Influencer is a Verb
my name is chris thompson
and the game dance dance revolution
changed my life which is a phrase
i never thought that i would say and for
those of you who are not familiar with
dance dance revolution
it is a game where you step on arrows on
the ground
that correspond with arrows on a screen
to music and it makes me look like i can
dance for
two to three minutes at a time and
anyone who has
watched me dance understands that’s
quite the accomplishment
this was 2006.
i was at an arcade with my dad and my
friend tessa and i had just
bought a camera that had the ability to
shoot video
which is something that wasn’t as common
back then
and i asked tessa to take a picture of
us dancing but instead
she takes a video clip that will go
on to launch my career
now when i saw this video how brilliant
it was i knew that my myspace page
needed to see this video but back then
you didn’t have the ability to upload
video onto myspace so i found a private
hosting site
put it over there linked it to my
myspace page got rave reviews my top 8
loved it
but then i started getting comments
i started getting emails from this
private hosting site
i got my first hater comment almost
immediately and in their defense i am a
bad dancer
but i was more concerned with how they
were finding this video if it was
private
turns out this is not a private site
it’s a very public social media
it’s a six month old website called
youtube and i was at the beginning
stages
of what would go on to become a huge
industry
now back then there wasn’t a name for
what it is that i do
but now i am called an influencer
which is a title i reluctantly accept
at times because there’s a lot of
negative stigma surrounding this term i
hear we
are vapid and self-centered and
disruptive
and there are examples of this for sure
but as someone who’s been there from the
beginning i really want to challenge
this idea
and the main reason i want to challenge
it is because when you ask
elementary school age kids and middle
school age kids about what they want to
be
when they grow up the number one answer
is now
influencer and we have the ability
to shape the way that they will use
their influence in the future with our
current actions
so how do we do that i think the first
step is
changing the definition of influencer
usually when you ask someone what is an
influencer they’ll say
something along the lines of someone
with a large social media following
who creates content on the internet
but what’s the threshold how many
followers do you need to be considered
an influencer is it 5000 is it
half a million is it a million
i want you to take a moment and i want
you to think about the person who had
the most
influence over you in your life
and now i want you to ask yourself this
question
how many social media followers did they
have at the height of their influence
over you and if you’re anything like me
you are thinking the exact same number
zero you do not need a large a small
any media following to be an influencer
my parents are influencers teachers
friends and at the height of their
influence over me not one of them
had social media to me
influencer is much more a verb
than a title it is less i am an
influencer
and more how do i use my influence
the follower count denotes nothing but
how far your reach can go not how you
use it
this next section i lovingly call my
10-year overnight success story
a lot of people see top content creators
but they don’t know
how much work goes into getting to that
level
and to give you guys an idea of exactly
how early on in the game i was
when i started on youtube you needed
about 10 000
subscribers to be in the top 100 most
subscribed of the entire website
and now that number is 27 million
so the game has expanded quite a bit
my first lesson was in failure
and not regular failure it’s public
failure you could put your heart and
soul into a piece of content and it
flops right in front of everybody
and it hurts it still hurts to this day
but i started to look at it as a process
of growth
instead of failure on my part like the
end of the road for me
the next lesson i had was in
perseverance
and patience perseverance and patience
and the fact that when i first started
on youtube i didn’t even know how to
transfer
footage from a camera to a computer
and then within three or four years i
was producing
full-length music videos
but there was a lengthy process for that
i remember
this video that i was just showing
essentially
i wanted to edit a video and i didn’t
know how and i locked myself in a room
for 12 hours until i finished that video
but i got it done
also perseverance in the fact that
there’s a lot of changes that happen
that are so out of your control
changes of algorithm disappearance of
platforms
me personally i was homeless twice in
the pursuit of being a full-time content
creator
i was broke way more than i was
successful but i
loved what i was doing you have to have
the love
to make it as long as i had a roof over
my head and food in my belly i was good
and that love is what’s going to lead
you to your why
your purpose for posting that’s what you
launch your career off of
and i would discover my why in 2008
a proposition passed in california
taking the rights away from lgbtq plus
people to be able to marry
and i knew there was going to be some
sort of gathering of people
and i figured i’d just grab my camera
and
see if i could get some footage and when
i showed up
there was maybe a few dozen people and
they were upset
and there were some speakers but pretty
soon that few dozen people turned into
thousands of people
those speeches turned into marches down
some of the largest streets in los
angeles
helicopters above us riot police
surrounding us
filling the square in front of the cnn
building demanding attention for what
had just happened
and for the first time instead of
turning the camera to myself
and saying how i felt about it i turned
the camera to them
and then when i uploaded their story i
watched how it elevated their voices and
educated people
and created civil discourse you guys
remember civil discourse
those were the days i saw that my
purpose was to use this big
beautiful platform that i had to elevate
and motivate other people
and that is something that i have done
for the rest of my career
and it didn’t always lead to the biggest
numbers but it created
impact and i prioritize impact over
numbers any day of the week
but none of this matters and i mean none
of this without this final element
and that’s authenticity which is
admittedly a word that people throw
around maybe a little too much so let me
break down exactly what i mean
by authentic you have to authentically
love and believe in what you post
or if you have any success at all it
will be short-lived
let’s compare it to dating you first
start dating someone you put your best
foot
forward you smile a lot more you
probably
ignore some things that would normally
annoy you
because you want to get into a
relationship with that person
then the honeymoon phase kind of fades
out
things start getting a little bit more
real and you start to see a lot of
tension in your relationship or the
relationship ends all together
and the reason is the person who had
invested in you now no longer recognizes
the person that they invested in
who is this person and that is the
relationship that you’ll have
with your audience so keep it real
now someone who i really look up to when
it comes to authenticity
is brene brown i love brene brown
she’s an author she’s a professor she
studies shame and vulnerability
and she was always successful i
discovered her like a lot of people did
through her ted talk and i know exactly
why her ted talk was so successful
it’s because she took a risk she started
sharing stories about herself that maybe
didn’t put her in the best light
but it humanized her it gave people
someone to connect to and we are all in
the business
of human connection we all live in fear
of
speaking our truth out loud even me
right now i’m nervous how you’re going
to judge what i’m
saying but i have to lean into that fear
so that the people who are listening
feel less alone in a world where that is
so needed
connection
i’ll leave you guys with the proudest
achievement of my career
i was in chicago visiting my family
and i had a viewer of mine who had known
for a long time who was passing through
chicago
and he said hey let’s meet up and i said
sure and he said let’s get pizza and i
said yes
and by the way if you’re ever trying to
seduce me into a conversation
pizza is a really good start especially
lou malnati’s pizza it’s the best pizza
don’t at me
he asked me if i remembered a video
called there’s nothing wrong with you
and i didn’t remember this video because
i made a video every single day for six
years
and some of these videos were pretty
much
just to keep the streak alive
and this was an example of that one take
to my iphone
no editing poor lighting but i still
wanted to make sure
that i was putting out a good message
there’s nothing wrong with you
he told me that was the first video of
mine that he had ever seen i was like
cool
then he said he was in a hotel room when
he saw it i was like
okay then he told me he was in the
bathroom
when he watched it i was like tmi
he had his clothes laid out
he had notes written to his loved ones
and he was in the final moments of a six
month plan to end his life
and somehow in that moment he found my
video
and the title alone spoke to him
and in that moment he decided he wanted
to live
his life is my proudest achievement
he is now engaged he just moved into a
beautiful new house
he’s got a great job i get to officiate
his wedding next year which is a
humongous honor
but because i took my influence
seriously
he lives and that’s the whole point
everybody who’s watching right now you
are all influencers
does not matter how many followers you
have your words
have power use that power for good
put good messages out into the world
you never know at what moment in
somebody’s life
they’re gonna need that message
thank you