Gamifying Growth: Overcoming Fear Through Action with Jesse Kay

Today we sit down with Jesse K. From launching his first podcast at just 16 as a high schooler, a project that ignited a passion for connection.

Jesse's journey is nothing short of remarkable. He'll share how gamifying his approach helped him land interviews with business titans like Mark Cuban, Jack Dorsey, and Gary Vaynerchuk. We'll delve into the evolution from those early podcasting days to founding Viber Media, his performance marketing agency. Working with massive brands, all while navigating Cornell and even a stint at Goldman Sachs.

Jesse will reveal his secrets to balancing it all, the advice that he has for aspiring entrepreneurs on managing risk and the power of mission driven work highlighted by his impactful Making Lemonade Fund. Get ready for actionable insights on staying ahead in business and the competitive spirit that fuels his drive to keep achieving bigger goals. As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe. All right, Jesse K. Welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.

Dave, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Absolutely. We are excited that you took the time. So let's get right into it.

So, Jesse, how did launching a podcast at just 16 years old shape your understanding of audience engagement and ultimately lead you down the path of performance marketing? Yeah, it's funny, I literally started the podcast initially as a high school project. So we were, I was in this entrepreneurship class. I didn't even really want to be in it because I found out you had to write have to write a business plan. I thought it was just like a fun fake class.

And then they're like, you have to write a business plan for a year. And I was like, I'm out. But they're like too late to drop. So I was stuck in this class, started it because I realized a bunch of people in the class had great ideas, nobody knew how to execute on it. So I was like, why don't I interview people who are successful and have actually done the thing that all these kids want to talk about?

I learned so many lessons from the podcast, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but how it ties into performance marketing was, I think it's actually a great experience on seeing how the qualitative side of interviewing people and chatting with people leads to quantitative results. So how did different people that I interviewed become clients? How did different people that I interviewed lead to referrals on stuff?

What was the flow from video clips to getting listeners and how long did that take and tracking the data to really make informed decisions on growing the podcast, which I've carried forward eight Nine years later. Outside of that. Attention Shopify sellers. Are you tired of slow sales? Do you want to skyrocket your revenue? Well, you'll want to join this free masterclass from my friends, the Traffic Ninjas. Learn how to optimize your store, boost conversions, and dominate your niche.

Sign up with the link in the show notes and take your Shopify business to the next level. Wow. Okay. And just following up on that because you hit on such an important point is, you know, entrepreneurs so often, you know, people have these aspirations and dreams and what holds them back is, is fear and lack of taking action. So when you're 16 years old and you realize that everyone has these ideas, but they don't know how to do it.

And you had that idea for the podcast and you, you took action right away and just got it started and, you know, kept going and can't imagine you knew anything about podcasting at that point. But, but where did that come from, that ability without fear at such a young age? Not only did I not know what I was doing, but it was definitely not cool yet. This is like pre Joe Rogan, pre. Any of the real podcasts being big. So, yeah, I mean, I think it was a couple things.

I think, number one, my dad's an entrepreneur, so I grew up seeing him and I wanted to eventually do that, where I was like, I want to control the destiny of where my life takes me and the work stuff, and there's only one way to do it, which is by actually doing. And then the second thing was, I don't know where it came from, but I looked at it like game.

So rather than fearing rejection, fearing failure, feeling that, fearing that nobody was going to listen, which a lot of people didn't for the first year and a half, two years, honestly, if you're talking about before you recorded, like, it took a long time before it became a big show in my head, but I honestly gamified it.

Like, I was like, oh my God, if I have the opportunity to talk to a Mark Cuban or a Jack Dorsey, I'm just going to take a million shots until I do that, and I'm going to do whatever I can to get to that result and, and make it happen. So I just gamified it in my head and looked at the long term vision of I get to meet people that I'd never meet outside of that. And then everything else kind of rode the coattails of that.

And you know, you mentioned some of these big names that you've interviewed. Jack Dorsey, Mark Cuban, you interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, as a kid just starting out, how did you get big names like that to come on your show? An insane amount of cold emails. I think I literally sent 300 cold emails a day, every day for six months when I was starting the show off.

And the only thing that gave me the motivation to keep doing it at the beginning was actually a no. Mark Cuban replied back to one of my early emails and was like, sorry, I don't have time, but gock. And I was like, oh, my God, if Mark Cuban responds, like, anybody would respond. So then did cold emails, did follow ups, the Jack Dorsey one. I literally. He was doing like a Twitter live, I think it was called Periscope was the branding they had at the time.

They sat in it for an hour and spammed it with like A hi, I'm 16. Will you come on my podcast for five minutes? And eventually he said yes. And I was like, oh, my God, great news. But then at the end I'm like, oh, no. Like, how do I like? He said yes, but that doesn't mean anything. How do I actually get him on? So I'm like calling Twitter headquarters and calling Stripe.

I'm like, your CEO said he'd come on my podcast, and eventually I was literally going to fly to San Francisco for a five minute interview with him. And then I got an email from his chief of staff, who's like, hey, Jack's actually in New York next week for a board meeting. Do you want 45 minutes with him? And then 45 minutes with our CMO? And I ended up interviewing both of them, and that's how that one came out, which was crazy. Wow. Incredible.

Okay, now, Jesse, what was the pivotal moment that made you decide to found Viber Media at such a young age? I think the biggest one, like, it was a relatively natural progression from the podcast. So started the podcast, built an audience there. As I had the podcast, I did internships. So my senior year of high school, I did an internship in sports marketing for a company called Steiner Sports, which is a big, like, collectibles and marketing company.

I worked and helped the founder with some of his marketing using what I had done from the podcast. And then I started getting a couple clients. Like, a couple of my early podcast guests turned into clients, pro athletes, different brands, that type of stuff, and it slowly just picked up from there. I did the internship senior year of high school, took on a couple of clients my freshman year of college. That grew sophomore, junior, senior year of college.

And it was kind of just A natural progression of the podcast, helping people with their social media, social media to other marketing, marketing to performance marketing. That's kind of where we sit today. Okay, and so why did you, why did you choose specifically to help like eight and nine figure brands, you know, achieve like this, this high margin digital growth?

I think it was the right place in the ecosystem, I thought, for the work we were doing because a lot of this stuff was, hey, how can we optimize and find efficiency of already proven strong businesses that have additional list opportunities? So how can we, how can we implement email traffic, sms, affiliate stuff, stuff that can lift their brand?

And it's very easy to tell what's driving growth because they already have a good baseline business and we can a lot of times add fuel to the fire and they're fun businesses to work with. Like we work with a big mix of brands anywhere in that kind of eight to nine figure range. But it's fun because we can get in the weeds, get super dirty with all the data, and then see relatively significant incremental growth relatively quickly. Okay. All right.

And so you mentioned as you were growing the business, you know, taking on clients during your time at college, so specifically with managing time, I mean, how did you continue to grow this, this agency while, while going to school full time at Cornell? It was really hard. I probably wasn't the greatest student in history, but it was hard. Like I was trying to balance graduating from Cornell and staying on pace.

I was doing an internship over the summer, did a full time thing after that while running the agency, and it was just sacrifice. Like I would have to stay accountable on my calendar of like, all right, this is time to hang out with my friends, this is time to go to class, this is time to do work. But it was essentially a full time job on top of being a full time student. So it wasn't easy by any means, but it was a priority for me and I love it.

So it didn't feel like work and it was just properly putting time in the calendar and making sure I was staying on top of it. Okay, and another great point too, right. So often, you know, entrepreneurs that, that do really well, it's like they, like you said, right, they love what they do, so it doesn't feel like work.

So, you know, how, what advice would you give to someone that's, that's looking to find that and then still trying to balance the reality of, you know, paying the bills, so to speak, and while they're, while they're growing their business. Yeah, of course I Think it's a, it's a question I get asked a bunch because I did like I did the business while I was in college. I took a job after college and then I chose to leave the job to do the business full time.

And I think the answer is different for everybody. Like, I think number one, hopefully the business has grown to the point where it's near or surpassed what you're making from your W2 job, where that makes it a no brainer. Because if you're able to grow the business to that point in the limited amount of time you have, obviously that becomes a no brainer to take the jump on. And then I think the other side of it's, what's your risk tolerance? Like, do you have other people that rely on you?

Is it just you? How confident are you that this thing is going to work? Is traction picking up? Do you have long term agreements? Like, one thing that was important for me was going to some of the larger clients that we have prior to me leaving and confirming, like, hey, we're going to sign a longer term deal here because I need to have security before I jump with long term existing clients that know the performance. And that's how I kind of hedged against it.

And also the business had grown to a point where I felt very safe doing it. But then also I was young and don't have anybody else relying on me at the moment. So it became an easier thing. And I think that question's different for everybody. But I think the key ones are, is there growing traction? It based off of the time you're spending on it today, are you confident that as you spend more time on this business, it'll continue to grow?

And then number three, what's your worst case scenario and can you live with that? Okay. All right.

And so you mentioned the job you took right out of college and that was with Goldman Sachs. So what was that experience like after already, you know, building this, this growing agency and then doing it all through college and then getting the W2 job right out of school. What was that like for you? Yeah, I mean, it was a great experience. Like I loved my time at Goldman. Some of my best friends still work there. I learned a ton.

Like the original thinking on working there was I wanted to see the inner workings of a great business and how they operate and learn more tactical stuff financially on top of what I thought I knew from a business perspective. So I loved my time there. That place is awesome.

And really the key thing in my head on when it became the right Time to leave was I was, I wasn't really sleeping because I was in the office at Goldman five days a week and then working on the existing business sort of nights and weekends. And it eventually became a game of all right, the business is growing a lot and in five years do I see myself wanting to work at Goldman or wanting to build my own business? For me, the answer was the latter.

And once I knew that the business had grown to a point that I felt safe with it and had an opportunity to keep growing this thing, it kind of became a no brainer. So that's when I decided to leave. But it, I've been a far more peaceful guy, still probably more chaotic than I was there. But over the last. I left about a year ago and just being able to wake up and go to sleep working on my own stuff has been a nice process.

Okay, and how do you stay ahead of the curve and continue to develop these, these innovative youth focused strategies in, in the ever evolving landscape of digital marketing? Yeah, I think like I was talking to somebody this morning on every time you think you're finally up to pace or ahead on digital marketing strategy, at this point you're behind again.

Just because at the pace of technology evolving and at the pace of new features coming out, there's just so much and the only feedback that I give and we talk about is test everything. Like just try and be in the weeds and play around with all.

There's so many amazing tools that are making marketers lives easier, revenue officers lives easier, and business owners life's easier and more efficient that just getting in the weeds and playing with these tools and figuring out how they could be useful for their business. Not only should it be interesting and cool, but it should save a ton of time. So I try and play with one or two new tools a day just to see what it's doing and how it can help.

And then we're trying to deploy a new tool a month to use in the broader ecosystem. Okay, I love that. All right, and what are some of the differences that you've noticed in driving growth for the range of clients you've had? Like taking professional athletes versus, you know, Fortune 1000 CEOs. Yeah, I think number one is you gotta know your client and know what their priorities are. So even if you take two clients identical size, it's very rare that we see that the end goal is the same.

Like obviously everyone wants to make more money more efficiently, but how do you get there? And what is the real thing holding that brand back that we can help with. So I think number one is trying to understand from the person you're working with seat, what are their goals, what are their indicators they're benchmarking off of. And then really, I think the more fun side is some of the smaller brands or individuals that we work with. We can do stuff quick.

Like, we can get an answer on it today and get it live tomorrow, while some of the bigger organizations, it takes time, of course. I mean, I worked at Goldman. I understand how that thing works of there's processes and bureaucracy and approvals and boards. So that's the key differences we've realized. But it's really fun because on a lot of this digital marketing stuff or performance marketing, we can, we can attribute it to an actual data piece.

So as we're driving results, we can see it in lifetime and kind of like how a gamified podcast, I can gamify this because it could just get tied back to a number and I want to beat last year's number from whoever working with and we can show them that those results live. So that's kind of the differences and how we look at it. Okay. And following up on that. So you've mentioned, you know, you gamify things. You've mentioned that several times in this interview.

And you know, that's a strategy that I've, I've read from, from numerous people in of like almost a hack in terms of being productive or sticking to being consistent on a particular area. Like, where does that come from? Your. Your way of gamifying what you're working on? I think I'm, I'm competitive at heart. Number one, like, I hate losing. And I think by gamifying it, it turns it into a competition for me.

Like, I'm benchmarking against last year's data or last month's data or last week's data. And it's pretty b. Like, it's either like, we're on track or we're off track and you kind are stuck to the numbers. And on top of that, it makes it a little more fun than like, hey, we're just driving for these results and here's what we're going for. Like, if I look at it like a sports game or any type of activity, on top of that, it becomes fun.

And then number two, I think it really just keeps me focused. Like, I can be insanely add if I don't stay on top of things. And I think keeping it gamified to one core metric. So, like, let's beat X keeps me Grounded to what the actual KPI we're going off of is, because otherwise you can get caught up in a million shiny objects. But if you lose track of the core objective or the core KPI we're going off of, none of it really matters. So by gamifying it, it's like, let's go win at that one thing.

And if we're winning at that one thing, we could do everything else on top of it. All right, and so how does your passion for sports and then your goal of ultimately owning a team, you know, influence your competitive spirit and drive in the business? Yeah, that one's been a one on the list for as long as I can remember. But I like, again, I don't think any of that comes to fruition if I don't crush it in business first and do stuff that is helpful in society.

But it's been a fun goal to have as a thing to chase. And then it comes back to the same thing of, like, it's a game. Like, for me, like, I truly look at this as, like, I'm trying to unpeg the different pegs on the thing to get to the next goal. So I look at it as, like, that's the broad four to your vision. What are the pieces that need to go into that thing to make it a reality? And I sure hope that I'm very early in the journey, but that's kind of how I look at it.

Okay, and what inspired you to launch the make and lemonade fund during COVID 19? And what impact did that have on your. Your perspective as an entrepreneur? Yeah, that was a fun one. And so, honestly, so unique from anything else I've done in my career to date. So the Making Lemonade Fund was, I guess it was five years now, but basically, March of 2020, world shuts down. I get sent home from college. Most of my buddies get sent home from college.

And I was talking to a friend, and we were like, people our age want to do something, but we have no idea what to do, how to do it. There's no sense of community. Everybody's home quarantined. What do we do?

So we decided to create this thing called the Making Lemonade Fund. And essentially, it was a way not only to raise money online and support three awesome nonprofits that were involved in the COVID relief efforts, but on top of that, build community for people our age who had lost that they're no longer going to high school class, or they were no longer in college. And we brought together four or five Hundred young people.

Anyone from, let's say, I don't know, 13, 14 years old in high school or 15 years old, all the way up to 30 year olds that wanted to support this mission. We had weekly or nightly meetings. Literally every night at 9pm for 80 days straight, seven days a week, we had these meetings. We ended up raising right around $125,000, if not more in a month and a half for Covid Relief. And it just gave me a lesson on it. Like nobody was getting paid, nobody was making money from it.

It was literally just because of the vision that people had and the mission of we want to make an impact during this time. So it taught me two things. Number one, I think it's such a great opportunity to attach philanthropy to any business initiative and do good while you're running a business. But on top of that, it illustrated to me how important visualizing the mission of what you're working on is for your team. Because if everyone is driven by that mission, nothing else really matters.

So it was just a good indicator of, like, lead with mission. First try and do things that people can all get around and get excited about no matter how much they're getting paid and everything else kind of falls into place. But it was a great, great effort. And literally some of those people are my best friends. I'm going to a wedding this coming week for somebody that I met through Making Lemonade Fund, which is insane.

Yeah. Wow. That. No, that's a great lesson in terms of what, what a mission can do to galvanize a team and, and direct everyone towards a common goal, more so than just, you know, anything financial. So totally 100. It was such a good experience. Okay. All right. And Jesse, if people want to get in touch and learn more about Viber Media and what, what your, your, your marketing agency does, what's the best way people that can reach out to you? They can do a couple things.

You can go to viber media.com so V Y B R M E D I A dot com. You can find me on any social media channel you'd look at. Just look up Jesse, K J S S E last name K A Y. And anyone from the show, if you have questions, you're more than welcome to email me just jesse@vibermedia.com all right. And we'll link all that in the show. Notes for everyone. All right. Well, Jesse, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom from your journey with our audience.

We greatly appreciate it. Of course. Thanks. For having me, Dave. All right. And that's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.