With a billion monthly users, an average session length of 90 minutes, and 27 billion views on the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt — there is a lot of commerce to unlock for any business or brand on TikTok. At the center of it all is Khartoon Weiss. Khartoon has been named “40 Over 40” by Campaign, “40 Under 40” by Advertising Age and “Top 50 Professionals". In her conversation with Ryan, the two discuss what it takes for any brand (at any size) to be successful on the platform. She also gives practical steps to help brands “think like marketers, but act like creators.”
With a billion monthly users, an average session length of 90 minutes, and 27 billion views on the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt — there is a lot of commerce to unlock for any business or brand on TikTok. At the center of it all is Khartoon Weiss. Khartoon has been named “40 Over 40” by Campaign, “40 Under 40” by Advertising Age and “Top 50 Professionals". In her conversation with Ryan, the two discuss what it takes for any brand (at any size) to be successful on the platform. She also gives practical steps to help brands “think like marketers, but act like creators.”
Khartoon Weiss 0:02
My mother always taught me when I was growing up on the mean streets of New York City to never end up on the back of a milk carton. And for those of you that know what that means, that’s, just don't go missing. Be present. Be out there. If you ever go missing, I want to be able to ask the deli guy, “Have you seen my daughter?” That courage, if you would, was imparted on me since I was a kid, and that courage puts me on that stage and allows me to tell a really authentic story.
(Intro music 0:26-0:43)
Ryan Berman 0:44
A skateboarder with cranberry juice, Billie Eilish with a ukulele in her mouth, humans feeding chipmunks, cats being cats, the unearthing of new talent, the unpacking of start out we finally get to see. And watching along and along for the ride is my friend joining us today; Khartoon Weiss. Khartoon is the Global Head of agencies and accounts for TikTok, which actually, I'm not totally sold. I know exactly, precisely what that means. So, Khartoon, why don't we start there? How awesome is your job right now? Give the cliff notes of what it is.
Khartoon Weiss 1:19
Wow. Okay, so first of all, hi, and thank you for getting us. That's probably one of my favorite introductions about the platform, because it's honest and spot-on. So, thanks, Ryan. Hi, everyone, my name is Khartoon, I oversee global agency and accounts at TikTok, what does that mean? It means that I have the honor and privilege to introduce our largest advertising and agency partners to the next generation of their buyers. It means I get to help people translate new digital media behaviors, and show them how the new kids and the young kids are communicating. It also means that I get to help translate all of the marketing principles you and I were taught all these decades, because now I'm not a spring chicken anymore, but we get to translate all those principles into modern-day marketing and make it good again.
Ryan Berman 2:07
We don't have enough time to go over your bios, so just actually go look up her LinkedIn profile. It's pretty impressive that you've been able to live on agency side, and on brand side, and on platform side, but this is way too much professional speak to kick us off. I know your mom, I've met your mom. We’ve got to connect up in Banff at the gathering.
Khartoon Weiss 2:28
Isn’t she cute?
Ryan Berman 2:29
She's awesome. Let's start there, did she stick around to hear you take the big stage?
Khartoon Weiss 2:33
That was actually her only reason for going. My mother, my entire career, has thought that I was an accountant. Little did she know that I failed calculus. My mother has always known her daughter to be this account manager girl in an advertising agency, and that really translated into her mind as, “My daughter works with numbers.” It didn't actually translate into business strategy, stewardship, brand development. So, when I sat there and said, “Mom, do you want to see what I do?” 20-something years into my career, she's like, “Oh, my God! Absolutely.” So, she sat there, front row, dying to see what it was that her accountant daughter did for a living at the gathering.
Ryan Berman 3:16
I'd say the only numbers that mattered was there was a packed house, and it really was. It was cool for me to see you do your thing. We have mutual friends, which is a whole nother story for another time.
Khartoon Weiss 3:26
A whole other podcast.
Ryan Bremen 3:27
That's a different podcast, but just to see you on stage and do you, was pretty cool. I've now done almost 90 of these podcasts, and the one ‘aha’ moment I've had is just being real and telling the truth is pretty much now an act of courage, which is crazy to think about. But when you take a stage, you can feel that from you. You're just being you, you're just being real. I imagine proud moment for your mom sitting there watching you.
Khartoon Weiss 3:52
My mother always taught me when I was growing up on the mean streets of New York City to never end up on the back of a milk carton. And for those of you that know what that means, that’s, just don't go missing. Be present. Be out there. If you ever go missing, I want to be able to ask the [?Deli?] guy, “Have you seen my daughter?” That courage, if you would, was imparted on me since I was a kid, and that courage puts me on that stage and allows me to tell a really authentic, really hard, hustling story of grit, and climb, and performance to prove this girl with a funny first name actually has a whole lot of family and history behind her. And it's full of a lot of boot-strappers, and immigrants, and first generation that are just trying to make the world and our families a more secure, happier place.
Ryan Berman 4:42
I'll keep it real with you, I still get a little nervous before I take a stage. And, in some ways, that's my job now. To take a stage and try to land and connect with people. Do you still feel nervous when you go up there?
Khartoon Weiss 4:54
You know what I'll tell you, I tell this to my team, funny enough, recently quite a bit. I take a page out of Serena Williams’s playbook. I read a quote one time that said, “I don't practice until I can get it right, I practice until I can't get it wrong.” And, ah! That hit me so hard. I was like, “Oh my God!” Practice until you can't get it wrong. So, when I take a stage, yeah, I'm nervous. Of course, I'm nervous, and I'm a sweater. So, you will always see me wearing either short sleeves, no sleeves, or black, but intentionally, I spent hours practicing my craft so that I can add my authentic self, bring my personality into it. Because I tell people all the time, when you know what it is you're going to present, only then can you actually bring it to life. And so, I get nervous, but I'm also relying on, hopefully, hours and hours of tradecraft, and experience, and really trying to own my conversation for everybody that's willing to listen.
Ryan Berman 5:51
Yes. Be prepared, it's as simple as that. Stay curious, but be prepared. You had said something on that stage, that TikTok, it's not a social media platform, that it's something else. So, in your words, what is TikTok?
Khartoon Weiss 6:05
I hope that I changed some minds in that room, and I hope we do that today on this podcast. It's really just simply the fact that TikTok is not a social media platform, it is an entertainment platform. That's simply because of the behavior behind it. People don't check TikTok, they check Facebook, they check Instagram, they check Twitter, maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. And they check Snap, but they watch TikTok, they told us that they do that. It's an entertainment platform that brings an entire community of global citizenship and joy all together from around the world because it's built on a content graph. And I want to make that one really important point, TikTok is not a social graph, it is a content graph. And it's not about who you follow, who you know, and who and who you've actively placed into your life, it's about what interests you, and what you want to learn. And so, that algorithm continues to present net new, interesting content, and edutainment videos in short-form mode. It's a very different proposition, and one that I hope people start to actually experience more and more over time.
Ryan Berman 7:15
So, I would say that it can't just be an entertainment platform, I think it has to be a branded entertainment platform. By the way, usually, when you look at branded entertainment, the minute you think branded entertainment, it's pretty shitty entertainment, because, like, “Oh, branded…” But when I see the return of the digital camera, which is happening right now I think because of TikTok, and you've got this #TikTokmademebuyit, which is an absurd phenomenon. Talk a little bit about the power of discovery through the platform.
Khartoon Weiss 7:47
Well, what's so interesting is that people are one and a half more times likely to explore new communities and new content on TikTok because of what's happening on the platform. and then, that naturally turns into commerce, because you've heard me once before say commerce is a cultural act. People are living in an environment that others are curating for them, and they're commercially contracting or they're transacting on it. So, what we have going on with ticktockmademebuyit, first of all, people are spending a movie's length of time on the platform in a session, that's insane. And so, they're discovering every 15 seconds, every 30 seconds, every 60 seconds. So, Tiktockmademebuyit presents this phenomenon that is allowing people to discover and then purchase. And so, I see something, it fits my lifestyle, it improves my lifestyle, I got to have it. Oh my God, I just bought it, I want it. It’s done. And so, It was seven billion views when I got here of the hashtag. I've been here for two years, it is now 27 billion views. And we talk about this by way of, like, “Ryan, how many people are on the planet?”
Ryan Berman 8:50
Yeah. Wow, Seven billion, 10 billion.
Khartoon Weiss 8:53
Eight billion, and there's 27 billion views. The math doesn't even add up, that means that many people are so hyper-engaged that they're doing it over and over and over again. And this is behavior you cannot deny because there's an entire conversation happening with this community under this hashtag. It brings small businesses to life, it brings large businesses to life and it actually brings products and services that enrich your life. I've changed my entire home because of the things that I've seen and bought from TikTok, and it really has become a recommendation engine for life improvement and life enrichment.
Ryan Berman 9:28
The platform is clearly serving many. There's people that are there to laugh. It's an escapism tool, as much as it is an entertainment tool, as much as it is ‘I found something new that I like.’ Maybe the answer is all the above, but, in your mind, there were all these other platforms before, why do you feel TikTok has exploded the way it has?
Khartoon Weiss 9:51
Honestly, and this is focus group of one, but I believe its product market fit, simple. It's product market fit. I think we have a couple of things going for us. One, we were boomed in the pandemic when everybody was at home, and was multigenerational, and moved from very retouched lives to very real lives. We also had cameras in our phone. You're talking about the digital camera comes back. We now have the technology to be able to distribute this way, capture, and distribute. And that turned into a billion monthly active users. A billion monthly active users in less time than it took all the other platforms before to do so. We're the only platform where everybody can come together and co-create and co-experience content, and that happened in the pandemic, and it stuck because it actually felt really, really good as people to be tribal and stick together. And so, we see that 69% of our community is so happy to be entertained, that's fantastic. Nielsen did an authenticity study with us to prove that. But what we're also seeing is that people are actually learning from this, improving, and doing better by humanity. There's a ripple effect of this co-creation, this co-experience in this community who are looking to be galvanized together on this simple product market fit app.
Ryan Berman 11:13
I can see why your mom thought you were an accountant, you can rattle off the numbers.
Khartoon Weiss 11:19
I got the numbers.
Ryan Berman 11:20
You got the numbers piped down. So, let’s see, you said a billion people on the platform a month.
Khartoon Weiss 11:25
You want me to share a couple, I can share a couple of numbers.
Ryan Berman 11:28
Yeah. Fire away.
Khartoon Weiss 11:31
I’m going to write some down because numbers are beautiful, they tell stories. And so, let me give you a couple. Here we go; 1 billion, that's the monthly active users globally. 90 minutes or so, that's the average-ish movies-like time people are spending on the platform in a single day, which is crazy. Let's go to 73%, that is how many users feel a deeper connection to the brands that they interact with on TikTok because they're participating their way through problems. Things as simple as dish soap, laundry detergent. “I feel a deeper connection with it because of how it's improving my life.” Then we're going to go to 25%, Ryan, and 25% represents how much more time is spent with brands and ads because they're TikToks, they're not push marketing and media. Finally, I'll give you one last one. I could go on for hours, but I'll give you one last one, which is one and a half. That's 1.5x, which is how many users are more likely to immediately go out and buy something. You've seen me do it, but immediately go out and buy something that they've discovered on the platform, compared to other user platforms, because it's authentically been put in situ, if you would, on the platform with the community.
Ryan Berman 12:46
Wow. Okay. There's a lot in there. And I think the safest way for me to approach this, which is ironic because it's The Courageous Podcast is like, change is happening whether you like it or not. You don't get to say. If I'm a brand, I don't get to say how the world changes, sometimes you're driving that change, other times change is driving you. Again, if you had to sum it up, TikTok changed the game for consumers and brands, why for the better?
Khartoon Weiss 13:16
So, let's break that down for a second because it is a paradigm shift. I'd say this change requires weight. So, consumers; the TikTok community truly changed the consumer journey from a very linear path, to purchase, to what we lovingly call a flywheel, but it’s this ecosystem of engagement. It sparks action in the moment, that happens. People are creating content on behalf of brands, and so, now we're starting to see there's just this massive lower impact, that lower funnel impact. All it takes is a single TikTok to clear shelves, a single TikTok to drive supply chain demand down to zero. And so, that flywheel is powered by the community who's actively engaging, and that co-creation, that participation has changed consumer’s behaviors and patterns. That's it. We're not going back, this is a path forward. But then, let's talk about the creator community for a second because they are the ambassadors of that change. So, the creator community, we've seen how people have had the ability to really open doors and have livelihoods off of TikTok. People have quit their jobs. We recently had a creator on the stage of TikTok world who was an engineer. First generation-born American, her parents were so excited to have her. She dropped being an engineer to become a TikTok creator because it changed her life in a positive way, in a purpose-oriented way for the better. One of our other favorite creators, he goes by the name of Angry Reactions, but his name is Oneya Johnson, and he's fantastic. I'm sure you've seen him, Ryan. He's got a very remarkable and unique delivery and face, but he's starred in multiple TV ads this year. So, talk about offline to broadcast, or online to broadcast. He has been in a Super Bowl commercial for Planet Fitness. He was in a Kingsford Charcoal ad, where he played his angry persona to pay compliments to the brand's garlic, onion, paprika. There is a beautiful amount of creator behavior that's translated into livelihood and career. The last thing that happens is brands have started to pick up, and notice and pay attention, because the consumers have changed. The creators are driving the behavioral change, and so now, brands cannot avoid that. Gone are the days of the traditional marketing push tactics. On TikTok, brands need to actually now become participatory, engagement oriented, and create, and pull forward the diversity of our TikTok community. So, they have to invite the world into a two-way conversation. And so, whether that's participating in trending hashtags, launching challenges, doing things with other popular creators, or creating with other users doing duets and stitching, brands are basically meeting the community and the consumers where they are. And that is now creating home marketing. So, that's a lot of dimensional change and it's unmissable.
Ryan Berman 16:20
So, I'm nodding and I share that because, although I can see you, we have video so we can communicate, this is an audio podcast. And I have to admit, it's called the courageous podcast so I'm going to be courageous myself here, I feel I haven't been as active on TikTok as I've been on some of the other platforms. And I don't know if it's simply my own fear of jumping from a platform I know to one I don't know as well, it could be my age showing. The Courageous Podcast, if I want to… To me, my goals are very clear, I want to inspire 3.3 million people to truly be courageous. And if I get to that 1% of the US population and I can teach them something, then let them do the next layer is sort of the idea. So, for somebody that has a little fear going into the world of TikTok, give me one tip that you can give me to help me get over that hump.
Khartoon Weiss 17:17
First of all, I don't buy it. Ryan, you got to muster up that courage.
Ryan Berman 17:21
(Laughs)
Khartoon Weiss 17:21
You can’t have a courageous podcast, and not employ some of your own courage. I know you got it in you. And so, what I want you to do, my one tip; unlearn what you think you need to do to create community and content for others. Unlearn. You have a voice and a point of view, share it, put it out there. Think of TikTok as your living soul train. You have all the tools you need to walk down that center aisle, all you need to do is jump in on the conversation, jump in on a trend, bring people with you. Go for the coffee challenge, that's really popular right now. You and your family can sit there and just put it out there because this is the judgment-free zone. No one has ever been more forgiving than this. So just be real, be authentic, be you, and show them all that courage. Come on in. I promise you, no one will punish you for being courageous here.
Ryan Berman 18:23
It's great feedback. And again, it’s like, “Is it Ryan, is it the podcast?” So, I'm all in, I'm going for it, and I will keep you… Sort of, ‘ll let you know how I’m doing. I will, I'll send some stuff your way. To do it right, and like you said, there's no right or wrong way, and I like the idea of unlearning. I think there's a really big point in that where we make these… They’re almost fundamental, but also, they’re limiting beliefs, because we're like, “Oh, this how you do it, this is how you always do it.” Okay. I'm going to unwind that. Now, in the spirit of that, I still want to hack. Give me a hack, give me something to get started. If I want to share the podcast, or I want to share myself, or for anyone that's listening; small business, potential big business, what sort of, “Okay guys, here’s how you get started.” Where should we start to grow on the platform?
Khartoon Weiss 19:15
It's a really important conversation, so thank you for raising it. First and foremost, we're always amazed, amazed by the creativity brands bring to our platform. They are additive, they're not duplicative. It's awesome to see the ones that do jump in. In general, we always encourage brands to think like marketers but act like a creator. Creators are different from influencers. Influencers are handed a brief, creators are handed guidelines. Think like a marketer and act like a creator. Create content that feels natural to the community in the conversation. That's the best way to make a connection. A couple of brands have done a really good job. So, can I shout out a few brands, Ryan?
Ryan Berman 19:54
Of course.
Khartoon Weiss 19:59
Let’s, like, show not just tell. One of the most recent ones; McDonald's. McDonald's has always been about getting into the community. They recently tapped DJ and creator Tisa Korean to create a custom track for the community and the Sprite fans. Sprite has a tremendous culture in music, so doesTikTok. So, great place to put two Venn diagrams together. So, they were doing to poking fun at crispy and crunchy or TV static, and so, they created the McDonald's Static sprite challenge, which invites the community to capture the taste and the feel of McDonald's Sprite to the beat of the Korean song; Static. So, all that does is it just demystifies. It brings music, it brings food. What are the two biggest passion points in the world? Together over the beauty of a McDonald's experience.
That hashtag alone has created 128 million views, which leaned on some of the creator and the community's most favorite elements of food, music, and dancing, and are challenges, just step in. Another business that did a really great job was Disney. Publicist is a strong partner of ours, and they have been really focused on our community commerce work. And so, we had a couple of sprints to think about, “How do we get you into the Disney holiday time period? How do we get you into shopping Disney?” Everybody's buying their kids things for the holiday time period. So, they launched a sprint to launch Disney's storefront, which is basically you see it, you have to find a place for this in your memory, and in your home, and you want to be able to purchase it and bring it back to your family. So, the Disney storefront, it’s a shop Disney’s storefront, they brought in a creator, his name is Lauren Heinz, and they wanted to showcase some of the latest and greatest products. That's all. It's that simple. Just think about how you can take a creator as your ambassador, a creator that kind of brings it to life in a really normal way, and bring it all the way through to the commerce part of the transaction so that you can fulfil on that desire. Finally, one of my favorites, last one. I'm so impressed with how people share information now. Let's talk about edutainment. P&G and their Always brand. I'm talking about menstrual products. In an effort to really de-stigmatize menstruation conversations between women and their partners, girl dads and their daughters, it's not something that has been topical but has actually been quite taboo. P&G and Always leaned in, they brought in a creator; Naturally Melanie. She posted a light-hearted, fun infomercial. Infomercials are back and they're on TikTok, and they showcase the Always flex foam pad to her boyfriend, and to the TikTok community, and walked everyone through how just simple this is to talk about, just how much pain or pleasure can be experienced from great product. And then, interestingly, we saw the community respond in a way that was like, “I'm so happy to see a period ad that doesn't use that blue windshield wiper liquid.” You know exactly what I'm talking about, whether you can see it or not, you've seen it in your head. These schemas and these old learned marketing habits are now being, hopefully, unlearned and applied in the language of this next generation. Those brands have dove in, in the simplest ways; food, music, communication, information, and they let it go, and it's paid off in strides.
Ryan Berman 23:24
You may not have an actual number on this, but since you're the accountant. Look, if you add all that up, there's loyalty at the end of that rainbow, correct? Is there anything you can share on the loyalty side?
Khartoon Weiss 23:35
Nothing that I can share for the brands themselves. What I can share from a loyalty, I’ll just stubble down on, is the time that users spend, it's the time well spent with TikTok. And so, what they're looking for is not just you, and me, and communities creating content, they are looking for brands to communicate in our platform, to give them information, to change their lives, to help bring girl dads into a different place, to help make boyfriends feel more empathetic to their girlfriends. All of that loyalty is rewarded with time spent. And so, we're just really honored that people spend that much time and open the app as many times as they do because they're looking for life improvement. And creators and brands do that for them.
Ryan Berman 24:18
In some ways, are you playing matchmaker here too? Are you taking a brand and being like, “Hey, here's this creator that believes in these three things,” and you guys believe in these three things? Or, “Hey, here's a brand, and here's a brand.” Like you said Sprite and McDonald's. How often are you just bringing the right partners to the table?
Khartoon Weiss 24:35
It's a great question. We are matchmaking strategy more than anything. We are matchmaking the opportunity for people to show brands, to show that their product's performance in people's lives actually have a place on TikTok.
Ryan Berman: So, are there certain brands, and you've mentioned a few, you don't have to mention, like, they so get it. I think I saw somewhere someone now has a chief TikTok officer. Are more brands like, “Okay, we need to focus so much more time and attention to understanding the platform.” I'm assuming you're seeing this?
Khartoon Weiss 28:21
Oh, absolutely. There is a courageous list of marketers, and there's no single qualifier in the DNA. There's no single vertical, or there's no single product type. There's no common denominator outside of very, very astute marketers that know and believe that 20th-century approaches to 21st-century communication is going to win. That's just not going to happen. There's a courageous list, but it could always be longer. It could always be longer. And so, what people do is, they're holding on and trying to get this perfect first TikTok into the market, this perfect first advertisement instead of, “What are all the assets that I've built over time about my business and brand?” Or, “What are the assets I should build over time if I'm a new small business that the community can help me shape?” We have a lot of education work to do, and we have a lot of confidence to give to people that you would do when you're coaching people out of fear. But humans are natural. We all operate from a fear-based state. So, it's not something that I would say is a TikTok challenge as much as it is very natural, behavioral side of people, and all we have to do is give folks like you the confidence to just jump on in buddy, come on.
Ryan Berman 29:42
All right. So, I’m going to give you a couple… Let’s personify this even a little bit more. I am a brand marketer, I'm not a CMO, but I'm a curious brand marketer that's on my way, and I have a mediocre budget, but I have a budget. Where do I start?
Khartoon Weiss 29:59
Okay. I'd like to liken this to a horse, a car, and a race car. As simple as we can be. The horses hire a creator to not give them an influencer brief. Hire a creator and allow them to create on your behalf, on your brand's behalf. That’s it. Take a first step by having your hand held, and moving in the direction of the community, and the best way to do that is the creator. Then, we move to the car. Start being on the platform organically. What does that mean? That means when Nathan Apodaca started scooting on his longboard, drinking Ocean Spray cranberry juice, a million other brands had the right to be there. When this cute kid came in on corn, a million other brands had the right to be there, they missed the conversation because they weren't on the platform organically. So, the car becomes, “Now I’m starting to move, now I have a point of view and I'm jumping in organically so my brand can be a community citizen.” So, hire a creator, become part of the community citizenship, and then, move to the race car. Now you start creating on your own, and now, you don't need an ambassador, a creator to develop for you. Now you're starting to be able to develop, not branded content, but just strong community content, think of it that way. And if you are moving in your own little race car, now you're developing your own TikToks as the brand, as the personification of your brand, that can be with creators or without creators. You can look at some very strong brands that have representation like KFC and The Kernel, and they've hired creators to go ahead and bring that to life, as well as, now they are on platform. The horse, the car, the race car. You get in by hiring a creator first, that is your biggest and easiest bridge to the language and the community. Then start getting in organically and start actively showing up in trends, challenges, duets, stitching, be present. Third, you'll know at that point how to start making them yourself, and that's when you're cooking with gas.
Ryan Berman 32:10
I love it. I feel there's a training wheels metaphor in there too, but this was super helpful for me. You kind of jumped the gun on the other question which is, okay, let's strip TikTok away from this for a minute, and maybe that's unfair of me to ask. But when you think about you and the fears that you have personally, and again, permission granted to go where you want to go on this. It could be work, it could be home, what about you, what are you afraid of? What fears do you have?
Khartoon Weiss 32:41
I used to be afraid of being vulnerable. When you're showing any kind of vulnerability or failure, that's something that you're not allowed to do when you're struggling or climbing or first-generation and immigrant-oriented. You have to be strong at all costs. And so, I used to fear being vulnerable, and since I've been coached through that and out of that, my fear really came into, “Oh my God, did I learn enough?” I'm so learning-oriented, I fear not staying hungry and staying learning. If I'm the smartest person in the room, Ryan, I'm in the wrong room. Oh man, I'm afraid if I wake up and I’m like, Oh, what didn't I know? What decisions am I making based on not knowing a little bit more?” And so, I'm afraid to get complacent and to stop learning and stop growing, because that is when you start to see those old curmudgeon, people around the business that refuse to unlearn, that's not me. And that’s in life, that’s in… Look, I learned how to swim at 30, who learns how to swim at 30? I learned how to swim at 30, so I could do triathlon. I would have never done that if I wasn't always motivated. I just make sure I stay learning and sheer static.
Ryan Berman 34:02
When you know that about yourself, how does that help you pick the people you surround yourself with?
Khartoon Weiss 34:09
(Laughs) That’s a great question. I never thought about that, but I bet you, there's a pattern in there. The people you naturally gravitate to give energy more than they take it. And so, people that give, give information too. I look to find people that teach me things. I have huge inflection points, people in my life, I can literally line them up and sit there and say “You said one sentence to me that changed my life. You taught me something that changed my trajection. You educated me in this one element, and I've never changed my habits since.” And so, I think you find people that give energy and give information. I personally find people that give energy and give information. The first time I met you, we sat there, we couldn't shut us up, it was like, “Okay.” The lights went on and it was like, “You don't have to go home, but you have to leave where you are right now.” And you find people that do that, and so, I would say I am a collection of the people I've come across my entire life and career.
Ryan Berman 35:05
Yeah. That’s how I feel too. Again, when you're curious and you want to be successful, you're going to find yourself in rooms with other really smart people that see the world differently than you. You taught me a lot about the platform today, and it's hard to admit to you that, “Ah, dude. I know I need to be there and I want help.” And to me, that is being vulnerable. In the spirit of sharing, this is so funny, I just had this conversation with my team. My role is very different when I'm a host of a podcast, versus when I'm on a stage. My job is to extract your knowledge and make sure I'm learning from you, and when I'm on stage, my job is to take what I've learned from you and share it with others. But I will say just in the spirit of energy, we're so aligned on this, maybe this will be helpful. Both of us are compensated observationalists, let's call us what we are. I think there's three types of people in the world. I'm sure there's more, but in the spirit of this...
Khartoon Weiss 36:05
Now, I'm going to get a pen, go ahead.
Ryan Berman 36:07
Okay. Ready? There's three types of people in the world that you interact with. One; there’s people you gain energy from. So, there's a gained energy. And you know right away when you walk into a room, like, “I want to hang out with that person, I'm gaining energy.” Two is, drain energy people. You're like, “Oh boy, what happened?” You can't do this with some of your family members because they're going to drain your energy, blood is blood. And then there's a third group, I think, which is maintain energy, and to be honest, I don't think maintain energy is where I want to be either. So, drain energy people, maintain energy people to and gain energy people. And usually, in my life… And I think this is normal, the older you get, the more you've seen different types of people, and you can sort of audit, like, “Oh yes. How do I design my life to spend more time with people that I gain energy from, and, maybe tip toe out of the maintain energy people, and then, let's opt out where we can of the drain energy folks.” And it's as simple as that as you move forward. Again, so maybe there's something in there for you where you're like, “Oh yeah. Whenever I'm in a Zoom with that person, I feel that energy coming. I want to get on that person's calendar, and even let them know that they're like a source of energy for me,” which is never a bad thing by the way.
Khartoon Weiss 37:27
I appreciate that. I'm going to take that and pay it forward a little bit in my week. I'm going to drop people a note, and let them know that I'm grateful for the energy they give me. I'm going to excuse myself from a Zoom call if it’s [Inaudible 0:37:39] taking it from me. And then, the rest is a good balance. But that's really helpful, Ryan. I appreciate the wisdom back.
Ryan Berman 37:47
Well, look. I've got work to do. I need to get myself on the platform, and you're going to get a thousand emails for me, just what you needed.
Khartoon Weiss 37:54
Anytime, call me anytime.
Ryan Berman 37:55
I don't want to see your email inbox by the way, but Khartoon, thanks so much for joining us. I'm sure I'll see you again soon, maybe in Banff or somewhere else.
Khartoon Weiss 38:03
[Inaudible 0:38:04]
Ryan Berman 38:04
Thanks for joining us.
Khartoon Weiss 38:05
All right. Thank you.
Ryan Berman 38:07
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Courageous Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to rate and review us on Apple podcasts so more people can find us. See you again next week.
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