We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.
Hi Chris, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
Content creators are a dime a dozen these days, and the vast majority of them have the exact same goal: create something that will be catchy, interesting, or flashy enough to get you as many followers as possible. There’s nothing explicitly wrong with that; I will openly admit I had that same mentality for a long time. Recently, however, I’ve had a bit of a change of heart.
Society is waking up to the fact that too much social media can be REALLY bad for you, and I’m no exception. So instead of making content that I think will get me followers, I am changing my direction to content that I think is useful. There’s a key difference here: I don’t want people to follow me because my content is addictive; I want them to follow me because they think they can put it to use, or even just because they like the message. Sacrificing “catchiness” means that the algorithm will definitely put your video in front of a smaller audience in the short term, but I think it will win out in the long term. If nothing else, I can feel good about my content knowing that I’m not just contributing to brain-rot culture.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
It all started with a podcast. I really wanted to listen to something that would walk me through the basics of whiskey, but I couldn’t find anything that specific. That’s when it hit me: who better to hold the listener’s hand on their whiskey journey than someone who was still going through it themselves? From there, the Whiskey Noobs podcast was born.
About that time, Tiktok was becoming really popular, so I decided to try to use it to advertise the podcast. Imagine my surprise when, a few months later, my following on Tiktok and Instagram had far surpassed the following of the podcast, and by proxy, boosted the podcast following as well. It was about that point that I started taking the whole idea of “content creation” seriously.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I started to really find my voice. The Whiskey Noobs channel became much more than simple tips for beginners (although I still make sure to cater to the “Noobs” on occasion). I carved out my niche as a whiskey educator and entertainer, creating lists of the best whiskeys, tips for getting better at tastings, and my most well-known topic of interest: blind tastings.
My love for the unbiased, unfiltered opinions created by blind tastings soon took on a life of it’s own. I made tons of videos trying all different ways of scrambling, tasting, and comparing different spirits until I realized I needed something to make it easier. In trying to solve the problem, I branched out from my content creation business to a new field: entrepreneurship. Thanks to my background in engineering, I found a way to make a blind tasting apparatus that allows the user to compare 2, 3, or 4 beverages head to head without knowing which is which, only revealing their identities at the end. With the help of a friend-turned-business partner, we brought the design to life, and the Solo Blind™, my first ever product, was born.
Now that I’ve launched my first product, I have had the chance to really take a hard look at what I want Whiskey Noobs to be as a business. From the content side, I finally have to confidence to focus on making content that I find meaningful. I am more picky about the brands that I work with for promotions, and I focus on making sure my content is truly useful – not just catchy. From the business side, I have a new passion. In a world where social media has created a “brain-rot” culture (guilty as charged), I want to find ways to help people enjoy their free time in the real world rather than doom scrolling. So while I change my content to be less “brain-rot” and more helpful, thus helping people get off their phones and back into the real world, I am also trying to make products that people can use when they get back to the real world. Products that help you focus on something fun, or important, or even just peaceful during your leisure time. Products like the Solo Blind™
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
If you want to build a following on social media, you have to learn to do it all. Recording, speaking, editing, and building relationships are just a few of the major skills that content creators develop. That being said, all of these pale in comparison to the most import trait of all: relentlessness. When anyone asks my how to make a following, I tell them, simply put, you need to be relentless.
I truly think that anyone can amass a respectable enough following with enough time and effort. Whether you want to sell a product, get your message out there, or just make something that you find meaningful, you can find your audience… but your audience doesn’t know you exist yet. Add to that the ever-changing algorithms, guidelines, and general chaos of social media platforms, and you are in for a mighty rollercoaster. You will have to change the way you record, edit, and communicate to keep up with the times, or you’ll have to carve a niche so specific that your following will stick with you even if you don’t change things up. I say all of this to say that your editing skills, acting skills, and use of cinematic style will change with the tides; they are only second fiddle to the thing that keeps you going: a relentless attitude.
You don’t have to wake up at 4:30, follow a routine, or take a supplement. When I say “relentless”, I don’t mean “grind mentality”. I mean one simple thing: no matter how much the landscape changes, or your followers plateau, or the excitement fades, you have to consistently and relentlessly put out new content. If you don’t ever stop trying, then you can never really fail. One of my favorite quotes actually comes from a random Tiktok sound that I heard one day, and I have no idea where it originated, but it sums this up perfectly: “It’s not over until I win”.
If you have that mentality, the followers will come. You will find your niche. You will learn the editing software. Just don’t stop until you do.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
All of my endeavors work toward a few major goals. Although it may be counterintuitive given my work on social media, my first goal is to help folks be less addicted to their phones. By making content that is more useful and less “catchy” and creating products that make people put down their phones for a while, I am really trying to reduce the “doom scrolling” culture that society is facing lately.
In a similar vein, I have found that I really have a passion for having conversations with people and trying to get fresh perspectives out into the world. I just feel like we get stuck in the same patterns, talking to the same people, and lose sight of how valuable other perspectives can be. I could see myself pursuing this more directly in a new podcast or youtube channel in the future, but in the meantime, I get a healthy dose of it through my social media channels. Between visiting distilleries, meeting folks from the industry, and forming relationships ad events, I find the work to be really fulfilling.
Combine that passion with my Christian faith, and my third (and perhaps most lofty) goal is to get people talking about God. I don’t just mean evangelizing a bunch of new Christians, although I’d be more than happy to do that, but my specific passion is learning and talking about the origin of the universe. Theism vs atheism, matter and energy vs consciousness. These are the conversations that I find to be the most interesting, and lately I’ve found myself wanting to really dig deeper into these topics with an unbiased perspective. Even if it never amounts to more than a good conversation over a glass of whiskey, it’s something that keeps me on my toes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/whiskeynoobs
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whiskey_noobs/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@whiskey_noobs
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/37g0w7hug978cwIEsTzhkW?si=a31a02186ad145b9
