How to Get to $13k/mo as a UGC Creator: Nash Patapoff

0:01Nash, welcome. How you doing? Doing great, man. What about you? I'm doing great. I'm so glad you could hop on today. Um, you know, you've been a Content Circle member for five months now. Somewhere around there. Around there. Yeah, four or five months. But yeah, I mean, you've been absolutely crushing lately. And I just wanted to get into, you know, your your content journey, how you're able to do, you know, five figures a month. Um, and just and just learn about you and and what your plan is. So, you know, introduce us to yourself and how you got into

0:31content. All right. So, um I'm Nash. Uh I've been doing content probably for about, you know, 5 6 months when I met Owen. Uh started posting, didn't know what I was doing. Met Owen, joined his community and then started uh posting from there. It it was a journey. Yeah. I mean, first couple first two months I actually made nothing. You know, got screwed over and it was a journey, but you know, made it all the way to uh around like 13 14K. I have uh as of now 17 deals um and reaching out and everything just

1:03cracked. It's crazy. That's insane. Um good stuff. Yeah, there's the problem with when you work with companies is, you know, if you like a lot of them are just not the most like you you would think like, oh, this is a big company. They're going to pay on time and all that stuff. Sometimes it's

1:19not like that, you know. No, it's not like that. No, sometimes it can be rough, but yeah. Um, yeah, I'm glad you I'm glad you did that. Do you remember how we met? Yes, bro. Right outside of here on, bro. Right in front of your apartment. Yeah. A random night. That was crazy. It was hilarious. I remember I was sitting out there with Brian Delada of mine and you walked by with Thomas and uh yeah, we just talked, you know, and um you know, you're like, "Oh, yeah. I do content a little bit." And you know, who

1:48would have thought? Who would have thought, bro? What was your goal with content? Like, did you want to make money from it or did you I did. Yes. I I wanted to make money, but I had just no idea. Like, I had no idea. I was just like, I'm posting. Hopefully something will come. Just I had no idea. No direction. But [gasps] yeah, [snorts] that that's exactly how I started. Um, how many hours a day do you think it took you to kind of like get to this point? Not just for your personal brand, but for doing UGC specifically for UGC probably like two three hours a

2:21day. It's not really So what what exactly are you doing in those two to three hours? Like many people, you know, still don't know what UGC is. So what would you So in those in those two to three hours um so as of right now I have three phones, right? So in those 2 three hours I do it. This is how I do it. It's my time is a little differently. You know people could say oh batched and everything but for those 2 three hours I'll you know grab one phone and I'll go through the account and I'll post and I'll uh I'll post what you know the

2:53company wants the creative manager what he wants me to post for that format or in some brands I'm actually ripping it so they just let me you know free ball and post whatever I want. So then I'll just go and post and then when I'm done I'm done. I gotta get this gotta get it

3:04done. Couple things there. One, what do you prefer as a creator? Do you prefer like more freedom or do you prefer like scripts being given to you? So, I probably I'd rather prefer the scripts given to me, you know. Um, if I see that um I find something that rips, you know, I'll like to, you know, venture off on my own. But I do like to do what um the format they it works most of the time cuz the creative managers, they work hard and they give good ideas. So, it does work. So, I do like when they're

3:34provided for me. Okay, cool. That's good to know because I've done both. Um, and yeah, I think a little bit of formatting like really helps. Yeah, for sure. You know, but at the end of the day, I think creators should have more freedom because, right, they're just the ones behind the camera. Yeah. But really interesting. And then for UGC, you you said you're making videos for brands, but like, you know, if I'm completely new to this space, I wouldn't even know like what that means. So, how are so how are you even finding these deals without like a huge personal brand? Like, you know, walk me through

4:07if you had nothing right now, how would you get to 10K per month? So, if I had nothing right now, what I would do is I would download an app. I would download either it's like an app like Sideshift, right? And I would go and create a profile. I would create a portfolio, you know, some mock videos. You know, you don't even have to like basically have a deal with them. You can just literally promote that product. Put that on your portfolio. do some outbound, you know, look at go on Twitter, look at the best top apps that are performing, DM them, and you know,

4:37just really put yourself out there. Yeah. Like, like for me, I did a lot of outbound. I DM'd as much. I was sending like two 300 DMs a day on Instagram. I was on Twitter. Sideshift literally maxed out every day applying. So, I was I was hungry. So, you have to obviously go out and get it. But once you're in a groove, bro, the deals come to you. Like after you have posted a win, I had

4:59someone say, "Oh, I see you're ripping." Uh, another agency says, "Oh, my friend told me that you're ripping in his agency. Come in here." So once you start, it's a snowball effect. Huge snowball effect. Um, you know what? How uh how how much money do you get from like each deal? Um, and do you feel like, you know, like there's a cap to how many you can take? Um, so right now I probably average 8 to 900 a deal. My lowest deal is actually 750 a month. Uh, my highest right now is 1,200 a month with a $2 CPM. So there, I mean, I would say there's not a cap because if you

5:40have a big personal brand, you can obviously charge a lot, but there's obviously not a cap. And I would say there's not a cap for how much you can have cuz if you really want the money and you really want this, bro, it's two two three four hours. Just work hard, bro. 100%. Two, three hours is nothing, you know? I mean, it it used to be if you could make, you know, 13 15k a month just doing two hours of work a day, like that would be that's a super desirable thing. I just don't think people even

6:08still don't know about UGC really. No. That's just crazy. So, um, and then in terms of getting your deal, you said you did a lot of outbound. Did you also get any from Content Circle or is it mostly just like once you had one viral video then you were able to like leverage that to get more deals from different

6:28agencies? No, Content Circle they've been handing out deals from the start. They uh they always there's always jobs in there. I've actually got a couple from there. Um Plutus has actually been a great one where I've gotten I have like five with them. So, it's a great company. But yeah. Yeah, we love working with uh Plutus. like they're, you know, everything we've heard from them from creators from, you know, working with them directly. I just did a podcast with Alex, you know, the founder of Plutus and, uh, they've been incredible. Um, and they have they work with really really good companies that are funded, you know, so it makes the

7:04whole thing smoother because they take payments up front, so it's easier to pay creators. And um it just seems like a really good uh beneficial relationship when we have you know a lot of good trained creators and content circle and then an agency like Pluto able to bring those deals in um which is awesome. So and then um do you get any inbound deals now through your personal brand or is it all through like word of mouth referral

7:32like how does that look? [snorts] Um, I would say it's both really. So, I can I do have a small little personal brand, nothing crazy. It's like 20K on Instagram, but that does help. So, yeah, you don't need a personal brand, but it does help to have one. It does help a ton. It does. Usually UGC brands are looking for people like 5 to 20k followers because um that's just kind of like the sweet spot of someone that's gone viral before and then is good at content, you

8:05know, but also will is willing to work. Like you don't have a huge ego, a an influencer and you're like, I'm only going to do it for like five grand for a post, you know? Um so you're still good making 15k a month, you know, for a couple hours of work a day. And so that's kind of like what brands want is that. And if if you're able to do that and get like a little bit of of a personal brand snowball, you can absolutely rip. Um, so that's one thing I tell most UGC creators because they always ask me, "How do you get the big

8:33deals?" Like my biggest deals were 2K per video. Um, and I I just had tens of thousands of followers at that point. I had like 50K or 100K followers, so it was a little bit easier. But if you don't have that, then this is like kind of what you have to do until you get

8:47there, you know? Exactly. This is like the road map started. Yes. And and so you know one thing with you is you've been able to do this and make a career literally from an iPhone and five [snorts] months basically. Yeah. Four months. Yeah. Yeah. Insane. Um what's what do you want to do next? You know, there's many different paths that a UGC creator can

9:08take. What I want to do next? I've I've either thought about an app or obviously the agency. That's what's next. in the UGC world. Yeah, I think both are great. You know, um I've done both and agency is nice because, you know, if you sign a client, you can sign them for 20K or 30K or 50K. I mean, there's big agency deals out there for sure. And so, you know, if you're able to either make content, personal brand content to put yourself in the shoes of those founders that are looking to grow um and explain what you've done and why it works, that can be super super helpful. Um, and then

9:49obviously the app, that's kind of more my focus now. I think it's cool. Like building a product I think is really cool. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, our app, we have some decent revenue. I'm not going to see any of it for a while because I'm just going to turn around and spend it on creators every month,

10:05right? Yeah. So, it depends. Do you want the cash now or do you want it later? You can kind of do both. That's the great thing with UGC is you've built this skill set of learning how to sell through content. Um, there's probably nothing more important, I would think, going into 2026 than that.

10:22Totally agree, 100%. Fire. Um, in terms of fitness stuff, I know you wanted to do that for a bit. Where's your brain on that versus UGC? So, um, that is that's something I still want to do. So, I want to do the, um, online fitness coaching. I want to do high ticket sales, selling a program. I've sold two to three clients so far with that. Um I would love to match it or even like surpass, you know, that's what like in two years I would love to just be doing that for like a good year or two and just help a lot of people out. But that's where we're at right

10:58now. But UGC is crushing it. So I'm just putting a lot of energy into that. I I bet people would ask like why would you switch from UGC and do that if you are making good money, you know? like why not just do UGC for a while or like is there like a certain monthly income

11:15goal that you have to hit kind of thing? Uh yeah, I want next so next year the goal is 100k a month. So I want to uh I've I've met and I've talked to a bunch of people like Craig and some other guys who are in this world and it's doable and I know it's doable. So I want to take on that challenge and

11:34shout out. Yeah, shout out Craig. I got a beast. Yeah, Tampa has a lot of killers like that. Like guys that are, you know, young and just dogs just work all the time. Yes, Craig has done a great job positioning himself to the right audience to sell his fitness offer because it is a very high ticket and you can only do that if you're selling to the right, you know,

11:55target audience. Exactly. That's the biggest thing right now. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean, as for UGC, like if I looked at you objectively, I think, you know, you're incredible creator. Um, and so, you know, if you were to build a product or if you were to run the agency, I bet you could do 100K a month. You know, for instance, Colin was a UGC

12:15creator and now he does 150K a month. Yes, that is true. It's very, you know, realistic for you to go as well. And it might even be easier because Colin was a UGC creator and he got this client Go Wish, which is an app, and he got them 50K or 80K downloads in a day and he posted that on Twitter, opened up his sales uh calendar and then bunch of people book calls with him like yo I'd love to work with you and he pitched them all at his high ticket thing and he signed like a bunch of clients in a week and made 150 grand you know

12:48disgusting I know but that's that's like a very real thing yes if you're a good UGC creator that's that's the next step up um okay you're you're now not just making content but you're managing creators with the same skill set so you're your work level stays the same. You you'll do two to three hours of work a day, but now you have all these videos going out instead of just, you know, your own. And then the great thing, too, is it's not even your money. Like, you're using the brand's money to pay the creators. Um, yeah. So, just a super interesting interesting path that you could do,

13:24especially if you got on Twitter and you started doing case studies like I'm a UGC creator and I made 13K this month, 15K or whatever. um like just simple tweets like that and interacting with those people. I bet you could easily, you know, run that up as well. Yeah, I've thought about that too. I'm

13:40really interested in that. Yeah, there's there's not a lot off the table for you, you know, at this point. Like there's many many different directions you can go and I'm just I'm hyped to see you do it. Um as for content circle, because you know, when you when you joined, you know, you were like, is this even like a thing? Is it possible? I think Thomas had told you like he was he got 10K in his first 32 days or something. Um, you know, but what do you think you like most about Content Circle as a UGC community, man? Um, I just love Well, first things

14:13first. Well, before I was really skeptical about joining. I I remember having this conversation with you. I'm like, bro, I even thought 250 a month was a lot. $250. I was like, bro, I was like, I don't know if I can do it. I was making chump money and then you were like, "Bro, I'm telling you, just do it

14:30and it will, bro, you're 10xing, bro. You're not get you're going to make 5 10K." And I was like, "All right, bet." Did that. But the thing I love about content, bro, everyone just wants to win and everyone wants to see everybody win. It's like, bro, it's like it's like we're family. It's like we've known each other. It's like a great community. You can say anything. You're always going to laugh. Just everyone wants to crush and

14:51win together. I love this environment. Thanks, man. Yeah, I I love Content Circle. When I first started it, I didn't know it could grow to something like that, but there's really really good people in there. So, I feel like we've been fortunate to just have people like you join um and just run it up, you know? It's it's inspiring to see. And like when you post stuff in there, everyone else gets excited, too. You know, they're like, "Oh yeah, like Nash is crushing. I'm going to turn it up a

15:14little bit." Yeah. And just, you know, piece of fire. It's great. It's really cool to see and um yeah, I don't know. Just just proud that you're there. [laughter] appreciate that. Yeah. Um yeah, when you know I was like 250 a month. I'm like Nash I have deals right now with brands. I I promise you you can

15:32do much more than that. Um and especially because you had like that little bit of a following. I don't know. It was like 8 10K at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Um I was like, "Dude, I I promise you brands are going to be interested in this because you're used to posting. You're used to being consistent. You've gotten views on videos before. Um and you like it. you know, like that those are all signs that brands look for to bet on a UGC creator. Um, and you know,

15:58so I don't know. Glad you took the risk. Uh, continue to do that in your your life and you're you're going to be great. All right, Nash, thank you for for joining. Appreciate you and uh let's have a great year in 2026. Yes, sir. Appreciate having me. Later.