How I Went from a Terrible Dancer to a YouTube Superstar - Matt Steffanina
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My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life.

- What's up guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we're gonna talk all about influence, building a tribe, a brand, a mass movement, which this guy's definitely done. Here with my friend Matt, he's built his following to over 30 million. Yes, that was not an error, 30 million. We've been friends for many years, met in LA originally.

And now look, we're both here in Miami. So welcome to the show, buddy. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. Great to finally connect here. Yeah. So 30 million, right? And you guys have probably seen this man dancing around. You may have not known it was him, but probably the most famous dance influencer and educator, I would say. Is that a pretty fair statement or one of, right? Yeah.

And you've been doing it how many years? I started on YouTube in 2007. So coming up on 18 years on YouTube. 18 years. So 30 million, but key point already, not an overnight success, right? It's not like, hey, I started this YouTube a year ago and got 30 million. So let's start there. What's the...

What's the story over the last two decades? Yeah, so I started in a smaller town in Virginia. I was bored in high school. Thought I'd pick up dancing. I saw Usher, Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake. I want to learn that.

And there weren't a lot of opportunities. So I found YouTube really early and I thought, man, like I could probably learn by posting my videos here. People give me feedback. Maybe I'll meet other dancers. And so it really just started out as that. And I sort of fell into this viral YouTube thing really early on, you know? But the main thing that I noticed is that the more I shared my story and my vulnerabilities along the way, my failures as well as my successes, the more people engaged with the channel.

And so I was really early on showing how bad I was. You know, I was starting out as a 17 year old kid in a small farm town trying to learn how to dance. And, you know, here we are today. And like you mentioned, it was probably about five or six years of not taking it seriously, posting a video here and there. And then I moved to L.A. and I thought, oh, now I'm in L.A., it's going to get easier. I'm going to get all these jobs. And it wasn't that at all. It's very, very difficult. And so I leaned in.

even heavier into content. And that's when my audience really exploded about 2014, 15, 16. Yeah. Because we met probably what, five, six years ago? Yeah. And like you were big at that point. Yeah. Really doing well. But you've had some cool experiences along the way, right? Like you've danced with some cool people. Yeah. I got to dance for Taylor Swift, a choreographer, Jason Derulo. Yeah. I was on the Ellen Show, Step Up.

So you think you can dance, you know, pretty much everything I ever dreamed of doing as a dancer. And, you know, that's why even today I'm huge on encouraging people to create content because there is no better way to reach an audience in a really, really genuine way than by creating content. Well, and I think for YouTube, it's kind of funny because like podcast to like when you did it 10 years ago, I was like, oh, you're a YouTuber or you're a podcaster.

and then like Joe Rogan podcast is like, Oh, you're a podcaster. And then Mr. Beast and stuff. It's like, Oh, you're a YouTuber. It's like changed how the world obviously we already knew as like in the industry, but like now the world, I think has like a very different level of respect. Yeah. Because these people that we admire have come over to this side. It's like now it's admirable to create your own things. I actually got

dropped from my agency and fired from several dance jobs early on because I was a YouTube choreographer. And that was how looked down upon it was, you know? So now it's crazy to think that there's no dancer in the world that doesn't have videos online and isn't using it as a tool. It's like the opposite, right? Because it's now like CAA and the big agencies are like, what are your follower accounts? You know, right away. Yeah. And brands too. Like brands are paying as much for big influencers like you as they are for...

A-list celebrities because your audience is sometimes way more engaged. Yeah. So let's talk about that. You know, this is a business show, entrepreneur show. Maybe everyone listening can't like dance like you, but hopefully they can grow an audience one day like you. So what are some general tips like throughout all these years of growing such a big audience? Yeah, well, it's definitely important.

a repeatable skill. You know, creating content, a lot of times people say like, oh, it's because you're a dancer and TikTok favors dance videos. Most of my viral content and definitely my connection to the audience has nothing to do with dance. And you were way big before even TikTok came out. Yeah, yeah, right. So like what I really lean into is storytelling. My biggest video this past year on YouTube was about me genuinely just telling my story about, like I said, starting in a small farm town, moving to LA, all the failures, the things I got fired from, the struggles.

thinking about moving home and giving up and how I overcame it and what I did to reset and find new inspiration. And that video outperformed all of my dancing videos. - I think I saw that, it went by, yeah, you had crazy engagement. - Yeah, and so the best skill you can learn if you're starting content or even if you're creating content and you wanna improve it is really storytelling. And whether you're a fitness influencer, you're an entrepreneur, you're selling courses, whatever it is that you're doing, if you can create it about your story

and why you're creating courses or why you're making fitness content maybe you were bullied as a kid and so you went really hard into fitness maybe you couldn't find your passion and then someone helped you and you're paying it forward and helping others right i think that's interesting because a lot of people listening i think people think that their audience doesn't care about that but you're basically saying the opposite they care the most about that yeah because if you don't

Admit some of your flaws or shortcomings. How does the audience know to trust you? Yeah, and you create the genuine connection because I think if you don't do that you're like this Godlike celebrity figure and they're this random person But like what I try and teach is no you want to remind them that you were the random person at one point and you still Down to earth person. Yeah, and it's really difficult to

for especially people that are entrepreneurs and perfectionists to get this. It's hard for me still. I still post videos and I'm like, I don't want to post this. I won't post, right? Because I know that it's important, but I work with a lot of people like you do, I'm sure. They're like, no, everything has to look professional and perfect. And so it's very counterintuitive, but many people consume

Media now is so different than 10 years ago 15 years ago, right? You'd like read a magazine and it's like Jay-z and he's perfect any million dollars and like you never got to see his flaws Well, even the celebrities now like this I can't remember what celebrity was the other day But they're like they'll film themselves crying and talking about some politics or whatever right or a breakup like

10 years ago, every agent would have been like, no, you could never, never. Like, there's no way you could do all those things. Right. So I think as social media as a whole now, there's like, it's changed a lot. It used to be this polished resume. Right. Now it's the real day to day you. And that's why reels took off. That's why stories have took off because it's like the vlog of your life, you know? And I guess YouTube used to be the vlog, like,

the vlog spot, right? People would vlog super heavily and now I feel there's less of that and it's like daily vlogging on socials. Yeah, and you know, as far as actionable advice that I give to a lot of my friends and clients that I'm helping with content is use TikTok as the training ground. TikTok is a really great place to mess up because your friends aren't really on TikTok, your peers aren't on TikTok as much and if you do a video and it doesn't do well, TikTok doesn't show it to anybody.

So like there's really no downside, right? On Instagram, it's like, well, my friends from high school

My person I'm trying to collab with doesn't want more pressure. Well, and they even just, I saw them have now released an option where you can test it. The trial reels, right, on Instagram. Have you tried it? Not yet. Yeah, I tried it. It's interesting. I don't know that I love it, but, you know, it's cool to see the innovation. But, you know, if you go hard on TikTok and you make three to five videos a day or two to three weeks and you just say, I'm going to try doing a rhythm.

I'm going to talk about my story and I'm going to do one other thing. I'm going to do this for two, three weeks. You'll have 30 videos. You'll have a lot of data in a short amount of time. And then you can say, okay, these are working. This will work really well. Let me put that on Instagram and YouTube because I actually like that one. These worked, but I'm going to keep them on TikTok. You start to develop a plan for yourself on how you can really scale this. What's really important up front

- And I think one other important point, like Tai Lopez really hammered this into me when I was partners with him, is like he, and he's like really interesting 'cause half the world love him and half are like, you know, it's kind of weirded out by him. But he was one of the first, I mean, to understand like creating content for the consumer versus you, right? Like I can sit with him or would sit with him, have highly intellectual conversations,

But for the consumer, he would go and create, you know, like, hey, here in my garage. Here in my garage. Yeah, yeah. So he mastered that game like before anyone else, I feel almost. And so how do you see that? Like creating content to attract a new audience and reach the masses versus like that polished resume sort of content? Yeah, so a good example that translates to other sectors too is I was a choreographer in LA and I worked so hard to be professional

professional dancer, professional choreographer, age, all this stuff, right? The videos that performed the best for me on YouTube in my entire career were my beginner dance classes. So like Jason Derulo, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, right? Or like these fun pop songs, easy choreography. And everyone would be like, why are you posting those? Like, that's embarrassing. You're a professional. And I said, 90%, 95% of my audience are beginner dancers.

And it's true, we're from advanced stuff for me, for my art and to push myself. But like at the end of the day, if I want to teach and I want to impact the world and I want to help the world dance, the best way for me to do it is make dancing relatable, make it accessible, make it fun. That's why I created the DNCR app. You just download it, take a free class and like, boom, you're dancing, right? And it's really important, just like you said with Ty, all of that is like in the beginning, you're mostly marketing to the people who don't know who you are.

who don't know what you're talking about they're not an expert in your field as you build you can niche to those more advanced topics yeah and i think that's even probably like one of the hardest for entrepreneurs of every category because they're like trying to get investors on board or like get into a grocery store or impress a shark from shark tank yeah well then doing this but what i try and remind them is most of the smart investors that have crazy money and invest or like

Daymond John or what they get the game. So they're not like freaked out by you doing this silly TikTok because it's like they actually understand why you're doing it. The people that don't understand it are like your staff member or best friend that say, oh, that's weird. Right. Yeah. Don't be afraid because the people that play in this world at a high level, they understand what you're doing. Right. They're like, oh, that's smart. He's creating this silly, this controversial headline because he wants to lure people in. So I mean, yeah, I mean, it's great. So next question.

You know, obviously you got in early, right? YouTube and all these things. If someone's listening now and inspired by it, would you still say start on YouTube? Would you say start on Insta or TikTok? Where would they start?

It depends what your goal is and who you're trying to reach, right? For instance, if you want to do long form educational type stuff, you want to do podcasts, you want to do all of that. YouTube is still, in my opinion, the best platform in the world for monetizing, for brands, for creating true educational long form content. Right. But if you're like, I want to make these little 15 second skits and, you know, funny stuff or whatever, like TikTok is probably going to be your best platform. Right. So it depends on your goals.

For me, the thing that I love about starting on TikTok is, I was saying about whooping a lot of content really easy on TikTok. The bar is really low and people love relatability. They love low production. So you can just pull it out, literally make a selfie as you're walking down the sidewalk. Here's three tips for like how I did this and this, right? Post all those and then take the winners

and put them on Instagram, put them on YouTube, put them on Facebook. It's kind of cool because that's exactly what I've taught for like eight years on the ad level. Like we'll test a lot of the headlines and even test opt-ins and like free downloads. And then we'll take the winner and make a low ticket product without like, you know, creating the whole course membership site, follow-up sequence. And then you launch it and it flops because the hook was weak. So now we test all the hook, you know, the last five, six years, we've always tested the hooks first on,

some ad spend or to our email list. And then, and we don't even sell the product. We'll do it as like a free download or a coming soon RSVP, like get on the pre-sale list. And then we take the winner and put all the time and efforts. It's kind of the same, test it in the 15 seconds before you spend 10 hours filming and editing a 20 minute YouTube, right? Yeah, I like that. So the next question everyone always asks me, so I want to ask you this,

It's YouTube feels so I mean, they're all competitive, but YouTube feels like so hard now because it's like Mr. Beast and all these people have raised the bar to like almost documentary or Netflix level quality. Do you need that to do well on YouTube? No, absolutely not. What you need on YouTube, one is consistency. Most people will give up because it is hard. But I would say that it's actually in a lot of ways gotten easier because YouTube

Even five years ago, before TikTok and the algorithm shift, it was so difficult to reach new people. Right. And if you had a thousand subscribers, the chance of getting a video that did 100K views was almost zero. You kind of had to just grind and slowly grow and build. Now you have shorts. Now you have this incredible recommended video algorithm that I get recommended on my page all the time. Videos that have 500 views.

and i'm like who is this why is youtube showing me something like 500 views i don't even subscribe to their channel click it damn it's a really good video oh okay i'm gonna subscribe right and that's recent it didn't used to be like that so

Yes, there's more competition now, but if you figure out how to make great content, it will rise to the top and you can grow quicker than ever before on YouTube. Like it. Next question I get asked, I've heard mixed things about putting the shorts and the videos together because it brings in a different subscriber and some people split the pages and some have them all in one. Do you have an opinion on that? Keep it together. Okay, yours. Keep it together. There's a function now on YouTube where you can tie any short

relate it to a long form. Cool. So what I do is a mixed strategy. I'll do some shorts that are completely standalone and they're just meant to bring in new viewers, bring in subscribers. Those people may or may not convert to the long form, but I'm okay with that. Then I'll do some shorts that are specifically for longer form, right? So if I'm telling a story about how I struggled to make money in LA as a dancer, I'm going to do a short that's just the most viral part of that.

- Yeah. - Really crazy like, but I'm gonna leave off the end and I'm gonna say go watch it. - Okay. - And so with those, try and convert those short viewers to long form. - Yep. - Those are never gonna go as viral as the standalone ones, but that way you can take from the traffic and kind of move it over as well. - Good. - The algorithm is getting better though for blending the channel. - The blending. - Yeah. - Which I think it has to eventually, right? 'Cause if it like screws it up, it's like it's screwing itself and all of its people. - Yeah.

Good. Next question. I want to go a bit broader now. Like we talked about YouTube and Instagram, TikTok growing 30 million followers, crazy number. So congrats, by the way, like not many people in the world outside of A-list celebs have done that, right? Like you've got to be one of the top influencers. Like, and I mean, it's so great that you've done that for so many years and now built a brand and a tribe behind it. So that's what I want to get into. Yeah.

Talk about the Brandon tribe if people don't know and how you transition because if people don't know like you have sellout events around the world basically right these massive dance parties you know so can we talk about that part? Yeah one of the things that I realized as I was building my following is that dance content especially because you're not talking to camera.

it's hard to build that relationship. People will be like, oh, I love your dance videos, but they don't really know you. They don't know your personality. And when I started to do tutorials, I love teaching. I love the energy exchange. I love helping people. And people could feel that in the tutorials, that it was authentic. And even views were never as good on the tutorial, but what I started to notice is

my classes in real life when I would do these tours just started exploding because now I had this relationship with my viewer that was different than you're the good dancer. It was now like, you're my mentor. You're my teacher. And that's why even though people sometimes are scared to talk on camera, it's so important to talk on camera because you build this bond with your viewer that's just different than any other skill. And so that was really the basis. I started to be the

pretty much only teacher, especially in LA as a professional dancer, I was willing to give away my choreography for free, teach tutorials for free online because I just wanted to build my

with people that had a similar passion. And I think the biggest lesson from that is in the beginning, you just wanna add as much value as possible. Sometimes people gatekeep stuff too early on and it's like, you really wanna build that relationship. You wanna build that rapport with your audience where they're like, this is my guy. He always gives me good tips and things and that and build, build, build, build, build.

And then you're like, and now I'm doing this insane mastermind and I'm going to keep it really close. Right. But if too early on, you're like, here's two tips, but if you want more, you got to pay for this and that. Yeah. You flip the rapport building step, you know, so it can be difficult to build that and it can take a lot longer sometimes than people expect it to.

But if you can hold true to that and hold off on selling in the beginning, it'll pay dividends in the end when your community is strong. Yeah, I like that. And what are some tips for... Because we've kind of come from opposite ends. I almost feel like I was a business guy and then started to work on content and create influence. You're a big influence, right? And now you're building the business side. So it's really fascinating. They both have their struggles, right? Yeah. So what are some tips for...

people similar to yourself where they've built a good following, have some good content, stuff's going viral and they're like maybe just selling affiliate products right now or other people's and they want to build like that brand and community. Yeah, it's obviously case by case depending on what your following is built on. But you know, for most people that have created a successful brand online and created great content,

There are people that want to learn how to do the same thing. I have a lot of friends that are photographers and now they're selling their different filters packages. They're selling courses on how to do photography. And so instead of just showing these beautiful images that they took, they're showing the behind the scenes. Oh, that looks like a normal mountain range.

I don't know how to take a picture that looks like that. And then zoom. And then you see the finish. You're like, wow, how did they do that? Right now I'm interested. I want to buy that guy's course. And again, dance, photography, entrepreneurship, it doesn't matter. Like mix and match whatever vertical you want. It's the concepts and it's understanding what is the thing that you can provide for your audience that they can't get from just a

a 30 second Instagram post, right? And maybe it's that you give them actual coaching and feedback. Like in DNCR, that's one of the things implementing is like, hey, you can learn how to dance at your local studio, but if you want an instructor that's from LA, that's been through the grind and booked jobs and worked with artists and really knows what these agencies are looking for to critique your video, there's only one place you can get that, right? And so that's a really powerful upsell. And so figuring out what those things are for your audience

and providing them is a great hack. Yeah, I think that's great because I mean, a lot of least influencers I've met, it's like the go-to swag and then they get stuck, right? And it's like, what's next? But yeah, I love that. Like, and we teach the way I teach that and the business side is what's your USP, right? So it's like everyone can sell swag, but if you can create that clearer USP, that's when you'll win. So that's a great example of, yeah, obviously you can get dance

teaching and lessons anywhere and critiques but our USP is we've been through the system on where you want to go so I love that so so last few questions around like entrepreneurship now because you are an entrepreneur um what what you know had this amazing growth but like it's got to be with some difficulties I say every entrepreneur you know probably they have this one thing in common that they've been like it's been great on this you know from the outside but there's

There's lawsuits or someone stealing from you or someone letting you down and downing yourself. So do you mind sharing one of the biggest things and how you work through it? Yeah, we definitely all share that in common, right? There's at least one or two places where you're like, do I quit? Like, is this the wrong idea? For me, one of the biggest ones was about five years into building my first YouTube channel, I got completely shut down for copyright music.

This was back in the day. Now they just, you know, restricted in some territories or they mute the video or whatever. But it used to be if they decided that they didn't want your video up and you use music, they just blocked and three strikes, you're out. So one day open up my email and it's like, your YouTube channel is banned. Just no appeal. No, nothing.

And I was thinking to myself like five years, I probably posted 500 videos and all of this. I got up to a couple million subscribers at that point. And I decided to start back from zero. Oh, you never got it back? I never got it back. Oh, God. Until three or four years later, they changed the rules. And they're like, hey, your old channel. I was like, guys, I think the momentum has died a little bit. So now my main channel, the one with 14 million is...

It was actually the second channel I created. Cool. And I have a second channel, which was my original one, which is like three or 4 million. I post like behind the scenes and stuff there. But you know, that was a really big gut check for, do I want to start over? And, you know, uh, I debated it for a few days and I decided, nope, I'm going to, I'm going to do this and I'm going to go even harder. I'm going to double down on YouTube. And, um, you know, it ended up paying off, but

Yeah, every entrepreneur faces some kind of crazy hurdle at some point. I mean, for an influencer or anyone else, like, I didn't have quite that, but we were doing about half a mil a month in my 20s in fitness, and our ad accounts got shut down. And it was like 80% of our revenue. And so we went from 500K a month to like 100K a month, just like that, right? And we had 20 employees. So I remember it's like, that's a real like, oh shit moment when you see that.

So it's good for you for, you know, getting back on and doing it. Next question. I always love to ask this one. If you had a time machine, you could go in it and speak to your younger self. What would you say? Oh, man. Business wise, I would have thought about the business elements. Yeah. You know, I'm very, very grateful for everything that I've been able to accomplish and experience. But, you know, I was talking to you earlier and said, you know, I wish that

five or six years ago, I hadn't been so hung up on the creative side and the LA industry and kind of caught up in all of that and realize how much potential there is to help people on a grand scale and create a real business around this. You know, I ended up doing it with DNCR now, but it took me a while to realize the potential that online content can really tap into a community, like how much power that really has. I

I think also too, you know, for me, LA was a credible opportunity, but it was also a huge distraction. And coming out to Miami and having some downtime and some time to process things, I find that a lot of ideas have come to me just in having that space. So, you know, I wish I had gotten a little less absorbed in the

industry and focused on my instincts a bit more. I think, you know, like LA, it's so great to meet people and all that. But yeah, you, like we were saying earlier, you just, you can every day be busy, right. At some event or some networking thing or hanging out with influencers. And that's great to meet people and make, shake hands and make those connections. But yeah, some of your biggest breakthroughs are like, or at least for me, some of the biggest breakthroughs are

when I'm free and I have this million dollar business idea, you know, and then, and you don't get that when you're in the weeds, like either in the business or in your world, creating the content and networking and the brand deal. So what about same question on anything on a personal level, like more around personal development, if you could speak to your younger self from the personal side. I grew up in a small town, you know, and when I, when I moved to LA, it was very overwhelming. Um, you

you know, as it is for most people, even if you don't come from a small town. And just in the past, you know, two years, I would say I've really reconnected to regular workouts, meditation, breath work, started this company, Mad Chill, based on that idea that

you know, physical work is great, but it has to be balanced with the mental and going really hard and grinding for your goals is great, but you also have to take care of your mental health and finding a work life balance, even if it's really heavy on the work and small on the balance, like it's still important to maintain that. And, you know, like I said in the previous one, I definitely got lost in the L.A. craziness a bit. And now being able to find that balance has

huge for me. And it's so important for just ideating and everything. We can take that minute to just meditate in the morning or take a breath work class and like calm down. It's crazy how many things fall into place. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. And last question. Well, last couple of questions. Uh, someone wants to learn to dance. Where do they go? Oh man.

app.dncr.com. Come on to the DNCR app. I still do free tutorials online on Instagram and on YouTube. So if you want to take something just like quick on YouTube, just look me up. Everything's Matt Stefanina. But the app is great. We're doing live stream classes and we're even doing a lot of dance fitness stuff now because I know there's

you know everyone's intimidated to dance i was intimidated to start dancing i was like i'm awkward it's embarrassing you know so a lot of the classes are catered to beginners follow along and i'm working on a special class for uh dancing for guys right now too which will be out later this year because i know as a as a guy it's even harder sometimes to get the courage yeah get on the floor like i was saying earlier the only time you catch me dancing is under the influence but i think what's cool too like just to finish this episode is

you were like started and you were once awkward, right? It's like now when you watch you dance guys, you know, if you haven't go watch his videos, you look like a, like a dolphin in the ocean, like flowing as part of it. Right. That's a great, that's poetic Rudy. I appreciate that. It's kind of true. Like when I watch your videos, like you're like blending with the, like the wind or some somehow, you know? So, but it's great because it shows like anyone can do it. Right. Yeah. And back to what you were saying about content.

that's even more powerful than the story of I was just born a dancer. My parents put me in it at two years old, you know, and so often people think that that's something negative, like I'm not that good. And I'm like, great. Tell people why you're not that good. Do you ever repost your original, like when you were terrible dancer? Oh yeah. Do they go crazy? It's the best hook. This used to be me. And I'm like, what?

You know, look at me now. Boom. And people are like, how did he do that? So it's like lean into it. What you think are your weaknesses are often your strengths. Yeah. Love that. Cool. Well, guys, that's a wrap. Hopefully you learn a lot. We talked a lot about influence, building the brand, the community, obviously tips, building a channel, going viral and obviously all your story and how you've worked through challenges along the way, like we all have. So hope you're inspired. Go check out the dance videos and I'll see you guys soon. Keep living the red life.

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