Dani Austin & Jordan Ramirez: How They Got To $40 Million+ A Year As Influencers

Yeah, I mean, like our first like full year, I think you already shared it. Well, you said 20, it was 40, but, uh, yeah, we did about $40 million. And then, um, you know, this year we're on track to do 30%, 35% growth.

Yeah.

Um, it's, it's crazy.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

So we are here in the, uh, Where we are. Shed. Yeah. The shed.

The shed.

Like this studio, like I'm looking at the video, it looks legit. Yeah. People don't know what this looks like from the outside. This is definitely like a sketchy, um, like I've seen a Netflix documentary about a shed like this.

Well, you got here 5 minutes later than we did. It was, it was like 100 degrees in here before you got here. I was like, this is gonna be a sweaty podcast.

And this is, uh, you guys are different than I'll say our normal guests, which are almost always like, I don't know, business, like tech software type of entrepreneur. Uh, y'all are entrepreneurs in a different way and you're Instagram famous. So that's cool. That's amazing. Um, you tagged me in a story yesterday and I gotta say my wife has never looked at me that way before. She was like, she was like, oh, cause she's never listened to one episode of this podcast. No way. We've done maybe 400 episodes. She's not a podcast person in general. Like she doesn't listen to anyone's podcast.

Yeah.

But you would think maybe she'll listen to our— we got little kids now. There's just not a lot of like time to like do things like that.

Hey, I get it.

But I think she'll listen to this one. So I'm excited because, uh, she's a fan of yours. And, uh, and so we, we hung out at dinner last night, got to know each other a little bit. So I'm excited. Maybe we'll do like, you guys give like me like a 60-second intro of who you guys are. What, why, uh, introduce yourselves to the audience.

Sure. Um, I'll go first. So my name is Dani Austin. And I started, uh, creating content online about 10 years ago. I was actually living in Austin. I was at the University of Texas, sophomore, like just making videos on YouTube in my, in my dorm room. Um, you know, kind of just grew from there really fast. Then got on Instagram, all the other platforms. We now run Divi, which is a scalp care, uh, hair care product brand. Um, and we do that together. We have a lot of fun doing that. Honestly, online we just share anything about our lives from like having 2 kids under 2 to, um, you know, fast or affordable fashion.

Um, yeah.

Yeah.

We kind of been doing that together for, you know, 5 years. So she's been online for 10 years. You know, we met, we didn't work together until we got married. I was in like Austin tech scene before we got married. And then, uh, you know, I was telling you last night, this just became a lifestyle and it was all-consuming. And so she would be in like Turks and Caicos, and I would be in a boardroom and I'd be like, oh my gosh, like, what am I doing in my life? And so around 2018, we took the leap to work together, jumped into kind of like the influencer space, which we, it didn't have a name before that. It was just like, we created content. And then I think the media started covering it a lot more. And then they labeled me an Instagram husband. And then they labeled our industry, you know, the influencer.

How do you feel about that label?

You know, it was fine. Like, I'm glad that I did it.

Wait, that's so not true. At first you hated it.

Yeah, it's true.

It was, it was, it was— I'd go to a party and be like, what do you do? And he's like, um, you never knew.

Well, when you're coming outta college, like, you know, so much of your identity is wrapped up in your title. Right. Especially being here in Austin, Texas. Like, you know, in the tech scene it was like, oh, what startup are you part of? Do y'all have funding? You know, what's your title? What employee number were you? And so I was still kind of caught up in that mindset. And then, you know, we jumped in together. It was like, I, I remember the first article that came out was by, uh, a writer named Taylor Lorenz. And she wrote an article about what is the Instagram husband.

I got a history with Taylor Lorenz too.

Yeah.

Really? Yeah. Dude, it's crazy. A lot of people have a history with her now, but, uh, you know, she, so she, she wrote that article and she quoted me in it and then I was like labeled the Instagram husband, but, uh, yeah. And so we, we did the influencer industry for 5 years together and just honestly created content together and then COVID hit and brands started really investing in that space.

We should also say how this came about.

Yeah.

You listen to the pod. Yes.

And he's a huge fan.

I'm a huge fan.

Huge fan.

And so we, I didn't know that. I didn't know who you were at that time, but, uh, I did an episode where I was talking about creator businesses.

Yes.

So content creators who have now spun off businesses that are doing really well that are not called MrBeast. It's like, okay, everybody knows MrBeast. Yeah. So who are the, what are the other cool, cool examples? And we did like, maybe 5, 6, 7 examples. And then Danny with Divvy was one of them. And so I guess you heard that.

Yeah. Well, so like a couple nights before, I think I saw a tweet that you were doing and you were like, we're doing an episode on creator-led businesses. And I think I like told you.

You told me.

I like pulled over.

I was like, man, that'd be so cool if they mentioned Divvy.

I follow you guys on Twitter and, you know, like I was like, oh man, like that'd be cool if they recognized Divvy. But we're in a niche, right? That is totally not your niche. Like, you know, you had no idea who Danny was. I, last night Danny was like watching the first couple episodes of y'all's podcast. And I was like, no, this is Sean. He's cool. Cool. And yeah, I was on a plane a couple days later listening to that episode and then it was like, oh, have you ever heard of Danny Austin? You asked that to Sam and Sam was like, no. That was funny. And then it was like, yeah, you talked about Divvy and I really appreciate that. So I sent a DM and I was like, hey man, we'd love to come and share our story. It's very different than most of the businesses y'all cover, but.

And let's play a little game. We went to dinner last night, Chinese restaurant. We ordered food. Let's see how well you know your husband. I don't know if he told you this already.

He ate alligator. Yeah. Oh, he brought out the—

Did he order chicken? Did he order pig? Wait, so you ordered alligator?

I did order it and it was just kind of like a spur of the moment thing. There was a couple things that were funny about this dinner.

I think he was trying to impress us.

No, I was not trying to impress you. This is funny though. Like, so Matthew booked the dinner and it was, uh, so Sam Ellinger used to play football at UT Austin. That's one of Matthew's really good friends. Matthew works for Danny and I., and I go, hey, find a cool restaurant in, in Austin that, you know, we can talk to these people. He books this like upstairs room. There's like a chandelier. It's a table for 16.

There's 5 of us. 5 of us.

And they walk in. I go, Matthew, this is such a power move. And then on top of that, you know, the, I'm like, you know, we're, we're all talking, so I don't know what to order. And then he's like, you should try the alligator. I was like, okay, I'll take the alligator.

And they were like, and then he brought it home and woke me up and he was like, you gotta try this alligator. I'm like, I'm not touching that.

Sorry.

It really tastes like chicken. You should just try it. Okay.

So you didn't try the alligator.

Yeah.

That was a crazy move. Uh, I gotta, gotta give you credit.

I will never—

Did you enjoy it? I'll never forget it. So, uh, I guess that's maybe a lesson to be learned. Yeah. If you go to dinner with somebody for the first time, order the weirdest thing on the menu.

They'll never forget you.

They'll never forget it.

Um, that's awesome.

So you guys, uh, you started doing this back in 2012. Uh, right around 2012. You were in college at the time. What was— because, you know, Instagram had been out. Um, YouTube had been out for maybe 5 years by that point.

Mm-hmm.

But it sounds like when you're talking about it, it was very early days back then. What was, what was working back then? How did it, like, what did you have, a tiny following back then? Like, how did it, kind of, what were those early years like?

And you're like 21 at the time?

Yeah, I'm 21. No, I was 20, actually I was 19, 20.

I couldn't drink. So what were you doing when you're working for your manager? Just by day, like, selfies and stuff?

Yeah, no, I mean, I was like, um, in on like all of the negotiations. Like a lot of the creators were moving out to LA and the brands would come to the office and, you know, meet all the creators. And I honestly learned everything about like the backend of the business.

So, because at that time you weren't the star, but you were like building up.

Exactly. Yes. And then like also being around all these creators, I would meet some of like the girls that I loved and then get their number and then we would collab and everyone was very, it was just very collaborative. Everybody's helping each other out. Um, so it was awesome. And, but then I was able to kind of take all of that back to Austin and there really weren't a lot of, you know, YouTubers in Austin, which also kind of helped me because I felt like I was one of the only ones.

And so, um, when I was, I did start kind of like pitching myself to brands cuz like I also signed with my manager, but she was, you know, managing girls that had over a million followers. I had maybe 150,000 at the time. Um, and so I started pitching myself to all these like startups in Austin. And what I found was what was happening was I was getting these brand deals or these partnerships. I would, you know, get to know them, pull them in, and then forward them to my manager. And then I would look on YouTube and like all the other girls that were signed with her would be working with these brands and I wasn't. So I was basically just like funneling these brands to my manager. So I realized at that time I was like, I'm not big enough for them to care.

Right.

So I need to get outta this contract and just kind of manage, manage myself and build my own team and like have people that actually care about what I'm doing. Um, so as soon as I could, I got out of that contract. And ever since then, we've always kind of had like an in-house team, um, which we've learned a lot from that. But, um, but yeah, it's just kind of crazy how it's evolved.

And so how, even when you were, so how big is the audience now?

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's very stripped down.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot more authentic.

Yeah.

Just kind of like follow, follow my day. And so you, uh, you've done that. Now you also launched Divi. Yes. And 'cause that's kind of how we, when we initially found you guys, I read this thread. I read a Twitter thread somebody else had written about this and they named 5 or 6 creators I'd never heard of that had businesses that were really big. It was like Divi, uh, it's a, you know, this sort of like hair care product or whatever. And it was doing $40 million or something in revenue. I don't remember what the exact numbers were, but I remember being like, wow, that's like really significant. And so cool. Like I never really, like, I'd never heard of that. You hear the same 3 or 4 examples all the time when it comes to like like Logan Paul in prime and MrBeast and whatever, like, especially in the tech world, we kind of hear the same. We're not like as deep in. So you only hear this, hear the same, you know, 3 or 4 examples every single time. So how did that come about? How'd you, when'd you decide to, instead of posting for other people, like, let's create our own brand and how'd you pick the product? How did you like, how'd you have the confidence to go for it?

Yeah. So, um, there was definitely an era on Instagram where everything was perfect. You know, it's like back in the day of like posting the perfect selfie or the perfect, like, latte art, whatever it was. Um, and so I definitely played that game and it gets very exhausting after a while. I started actually losing my hair when I was in college, whenever I was at UT. First it started with like just me being so stressed out cuz I'm at UT, I'm flying to LA every weekend. I'm posting on these videos. I have like Neutrogena's like, where's the brand deal? And I have like 4 exams the next day, so I'm stressed out all the time. Start pulling my hair, then I get hair extensions to try to like cover that up. That makes it worse. Then I bleach my hair. That makes it worse. When we get married, I think like a year in, I look in the mirror and I'm like, I literally have no more hair. I was like, I didn't even want to leave the house anymore. So Jordan—

this is a dumb question. I mean, are we talking a couple strands of hair? What are we talking about?

No, I mean like bald spots, like patches, like patches of hair.

And it was stress-driven?

Stress-driven and then hair extensions. So that's probably like more traction alopecia. So what happens when you put hair extensions in, like your hair can't withstand that weight. And instead of just losing hair where the hair extension is, With traction alopecia, you actually lose hair like around that whole surrounding area. I see. So it was like multiple bald spots, like all over. So Jordan, of course, my husband, he's like, wait, I don't get it. Like, why don't you just get a wig? All the Kardashians wear wigs. What's wrong? What's wrong with that? So he takes me to a wig shop in Dallas, like the first place he Googles. We walk in, it's like a Halloween store.

Okay.

Like the most expensive wig is like, it's like probably called $200.

Yeah. Bright neon yellow. I'm like, I don't know if this is gonna work.

They're like, they're like plastic wigs. They're like, the most expensive one is like $15. So I leave there like so defeated. I'm like, I'm always gonna be bald, you know? So we actually, um, learn about this like wig shop in Los Angeles called The Wig Shop actually. Yeah. Uh, from Jeffree Star.

That's what I was gonna say.

Jeffree Star. Jeffree Star, who's another YouTuber. Anyway, long story short, we fly out there, find my first wig. I'm in wigs for a year and actually when I first got my first wig, I didn't tell anybody cuz I was so embarrassed.

I was like, we actually took a trip to Chicago with my parents and my sister-in-law and my brother. Mm-hmm. And we didn't tell them the entire time. They go, oh, Oh, nice haircut.

You know, like they— I mean, these things can look so real now.

Yeah. They're super real.

It's insane. So about a month into wearing it, I just felt like a fraud. I was like, I gotta tell people. I feel like I'm probably not the only female going through something like this. I think that like people will appreciate it and hopefully they'll be cool with it. So I shared that I was wearing wigs and it kind of just opened up this door of like all these females that are kind of going through the same thing, like this like hidden epidemic of hair loss.

Um, so yeah, my wife all the time after, uh, after we had our first baby, I think there's like an unknown kind of like postpartum. Oh yeah. Like issue with, with, uh, hair loss. And so she was talking about it all the time and I was like, I was like, what do you mean?

Like, it's nothing.

Don't worry about it. And she's like, no, look at this. And these like baby hairs, whatever. And it really bothered her. And I, I didn't even think really even to, to try, like, what, what would a solution look like?

So, yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it can be very emotional, like especially for females.

Um, cuz there just weren't a lot of people talking about it. So, um, long story short, I took the year and wore wigs and I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna focus on my scalp health. I'm gonna focus on my wellness. Um, and really like give this thing like 100%. So meanwhile, there was actually this trend, um, or I guess a hack online where a lot of women were using Monistat. To grow their hair back, which is so strange. But the reason that was working is because it has a lot of like antifungal properties.

Monastac.

Tell Sean, Danny, you gotta tell him. I shouldn't know about it or no? No, you shouldn't know about it.

Is it a good thing that I don't know about this?

This is good clickbait.

Tell us.

Okay, so all the guys on the podcast are gonna be like, what the heck?

By the way, we will explain. We always joke that we have 4 female listeners. Hopefully that'll change after this episode.

Those 4 female listeners were all like dying inside laughing right now.

They're all like putting face masks on their face right now.

Monistat is what people, what females use for yeast infections.

Okay.

Gotcha. And so a lot of women were using this on their scalp though, and it's helping their hair grow and people are taking before and after pictures and it's like insane. So the reason that's working is because it has these antifungal properties in it, which nowadays, you know, they always tell you don't wash your hair, it's not good for you. So a lot of females are using, um, dry shampoo. Yeah. And so they're putting all this dry shampoo, all this product that's just like sitting on your scalp. Blocking your follicle. And so your hair doesn't really have like a fair chance of growing. So when they're using Monistat, you know, it's kind of like detoxifying, it's getting rid of all that product buildup and your hair is growing. So the only thing with that is you shouldn't be using it long term. It's just like has a lot of harmful things in it. So my goal was to find a more natural way to essentially accomplish the same thing. So I would like get into my bathroom and I studied bio at the University of Texas. I was going to—

So did I. They don't teach you anything. I learned photosynthesis for like 7 years. Yeah, exactly. They don't teach you anything about the human body.

Exactly.

She can hang with the chemist, Sean.

I can hang now.

She can hang. She's like, okay, I remember that.

I kind of, I kind of get it.

But, uh, it's amazing how much you learn when you really need to learn versus like my major.

Now I wish I really would've paid attention.

Right.

Because I think it really would've benefited me, but would've known. Anyway, so, um, so, you know, I'm like a little chemist in my, in my bathroom. I'm getting all these ingredients from online, Whole Foods, all over the place and just making my own scalp serums. And I would, you know, share on YouTube like, this is how I make it. This is where you order this and then mix it this way. And and then people started asking, they're like, hey, can you just like ship it to me? Right. And so I go to Jordan, I'm like, I really think this could be a thing. A lot of people—

we're not gonna ship them a peach tree dish.

When was this, like a couple years ago or—

this was, uh, 2019.

Uh, no, they probably—

yeah, 2019.

2019.

It was the best marketing there is, right?

Before and after. Yes. People started sending in their before and afters and like, so then I would start sharing them, you know, left and right. And I mean, every day I'm probably tagged in like 15 before and afters even to this day.

Yeah.

So were there not scalp serums before that or there were, but they just weren't You know, I think it was just such a new, like a niche, like, you know, putting something on your scalp, like a skincare routine, like creating that scalp routine was very new. People weren't really thinking about it. So I'm sure that there were scalp serums out there, but I don't think people were educated about like how to use them or why they were important. So our biggest thing is just like if you're taking care of your skin, like you should be taking care of your scalp. It's kind of like an extension of, you know, and so, so I think once people kind of understood how to use it, then they went to Divi first because we were also one of the only like clean scalp serums out there. Gotcha.

So the business launches when?

2020.

2020.

Uh, no, 2021.

2021. October 2021.

So we're not even 2 full years in, you know, and it's exploded. So I don't know how much you guys typically share. Do you guys share revenue stuff or not really?

And that's mostly from kind of the power of your community or that's that plus a bunch of other marketing that you have to do or how, how does the business grow?

I mean, how much do we sell?

That probably exceeded your expectations. I mean, that would exceed anyone's expectations.

And so I missed that whole era.

Yeah, you missed the era.

Well, it's here.

It's now. I don't have a skincare routine either. So I had to catch up. I need to start with skin, move to scalp.

I gave you two boxes. Yeah, I know. You're, you're in it now. Um, and so, yeah, it's, it's just been wild. I mean, we, we never expected.

And so did you guys look at like other creator-led businesses? Like who was the inspiration that you're like, oh, you know, if we do this well, this could be like, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

Skims, or this could be like the Kylie's lip thing or whatever.

I mean, we've always admired the Kardashians in a business sense of like how they've how they've like used their reality TV to grow all these businesses. And like, we, one thing we love about them is like how they all support each other. It's like a, an ecosystem. Like you're using, you know, Kylie's makeup and then you're wearing Kim's Skims. And so we always love that aspect of what they do. But I mean, in terms of like our inspiration, to be honest, everyone in our space was just launching clothing lines. Um, so it was totally different.

Yeah, it was very, very different.

Were you tempted to do that too?

Or 100%? Ryan was like, please don't.

Yeah, please don't. The returns are insane.

My My parents, my dad actually has a showroom at the, uh, Dallas World, uh, Trade Center in Dallas. So he, um, you know, sells wholesale to all, you know, Nordstrom, all these boutiques. My dad always told me, he's like, the one thing I ask you is please don't get in the fashion industry.

Right.

It's just, yeah, it's, it's a lot. And so, um, but one thing I knew that I wanted if I ever did launch a business is that I wanted to have something that could be on subscription. And so a lot of my ideas. Were mainly tech at first. Um, I never really thought of it like—

Tech like what? Like what would it have been?

Uh, you know, some service that you could get. I had, I honestly didn't have like a, a tech— what?

Like you—

We had the Sassy Club.

There was like one, yeah, there was one time where she like wanted to launch her own app because she felt like, you know, she could build a better community like through a different platform than Instagram. And, and I, and, and we tried it. We called it, what did you call it?

The Sassy Club.

The Sassy Club at the time. And it was like, we used this, uh, this third-party app system and we drove a large part of our community to it and we tried to do like more, the whole concept was like, let's meet in real life with our audience. And so it was like we'd do meetups and stuff like that. And that was just really hard.

It was kind of like a Bumble, right?

Yeah.

It was kinda like a Bumble. Yeah. And so we tried that, you know, it, it was pretty difficult.

And then it was, it was difficult to manage like the in-face interactions.

Yeah. Now let me ask you a question. I just hired a guy, paid a guy $5,000 to do a couple of like one-on-one like workshops with me. And it was all about this idea of personal branding, which honestly a pretty lame phrase in general. Like I cringe that I even did all this, but I'm putting it out there in the spirit of authenticity. So I paid this guy. Why did I pay this guy? Well, this podcast itself has gotten pretty popular, but, uh, I've always had this problem, which was just like, you see some people and their brand is so clear. It's like, there's this guy who, this guy named Pomp and Pomp is all about Bitcoin. He's the Bitcoin guy.

Yeah.

Like, you know him about, you know him because of Bitcoin. He talks about Bitcoin, everything he loves, you know, every fourth word needs to be Bitcoin. Yep. And then you have like, Tim Ferriss, who's, you know, the 4-Hour Workweek guy or the 4-Hour Body, 4-Hour Chef. He's the 4-Hour guy. He's all about kind of life hacking your way there. And so you go down the list and a lot of people who have built good online followings, they have a clear kind of like, they're the blank guy or they're the blank gal, whatever. Like that's what they're known for. And for me, I've always been like, well, I don't know, the business guy, that doesn't sound very like specific or focused. And I was like, oh, I've gotten pretty far without that, but maybe I, maybe somebody can help me kind of sharpen this. So this guy who I hired, he works with like You know, like Jay Shetty and like, um, a bunch of people who are like that. Like, uh, the guy who did Quest Bar, I think. Yeah. Tom, whatever, Billiou. Mm-hmm. Um, and he's like, yeah, you know, like Jay Shetty, his story is he was like kind of like in and out of trouble, then decided to go be a monk and he was a monk and then he like got kicked out of the monastery cuz a monk came to him, was like, you know, you like, so there's something bigger in store for you. So he decided to make his life mission to bring Ancient monk wisdom in a modern way to the world or whatever. I butchered that, but something like that.

He's consistent, man.

Right.

He's doing it every day.

I just knew him as like the blue-eyed Indian guy or like, you know, that's what stood out to me.

Like the guy's got blue or green eyes.

Yeah, exactly.

But I was like, okay, I see how, I see the value in if you really like sharpen this, like whatever your brand is all about. But then I've met people who are maybe like you who, um, you probably never hired a consultant or like did a brand workshop or like sat down with a piece of paper and like tried to architect it. Seems like it kind of happened organically and naturally for you. So I have two questions for you. One, do you think you have like a focus like that? Like the blank, you are the, you know, just like the Bitcoin guy. Like, do you have like a thing that's like our brand is about this word or these three words or whatever? Do you have something like that?

So When I started going through my hair loss, I think it was the first time that I kind of felt like I had that thing. Like I was kind of like the wig influencer for a while and then kind of like the hair loss influencer. I mean, as cliché as it sounds, I feel like, like I think our biggest thing is we've always just been very authentic and like goofy. Um, and we've kind of, I feel like what we've done is figured out how to collide those worlds of like being professional, but also getting, you know, taking your heels off, getting back home. Right. Just like, and being real about what it's like having two kids. Like you're in heels changing diapers, kids peeing all over you. But like, I would say it, it took like 10 years for people to kind of, I've never had, you know, this persona or this video pop off and go viral and then everyone knows who I am. Like I've never had that moment. It's just been like very gradual of, but I, But I totally feel what you're saying. Like, I, I still go through those times where I'm like, okay, who am I?

Like, what do you—

what's my identity? Like, what do you— and I, I do feel like there are some bloggers out there that are so good at like, okay, when you think of Chick-fil-A, you think of this one person. Or when you think of like this one brand, you think of it.

Dude, that should have been mine. Chick-fil-A. You're a genius.

Yes.

No. In front of me the whole time.

Yeah. And it's like, and so I do try to find those things that like, okay, when in Dallas, when people go here, like, are they going to What brands are they thinking of when they think of Dani?

Yeah.

You know, but it, it's, it's challenging because also like I'm very, you know, one day I wanna be doing this, one day I like to like kind of shift and be on my toes.

And so what do you think people get wrong when they try to build a following? Not like the people who are just obviously bad, but let's say people who have the potential where it could be working out. What do you think are the mistakes that those people make that like they're trying to be perfect all the time and it's so unrelatable.

I think like one of the biggest reasons that like people can relate is because We have made so many mistakes and we share them and like there's times when we get online and we're like, man, that was bad. We should have done that. Like there was an example, a small example, but I was, uh, cutting up like fruit for my daughter Stella's lunch and I'm cutting the grapes wrong, you know, like where they can choke on grapes and like had no idea. Like my mom never cut my grapes, so like I didn't know I was doing anything wrong. But you know, like the DMs start flooding in, the Facebook groups are popping off, Danny's like, Cutting the grapes wrong.

Are you trying to kill your kid?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you're influencing all these moms to cut grapes wrong. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't know. Like, so, you know, you get on, you're like, guys, I'm so sorry. Like, I made a mistake. Let me like teach you the right way to cut grapes instead of like deleting the content and being embarrassed about it. And so it's like—

I think you cut them wrong the second time too.

I did. I did. I did. Um, but yeah, so I just feel like I have a lot of girlfriends like in Dallas that are, you know, trying to do something similar and they're trying so hard to just be perfect all the time. And it's not really—

I know, I, I, I agree. I mean, I feel like the times that we connect with our audience the most is like in those goofy times when I'm running around with no pants on and like, we're like, oh, I relate, same thing, you know?

I think there's like a, there's like a pushback on like A-list celebrities even towards influencers because it's like, I don't understand, like this is not relevant to my life at all, what the Kardashians are doing in the private jets and all this stuff. And like, I think that that's where people feel at home, you know, is, is in these kind of like relatable moments, which is what I told Ben you need to do. I feel like y'all do this so well on the podcast. Podcast is like, you're not trying to be this business guru expert. You're just kind of talking about everyday people's business and your thoughts on it. And you're kind of riffing. And I think that, you know, I told Sean, I was like, I think he just needs to do more. He needs to get on Instagram stories. He needs to get on YouTube. That was my advice to him.

Are you on Instagram stories?

So I went non-private, like, you know, a month ago.

Yeah.

For the first time. I'm now not private.

Yeah. When we DM'd him, it was private.

I was like, what is this guy doing?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't bother with Instagram, but But what did your, your, your fancy branding coach tell you?

I think it's like education meets inspiration. Like I think I walk away being like, oh cool, new idea. Like I want to, you know, I want to learn more about that. Or I feel like I can, you know, go do this in our business.

Right.

And I think that that's what you guys do really well, whether it's like just sharing ideas or, you know, uh, uncovering these things we've never heard of, but it's done in a relatable manner. Whereas like, I think that that's why it's inspiring is because you're not doing this in like this, I'm up here, you're down here type of way. It's kind of like, hey, we're all here and we can all do it.

Right.

It's more tangible. It's more tangible. It's very relatable. Like, I think that there's very strong parallels between what I've seen in like Dani's content and the way that she relates to her audience and what you guys are doing with your audience.

Well, we call it the girl next door. We, we don't wanna be a supermodel. We wanna be the girl next door. Yeah. You're still trying to be hot.

Hot, but you're trying to be like—

relatable hot.

Like, I can get there. But yeah, you are the girl. I love that.

How have people— like, do you— what are your experiences like in real life when you meet people who listen to the pod?

Uh, it's probably like how— what you feel, which is that they know you. They're like, like, yeah, you don't know me, but I really know you.

Like, we're friends.

Yeah, like, like an Instagram— like daily vlogging, kind of like through an Instagram story, is kind of the same way.

It's like the same.

I know you, your kids, I know what your house looks like, I know like On my way here, I was asking my wife, I was like, I was like, I don't follow them on Instagram. Like, I don't know their stories. Little do I know, they're like, oh, their mom is like involved in it and this, they got two kids. Like, there's like all these little things that are known about your life, the inside of your life. And so I think like, that's what you guys do on the podcast is different. Podcast is like such a long form conversation, right? Unedited, unscripted. So you get to know someone's personality and we, I usually do the pod with, uh, my buddy Sam and Sam, like. It's kind of like two friends hanging out, kicking it. And so you, you get the, like the big, what we found was that the two transformations people get, the two feelings that they get consistently is we're like their entrepreneurial friends. It's almost like they got to hang out with their two guy friends who are like super into business, nerding out about business stuff. It's like they kind of got to have the hangout without like going and having the friends and doing the hangout like themselves. Cause it's like, oh, I was driving somewhere and I just listened, but I kind of got my hangout fix. And the second is like motivation or like the inspiration, like the juice to be like, I'm probably not going to go do any of the things you mentioned on this podcast specifically, but just hearing about stories of people doing interesting things made me want to go do more interesting things or made me want, if they're doing well, it made me want to go crush it in my field too. So once we realized that it's like, oh, okay. That's very different than people come to me for this specific information or the specific help. Um, because it's like, Yeah, there's some of that, but it's not the main thing that gets people attached to you.

I told Ben this, you know, but I said the biggest pitfall from here is you gotta stay humble and you gotta stay consistent because I think that what happens in this era and you saw it a lot with the early TikTokers that blew up during COVID is they moved in these big houses, right? You know, and then they would sign with these managers and then they're all in all these commercials and the very thing that made them relatable and tangible during those times, which was dancing alone in their bedrooms, which was dancing alone in their bedrooms. Now they're in mansions and it loses the same sentiment. Right. And I think that that's the pitfall of anyone really in like the entertainment industry, but like anyone who's built their brand off of authenticity is like losing that. Right. So it'd be like you guys, you know, becoming jerks, you know, or douchey and then like no one wants to hang out and they're like, oh, well now they're just pompous. Or even like you have to protect yourself, you know, in our world we have to protect ourselves from the sponsored things of like, oh, they're just bought now. Right. You know, like I don't trust them anymore. You know, I, I, I don't believe that they're saying this for just genuine reasons. It's not Sam and, you know, kicking it.

And so you probably get this question a lot. It's the same question we get a lot, which is like, if you were just starting out today, what would you, what would you do? Right. If you were 21 now, what would you, where would you start? Uh, we get that on the business side. What would you say your, your answer to that is on the content side? Would you, would you start on TikTok? Would you go to Instagram? Like what type of content would you do? Because like, You had said one thing that was actually very, very interesting to me. Your first video you said was like affordable New Year's, New Year's Eve outfits. That's kind of amazing because that's a great, like almost like title. Um, like it seems like from the beginning you had a good sense of like what content will work. Um, not everybody has that. Like, I think most people would have tried something that's like not that.

I would say with like any platform that I started on, I mean, I would probably start on TikTok now just because I feel like it's. Easiest to go viral. Instagram is so tough. Um, but I do feel like YouTube's like kind of coming back a little bit.

Yeah, I heard vlogging's coming back.

Right.

Um, so I wish I would've just like kind of been more unique, which I think kind of just goes back to like, what does Dani actually wanna share? Like, what is she really passionate about? I would mix in a little bit of that. Like I, since I was studying biology and kinesiology, I would, you know, mix in a little bit of like what I was learning in my classes. But then the next video was a trend. Right. You know? And so that's the same thing that I feel like a lot of TikTokers get caught up in. Yeah. You know, they're just doing all these trendy videos and then they have a meetup and like no one comes because nobody really knows them and nobody actually like connects with them. Um, and then too, like, I think branding as characters within your content is so important. Like you said, my mom's in a lot of content, so I had this idea to call my mom.

So yeah, her character is, we call her Tornado. And that's the re— the reason we call her Tornado is because she is a tornado when she walks in the room. Like right now, if she was in this room, she'd be dusting off your leaves over there. She'd be fixing all the light bulbs. My mom has so much energy and I didn't really know how to like communicate that to the audience. So my first step was like, we call her Tornado. And the second step is every time she comes over, we're showing her up on a chair dusting things off and like doing tornado things, doing tornado things, pulling me out, out of my comfort zone, just like being a tornado. And so, um, and then, you know, Jordan's— Jordan's character is like every single day he gets up at the same exact time, he wears, you know, he gets dressed up every single time I'm running around the house, just like chaos. So We all have our certain characters, and I didn't really learn how important that was up until like probably like 3 or 4 years ago.

How did you learn that? You sort of like—

because people started forgetting who we were. And so I had to like create a way where people, like, when they, when they, you know, were missing it, like, what did they associate our family with? And like, how, how could they remember us throughout the day? And so, um, so like Tornado was, was a like— was kind of huge for us. I feel like that was not only that, but it was like very relatable because You know, just even before we had kids, like the content we were creating, I'm like, who relates to this? We're traveling all over the world taking outfit pictures.

Right.

You know, like this is not, yeah, that doesn't make sense. And honestly it was exhausting for us cuz it wasn't even like relatable for, for us, you know? And so as soon as we kind of like settled down and we had kids and I was like, okay, we have to figure out a way to make our everyday life interesting.

You're like, so we bought our nice house and then we put a relatable house. Yeah. We film the content in the relatable house and then we go sleep in the nice house at night.

No, honestly, I know people that do that. Like I I know influencers that have second houses that literally just film there.

Yeah.

Or middle class house.

Yeah.

No. Or I know influencers that literally will, like, they'll take a Chanel bag to dinner, but they'll like switch it with like an Amazon one before when they take the photo. And it's like, um, but no, I feel like what's so like unique about us too is like that we kind of live our lives just the way we were raised. Yeah. Like with the same family values that we were raised with. We're not scared to, we're not scared to share that with our, with our audience.

Yeah, I mean, I would say like everything you said a lot about like characters, this is like who they are, you know? And it was just like, how do we kind of like tell it from all of these different angles? And it just fit, you know, like every family is a story, right? And I think that that's where a lot of the creativity seeped into what we did, right? And why it was hard to do what we did is we had to find what made our, our family unique and almost produce it like a reality TV show. And I think that, that, I mean, I don't wanna say that we were the first, but I think that that's what we saw the medium of. Instagram stories as like a lot of, I think influencers in like the 2019 era when it came out, we were like, oh my gosh, like how am I gonna do this? Because they're not super personable. And we, you know, with your YouTube background, we were like, oh man, this is like our platform to shine. And it was, it was so fun. It's what I'm pushing you to do is like show your wife, show your kids, like show the behind the scenes of like what is happening in Sean's life beyond just this podcast. Like that's what I think.

And it doesn't even have to be family. It could be like your producer or your assistant or whoever it is. Like my, my brother now has an assistant. Her name's Katie. And she shows up like 3 days a week and she is, everyone like loves her on the content. And now because they love her and because she's a character, they go out and do these crazy things that they probably would've never done. That's just so much more entertaining now because there's another character involved.

And so who's, are you just like selfie with the camera? Do you have somebody who holds your right arm? This guy. Hello, my name's Jordan.

Okay. This guy. I mean, yeah, it's, we do have a content creator now that we actually just hired. Yeah.

He helps with like reels, cuz those are, that's a different game.

That's a whole nother beast. So, you know, he's been helping out a little bit, but like we kind of just enjoy doing it ourselves.

There's a lot.

I talked to another woman who listens to the pod, Rebecca Zamorolo, you know who she is? Yeah.

She's like a YouTuber.

She's got like 10 million subs on YouTube. Mm-hmm. And when I called her, she was basically like, yeah, downstairs right now is like the camera crew. They basically live in our house. And she's like, my dog has a channel that's got like 300,000 subs. Like we have our gaming channel. We have our, she does like kind of kids like roleplay content or something like that. Yeah. Story kind of like, oh yeah, let's like treasure chest in the backyard.

Let's go do whatever.

And so they not only, each one had not only as a character, each one got their own sub channels, has their own following. And then they have a camera crew that was like just there all the time. I was like, man, that's, you know, stressful. Or like, just, it's like a lot.

Like, It's like reality TV.

It's like, you know, famous people, they have trouble when they go out because they're like, oh, I keep getting stopped. But almost like influencers have it in the house. It's like, I never get to just not. Yes. Have you said the same thing?

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

It's, it's hard. And I love our team to death, but you know, it's, it's hard when your job is to live your life. You know, your job is to, to experience life, to capture it in a very raw, stripped down way. But you know, when there's crews and there's teams, it's, it's sometimes counterproductive to what you're trying to do. And so, you know, the reason I think that the husband and wife dynamic works so well in our niche is because it's just us hanging out, you know?

And it's like, it's the best content there is.

If Annie had a Ben in her life that was like following around that wasn't her husband, it's like, it's all about the dynamic, right? And so like, I, you know, it's funny, I always advocate for like the best producer for a content creator is gonna be the husband. In fact, I think that the most successful couples in our niche have that husband-wife dynamic where they're creating content together.

It is funny. We have our, so we do have a team and they come over like 4 days a week. Like, well, they, they meet in our upstairs playroom, and so they're not the ones actually filming the content, but they're there.

Truly, as we had more kids, it was like, okay, we're just gonna put this ball pit in here. Okay, here's Stella's table. And so Stella will walk in and just be playing.

But the amount of times that we've tried to, you know, get a workspace or get an office, it just like doesn't work because they do have to be there. Because like, if we're going into an office every day, that's not relatable anymore, right? And there's also like nothing—

I don't know, it's truly one of the most technical nuances that's difficult about our industry, um, is like, how do we position our team? Where do we put them? And then like Danny can't, you know, you can't just say, hey Danny, come to the office and do a try-on haul. All the clothes are in the, the, the closet.

Right, right.

But so it's always the trade-off of, okay, do we have people in our house?

What do we do?

Yeah, we're still figuring it out.

Still figuring it out.

And for the, uh, like Instagram kind of like sponsored content or like brand deals, um, Tell me a little bit about those. So how, uh, how have those kind of like changed over time? What, what it, what is like working the best or what works, what doesn't work anymore or doesn't work at all when people try it?

Yeah. So I mean, brand deals started out as, you know, here's a product, go make a YouTube video, include it for 20 seconds, put the link in there. And like, at first I was such a sellout because, you know, like you're, I'm 20 years old. I'm like, I'm just trying to pay my rent. Like, I'll do, I'll do anything that I can do to just like get by. And so, and then I think you get to a point where you're like, wait, like people really trust me. Like, this is like some responsibility. So I kind of like took this approach where I pictured myself like, you know, shopping with them and then purchasing something, then trying it, and then them being like, what the heck, Dani, why'd you recommend this? So I really started to take like more responsibility and like, wait, I am a resource. Like I gotta serve these people. Not only that, I have to find the best deals. Not only that, like I need to go after these brands and beg them for better promo codes that like they can't get anywhere else. So it kind of became like competitive with myself.

But I think what works a lot for us is to not just go 100% on brand deals, but to also couple that affiliates. So when I post, you know, LTK. So when I share something that I—

like to know, right?

And so what's the juiciest brand deal you've ever had where you were like, wow, they're gonna pay us that, like that's a stupid amount of money, or like You know, we, we can make this work.

You don't have to say the name of the brand or you could just describe it.

You gonna say it?

I, I know what you're gonna say. I think you say it.

Stanley.

Yeah.

Stanley. Stanley. The cups. That's a giant mug.

Yeah.

So fun fact, we were like the first.

Why are those like so popular now?

We were the first to share them. Yeah. First bloggers to put that. Yeah.

And I was like, this is humongous. This is a giant, giant cup.

Not on the Quencher. We have a code on every other product but the Quencher.

Yeah, that's, it's hard, but yeah, they, um, they've been good.

They've been awesome to us.

We have some special things coming out with them. We're excited about.

Yeah.

We're excited. Amazing. So pain points, right? So like you talked about how Divi was born out of a pain point that you had.

Yeah.

Um, I'm curious as you guys are trying to run this kind of influencer business plus Divi, Have you felt any pain points that you're like, God, I wish, I wish somebody just made this easier or made this hiring people easier.

That's a good idea.

That's a great idea.

That's a great idea.

Take photos and I just paid them like hourly, but I feel like you could get like a pretty good team that like, you know, they take all this. The nice thing is too, you get your content the day after the wedding. Right. Because like the biggest bummer is you go to your honeymoon, you don't have any pictures.

You don't have anything to post.

Yeah. Nothing to post. And like people are gonna pay for that cuz it's their, for one day.

It's just a normal videographer, I think is like like $10,000 plus.

Yeah. Like, and sometimes I don't even like, I like the iPhone video.

Those are like, like you said, like my sister-in-law just got married like a few months ago. She just now got like the first cut of the wedding video. And then that doesn't look like what content looks like nowadays.

Exactly.

It looks like this like arcade looking thing. It's like nice.

Yeah.

But it's like, if you posted this, it's like, okay, grandma, like, you know what?

This is not like, uh, my brother had like 5 TikToks and like 6 Instagrams.

Yeah.

That like felt like the fun of the party, you know, was captured.

And I, I think the reason we've noticed that is because Jordan Films a lot of our content and we've, we've been to a lot of weddings where the next day the bride is like reaching out to me like, hey, can you send me that reel that you posted or, uh, your stories for the day? And we're like, oh, they already expired. Like they're, they're done for, you know?

And there's so many like content creators now that I feel like don't want to be influencers. They're just like content creators. Like they'll just create content for other people. I think someone's gonna, that's always been a great idea you had.

Thank you. If I had more time.

I like that one a lot. And that's cool because that could just be like local franchises, right? Exactly. You could, uh, in theory, you could just start that business and then be like, I'm looking for an operator in Nashville. We need an operator in Florida who's going to be able to do these like dispatch content creators.

And they go in and then they like cut it all up and then they have it to you by midnight.

Who did you say? You said there's a bunch of content creators that don't want to be influencers. So who are they? What are they? What are they doing?

Yeah. We pay for our brand. We pay like between $1,000 and $2,000 to a handful of creators for this exact thing. And it's like, they don't have a following.

Yeah.

They're just like good at creating this content. And, uh, they're like, wow, you know, I get free product. I get paid to do this? Like, this is amazing. And I don't even need to be famous.

Like, I felt the hit even with my brand deals. Like, we don't get a lot of those opportunities more because they used to come to me and they used to say, we'll pay you X amount. But now I guess we're too expensive or something because we never hear from them anymore.

Well, it's kind of shifted to like, that's interesting part about like how the influencer industry shifted is it's, it always kind of goes in waves, right? But it's like moving from like back to mass marketing where it's like as many people as possible are using and talking about your product at the same time.

And so That's how it goes viral on TikTok.

That's how it goes viral on TikTok.

And so where does Divi go from here? So you guys are at this level now. You guys, you have like a retail distribution too, right?

Yeah. So last year we did about 8% of our revenue from retail, but we are scaling in Ulta. So we're hoping to be in all doors of Ulta by the end of this year. Um, I don't know. Danny's always been big on like not taking investors. So we didn't do that at the front end. Um, And so we're kind of like, we own our own destiny at this point. I think that we're very passionate about the mission of Divi. Like, it's hard to create an influencer brand that people don't think you just slapped your name on it, right? So we really wanted to create a product that is more and bigger than Danny. And so the products have to be really good. And so we're really focused right now on innovation. We're trying to patent some of our technologies.

By the way, why is it called Divi? What's the name? What does that mean?

Yeah, you answer this.

I always forget. So divvy, it's just like divvying up attention to like each area of your life. It's like overall better lifestyle and overall wellness.

But is it one of those things where it just sounds cool, then later you're like, what's the meaning? Or you're like, I always try to, she doesn't like that one.

Honestly, I really wanna know.

Yeah.

It was just so hard to trademark anything.

Yeah.

I was like, I mean, we had to, she gets mad when I say this, but I was like, yeah, it's the third name. All the other ones are trademarked.

No, it was like the 30th name.

Like, um, it's a good name.

Yeah, it's good.

I mean, yeah, now I like, I love it now, but And so you're going into retail, you hired up a bunch of people, you said. Yeah. What else is like, what's the next unanswered question for you guys? What are you trying to figure out next?

I would say like, you know, last year was very difficult just because like it was kind of Danny and I running everything. We've now, like you said, hired like this suite of VPs. I would say the next biggest challenge for us is like we're kind of setting the stage for in 2024 to go international. Um, which some companies have done really well and other companies have really botched. Yeah. Um, and it's been just like a, a money pit. And so that's probably the next frontier for us. And, you know, we would like to do it without having to raise additional capital. We've done everything thus far ourselves. Um, which is very unique.

So, I mean, the best part is like our audience is kind of built in. So when we launch something, people tell me that day if they like it or not, or that day, right, what they want more of. And so, you know, our sequencer, what we've launched, we only have 4 SKUs right now. Has just been like listening to our audience. And that's the biggest, one of the biggest things is, can you sell international? And so, so we're definitely working on that. And then just like a lot of other SKUs in the pipeline, since we only have 4 SKUs, we have a lot.

Product development's been the hardest thing to learn for us, for sure.

Oh, 100%.

And so there's like that, uh, company like Seed Beauty that was doing stuff for, I forgot who, Kylie or some, something like that. It was like, there's like these companies that are behind a lot of the influencer brands. Like, uh, I know like the Prime drink or whatever, there's like these guys behind it that totally— they have their own company. They do like multiple brands out of that. Did you guys work with somebody like that or did you do your own sourcing and manufacturing?

We found a manufacturer and that's pretty much it.

And like formulation, how'd you do that? You went to like a formulation house or whatever?

Kind of the same. Yeah. Like manufacturers usually have chemists in-house. And so we found one and it— they developed our serum and luckily we just picked one right. That's a very hard world to navigate too.

I've learned.

Um, I think we totally got lucky with our manufacturer on the first one because there's a lot of bad manufacturers out there and you don't know until 6 months later. Right. And so picking the good ones has been hard. But yeah, other than that, I mean, we have 2 in-house chemists now. Yeah, we have 2 in-house chemists. We, we, again, with the influencer business, like Dani learned so much from having a manager. We've always just tried to be entrepreneurs in-house and bring in-house, which is usually longer. You make more mistakes, it's harder. But I mean, I think that we like where we're at, where we didn't have a Cody or someone come in and say, just slap your name on this because we're able to listen to our audience, develop the products that we know that they want. And, uh, but yeah, it's more challenging for sure.

I didn't see him at all last year.

Yeah, I was like, I'm like, I have a life now. I play paintball now. So like, I'm, I'm good now, but paintball round. Yeah, I play paintball now.

So no, and it's also the first time now we have like our 4 VPs when we walk into a room and we're like, hey, we have an idea. Can we do this?

Yeah.

We're like, what's the political process of how we get things done? And, and now there's process everywhere, whereas It's like, you know, if we have an idea today on the content side, we're like, okay, let's make it happen. You know? And it's just, it's becoming a real company, which is, it's cool, but it comes with—

Yeah. I have to be careful. Jordan tells me when we walk into the office, he's like, you can't just walk into the office and tell them what you want or they don't like something.

Sometimes I'll throw it like, we've been working on this product for 8 months. She's like, yeah, I don't really like it.

You know?

It's like, wait, wait, wait, just don't say it.

Just crushing hopes and dreams.

I'm sorry.

Do you think you'll be doing content in like 5 years, 10 years?

100%. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed with my job. Like I love creating content. Yeah, yeah, I don't even think of it as a job, but it's, it's honestly like, so I, I think it like, our relationship I feel like is always really healthy whenever we're like creative together and creating things together. And I think we love doing that.

Um, Instagram therapy basically. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you guys connected.

Well, if you work with your wife, like, you, I feel like you have to work through so much more conflict than if you have 9-to-5s. Like, I mean, we, yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's, it makes our relationship stronger in, in a, and we, with something like a, a larger goal and then, you know, um, but we'll see like how it evolves with involving our family, like our kids. Yeah. That's something I still haven't really figured out. Um, and that's what's so great about working with Jordan is like if we ever didn't wanna share our kids or go down that path, like him and I can just take over again. Right. Um, and then also having Divi, we don't have to rely on, on sharing the entire family. Um, but no, I think it's something that we'll probably always be doing.

Yeah. Where's, uh, well, on Instagram.

Yeah. So people can find us on Instagram under Dani Austin. Um, and then Divi, diviofficial.com. Um, and then Instagram, Divi Official. Yep.

And what about you? Where's your Instagram?

Oh, I don't.

You don't even have one? I don't have one. Dude, you got a spinoff character, man. No, no, no.

It's so much effort that I, I, I couldn't. I couldn't. It would cause conflict in our marriage to try and do both. Like, It was true.

Yeah.

I'm a great supporting actor.

That's why. Amazing.

If people want to come work for you, how would they find you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you want, if you're— yeah. If, uh, if you guys want to come work for Divi, email hello@diviofficial.com and it'll get to me.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, thanks for doing this. I know this is definitely, you were probably like, what the heck is this podcast? Who are these guys? But, uh, you know, I appreciate you coming on.

This is fun.

This was fun.

Yeah.

Thanks for having us.

Right on.