What can you make of Andrew Tate's creator-led biz model?

Most folks either love or hate him... but we just wanna analyze what he's doing.

If you haven't heard of Andrew Tate than you've probably been living under a log

He was the most Googled human being on the planet last year in 2022. And he is controversial as hell.

In part because he's got a big mouth and he likes to use it.

For example he's known for making quotes like this one below, which completely break our acceptable social norms.

So this has resulted in him being banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube.

And many other celebrities kind of write him off. And consider him a blow hard.

But if you did this... you'd probably be writing him off too soon. Which kind of reminds me of when Donald Trump ran for the election.

Everyone thought it was kind of a joke at the beginning. How can such an offensive person take the most important position in the world (at the time)?

Reality was that he had a huge, highly loyal following. Similar to the cult-like following that Andrew Tate has among guys.

And fact of the matter is Tate's a very charismatic and pretty smart dude.

Plus he's worth hundreds of millions. Most sources estimate he's worth about $300m.

A bit about Andrew Tate

Andrew Tate is a former professional kickboxer who first got well known for his appearance on the reality TV show "Big Brother" in 2016.

He was born in Washington DC to an African American father (who was an int'l chess master) and an English mother. And was raised in Chicago and then Goshen, Illinois.

But after the divorce of his parents his mother took them to England.

Later in 2005 he began practicing martial arts and by 2009 was winning championships.

In December 2022, Tate and his brother Tristan were famously arrested in Romania with suspicion of human trafficking and forming an organised crime group. And are awaiting trial in house arrest.

So what is Hustler University?

Its probably best to think of it as an online university. And it claims to have over 100,000 people in it.

There is mentoring from 'multimilionaires' and you learn concrete skills through its courses in things like e-Commerce, Copywriting, freelancing, investing, etc.

So there's an online library of course that you can take while also networking with the community. Not so different from the approach hundreds of other creators take.

The course also charges $147 a month.

Perhaps the most interesting part is the 'multi-level marketing' element of how it spreads

Basically everyone that joins is by default an affiliate. Who can earn referral money for the people that they refer.

But its a bit different from traditional referrals in that you don't earn a set commission. Rather you continue to earn 50% of the continuing revenue of anyone that joins because of you.

So Tate is at top, the people below him pay full price, but make 50% of what the people below them refer. etc.

And therefore if you pay $147 but successfully refer two people than you essentially paid nothing.

The Content Marketing Approach is somewhere between genius and extremely egotistical

One of the primary methods the courses teaches to get others to join Huster University is cutting up clips of Tate to drive traffic as an affiliate marketer to the course.

So you see thousands of people making social media posts or Tiktok and Youtube videos that push his course by using images of Tate.

The guy's image is probably one of the most disseminated images on the Internet.

And so basically this guy has built a cult-like army pushing his content. But they do so not because they're brainwashed... but rather because they're financially motivated to.

So what can we learn from Andrew Tate?

First... let's start out by saying that there are many things we disagree with about what Tate says in social media. As he often comes off fairly chauvanistic and offensive. And in no way do we condone that.

But the guy isn't all bluster. He's actually a pretty smart dude.

He is almost like the latest twist on this whole creator-led model game.

Because he has been able to develop a huge, highly loyal audience that not just listens to him. But they also make money for him.

If you think about the traditional online course model which tons of creators do.. he has put it on steroids. By giving his fans incentives to become affiliates of it.

And so the lesson here is... don't just blindly follow models.

Put your own twist. Find your own path to virality. Just be a bit more polite about it than Tate is :)