 It's the mat work. So 2020, I get off work, right? I'm driving home because like I said, I'm an independent artist. I'm still working, trying to figure everything out right now. I'm investing all my own money on my own, everything I'm driving home. I'm like, I got to get groceries. So I'm like, I'm going to go grocery shopping right quick. I'm like, bro, I told myself it's January 3rd, the third day of 2020. I told myself 2020 my goal is I want to be more consistent with my content on TikTok because I know the power and I know what it's going to turn into later this year, especially with that stream platform rolling out. I tell myself by the time I get back from the grocery store, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to make three videos. I'm going to make three videos. If I don't have no idea, I guess I'm going to turn the camera on and just off the dome. If I could freestyle or rap, I could freestyle video. Why not? I got the personality. I got the looks. I got the I just need the platform in the ears and the eyes. So I'm like, whatever I go on my way back. I drop ass Dollar Tree in my head. I'm like, you know what? I don't have no ideas. I'm like three minutes from the crib. I'm going to go to Dollar Tree. I don't know what I'm going to find, but I'm going to find something video worthy, whether it's initially I'm thinking like silly string. Don't even know what I'm going to do with it. But just something like something I could use to give me some to hopefully spark idea going there. I see they got like a snake. It said put it in water, grow 600 times bigger. A big trim right now is the whole you post a video and it's a two part series or a multiple part series come back in 24 hours. So I'm like, OK, what if I put it in the water? I see somebody do something similar. And this is the biggest thing with the trans. That's like, it's the biggest misconception because this was what I was stuck on is I would see the trans and I would copy it, but I would copy it identical. And that's where you go wrong, because somebody with a larger platform or an established platform, say they see something and they copy somebody else's idea, which on Tik Tok, the great thing about Tik Tok is copying isn't really looked down upon. It's almost the norm. It's for you. You're supposed to copy or to recreate. But the biggest thing is putting your own sauce on it. I've seen somebody do it. They had a small one, though. They had a small thing that you put in the water. It grows if you've ever been a kid, which I live aside, you know what I'm talking about? You put in water, it grows. So I found the snake. I was like, dang, the snake is already big, though. I was like, it's going to grow bigger than that. So I'm like, that kind of sparked my interest. So I grabbed that. I grabbed that a magnifying glass, water balloons and some rocks that was supposed to turn a crystal. They didn't know which one I was going to use. I'm like, it's the dollar store. I'm going to spend a Tampa piece, come home with 10 possible ideas and drop them 10 days in a row and just see what pops if anything pops. But it's better than me not posting. So I go home, get back to the house, set my stuff down. You know, I'm boxed. I'm boxing stuff. I'm like, all right, let me do the snake. Because it kind of sparked my interest. I'm like, dang, it's big. It's supposed to get 600% bigger. Don't be there a lot smaller when they're supposed to grow whatever. So you know, get my little setup ready, get the phone out. And the thing with TikTok too is you can go viral on it. I got a million views on an iPhone X Max, not even the 11. Your video quality don't even have this. I've seen people with Android quality, no offense to anybody with Android, with millions of views. So it's like, you don't have to have any crazy setup. You don't have to have. If you go to my TikTok, most of my videos are in my room. I don't even really leave the house. I come home, I do music, and I post videos all in my room. My livelihood is in my room as of right now. So you know, mark the camera up. And one big thing when I talked to going back to, like I said, Dakota Alave, I'll never forget that conversation I had with him outside in the bathroom at that TikTok Halloween party. He said the biggest thing on TikTok, once you get the platform, is you need to make sure that your fans or your viewers or whatever your followers, whatever you want to call them, feel included in something. So like, one thing that I kept in mind is like, OK, I need to find a way to keep people's engagement because I don't want a viral video to go viral. And then that'd be the end of me. You know, this is something I got to keep going because my point, I don't want to just get viral and be known as like, oh, he's a funny guy on TikTok. Like, bro, at the end of the day, like, I need you all to listen to this music. Like, I'm being slick about it. I'm not throwing any of your face at first because don't nobody want to be handed a CD. You know what I'm saying? How many times have you turned down a CD at the gas station? Like, bro, you not worried about that? So whatever, like I said, spark up the camera. I said, so I think I said, show the package. You know, this says that it's supposed to grow 600% times the size. Let's test it. The water was kind of funny with it. And I named it. I think that was what the biggest thing was. I think besides saying, come back in 24 hours, for whatever reason, just me being me, just trying to throw some sauce on. I said, and we're going to name them Snickers because he looked like a Snickers. That's what I had said. And I throw him in the water. And I said, come back in 24 hours. So I posted this video, though. But mind you, I told you, when I went to Dollar Tree, I got like 10 items or so. And it was just like, I'm going to just post a bunch of videos and throw one pop. So as soon as I post this, don't even think nothing. Throw it up there. I had another video. And he's in my bathtub, by the way. At this time, I did it in my bathtub. So they had these magic towels at the Dollar Tree store as well. Same concept. It's like a little ball. You put it in water. And it turns into a towel. I thought I had never heard of it. So I was like, it sounds cool. It's a dollar, why not? I don't have no better concept. You haven't heard of those, man. That's what everybody was telling me, though. I had never heard of them. Everybody playing me like a fool. But I'm like, crazy to me because I'm like, bro, I'm not wiping that on my body. I'll do it for the video. But if any of you guys have ever wiped it on your body, it's got to be some chemicals or something. But yeah, I had never heard of it. So I feel like a little kid. I'm in Dollar Tree, you know what I'm saying? Cheezing, like, I'm going to make some content. I don't know what. But like, bro, when I walked in there, I was like, bro, this is a genius idea because, for one, it's cheap. For two, it's all type of crazy stuff. Like, all this growing stuff. That's TikTok stuff. It's just like weird stuff. Like, bro, we'll get to our topic with it. We'll get to it eventually, I'm sure. So whatever. Throw it on the right. Got the towel thing. So the snake video's up. I don't even check the views. I post it and I'm telling myself I'm 2020. I'm going to be consistent with this TikTok content. So throw it up. Don't even look at it. Because that's another thing, too, is don't watch your views. Gary V is the goat for that. You got to post like nobody's watching because when you start, nobody's watching. But when one takes off, it's going to be no. Nobody's going to think about them videos with five, 10 views once you crack your first meal or whatever your pinnacle is. So I kept telling myself, bro, don't check the views. Don't check the views, even though it's hard. Throw the towel in the water. The towel had to go on water, too. So the snake's in my tub. I'm like, I got a tub full of water. I'm going to throw the towel in there, too. The towel needs water. Throw it in there. It's a little magic ball. Turn it into a towel. And I was like, oh, and thank God I had named this snake for whatever reason, just on a fly. I named it Snickers just to try to give it some type of storyline. I threw the towel, like, oh, so the same concept. This towel's supposed to go on water, so we going to throw it in the water and see what happens. Throw it in the water, and the snake was in the video like in the corner. I was like, oh, and if you watched my last video, you already know what's up with Snickers is snake. That's the homie. This is going to be his blanket. Make sure you check that video out if you didn't already. So it was almost like a series on accident. So I purposely knew there was going to come back to the video in 24 hours, not knowing how many people, but whoever saw it, I would hope at least one or two people will come back. But then the towel kind of accidentally did that. And I post that, I post that one with the towel. All I did was let it sit. I poked at it and it turned into a, I was like, oh, look, it's a rag. And I think I accidentally called it a towel. So they was getting me in the comments about that. They were like, oh, it's not a towel, it's a rag. So almost that fueled the fire, I think too. It was just like the perfect, it was the perfect like accidental, like series of events, I guess. So I go back and check out the other video after I post this one, video at like 5K. I'm like, oh, dang, okay. Mind you, at this time we have 3,000 followers. I don't have no business with 5,000 views, but that's like the beautiful thing about TikTok. Cause it's not Instagram, it's not Snapchat, it's not nothing, it's TikTok. So you could have a hundred, I don't see people with a hundred followers with videos with some hundred or whatever the case is. Long story short, I see 5K, I'm like, okay. Like I said, at this point, my highest viewed video was 100K. And that was 65 videos prior to this one. And I'm at 3K followers. So, like I said, it's hard not to watch the numbers. I start, it's at 5K, I refresh, 6K. I'm like, 1,000 like that. I'm like, bro, 6K videos. And I'm cheesing the past like three, I've probably been on TikTok maybe four months, the past three, four months, I'm cheesing through 6K. And I just gotta, I'm like, bro, did I just refresh 1,000? Refresh. And then this is when it started going crazy. So I say this, this has only happened to me once with the Uber video, but never for this amount of time. So similar to Instagram, once you hit 99 on the notification, it maxes out. So I said, plus 99, I'm like, okay, plus 99, that's cool. Refreshed it. The video go from like 5K to like 7K. I'm like, whoa, start, just every time I refresh it's going up, then I started getting the followers in. And I was like, whoa, cause I had on the, when I posted the Uber video, and I think it's crazy is like the follower retention to the viewer, to the amount of views is like real skewed. Cause I've seen a lot of people where they have only one video on their account. The video will have like three million views, they only have like 3000 followers. So my followers start going on 50 followers, 10 followers, 20 followers. I think I turned off my phone and hopped in the shower. I'm feeling good. I'm like, man, this is crazy. I don't want to stare at it too long. Turn off my phone, hop in the shower, get out the shower. There are videos that like 10K views. I might've been in the shower for like 10 minutes. I'm like, bro, okay. But I've been here before. So in my head, I'm like, okay, the highest viewed video I've had to this date, which was three days ago on Sunday is 140,000 views. So I'm like, if I can hit 150,000 views, that's all I'm looking for. And then I'm going to move on to the next thing. By the time I get out the shower, man, it's like 20K. And the other one went off for about three, four days. And that's the thing with TikTok too, is the life of your posts is a lot different from Instagram. Me personally, I can't speak for anybody else. When I post something on Instagram, I might have two, three days if even three days. Really, I'll say two days, 99% in the first day, however many likes I get is the majority of my likes. And I might get another 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, whatever you know the number is, the next day, but on TikTok, the longevity of your posts is really crazy. And another thing is the chain reaction. So what I- On TikTok, like easy, and they have a system where your stuff can be dead, but like months later, they'll refresh it and put it back into the bucket and it'll start up over again. And that's what I noticed, because what irritated me prior to this video and what like was real crazy to me. And like right now, as passionate as I was about TikTok, just because of what I knew it was capable of love, as passionate I was prior to getting any type of like hit times 10 now because I was putting out videos, I'm like, oh my videos are funny. Like don't get me wrong, 50%, like I said, this was my 70th video, 69 videos that I had prior, half of them were trash, I ain't gonna cap with you. Half of them were trash, but the other half of my, bro these are solid videos, like these are good videos but nobody's seeing them, but that's the thing. When this one started picking up, I wanna say once it's got to like 30, 40K, I started noticing my other videos started going up crazy, comments. And so it's like a chain reaction. And I think that's the thing, cause that what tripped me out is I would always see people with like three million views and that's the only video and they only have 3,000 followers. And I think that's almost like worse. Like I'm, I didn't think this before, but I'm almost happy that I didn't get one to really go viral, like a million plus viral until I already had 69 videos because a lot of people go viral and the first thing they do is go to your page and they wanna, you know what I'm saying, TikTok, YouTube, all this is entertainment. They don't wanna be entertained. They go to your video, your profile, you got one video, they don't need to follow you. They just seen everything you were on that one video where they might like it and go on about their business. I had 69 videos, so I started getting trickle down effect on all my old videos. It's the mat work.