He left Latvia with nothing and built an agency in Dubai, with Elvis

A month after landing, Elvis saw an Instagram story from Mike Thurston, the fitness creator who had inspired the move, saying he was looking for help with his YouTube and social media. Elvis and his partner at the time, Chris, sent their own DMs. Then Elvis asked friends back home to do the same. Somewhere between 30 and 40 people messaged Mike and tagged them, saying these two were in Dubai and could help. Mike replied within 24 hours.

The meeting was about YouTube, and it was going quiet. Elvis had studied Mike's whole brand beforehand and noticed there was no TikTok, in 2021, when TikTok had far more viewers than creators. Mike pushed back that it was for kids and dancing. Elvis showed examples of creators simply talking to camera, and Mike said he'd rather pay someone to do it. That became the offer, and Mike became one of the first clients of what is now Explode.

Elvis sells personal brand building as a way of selling entrepreneurs their time back: strategy, filming, editing, and posting to every platform, so the client only has to show up in front of the camera. His retainers run from 3 to 10 thousand a month. His reasoning is simple. If you want to be premium, you need better people, and you can't charge 500 or 1,000 a month and promise that quality.

He uses the water bottle comparison: around 50 cents at the grocery store, 5 euros at the airport. Same bottle, different market. He told a friend in Latvia with 15 clients at 800 to 1,000 a month to move everyone to 2K. Maybe half would leave, but he would earn the same with half the clients and have room to do better work for the ones who stayed. Elvis keeps margins at 70 to 80 percent and says he doesn't want to be in any business that runs below 40 or 50.

The best clients Elvis has worked with came in thinking in years. One creator went from 30,000 to 100,000 followers in about three months with no ads, and she understood that a single video, even one with 5 million views, changes nothing on its own. The worst clients, in his words, were the ones who said let's try it for a month. His minimum is now three months.

Part of the reason is cost, and part is emotional. Explode builds a team around each client and onboards them like a family member. Doing that every month for someone new, he said, is like starting a new relationship every month. He also says no when the first call is full of limiting beliefs, like a client who says they have no time after hearing the work takes three to six hours a month, or when it's clear they can't keep investing past month three.

Elvis could not afford Dubai alone, so he didn't go alone. He found people with the same mindset who were fine living in one apartment until things picked up, and they pooled their money. His gym client, an IT worker who could work remotely, came too. The deal was that Elvis would train him four or five times a week and the client would cover his rent.

He tells this story because people answer ideas with 'I don't have money.' Elvis did have enough for that month's rent, and chose to keep it and trade instead. Resourcefulness is the thing he says he learned then and still keeps close.

Elvis dropped out of university twice, once in Latvia and once in Denmark, and doesn't care much about degrees. He looks for people who are enthusiastic, bring questions and ideas, answer fast and in depth, and work hard. A skilled editor who replies in two days won't get more chances. When a young photographer turned up to a shoot at one of Dubai's most luxurious residences looking like he had just woken up, Elvis told him to his face, and sent him to a secondhand store for a white shirt and loafers. He came back sharp.

The worst case was an editor who posted Explode's work for a client with a million followers as his own portfolio, claiming the growth, when he had done the captions and B-roll while the strategy came from Elvis. Because the contract said the content was the client's and Explode's intellectual property, one message settled it. His conclusion: have contracts in place with clients before you need them.