From $199k in three years to $925k in one.

[Cold open]

Havana: It was up and down.

Havana: There is no way you can do the work that the team does by yourself, because you are limited by time.

Leon: You already had a main job.

Havana: Yeah. I think we're averaging 30 to 40 million views now on my main account.

Leon: Very simple question to ask, but how happy are you with the service we provided?

Havana: I'm very happy.

Leon: Okay, I think that should be enough to say.

[Interview]

Leon: My name is Leon. I'm 24 years old. I've been leading this agency for the past three years, and we were able to bring several creators past the six-figure mark. This is Havana.

Havana: Hi.

Leon: She joined last year and was also able to surpass the six-figure line. Today we're going to go through how it went for her joining the agency, how it looked before, and all the things that surround the topic. Maybe you can introduce yourself for a second.

Havana: Sure. Hi, I'm Havana. I'm 28, and I joined this agency about a year ago. Before that, I'd been doing OnlyFans for about three years by myself.

Leon: And as we said, last June 15th, I suppose, you joined, and things started to go up quite rapidly, I'd say.

Havana: Yeah. It was a great time.

Leon: It was a good year. Let's leave it at that. So how was it, doing OnlyFans before you joined our agency?

Havana: It was up and down. I had some okay months, I had a lot of bad months. One of the biggest things was: if anything happened in my private life, if I got sick, or friends got sick, my family got something, or I wanted to go on a vacation, I would just not earn any money. I had to be very diligent with everything. I had absolutely no security net, which is stressful as a creator.

Leon: Absolutely.

Havana: That's one of the biggest things that was just difficult for me. I had to leave the country for three weeks or so because of a family emergency, and I made zero dollars in that time. And that adds up. It gets super stressful.

Leon: It does. But you even hired your own chatters.

Havana: Yes, I did.

Leon: So you're one of the few. That was quite impressive. And I think at the point we took over, you did around 7k monthly for the past 30 days, which is really solid, especially if you're all on your own. You were doing all of the content, so basically you already had a main job, and then you had to do all the other things on the side.

Havana: Yeah, that was pretty stressful.

Leon: You had a lot of offers from other agencies. In the beginning it was like 10 to 15 a day. What stopped you from joining them?

Havana: The biggest thing for me was the contracts. Some of the contracts were for two years, for three years, and if you want to get out, you have to buy yourself out. It's like $25,000 to leave the agency, and you don't have a guarantee that you'll have that much money laying around if things go south. The other thing was, a lot of them are very pushy. A lot of them don't really explain what exactly they offer. They make you a lot of promises, but they don't explain how you're going to get there. It feels a little bit scammy at times.

Leon: And I think from the creators you knew who joined an agency, they were all unhappy.

Havana: Yeah, exactly.

Leon: That's what we get a lot as well. And it's pretty frustrating, especially if you have such high expectations and then nothing gets delivered. So, we already said we worked together for one year. How was it in the beginning? You already had quite a nice place to stay, you already had quite a nice car, but everything was super stressful and overwhelming, and the business was more of a burden then. And I mean, you get into it because you think, wow, there are those creators who got the nice cars and got everything. We'll come to that part later, by the way. So you joined. How did things change at that point?

Havana: Well, they changed very rapidly.

Leon: That's for sure.

Havana: I think even in the first month, when we were still trying to figure out exactly what branding we're going with, how much I can work per day, all of these things. What did we do? I think we quadrupled.

Leon: Yeah. But the statistics kind of looked like, pfft.

Havana: So at first, I was like, okay, I need to be careful with the money, I need to set it aside. You never know. But then I got to move to a much nicer state, a much better neighborhood. It's very safe here. It's a good place. I didn't have to really look at the price of the place I'm moving into, because I was like, okay, I got it.

Leon: Yeah, you got it. Which was really nice, to be able to get out of the Midwest and into a nicer area. I'm here right now, so that's your place. It looks decent.

Havana: It's decent, yeah. You can stay here, that's for sure. And little things as well: I was able to pay off my credit cards, pay off any remaining debt I still had from college, stuff that accumulates over the years. I was able to just zero it out.

Leon: Perfect. You sleep better when you don't owe anybody anything.

Havana: Yeah, that's for sure. I'm saving, I'm investing, things like this. Oh, I was able to get a nicer car, too.

Leon: Maybe we can get a look into that later on. So, work-wise, how was that? Because from what I got, it was just: I don't know what brand to choose, I don't know what content to create, I don't know what people want to see on my profile, what you actually sell in the end. Tons of tasks, tons of things to do all around the business, and you just lose track of what to do. You even got some coachings, I think, for a few hundred bucks, but you say they pretty much sucked.

Havana: It was common sense, such as treat it as a business, but I was already treating it as a business.

Leon: You gave your best, and you did quite well. But then you came into the agency. How did the systems we provided, the content, the tasks we gave you, change your workflow?

Havana: Well, it's much more structured. Before I was part of this agency, I would wake up and be like, hmm, what do I do today? What do I feel like filming? And oftentimes it would flop, because there was just no demand for that, or it would get flagged, and it felt like I'm wasting my time, because I'm creating so much content but it's just going nowhere.

Leon: And from what you told me, it was so weird, because every girl kind of seemed to go viral effortlessly.

Havana: Yeah, that's what you think. You think you got lucky.

Leon: But there is no luck in this business.

Havana: Exactly.

Leon: That's what we told you in the beginning, and that's what turned out in the end. A lot of stress relief, a lot of structure, and you started realizing: okay, there's nothing wrong with me, there's just something wrong with the way I approach things. Because from a creator's perspective, you always think it's your fault. Do I not look good? Is there no demand for my body type, for my face? You're always questioning yourself, but everybody has a place. It's a very big cake, and everybody can get a slice.

Havana: Oh, yeah.

Leon: But you just need to know exactly what piece of the cake is yours. And I think that's what turned out for you as well: you were doing the job of a marketing manager, of a background manager, of a cutter, of someone who researches, of a poster. And then you're the creator on top of it, and you also still have to film everything.

Havana: Exactly.

Leon: It's just not possible to deliver everything. So you needed a team, and I'd say you got the right one. Let me look at my questions real quick. How much reach did you gain in terms of followers since we started working with you?

Havana: I think I started around 100,000, that was what I had going on myself. A year later we're at 500,000, I think we're scratching 600,000. And one of the biggest things is just reach in general. I can maybe make a total of 1 million views per month myself, which sounds like a lot. It's not, in this business, because you never know who's watching. The right target audience is also definitely a problem. I think we're averaging 30 to 40 million views now on my main account.

Leon: And we have a lot of big accounts. Given the fact that we have several people working in the marketing, it's super easy to have multiple accounts and a lot more reach, without having more work on your hands, so you can focus on the content. All in all, a very simple question to ask: how happy are you with the service we provided?

Havana: I'm very happy.

Leon: I think that should be enough, seeing your reaction. So, would you be okay with telling people how much turnover was made on your account in the best month?

Havana: Yes.

Leon: And that is granted, we hadn't been working together that long at that point. I think that was five months or so in.

Havana: Yeah, I think it was around 160,000 USD.

Leon: We did 156,000 USD on OnlyFans.

Havana: On OnlyFans, and then we had Fansly.

Leon: Which was 25,000.

Havana: Yeah, something like that.

Leon: No, we're joking, guys. How arrogant of us. We don't want to count that into the calculation, since we are in OnlyFans management first and foremost. Okay, so, from your perspective: you fought against having an agency for a long while. You thought, oh my god, somebody will manage my account, somebody will have control over me.

Havana: So I think that's what a lot of people need to know: there's literally no point where an agency has actual control. You as an agency don't. Other agencies do.

Leon: Maybe because we don't do the necessary steps to get control over something. Everything is always in your hands. You've got control over everything. You have control over everything that gets posted, over every platform that we start using. We always get your okay before getting started. That's how it went so far, and how it will always go, with you and every creator that we work with. So, given the fact you fought so long against the thought of having an agency, what can you tell other creators, as advice, as someone who is, I believe, in the 0.02 percent of OF currently?

Havana: The thing is, in order to get there, or better, you can't do it yourself. It's not a personal failure that you only have 24 hours in a day. If you want to take this seriously, you will be in front of the camera for a couple of hours a day to begin with. You have to get yourself ready first. You have other things going on in life aside from work. There is no way you can do the work that the team does by yourself, because you are limited by time. And sometimes resources, which is something that also is being handled in many ways. For me, for example, to hire a cutter, chatters, this, that, the other, that is a process. Some people have the job to only hire, that's all they do all day. It's not easy to find people who are good at what they do. In general, you just can't do it all by yourself. And the other thing: for me, a big factor was, do I want men to see me? Which is funny, because a lot of men see me. But I was like, do I want men that I work with to see me in this, that, and the other situation? But it's so professional. We've been hanging out for a week, and it didn't even cross my mind.

Leon: It's also pretty funny, we're just hanging out like friends all the time, roasting the other manager that is working on the account. Okay, and probably that's what concerns people a lot: an agency takes their cut, that's obvious to anyone, and you have the concern: will I have less in my pocket after giving them their cut? Did you have less in your pocket after paying your cut?

Havana: No.

Leon: I think it was, at the best points, three times, four times, five times, six times, ten times the amount you had in your pocket before.

Havana: Yeah, exactly. And not necessarily in the first months, even. At first I was like, maybe I have to give you guys three months to prove yourselves to me, or something like that. That wasn't the case. I think we made back what I wanted to have, in a week.

Leon: The first day we started was like 1.5K already.

Havana: Something like that. And then I was like, oh, okay. I think I'm going to make what I need to make.