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

Frisky, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

It all started with the idea that I wanted to get paid to attend festivals…. for just being myself. What a concept am I right? Get paid to just be yourself? My friends thought that this idea was one of my craziest ones yet and thought I was just talking out of my ass. I would constantly ask myself, “is there any way that I can be paid to go music festivals or at least attend music festivals for free by just providing my presence? Is my presence enough of a commodity that brands, companies, or even organizations would want to offer me something in exchange for something else, a little this for that? The problem with being yourself is that most people don’t know who you are, and most people don’t want to pay you or offer you incentives unless you can provide some kind of service back.

I used to be a gamer, I used to play in tournaments with a big squad of other gamers, we also had a YouTube team, graphic designers, and video editors within our gaming circle. I used all of my knowledge and resources from my previous gaming life, and it helped jumpstart my new idea of becoming a music festival icon and make it a reality.

What helped me execute this idea was having knowledge about the social platforms I was using. I had to understand what it was going to take to make myself more noticed and one thing that kept coming up was “the algorithm”. At first, I brushed off the concept that the algorithm rules the platform but after going through so many blog posts that confirmed it, I tested the algorithm theory and used it to my advantage, thus gaining countless followers on multiple platforms.

Knowing the algorithm wasn’t going to be enough if I was really serious about making money by attending festivals. Unfortunately, it takes money to make money. I slowly but surely invested in tons of recording equipment, merch, goodies that i could hand out at festivals, taught myself many valuable editing skills, and obviously spent money on tons of festival tickets. In the first few years, I had spent over $10,000 on all the things that I needed to be successful in this passion…. in this crazy idea.

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?

My real name is Manny Palacios, but I go by Frisky Hug on all social media platforms. At the time of this interview, I am 32 years old, and my home is Orlando, FL. I am originally from California (born and raised) but my 7 years of military service has influenced my living travels to the east coast. I got into the festival scene when I was 21 years old, my friend Stuart invited me to attend a Steve Angello show at the Hollywood Palladium in California and I have been obsessed with the Dance Music culture ever since. At this moment, I am a fulltime Music Festival Content Creator, I create videos, photo posts, blog articles, community meetups, promotional sales and commission, and I also do interviews on my podcast. What sets me apart from other ravers (festival attendees) or even other content creators is that I have a wide range of skills sets, most content creators stick to doing reels/TikToks, or just YouTube, or just write articles for certain brands… I do all of it and more every single week, I don’t have a team, it’s just me. I am very proud of myself for not giving up on my dream and coming this far in my music festival career because it’s been so many years since this idea to make a living doing what I love first sparked.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a content creator in the festival space is having individuals come up to you during a festival to tell you how much you are appreciated and how much they love watching the content you put out. There are many times when I get down on myself because I feel that I should be in higher places and the words from my newfound festival friends uplift me and motivate me to go home and get to work after the weekend.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Believe it or not, I actually made some money from crypto and used all that money to fun most of my equipment that I still used to this day. Any new equipment that I have now has come from tax returns.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/friskyhug
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/friskyhug
• Youtube: www.youtube.com

Image Credits
Tyler Chruch Carson Packer