Here's how I see it. The right clients should be finding you because of the work you've already done, with money coming in without posting all day and an afternoon that actually belongs to you. That's what I write about here. Join me twice a week, where I share sales and marketing strategies for women over 40 who don't have the emotional capacity to market like a 20-something.
You don't have to be an influencer. You do have to have influence.
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Brand Lessons from Pop Culture
You don't have to be an influencer. You do have to have influence.For the one who wants to be known for the work, without becoming a full-time content creator. Fat Joe's second Tiny Desk dropped this morning. Remy Ma, Jadakiss and Stove God Cooks all came through, two months after his new album, Organized Rhyme. Fat Joe has been in the spotlight a lot over the past six to eight months... and I want to talk about it. Welcome to another brand lesson from pop culture. It's where I get to discuss what's happening in pop culture, the business and brand lesson I see in it, and how it applies to you. Let's talk about it first.I can't talk about any of Joe's accomplishments without acknowledging his recent viral moment on Joe Budden's podcast, when he called himself the blackest N-word. Regardless of where you sit on that, it's part of this story. Joe isn't new to controversy. That's what happens with fame, right? You could bring up his association with Diddy too, and I don't know too many people in R&B and hip hop who haven't been associated with Diddy. I can hold Diddy responsible for his crimes, and we can hold people accountable for not speaking up about it, but that's not what this is about. The rise of Fat Joe... but is it really?I remember where it started, because I was watching. It was March 2020, everybody was stuck in the house looking for something to do, and Joe's daughter told him he should go live. By his own telling, he didn't even know what Live was. He got on anyway to tell people we were all scared together, then he did it again the next night, and the next. After about a week of showing up every night at eight o'clock, he realized he had a show. As the weeks went on, I started seeing somebody I thought I already knew. I knew Fat Joe the rapper. I didn't know the husband and the father. That's when I first learned about his son. That's when I started hearing about his give-backs in the community, his businesses outside of music, and why access to healthcare mattered so much to him. By 2023, he was meeting with Congress and the White House about transparency in healthcare pricing. He didn't learn one new thing to make that happen. He's been in this since 1993, and people had no idea how many relationships he had, so he named a segment after it: "You Don't Know Who I Know." Everything that made that show worth watching was something he already had. The Live just gave it somewhere to go. Then the money started showing up.Revolt put the show on TV within months, and by early 2021 he was hosting a talent competition for Pepsi. That same spring, an interviewer asked if he planned to stay on IG Live. He said he was thinking about a bigger platform and named three: Amazon, Apple and Netflix. Okay, MANIFESTATION WORK! It took Fat Joe years to get to Netflix. He had a run on Starz, then guest spots on other people's podcasts that went viral, until he decided he should be capitalizing on that himself. In May 2025, he and Jadakiss launched Joe and Jada. I'm biased, because Jadakiss is one of my favorite rappers. I can honestly say I would never think to put those two on a sofa with podcast mics. Joe is loud and always has a story. Jada is reserved and thinks before he speaks. That's exactly why it works. This January, it landed on Netflix.
There's a reason why people line up to sit down with them.Part of it is the relationships they've built over the last 20+ years. The other part is math. According to their Shorty & Hashtag Sports awards entries: 100,000 YouTube subscribers in under a month 13.6M+ monthly YouTube views about six months later, up from 3.5 million at launch On Netflix, Samba TV's early estimate ranked Joe and JadaNo. 5 by views among podcasts for the first three months of 2026, and Podcast News Daily puts it in the top 20. On social media, the show reports monthly views going from 23 million at launch to over 66 million about six months later. The team even has a name for the lift a guest gets afterward, the Joe and Jada Bump, and the bookers say no to more people than they say yes to. Don't get me wrong, none of this stayed casual. Joe has said on his own podcast that he's always looking at how to feed the algorithm, and it shows, because he's always going viral. He's even admitted he tried to start beef with other podcasters when the show launched, and nobody took the bait. I'm not telling you to do what Joe does. Your job isn't to be an influencer.When you own a business, your job isn't to show up as an influencer, and your job isn't to become an all-in content creator. How you build visibility for your brand is still important. You and your business have to have influence.If your goal is to be a top contender in your industry, you and your business have to have influence. That goes double if your business is Black- or woman-owned. Understand and know that we don't get to assume the work will speak for itself in rooms we aren't in. Contracts, referrals, stages and partnerships get decided by people choosing from the names they already know. Does your name come up?Now take a moment and think about your cultural currency. When people in your industry talk about who's best at what you do, does your name come up? You might be reading this and saying: "I don't have time to go live every night." "Who would even watch that?" "I'll get to it when things slow down." And you're right about the first one. Joe said that nightly show meant no dinners and no weekday basketball games, and I wouldn't trade my life for that. Look at how his show runs now, though. Joe and Jada has a production team reading the analytics and four editors working across different states. Joe doesn't have to be the one cutting clips. He gets to do the part nobody else can do, which is sit down and tell the story. You already have the stories.You have the client results and the relationships, and you've had them for years. Building influence shouldn't start with learning something new, and attention you've already earned is money you don't have to chase when it's time to sell. xoxo... Kimberly |
There's a difference between being one in a million and one of a million.
Here's how I see it. The right clients should be finding you because of the work you've already done, with money coming in without posting all day and an afternoon that actually belongs to you. That's what I write about here. Join me twice a week, where I share sales and marketing strategies for women over 40 who don't have the emotional capacity to market like a 20-something.