Becoming famous
Some thoughts on the pros and cons of niche fame, three years after first going viral on TikTok
Three years ago today, I posted a TikTok that went massively viral. At the time I was a relatively unknown legal tech sales rep, with an uncertain future. The pandemic was in full swing and work wasn’t going great. All of my buyers were still waiting to see how Covid played out, and weren’t ready to purchase software. Which meant my quota (and sales commissions) suffered. I was on the verge of losing my job.
So I tried to jump start my marketing efforts by trying out a lot of different weird things.1 One of those weird things was law-related video skits. Links to some of them can be found in footnote 1, but basically I made these low quality skits by recording myself with Zoom and editing the film with iMovie. My videos were popular but they took so long to produce. Someone suggested that I try out this trendy new video app2
It was called TikTok.
Making my own videos with TikTok was so much fun
Because I was able to produce content with lightning speed. The videos also looked better than my Zoom/iMovie videos. I made one, then another, then another. The plan was to download my videos and re-post them on LinkedIn where I already had a small following in the legal community. I figured most people on TikTok were teenagers, so there was no reason to focus on building an audience there.
On November 6th, 2020, I decided to make another TikTok. It was set to a newly trending song, Blinding Lights by the Weeknd, and the skit was about an associate disrespecting a paralegal. My idea came from a similar video in a different context—a new doctor not respecting a nurse—and I decided to copy it.3
Once I posted my video, I closed the app and went on with my life.
The next day
I was in the middle of a sales call when I noticed my phone notifications blowing up. I was getting bombarded with text messages and DMs from a bunch of people, like my co-workers, old college friends, people from my past. Even my sister texted me! “Hey this is kinda crazy but I just saw you on TikTok,” she said.
I had no idea my sister was even on TikTok! Which made me think—who else out there was also a lurker on the platform?4
I immediately opened the app and what I saw shocked me. Absolutely shocked me. That video I posted—you know, the one about the associate not respecting the paralegal—had hundreds of thousands of views. I was flooded with notifications, comments, and follow requests.
Over the next week, the TikTok algorithm kept pushing out my video, and I ended up with just over 2 million views. Overnight, I went from being an anonymous sales rep to someone with a significant audience. That’s when I doubled down, and made even more silly videos.
It wasn’t long before someone recognized me on the street. And then another person. And then yet another person. This all happened during the pandemic, when we were isolating ourselves, by the way. It was so surreal. At my peak I was generating 5M to 10M monthly views of my content. I remember going to an in-person ACC event in 2021 and learning that half the attendees—consisting of senior in house lawyers—recognized me. It soon became obvious to me.
I’d become niche famous.
It’s been three years since all that happened
Becoming niche famous changed the entire course of my professional life. I cannot overstate its impact. Within a year, my entire career trajectory was transformed. I was recruited to join the top startup in my space—not to sell software—but to serve as an in-house influencer.5 That enabled me to double down on producing engaging content for my industry, which gave me even more visibility.
There were a lot of really great things that happened to me as a result. I got to do really cutting edge, interesting work, with talented people. My audience enabled me to gain the professional visibility I had spent most of my career struggling to get. And most importantly, I was having a significant business impact. Because my content was geared towards the legal industry, it was a natural fit for driving marketing awareness and inbound leads. It also helps keep me really up to date on the latest trends in the industry.6
But a lot of things actually stayed the same. I was the same person as I was before. Gaining an audience didn’t solve all my problems. In fact, all I really did was trade one type of performance driven treadmill—sales—for another type—content creation. Today, in 2023, it’s much harder to stand out online.7 People started expecting even funnier content. Meanwhile, the copycats started to emerge, and to be quite honest, many of their videos and jokes were funnier than mine.
Plus, I *hated* the idea of being an “influencer.” I avoided using the term to describe myself, but other people kept calling me that. It bothered me, but I also realized that I had to accept it. Because I was playing a character. If I wanted to continue generating that business impact, I would have to continue playing the part that people had come to expect.
Adjusting to being this, like, cartoon character, was probably the most challenging part of everything. I went viral a decade after graduating from law school. I’d spent my entire career acquiring credentials so that I would be taken seriously. My plans never included becoming an influencer or content creator. But because of the power of social media algorithms, the vast majority of people who knew who’d heard of me, knew me as “that Asian guy who made funny videos and memes.”8
That’s part of the reason why I started writing long form content
A couple of years ago, I started writing this newsletter to share ideas that were bouncing around in my head. I also wanted to add substance to my personal brand. I knew most of my audience wouldn’t be interested in my newsletter because they followed me for my funny content. But my hope was that by writing, people would slowly start to see other sides of me. They’d start to view me as a three dimensional person instead of the character I had created.
There was one more thing, too. A lot of people were talking shit about me. When you put yourself out there on social media (or anywhere else, for that matter) people talk about you. Once again, it was a natural consequence of my own actions. The jokes and memes I posted were *designed* to generate conversation. So getting people to talk about me was a feature, not a bug.
What I didn’t expect was that the conversations would become so … personal. Like they didn’t discuss the joke or ideas in the content. They would discuss me, my personality, and my background directly. And sometimes they weren’t very nice.
I really shouldn’t pay attention to the haters, but I can’t help it. In the real world, talking shit is a normal part of life. Except most of it doesn’t get back to you. So for the most part it doesn’t bother you. Plus, because you can’t say things anonymously, people are more controlled with criticism or negativity. Even if they’re annoyed or frustrated, they know they’re talking shit about a human being.
On the Internet, it’s different. People can say anything anonymously, and they say pretty mean things. The algorithms then give the comments visibility, and everyone can upvote and agree. The thing that brings your audience together is the same thing that brings your haters together.
It’s magnified when you grow quickly, too. Because when you increase (1) the total number of followers you have, you also increase (2) the total number of shit-talkers and haters at a similar rate. There’s a direct relationship in growth of the two. Which is why influencers who go viral repeatedly and grow very fast in a short time, tend to attract a disproportionate amount of hate.
So being niche famous was great but it came to a point where growing my audience stopped serving my interests. I just kept questioning myself. Was it really worth it to get a ton of followers when it came with so much negativity? Especially if gaining incremental followers had limited business impact? Or the bigger question: Was I using social media, or was social media using me?
That was around the time I decided to throttle my own audience growth, by posting fewer TikToks, and shifted to writing in-depth long form content.
Conclusion
I want to be clear. I feel incredibly blessed to be niche famous. Having a portable audience on my personal balance sheet has changed my life. It’s enabled me to gain financial security, and has earned me a tremendous amount of autonomy to be there for my family, and to be present for my kids.9 I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.
However, I’ve come to realize that fame of any kind—even if it’s niche—can be a mixed blessing. To paraphrase that quote about money, being famous doesn’t solve all of your problems, it just solves your fame problems. And yet it’s become clear to me how many people out there want to become famous for its own sake. They keep asking me for advice and secrets.
I used to respond by sharing tactics and strategies for growth. But these days I just lean on one single lesson I’ve taken away from all this: Focus on how fame helps you achieve your goals.
Don’t go viral for the sake of going viral. Don’t try to hit arbitrary goals for metrics like followers or likes. Frankly that’s what the social media platforms want you to focus on, and it’s not always the best thing for you personally. Consider where you’re trying to get professionally or what you’re hoping to get out of it all. Only then should you come up with a plan to see how views and likes can help you get there.
Because if you focus solely on the numbers—you might wake up one day and question whether it was even worth it in the first place.
Thank you for subscribing to Off The Record. I’ve been writing this newsletter for almost two years, and although in recent weeks I’ve slowed down a bit (lots of stuff going on in my personal life, but all good things!) I’ve been so grateful to all of you for supporting my work. I’ve also spent some time thinking about what I hope to accomplish with my newsletter, and how it aligns with my goals.
With that in mind, I wanted to share two changes to my newsletter.
First, I will be putting most of my archived posts (with a few exceptions) behind a paywall. I’ll continue to send free articles to the list, but if you want to access (most) old articles you’ll have to be a paid subscriber.
Second, I’ll be expanding my premium content to cover topics beyond sales & business development. There are just too many ideas and thoughts I want to share.
These changes hopefully won’t impact your reader experience significantly. But if it does, and makes it all worse—I truly apologize. If you paid for an annual subscription, let me know and I would be happy to issue you a full refund.
Most importantly, I just want to let you all know that I appreciate you and your support. As long as you all keep opening my emails and reading my articles, I’ll keep writing!
During the first few months of the pandemic, I would host Zoom networking meetups, record them, edit clips, and post them on LinkedIn (e.g. here and here). Before that I had zero experience producing video content. A few months into it, I posted my first video “skit” that ended up being pretty well received compared to my other types of content. The success of that video gave me the confidence to produce additional skits, e.g. here and here, and other video based marketing posts.
The truth is that lots of people told me to check out TikTok, but I didn’t take it seriously. I had no interest in consuming short form video content, especially if it was all teenagers dancing, or whatever. But by mid 2020, a bunch of mid-career attorneys had suggested I start creating on the app—which led me to question my earlier assumption that the app was only used by kids. Turns out, there were a ton of people in my target audience on TikTok—they were just lurking, and not actively producing.
That creator and I ended up becoming friends on TikTok, and we exchanged a few DMs. I’ve always tried to publicly credit her for being the reason why I went viral. I remember watching all of her old videos and finding some of them to be utterly confusing. It wasn’t until I re-watched them with my wife—who works in the healthcare industry—that I understood the power of niche content. There were just too many inside jokes I didn’t get. That experience helped me realize that the power of niche humor isn’t in necessarily in the delivery, but in the specificity of the references. Which was a huge revelation that took my meme creation skills to the next level.
And even if they weren’t lurking—TikTok made it super easy to reshare videos. So even if you weren’t a user of the app, it’s likely someone who was forwarded you a TikTok.
My job title, Head of Community Development, is completely made up. But the core of the job is very real. My role is to engage with the community in various channels—online and in person—by using jokes and commentary on the legal industry. It’s a very real Unicorn Job—a special role that’s uniquely created for you—that exists only because Ironclad’s forward-thinking leadership team saw my potential and what I could be capable of. If you want to read more about Unicorn Jobs, you can check out my articles here, here, and here.
Incidentally, this is partly why a couple of weeks ago, I shared this LinkedIn post on the state of social media algorithms. As you can see from the comments, not everyone agreed.
I don’t think this is just an online / influencer problem. Any brand that gets famous, being known for one particular thing faces this challenge. That’s why if you want to be known for something nuanced, it’s better to grow slowly over time. Getting famous for one thing quickly leads you to be typecast. Just ask anyone in Hollywood. So many actors and actresses try so hard to break out of what made them successful in the first place. A different version of this problem also happens with companies. For example, many legal tech startups are happy to “only” have a brand in the legal community. However, as they become successful, they often want to break out of that reputation, because they want to tap new markets for new revenue sources. Rebranding is difficult, and requires a lot of patience.
The workload remains the same, but my responsibilities are different in nature. I do creative work, which enables me to work on my own schedule. I also attend third party events (trade shows, conferences, and meetups) which are easier to plan for. I’m no longer jumping at the last minute to respond to last minute requests or internal deadlines, for the most part.
Great read, Alex. I’m starting to feel a bit tiny-niche-famous, too, and it was really helpful for me to read your observations. Best, Amanda
I just want you to know that I came because of the funny memes but I stayed for the insightful articles. Whether it's posting videos on social media or writing down your thoughts and ideas, your work makes a difference.