Dani Austin & Jordan Ramirez: How They Got To $40 Million+ Year As Influencers

**Jordan Ramirez** (0:00)
Yeah, I mean, our first full year, I think you already shared it. Well, you said 20 is 40, but yeah, we did about $40 million, and then this year, we're on track to do 30%, 35% growth.
It's crazy.

**Shaan Puri** (0:15)
Yeah.
So we are here in the... The shed. This studio, I'm looking at the video, it looks legit. People don't know what this looks like from the outside. This is definitely a sketchy... I've seen a Netflix documentary about a shed like this.

**Jordan Ramirez** (0:40)
Well, you got here five minutes later than we did. It was like 100 degrees in here.

**Shaan Puri** (0:43)
Right.

**Jordan Ramirez** (0:44)
I was like, this is gonna be a sweaty podcast.

**Shaan Puri** (0:47)
And this is... You guys are different than, I would say, our normal guests, which are almost always business, like tech, software type of entrepreneur. Y'all are entrepreneurs in a different way. And you're Instagram famous, so that's cool, that's amazing.
You tagged me in a story yesterday. And I gotta say, my wife has never looked at me that way before. She was like, oh, because she's never listened to one episode of this podcast. No way. We've done maybe 400 episodes. She's not a podcast person in general. Like she doesn't listen to anyone's podcast. Yeah.
But you would think maybe she'll listen to a lot of podcasts. We got a little kid now, there's just not a lot of time to do things like that.
But I think she'll listen to this one. So I'm excited because she's a fan of yours. And so we hung out at dinner last night, got to know each other a little bit. So I'm excited. Maybe we'll do like you guys give like a 60 second intro of who you guys are. Why introduce yourselves to the audience.

**Dani Austin** (1:42)
I'll go first. So my name is Dani Austin and I started creating content online about 10 years ago. I was actually living in Austin. I was at the University of Texas sophomore, like just making videos on YouTube in my dorm room. Kind of just grew from there really fast. Then got on Instagram, all the other platforms.
We now run Divi, which is a scalp care, hair care product brand.
And we do that together. We have a lot of fun doing that. Honestly, online, we just share anything about our lives from like having two kids under two, to affordable fashion, yeah.

**Jordan Ramirez** (2:24)
We kind of been doing that together for five years. So she's been online for 10 years. We met. We didn't work together until we got married.
I was in like Austin tech scene before we got married. And then I was telling you last night, this just became a lifestyle and it was all consuming. And so she would be in like Turks and Caicos and I would be in a boardroom and I'd be like, oh my gosh, like what am I doing in my life? And so around 2018, we took the leap to work together, jumped into kind of like the influencer space, which we didn't have a name before that. It was just like we created content. And then I think the media started covering it a lot more.
And then they labeled me an Instagram husband and then they labeled our industry.

**Shaan Puri** (3:04)
How do you feel about that label?

**Jordan Ramirez** (3:06)
You know, it was fine. Like I'm glad that I did it.

**Dani Austin** (3:09)
Wait, that's so not true. At first you hated it.
He was like, what are you doing? He's like, oh, you never knew.

**Jordan Ramirez** (3:17)
Well, when you're coming out of college, like, you know, so much of your identity is wrapped up in your title, especially being here in Austin, Texas. Like, you know, in the tech scene, it was like, oh, what startup are you part of? Do you all have funding? You know, what's your title? What employee number were you?
And so I was still kind of caught up in that mindset. And then, you know, we jumped in together. It was like, I remember the first article that came out was by a writer named Taylor Lorenz.
And she wrote an article about what is the Instagram husband.

**Shaan Puri** (3:40)
I got a history with Taylor Lorenz too.

**Jordan Ramirez** (3:41)
Really?
Dude, it's crazy. A lot of people have a history with her now. But, you know, she so she she wrote that article and she quoted me in it. And then I was like labeled the Instagram husband. But, yeah. And so we did the influencer industry for five years together and just honestly created content together. And then COVID hit and brands started really investing in that space.