generAI

CEO & Co-Founder

Trend Z 

Co-Founder

The Nice Center

Content Manager

WAVE.tv

Social Media Ambassador

College Truckers, LLC

Campus Co-Founder

U.S. Bank

Commercial Banking Intern

Co-Founder at generAI | Helping DTC brands leverage AI

Most DTC marketing teams do not realize in ~2 years, they will have hundreds of agents and ai workflows working for them.

But most brands have no idea how to even begin.

That’s me. I help DTC marketing teams build unified AI systems and agents. The future is about to get wild.

Email: Jimmy@humansquared.co

Jimmy Slagle

Return on Creators

Co-Founder & CEO

The Roc Crüe

Leading new agency initiatives
Cultivating new and existing partnerships
Guiding forward-looking strategy and execution

Head of Strategy

Trndsttrs

Guiding Strategy. Getting out of the team's way. Helping brands crush on TikTok Shop.

Trndsttrs Media is a Gen Z owned & operated agency that helps brands connect with modern consumers.

We are social media marketing gurus, content creators, social influencers, and trendsetters 🚀.

Founder & CEO

Seven years ago, I was just a kid with a hunch.

Brands didn't understand Gen Z. 

I saw the gap and knew it had to be fixed.

But the thing about being an 18 y/o dropout with no experience, clients, or money?

No one gives a shit.

I had to go prove it.

I scratched. Clawed. Worked like hell to just get a chance.

I got a shot and took it.

Trndsttrs was born. 

The idea became a team.

A team that would prove our thesis brick by brick. 

The stakes grew and so did the team.

We helped McDonald's navigate COVID. 

We launched your favorite brands on TikTok and hacked the algorithm.

We changed the vertical content game forever. 

We helped brands break through the noise. Built creator partnerships that mattered. And ran campaigns that didn't sell into culture, but shaped it.

We built, pound for pound, the best Gen Z team in the world.

But here's what they don't tell you about building something from scratch:

You don't just learn how to solve problems. 

You learn to spot the ones that keep coming back.

For years, we solved the same problem over and over again.

Every campaign, every deal, every strategy—it all pointed to the same gap.

The brand <> creator ecosystem is broken.

We worked around it. We filled the gaps ourselves.

Until one day, we realized we weren’t just filling the gaps.

We were building the solution.

Now I find myself building RoC (return on creators).

Not a new idea—it’s the culmination of everything we’ve built, everything we’ve learned, and every challenge we’ve solved along the way.

This is our moonshot. Beaten and battered grapes forming our magnum opus.

I'll continue to operate with Trndsttrs as the premier social commerce agency—partnering with a select group of brands to drive results on the fastest-growing commerce platforms in the world.

Jake Bjorseth

Closed The Biggest Deal of My Life This Weekend 

She's been with me in building two companies.

Dropping out of college to pursue this crazy dream.

Starting our influencer operation from the ground floor into the thing we're the absolute best at today.

Following me and that dream from her family in Kansas City to Los Angeles and now Florida.

She's the only one that's been with me through it all.

Missing dates I couldn't find the time for.

Rarely any budget for birthday or anniversary gifts.

Dealing with the chaos of the entrepreneurial life we chose.

I owe it all to her.

Amanda, now let's go get you a new last name people can't pronounce and go build one last venture together:

A family.

Social Commerce + Creator Marketing | Mom's Favorite Son

Email thread with a random girl I went to high school with who had built a career on TikTok. 

Now, 6 years later, my fiancé and business partner.

A smarter person would have something more profound to say, but I’ll give my dumb, uneducated version:

Life is pretty cool.

Summer 2018.

The summer I dropped out of college.

The summer I bet everything on Trndsttrs.

This photo is wild to look at now.

None of us were getting paid.

We were borrowing equipment.

We were shooting campaigns we had no business landing.

And my friends were working for me, trusting a vision I could barely articulate.

But here’s the truth:

I wasn’t a “founder.”

I wasn’t a “CEO.”

I wasn’t even sure I was making the right decision.

I was just a 19-year-old kid who refused to wait for permission.

While everyone else spent the summer partying, we spent ours:
 – filming in the heat
 – editing in my apartment until 3am
 – pitching brands that ghosted us
 – trying to build something out of nothing

We didn’t have funding.

We didn’t have salaries.

We barely had a plan.

But we had belief.

And sometimes that’s enough for the first chapter.

Looking back…

Those unpaid summers.

Those friends who took the risk before the results.

Those early clients who gave us a shot.

That’s the foundation of everything I have now.

People see the team today.

The success.

The brands.

The traction.

But this photo?

This is where the actual company was built.

Not on revenue.

Not on strategy decks.

But on someone saying “I’m in… even if this fails.”

I’ll never forget that.

And to anyone in their “unpaid summer” right now:

It doesn’t feel glamorous.

It doesn’t feel like “founder life.”

And most days, it doesn’t feel like progress.

But it’s the part you’ll look back on one day and say:

“That’s when everything changed.”

I toured the penthouse apartment in college three years before I moved into the same unit.

Designed org charts for a 50+ person team when it was just five of us.

Built personal budgets and savings plans for 10x the income I had at the time.

Strategized social media campaigns for McDonald's exactly a year before they became a client.

Hired my now fiancé for an influencer project before I knew her.

Spent weeks in Venice Beach touring rentals on Zillow before I moved there two years later.

I took a freaking family vacation to the beach I now walk every morning when I was in high school!!!

Call it whatever you want,

Manifesting
The law of attraction
Universal Alignment
Visualization
Self-fulfilling prophecy

It's probably real or I'm just insanely lucky.

For the skeptics, and understandably so, I have just one question:

But what if it worked for you too?

TikTok Shop just did $500,000,000 in US sales over Black Friday–Cyber Monday.

Half. A. Billion.
In four days.

And here’s the real story everyone is missing:

This wasn’t a “marketing win.”

This was a distribution win.

Because TikTok Shop isn’t scaling ads.

It’s scaling creators-as-channels.

The Big Unlock:

For the first time in US commerce history, content, culture, and checkout all lived in one motion:
   • You saw the creator
   • You trusted the creator
   • You bought through the creator

No tab switching. No Google searching. No Amazon comparing.

Just swipe → watch → buy.

Creators aren’t talent anymore, they’re storefronts with built-in traffic, trust, and now, SKU-level attribution.

And this weekend proved it at scale.

But here’s the part most marketers will get wrong:

Everyone will focus on the $500M number.

But that’s a tiny sliver of the real market:

US e-comm over the same four days = $44.2B

Amazon US annual sales = $500B+

TikTok Shop US 2024 = $15.8B projected

TikTok Shop is still small compared to Amazon.

But its growth curve is what matters:

⬆️ Half a billion in year 2.5
⬆️ Major brands (Disney, Samsung, Ralph Lauren) joining the platform
⬆️ Social-driven shopping up 56.5% YoY

This is the shift we’ve been talking about.

We’re watching ecomm dollars migrate from Amazon → to content → to creators → to social-first retail.

Why this matters for brands in 2025

Most brands still treat creators like vendors:

PDFs, One-off briefs, Manual tracking...

“Let’s hope this performs” energy

But that model breaks instantly at scale.

And scale is exactly where TikTok Shop is forcing everyone next.

Creators are becoming a performance channel.

Not in theory... in practice.

You don’t scale Facebook Ads with interns.

And you won’t scale social commerce with spreadsheets.

The brands who win in 2025 will be the ones who build:

• Creator CRM
• Attribution → iteration loops
• Predictive ROI models
• Always-on creator networks
• Infrastructure built for 100 creators a month, not 10

$500M isn’t the headline.

The headline is this:

A platform that didn’t exist ~24 months ago just turned creators into one of the fastest-growing retail channels in America.

And we’re still early.

TikTok Shop just did $500M over BFCM… and the headline everyone is sharing is the wrong one.

I broke down what this really means for the future of ecomm and why creators just became America’s fastest-growing retail channel.

Full breakdown here 👇

View newsletter: Social Commerce Collective

(Book 2026 Planning Session Here) TikTok Shop just did $500M in US sales over Black Friday–Cyber Monday. Half. A. Billion. In four days. And here’s th

Open article: The Half-Billion-Dollar Signal: Creators Just Became America’s Fastest-Growing Retail Channel by Jake Bjorseth • 2 min read

The Half-Billion-Dollar Signal: Creators Just Became America’s Fastest-Growing Retail Channel

I’ve been talking to a lot of founders lately, and there’s a theme:

Everyone is working hard.

Very few feel like they’re making meaningful forward progress.

And it’s not because they lack talent.

It’s because the landscape changed faster than they adapted.

• Paid is more expensive
• CAC keeps rising
• Retention gets harder.
• Every channel feels saturated.

Meanwhile…

The brands breaking through right now are quietly tapping into a distribution shift most founders still haven’t fully woken up to.

Creators aren’t “influencers” anymore.

They’re infrastructure.

Discovery → Trust → Conversion… all happening through them.

And here’s the part no one wants to admit:

More brands aren’t on TikTok Shop than are.

That gap is the opportunity.

And it’s closing.

Which brings me to December.

December is the only month where the world slows down just enough for a founder to get ahead instead of catching up:

To rebuild the growth engine.

To reset the rhythm.

To fix the foundation.

To step into 2026 with momentum instead of hope.

Most founders wait until January.

The ones who win start before it.

So here’s where I’m at:

Help me help you.

I’m attaching a teaser of our exact program

It outlines the system we use, the way creators become distribution, and the operational structure required to win next year.

(It doesn’t show pricing, just the framework + offer.)

But if you actually want my eyes on your brand…

The "Comment 2026" for "X" is too boring... 

DM and I’ll reach out personally with:

• A 50+ 2026 TikTok Strategy Deck
• A calendar link to book a free 2026 Planning Call
• Free access to our software Return on Creators that runs it all

December is the window.

2026 is the opportunity.

Let’s not miss either.

TikTok Shop 2026 Strategy Teaser

Vine is back. Sort of. 

And it says a lot about where the internet is going.

I spent this morning thinking about something wild:

A decade-old app just resurfaced…

And somehow, it feels more relevant than half the platforms that launched this year.

Vine (now revived as “diVine”) brought back 100,000+ of its original 6-second videos.

And it’s taking a hard stance: no generative AI uploads. Only real humans, real cameras.

This hit me for one reason:

We’re officially entering the era where nostalgia is a strategy.

Consumers don’t just want new features anymore.

They want a feeling.
 
They want the internet they grew up with.

They want identity back.

And the comeback of Vine tells us something brands need to pay attention to.

Short-form didn’t win because it was short.

It won because it felt raw.

It felt human.

It felt like creativity had constraints again.

Today, platforms are bloated.

Feeds are flooded with AI sludge.

Authenticity feels algorithmically filtered.

So of course an old format suddenly feels refreshing.

Here’s the real takeaway:

The next wave of social isn’t going to be “more.”
 
It’s going to be less.

Less polished.

Less synthetic.

Less optimized for machines.

More human.

More native.

More emotional.

Brands that embrace this shift will cut through the noise instantly.

Not by trying to out-AI everyone.

But by returning to constraints that force creativity.

If you’re a marketer, creator, or brand leader… ask yourself:

Are you chasing complexity?

Or are you building for the internet people miss?

Times I've Been Asked If I Had A College Degree:

0

Times I've Been Asked About Case Studies:

3,000+

Meritocracy: holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability.

Don't take for granted just how unique this moment in time is.

For thousands of years, your success depended on who your parents were.

For the last century, it was your college and degree based on grades you got at 16 years old.

Today, it's... what you can actually do.

My passion for entrepreneurship and marketing is all a facade.

A trick played by my own brain against my subconscious.

And all of this you see is nothing more than the outlet for the real motivation.

For some, that intrinsic motivation is money.

Attention for many more.

More nefarious things, but helpful, for others.

For me, I know all too well the hidden desire that makes me tick.

Competition.

I've had an obsessive need to compete, and win, since as young as I can remember.

Nothing could ever just be a fun game to play.

Sports, activities, school work, video games...

I didn't care what it was, I needed to win.

I used to find ways to cheat playing freaking Uno with my family.

I spent 20 minutes last night watching a Youtube video on strategies for the card game "Spades" so I can crush my buddies this weekend.

It's a problem... 

But it's who I am.

And it ain't changing.

Maybe I need a therapist.

Or maybe I need a business that lets me work with hundreds of brands getting the chance to compete everyday across every category.

If you're a founder, I know the same is true for you.

There is some intrinsic motivation behind it all that is the real reason you do what you do.

Find that motivation.

Cut the crap trying to convince yourself you were born to sling enterprise software or CPG products on the internet. 

Lean into that intrinsic motivation and design your life for it.

You'll be glad you did

TikTok isn’t the Silk Road.

It’s Rome.

The Silk Road was a trade route.

Rome was a world order.

TikTok isn’t just connecting culture and commerce…

It’s centralizing it.

Here’s the real analogy:

Rome didn’t just influence the world, it dictated it.

All roads led back to Rome.

And all influence led out of it.

TikTok operates the same way today:
👉 Trends begin there
👉 Narratives spread from there
👉 Products are validated there
👉 Purchases happen because of it

Not because TikTok is “randomly powerful.”

But because of its origin.

A cultural empire disguised as a social app.

Most platforms distribute influence horizontally.

TikTok funnels it vertically.

It’s not a marketplace of ideas,

It’s the epicenter where ideas are minted, ranked, and exported.

Creators orbit it.

Brands depend on it.

Consumers treat it as truth.

And whether we like it or not…

Every road in modern culture now leads back to TikTok.

The companies pretending TikTok is just another platform are the ones falling behind.

The ones treating it like Rome, the undeniable center of cultural gravity, are the ones winning.
—

If you want to understand where culture, commerce, and attention are heading…

Don’t study trade routes.

Study empires.

taplio

The Battle

Jimmy Slagle

Jake Bjorseth

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taplio

The Battle

Jimmy Slagle

Jake Bjorseth

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jake Bjorseth's LinkedIn Performance

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