In search of himself, Andy Mai sought to take a more conscious look at... his look. He was one of the early adopters to jump into the /r/malefashionadvice subdreddit, also known as 'MFA', that has since grown to be one of Reddit's staple communities with over 500K readers. Andy's passion for expression extends beyond himself as he encourages people to experiment with their self image. Leading by example he constructed the now legendary prompt "let's have some fun" and submitted it to Reddit. Four years later he still gets questions from people seeking a supportive voice and is always there to answer the call. This episode is guaranteed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Subscribe and review the Ghost Influence Podcast on iTunes.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: ‘Splashed - Her Smile (Original Mix)'
By the time Bernie Sanders officially announced his candidacy for president in April 2014, Aidan King had already been preparing (and hoping) for five months. Aidan is one of the Co-Founders of the subreddit /r/SandersForPresident, a moderated community on Reddit geared toward political activism and digital grassroots organizing. This community is more than a place to post updates, it's become a powerful network of supporters around the nation working together for a common goal and it's inspiring to see. Regardless of your political interests, Aidan's insights on leading a community are an illuminating education into the human psyche.
EDIT: Shortly after this episode was published, Aidan stepped down as a moderator of the /r/SandersForPresident subreddit and accepted a position as Digital Staff for Bernie 2016. At the age of 22 and with no formal experience in politics, Aidan King was recruited to be a part of a presidential campaign. The creation of the subreddit wasn't a ploy designed to land him a job, it was purely his passion for the cause and the community supporting it — the rest happened naturally. THAT is how you Reddit.
Subscribe and review the Ghost Influence Podcast on iTunes.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: ‘Schyzox - My World'
With 29K subscribers on YouTube, 590K fans on Vine, and 2.5M followers on Twitter you might think that someone as prolific as Ali Spagnola wouldn't be impacted by a little content theft — you'd be wrong. Ali shares the brilliance behind her creative process and what it's like when the content you've invested so much of yourself into creating gets stolen. Crucial lessons for anyone building a personal brand.
Subscribe and review the Ghost Influence Podcast on iTunes.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: ‘PKR - Ignite (Original Mix)'
Laid off from his 9-5, Sandy Gordon decided it was as good a time as any to start his career as a Pixel Artist and submitted his first game, Don't Get Wet, to iTunes with his partner Tudor Iancu. With nothing but passion and dedication, he shared his story in a brilliantly eloquent submission to Reddit's /r/gaming community. Striking a nerve with other designers and programmers seeking to make their passion their paycheck, his story took off and eventually hit the front page.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'Progressive House — Valuo'
Passionate magician, fantastic human, and COO for Ellusionist — the 'The World's First Online Magic Retailer' — it wasn't abnormal for Adam Wilber to conceive of something as magnificent as a wrist mounted, fully concealable flame thrower. Making it's way to Reddit organically, it generated sales far beyond what they ever expected. A year later, while launching the second (even more concealable) version their ignorance got the better of them and they were banned from /r/gadgets for inadvertently gaming the system by campaigning to their email list for votes. The story of the Pyro is one of success on accident, failure on purpose, and (finally) success on purpose.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence Community.
Music: 'Dan Porcaro - Shadows'
Responding to the prompt to discuss "the weirdest encounter you've had that's ultimately led to sex", Sean Thomas saw an opportunity to share his virginity story. Channeling his screen writing background, he detailed the epic as vividly as he remembered it. His comment generated more traction than the submission it was posted to and three years later it became the inspiration for his YouTube channel 'Based On A Crude Story'. In this episode Sean shares how he generated 9K subscribers in a week.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'KOOA - Don't Stop (Extended Mix)'
Anon of the viral t-shirt site 'Shirt Was Cash' shares the origins of the e-commerce apparel website where users from 4chan, Reddit, Imgur and the Internet submit ideas for designs. Having hit the front page of Reddit multiple times, Anon shares how an investment into the community is the only way you can truly generate consistent profits with democratic platforms. Priceless advice to anyone building an e-commerce brand.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'Maleean - Ransom (Original Mix)'
Heather Christianson is both an illustrator and a curious explorer of the social web. She was naturally curious when, in 2009, Vine launched it's quirky new platform where users post six second looping videos. Quickly finding a natural fit for her humor, Heather started making new vines on a daily basis and slowly built a following.
While it was posted two years ago in August of 2013, her Vine titled "my favorite movies" was discovered and submitted to Reddit's /r/videos community just two days before this episode was recorded. In that time it has jumped from 250K to over 4.6M loops and been shared by nerd celebrities like Mythbusters' Adam Savage. Heather shares how the interconnection of her personal, brand, and portfolio pages is consistently helping her to better leverage the social web to develop her career as an illustrator.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'Exomorph v3 by Minkovsky'
Richard Littauer was more than a few drinks in when his friend asked for feedback on the user experience of his website. While he warned of his inebriated state, the friend persisted that he wanted to know his thoughts. Hesitantly, Richard began diving in and soon realized that his lack of verbal filter was proving entertaining — yet surprisingly helpful feedback. The idea percolated into the purchase of the domain 'theuserisdrunk.com' which sat dormant until a hackathon where he felt it was time to bring the project to life.
Setting up a simple, one-page website, Richard built his consulting offer whereby he would get drunk and make a video reviewing your website. Within an hour of submission, he was at the top of Hacker News. He had just under 100,000 visitors on the first day and within a week around 300k. He was interviewed by FastCo, Tech.co, Gizmodo, VWO, Hubspot. The project quickly became massive leverage for his consulting work and has been ever since.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'Marko Stc - Apollo 13 (Renan Willian Remix)'
Bobby Edwards just wanted to help his mom poop. Having discovered the extensive benefits of squatting to poop, he set out to create "the stool for better stool". It wasn't until a barrage of awkward Christmas gifts resulted is raving enthusiasm that he truly realized the potential of his poop platform... or as it's famously known today — Squatty Potty.
Brilliant in it's simplicity, much like the product itself, Bobby's initial marketing strategy was to find bloggers in the health space and send them a Squatty Potty. That led to a phone call from The Doctors and later an endorsement from Howard Stern. Bobby eventually took the business to Shark Tank and landed a deal with Lori Grenier who got them prime placement in Ben, Bath, & Beyond. All of that... and they still only had 1.2M customers.
Working with The Harmon Brothers, the marketers behind the viral success of Poo Pourri, the Squatty Potty team produced a three minute promo video titled "This Unicorn Changed The Way I Poop" and drove over 48M views (between Youtube and Facebook) and was submitted to Reddit 42 times within the first 50 days it existed. Bobby shares the details about the creative process and how this viral video catapulted their sales.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'Contact - Somewhere (LIONBLOOD Remix)'
Marc Balaban wanted to escape his job in tech recruitment to improve his web development skills and move towards something more creative. He joined a hackathon to push those boundaries and was challenged to create a product in a weekend. Living in San Francisco, California where technology and mindfulness are commonly included in the same conversations he opted to create a sixty second meditation tool. He dubbed it Pixel Thoughts.
Some weeks after the hackathon he finished the app and submitted it to Reddit's /r/InternetIsBeautiful where it received far more traction than he ever expected. While his intention was to build something that showcased his skills, he never anticipated that a fun project would generate such substantial professional leverage. Marc's story is a phenomenal example of how powerful passion and self-education can be as tools for marketing your creative skills.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'Whylex - Brillante Atardecer (Especial Sunset Mix)'
Andrin von Rechenberg wanted to play video games on his computer and he wanted to use his smartphone as the controller. Unable to find an existing solution, Andrin sought out to create his own and within just two days — he had. He didn't see this as a weekend project, he saw it as a business opportunity and founded N-Dream. The newly recruited team got to work turning a weekend project into a full fledged platform — Air Console.
In this interview Rafael Morgan, the team's Product Manager, shares how Air Console evolved from an idea into something much bigger.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Music: 'Realize - Coming Through'
Blake Jamieson was a few whiskeys in when he started thinking of ways to hack Tinder — a mobile dating app where users rapidly swipe profiles 'left for no' and 'right for yes'. Jamieson contemplated what would, in an instant, make someone choose his profile over all the eligible bachelors on the platform. His method, edit each photo to look as is if Tinder themselves had endorsed him as the 'Match of the Day'. It worked.
Blake wooed over four thousand women to match him and chronicled the tale in a Medium article. The posts started to spread and he was eventually contacted for an interview with AdWeek which pushed the story even further. His story migrated to Reddit as users submitted it to communities like /r/seduction, /r/socialengineering, and /r/Tinder. As the wave continued across the web, Blake lay the foundation for Tinder Hacks... and so much more.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
Ilias Ismanalijev had a solution in search of a problem. Wanting further develop his skills as a developer, he sought a project that would challenge current understandings and force him to expand his knowledge in new areas. Ilias began to develop Reddit Music Player which would later become the open source project that enables Redditors to consume and discuss music in a way never before possible.
He eventually submitted the project to Reddit's /r/InternetIsBeautiful only to be inundated with traffic to the site and love for the project. On this episode, Ilias shares how the player was developed as a project of passion, self-education, community, and an asset to the development of his professional career.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
James Shamsi, Founder of Chameleon.LA, arrived in Los Angeles for a job that he would quit before ever completing a full week of work. The allure of the city was one based on creativity and he could quickly see this position wasn't going to afford him much. James had to get creative about building a network in one of the world's largest hotbeds for tech and entertainment so he started looking at the process in a different perspective.
Tune in to hear how he fostered conversation for social change by trolling Instagram only to have the news story be submitted to Reddit's /r/TwoXChromosomes community. James also shares details of other viral successes like how he created a service for photoshopping puppies into people's Tinder profiles or that time he pretended to be a hot girl on LinkedIn.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.
As Scott Plybon's degree was coming to a close he knew he needed to differentiate himself in order to survive in the job market. He sought an opportunity to showcase his web development skills with and settled on an idea his wife inspired. In this episode, Scott shares how he developed 'ReelScary.com', submitted it to Reddit's /r/InternetIsBeautiful community, and was bombarded with more than 150K visitors.
Create social leverage with the Ghost Influence community.