Meet Michael Shatravka

After nearly a decade of creating social media content for small businesses, I noticed a troubling pattern: each year, my videos received less engagement. Despite their professional appearance, featuring attractive models and on-point messaging, something felt off, and it bothered me deeply. It seemed like content that would have gone viral years ago barely managed to break a few hundred views now. It felt like society was evolving, and my videos didn’t matter anymore.

Feeling burned out from putting all this effort into content that barely made an impact, I initially blamed myself. I questioned if I’d lost my touch as a videographer or if my clients were lacking marketing strategy. However, tired of depending on others for my success, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I became a co-owner of an exotic car rental business in Miami. You’re probably wondering, “How the hell does a videographer pull that off?” Truth be told, I’m still figuring it out myself. Why did I do this? As a videographer, I didn’t really have much control over the marketing process. Even if I made the best video, I could never be certain it was promoted properly. So, I felt compelled to become an actual business owner to have a say in the marketing efforts. Sound crazy, right??

Our strategy was simple: associate our exotic rental fleet with the ultra-luxurious Miami VIP lifestyle – concierge services, yachts, mansions, club scenes, and beautiful women. Leveraging old contacts to gain access to these locations, we aimed to create the most luxurious, cinematic content imaginable, expecting a flood of inquiries! But reality had other plans. After posting those videos, there was nothing but crickets… Despite featuring hot girls and lavish settings, and having top-of-the-line cinematics, we were barely able to rent out our Ferrari’s for a measly $400. It was a blow to my ego.

As we sat there for the rest of the week, waiting for the phones to ring… idly scrolling through Instagram…my partner suddenly said, “You know, this Ghostwriter guy is trending big time… what if we got in on this?” And that’s when a bunch of light bulbs went off in our heads. (FYI: Ghostwriter was this anonymous individual using AI technology to mimic Drake’s voice and create a viral hit song without Drake even knowing, it was a HUGE controversy).

Immediately, we dressed up our office admin, Pablo, as “Ghostwriter” and stuck him in a yellow Ferrari 458 Spider with the top down (you could say Pablo had the best office job in the world). The aim of this marketing stunt was to cruise around the streets of Miami, hoping people would recognize “Ghostwriter” and view it as some sort of celebrity endorsement for our business.

To my surprise, it worked like a charm. Every passing car was yelling “GHOSTWRITER” and singing the “Heart on my sleeve” lyrics. And the cherry on top? Everyone filming us was unknowingly fanboying over Pablo (Ghostwriter) and sharing the videos all over Instagram, which even led to us being featured on @onlyindade (a viral community page that showcases scandalous events in Miami).

The next day, we woke up to thousands of views, at least a hundred DMs, and even famous rappers inquiring about our exotic rentals. You could say for the rest of that week, we milked those Ghostwriter videos harder than Ghostwriter!

And that’s when things finally started to click for me. I realized nobody gives a f*ck about “professional” cinematic videos. My biggest problem was that I never experienced wild success with content, and now I finally had something to compare it to. I realized the issue was that these pro videos were boring, and the market was so oversaturated with them.

Right now, people were craving something RELATABLE, something RELEVANT, something REAL. And you know what the best part was? We didn’t have to spend a penny on any of this! No advertisements, no paying influencers, no expensive productions; all of this hype was generated using our phones. And from that point on, I said f*ck all this fancy camera sh*t; it’s gonna be only iPhones from here on out.

Aaaaand a few months later, things came crashing down just as quickly as they came shooting up, the party was over. Long story short, we were trying to scale too fast, bleeding overhead, and failing to find the right product-market fit (I’ll save the full story for another time). I was pretty bummed out; you could even say it was rock bottom for me. I lost a ton of money, was struggling with obesity, and found myself back at square one, feeling like a total failure.

For the next month, I took a break and disconnected from everything, trying to figure out where I went wrong, how I could have done things differently, and if there was any meaning to this… I thought about all the people I had met—many of them were multi-millionaires; some were even kids in their twenties. What was interesting is that when you actually met them in person, you realized they were just regular ass people. The only difference was they had learned how to use social media to leverage themselves.

It made me think back to the “Ghostwriter” stunt, how we generated all this hype with minimal effort by tapping into something relevant. As I looked closer at all these successful people, I saw the one thing they all had in common was taking whatever trends were happening in society and figuring out a way to apply it to their brands to make it relatable to their audience. They were doing it in an authentic way that felt completely genuine, almost as if they were speaking straight from the heart, appearing unscripted and effortless.