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

2018 - toured penthouse apartment downtown while just a college student with no money. 

2020 - moved in

2019 - visited LA and checked out Zillow listings in Venice beach

2021 - moved into one of the same listings right off the beach

2023 - family vacation in 30A, Florida. Fell in love with the beach town vibe.

2025 - moved into house there .5 miles off the beach

Kicking off 2026 staying at a farmstead with chickens, goats, pigs, sheep, ducks, turkeys… 

and our two German shepherds herding it all. 

The 2028 vision has already come to life…

The only thing between now and then:

- some hard work
- some smart decisions 
- Father Time

Thoughts ➡️ Reality

Social Commerce + Creator Marketing | Mom's Favorite Son

The incentive will determine the outcome.

If your team isn't directly incentivized to work harder, why will they?

If your agency partner has no upside, why will they create it?

Call me cynical but everything in life is quid pro quo.

And the "quo" of not getting fired is not proportional to what it once was.

I took the holiday break to design this for our business.

Three rules for incentives across org:

1. Incentivize day-day role

As your capacity and bandwidth grows, so should your earnings. Do more, earn more.

2. Incentive on department success

Training + collaborating team members can be negative to existing workload. 

Put incentives to department team success collectively.

3. Incentive on company value creation (market cap, earnings)

Equity shares for leadership, rev-shares for everyone else.

AI generative content is going to sky rocket 500+ brands this year.

Then it will destroy the brand reputation of the 1,000+ brands that copy the formula right as the consumer pendulum swings back around. 

I hope I'm wrong

Youthvine Agency

I drive strategy, agency growth, and nurture creator and social community programs at Youthvine, a next-gen lifestyle marketing agency and talent network. Focused on connecting brands to youth culture’s pulse—action sports, music, fashion, and social change—we blend strategic expertise with hands-on creator-driven approaches to deliver authentic impact.

Chief Engagement Officer

ThinkWithWitt

We help companies and nonprofits modernize their brand storytelling, social content, creator partnerships and audience engagement strategies to impact change and drive business growth.

Specialization: youth culture, hard-to-reach demographics, fandom communities, and cross-generational communications.

Guided by data. Driven by culture 🔥

Senior Youth & Creator Marketing Strategist, Problem Solver & Brand Builder

Thrive Global

Thrive Global is Ariana Huffington's health, wellness and fitness media resource. Together we're on a mission to end the stress and burnout epidemic by offering companies and individuals sustainable, science-based solutions to enhance both well-being and performance.

Contributing Author

YouTube

As a Senior Youth Culture Marketing Strategist for YouTube via GLG consulting, I have leveraged my expertise and understanding of youth culture to drive product innovation, enhance user experience, and develop effective marketing communications strategies in collaboration with prominent creators and users. Through our co-creation efforts, we have delivered tangible results and helped businesses stay ahead of emerging trends and remain competitive in an ever-changing marketplace.

Senior Youth Market Insights and Strategic Advisory 

We Are Family

Cross Generational Marketing Strategist | U.S. Market

Kogan Page

Co-Authored 'The Gen Z Frequency: How Brands Tune In and Build Credibility' with Derek E. Baird. The title was released on September 28, 2018.

Connect your marketing with youth culture and resonate with Generation Z using this expert guide, packed with proven strategies and usable frameworks for effective youth marketing. Generation Z, ranging from tweens to young adults, has enormous spending power; yet it is one of the most challenging generational cohorts for brands to reach.

Embodying an unrelenting relationship with information and mobile technology from a young age, Generation Z's ecosystem is infinitely more complex and varied than any generation before. Staying tuned-in to this demographic's impatience, confidence and constantly evolving trends can be daunting for any marketer trying to keep up.

The Gen Z Frequency offers a comprehensive guide for any brand, non-profit/social impact or organization trying to reach this demographic, covering fundamental truths, content creation, engagement strategies and tactics such as social media, experiential, emerging technologies, and much more. It is woven with fascinating case studies and real-world stories from the trenches, plus key insights from leading youth brands and Gen Z themselves.

Best-Selling Author  | Named Top Youth Marketer to Follow by  Inc. Magazine

Motivate Inc.

Motivate is the leading insights and media partner for reaching Multicultural, Youth and LGBTQ segments. We specialize in consumer segmentation, custom insights, product development and turnkey media strategy and execution for high-growth demographics. 

Motivate acquired Immersive Youth in 2016. The newly formed Motivate Youth practice provides best-in-class media activation in digital, traditional, social and influencer marketing services used by Fortune-500 brands and major advertising agencies.

EVP, Youth Marketing

Immersive Youth Marketing

Immersive is a youth marketing agency cultivating brand relevance with young people. 
We unlock the passions of consumers through cohesive solutions that emotionally connect, inspire action, and positively change behaviors. We’ve helped some of the world's greatest brands reach mass audiences while building credibility within niche youth segments.

Youthvine is our proprietary youth-powered resource. We deliver actionable insights, innovation, strategy and advocacy programs to help brands rapidly and cost-efficiently connect with influential tweens, teens, and young adults. 

Some of the brands we are honored to work with, include; Walt Disney World, Autodesk, Qualcomm, Nitro Circus, Funny Or Die, Bravo Sports, Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, Texas Department of Agriculture, Hansen's Natural, and Konami Digital Entertainment.

Premise | Youth Marketing + Immersive Media 

Premise is a full service agency that builds positive connections between brands and youth.   We provide the depth of expertise needed to resonate with young people in ways that are trend conscious. Our work impacts targeted consumer segments from the inside out to provide your brand the authentic foundation needed for success.  

We deliver a complete set of youth marketing services including; youth market strategy, brand development, research and cultural insights, social media, creative design and media services, content production, and education programs.

Head of Strategy and Consumer Insights

Landscape Structures

Strategic Advisor, Youth and Fitness Markets

Youth Brand Builder | Gen Z & Alpha Specialist | Creator Marketing Strategist | Author, The Gen Z Frequency | Youth Marketer to Follow, Inc. Magazine | #CreatorEconomy | Let's talk brand and business growth 🔥

Gregg L. Witt’s tireless pursuit of youth culture has been a long and winding road. Never content to just ‘know it when he sees it,’ Witt has dedicated his career to understanding the wisdom and authenticity of youth culture while guiding others to do the same.

With over 25 years of experience, Gregg is a senior marketing strategist specializing in building brands and directing campaigns that resonate and drive growth. Recognized by Inc Magazine as a "Top youth marketer to follow," he connects with tweens, teens, and young adults through cultural storytelling and youth-driven strategies.

Gregg’s journey began at 16 when he launched Goodtimes Skateboards, generating $500K in sales within its first year. This entrepreneurial spirit laid the foundation for his career as a trusted youth culture advisor.

As an independent consultant, Gregg advised major brands like YouTube, Meta, Samsung, Intuit, and Axe, while mentoring over 150 emerging creators and collaborating with Reichman University’s ContentShapers Masterclass Program.

From 2018 to 2021, Gregg served as USA Youth and Creator Marketing Strategist for We Are Family Global Agency Group, partnering with Adobe, Thorn, and Radio Disney to create youth-focused campaigns. Before that, as Vice President of Youth and Creator Brand Partnerships at Motivate Agency (2016–2018), he drove avg 33% annual growth, generating over $5M in revenue with work for Hollister, Cooper Tires and Walmart.

Earlier in his career, Gregg co-founded Premise Marketing, delivering strategies for brands like Funny or Die and action sports companies, and before that worked with Powerline 6 Design, collaborating with Ecko Unltd., Burton, Razor., and others. He also led award-winning social impact programs for the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids and Queen Rania of Jordan during his tenure at Immersive Youth.

Gregg is the co-author of The Gen Z Frequency (Kogan Page), a best-selling guide to understanding Gen Z, translated into seven languages.

As Founder and Chief Engagement Officer of Youthvine, Gregg leads a next-generation marketing agency connecting brands with youth culture through creators, community builders, and social media. Youthvine’s network spans 100+ creators and 500+ social communities, reaching over 100M youth globally.

Gregg’s work resonates because it is grounded in cultural intelligence and authenticity. “Gregg is this marketing dude that talks like us,” says Dana Barbaro, 15. From insights to advocacy marketing, Gregg ensures measurable results—all delivered in a new pair of bright red Vans Grossos.

Gregg L. Witt💡

Movement in 2025 didn’t become louder. It became participatory.
People didn’t just watch action sports. They showed up.

Performance still mattered, but participation mattered more. Brands that built sessions, access, and repeat experiences earned trust over time. Brands that treated action sports like media placement got ignored.

Growth came from systems that helped people do the sport, not from chasing visibility. That perspective shaped what stood out this week.

🎯 This Week’s AI Check: Rewind

Rewind turns personal memory into searchable infrastructure. It records what you see and hear across meetings, docs, and messages, then lets you search your own history privately, without breaking flow.

Where it shows up best:
• Brands rethinking learning, onboarding, and knowledge retention
• Schools and nonprofits supporting context-rich learning
• Teams preserving institutional memory over time

The net effect:
Participation beats exposure.
Recall compounds when systems support continuity.

Other signals worth noting:
🏃 Movement replacing doomscrolling as social infrastructure
⚡ Sports marketing shifting from interruption to immersion
🏁 Action sports maturing into long-term, league-level ecosystems

If you are building for trust, systems, and long-term relevance, that is what we unpack each week in The Gen Z Frequency.

Worth subscribing if you are building for what lasts.

Gregg L. Witt

Welcome to Edition 117 🌐 Tune in for a few minutes each week to elevate your youth and creator marketing game in a generational context. Here's what 

Open article: Why Participation, Not Visibility, Defined Action Sports in 2025 by Gregg L. Witt • 12 min read

Why Participation, Not Visibility, Defined Action Sports in 2025

Influence in 2025 didn’t disappear. It stopped being automatic.
People didn’t disengage. They decided faster.

Followers still matter, but they no longer carry the weight they used to. Relevance does. Trust does. Brands that treat creators as partners and build for participation earn staying power. Brands that treat influence like a media buy get skipped.

Growth now comes from systems built to earn attention repeatedly, not from chasing reach once. That lens shaped what stood out this week.

🎯 This Week’s AI Check: Arc Search

Arc Search doesn’t send you down a list of links. It reads the web for you and returns a clean, structured answer, which makes discovery feel more like exploration than homework.

Where it shows up best:

 • Brands adjusting to faster, summary-driven discovery habits
 • Schools and organizations simplifying research and learning
 • Teams looking for clarity without tab overload

The net effect:

Influence is earned, not owned.
Trust grows when usefulness replaces noise.

Other signals worth noting:

🌍 Digital skills framed as economic dignity, not just education
🚀 Learn-to-earn pathways expanding through platforms that fund youth-led innovation and leadership
🤝 Partnerships proving that scalable impact comes from building with young people, not for them

If you are building for trust, systems, and long-term relevance, that is what we unpack each week in The Gen Z Frequency.

Worth subscribing if you are building for what lasts.

Welcome to Edition 116 🌐 Tune in for a few minutes each week to elevate your youth and creator marketing game in a generational context. Here's what 

Open article: What 2025 Taught Us About Influence, and Why Trust Has Replaced Reach as the Real Growth Engine by Gregg L. Witt • 14 min read

What 2025 Taught Us About Influence, and Why Trust Has Replaced Reach as the Real Growth Engine

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Jake Bjorseth

Gregg L. Witt💡

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The Battle

Jake Bjorseth

Gregg L. Witt💡

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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