If you've been on finance TikTok lately, you've probably seen Dean Indot answer his wife Alexis's finance questions to the tune of millions of views.
Dean, a commercial banking exec and Pepperdine MBA, and his wife Alexis went viral from one of their first-ever videos. It wasn't long before Dean's reading-chair rant on why you might not want to use your debit card very often got 14.5 million views. Now, their TikTok account, @alexisanddean, has 1.7 million followers.
We sat down with Alexis and Dean to discuss why their content struck such a chord, when they started making big money from it, and why educational content is so important.
How did you guys come up with the specific concept for your videos?
Dean: Alexis is pretty active on social media. I'm not at all. I use LinkedIn for work, and my company manages that for me. And I use Twitter or X for my investment news feeds and data. That's about the extent of my usage of social media.
She always asks me questions, just as a couple, about finance stuff. It's just how we talk. We sit down and we hang out, and it's always questions. Right after the mini financial crisis in '23, I'm immersed in that because I'm a banker. So all the bankers out there were heavily immersed in that for those two to three weeks of chaos. The long story short is: she asked me to explain it. She wanted to know what was going on because the average person didn't understand what it means when banks go out of business. Why? So she asked me a question, and then I explained, and that was the first video.
Were you uncomfortable at all with the idea of answering her questions on camera?
Dean: No. I didn't realize it was being recorded [at first]. I'm not uncomfortable at all. And fun fact: I don't watch any of my videos. I would only watch the videos in case there are editing requirements or some comment that says I said something untoward or wrong. But I never watch my videos.
Do you edit them?
Dean: Alexis does everything. She comes from digital marketing and is an entrepreneur. She had her own business for many years, all of which was marketed and driven by social media. I have no idea what happens after she takes the video.
Alexis: I film everything in one take. If it's for a brand [and] if a brand requires edits, I will do it in CapCut, but all of our organic content is filmed in one take, and then I post it directly on TikTok. I just add a little title to it through the TikTok app, but I don't edit our content whatsoever.
Dean: If you see the setup here, you'd know there is no production here. I don't even have a mic. It's her iPhone.
Alexis: Everything's done on the iPhone camera.
Dean: Not even a stick or a stand. She just holds it. And that has not changed since day one.
Why do you think viewers gravitate toward that?
Dean: Authenticity. What you see is what you get,
Alexis: [We get] comments [about how people] feel like they're sitting at a table with us.
Where do you both come up with inspiration or ideas for your videos?
Dean: I'm very active in paying attention to news, to the economy, to markets. I'm an active trader — not by trade, but for personal reasons. I'm literally sitting here every morning before the market opens, listening to news all day until it closes. I'm a news hound. That's just how I am. What I do is interpret the news for the masses on social media who don't want to read or don't have the time to read. So the content ideas just come organically. If it's not a brand deal, it's usually organic. It's something interesting out there that I want to talk about, or she thinks it's really interesting that people don't understand.
Alexis: There'll be a headline in the news, and Dean will be going off about it. And it makes perfect sense to Dean, but I have no idea what's going on. I might ask questions that seem elementary to him, but I kind of represent our audience in a way that not everyone understands what's going on. So sometimes it'll be me asking questions, just trying to get an explanation on current events.
Can you sort of walk me through how you go from ideation to publishing a post?
Alexis: I ask Dean the question, [and] I'll get the content that I need. And then, as far as posting it, sometimes I will backlog content. We'll film a bunch of stuff in one day. Dean's really busy, so we'll have filming days where we do a bunch of content in one day. If it's a hot topic, we'll film it that morning and post it right away.
When I'm ready to post that piece of content, I upload it to the TikTok app. It's very important to use hashtags on TikTok. Not so much Instagram, but cataloging your content on TikTok is really important. So I make sure that I use as many relevant hashtags as I can think of. Some of our favorites are #FinancialLiteracy and #FinancialEducation. Dean doesn't know anything about hashtag strategy.
Dean: No idea.
Alexis: I make sure that I always hashtag relevant hashtags. Then I tag the location, and then we upload it. I don't keep anything in the drafts; I just keep it like on my camera roll in my phone. And it's really straightforward and simple. There really isn't much of a process other than we film.
How many videos are you posting on average every day?
Alexis: On average, we post three times a week. One thing that we just started is Financial Literacy Fridays. I can film a bunch of content that's not time sensitive with Dean and then keep it as a backlog. That way, I'm posting every single Friday, no matter what. We just did the first one, and we got almost a million views. So it seems to be well-received. And that's hopefully a new cadence for us moving forward.
When did you realize you could generate a significant income from this?
Dean: The first video [we posted] went viral, but I didn't really pay attention to it at all. I would say six months into it.
Alexis: Dean thought it was kind of a joke in the beginning, but we got a million views on the first video, and then that same week, we got something with like three or four million views, and nothing was getting under 300,000 [views]. And I knew that was a really big deal. [It took us] two months to get into the TikTok Creator Fund.
Dean: They started paying out really well on engagement. Once it passed five figures in revenue, that's when I [said], "Wait a minute, this is bonafide. This is not a joke."
You were getting five figures from the Creator Fund?
Alexis: No, not [at first]. Only this year.
Dean: In the beginning, we had small brand deals here and there, what I call "funny money." It's gas money.
Alexis: But we're really only two-and-a-half years in, and to see how much we've grown has been really kind of crazy.
Which monetization methods do you use?
Alexis: The Creator Fund. There is something called Specialized Rewards on TikTok, where they reward creators who make what they call educational learning content. And we've been selected to be in that program as well. So that's been really great for brand deals.
Dean: We have a couple of longer-term contracts, but again, we're very picky about that, too, about the brand deals. I view this business not just as about making as much money as I can as fast as I can; it's more about helping the community… I would never do a brand deal if it's a product that I wouldn't use or that I haven't used already. I'm very, very strict about that.
Alexis: Even if it's a product that I think is a good product. If Dean's like, "It's a good product, but it's not something that fits my lifestyle," we still won't. It has to be something that we personally use and enjoy.
Is that mostly brands coming to you?
Dean: No, they all come to us.
Alexis: I have a manager, but I would say 98 percent of everything is inbound to us.
How quickly you became successful on TikTok is quite an anomaly, right? It's not that common to have your first video go viral. Was this your first attempt at virality?
Dean: It wasn't even a try.
Alexis: I had other channels.
Dean: She thought it was funny.
Alexis: Well, no, I had a small business that I would advertise on Instagram that I've spent years building, and I never had the success that I had with this channel.
[For this project],I filmed one video and I introduced myself and [said] what I was gonna be posting. And then that same night, I posted the very first question I asked Dean, and out of the gate, it did really well. It wasn't an idea that I had recycled and had to try multiple times. It just worked the first time. I think it was a combination of the content style and the topic that we picked. It was such a hot topic at that time. I've realized that the content that does the best on our channel sometimes is a hot topic. Being on it with what's relevant works really well with TikTok. The algorithm seems to like it.
What advice would you give to someone who's starting out in content creation and is looking to build a career or grow their following similar to yours?
Dean: What you see is what you get. I'm not trying. I'm not doing anything that isn't normally me.
Alexis: What Dean just said. When people ask me, "How can we replicate what you guys have done?" I just tell people to be themselves. When you're creating content, if you're not filming with a partner in the way that we are, I tell people to act like you're on FaceTime with your friends. TikTok feels like a little community, a small family, people that you talk with every day, and engage with your comments. Film as if you're talking to your friend on FaceTime.