The Influencer Path: How I Build Brands with Creator Videos

An Army of Promoters You Don't Have to Hire

I'm going to tell you about the influencer path. It's going to help you get thousands of people promoting your business without spending the enormous amount of money it would take to hire those people. And I see this being the strategy for at least the next 10 years.

An influencer is somebody who has the ability to influence others. They call them creators. They call them affiliates, because they get to promote your products and make a commission from it, or whatever agreement you make with them. But here's the key: these people know how to influence. There are hundreds of thousands of them worldwide. Millions of them. They range from 5,000 followers to 5 million followers.

And I'll tell you where most of the value is right now for somebody like you or me. It's the influencers with small followings, 10,000 followers or less. They're willing to work for pennies on the dollar, or even for free products. In exchange for free products, they'll talk about your products on social media. It is a beautiful thing.

Step One: Get Creator Videos for Your Brand

The first thing you do with these influencers is get them to make you videos promoting your brand. They get your product, they talk about it, they explain the features and the benefits. You set the rules and the guidelines for what to say or not say on camera. Then they give you those videos, and you post them on your own social media.

Let me give you some examples of brands that use influencer videos. Comfrt went from zero to half a billion dollars in two and a half years with this path. Imagine selling $40 million a month by having other people talk about your products and services. That's an army of people promoting your brand. Glossier does this. If you have a teenage girl at home, you probably know that brand; they're a very successful nine-figure company. Gymshark does this. Fashion Nova does this. HelloFresh does this. These brands use influencer videos and promote them on their social media all day long. That's the way you start.

How do you find these people? Go to a tool like ChatGPT and say, give me five networks of influencers and platforms I can use to find people interested in talking about my products. It will give you a lot of options. There are many companies out there whose whole business is connecting influencers and creators with brands. All you have to do is contact them.

One of my favorites? You might have heard of it. It's called TikTok. TikTok has its own influencer network and its own influencer management platform. And imagine this: they have a bot you can integrate with TikTok that, when you press a few buttons, sends a thousand invites a day to influencers, offering them an opportunity to promote your brand in exchange for free products or a commission.

You Only Pay When They Sell

Think about what that means. You can launch your products without paying anybody up front to promote them. You only pay them if they sell something. It doesn't get better than that.

I can tell you how I built businesses back in 2014 and 2015: I had to pay to get attention. If I didn't pay, the platforms would not show me to the audiences. Now you get to make a deal without paying anything to these people, they go out and promote on social media, and you take those videos and use them over and over again.

Step Two: Whitelisting Your Top Creators

Once those videos start rolling in, the second step of the path kicks in. The actual term for it is whitelisting. You take your top influencers, the ones whose videos are performing, and you tell them: hey, your videos did really well. Would you like to create a partnership with us? Now you can go directly to their audience using their name, their likeness, and their following. That's whitelisting.

Examples of this at the highest level: Kylie Jenner, Cristiano Ronaldo, The Rock, Selena Gomez, Kevin Hart. These people make partnership deals to whitelist, and that prints money. YouTube will allow you to do this. Facebook and Instagram will allow it. TikTok will allow it. You get to promote directly on their channels.

Step Three: Affiliate Relationships

The influencer path is a journey, and it ends with affiliate relationships. This is where you get into a contract with the people who were so successful promoting your products. The videos were good, people bought, they converted, they proved they have a great ability to communicate and sell your products. Now you say: do you want to get married with us? Do you want to build a longer-term partnership?

You pay them a monthly contract and require them to post a certain amount on their social media, organically, every single month. Depending on who the celebrity or influencer is, you'll be able to make deals like that. Kim Kardashian has affiliate contracts. Zoella has them. Casey Neistat, the YouTuber with a big following, promotes technology like GoPro under affiliate contracts. PewDiePie, the big YouTube gamer, promotes headsets and gamer chairs and gets paid a lot of money every month to sell on his channels. You can make these contracts too, at your own scale.

Why This Is How I'm Building Brands in 2025

The influencer road map is how I'm building brands in 2025, because it allows us to scale to the moon faster. I was able to take brands from zero to nine figures in 10 years. But now, over the next few years, you have the ability to go from zero to millions in a few months, in a year.

So if you want to launch a brand from scratch, or break through whatever plateau you're going through right now, use the influencer path. Get creator videos for the brand. Take the videos that perform the best and get whitelisting agreements so you can promote on their social channels. Then find the stars within that journey and offer affiliate relationships. Obviously, the deeper you go into the path, the more money it costs to contract these people. But you can start with the small creators, and many times all you have to do is give them free products.

If you want to try it, go to a platform like CreatorIQ, set up an account, get the first 10 influencers you feel have the audience you need, get them under contract, have them promote your brand, see what happens, and take it from there.