April 26, 2019
Trey Ratcliff: Photography, Forest Bathing, Buying Instagram Followers, and More – The Kevin Rose Show
Key Takeaways
- “Every photograph is a gateway to a story you can tell”
- If you’re feeling down or anxious, try taking a walk in nature
- Traveling to new countries has a whole host of benefits
- “The greatest creative gift that anyone can give to themselves, is to let go of themselves”
- The fact is – many people on Instagram are buying followers, likes, and comments
- This creates a false economy and makes a ton of people feel hopeless when it comes to building a social media following
- (You can buy 100k followers for a few hundred bucks)
- In 2018 – $2 billion was spent on influencer marketing (this figure is only growing)
- With social media, this is the first time in history where people are seeking the approval of complete strangers
- Dabble in lots of areas and when you find something you love – go all in
- In a way, psychedelics revert your brain back to a child-like state
Books Mentioned
- Trey’s new book – Under the Influence – How to Fake Your Way into Getting Rich on Instagram: Influencer Fraud, Selfies, Anxiety, Ego, and Mass Delusional Behavior
- “In a world where there’s an infinite amount of everything, people want what’s rare”
- This idea is talked more about in The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by Dan Thompson
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Intro
- Follow Kevin on Instagram
- Trey Ratcliff (T: @TreyRatcliff, IG: @treyratcliff) is a famous photographer
- Some of his prints can fetch over $100k
- Check out his blog
Trey’s 360 Degree Camera
- While walking the Camino de Santiago with Kevin Kelly and Matt Mullenweg, Trey wanted to capture some of their conversations
- To do so, he purchased a 360 degree camera – the Insta360 ONE X
- How does it work? – You put in on a selfie stick and when the video is stitched together, the selfie stick is erased so it looks like it’s just a giant orb floating out in front of you
- Here’s one of his conversations with Matt Mullenweg, and another with Kevin Kelly
- Kevin and Trey shot a conversation together while walking through the woods in Oregon – check it out
- “There’s something extra stimulating about a couple of people walking through nature”
The Power of Nature
- “When I have any anxiety, just sitting in my studio working on photos, if I just go outside and walk around in nature for 5 or 10 minutes, that anxiety disappears”
- The beautiful scenery is one reason why Kevin loves Oregon so much
- The Japanese have a practice called forest bathing
- They’ve done studies showing that if you go and spend time in the forest, your levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) and inflammation markers drop
Japan
- Trey has been to Japan ~10 times
- One of his favorite spots – Japan’s Wind Chime Garden
- We couldn’t track this place down online
- Another – Japan’s Puppet Town
- When people die, they replace them with life-sized puppets dressed in the actual clothes of the deceased
The Wonder of Travel
- “I think it’s great to open your mind to new experiences because as you get these unusual audio and visual inputs, it actually rearranges your brain”
- There’s been studies that show the more open you are to new experiences, the more creative you’re likely to be – “That’s why travel is good for everyone”
- “Travel can soften hard edges that your own particular culture, the one you grew up, might have created”
- There’s been studies that show the more open you are to new experiences, the more creative you’re likely to be – “That’s why travel is good for everyone”
- Kevin, on the benefits of travel – “I just feel more connected to the world as one big place, versus it being just all about the U.S.”
- Trey actually moved to New Zealand a few years ago with his family (his wife, and his kids aged 10,13, and 17)
- Every year, he tries to take his family on a longer trip to expose them to what the world has to offer
Photography and Trey’s Blog
- Trey’s background is in computer science & math – he’s done a lot of IT work throughout his career, but he’s always known it wasn’t for him
- After doing some world traveling, at the age of 35 (he’s 47 now) Trey bought his first camera (a Nikon)
- He eventually started a photography blog to distribute his photos
- Trey was doing something unique – sharing full res. photos with no watermarks (not many people did this for fear of their photos being taken)
- Eventually the blog started to make money with ads/affiliate stuff
- Soon enough, Trey decided to make extremely limited edition prints of some of his best photos and sell them (like really limited edition – usually only 3 prints at a time) – things snowballed from there
- “In a world where there’s an infinite amount of everything, people want what’s rare”
- This concept is talked more about in The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by Dan Thompson
- Nowadays, with these limited print runs, here’s how Trey prices his photos:
- With larger print runs (3 photos which are 6-10 ft. in width) – The first two are priced at $75k and the third at $90k
- The smaller prints (usually 3 photos which are 3-7 ft. in width) start at $15k and go up to $65k
- “In a world where there’s an infinite amount of everything, people want what’s rare”
- He eventually started a photography blog to distribute his photos
Trey’s New Book: Under the Influence – How to Fake Your Way into Getting Rich on Instagram
- The subtitle – Influecer Fraud, Selfies, Anxiety, Ego, and Mass Delusional Behavior
- Why the long title? – “Sometimes the only chance you have to advertise is the book title”
- Trey almost titled the book “How to Stay Zen on Social Media”
- Related – “The greatest creative gift that anyone can give to themselves, is to let go of themselves”
- The fact is – many people on Instagram are buying followers, likes, and comments
- This creates a false economy and makes a ton of people feel hopeless when it comes to building a social media following
- Why do people buy followers?
- Ego
- To get more business deals
- In 2018 – $2 billion was spent on influencer marketing (it’s only growing)
- In the book, Trey ran an experiment growing a test account to >100k followers which he only paid a few hundred bucks for
- It’s much easier than you think to do this (all detailed in the book)
- You can also buy Instagram comments
- Some of these services even let you write your own comments, which you can distribute across your posts as you see fit
- How can you tell if someone’s doing this?
- There are certain sites that let you examine the historical timeline/growth of an Instagram account, but it takes quite a bit of time to do this
- Most brands spending money on social media marketing definitely don’t look into this – “It’s the wild west out there”
- There are certain sites that let you examine the historical timeline/growth of an Instagram account, but it takes quite a bit of time to do this
- Another point in the book – this is the first time in history where people are seeking the approval of complete strangers
- “Now people base their self-worth on absolute strangers who will never have any material impact on their lives…this is a bad thing”
- Because of this – anxiety rates are sky rocketing
- “Now people base their self-worth on absolute strangers who will never have any material impact on their lives…this is a bad thing”
- Trey adds – “Don’t fall into the trap of despair based on the false reality that appears to happening”
Podding
- This is another concept discussed in the book
- What’s a pod? – It’s a group of Instagram accounts who communicate offline (north of 1,000 people) via something like WhatsApp
- When you post a photo, you message it to the pod and within 5-10 minutes, everyone in the pod is required to like/comment on it
- Without a pod, a photo you post to Instagram is likely only seen by ~1% of your followers
- Why? – The Instagram algorithm is optimized to boost a user’s screen time in order to increase advertising revenue, so they only show photos with the most likes/comments
- You can’t view your feed chronologically
- Any comments/likes boost the photo within the Instagram algorithm – increasing the % of your followers who see it
- How can you find these pods?
- There’s Facebook groups – just search “Instagram pods”
- You can ask other people who appear to get a lot of comments if they’re part of one
- So if you’re trying to grow an Instagram following, if you’re not in a pod – you’re at an immediate disadvantage
How can people grow a real Instagram following then?
- “It’s very difficult”
- The most important thing – have a pretty photo
- But you could argue that anybody can take a good photo nowadays
- “Every photo is a gateway to a story you can tell”
Trey’s Life Advice – Discover Your True Self
- “As you find your true self and become more open-hearted and vulnerable, you start to tell your story, and you can tell your story through whatever your creative mechanism is”
- “Everyone has some kind of true calling that they get obsessed with, and they might not know why”
- For some people, they’re lucky enough to turn this calling into a monetary vehicle
- “Everyone has some kind of true calling that they get obsessed with, and they might not know why”
- Another piece of advice – read books from a wide range of areas
- “As you read all these diverse subjects, you’ll be better able to bring a unique approach to your creative pursuit”
- So dabble in lots, and when you find something you love go all in
Psychedelics
- Trey is a huge fan of Burning Man – he’s gone 8 years in a row (the first few years he didn’t drink/do drugs)
- Then he decided, what the hell, and took mushrooms (he was in his early 40s at the time)
- “I realized it removed a bunch of the filters that the human brain puts into place…I just found it to be so intellectually stimulating”
- “I found it opened up rooms in my mind that I could revisit at any time.”
- Later on, Trey recalls trying LSD:
- “It showed me how incredibly beautiful and wonderful the universe is, and how lucky I am to be apart of it”
- “I see this wonderful tapestry of consciousness, how we’re all connected and all in this together…the answer to everything is love”
- What else has LSD done for Trey?
- “It’s made me more bold, less apologetic, and I now have less fear. This is so important for creatives.”
- “Now, when I look at the world, I see things a little bit differently…I see the trees differently, the mountains differently, and the sky differently”
- “I now understand that you’re not the thoughts in your head, you’re the silence behind the thoughts”
- Then he decided, what the hell, and took mushrooms (he was in his early 40s at the time)
- Kevin has had only one high dose psychedelic mushroom experience and says it was “life changing”
- In a way, psychedelics revert your brain back to a child-like state
- Its really amazing – a piece of tree bark or a blade of grass can become the most fascinating thing in the world
- In a way, psychedelics revert your brain back to a child-like state
- The psychedelic, ibogaine, has some pretty remarkable effects at reversing addictions to dangerous drugs like heroin
