 This is the MatBeck Podcast. Today's episode is powered by Mounder View. What's up, guys? Welcome to the MatBeck Podcast. Today, we are going to talk about platform artists, we're going to talk about hair companies, and we're going to talk about creating content and why all that stuff kind of works together. So the first thing is platform artists. I want to talk about the term platform artist and also my thoughts on that now. So here's my thing. I like to do this podcast when I'm sparked. I have an idea or I see something and it makes me want to talk about it. So I saw something on Facebook. If you post it, you might know who you are. I saw it on Facebook and it was really talking about platform artists being educators. So it said basically, if you're a platform artist, you're either a great educator at hair or you're great on social media. So I want to talk about this for a second because I do believe that there is a lot of bitterness. So I want to get into that conversation. There's some bitterness between people that have been doing hair for quite a while, had a following or have a following, but in a different way have been on the platform artist circuit for a long time, been at the hair shows, teaching hair cutting, teaching hair coloring, whatever it is, doing all the hair shows. And now all of a sudden you've got a whole kind of group over the last three to four years of people who are influential on social media that maybe have not been doing hair as long as them are now getting the work. So my big thing for a very long time, even when I started working for a hair company 14 years ago, was that I just wanted to work. I wanted to be on the platform. I showed up at every hair show. I tried really hard to volunteer whenever I could. I was teaching classes every week, trying to get picked to do the bigger jobs. I did all of that and for 10 years never got the call to do anything bigger. So when you look at, people look at kids or not, I don't want to say kids that are doing social media stuff, but the group of people, the influential hairdressers that are on social media, Instagram, YouTube, whatever it is, that are getting the work now. People think that they just all of a sudden became popular. And that could be the case for some, but I can guarantee that for most of them, you just didn't know who they were until it really exploded. But they worked and worked and worked to create content, to create a brand, and then that blew up. Now hair companies don't know. So almost every hair company out there, I'm actually trying to think of one right now that has figured it out, how to create this sort of brand now that social media people are building. So you look at all these big hair care companies, they can't just build a person. They don't have a person on their team that's creating this kind of social media wave. So what a lot of these bigger companies are doing, they're basically taking these kids that have built their following on the internet and they're using these kids to help build their brand, which is smart. It's what they have to do. So when you look at the hair show floor now, it used to be a bunch of platform artists that were great at hair cutting, great at hair color, whatever it is. And now you've got brands bringing in these kids that maybe aren't great at teaching, but they're great at social media. So I get the post, I understand where the person is coming from. But at the same time, a lot of people, I don't think there's a lot of learning happening at hair shows anymore anyways. So for me, that doesn't really even make sense. I always thought hair show floor is kind of an ego based area where like I wanted to be on a platform because I wanted to be noticed and I wanted people to see me teaching whatever. But that's where you've got these kind of bigger social media kids, they're showing up at these booths and people are surrounding the booth because they want to meet the person that they're influenced by on social media. So it's just a different world. And when I look back at people or when I see posts and people saying, you know, this person just instantly became Insta famous and now they're up on the platform. I also looked back at my the beginning of my career 14 years ago and I think, you know what? I showed up at every hair show. I taught classes every month or every week, not every month. I taught classes every week. I was driving miles and miles in my car. I was teaching 75 classes a year and I never got put on the platform, right? Except for my local hair show. But I did not get sent to do all these things. There were people that knew people in the company or just people that were related to people, whatever it was or knew somebody that was already on the platform and now they brought their friend up, right? Those people got put on the platform before me, right? It wasn't because they were better at this point. Who knows if they were better, you have to judge, right? But they knew somebody so they got put up there. My point is it's been happening forever. Social media didn't change that part of it. It didn't make this whole industry different. It just made like you're not getting called up now. Like it made the playing field different, which is what I love about it because I can sit here and I can make content every single day and I can put it out on the internet and I can get to know my community. I can build my community. We built free salon education. Now I talk to brands. I'm up on the platform 12, 15 times a year for different hair shows, right? Because I built a brand. I built my audience and now platform artists that never did that maybe looked at the internet and didn't want to jump on and start creating content or are too good. They got all their secrets that they don't want to let out there and let other people learn them or whatever it is. Like I don't know why they're not creating content, but they didn't and all these other people did and now they're super bitter about it because they're not getting the work, right? So the times have changed and the platform has changed. So when people complain about it being a platform artist and it's all about being a great educator and being up on the stage, well, the platform is now Instagram and YouTube and Facebook. And what are you teaching now? Because if you were on the actual platform that is the industry now, if you were a platform artist on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, teaching, you have the upper hand. So I don't want to just say like, you know, they did it and they're the best and whatever. What I'm saying is you as the best in the industry, something that has been teaching on a platform for years and years and years should be creating content every single day, putting out there and using it as your platform and become a platform artist again and stop worrying about the hair shows because I don't think there's even going to be hair shows in a couple years. Like hair shows aren't really that cool anymore. So what are you doing to change that? So that's a platform artist area. And then also I want to talk about brands because brands, I see them putting out content. It's like unbelievable. It has to be engaging, right? So every brand puts out content that is a commercial. It's like, whatever the new product is coming out, it's just a commercial. It's like 30 seconds, one minute of a commercial or they show somebody getting their hair done for like two minutes and they don't teach anything. Like we do have to go back to teaching. People want the information. They're not learning it at the hair shows. If a brand could figure out how to educate on the internet, the best out of all the other brands, right? And that's where I try to push brand. Any brand that I'm working with, if we can create content to teach the industry, then you show up at a hair show with your booth. It's going to be the biggest booth of the show. It doesn't matter. You don't have to hire in every big Instagrammer. Like you would already create your own. So brands have to really kind of get smarter because I see every, every, I was just on YouTube today and I was looking at what the brands are doing. And it's just like, it's kind of laughable sometimes because they'll take like their Facebook live video and they'll put it up on YouTube. And it's like a vertical video. It's like shot like this on a phone. And it's on a platform that's supposed to have a wide screen and like you're posting that content and it gets like 100 views. Like no one wants to see it. You're not engaging with what your audience is, but you'll spend like hundreds of thousands of dollars on a booth at a hair show where people barely walk by it, right? You have an opportunity. I put out a video on YouTube and I get 10,000 to 12,000 people watching it within 24 hours. And you're spending $100,000 to get like 100 people to walk past your booth. Like that doesn't make any sense. So there should be more work for artists like what we do. The brand should be looking for artists like us because we're the ones that can create the content and put it up and utilize your brand and promote your brand. So I think there's a ton of work that it's going to be available. And all the platform artists out there, this is my thing to you guys is if you have any, like if you want to be a platform artist still you got to figure out, you got to know what the platform is. And the platform is YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Hiding your secrets, quit trying to sell videos for $10 to hairdressers. Like for me, like that doesn't make any sense. Like you have brands that are going to need content, brands that are going to need you to be a platform artist for them in a different way. And like trying to get $10 here and there for your videos, trying to sell them before you're even people know who you are. People like people that have been on the platform for a very long time, people don't know who you are because they only know the social media people now. And I'll leave you with this. My big thought is when I put out something, I put out a piece of content, I already know as soon as I hit that upload button that people are forgetting about me already. And that's what I think about every single time. I put out, I create a video, an education video, I put it up on the internet and then instantly start thinking about what do I get to do next because people forget. That's why I'm posting almost every three hours on the internet because I need to make sure that people don't forget. Think about this. What's the last thing you saw on Facebook? Can you remember? If you're watching this on Facebook, then it's this, but think about the last, the thing before this that you saw. If you're watching this on YouTube, you don't remember what you saw on Facebook last because there's so much stuff. There's so many people. There's so many things being pushed into us every single day. So think about that. You got to create content. You can't hold your secrets. You got to create things for people. This is the platform. This is what platform artists are now and hair shows are going away. So who cares? Don't even be upset about who's on that stage. I don't care anymore who's on that stage. The stage is the internet, right? So thank you guys so much for listening. I know this was a bit of a, we went, we went for it on this one. Did you like it? Let me know in the comments below. If you're following me on iTunes or Spotify, know that you can DM me out your thoughts on this, this episode of the podcast on Instagram. Follow me at freesaloneducation. If you're on anchor, then I would encourage you to post on there or send me a voice message on anchor because that's a cool interactive app for podcasts. You can listen to the audio and then you can send me a voice message. We can continue this conversation. And then also if you're on YouTube watching this podcast, leave a comment below. Love to know what you think about this subject, your thoughts on it. And that's pretty much it. Thank you guys so much. Hope to see you on the internet in some form or another. And I will talk to you guys soon.