Love is Blind, but Growth Strategy is Clear ft. Kwame Appiah | Revenue Reimagined Ep. 054

Kwame Appiah, known from season four of Love is Blind and a seasoned BDR leader, shares his journey bridging the gap between B2B sales and the creator economy. Now leading influencer engagement at Later, he explains why influencer marketing is full-funnel and why creators are drastically more effective at delivering brand messaging than the brands themselves. A central theme of the episode is the power of overwhelming consistency for anyone looking to build a personal brand from scratch. Kwame also offers practical advice for early-stage founders with limited budgets: focus on product seeding and gifting to build genuine trust with creators who authentically love your solution, rather than chasing vanity metrics or big-name celebrities. Finally, the conversation highlights the critical value of the BDR role as the ultimate foundation for any tech career. Kwame emphasizes that companies should enable, rather than restrict, employees who want to build personal brands, as these internal creators often become powerful, authentic advocates for the organization.

Discussed in this episode

• Kwame's serendipitous career transition from leading BDR teams to full-time content creation and influencer marketing.
• Why content delivered by creators is 300 percent more effective than brand-delivered content.
• The importance of looking past follower vanity metrics to find creators with high engagement and deep community alignment.
• How Later's acquisition by Maverick married influencer marketing data with social media scheduling analytics.
• The necessity of overwhelming consistency across multiple social channels when building a personal brand from zero.
• Why early-stage founders should rely on product seeding and gifting to build authentic creator trust on a tight budget.
• The value of enabling internal employees to act as brand creators instead of restricting their social media presence.
• How starting as a BDR provides the ultimate structural foundation and resilience for any role in the tech industry.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — From SDR to full-time influencer
2. 3:15 — Why creator content beats brand messaging
3. 5:30 — Ignoring vanity metrics for real engagement
4. 7:45 — The Later and Maverick acquisition
5. 9:10 — Building a brand from zero
6. 13:00 — Product seeding for early-stage startups
7. 16:20 — Enabling employees to be internal creators
8. 18:40 — Creators vs traditional celebrities
9. 21:15 — Transitioning from BDR leadership to marketing
10. 26:30 — Rapid fire questions with Kwame

Key takeaways

• Creator-delivered content is 300% more effective than brand-delivered messaging.
• Look past vanity metrics; high follower counts require deep audience engagement.
• Building a personal brand requires overwhelming consistency every single day.
• Startups should prioritize product seeding to build authentic creator trust.
• Companies must actively encourage employees to build their own personal brands.

Transcript

You know, content delivered by creators is 300% more effective than content delivered by brands. Right? But it's not go yeah, right? It's not going to be that if you are just finding any creator.

Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagined Podcast. We have Kwame Appiah with us, who is a name that you may probably be familiar with from season four of Love is Blind. My wife is in the other room. She's incredibly jealous that we're talking.

But Kwame is a legend in his own right in the BDR world. He led BDR teams at ZoomInfo, Builder.io, Common Room, and now leads influencer engagement at Later. Before stepping into that role, he spent a year as a full-time content creator, gained experience monetizing his social media, and now he's working to help bridge the gap between content creators and the brands that they hope to partner with.

Kwame, thanks for joining the show, man. Thank you so much for having me, Adam and Dale. Yeah. We let him do the introduction because he's like the radio dude, he's got the radio voice, he's got He does.

It's a really good radio voice. The smooth operator. See, I I I do the introductions. I get the guests.

Dale just shows up and records, man. That's right. He's got the easy part of this game. It's a gig.

It's a gig. You know what they say about radio voices. Okay, cool. So So, uh, so Kwame, tell tell us a little bit like as you're going you you've been going through a lot of different transitions, but why did you want to start doing influencer marketing, uh, influencer brand, like tell us a little bit about that whole origin on like what made that click and be like, this is the way I we have to like really get attention uh, in the in our companies in our processes, etc.

Yeah, I mean, I would say it kind of it's all it was all serendipitous the way it came together. You know, I I've spent a vast majority of my tenure in tech in the business development space. Right? So it's just that like that in your face, I'm going to just dial and smile, get to your phone, call your cell, sometimes even call your mom's phone if I really need to get to you.

Um, you know, so my entire career has been super direct and I will say, it's something that it took a while to really um, to really settle with me, right? Because I'm not the most overly invasive person. I like to think of myself as like the kind of just like laidback guy. And so it took a while to get there.

I know like in the beginning of my journey, I struggled as a as an SDR, but once I got to the point of getting to the I'm here to help you, and once I understood that, it made a lot more sense to me. Um, but yeah, I mean ultimately, as I was going through that journey, I started to try to think about the ways that I could really best approach and understand and engage with customers. And as that journey went on, uh, we saw the transformation of like the creator market. You know, and the creator economy.

And it just kind of made sense because I became a creator. I was in it. I was doing it. I was talking to organizations and companies and brands.

Um, and I was doing some of them, you know, obviously the the campaigns and the marketing for them. And so, Scott Sutton, who's this uh now the CEO of Later, reached out to me, we used to work together at ZoomInfo. And he said Great dude. Hey.

Great human. Good human. Yeah, yeah. So, uh, he said, hey, I've got a kind of a cool idea about what we're trying to do in this space.

I think there's a lot of untapped potential in the connections that brands have with creators, and I want to make sure we help everybody align better in that sense, right? And so, what can we do to put someone in that position to align everyone across the space? Someone who understands the like business development aspect of it and the grind, and the, you know, the the tenacity aspect that goes into it, but also has been on purely the creator side of things. Right.

Um, and how do we marry those two together? And so, that's then what what got formulated to create head of influencer engagement and experience at Later. So I I I love this for a ton of reasons and there's so many places I want to go. Like I want to talk BDR, I want to talk creator, but I I I'm I'm going to stick with creator for a second.

There's so many brands out there now that I feel go to LinkedIn, just find someone who has, you know, some stats and they're like, oh, we're going to make you an influencer and go post about us. Or vice versa, you have some tool on LinkedIn who thinks they have cred, who posts of, you know, at whatever company I want like, let me be an influencer for you. I I I my gut is that is not the way to do it and it's broken. Talk to us how can brands and how are you guys helping brands properly leverage the correct influencers to grow their brand versus let me go find someone on LinkedIn who has 50,000 followers.

Yeah, um, that's a really really good question. I think what we take pride in at Later is making sure that the creators within our platform you have the most open transparency to who they are as creators. You know? So are you able to dive in there and see who these creators are, who are they targeting, what their most recent engagement was, right?

Their engagement level overall, uh, what niche they fit into. Um, all these things that come together to create like, is this person a good fit for me? Right? And so if you're a brand and you are looking for someone to push out the message that you want to deliver, to talk to your community, and and the reason like the obvious reason why creator engagement and creator, uh, like the creator economy is so important is because you know, content delivered by creators is 300% more effective than content delivered by brands.

Right? But it's not go yeah, right? It's not going to be that if you are just finding any creator. Right?

So who's going to be the creator that really optimizes the message that I'm trying to deliver here to my community and to theirs as well. And so I think you start first with understanding the niche. Right? It's not just some, you know, cookie cutter regular like, you know, influencer.

You want to understand that this person speaks to the messaging and speaks to the community that you have. And then from there you want to understand their overall audience. And I think when people look at audience, typically it's been in and I think Adam might have mentioned it earlier, as well, it used to be like, let's go find someone with a bunch of followers. You can have a 100,000 followers and you can have 1% engagement, right?

It means that your community you're not really attached to your community. Yeah. You know? So they don't necessarily the message that you deliver might not resonate with them.

And so a big part of about what Later has done, and I think also taking on this uh, this acquisition of, uh, because I mean, just to tell the quick backstory, Maverick was the influencer marketing platform. Um, and Later was a Canadian company, which was the social media and content scheduling tool. Right? Maverick acquired Later and then rebranded as Later, kind of like when DiscoverOrg acquired ZoomInfo but rebranded ZoomInfo, because Later had better brand recognition.

Um, and a different, you know, a larger customer base. And so, with those things in mind, what we then got was the influencer marketing campaign data that we've always wanted, combined with the social media scheduling and analytics of understanding what's the best way to optimize when you are delivering your message, how you're delivering it, and how you follow up. Right? So you marry those two things and you have this incredible like, uh, like creator tool that allows organizations and brands to really understand from the beginning who are we delivering it to, who can we get to deliver that message, when should we deliver that message, and then how should we follow through that entire customer journey?

So, the creator economy is becoming really cool, man. It's it's it's full funnel, it's full cycle now, it's really awesome. I I'm going to cut Dale off because it's his turn, but it sounds awfully like BDR. It sounds awfully When?

How? You mean you can't just say, hey, Kwame, I want you to do a post and tag me in it and expect it to work? Go figure. Go figure.

Sorry, Dale. Yeah, no, no. And I and I love the what you were just talking about full spectrum. Like you're all the way into customer success now.

Like, you know, the creator economy isn't just for top of funnel. Creator economy goes all the way back through. Then you're really trying to figure out at the end, did we hit the ICP? Are they using the features?

Are they getting the value? If they are, we like feed that back into marketing and if they're not, we're like, let's not find more of these people because that's not really going to help. Uh, so, it's really interesting. My my question for you is, so you've done a lot of great like brand, personal brand stuff, but there's people out there that like haven't really started.

Like they're like, okay, we're just getting going. So with all the knowledge you have, if you went to zero followers today, you didn't have the creator, like, how would you tell them to get started? Oh. That's a re It's a really good question.

You're about. You love that. No more PV you had nothing. Like down to like you just graduated college and you're like, okay, now what do I do?

Yeah. You know, I think I'm really fortunate, obviously, I got put in a position where I have this following. And I say this all the time, right? Like I wish I was a better influencer.

You know, I wish I was a better creator. You know, I do think that there's aspects of creation and content creation and influencing that I feel like I need to really, really work on. Um, because it really takes a lot of deep connection with your community. And we just spoke to uh Jason Tardick on Scott and I's uh Beyond Influence podcast just a few weeks ago.

And what he said, like, it aligns so well with like the difficulties of starting being a creator from ground zero is you have to have an overwhelming level of consistency. Overwhelming consistency. Yes. Every freaking day.

Every day. You have to be at it every single day. Um, because the thing about the algorithm and the way that things work, right? All of it it comes it comes it goes and it fluctuates.

But when you put content out, someone is seeing it. You you know, no matter what content you put, if it's one person, great. If it's a million people, great. But you have to keep putting out that content.

And when you think about virality, you we wish that there was a one size fits all way to like guarantee that everything's going to go viral. Right? There's obviously things that you can add to something and there's methods and there's formulas that you can put in place to make sure that you increase your likelihood of success. But you have to keep going.

You could have something that is formul- like down to a T and it could be, you know, 5% engagement. And then you could do the exact same thing and drop it tomorrow, and then all of a sudden it's, you know, 100 million times engagement. And so that's why the consistency aspect of it is is really important because you have to take the things that are working and implement them over and over and over without shying away or feeling like a failure when you have the occasional moment where it doesn't work. So what so what I hear you saying is even if it's failing or even if you consider it failing, like these vanity metrics are like just that, vanity metrics.

Like, do it for yourself, don't do it for what you believe the return's going to be. Just like any give get type of thing. Like you give to hopefully just not, you know, you continue karma is a real thing, so keep putting that content out. I love that.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's it is really important. I do think uh and sorry to cut you off Adam, but I think to You're cut him off. It's good. You're you're the guest, man.

But yeah, I mean to to finish it off, I do think um testing all the different avenues, all the different, uh, I would say social channels as well because something that will work on TikTok might not work on Instagram, right? Or on YouTube and so on and so forth. And so that overwhelming consistency has to be spread across all the channels that you want to try to see success in to figure out what is going to work and how you can continue to repeat that process. Because I know people, I think one of the craziest things that I've ever seen, one of the craziest come ups in social, I don't know his his uh exact handle.

But it's a guy who does the exact same dance in just different places. I and the exact same dance, right? This guy I think now has I think three million followers. And he started, you know, like from nothing, but he did the exact same dance every single day for like a year plus.

Yeah. Dale. The Adam dances. Look up Adam J on TikTok.

You see you see him like doing the doing the dirty burn. That's crazy though. Like and it's it's funny because the things that you think will resonate sometimes don't and like I'll tell you, some of my best posts are are the ones that I put together and I said I'm like, no one's going to give a shit about this, but I have to post today because the the the algorithm. I hate that word, but like got to post today, right?

Have to have to be consistent. Um, and it it changes. It it's interesting to me, Kwame, like you guys have the deep analytics, you have the strategy. How does, you know, I'm I'm curious if you're talking to, you know, an early stage founder, you know, of, you know, XYZ company.

Where where do they get started? Like how do they start leveraging this? Because I find that most founders we talk to are doing one of two things. They're either A going about it totally wrong, the way I mentioned earlier, it's all, I'm going to go find some sales influencer and get them to post about me.

Okay. Or they wait way too long to take advantage of the creator economy and using influencers. Where where do they start? Um, you know, I think when it comes to early stage, and I think it especially with the lack of funding, I think the initial way to approach it is uh through seeding.

And through gifting. You know, when it comes to, you know, the that side of the creator economy, it's about finding people who are curious and interested in what you have and just want to be part of it and try it. And I can guarantee you there are so many creators out there who will just take the product as the payment. Right?

Like, as it's really funny. As we talk about this, I have this hydrojug that I'm drinking from, um, there there Right? Like I did not get paid to say that, but they sent me this hydrojug just to send me this hydrojug. And I drink from it all the time.

Anytime, almost it's it's in so many of my stories now that, you know, yeah, you know. And so, when it comes to when it comes to really, really like starting from grassroots, starting from the bottom, you want to find people who are interested in the product. Um if they're interested in the product and they just want to use it, what you're doing there is you are building a connection of people and a community of people, and a community of influencers who want to influence and spread, sorry, I need to drink some more of this water, but You're building trust. Yeah.

You'll you're building trust. And you're building trust and the currency that you are sharing is the product in itself. So it almost becomes reinforced that like the use of this is what we're getting out of it. So people start to use it, they start to spread the news, they start to talk about it.

And so I would say the best way to be effective early on in influencer marketing is just to build a foundation of trust with some creators who are interested in just your product or your solution or what you have. And then kind of just and then take it from there. And it's also a plus. I think it's been a really big plus that I think a lot of uh organizations are noticing nowadays as well is, if you can find people who have an incredibly like qualified, uh, you know, background for the job, but also like to create content, you have hit a unicorn.

Right? And I see you see companies like like ZoomInfo has a bunch of sales people who make like a a day in the life of a ZoomInfo employee. You know, they are basically just creating free content for ZoomInfo. And I'm sure ZoomInfo is not paying them any extra for that.

I'm just going to be honest, right? Um, So But they enable them, right? So I think the other side is a lot of companies like let's even today will cut the employees off because they're like personal brand, like it's not in our language. Like you do, you need guardrails, but like let your reps like completely make their own personal brands because it's only going to help you as an organization in the long run.

People don't like that connection hasn't been made yet for a lot of people. People buy from people. That's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win. The best part?

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com. Yeah, I agree with that 100%. The enabling and even the encouraging, um, because Yeah, right? There's there's even there's a small uh story I forget I think her name is Mary.

She was on TikTok. She was a a Chick-fil-A employee. She used to make Chick-fil-A TikToks and just like talk about how much she enjoyed the food or whatever. And Chick-fil-A actually reached out to her and said, hey, stop doing that.

Right. She was giving crazy. That is crazy. Beyond crazy to me.

And so they reached out to her. She stopped making Chick-fil-A TikToks. And you know what happened? She's on Chick-fil-A, bro.

We actually connected with her We we actually connected with her at at Later at Later, right? We connected with her at Later and we got her on with El Pollo Loco. She also did a A good leftist brand, great chicken. Yes.

Right? And she also did a Shake Shack campaign as well. And so all these other brands are like, if you eat our food and people will listen to you talk about it, please, we will pay you to do more. You know?

And so I do think that is important. Um, I'm glad you bring that up, Dale, is like, yes, um, these creators who have been enabled and can really help your organization from the ground up if they are proud about the product and they're sharing it. Like, you have to allow those, you have to enable it, you have to encourage it and not shut it down. Enable it.

I was on I was at Oracle and like it was all this is, I don't know, seven, eight, nine years ago and social selling was kind of like this this thing happening. But they didn't have there was no infrastructure inside to help people like learn it, understand it, execute on it. Now we have this whole creator community. I was, um, at I I have season tickets for the Bucks and Mr.

Beast came out, right? So they gave like Mr. Beast a contract for a day. He came out with his film crew.

Like they did all this content. And like behind the scenes what I heard was like the Bucks are the only team that would give him like a day contract. Like, and I'm like, why wouldn't more NFL teams not do that to get the exposure. The dude has like 400 million followers.

It was insane. Yeah, I think that people are starting to realize that, um, the connections are deeper with creators than they are with, I would say, standard celebrities. Right? Absolutely.

More relatable. More relatable. More more relatable. I I just had I just watched this entire kind of like uh saga go go through of um, the UNICEF sock UNICEF has a a really cool soccer game.

Um, it's called Soccer Aid. And I've always wanted to play in it. It's like my dream to play in this game. Um, because it's always played at one of the big uh, English like soccer stadiums, football, you know, football stadiums.

you know, they would they would be mad if they heard me say call it soccer. But Right. You you used to you used to play semi-pro, right? I played pro.

Pro? Okay, very good. Come on now. Um, Um, your radio certificate's taken away.

It's it's Yeah. For for for give me that I don't stock Kwame. Yeah, I know. It's I'm actually grateful that you you don't.

So thank you. Um, But it's this big game and they usually get a bunch of retired professionals to play in it. People who have had just like this these incredible careers. And they bring them on and then they also get a bunch of influencers to play as well.

And I saw this journey of like them announcing certain players, certain creators and so on and so forth. And during the game, uh, there was a creator called Miniminter or something like that, who's really big on YouTube and he does a lot of just like soccer influencing in general. And what I saw throughout the comments was actually kind of crazy to me. People were really upset that he was announced and he only he only played about 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes.

People were really, really, really upset about that because typically you would think, like some of my legendary like goal like soccer players were in this game. You know, people that you would do anything to see play again or watch. But the audience that was involved and interested in Soccer Aid was mainly there for this influencer, like 27-year-old influencer, who had built a soccer community. Because they were like, this is the guy we want to see play.

We've been watching his journey. Yeah. Right? And so that just speaks so much to how much more relatable and relevant that creator like the creator economy is because people are seeing the journey of people, they are building trust with their community and it like they want to see them succeed.

Yeah, it's there's so many people out there who I think don't realize that versus big celebrity, these creators, these influencers, they're more relatable, they're they're closer to their audience. They can sell tickets, sell product, do whatever it is that you're talking about much more than if you were to go get whoever the big A-name celebrity is today that, you know, yeah, they're great for a Colgate commercial, but are they really going to like help drive tickets? Probably not. Um, I love that.

Kwame, how how how was the transition from like BDR land to what you're doing now? Because like you and I talked a little before we started recording, like being a BDR, I think is the hardest job in tech. Um, I I can't imagine it. I hate when Dale tells me I have to go cold call and get us clients.

Um, you you did it and you led BDR teams for a long time. What's that transition been like? You know, um, I'll just say I'm very fortunate and very happy in the role that I'm in now. Uh because Because I know what it's like on the grind.

I think it is really important for everyone in the beginning of their sales journey to start as a BDR. Like, I honestly think everyone at an organization, even if you are a a front-end developer. Yeah. Could could not agree more.

We talk about this all the time. Yeah, I feel like everyone should know what it takes to really grow grow like an organization and help it build from the bottom up. And I don't think that SDRs get enough like that's one thing that might just be a continuous like message that should always be spread that we just don't think BDRs get enough credit. And so, I was really fortunate.

I landed at uh SDR which uh at ZoomInfo, which I think is probably the most well-oiled machine when it comes to the sales process from the SDR up. Um, I think that was really, really good for my career and also hurt my career in some ways because when I was at ZoomInfo, you know, I started out, um, as an inbound rep, did really, really well in that because it was just kind of the familiarity of it. People are calling, they're raising their hands, you want to talk to them. And then you transition to the outbound side, which I I struggled for about a month and a half.

And then I realized what my successes would be and like what my strengths were. Um, like I said, I leaned into the being a nice guy thing. And so, it will you know, you kind of you led with the apology of like, hey, I'm really sorry for, you know, calling at this time. Like, you know, how's your day going?

How's the weather? Blah, blah, blah. It almost built this really, really awesome uh a relationship before you even led into like the, can I borrow 30 seconds to tell you this, right? Um, and so that was really important for me building my foundation.

And then at ZoomInfo, I got really lucky to, you know, and and was blessed to move over to the West Coast, take over the West Coast inbound team. Um, and that journey was really cool because I started leading about it was like 20 SDRs. And that was that's always been my goal. I've always wanted to be in leadership.

My end goal is to be C-suite somewhere if it works out. Um, you know, so it helped start to building the foundations of Subtly, subtly, y'all. Yeah. You know, um, in case you're listening, Scott.

Uh, but I'm going to I'm going to text Scott after this call and be like, Kwame needs a C-suite role. Yeah, right? But um, but ultimately, building that foundation of understanding what it took to sell from the ground up, and then starting to lead other people who were going through it, seeing their struggles, working with them. Um, and then moving on.

And I think one thing that I want to make clear is like, moving on from ZoomInfo, it was helpful for my career because in the beginning of it it taught me all of these fundamentals and how to make sure that you had like structure with like your SDR teams. Um, and as an SDR. How it might have hurt me was that since ZoomInfo is such a well-oiled machine, when I got to my first organization after that, which was Builder, there were some areas where I was just like, oh my gosh, we don't have this yet. We don't have this yet.

You know what I'm saying? Because ZoomInfo has everything you need. Everything. Everything.

And so, I think that that hurt me in that first step. And so I I struggled a little bit there, but um I think during that time was also people might not know this, during the time at Builder was when I actually left and filmed for Love is Blind. And so, I remember having that struggle of a conversation back and forth with my VP like, hey, this would be really hard if if, you know, you left, right? The timing is a little tough.

Um, and my COO whose wife was a massive fan was like, you should go. You should go. And it and it and it worked out for you. And it worked out, you know what I'm saying?

So, I think like, you know, long story short, whatever that journey is, it it worked out in the best way. But when I came back from filming, I was obviously removed and I felt like kind of disconnected from Builder, um, and it just didn't pan out the way that we wanted it to. And so, I ended up leaving there and then transitioning to Common Room, which I think I've been lucky in my career because I always step into a role that has a really, really like emerging market. You know?

Like it's usually like a top five emerging market. When I started at ZoomInfo, like the whole contact data, um, and sales process, like I would say automated sales process was really being built out. Um when I went to Builder, that was more on the like developer end and I didn't understand Builder as much as I wanted to because Builder was a very developer heavy tool. Um, but, you know, Builder was meant to like revolutionize the way that develop front end developers like work and it would reduce their their uh processes by like hours.

And so I was really lucky to step into that space. And then when I went to Common Room, Common Room was a community tool to really help you engage with and connect with your community, especially as organizations and from, you know, having these mass levels of, I would say, dark communication, where a lot of people are talking about you but you don't know about it. Um, and so going to Common Room was really great because it helped me understand like the need for community. So you go from like contacting people directly to understanding how to communicate with them when they reach out or need to, you know, or maybe they're just talking to each other and you in some way intercede but obviously in a non-invasive helpful way.

And then transitioning over to Later, it's been amazing, right? Taking those tools or those strengths and bringing them over. With Later, it's been great for me to really just lean in to like the communication and and relationship building aspect of what I've learned. I think as we go on, and as I'm starting to really like, uh, blossom within the role that I'm in, I've started out as someone who is just meant to understand how to connect brand and influencer, you know, and and creator with the community as well.

As we move on, as we go further into this role, I know it's going to be a lot more in depth in the sense of great. We've found this map, right? This roadmap of how to make it all line up. The next step is how do we accelerate that?

And I think that that's where the business development background really comes in handy, right? And so, um, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm now working my marketing muscles, which marketing is very different from sales. And I'm learning that. I'm learning that the hard way for sure.

Um, but it's been great because I I've spent most of my journey in sales having to do the, you know, one of one work. And now it's just like leading and developing projects where I have to assign many different roles and figure out how it goes from there. It feels like kind of understanding um marketing and project management as well. And so, yeah, bringing those two together has been really, really great for me.

I'm learning a lot. There's a lot to learn. I'm, you know, I feel like I I'm a step back in certain things, but I also feel a lot of encouragement from it as well from my team. So, I think that's what's been great for me.

I love it, man. Seeing that you can make that transition, you know, we we talk to a lot of BDRs that are working with our our startups as well and it's like, oh, like what am I going to do next and where am I going to go and one of the things Dale and I always say is, listen, like, I agree with you, Kwame. Everyone should start as a BDR because it gives you that different perspective. But take it and go wherever you want to go.

You can go to sales, you can go to marketing, you could go to content creation. Like, use this as a foundation because if you could be successful here, fuck, man, you could be successful anywhere because this is the hardest hardest part it is. Um, all right, we are coming up on time. We would love to dive in, do a little bit of rapid fire before we wrap up.

Uh, here here's the rules, no more than 10 words per answer. Okay. Pretty simple. Okay.

All right. Early bird or night owl? Early bird. Awesome.

Uh, who besides you are your is your favorite creator? My wife. Oh, good answer. Good answer.

No, that was a Besides you and your wife, no family members. Okay. Um, uh, Jordan the Stallion. He's a food he's a like he just does these selfie reviews of food.

It's great. I love it. What uh, what's the one thing you do to unwind after a long day? Soccer.

Nice. Nice. Does Chelsea play with you at all? No.

All right. I wish. I wish. Yep, yep.

I get that. Um, what's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning? Mr. Creator.

Instagram. Nice. IG. Nice.

So, is that your favorite creator platform as well? Yeah, I'd say so. It's where most of my audience is. It's where people interact with me.

Um, yeah, for sure. I uh, I I I have to ask because like with who you are and it just wouldn't be the same if you didn't ask. Is love really blind? I'm kidding.

We know the answer to that question. Um, Yes. I'm kidding. What's uh, Kwame, what's your favorite guilty pleasure snack?

Reese's. Nice. Nice. And if you make them with s'mores, Reese's s'mores.

Unbelievable. Um, Yeah, like my my wife was like, she was making a s'mores like, let's get the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup to put that in the middle. Good one. Um, last one, let's uh, let's end strong.

Dream vacation destination. He travels everywhere. I know. But he's got to have a dream.

Japan. Yeah, Japan. Is it is it booked? Is it on the radar?

Um, so it was We were going to go to Japan with our other friends who if you've seen season four, Brett and Tiffany. They just went. Um, and it's always been my dream destination. Me and Brett are both big anime nerds, so we thought it would be something awesome to jump into.

Uh, so we didn't get to do it because it was either that or buy a house. And we bought a house. Yeah. Yeah, I I think you probably made the better choice.

Um, Japan will always be there. Japan will be there. Kwame, thank you so much for taking the time for joining us. Where can people find you?

Where can people learn more about Later? For sure. Um, Later.com, which is always the great way to start.

Um, if you want to dive into Scott and I's new podcast, Beyond Influence, you can actually type in Later.com/podcast or go to wherever you listen to your podcast and type in Beyond Influence. Apart from that, if you go online, uh, to Instagram, you can find me at @AyoKwame. A Y O K W A M.

I love it. And we will uh, we will backlink to your podcast as well. Thank you for joining the show, man. We appreciate it.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you all so much for having me.