We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shane Murphy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shane, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

It was Christmas Day in 2021, and it was at the dawn of the big Web3/NFT boom. I had become obsessed with a specific idea within (what I would come to learn is a very predatory) industry: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

As a left-leaning, progressive entrepreneur the idea appealed to me. Instead of running a company or business with an executive team, you could give the shareholders an equal part and oversight of its mission and goals. There were thousands of people coming together to raise money for things they believed in and manage it thereafter.

So on that fateful Christmas holiday, I drafted up a Twitter thread of my own prospectus: form a DAO to buy the Blockbuster brand from Dish Network and turn it into a decentralized movie studio.

Within 24 hours the twitter thread became viral, with news coverage on nearly every continent and in multiple languages. Just one twitter thread from an anonymous account put me in the national spotlight of a burgeoning industry.

To be honest, I had no idea it would happen so fast, so I thought I’d have time to learn and grow naturally. Instead, I was forced to build this coalition overnight, creating a community, rules and guidelines to govern the coalition, and build a team of people around the world to make it happen.

The next year and half was filled with speaking engagements, Dish Network flying out to meet with me about the idea, and mounting pressure to make it happen both fast and democratically. While we never got the deal through the door, I’m proud of all we accomplished without raising a single penny. A beyond special experience that to this day I hear is brought up in college lectures (someone sent me a photo from a Princeton lecture) and of course in the industry itself.

Getting your idea out there and finding support can be a LIFE CHANGING move. Just put yourself out there (especially YouTube or TikTok) and support will find good ideas.

Also, don’t try to grow too fast. It’s not always the best thing for your idea. Great execution takes time.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always been a Renaissance Man (or Master of None, depending on how you look at it).

I started in college wanting to be a filmmaker and made short films at won awards, including an interactive theatrical release that won a global competition.

My freelance business was making marketing videos, so I then went into tech, working for a B2B company called Seismic Software, helping lead various campaigns to win and retain Fortune 500 clients. this where I just really honed in on my skills, developing as both a Motion Graphics Artist and as a Marketer. But after a while, especially in your 20s, you get tied of marketing to a single demographic of 50+ year C-Suite executives.

I left to join a direct response marketing agency, Mutesix, where I became the de facto video editor for top tier clients, putting together the company’s top spend commercials and campaigns. It’s also where I met my partner in crime (and the love of my life), Kelly Rocklein. I have spent the rest of my career within marketing agencies, and it’s here that I’ve seen two major developments unfold.

1. Freelance creators are producing better and better content, and with the rise of TikTok style video, they are becoming a vastly integral part of every company’s marketing strategy. Both agencies and brands are building their growth strategy around UGC and organic content, while much of that success comes from putting their ad spend behind that content. I don’t think creators understand quite yet how vital a role they play.

2. Agencies are a tough business to run effectively, as well as a tough relationship for brands to buy into. There are so many agencies out there, and many of them are either too big to get your work done efficiently/effectively, or too small to hire the best talent. Especially when it comes to creator content and UGC, every marketing team seems to struggle heavily with hiring creators, managing them, and iterating on them over time. They get stuck paying for one-size-fits-all platforms that really are a band-aid solution to their problems.

Both Kelly and I, veterans of the marketing space with 20+ years combined, have created one company with two initiatives that tackle both of these problems.

UGC Pro, our e-learning community for 40K+ UGC creators, has become the epicenter of this growing industry of creators. We use both free and paid resources to teach creators not only how to create content that their clients will love, but content that ACTUALLY converts. We teach them everything from creating content, growing their client list, to taking the leap to a Creative Strategist, where they can lead brands at a director level.

Hyera, our latest initiative, aims to tackle the agency problem. We are combining our community of talented, certified creators and implementing a custom system and structure for agencies and marketing teams to scale their creator content over time. We don’t take a commission, which removes incentive to nickel and dime our clients, and we take a strategy first approach that emphasizes the important steps needed to produce winning content.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

We’ve had a goal in our head based on various studies that we need 7 Streams of Revenue in order to scale our business without external funding or private equity.

For us, being completely self-funded and in control of our business is a major factor. So in order to prioritize this, we had to focus on brining in steady. scalable streams we could count on.

so far this is where we have found the most success:

#1: Digital products – courses and learning material have been the most efficient stream of revenue. We are able to put all of our effort into one product over the course of a couple months and sell that work in perpetuity with little to no upkeep. We deliver extremely high quality work and have built an incredible relationship with our community because of it.

#2: UGC and Creative Strategy – our bread and butter is our freelance services, soon being wrapped up into our Hyera initiative. Consulting and high level contracting can be lucrative sources of income that don’t use an excessive amount of your time.

#3: Affiliate Links – This is a smaller but very low effort stream of revenue. Especially with digital products where you are inherently teaching about a specific service or software, it is only natural to try and use affiliate links when possible.

#4: TikTok Shop – Whether as a store or affiliate, we’ve seen a lot of potential using our UGC and advertising experience to market products on TikTok. It takes quite a bit of time, but if done effectively, can be a huge contributor to your revenue.

While only at 4 streams thus far, we do see some other potential in sectors like growing our YouTube to monetize (which would help affiliate revenue as well), and putting on conferences and events for our larger industry.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Honestly, our drive and compassion for making education more accessible has attributed a huge part to our success.

A lot of “course creators” really only sell a slapdash solution that opens the door but doesn’t take you any further. And on top of that, their marketing strategy is just content that sells the course or brags about the money they make.

We have taken a largely different approach, focusing on a full funnel education that not only teaches you everything you need to know to be a UGC Creator, but how to advance your career thereafter.

Our content is authentic, helpful, and discusses topics relevant to creators who are ongoing in the field, not just looking into getting started.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ugc.pro
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ugc.pro/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasafila
• Twitter: https://x.com/UGCpro
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UClkTSVjjnCUS9umOunLGRYg
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ugc.social