# First Month UGC: From Zero to $300 Deals in 7 Days with Jake Winters, Millennial Dad UGC Creator |

Channel: Nate Flake | UGC CREATOR & COACH
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orgm9TjfNms
Duration: 54 min
Language: English
Words: 11214
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Orgm9TjfNms

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[0:00] If you're a UGC creator and you have a hard time either taking a stance or negotiating your prices or sticking up for yourself, this is the episode you want to listen to. Today we have Jake Wyinners. Welcome back. I'm your host Nate Flake. Jake, if if you guys know me, you for sure probably know Jake or vice versa. But Jake, for you know, for kicks and giggles, will you introduce yourself and kind of give us an intro on who you are and how you kind of fell

[0:25] into UGC? I'm Jake Wyinners. I'm a dad of four. known Nate for a while and I was in real estate in investment real estate my my whole adult life basically an analyst on like the analyzing property side and the numbers and just boring stuff that nobody cares about. I was doing that and then this year in 2025 in January I lost my job and I mean long story short I guess we'll get into the longer story here later but I that's how I fell into UGC was I needed something to make cash quickly. I just had to create some cash somehow and

[1:05] uh UGC is how I did it that same month. Sweet. So, for those of you that don't know, I think most people that like follow you on Tik Tok or Instagram or that join your lives, I think they know that we know each other from before, right? Like from before UGC, we've been friends. Uh we're related through a marriage back in the day, but um what's funny is like we we've we've been talking about I think you had asked me before like, "What are these videos you doing?" I'm like, "Yeah, it's just this like thing. Don't worry about it." Like we never like really got into what UGC

[1:33] was. And when you when you first got, you know, lost your job and then you're like, "Hey, I need to like make some cash quick." Like, you know, you think this UGC thing can like cover me for my bills until I find something else? And when you when you were actually So Jake was actually the first person through my course, coincidentally, just like right place, right time. My course came out the week that you called me. Like when I say came out, like I released it, nobody even knew about it yet. I I kind of created the course out of necessity of after like having to going to a

[2:03] bajillion lunches and breakfast with people trying to explain to them what UBC was as personal favor and I was like hey actually do you mind doing me a favor and like going through this 11 hour 10 and a half hour course and like just learning about what it is and then I'll kind of take questions from there and like let's just get you ramped quick. So, I thought was interesting. It was like it was it was nice because you were helping me out by like going through it and being like the first beta user and then and then it was good for you because you learned exactly what UDC

[2:32] was from it because you literally had no idea. You thought I was like working for all these like separate companies as like a freelancer or something. Yeah. I would see Nate on these video ads all the time like just like on my FYP scrolling and I would be like, "Dude, what are you did you start like a mental health app or like are you okay, dude? Like what's going on?" And then I had no idea but it they were just UGC

[2:51] ads. Yeah. So you ramped very quickly. So January you lost your you lost your job. Go through the course. You binged it within what 24 hours or something? Like a day and a half. Yep. Got my first job like within 7 days after I finished the course. Well, meaning after I finished the course and got all set up on Fiverr and got my social media handles set up and I made a fake portfolio. I just did a bunch of videos um all in one day, put them all together in a portfolio, did all the stuff that the course told me to do and then just started going hard at it and

[3:27] got my first job that paid me. It was for uh Wide Out Survival, a game. I don't know. I can talk about that on here, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get I get those. So, White Out Survival, I got two 15-second videos for $150 each was my first job. Paid me 300 bucks. And I was like, "Okay, like I I'm going to if I can do this over and over and over again, yeah, this can just like replace my income, I think." And so I just started going hard. I went to an event with mate a couple weeks later. Like that that event was actually I went to that event before

[4:04] I actually got paid on that first job. I remember that. So I I had never actually completed a full UGC job before I went to that event. I wanted to ask I've never asked you this when you first started, right? Like I know like I was like helping you with the first gig video and and uh on Fiverr, but before you had landed that first $300 job, right? Like you had done the course, you're like in Fiverr, uh you created the portfolio, which I want to actually come back to in a second, but did you ever think like, oh, this is Nate's Nate's like for sure dragging me

[4:34] along. Like this is not as cool as what he says it is, or like he must be making money somewhere else. Like there's no way he's because I was still working full-time for into it at the time. Like I was working a tech job, right? And so, but were you ever like, "No, I'm gonna steal." Were you skeptical or like I never I've never actually asked you

[4:50] that. 100%. Because here's why. I've known Nate for a while and I know he works at a big tech company. I UGC and technology and all of that to me in my brain before I started was all together was one conglomerate. Right. I'm like, "Mate's done like you had like started a podcast back in the day. you had done kind of stuff like this with social media and started different social media pages and I know you're working on an app at one point of your own and so I was like I'm not that guy like I'm I'm not that techy guy and I know Nate is and so for until I started

[5:30] getting jobs I totally thought like yeah Nate's making whatever how many or thousands of dollars a month because this is his thing and this is his niche and maybe I can do it at a smaller scale But I didn't know that I could just do it at the same scale you were doing it. Yeah. And then what did it also and did you also were you also shocked at how easy it was? And I know like that's like super hot topic maybe for a lot of people like oh no it's not easy like yeah duh there's a lot of not easy stuff about UGC but like that first $300 deal

[6:01] were I like I remember having conversation you're like dude it's two 15-second scripts like I just sit against a white wall. Yeah. Did that shock you? Filming the videos and how easy it was to make the videos and the time it took was very shocking like how easy that was. But I was really nervous on camera and so that part wasn't very easy for me and like being natural and and just like being myself on camera. the time it took, even though I was awkward on camera and I didn't look right and I was making the wrong faces and everything like that and you could tell I was

[6:33] reading a teleprompter, all of that stuff, it still was like, "Okay, I just got paid $300." Like, at my job, my old job, it would take me whatever 3 days of work to make $300. And I just did it in 45 minutes total from from like getting the message that there was a job available, accepting the job, filming the filming the thing on a blank wall in my garage and then delivering it to him and I made 300 bucks. I'm like, "Okay, if I can repeat this, this is like, yeah, this is way too easy." Uh, I want to talk about the portfolio real fast because this is another I I think part

[7:11] of the advantage of being a newbie in this space and I kind of put myself in this realm still. Like the reason everyone knows the reason I started this podcast isn't because I'm an authority on UGC. It's because I'm like trying [snorts] my my whole like life motto is like always be surround yourself with people that are cooler and smarter and better at things than you, right? That's how you learn. And so I think there's a lot like one of the advantages of being a a newer person in the space is you're not tied to like these like stereo or these like I don't even know yeah

[7:41] stereotypical thoughts of like how to do things right and there's a lot of voices in this space a lot of voices. I've interviewed tons of the voices in this space and a lot of people would say like don't you like even I teach in the course like hey you know if you don't want to create a portfolio Fiverr's kind of the workaround create one video and then let these professional uh marketing teams like kind of start like hiring you and then as you get a video you put it in your portfolio you get another one you plop it in your portfolio you slowly populate a portfolio that's like been you know

[8:14] curated scripts and all that stuff like from professionals. Uh, one thing you did which I I remember talking about this and and you were like, "Can I just like make a portfolio?" And I'm like, "Well, I don't see why not." Right? Like you one thing you did is just straight up like like you said, same day. You

[8:28] only had four videos too, right? Four. Yeah. Four. Four videos, same day, different outfits, different products, different parts of your house essentially. how like one thing I think a lot of people get stuck uh stuck on is thinking that a their portfolio has to be perfect or b they have to like I've had people ask me like do you have to get permission from the company to like put this video in there and stuff like that like explain that process and how quickly that portfolio started generating revenue for you. Hey, real quick. If you're brand new to UGC and feel overwhelmed, I made a free guide for you. It's called 10

[9:02] steps to becoming a UGC creator from scratch. And it literally takes you from I have no idea what I'm doing to landing your first paid gig. No fancy equipment needed. No massive following required. Just a clear road map. Links below. It's free. It's practical. And it'll help you start making money like now. All right,

[9:21] back to the show. My portfolio sucked so bad. It sucked so bad. The formatting was [laughter] Yeah, Nate Nate ripped it apart. It was just It was horrible. But it was just videos of me on a page that brands could see that I was doing UGC. And I wasn't at this time when I started, I wasn't charging 56 700 a video. I was wanting like a hundred bucks or 150 bucks per video. And that was kind of the caliber of videos that I was uploading onto my portfolio, right? They weren't they they had some B-roll in them. I started on camera. I put some B-roll over the top

[10:00] of the rest of it and I ended on camera. And I just did four of those of four different random products. And that portfolio started making me money on week two after just so many hundreds of copy paste onto every Reddit post, every Twitter post or X. I was just working it. I I was just I just took everything that like that that mates course told me to do and just like actually did it. Like I my whole thing

[10:29] was like, okay, I lost my job. I'm going to pretend that this is my new job. And then like I have to do all of this stuff in order to make money. This is how I get paid is if I do all of these things just like at my old job, I had to do all of these things in order

[10:44] to get paid. Yeah. I had to close the deal, right, in order to get paid at the old real estate job. And this was no different. This was like and it psyched me up. It was like it was cool. Like I was like, I can go and chase after this stuff and let's see what I can do with it. But that portfolio, I try to tell people the portfolio really isn't that big of a deal. First of all, I don't even think you need a portfolio if you want to just start on platforms. You don't even need

[11:09] a portfolio to start UGC. Yeah. But if you want to like take it all the way, making a portfolio should take you three hours out of your day total. I think you can you can make a few videos, get it on a free Canva template, a portfolio template, and run with it. And then just start putting your that's that's the only way you're

[11:32] you're able to like on X and Reddit. It's the only way you're able to get yourself out there over and over and over again without having any experience. They didn't know that I didn't have any experience. Yeah, they might they might have known that my videos sucked, right? They they might have known that I wasn't very good talking to the camera and that's why I was only charging $100 or applying to jobs that were only $100, $75, but they didn't know that I had 48 hours of experience, [laughter] right? I had zero experience. I had never made a video of myself talking to the camera ever, ever before UGC. I did

[12:08] a lot of videos around the other way of my kids and I would take cool videos of my kids doing cool stuff and jumping around and so I understood a little bit how to take videos but not of myself and that is like the total opposite. It's it's it really freaked me out. Nate can attest. Nate had to just nope start

[12:27] over. Nope, start over. Yeah, that part takes time, right? And I think that I think that everyone's scared of like we talk about this all the time in the community and stuff is like people get like in the again I'm not trying to like bring this back to the course but like anytime anywhere you go right when you start UGC in my course it talks about Fiverr first module 3 is when it gets into all right time for you to make a video everybody gets stuck there. People come into my lives people come to your lives on TikTok all the time. Yeah, I'm I'm in the course or

[12:57] whatever I started, but I just can't make the video. And it's like, dude, if you can't make the video, that's like what this is. That's exactly what this whole thing is. You can't make the video. So, I think people get a little scared to to just even like put themselves on camera and you just I think you just have to and I told you this. I'm like, dude, you just have to

[13:14] just not give a crap what you look like. And I think you just have to get to the point where like I know this is cringe and I just got to lean into it and just do it. And like even I came in like dude you sound like you're reading a monitor. Like you sound monotone. That's not how you normally talk. Like just talk like you're normally talking and like and then you you don't get you get better at the teleprompter as you go. But even from the first two words yeah I kept stopping you in the other room. You were you were at my house you know and I'm

[13:38] like all right redo it because like even the first two words you're like when [snorts] I first I'm like no that's not it dude. And everyone I'm like I wish I had somebody that was like in the room with me. my first video could not have sucked harder and it took me many many videos and a lot of revisions to get to that point where like someone was being honest with me too. And so the other thing I want to talk about real quickly too so anyways the the lesson there is like guys everyone looks stupid on

[14:02] camera. It's a freaking learned skill. It's one of the things that does not is not talked about enough is like like yeah we talk a lot about about we talk a lot about finding jobs getting on platforms doing a portfolio but we don't talk a lot about just putting yourself in front of your camera and just getting comfortable talking to the camera. Copy and paste a New York Times article that's 12,000 characters long and throw it in a teleprompter and then just read that entire thing from the teleprompter on camera. You know, like just getting comfortable and putting reps in that I feel like it's like a very under under

[14:35] uh valued skill for UDC. For sure. Something you told me, Nate, when I was making that fake portfolio, you were like, you know, these these videos you're making don't need to be perfect. This is UGC. This, you know, they want normal, relatable. You need to you need to be able to like talk to the camera and sound normalish, you know, sound natural. But what we want is for you to end up getting paid jobs and then replacing these videos with these new videos that you're making and getting paid on that maybe have revisions and they come back and say, "Hey, tweak this, change that." And then you have a

[15:11] pretty good video. Like if you're getting paid to do a video and and and the brand's accepting it and maybe having some revisions and then you know going through correcting some stuff and they're accepting it, then you have a good video that you can then replace and put into your portfolio, scratch one of

[15:27] the crappy ones, put the good one in. And that's what I did. And then quickly within two months, I had six videos that were all paid jobs that I really had done and they were real portfolio videos. And it's the exact same since then. I haven't changed one thing since then. You haven't updated it? It took me forever to update mine, too. Well, another thing is like a lot I'll I will die on this hill. A super crappy portfolio like the one you had in the beginning is way better than no portfolio at all. Like way better, right? You can't even put yourself into the mix on X and Reddit without a

[16:02] portfolio. And and even Anna talks about this uh A+ socials, if you guys don't follow her, I've had her on the podcast, too. is like when she first started, she just had a Google Drive link with five videos. It was just a link and like that even is better than nothing. But to just say like, "Hey, sorry I don't have a portfolio yet." is like that's a killer, man. That'll kill your business, you know? And then like think about all those brands that you sent um in the beginning that have like come back and hired you multiple times from those first few from those first few deals you

[16:33] got, you know? That's crazy. And it was like it was like even from the beginning it was like probably 30 to 40% of my business was inbound from not from platforms you know from like X and Reddit and my email address and the those same videos I posted them on my social media channels and as UGC examples. So, I was visible there. And yeah, without without making those first four portfolio videos, I would have been

[16:59] it would have slowed me down a lot. Would have slowed me down a lot. And it would have gotten discouraging because I wouldn't have been enough money for me to keep going. It would have been about half as much money as I needed. But, you know, I was doing I was going the extra mile and doing this portfolio thing. And it's so easy to do. It re it really is. If I look back at it, it took me a few hours of being awkward and feeling awkward in front of myself and then it was done. And you you throw it up on a Canva template in whatever

[17:30] format or a Google Drive like even even having a Dropbox link or a Google Drive link to be able to just put yourself out there in the mix. I totally agree. Totally agree. I think a lot of people have as probably asked you, right? You probably had a ton of people ask especially because you started and scaled so quickly to replace your income. Like probably people are asking you like how did you do it so fast? I think the reason you were able to do it so fast was and we'll get into the kind of negotiating the negotiation stuff here shortly but like you didn't just get on a platform, one platform and

[18:01] wait. You got on as many platforms as you could and you started doing outbound. started pitching and you put the portfolio out there so you could get inbounds and you started new socials. Like you did all the things like you did all the things and it the all UGC is a numbers game. Like yeah there's personal branding and all that crap in there as well and brands find you but it's all a numbers game. The more you put yourself out there and the more chances you get give yourself to get paid gigs, the more you're going to get. It's just like common sense, you know. Uh, one thing

[18:31] that I that other thing going back to the the whole point I made of like it's interesting when you get new people in the space because they challenge like they new ideas and stuff. One of the things that you did that I don't know if you even remember this that you did um to generate gigs and you actually got a gig within like two days when you first started is you and if you're listening to this you guys if you don't know a UGC ad is if you can't recognize what a UGC ad is on your own feed like you've got problems. You got to like start studying

[19:00] what that is. You'd see UGC ads on your social on Instagram and Tik Tok before you even had socials. And then you would message the brand and you'd say, "Hey, I just saw an ad of yours. I could do way better." And like that worked. Like that worked multiple times early on. Oh, I got deals multiple times and I had never made a video before and I was

[19:18] telling them that I could do way better. But yeah, and I don't I don't know if it's because I told them I could do way better. It probably was because I just was charging $100 and they were like, "Yeah, sure. We'll have another piece of content for 100 bucks. Yeah. You know, but I was Yeah,

[19:31] I totally remember that. I say this all the time, man. You got to fake it till you make it. And like they probably honestly had never seen anybody say that ever to replying to one of their ads like, "Hey, I saw an ad. It's not good. I can do better, you know?" So, they were probably like that probably stunned them, which goes back to the whole UGC like pattern interrupt thing, right? you're like you're doing everything you can to just stand out to these brands, which is why there's all these different pitching methods and everything. I want to say on this topic, so one of the things that

[20:00] you're really good at that I suck at is uh negotiating. In fact, you're always giving me crap for like not charging higher or like, you know, I'm too nice. I take stuff on. I'll take revisions when I'm not supposed to and I should charge for them. Where did that come? Did that come from your from your previous life or did that did you learn that within UGC? Like kind of give us a rundown through that and I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions about this because I think it's super interesting and I think that if you're listening, uh, get out your freaking pens and paper. You're going to want to take

[20:28] notes on this one. Yeah. So, negotiations have been something that I've been obsessed with since I was like a teenager. I would buy and sell stuff, motorcycles and trucks and jet skis and all sorts of stuff. just I loved finding a deal. I loved finding a deal and I loved being able to close the deal and I I just loved being able to squeeze all the juice out of the lemon that I could. And then I got into real estate after I was married and I was obviously negotiating, you know, for I had I had done a lot of mentorships and a lot of education on learning how to

[21:06] actually negotiate like as a like a like as a real skill. spent a lot of money on on getting good at it, like going to master classes and stuff. Uhhuh. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Like in my real estate life. Yeah. I didn't know that. Uh pro probably spent 10 $15,000 on like master classes for like like highlevel negotiation like almost like reverse psychology type of negotiation. And it kind of just bled off into my normal life. Mate makes fun of me still for doing it to him. Um trying to get Nate

[21:37] to book a trip with me or something. Um, I don't really care if you come or not. Actually, it's going to suck. Yeah. Yeah. Don't come, Nate. Don't come. I'll find someone else. So, that's that's kind of how negotiations um that that that's how I I just became obsessed with negotiating and and squeezing the the all the juice out of the lemon, right? And so, when I got into this UGC thing, I knew that at the beginning I had to charge a little less because I had no experience. But then I quickly learned that these people that I was pitching and these people that were emailing me,

[22:12] they didn't know that I was new. They didn't know that I'd only been doing this a month or two. And I'm really good at faking it till I make it. I'm really good at just acting like I know what I'm doing. I I'm very good at getting into rooms that I'm not supposed to be in just because I'm walking like I like I'm supposed to be there and I can just get into that room because it I'm carrying a

[22:33] ladder or what whatever, you know? And that's what I started doing with these brands. I just started like almost being a smartass a little bit, like, "Oh, no. I'm not I don't accept jobs under $400 and just seeing what would happen with these brands and seeing what they would say." And then most of the time they would come back and say, "Oh, okay. We could only go up to 350, but you know, but we were starting at like a $100 and I was coming at them at 400. Then they would land at 350. That's a great day for me." Yeah. And you and you knew that

[23:06] they were like because you were brand new in the space, right? So that's another like again if you're listening to this and you're brand new, like I talk about this on Fiverr, like when you're in Fiverr, you got to start between 50 and 100 bucks just like you did, Jake. But like I if you don't know anything outside of just like what you've seen on Tik Tok or Instagram so far in UGC, you may not know that there are creators like myself and Jake, right, that are charging anywhere between $500 and $1,000 a video. So because you had that context and you're like, "Hey, what do you Oh, oh, you did

[23:37] 500. Okay, I'm going to go back and talk to these guys." You know, cuz you if you didn't know that that was the potential and you thought like the average deal size was around $100 to $200 and $200 was like a great day, which it is for a new creator, don't get me wrong. Like you would have had no idea that like, oh, brands actually do pay up to literally $1,000, $1,500, sometimes even

[23:55] more. Yeah. And where I learned that was going to that event, going to TR Foundations event in Scottsdale. I Nate and I went and there were people that like would laugh at deals under $1,000. like they wouldn't touch a video for under $1,000 or $800 or whatever. And so yeah, I learned that that's Yeah, that's

[24:18] why that be me. Yeah. Yeah. They don't know. And you're you're in the we call it the wild west. Like when you're off platforms, platforms are great, by the way. I'm not like on platforms. My entire, you know, 70% of my business still comes through through Fiverr. But when you're But you can see if you're a new seller. You can see if they don't have experience because you it's all there right next to their face. But out in the wild west is we Jake and I call it like on on in you know when you're getting inbounds or when you're pitching brands the only it's not like you have reviews

[24:47] on your on your port it's like you have you know your number of jobs on your portfolio and they can see how many how long you've been doing UGC. It's like you're presenting your best face you know right? I knew that if people were charging that kind of money $1,000 a video. I al I also knew, you know, that like it really was going to depend on the type of brand, how big the brand was, how well known. If I'm if I was like I remember pitching Peak Design, which is like a camera mount, a big company that I was doing a motorcycle motorcycle phone mount thing for

[25:20] and I knew that I could pitch them at $600 because they're a huge company. And then the ads that they're putting out are like really good. And I and I can tell, right? If I'm talking to a mom and pop shop that hasn't ever done UGC and I'm convincing them to try UGC for their brand, I'm obviously not going to be charging that brand $600, right? It works. It works. The the negotiating the the faking it till you make it and just pretending like uh like you are worth $500 a video even when you're new. it works and maybe you don't get the $500 but maybe you get 350 and that's like so

[26:00] much better than what I was getting on fiber at the time. So how do so when you are first starting even now right? What is your first move? Like let's say brand sends you and you don't have to like say your I mean we know your prices are are between 500 and a,000 so it's not that's not a secret but I'm saying like a brand writes you okay like let's take this and and give a practical example and they say hey we'd like you to work for us blah blah blah and you first look at the brand name see how big they are and then do you wait for them to hit you with

[26:30] budget? Are they hitting with budget first most of the time or are you responding back and saying like here's my rate? Are you like what's your first move back? You know, they're usually tell like the inbounds that I get like to my email usually tell me what the rate is. Like I just got one today. I'm looking at my phone uh from Headway app. They wanted three hooks,

[26:56] two bodies, and one CTA for $250. And my response was, "Hi, thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, your budget doesn't align with my rates. We were pretty far apart. Thanks, UGC Jake." You just wait. And then they they responded yet. That was it. But that was that was like two hours ago. So they'll probably they'll probably respond and say, "Oh, well,

[27:16] what are they? Our budget's 250, but we have room to go up. What are your rates?" And I'll say, "Oh, okay. Well, my rates are whatever. I'll put 600 bucks, 650." The Headway app's a big It's a big brand. I know that they can pay more than $250 for two hooks, two bodies, and two CTAs, which

[27:34] gives them a lot of videos, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but that's my that's my first move. Yeah. It's probably hard to get and be like, "Yeah, I'm good. I'm good walking away. I don't really need this. Like, you need me more than I need you type thing." For sure. For sure. If if they if if they respond back to that message, I got them hooked. Like if if they respond to my reply that gave them no info other than I'm just saying no. And if they reply to that, I've got them booked and I I'm gonna be able to make something work that I'll be happy with. And so so

[28:06] like and you know me, dude, I will still take deals for cheap if it's if it's easy or something. How do you get through the fear of like what you just sent? What if they just never reply and you just walked away from $250, which a lot of new sellers would be like, "Oh, I freaking kill for that job." Like how do you get over the or how do you get I

[28:26] don't even know what I'm trying to ask. Like what does it like how do you get to the point where you're okay walking away from money? Like you're walking away for 250 bucks for a couple script reads. So couple things. I didn't do I wasn't this hard ball when I wasn't busy, right? Does that make sense? Like I I started playing hard ball when I got really busy and I and I really couldn't take any jobs on unless it was going to

[28:53] pay me like Buku bucks. Okay. So, if I were a brand new creator starting out again, I would try to lock as many deals up at any price that you can. Any price, $50, $100, $200. Get as many going as you can to where you're comfortable and you have enough money coming in in the pipeline so that then when brands start reaching out to you and offering you a $200 rate, you can The fear wasn't there that I was walking away from $200 because I really couldn't handle another job. Even if it was $250, it needed to be way more

[29:34] because I was so busy. Yeah. And that just came from reps. that just came from pasting my portfolio over and over and over and over again, doing all the platforms, all the stuff. And then the secret is once it works one time, that fear kind of goes away. Once it works one time, if headway comes back, right, and they say, "Okay, we can do a $600 video." And they offered me 250. It's like I I know these

[30:01] brands have more money. I I know that. And if they and and it gets to the point where I I know I know the type of work that I'm gonna have to do for a big brand like that and if they're only paying me $250, I know it's going to be annoying. Yeah. I know there's going to there's it just with a very lowbudget jobs are like the hardest ones,

[30:25] right? Yeah. It really does seem that way. The higher the budget, the more just like professional and understanding everybody is. And so I know that was a long winded answer, but No, it's great. Um the the fear goes away once it works and it does work. It works. Playing hard ball. Playing hard to get really works. So do you when you're like let's say because even I have I we've talked about this like I mean it's we're recording this middle of December. When it does start to slow down, are you a little bit more lenient on your responses? Are you a little bit softer? heard you like, you

[30:57] know, or like are you you're still negotiating everything no matter what? I know you like even if you're dead and you have zero jobs, you're like, I'm not doing that for 250 350 like right. Are you always negotiating every single job? Yes, I am. I am trying I'm trying to get a no. I'm I'm trying I'm trying to get I'm trying to find out their absolute top top top top top and for every deal because I believe if they're reaching out to me, they have seen my work and they want to work with me and they're just trying to get the best deal. And I don't blame

[31:37] them for that. The I'm trying to get my best deal as well. These agencies and these brands are trying they they want to pay the least amount of money that they can for as much content as they can get. Yeah. And I've just got to find out where we can meet and have a meeting of the minds. And I still preach it to Nate to this day. Like you've got you could make

[31:57] double what you're making. Oh yeah. Yeah. I if you just try to squeeze the juice out of every one of these deals, you can you can double your income. You can give yourself a 50% raise. I just like I can't I don't know why I can't take the personal side out of it. I'm like, "Ah, well, Jessica seems really nice. I don't want to like clap back and be like, "No, I'm not doing 300." You know, and and I I mean, you're totally right. They're having been on the corporate side and having hired people off Fiverr and off of a bajillion other websites. The company gives me a budget, right? Let's

[32:28] say, "Hey, we can do this project for five grand." Uh, between five and seven grand, no more than seven, no more. I always start with five, right? Like when I when I reach out to contractors, I'm going to I'm going to start them with the lowest budget because then I look like a hero to my bosses because I saved them two grand that they were willing to pay, right? So like someone like Headway, and I'm sure hopefully just listening to this just getting stunned, but [snorts and clears throat] uh they're probably hitting you with the the the bottom of the barrel. This is

[32:55] the lowest we can go basically, right? Of course. Um that's what I believe. I don't know that for sure, but that's what I believe because that makes sense. through experience, me sending responses like that always turns into a deal that pays me higher than what their initial email says. Do you really think these brands would put their best foot forward on the first email they send out to 50 creators? I

[33:20] don't think so. Especially when they put the price in the first email. That's a great point. That's a great point. I need to just I need to be better at like not taking it a taking it personal and b being okay walking. I I I've talked about this before. I've got this scarcity mindset. and I grew up super poor. So, I've got this scarcity mindset of like, well, what if like tomorrow the UGC tap turns off and this like I got to get this $200 deal or this $300 deal. But, I've been better at it. Like even today, I I on Fiverr, somebody came and asked me for

[33:49] the thing. I gave them a quote on my like full rates plus some and then they they sent me a typo. Did you accidentally add a one to this? And then I just said, "Yeah, we're not working together." Like I was like they you know, they literally wanted $1,000 less than what I quoted them. They wanted to do it for $1,000 less. And yeah, I need to I I know for sure I'm leaving money on the table and I'm sure there's listeners that are doing the same thing, doing revisions for free, but I don't I do think there's a there's an in between ground, especially like you said, when you're new, it's

[34:19] like, hey, dude, you're an unpaid intern at this point. You got to be grateful for anything you take, but especially on the platforms, you're just trying to get reps. You're you're getting paid job. You're getting paid on the job training right at that point. like someone's hiring you and you have zero zero experience. If they ask for an extra hook, like just throw it in there because that's how you get repeat buyers, you know? I I didn't like and even still I to an extent I don't like nickel and dime people as much as I probably should, but especially when I

[34:47] was new. Oh, you want three revisions? You want five extra hooks? Like consider it done. You know, I just need a fivestar review. Yeah. And I did that stuff too if you remember. Like I I did that stuff too when I was brand new. I was taking deals at50, $75, $150. Yeah. And overd delivering and doing more than I said I would and labeling all the files and putting them in folders and making it just like this pretty package to deliver to them so that I could get

[35:14] repeat business. Yeah. But what I didn't do is charge them that same low rate on the second project and the third project. I would increase it every single time. Which is another thing that I'll preach and I'll die on the hill. Like just because they took a chance on you when you were new

[35:32] Yeah. doesn't mean they deserve a 70% discount forever, you know? Like like that you you you deserve to get paid what you're worth because I like I'm busier now. I'm busier now and I've got I can't I just can't accept jobs at this rate anymore. these are now my rates and they're always they always were okay with it because they liked me and they liked my content. They were always okay with it and it wasn't like an awkward

[35:57] conversation at all. Yeah, there's something to be said about a brand coming back to you means the you're if your ads weren't performing well, there's no way in the world they would come back to you, right? And then also you're getting you're you're I mean like we're talking about your first video, right? And like you hated your first gig video. You're like, "Oh, it's the back massager." remember like you're

[36:17] like, "Oh, it's the worst video ever." Like, and to you it was, but you're getting you get better at content, too. Like, you improve in skill and so you shouldn't be charging the same rate 6 months from now. I had someone reach out to me yesterday that had hired me a year ago and I've 4xed my prices since a year ago, you know, and but they see that too. They look at my recent videos like, "Oh, cool. He's better, you know, he's better at editing. He makes better content now." Whatever. And so I think that part of part of learning this UGC crazy world is just knowing that like

[36:50] having the confidence not only to having the confidence on camera but having the confidence to charge your worth like you said. I think a lot of people like I don't know it's tough, right? It's it seems like a very almost like conceited business, but like at the end of the day, the brand's getting the deal, man. They're making so much money off these ads and they're saving so much money off these ads. Like they're they're used, you you know, the other alternative is paying a paying a professional actor in a studio to do a full high-end commercial that's going to cost them 20 grand and they're spending

[37:19] influencer to post an influencer to post a video for $6,000, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's actually wild. How did you get I know you talked about just reps, right? But like how did you learn confidence on camera and then a little bit we're I want to kind of pivot to your TikTok lives and kind of how that's really improved like helped your business too, but like confidence on

[37:39] camera, right? How did you learn that? What was like what's your best advice to brand new people that are like super crappy on camera? We all are super crappy when we start, by the way. It's not like just you. Everybody sucks when they first start. I first started to pretend that I was facetiming my sister. Not FaceTiming my wife, not FaceTiming my dad, not FaceTiming my best friend, but FaceTiming my sister who I don't

[38:04] FaceTime with every single day, right? And I just I picked someone that I was could just pretend like I was talking to and could be just totally natural to, not too sloppy, not not too salesy. Yeah. Right. But just like talking about a product, too. I started doing that and that helped me in a huge way. I don't know if it was you that I think it might have been you Nate that suggested that I

[38:27] act act like you're facetiming a friend. That was the biggest help for me is just pretending as I'm talking like I can see my sister on the other end of the video and I'm not just like making a reading a script because when I I don't know if you remember when I was reading a script I was just like very monotone. Yeah. you know, couldn't get any feeling out at all. I was just reading sentences because I was so stressed about the teleprompter and where it was on the screen. And like I'll tell you, 10 times out of 10, I just did a video that I had

[38:59] to read a script from uh teleprompter and I was totally looking down and reading the script and you could tell I was reading the script, but it was such a good video because I was relaxed and like and I submitted it to the brand and they accepted it and they loved it. It was for that extra vacuum pack sealed

[39:16] carry-on luggage thing. And they loved it. And you could tell I was reading a script. You could tell my eyes were moving. But I was so much more comfortable and confident on camera now versus I was 8 months ago. Yeah. It's just reps. It's really is just doing it over and over and over again.

[39:34] And I and I was making fake videos also. Like I was just practicing. I would just pick up my phone, go in the backyard, and just start talking about this granola bar that I was eating and just practicing. Acting like that this was my real job. Yeah. Acting like I had to get better at this skill. It's just a learned skill. How is there How is there 75year-old people

[39:56] doing this and making money doing this? It's because it's just a learned skill like any other skill that they've learned. Learned how to drive. They've learned how to do lots of things. people people can learn to do things. You just got to practice. You just got to practice. It just takes time and it

[40:13] takes reps. Yeah. I love that. There's a lot of people that that a lot of my friends even and you've met some of them, dude, that that are like, "Oh, I can never do that." And tell them they like, you know, either like need some extra money or whatever or they're like, "Oh, do you think?" And then they start doing it and

[40:27] I'm like, "Yeah, dude, you can do that." Like, yeah, sure. Just like math, there's some people that like get it a little bit quicker and easier, right? Just like any other learned skill, there's some people that get it quicker and easier that are better at it from the beginning, but anybody that anybody can learn this and put in extra work to

[40:44] get to where those other people are. It's just like act like you know, it's just like acting too like it's it's like these actors, you know, we just watched what was that movie with George Clooney and Adam Sandler where he plays like an actor, you know, towards the end of his life and and it flashes back to when he was younger in acting then. I'm like, dude, think about all these actors. They none of them came out being freaking awesome. They all started and had to learn a skill and had to learn how to do these things. And yeah, I I I think that there there's this big misconception

[41:11] that like you either have it or you don't, which is like so false. There's some people that I mean, even myself included, like I I had never done anything like this. I've been on podcasts, but yeah, obviously I have a face for radio. I'm good at talking here, but I'm never like on video, right? And so yeah, anyways, I I I 100% agree. I want to pivot to Tik Tok live for a second because you're awesome at that. Obviously, you've grown your following on Tik Tok from like when did you start your TikTok? March or like

[41:40] later? Uh Febru February 26th. February. Okay. So, February you have what 21 22,000 followers at this point that you've grown exclusively like if you go to your page now. Yeah. Yeah. Now, now you do. You started with zero. Brand new account. Yeah. Brand new account in February. Brand new account. You've posted less than how many times? Like how many actual posts do you have

[42:02] on Tik Tok? Yeah, probably 15. 15. 15 or 20. So, have you grown your entire following and your basically your entire account off of Tik Tok live? So, I want to kind of dive into this. I'm not saying like Tik Tok shop. I'm not saying like even even not even saying to grow following even though that it does help to grow following because we always talk about in UTC your follower count doesn't matter which is very true, right? You've never, as far as I know, you've never posted an influencer video on your Tik Tok. You've only had 15 posts. Most of them are UGC examples like a living

[42:34] portfolio. Um, but how has Tik Tok live a helped with your UGC, like just your UGC skills, confidence on camera, and then also like with your business? Because I know that there's been a lot of advantages and kind of benefits from you. Yeah. Doing that. I I I think a lot of people are sleeping on TikTok Live, honestly. Yeah. So, a few things. starting out I I didn't have Tik Tok before. Like I

[42:59] didn't have like a personal Tik Tok. Yeah. When I started UGC, I just didn't I had Instagram only. And so when I started Tik Tok and I got on Tik Tok and I saw people going live on Tik Tok, I was like, "Oh, that's pretty cool." Like you can just go live and just people can watch you like like I knew Instagram

[43:19] live is like only your followers, right? Yeah. But you can go live on Tik Tok and just like random people can drop into your room and like say what's up. That's pretty cool. That was a big reason of why I started doing it quickly after I realized that if I could go live every single day, I'm going to get followers by osmosis, right? Like just people are going to follow me because that's what happens when you're live. People follow you. Like I've never had a live where I didn't gain at least

[43:50] one follower. And I wanted I wanted followers so that I looked more legit in the UGC space, right? Like to to brands. I wanted to have like a at least a little bit of following. Like I I only had like I I don't know how many hundred followers or something when I got live access.

[44:08] Yeah. Which is another thing people are sleeping on. You probably think you need 5,000 followers or a thousand followers or whatever to go live. You do not. You do not. As long as your account isn't brand spanking new, you can get you can get live access when I think I think it's 50 followers. Uh you have to be 18 years old, 50 followers, and I think there's one other metric, but there you're not going to get live access within like the first week or two of an account being born. Uh but you don't

[44:39] need a ton of followers to go live. Yeah. And you should go live because it's there's a lot of advantages in my opinion about going live. So, I started doing that, started gaining a bunch of followers. Um, I was talking about Nate's course a lot on Tik Tok live. People were buying the course for my affiliate link. So, that was making me money every time I was going live. So, that was another motivator to keep going live. But what it was doing was really for me it was like a mental health thing. When I lost my job, I kind of spiraled and I was in this kind of cloud

[45:09] of depression. Didn't know what I was going to do. And a lot of people probably know when I when I started going live, I was going live early in the morning, like 6:00 a.m. grilling on my Blackstone, cooking breakfast for my family. And it got me out of bed. Like every morning, it it got me out of bed. I had something to do for work, right? Like I

[45:29] felt like I was working. Yeah. And it got me out of bed early in the morning. I would go to the gym. I would come back. I would do my Tik Tok live and hopefully make some money selling Nate's course if if somebody bought Nate's course. Right from there, I started to see that if I wanted to like really scale and I wanted to be a name, a known name in this UGC

[45:54] space, Tik Tok Live could get me there. It could it like Well, I'll back up even before I talk about that. I started to get a lot of deals from Tik Tok Live. Being on Tik Tok Live, again, it's not just people that don't know about UGC coming into my life. It's people, it's all different types of people, a lot of people that have their own brands that want UGC creators. And

[46:18] I'm this UGC guy talking about UGC. Looks like I know what I'm talking about. And they would hire me. They would say, "Hey, how can I how can I hire you for a video?" I'd say, "My email's in my bio. Send me an email." These are also people that and you've told me a couple of these stories where the people that are watching your live are like business owners that didn't even know what UGC like you're educating them on UGC in real time and then they're like oh I want that can I message you like and they'd say that in the comments can you can I hire you for

[46:45] this UGC thing. So it's like not only people that knew what estab that established like I don't know that knew what UGC was in the in the first place but people you're literally educating and closing them like on the live too. Oh yeah. I can't count how many times I've done a UGC video for a brand that

[47:00] was their first ever UGC project. Wow. Some of those didn't turn into ongoing projects, but a lot of them did. And so I started getting a lot of deals, a lot of UGC deals um from Tik Tok live doing it that way. And then I realized that if I wanted to be a name in this space and I wanted to scale and I wanted to have I wanted to be known in the UGC world, Tik Tok Live could get me there. And so I just kept going every single day going live, going live, going live. And eventually eventually you get seen by everybody else in the UGC world and you

[47:35] get connected and you get followed and oh that's that guy that grills in the morning. I know that guy and there's people, you know, I could I could get my name out there in the UGC space to to hopefully start coaching and and doing that kind of stuff. That's been great. T I'm a huge fan huge fan of Tik Tok live. I think everybody should do it. I think everybody should go live. What's your best advice for like two piece two pieces of best advice? I know we're running on time here. Two pieces of best advice for someone that is a UTC creator, brand new that has a Tik Tok account where they

[48:04] can go live or that wants to go live. What are your best two pieces of advice? It's a different beast for sure. To go live, if you haven't gone live before and you have live access, you have to go live three separate days and go live for at least 30 minutes on one of the days. So, I would just go live for 30 minutes the first day. Um, at that it's going to be the most awkward thing ever. There's going to be no one in there. You're not You might have one person in there. I would encourage a couple friends to go in there with you just so you don't feel

[48:37] totally awkward and just talk and talk and talk about UGC. Just talk about UGC and only UGC and don't talk about anything else. You can talk about your journey in UGC. You can talk about how much money you've made in UGC. You can talk about how you started UGC. You could talk about what UGC is. Educate people on it, but talk about UGC as much

[48:56] as you can to train your algorithm. And then after that, once you have you go live three separate days and you've gone live for 30 minutes um on one of those days, you get unlocked to full live access, which then puts you out on the FIP. And my second piece of advice, that's kind of my first piece of advice all mashed together. You know, you got to do you got to do all the Tik Tok rules stuff. You've got to do it three days in a row. I I would just choose to do it three days in a row and do it for 30 minutes your first day, 10 minutes your

[49:28] second day, 10 minutes your third day, and then get it done. And then you got full live access. And then once you're going live, um, with full live access, I would just be doing something while you're live. Don't just sit there with and just be sitting there and talking to the camera like I was grilling on my grill or folding laundry or making a dinner or baking cookies or go or on a walk or do do something to where people want to stay in there and listen to what you have to

[50:00] say. It's like a visual hook. Yes, absolutely. Because remember, there's people coming in and out of your live. Like hundreds of people at a time cycling in and out of your live. Maybe only six or seven of them are staying there at the top. The little number you see at the top, maybe only six or seven are staying there. But that was like 300 people that Tik Tok pushed in and out of your life. If there's only six or seven people in there, it's because it's not

[50:27] very engaging. It's not very hookie. Yeah. People aren't people aren't wanting to stay in there. And that's why that number is staying low. the higher it grows that it's just retention rate, right? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's sweet. Yeah. I need to do a better job. I I literally just sit there like you said, I need to But the my my live where I have the most people in there is like when I'm doing like a live UGC demo where I'm like moving a freaking tripod around. I'm running around showing people how to do stuff. And then then the numbers go way up because I'm like

[50:56] moving. So that definitely totally makes. And it's not that it's not that the numbers are going up. It's that the retention is high. Yeah, the people are staying there longer. That's why that number because Tik Tok is constantly pushing people to your live constantly. It doesn't stop. There's always people getting pushed to your live, but most people are just swiping through, swiping through until they see something that's going to

[51:17] retain their attention. Yeah. Show the attention economy. That's wild, actually. All right. Well, I want to talk about one last thing before we wrap it up. I've talked about this on the podcast before in the last few weeks, but if you didn't know, we are doing a live event in Park City March 14th, 2026. UGC Creator Connect, Jake and I are partnered on this event. We're both going to be there. We're both going to

[51:40] be doing workshops with everybody there. We're maxing out. We are selling out at 400 UGC creators. We have nine different UGC coaches besides Jake and I. So, 11 including us doing trainings for this thing. It's going to be a really really fun fun event. It's going to be awesome. And then we we also have an exhibitor hall with brands, agencies, and UGC platforms and tools. We just had another brand sign up yesterday. It's so it's it's going to be awesome. Uh anyways, all day event. If you guys want to join us and meet Jake, meet myself, uh go to ugcreatorconnectvent.com and sign up and yeah, come come hang out

[52:19] with us. come learn. Like you said, Jake, like that found that first foundations event you went to last February was kind of like the catalyst that like really drove you to Oh, I can trace all my success back to it at some point. Meeting other people there, seeing, you know, just it was very inspiring. Very inspiring to see. And this is going to be like on a whole different level, dude. This is going to

[52:41] be this is you got to be here, guys. It's going to be awesome. Yeah, it's going to be sweet. I'll throw the I'll throw the link in the show notes, you guys. Jake, any last words of wisdom? Anything else you want want to say that you didn't cover? No, man. That was it. Thanks for having

[52:53] me on. Appreciate you. Yeah, it's been It took long enough. Hey, dude. I know it's been too long. We've we talk every single day and so I figured I'm like, "Yeah, I need to probably have you on at some point." So, appreciate you hopping on, dude. Um, you guys, if this was if this was helpful to you, if you learned anything, please

[53:07] share this episode with your friends. Subscribe and like and a and a good review or comment on any of these podcast platforms goes a long way. And we will catch you on the next episode. Thanks, guys. All right, that's it. If you got something out of this, hit subscribe, catch another episode, or share it with a creator friend who needs to hear it. And grab my free 10 steps to becoming a UGC creator guide. The link is below. Thanks for [music] hanging out. I'll catch you next week. Keep

[53:33] creating.

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