The creator economy is becoming big business — and Social Fest wants the Rio Grande Valley to have a place in it.
In this episode of the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal Podcast, Naxiely Lopez-Puente sits down with Yaw Sam, CEO of Brand Geniuz and co-founder of Social Fest, to discuss how the event is growing after drawing more than 1,000 attendees in its first year.
Sam explains why Social Fest was created, how organizers brought national and international speakers to the Valley, and why the 2026 event is moving to the McAllen Convention Center.
The conversation also explores how creators are turning audiences into businesses through brand deals, paid platforms, speaking opportunities, products, and social media reach.
Looking ahead, Sam says Social Fest aims to become a destination event for creators, marketers, small businesses, students, and brands looking to connect with the Valley’s young, heavily Hispanic consumer market.
The following is a rough, AI-generated transcript of Naxiely Lopez-Puente’s interview with Yaw Sam, CEO of Brand Genius and co-founder of Social Fest. Minor errors and misspellings may appear. For the full conversation, listen to the episode above or through your preferred podcast platform.
YAW SAM:
We also realized that the creator economy is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world right now.
So we have some exciting folks lined up already. We’ve confirmed close to 20 speakers already, and we’re working on probably about 35 more.
We’ve already announced one of our keynote speakers, Keith Lee. He is a food creator, globally very well known, and he has over 16 million or 17 million followers.
We want Social Fest, in the next five years to 10 years, to be an event where people travel from all over the world to come to, and we want the RGV to be the destination for it.
So whether it’s other marketing agencies out there, whether it’s other brands who can contribute in some way, media partners, whatever it may be, we’re open to that, and we want to partner with as many people as possible.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Thank you for joining us on this edition of the RGV Business Journal Podcast. I’m Naxiely Lopez-Puente, and today we have Yaw Sam with us.
He is the CEO of Brand Genius, which is a marketing firm, and also a part-time lecturer at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and co-founder of Social Fest.
Yaw, thank you so much for being with us.
YAW SAM:
Of course. Thank you for having me. I truly appreciate it.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
For sure.
The big news coming out this week is Social Fest 2026.
Before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourself. For those at home who don’t know who you are, tell us who you are.
YAW SAM:
I usually like to say I’m a simple individual. I love soccer, I love marketing, and good vibes.
I was born and raised in Ghana, West Africa. I lived there all my life and then moved to the U.S. 10 years ago.
When I moved here, I came straight to the Rio Grande Valley. Put on 956, as they say.
Since then, I went to UTRGV for my undergraduate degree and then got my master’s degree at UTRGV as well.
From there, I transitioned into starting a business, which is Brand Genius.
Then we went through, I think it was around Covid when Covid started. Fun stuff. Fun times.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Oh, yes.
YAW SAM:
Then we quickly transitioned into a lot of things — doing new things, trying new ideas.
Last year, we started Social Fest. From there, the rest is history.
Some of my hobbies I usually talk about: I love soccer. The World Cup is coming up, so I’m super excited for that.
I still play soccer every single weekend here in the Valley. So I try to be ingrained in the community and find ways to get involved as well.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
For sure.
I feel like I see you everywhere.
YAW SAM:
Is that a good thing?
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Yeah. I think so.
You’re embedded in the community. Speaking of the community, big event coming up — Social Fest.
Tell us about that. What is it?
YAW SAM:
A few years ago, myself, Josh, and Eileen would go to a lot of different events all over the U.S., and we figured there was still something missing here in the Valley.
Especially knowing how much we love marketing and how important it is, even with the rise of AI now.
So we figured, why don’t we have something like that here in the Valley? A conference where people can come together and learn from the experts.
Myself, Josh, and Eileen do a lot of training, and there are a lot of people here locally who do a lot of trainings with marketing. But who is training the trainers?
This was a little bit more selfishly, if I would put it, for me wanting to get more information and more education that is out there.
We thought if we wanted to get that education, I’m sure there are a lot of people who would also love that.
We also realized that the creator economy is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world right now.
So we decided to start an event or a conference that would bring speakers from all over the world and also highlight local speakers, give them that platform to share the knowledge they have, and at the same time, build experiences for people.
So people come to this event, they have a good time, and in the future, we want the Valley to be a destination where people travel to attend this one specific event.
We decided to start Social Fest.
We came up with the name on a random day. We went to Teclo from Mission EDC, and we said, “Hey, we have this idea. What do you think?”
Funny enough, they had already done a social media summit in the past, so they were very quick to back it from there.
We did the first Social Fest in 2025.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
I was there around the time. I was working at Mission EDC, and we actually worked in the same building together because Brand Genius, your marketing firm, was housed inside the incubator that Mission EDC has.
I was doing the marketing back then.
YAW SAM:
Yes, yes.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
I saw the inception and the work that went into putting this event together last year.
Talk to us about last year and what you all expect for this year. What’s going to be different?
YAW SAM:
Last year was incredible. We were surprised by the way people received it.
We tried to find as many people to say yes to us as possible. We tried to look for a lot of partnerships to make this happen.
Social Fest didn’t happen just because three people decided to make it happen. We have a committee of people who are working tirelessly behind it.
Last year, we reached out to about 10 to 15 people and said, “Hey, you’re very important in the community. You love social media from what we see. We’re trying to do this. You’re a visionary. Can you join a committee to make it happen?”
All these people came together and said, “Yes, we will help you make this happen.”
So we had a committee of people who basically helped develop Social Fest.
The first year, I’m not going to lie to you, we were like, OK, maybe we can have 500 people, 600 people. That would be a good start.
But our committee really pushed us and said, “Hey, let’s go bigger. Let’s look for ways we can make this bigger than we thought.”
So we ended up having over 1,000 people at the event, which was incredible for the first year.
It happened at the Mission Event Center, and we had really great support from the Mission EDC.
All that put together, including Hidalgo County. Judge Cortez, when we spoke to him about this, was like, absolutely, I’ll support whatever you guys need.
They were huge supporters of Social Fest from the beginning. That helped us position ourselves to bring all these people together.
We had great sponsors as well and over 1,000 people. We had 55-plus speakers.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Fifty-five plus?
YAW SAM:
Yes.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
OK.
It’s an inaugural event. How do you get people to buy into the idea when you have nothing to show them, aside from your work and your work ethic?
How do you get them to buy in?
YAW SAM:
It was really, really hard. It was really difficult.
Even the speakers — trying to convince them that, “Hey, this is an event we’ve never done before, and we need you to fly all the way from California or New York,” or one of them from Italy, “to come to the Rio Grande Valley.”
Most of them didn’t know where the Rio Grande Valley was. They had never been here before. The majority of the speakers had never stepped foot here.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Because they’re not just local. You brought in outside speakers.
YAW SAM:
Yeah.
It was really about not giving up.
There were some folks we reached out to who didn’t respond to us. We kept reaching out to them. We kept bugging them.
I’m one of those guys who, if I really want to get something done — and Josh is the same way, Eileen is the same way — we don’t care if we spam you with 20 messages.
One of our speakers, James Dumoulin, took us toward the last month to confirm because it took us reaching back out consistently.
So we did a lot of that. We did a lot of trying to paint the picture to people. Some folks didn’t really get it, but those who got it jumped on board, and they made it happen.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Now this year, you’re coming back with something to show for it.
How much easier is it? Are you doing the same thing? Do you still have the same committee? How is the planning going?
YAW SAM:
Planning is going great.
We have some of the same committee. We have others who stepped back. But we have new committee members as well.
We’ve mixed things up a little bit more.
Things are going well, but obviously, nothing is easy. Nothing comes to you easy. You have to work hard for it.
So we’re working very hard to get more sponsors than we had last year, and also new speakers.
We have some exciting folks lined up already. We’ve confirmed close to 20 speakers already, and we’re working on probably about 35 more.
We will have some interesting ones that I think may get people excited.
We’ve already announced one of our keynote speakers, Keith Lee. He is a food creator, globally very well known, and he has over 16 million or 17 million followers.
That’s the kind of people we’re looking for.
We also have some local speakers who are incredibly talented. We want to build this ecosystem where they can learn from the speakers we’re bringing down, but people can also learn from them, and the speakers we’re bringing down can also learn from them.
Last year, we tried to make sure everything we did was top notch, so we could give folks the best experience.
For our speakers, we made sure we were driving them everywhere they needed to be. We had a whole transportation system built out for them.
One of the speakers — actually two of them — told me, “We’ve been to a lot of conferences, but we think this is the best one as far as hospitality.”
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Wow.
YAW SAM:
To me, that was like, yo, that’s crazy.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
But that’s something they always say about us here in the Valley.
Is that something you saw here, or did you bring it with you — that sense of community?
YAW SAM:
No, the Valley has it already.
The Valley has a lot of people who are super hospitable. That’s one thing I love about this place.
When I look back at where I’m from in Ghana, that’s one thing we’re known for. If you go back home in Ghana and you’re a foreigner and say, “Hey, I need a place to stay,” someone will even let you stay in their house. Super hospitable folks.
That’s one thing I love, and I see that here in the Valley as well.
When they came down, they were like, “Yo, people are super nice here and kind.”
I think that’s one of the key things we want people to know and highlight.
There are very positive things here in the Rio Grande Valley that we need to focus on, not the negative.
That’s some of what we’re trying to push as well — that there are things to do that are fun, and exciting opportunities here in the Valley that we want people to be exposed to.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
You mention that because a lot of the things we hear with the business community — and it might be changing a little bit — but we always have this negative image.
It’s like, oh, you’re the border. It’s lawless.
Did you find some of that pushback when you were trying to recruit speakers?
YAW SAM:
Not really, actually. No, not really.
I think the national media does have a certain perception of the Valley, but that’s not reality. That’s not what’s on the ground.
They talk about all these things about our community. I’ve lived here for 10 years, and I haven’t really seen any of the things they talk about online.
Most of our speakers really just wanted to make an impact as well. So us reaching out was them saying, “Hey, we’re more than happy to do this.”
Obviously, they got paid, but once they got here, they saw how important this community was and how special it was.
They even talked about how nice people were dressed and how they respected that a lot.
Those are things we can’t take for granted. Here in the Valley, it’s a special place, and we have to keep it like that.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Correct me if I’m wrong, this was not just a one-day event, right?
YAW SAM:
It was a two-day event.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
And that’s going to be the same this year?
YAW SAM:
That’s going to be the same this year. Another two days.
In the future, we will expand it. But for now, yes, it’s going to be a two-day event.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
When is that happening?
YAW SAM:
For this year, it’s going to be Nov. 12 and 13.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
OK.
YAW SAM:
Nov. 12 and 13 at the McAllen Convention Center.
We just announced that yesterday, so we’re super excited. We have a bigger venue where we hopefully will have a lot more people in attendance.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
For a business that is considering sponsoring, what’s the draw?
What are they going to get from participating in Social Fest? What kind of demographics? Who will be in attendance?
YAW SAM:
That’s a great question.
For attendees, we’re looking at content creators, marketing professionals, small business owners, and some students.
One thing that we cannot overlook is that the Rio Grande Valley is one of the highly concentrated areas of the Hispanic population.
A lot of brands are looking for ways to culturally stay relevant with a demographic that matters.
All demographics matter, of course, but at some point you identify your customer segment.
The Hispanic demographic is concentrated here, and it’s time for that demographic to be highlighted. Brands need to focus on certain demographics and certain areas, and I think this area is suited specifically for that.
Those are some of the things we’re talking to some of these brands about.
We have a huge population of Hispanic people, but not just that — this area has a huge population of young people as well.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Yes.
YAW SAM:
We cannot ignore that fact.
Those are some of the things we’re looking at and talking to our sponsors about.
Then also, it’s just the sheer reach of the event.
In our first year, with 1,000 attendees, we had a total reach of about 11 million on socials.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Wow.
YAW SAM:
On the social media page for Social Fest only, it was about 2.5 million.
That’s the point of what we’re doing with the creator economy — being able to reach as many people as possible and put your brand in front of millions of people.
That’s a huge opportunity I think brands need to take advantage of.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
I think you mentioned something very important, especially for our audience: the creator economy.
There’s an opportunity to translate your content and your social media into not just shedding light on your brand, but actually making money off hits and views and things like that.
Talk to us about that. Where is the value when it comes to actually capitalizing on that economy?
YAW SAM:
We’re a little bit behind, I will be honest. I’m not going to lie about that.
The creator economy is a multibillion-dollar industry, and it’s one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
The reason is because of AI, the rise of AI.
Right now, as we speak, I can sit here and build a startup with no coding experience from scratch easily.
But one thing I cannot do as easily is build an audience significantly within a short period of time.
That’s where the creator economy comes into place. We have people who have built really good audiences, and they can build businesses on top of those audiences.
A good example of that is MrBeast. He built a very loyal fan base, and he’s able to build businesses on top of that.
One of his businesses, Feastables — you go into H-E-B, you go into Walmart, you see his brand everywhere.
That’s a creator who monetized his audience by building a business on top of it.
That’s what we’re going to see in a lot of places.
In the Valley, there are a lot of creators also like that. There are creators making millions of dollars on social media by building businesses on top of their audience, and even just making money off their personal brands.
I’m not a huge creator or anything, but I made a little bit of money on TikTok. There are bigger creators who are making bigger impacts like that.
Last year, we had one of our creators, Life for Stars, who is a cook and a food creator as well. He has a cookbook, he has his own matcha, and he’s built that business on top of the audience he has.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Wow.
YAW SAM:
There are so many examples like that in the Valley, and that’s what we want to highlight.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
For someone like me who has no idea how much money you can make off having a good social media channel or something like that, give us an idea.
YAW SAM:
I’ll tell you this: There is a high ceiling, and the ceiling keeps going up.
I’ll give you an example. My business partner’s wife is a creator with 1.6 million or 1.7 million followers on TikTok and over 200,000 on Instagram. She gets paid a lot of money by brands like H-E-B to create content online.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Really?
YAW SAM:
Yes.
There are folks getting paid six figures to use their likeness online on social media.
There are folks getting paid a lot of money to speak at places.
I’ll tell you this because I know we’re booking speakers — a lot of money. Five figures, and some are asking for six figures to speak because they’ve built an audience.
That’s all part of the business ecosystem.
You have Facebook paying creators now. You have TikTok paying creators. You have YouTube paying creators. Even Snapchat pays creators.
These are all platforms that folks can use.
Last year, one of my good friends who works for Meta directly — he works for Facebook for creators — made it very clear. He said Facebook is one of the best platforms for creators because they pay creators the most.
Whether you like it or not, that is very true. Facebook pays creators the most currently.
He was a speaker at Social Fest.
We have that opportunity here in the Valley. There are a lot of creators tapping into it, but we need more creators to tap into it.
We need more potential young people to see this as a career path. With the rise of AI, we want that to be an opportunity that people can see as an option somewhere.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
What are the types of creators who are successful here in the Valley?
I don’t know if it’s the algorithm on my Facebook or my social media, but food content creators appear to be big.
YAW SAM:
Yes, food creators and lifestyle.
When I mean lifestyle, it’s hair and makeup, and folks who just talk about their lives, what they do, and stuff like that.
Food is one of the big ones locally here in the Valley because we have an incredible food scene that we need to highlight.
There are a lot more creators in the sports industry as well. Hopefully, that’s one that I hope to see grow. With the World Cup coming in, I think we’ll see a lot more of that in the future.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Awesome.
What can people expect this coming year?
YAW SAM:
This year, bigger speakers, of course, and more workshops.
Last year, one of the pieces of feedback we got was that people wanted to learn hands-on, a lot more hands-on.
So we’re implementing a lot more workshops this year — folks who will be actual teachers of what they’re experts in.
We’re also potentially working on partnerships with some social media companies to bring people down who will teach us how to move around and use the platforms very well.
We’re also working on better experiences.
We want opportunities for people to have really cool photo opportunities, but also to interact with local businesses here in the community.
We want to build a full ecosystem where people can have a good time, and then finally, good food.
We’re working on potentially what that would look like as well for folks to really have a good experience moving forward.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
That’s Nov. 12 and 13, right?
YAW SAM:
Correct.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
If somebody wanted to sponsor or get more information, where can they go?
YAW SAM:
They can reach out through our social media at Social Experience, or our website is Social Fest RGV.
Or they can directly look for me, Yaw Sam, on all social media platforms and reach out to me directly.
I usually have my phone number on LinkedIn or even on Instagram. So call me directly. I will answer the call.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Wonderful.
Anything else that you’d like to add that maybe I didn’t ask?
YAW SAM:
I’m just super grateful for the RGV community for being behind this.
If you’re anyone out there who is interested in partnering with us, whatever it may be, it doesn’t have to be on a sponsorship basis. We’re open to everyone coming on board to make this bigger.
We want Social Fest, in the next five years to 10 years, to be an event where people travel from all over the world to come to, and we want the RGV to be the destination for it.
So whether it’s other marketing agencies out there, whether it’s other brands who can contribute in some way, media partners, whatever it may be, we’re open to that, and we want to partner with as many people as possible.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
All right. The sky’s the limit.
YAW SAM:
Yes, absolutely.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Everybody at home, reach out. He’s available.
Make sure to subscribe, and we’ll see you next week.
YAW SAM:
Thank you very much.
NAXIELY LOPEZ-PUENTE:
Of course.
YAW SAM:
Thank you.
