Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Brendan Kane - Generated 100M+ Followers for Clients | The Secret Algorithm Hack Nobody Talks About

Transcript

Brendan Kane - Generated 100M+ Followers for Clients | The Secret Algorithm Hack Nobody Talks About · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In today's world it's really difficult to break through. You're talking about a world where there's
• 0:04
  5 billion people on social media. When I started in 2005, there was less than 40 million people
• 0:09
  on social media. The amount of competition for attention is pretty fierce. In a world drowning
• 0:14
  in digital noise, one strategist found the formula to break through it all. Meet Brendan Cain,
• 0:19
  the pioneering force who engineered the first influencer campaign on YouTube in 2007. He's
• 0:24
  steered more than $200 million in marketing for brands like MTV, Paramount, and global celebrities
• 0:30
  like Taylor Swift and Rihanna. We see everything go viral. Tax is finance, nutrition, real estate.
• 0:35
  It doesn't matter, this subject matter. It's more about the story that you're telling. One of the
• 0:39
  biggest mistakes people make, they're doing too much. They may have a meme card text on the top.
• 0:44
  They'll have captions on the bottom and then you'll be talking. If the viewer in the subconscious
• 0:48
  doesn't understand which one I need to focus on and thus it's going to move on. His hook point method
• 0:53
  has unlocked over 60 billion views and helped generate 100 million plus followers across every
• 0:58
  platform. And in 30 days, he proved the power of his own strategy by gaining a million followers
• 1:04
  with no tricks, just strategy. You need to connect with the way that you're going to be telling
• 1:09
  stories. If it doesn't resonate with you, you're just going to burn yourself out or you're just
• 1:13
  going to quit after the first few times. The algorithms which control reach and distribution of
• 1:18
  content, they care about just one thing. That is holding people's attention. The longer people spend
• 1:22
  on these platforms the more as they conserve the more profit they generate.
• 1:36
  So one of my favorite quotes that you say is a very simple quote and I think it's probably
• 1:43
  to the majority of people listening controversial, even though I know for you it's going to be
• 1:47
  something that is it seems so obvious. Any subject matter can go viral. You said this many times
• 1:54
  you've proven it out. Explain. Let's explain why for most people listening and watching that's
• 2:03
  such a difficult idea to understand. I think it's because there's a lot of frustrated content
• 2:11
  creators, business owners that have tried to tackle social media or tackle any type of marketing
• 2:17
  and it just really hasn't connected. I feel their pain. Listen, I've been doing this for 20 years
• 2:22
  and if you're content, it's just putting your heart, soul, resources, energy time into content
• 2:30
  or a strategy and it doesn't work. I've been there. I know how that feels. I think that that's
• 2:35
  where a lot of it comes from is you've you've tried everything but it just doesn't seem to work
• 2:42
  and in today's world, it's really difficult to break through. I mean, you're talking about a world
• 2:47
  where there's five billion people in social media. When I started in 20 2005, there's less than 40
• 2:54
  million people in social media. Now we're talking about five billion. So the amount of
• 2:59
  competition for attention is pretty fierce. So a lot of that comes from just trying something
• 3:06
  and it's just not resonating and breaking through. But as you mentioned in the quote, like
• 3:11
  we've worked in every industry or sector, we see everything go viral, taxes go viral, finance
• 3:16
  goes viral, nutrition goes viral, real estate. It doesn't matter this subject matter. It's more
• 3:22
  about the story that you're telling around the subject matter that dictates whether it succeeds
• 3:27
  or fails. When you think about replicating virality, which is really what you do for a living and
• 3:32
  that's, you know, what you've done successfully across literally every category you've worked with,
• 3:37
  when did you first realize that there was a little bit of a formula to go viral and it wasn't just
• 3:41
  chance? I think that and I don't know the exact date, but to me, so I started my career in the
• 3:48
  in the film industry making movies and before going in the film industry, I went to film school. So
• 3:53
  I wanted it to be a movie producer and when you go to film school, no matter what you want to do,
• 3:58
  whether you want to be an actor, a director, a screenwriter, or for me, a producer, they make you
• 4:02
  learn every discipline of making a movie. So I had to take acting classes. I had to take screenwriting
• 4:06
  classes. I had to learn how to light sets. I had to learn how to direct and edit. And the reason is
• 4:12
  there's all these small nuances that make up whether you tell a successful story or it flops.
• 4:19
  So when I started my career in the film industry, I worked for Academy Award winning producers.
• 4:23
  And even them, like with like very veteran storytellers, if one small thing was off, let's just say
• 4:30
  they cast the wrong person. There was a conflict between the actor and the director or between
• 4:34
  actors or the cinematographer and director didn't get along or the dialogue was just off.
• 4:39
  One of these small things would just destroy the performance of the movie. And I'm sure a lot of
• 4:44
  people watching this, like you've seen a bad movie, but you can't just put your finger on like why
• 4:49
  that is. So it's pure storytelling. And the light bulb went off for me was, and I think most people
• 4:57
  forget or don't even see this, but social media is just a pure storytelling platform.
• 5:02
  And the best storytellers win. And again, like in film, the same thing applies to social media. There's
• 5:09
  all these small little nuances that dictate whether the story that you're telling on social media
• 5:16
  is successful or not. So like the one thing that that has kind of solidified that light bulb is
• 5:24
  we spend a ton of our time, we spend over 10,000 hours researching content and social media.
• 5:30
  And what we're looking for is like what we call formats. And these are like storytelling
• 5:34
  structures or blueprints. So like any movie of the past 100 years has used the same format,
• 5:40
  the three-act structure. Now in social media, it doesn't use the three-act structure, but there's
• 5:44
  hundreds of these. So that's where you start seeing the patterns of the people that are successful
• 5:49
  and successful on a repeated basis. They're finding their format, they're finding their structure,
• 5:54
  and they're mastering the nuances within it. If you think about like Steven Spielberg, one of the
• 5:59
  best structures of our time, every movie he creates is using the three-act structure. Now each
• 6:06
  movie feels distinctly different like Jurassic Park versus ET or JAWS versus Indiana Jones,
• 6:12
  but he has spent his career mastering the nuances within that format, within that structure,
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  to become a master storyteller. So it was just starting off my early career, studying stories,
• 6:24
  and now well into my career in social media, it just goes back to the same thing. It's just
• 6:29
  studying stories and understanding the elements that equate to success and also just as important
• 6:36
  to track from success. You know, this is interesting because first of all, not a lot of
• 6:40
  content creators went through the education that you went through. So I understand how you can
• 6:44
  see the parallels between sort of how media has always been successful and how to translate
• 6:50
  not the exact framework that makes a movie successful. Maybe there is some crossover. I don't know,
• 6:54
  I'm sure there's a little bit, but not the exact framework, but the patterns. You can understand
• 6:59
  and identify the patterns in the content. You can replicate those, but it's interesting because
• 7:05
  I would have assumed that CMOs of big brands who have been in the game for a long enough period of
• 7:11
  time should have had some sort of understanding of what makes good media, what makes a good commercial,
• 7:16
  what makes a good hook. But I don't see many CMOs of big brands take any experience and apply
• 7:24
  it well to social. Like outside of like I'm thinking dualingo, Ryanair, Wendy's on Twitter,
• 7:32
  like there's a handful of brands that I can remember that they kill it, but 99.9% of brands don't.
• 7:42
  So what happened? Did like CMOs just throw out the rule book and they no longer applied any
• 7:47
  of their training to social media? Like why does the majority of social media suck?
• 7:50
  Yeah, it's a great question. And I think that, you know, when you talk about like brands and
• 7:54
  specific, there's kind of two waves to it. Like the first wave that I saw is it was just purely
• 8:00
  taking traditional assets and putting it on social media. So it's like taking a TV ad and putting
• 8:05
  on social media and expecting it to work or like if it's an image like a print ad and putting it
• 8:10
  on social media to work, then a majority of the brands started to wake up and say, no, we actually
• 8:15
  need to create, you know, original content specific for this platform. But the challenge in the
• 8:21
  second phase is that they're leveraging creative models and creative practices that were designed
• 8:29
  before social media. So they're not doing it within the realm of social media. And the same
• 8:34
  thing goes with like a filmmaker, like filmmakers or design or creating content for that format,
• 8:40
  for that audience that's sitting down in a movie theater. They've already made the decision.
• 8:44
  They bought the ticket. They drove to the theater. They're sitting in the seat. They're going to
• 8:48
  sit there and watch it. And it also stays, you know, holds true at home now. People can switch
• 8:53
  a little bit easier. But in the art of social media, literally, you have billions of content
• 9:02
  to choose from. Like literally with a click, you can move on to the next one literally within a
• 9:06
  second. You move on to the next piece of content. So the creative models that they're using were
• 9:10
  designed for these other mediums television and print and radio and things of that nature,
• 9:15
  not understanding that you need to tweak the nuances of how to tell a story specific to these
• 9:20
  platforms. Because if you think about commercials that were created before social media and that
• 9:25
  creative process and model, you basically have the audience locked in. Like you had them locked in
• 9:30
  until Tivo came around and then Netflix and things of that nature. So it's more about the approach
• 9:37
  to creating content and just making these slight adjustments in terms of how people consume content,
• 9:42
  how to retain audiences and things of that nature. What's the most important thing to unlearn and
• 9:49
  let's give examples of a small business and how they should start unlearning and redoing and
• 9:55
  revamping. But also maybe give some advice to the decision maker in a very large corporation. If
• 10:01
  they watch your content, they love everything that you're saying. But they're like, I feel like my
• 10:06
  hands are tied. I can't do anything at all. Where do I start? Who do I speak to? What's the
• 10:11
  proof point that I have to put in front of my boss? Because getting them to buy into the idea and
• 10:16
  for the company to buy into the idea of our social sucks, let's do better. That's the first
• 10:22
  barrier that you have to come up with. You have to sort of get over. Yeah. So the first place to start
• 10:27
  in unlearning from previous experience is don't start with ideas. This is where everybody starts
• 10:34
  as they're just like throwing ideas at the wall. They're creating content calendars of like
• 10:38
  just ideas off the top of their head or they're chasing trends. You know, they're just, oh, there's
• 10:43
  a trend. Let's come up with an idea for that trend. The reason that doesn't work is there is no
• 10:51
  proven structure that you're inserting that into. So it's kind of like going back to making movies
• 10:57
  is if Steven Spielberg just came with ideas and was just reinventing the way he told those stories
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  each time instead of using the three-act structure that's been used for a hundred years, it would
• 11:07
  fall flat. So the first place to start is just say we're going to stop just coming up with ideas
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  first. We're going to switch our mindset of just passive social media consumption to active
• 11:20
  consumption from an expert creator standpoint. And what we're going to start doing is start looking
• 11:24
  for the patterns. So the way that you look for the patterns is we created something at my company
• 11:28
  hook point, the hook point format finders. So basically what you do is you see a viral video and
• 11:33
  you're like, hey, this viral video is kind of draws parallels to like a message that we could do
• 11:41
  or a structure that we could use. So what we do is we click on the creator's profile and we see
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  have they use that same structure that same format at least five or ten times. If they haven't,
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  it's likely a trend or it's just some original thing that they are not going to be able to reproduce.
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  And you keep doing that process over and over again until you find a format that has been
• 12:03
  used at least five to ten times successfully that you can insert your message into. So let me just
• 12:09
  kind of define like format and give some examples so that we can solidify it. So like a format is
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  is basically a blueprint. It's a structure that has repeatable success that you can insert your
• 12:19
  message, your brand, your content into. So for example, just and I'm just going to give ones that
• 12:25
  most people have seen. They're not meant to be suggestions. But one that pretty much everybody's
• 12:29
  probably seen as man on the street is you approach a random stranger on the street and you interact
• 12:33
  with them. So I have a friend and we've done some work with them. Alex Stemp, who is a photographer,
• 12:39
  and he approaches random strangers on the street offers them a professional photo shoot and the
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  story unfolds. He's built an audience of 20 million people doing that. There's another really
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  popular account now called the School of Hard Knocks, which will go up and interview people.
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  How did you make your first million dollars? It's used for fitness. There's a guy body by
• 12:57
  mark that he approaches fit people on the street and he says, Hey, you look really fit. What did you
• 13:01
  do to get into shape? So just to know that when we look at a format, it can be used for any type of
• 13:09
  subject matter. It's just the container. The interesting thing about a lot of formats is they were
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  created before social media even existed. The man on the street format was invented in 1954
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  for late night television. So that's one example. Another example is called two characters, one
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  light bulb, where it's the same person and they play two different characters. So like Erica Colberg
• 13:30
  does this for legal things, like what happens when your flight gets canceled? What happens when
• 13:34
  your AirPods break? Mark Tilbury, the teacher's finance uses that format a lot. You see a lot of
• 13:40
  people doing it. That one, I don't know who invented it, but if you remember the first Austin
• 13:44
  Powers movie that was before social media, you had Dr. Evil and Austin Powers and they were going
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  back and like doing very poignant conversations about society and politics and culture and things
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  of that nature. So a lot of these formats have been used for decades. So the first step that we have
• 14:02
  to do is stop with ideas, start looking for formats, understanding which format is the right fit
• 14:09
  for you, and then study every element of that format. So what we do, we created a process that's
• 14:16
  called gold silver and bronze. It's like a proprietary process that we created to really decode
• 14:21
  why content goes viral at a very high level. What we'll do is let's just take man on the street.
• 14:26
  We'll say we want to analyze why is the school of hard knocks so successful because we're thinking
• 14:31
  about doing a man on the street format. So we'll open up a spreadsheet. We'll put like five or
• 14:36
  10 of the high performers in that format. It's like five million views plus. Then we'll take five
• 14:40
  to 10 of the average performers and five to 10 of the low performers, which is like a few hundred
• 14:44
  thousand views or less. And what we're doing is we're cross analyzing like what is happening in
• 14:49
  those high performers that's not showing up in those low performers and typically has nothing to
• 14:55
  do with the content, but more the context. So it could be things like pacing, facial expressions,
• 15:01
  and that format reactions of the people are very important. It could be the environment that you
• 15:06
  should have in captions, title cards, hooks, if it's YouTube thumbnails. So the big unlearning starts
• 15:15
  with we're not just trying to create a content calendar. We're not just trying to find the next
• 15:19
  trend. We're not just trying to find the next idea. But we have to get to the roots of storytelling.
• 15:24
  And the roots of storytelling on social media is through formats.
• 15:28
  You said that any kind of business can go viral. What about boring businesses? Because not everyone,
• 15:35
  you mentioned a few different styles of content. Man on the street, you know, two characters,
• 15:41
  one light bulb. There's some very boring businesses out there. Like I'm trying to think about the
• 15:46
  most boring one. Taxes. Taxes are pretty damn boring. Finance is usually pretty boring. Real
• 15:53
  say it's pretty boring. Is there is there any advice for people that have super boring businesses?
• 15:59
  There's the same process of studying what's viral and finding a way to take whatever boring
• 16:05
  business you own and then put it into that content style. Yeah, absolutely. So in the work that
• 16:12
  we do, we leverage what's called the general principle, which means how do we speak to our core
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  audience, the audience that drives our business, but also at the same time make our content
• 16:24
  interesting, digestible, and exciting for the average person. The person doesn't care or doesn't
• 16:29
  want, you know, may not buy our products or services. And the question maybe, well, why is that? Well,
• 16:35
  the the algorithms which control reach and distribution of content, they care about just one
• 16:40
  thing. And that is holding people's attention. The longer people spend on these platforms,
• 16:45
  the more as they can serve the more profit they generate. Now, because they have so much content
• 16:49
  to choose from with billions and billions of pieces of content, there's like over across all
• 16:53
  social platforms, there's a billion pieces of content posted every day. So they have so much
• 16:58
  choice. They want to find content that they could see to the most people and hold their
• 17:02
  attention for as long as possible. So our goal is if we believe we have a boring businesses,
• 17:08
  how do we still speak to our core audience, but make it accessible to our wider possible audience?
• 17:13
  So I'll give you examples of the industries you talked about. So we talk about taxes. There's
• 17:20
  a great YouTube channel called clear value tax. They went viral during COVID because they were
• 17:25
  doing videos about stimulus checks. Like, and it's just a guy sitting behind a desk. But what he
• 17:30
  did is he he tied on to really relevant, culturally relevant events that are happening in the new cycle
• 17:38
  that impacts their ability to make money. So during COVID, everybody was super curious about like,
• 17:43
  am I going to get a stimulus check because people were worrying about money and things of that
• 17:46
  nature? He generated millions and millions of views with that. We have like, we have a client
• 17:53
  Chris Cobb that went viral with car insurance and he uses a format that's called a visual metaphor
• 17:58
  that breaks down using like toy cars and characters, like talking through the process of how insurance
• 18:03
  works. So that's one example. You talk about real estate. There's a perfect example with a real estate
• 18:09
  agent Ryan Sirhant, who is a luxury real estate agent in Manhattan that represents properties that
• 18:15
  are valid at 15 to 250 million dollars. So, and this is an example of how it actually translates
• 18:21
  into business. So he's playing the generalist principle by creating videos like, let me take you
• 18:26
  in a two over seven million dollar closet. Let me take you in a two over 250 million dollar ranch.
• 18:30
  Now what format was that before social media? The lifestyles of the rich and famous. So he's leveraging
• 18:37
  that that format because he knows millions of millions of people want to see what a seven million
• 18:41
  dollar closet looks like. And because he generates tens of millions of views a month, if less than 1%
• 18:48
  of that audience is his core ideal target. He is killing his competition because that is so
• 18:53
  many more people than the competition are doing. And he's even said that he sold a 30 million dollar
• 18:58
  penthouse from a YouTube video. So what we have to look at is like how do we make it interesting
• 19:05
  and accessible to anybody? So like an exercise that people could do is like ask a grandmother,
• 19:10
  ask a loved one that has no interest in your subject matter and like test hooks on them,
• 19:15
  you know, just study. You can even use chat GPT is like just how do I make how do I make
• 19:20
  insurance, you know, more accessible? Like we talked about Erica Colberg earlier that is a lawyer.
• 19:27
  You know, she's a lawyer and she breaks down the fine print, which is super unsexy. But the fine
• 19:31
  print of what happens when you're Nike shoes rip, what type of warranties do you have? There's
• 19:37
  even a YouTube account called Legal Eagle that has millions of subscribers and he'll break down like,
• 19:43
  you know, the honey scam that's going on and things of that nature. So it's just thinking through
• 19:48
  a different lens of not just creating a niche piece of content for a niche audience. So when somebody's
• 19:54
  thinking about creating content and they look at some of the examples that you mentioned,
• 19:59
  all these people are huge personalities too. Like Ryan Sirhand is a huge personality.
• 20:04
  So I don't want somebody to think that they have to be huge personalities because I've
• 20:08
  been thought about this with like my podcast. I've seen how fast school of hard knocks has grown.
• 20:14
  And Simon Squibb does the man on the street interview as well. And I've thought like I should
• 20:21
  probably just do that. But like that's stressful to me. It's very stressful to walk up to a random
• 20:25
  stranger on the street and interview them. It's like getting your own ad about it. So what's the
• 20:31
  strategy for somebody? And I don't even consider myself super introverted, but there's a lot of
• 20:35
  people that are me or even more introverted when it comes to social. What's the strategies
• 20:39
  that people should think about if they're more introverted? If they don't want to be running around
• 20:43
  like Ryan Sirhand, are there ways for the person who has a little bit more anxiety about showing
• 20:49
  up on social to still be as successful as some of these creators? Absolutely. So just know that if you
• 20:57
  are looking at like a man on the street Simon Squibb or school of hard knocks and you're like,
• 21:01
  that gives me anxiety to do it. Don't do it. There are hundreds of different ways,
• 21:06
  hundreds of different types of storytelling formats that you can leverage to be successful. So
• 21:12
  the way that I kind of coach people through like how do you choose the best direction and the best
• 21:17
  way to tell your stories, choose your format, your blueprint for success is number one,
• 21:22
  start with what are the resources you have available to you? Like if you just have an iPhone,
• 21:27
  there are ways you can be successful with just an iPhone. You don't need to have necessarily a
• 21:31
  team or fancy equipment or any of those things. The second is what feels authentic and exciting to you.
• 21:38
  You need to connect with the way that you're going to be telling stories. If it doesn't resonate with
• 21:44
  you, just knock it out because what's going to happen is you're just going to burn yourself out
• 21:48
  or you're just going to quit after the first few times. It should be an enjoyable process. It
• 21:53
  shouldn't match your personality. It should be authentic. So you look at somebody like Simon
• 21:58
  Squibb, who has a massive personality and just loves engaging with all those people and you can
• 22:04
  compare it to a content creator hunter prosper, which does man on the street, but he's never on camera.
• 22:10
  And he's just basically asking people emotionally charged questions about their life. What was your
• 22:16
  first heartbreak? What was your first date like things like that? Or you can look at Dan Coe,
• 22:24
  which a lot of his short form content were animation things. He's not even showing up there.
• 22:29
  So the thing that I would say is just because you see something working doesn't mean you have
• 22:34
  to do it. You can keep searching for something that works, that matches who you are in what you
• 22:40
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• 25:30
  indeed is all you need. One more style of content that I see work, it seems well but I'm curious
• 25:36
  about your opinion on it is reaction style content. So I've seen, who's that Jordan? Is it Jordan
• 25:42
  the stallion? Is that the guy? Yeah, so he finds a viral video and then clips it at the front
• 25:47
  and then he switches to himself. It seems to have worked out for him. Is that a good strategy for
• 25:53
  an introvert that doesn't or is that a lazy strategy? Does that build the same amount of trust
• 25:58
  with the audience if you create the content yourself? So the answer is yes, it can do that but 99%
• 26:04
  of people will fail with that format or any format because they skip the step of actually analyzing
• 26:11
  the format. So let's just say Jordan the stallion, most people will look at it and be like, oh man,
• 26:15
  he's just reacting to the content. I can do that and then they try it, it doesn't work. Why doesn't
• 26:20
  it work? Because they haven't studied like what are the things that contribute to the unsuccessful
• 26:26
  people using it or even with him the unsuccessful videos versus the successful ones because there's
• 26:31
  a lot of nuance in that. Like we've done reaction based content and one of the big things I'll tell
• 26:36
  you is it depends on the clip. You have to source the right clips. In addition to like what is the
• 26:42
  pacing? What is the editing? What are the first three seconds set up? Like all these small elements
• 26:48
  contribute to it. So I'm not going to say it's it's definitely not lazy because like to get good at
• 26:54
  it, it takes a lot of work and there's another YouTuber Dr. Mike that blew up with this. It was
• 26:58
  real doctor reacts to Gray's anatomy, real doctor reacts to the good doctor and it's a great format
• 27:04
  to leverage your expertise and respond to it but it's not as easy as just like, oh I'm just going
• 27:10
  to sit in front of a camera and react to something. We're going deep into like the actual content
• 27:15
  but the hardest thing for people to do is to stop people from scrolling on social media because
• 27:19
  if they don't stop the scroll right then they're not going to watch the rest of the content. So
• 27:23
  what's the strategy to get somebody to stop scrolling? Is it a ridiculous hook in the first
• 27:30
  second? Like how much time do we have? Is it a cover image? What is it that stops you from scrolling?
• 27:35
  So a lot of this happens on the subconscious level. So you're making decisions subconsciously
• 27:41
  about what you're going to walk before it gets to your conscious mind. So oftentimes you're scrolling
• 27:45
  past something not from a conscious basis but from a subconscious basis. So one of the biggest mistakes
• 27:52
  people make with that is they're doing too much. So they don't have a clear visual hierarchy.
• 27:58
  So they may have a meme card text on the top. They'll have captions on the bottom and then you'll
• 28:02
  be talking. So there's three different things happening at the same time. And if the viewer doesn't
• 28:08
  understand the subconscious doesn't understand which one I need to focus on, it feels like it's
• 28:13
  being left behind and thus it's going to move on. So that's one major mistake people make.
• 28:18
  The other big mistake and thing that you have to focus on is making sure that you're
• 28:22
  positioning what you're going to say as something unique and different. Because if people feel like
• 28:28
  that they've heard it before, even if you have a completely unique perspective on it,
• 28:34
  like we can just talk about like finances or meditation or business coaching, whatever subject
• 28:41
  matter, it's been covered billions of times. If you type into the Google there's billions of
• 28:46
  results that come up. So you just kind of make sure that in those first few seconds they realize
• 28:52
  that it's going to be a unique story or a unique spin on it because if they think they've heard it
• 28:56
  before, they're going to move on, they're going to scroll past. And that's where really solid hooks
• 29:01
  come in to set an expectation that you should stay to the end or even kind of seeding that.
• 29:07
  That there is going to be a final payoff. There is going to be something that's worthwhile
• 29:12
  at the end of that video. But it's never about baiting somebody into the content. So you have to
• 29:18
  like the hook has to sync up with what they're getting. Yeah, clickbait, clickbait really doesn't
• 29:23
  work that much anymore. I think all of us are professional content consumers and we can really tell
• 29:29
  if something isn't going to match up. If it feels too clickbaiting, in addition,
• 29:34
  the algorithms are really paying attention to, yes, they're paying attention to how many people stop
• 29:40
  but they're paying attention to how people how long people stay. So that first wave of audience
• 29:45
  that gets it, even if you kind of trick them into it, you'll see that massive drop off in the
• 29:50
  retention when they realize it's not going to pay off. And thus you're going to you're not going
• 29:58
  to stick around does shadow banning exist because I hear this a lot. I'm shadow banned. I'm in all
• 30:05
  I'm in all these group chats and they're like all these business leaders and whatnot and some guy
• 30:10
  said, you know, I hit 256,000 followers on TikTok incredible success and I haven't been able to
• 30:17
  grow TikTok since I must be shadow banned. The shadow banning exists is the algorithm against
• 30:23
  everyone or is it true that like most people's content or at one point their content worked
• 30:30
  and then audience preferences changed and that's why they're no longer getting the reach that
• 30:34
  used to 99.9% of the time you're not being shadow banned. So that's just the simple truth. Are the
• 30:43
  algorithms out to get you? No, because if you think about it, we are the fuel that runs these
• 30:49
  platforms. This isn't like Netflix or Disney where they invest billions of dollars a year in
• 30:53
  original content. They rely on content creators like you meet people watching this to keep
• 31:00
  fueling this engine because if we all stop creating content tomorrow, they would have no business.
• 31:04
  So the number one thing is they want to see us succeed. Now in rare circumstances, if you're
• 31:10
  you know spreading like very like harmful information, yes, they will shadow ban you or kick you
• 31:16
  off the account. But 99.9% of the businesses, it's not the case. Now the other thing I hear is
• 31:21
  they're suppressing my reach on purpose to get me to pay to boost my post for it.
• 31:26
  Well, if that's the case, well, how did Mr. Beast, a 13 year old in North Carolina starting in
• 31:31
  his bedroom, become the most subscribed person on YouTube? Like all of these people, you know,
• 31:36
  in you know, some of these influencers like Erica Colberg or Mark Tilbury or Dr. Mike or Graham
• 31:42
  Stefan, like even Joe Rogan, like these people, they would be just favoring like Coca-Cola and
• 31:48
  Apple and all these people that have the biggest budgets in the world to drive that audience.
• 31:54
  So the big thing to just relate to people is just like it just comes down to the best story tellers
• 31:59
  win. And that previously there was less content, less content creators to they there's more. So
• 32:05
  it's just more competitive for that attention in that success. When you look at, you know,
• 32:11
  people like that that seem to seem to grow despite the competition.
• 32:17
  In my opinion, that's who you should at least learn a little bit from because they're doing
• 32:21
  something that helps them grow now when there's this many people on social. Is that like a fair?
• 32:26
  Yeah, I would definitely say that. Also, the other thing is cutting out
• 32:30
  people that are having success because of external factors. So you think about,
• 32:36
  and this isn't a new brand, but just think about Apple. They have like 30 million subscribers
• 32:40
  on YouTube. Like they have, they spend over a billion dollars a year on advertising.
• 32:45
  Like that's fueling that relationship or you think about actors like the rock who's one of the most
• 32:51
  followed people on Instagram. Like is that generated organically? No. Now I think the rock does
• 32:55
  amazing job with content, but every movie he's in, they're spending a hundred million dollars
• 33:00
  promoting it. He's on every billboard television station magazine cover things of that nature.
• 33:05
  So yes, I think paying attention to people that are having success recently,
• 33:09
  but also are having success because of social media, not because of external factors.
• 33:13
  Now we did some work with Stephen Bartlett's team and like they're, I mean, they are masters
• 33:19
  at understanding stories. Like they get super deep into the research of things about the person,
• 33:25
  how to create that emotional connection, how to create emotional vulnerability, how to create
• 33:30
  trailers out of those clips and really drive it along. In addition, like if they have a bad
• 33:36
  podcast, they're not going to post it. And he's up front with the guests about it. Like there needs
• 33:41
  to be some quality to build that relationship with the audience. Do you find the most people
• 33:46
  think their content's better than it is? Yes. And what I will say is it's not that your content
• 33:54
  is bad. It's the way that you're delivering and packaging the content. So let me just give you
• 33:59
  an analogy is like how many movies are there about World War II? A lot. A ton. A ton. Now there's
• 34:06
  clear ones that are amazing. And then there's clear ones that are just horrible that are unwatchable.
• 34:11
  So it's not about the content about World War II that's bad. It's a story that's being told
• 34:16
  through it. And that's the same thing. And you can, you know, maybe people don't watch a lot of
• 34:22
  World War II movies. Let's talk about aliens. Like there's a ton of movies about aliens or ghosts.
• 34:26
  Okay. First of all, everyone's seen David private Ryan. Everyone's seen
• 34:29
  aliens. An alien versus private. They've all seen these. But there's, but again, it's like there's
• 34:34
  great movies and there's horrible movies. It's not about the content. And that's what I tell people.
• 34:39
  It's it's typically not about you. It's not that your bad is not that your content's bad. It's just
• 34:45
  the context of how you're delivering it that's just not connecting. And if you just start making
• 34:49
  those tweaks and learning those things, that's where success can come from. Because I never will
• 34:55
  work with people and tell them to do something that has nothing to do with what they,
• 35:01
  what their business is has nothing to do with them as an individual. I'm never going to do that
• 35:05
  tell them to do things they don't believe in. Like you can be authentic to yourself and continue
• 35:11
  down the path in terms of your expertise, your, what you're trying to achieve. It's just the
• 35:18
  way that you go about it and deliver it that dictates success. So what do you focus on when you
• 35:23
  have no budget, no resources, you're just getting started. So we just look for a format that matches
• 35:29
  where the person is. So to give you an example, we worked with a hand doctor, Dr. Aaron Nance,
• 35:35
  zero social media experience, zero followers, zero views, didn't want to hire a big team.
• 35:40
  And we helped her find a format that matched her personality and the information that she wanted
• 35:46
  to share, which is called little misdiagnose. And that's her TikTok channel name.
• 35:50
  But basically, you will see it if you go to her TikTok channel, she's holding her phone,
• 35:54
  she's sitting in a corner and she's telling stories like emotional stories about what happens
• 35:58
  in the ER room, what happens when people get misdiagnosed, what people happens with their
• 36:04
  health struggles. And through that, she shares advice and things of that nature. Again, zero views,
• 36:10
  zero social media followers, just an iPhone and she massed an audience of 750,000 people.
• 36:16
  She has 31 videos with over a million views. Through that, she got a book deal with Harper Collins,
• 36:21
  a podcast deal and a reality TV show. So just with her, or with her phone, that she was able to do
• 36:26
  that. Now, there's a lot of those formats out there. If you want to talk about podcasts is
• 36:32
  maybe you start with a zoom podcast, maybe you start with man on the street and that form of
• 36:36
  podcasts. Just start with the resources you have. Just make sure that you're actually studying
• 36:41
  the success of it. Like a recent podcast is not so recent, but it's more recent than others,
• 36:45
  is the all-in podcast. Like that's zoom, you know, they're just, they have a me.
• 36:50
  There's no production. Yeah, and they have, but the thing is they have amazing chemistry.
• 36:54
  They create an experience with it. So you have to study and understand those elements.
• 36:59
  So it's, it's definitely not about how big your team is, how much equipment that you have.
• 37:04
  But it's more about your ability to tell a story. People with iPhones, all around the world,
• 37:10
  tell amazing stories and reach millions and millions of people. When you think about looking at,
• 37:15
  so step one is start and study and get the data. And then you create some content and you're trying
• 37:22
  to figure out, okay, am I on the right path? I don't expect the first piece of content that most
• 37:28
  people create that's in this new format to just knock it out of the park if it does great.
• 37:32
  But what are the things they should look for? What are the metrics? You let's talk about
• 37:35
  Instagram because that's really where most people focus. Not many people focus on podcasts.
• 37:38
  People want to kill it on Instagram. Is it shares? Is it likes? Is it comments? Is it
• 37:44
  what's the thing that sort of the positive signal that this is moving in the right direction?
• 37:49
  I would say that the number, the first place to start is just the number of views.
• 37:53
  Because that will, that will just demonstrate are the algorithms seeing what they want to see
• 37:59
  to syndicate it to more and more people. And typically, 9 out of 10 times engagement is going to
• 38:05
  follow views. Unless you're using paid ads, which it's a little bit different. But the views,
• 38:13
  what they tell you is that you're able to stop the scroll and you're holding attention long
• 38:18
  enough. Now, I'm not talking about 10,000 views. I'm talking at least a few hundred thousand views
• 38:24
  and beyond. Now, if you have followed the process that I've outlined, which is first shifting
• 38:31
  from a passive to active mindset, understand that there's clear patterns. There's the story telling
• 38:36
  formats out there that have repeatable success. You've taken the time to align with the format
• 38:41
  that matches you. And then you study that format, the successful use cases versus the unsuccessful
• 38:47
  use cases. Then what you can do if you have an underperforming video, you just take a reference
• 38:56
  of like a high performer using that same format. And you put your content on one side of the screen,
• 39:01
  the high performing the other side of the screen, and you play them side by side. And don't even pay
• 39:05
  attention to the content. People are oftentimes looking for apples to apples comparison. Like people
• 39:09
  saying the exact same thing as me, don't do that because it's highly unlikely that you're going to
• 39:13
  find that correlation. But when you play them side by side and if you're truly honest with yourself,
• 39:18
  truly honest with yourself and open, you will start seeing the differences in the execution.
• 39:24
  So that could be things like the pacing, the facial expressions, the reactions, like the camera
• 39:31
  angles, the lighting, captions, hooks, title cards. But this simple exercise of taking a high
• 39:37
  performer with a specific storytelling format and yours with an underperformer and playing them
• 39:41
  side by side, you will see it. And the same thing works for podcasts. If you're creating a podcast,
• 39:48
  play it side by side with a Stephen Bartlett, Alex Friedman, a Joe Rogan and all in podcasts,
• 39:54
  and pay attention to what is the experience that they're creating? What are they doing differently?
• 40:00
  Why does it feel different than what I'm doing? That you will learn so much through that process.
• 40:06
  If you're open to it, you consistently do it and you're honest with yourself.
• 40:09
  And I think the other thing that I think people, and I want you to speak on this because
• 40:15
  I suffer from this as do probably most creators, they look at content that's performing and they
• 40:19
  can't understand why it's performing. I'll give you an example. I have no idea why Alex Friedman
• 40:25
  podcasts is so popular. I like him, but I can't sit through a three, four hour podcast,
• 40:31
  and I don't find him exceptionally charismatic, but something about that draws people in.
• 40:36
  So if I don't understand it, it's hard for me to replicate it because I don't have conviction
• 40:40
  that I can do it well. And I'd also don't understand if I put that much energy in time and
• 40:44
  convince somebody to sit down with me for four hours and wear a suit with like a little tiny tie,
• 40:49
  I don't understand how that's going to drive the results.
• 40:52
  So there's a few things in just in terms of Alex Friedman, he followed Joe Rogan's model.
• 41:00
  So one of the things that they do is they leverage clips and strong hooks around clips
• 41:04
  to get people introduced to the podcast. And then it sparks interest for people to go into the
• 41:10
  long form. However, what those clips are also doing is it's building relationship with the audience.
• 41:15
  You know, when we talked about getting people to know, like, and trust you, if they know,
• 41:20
  like, and trust you, they ultimately want to consume more of your content and there's a compounding
• 41:25
  effect. So you start on a small level and even Stephen Bartlett does this with his kind of like
• 41:29
  movie trailer-esque, you know, you know, trailers on Instagram or TikTok that push into the long
• 41:35
  form is you're finding that spark, that reason that people should pay attention. So you think about
• 41:42
  even like Netflix or Amazon Prime video or Disney+, how many options do we have in terms of TV
• 41:49
  shows? It's it's crazy. So what drives our initial interest is either the trailer or a friend
• 41:56
  telling us about it. And then once we've, you know, garnered that trust or that excitement,
• 42:01
  we're willing to sit and binge watch an entire show or watch a three or four podcast. But if you
• 42:06
  want to get into kind of like the difference, even just start with like clips, like watch a clip
• 42:10
  of like Lex Freeman, I'm talking like more of the YouTube clips, just to get the experience that he's
• 42:15
  doing versus what another podcast or is doing. And you will see and it's going to be very subtle.
• 42:20
  I'm it's going to be subtle. I'm not going to be like there's going to be this glaring red flag that
• 42:25
  says, Oh, this is different. But if you really study it, like even Lex, he is very dry in some ways.
• 42:33
  But he is a master at like pulling things out of people, like building that connection with the
• 42:40
  person, making you feel like you are in the room with him. And that is the same with Joe Rogan. You
• 42:46
  lost in kind of these, these conversations, these experiences that they create through the screen.
• 42:53
  And I think that's where a lot of podcasts are lost. Like I spent two years
• 42:57
  working with Katie Kirk when she moved to Yahoo. And there's just like so much nuance that goes into
• 43:04
  the interview type format on social media versus kind of the television experience.
• 43:09
  I can't remember where I heard this, but somebody, I can't remember who told me this,
• 43:14
  but somebody said you can either make content entertaining or educational, but you can't do both.
• 43:22
  Do you believe that to be true? I completely disagree. I'll just give you examples.
• 43:26
  You look at Veritasium that I think they have like 20 million subscribers about science.
• 43:31
  It's entertaining and educational. You look at Mark Rober, the former NASA engineer, like his is like
• 43:37
  super educational is like, can I make a pool out of jello, which sounds like stupid, but like he gets
• 43:44
  into the science of like how you actually do it. He, and he, and he creates toys that's so amazing.
• 43:49
  He created a toy company that helps kids understand engineering. So I definitely believe it can be
• 43:55
  educational and entertainment value at the same time. The HubSpot podcast network is a success story
• 44:00
  partner. Now a quick podcast recommendation. I've been listening to truth, lies, and work. They're
• 44:05
  in the HubSpot podcast network, just like success story. It's this husband and wife team Al and
• 44:09
  Leanne Elliott. They break down why people actually do what they do at work. So if you have a business,
• 44:15
  if you manage people, if you have to hire people at any point, you have to listen to the show.
• 44:19
  I just listened to an episode on my good employee suddenly quit. That's an issue that we all have,
• 44:23
  and it totally clicked for me. One of the reasons I explained is why it's not usually about the money.
• 44:27
  It's about all these little promises that we as founders, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders,
• 44:32
  we break without realizing it. Like when you tell someone you just hired that they're going to
• 44:36
  learn all these new skills, but you just keep giving them the same tasks over and over and over again,
• 44:41
  it made me realize that I probably lost a lot of good people for dumb reasons that I never noticed.
• 44:45
  And hiring is one of the most important things to figure out. So if you manage people or if you just
• 44:49
  want to understand what makes your co-workers tick, it's worth checking out. Listen to truth, lies,
• 44:53
  and work wherever you get your podcast. Shipstation is a success story partner. You know what separates
• 44:58
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• 45:03
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• 45:34
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  success story. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now the future of business is happening right now
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  Visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. Do you think that everything should
• 46:53
  entertaining and educational? Great. But do you also how do you how do you figure out
• 47:01
  how to tie your content into someone's emotion? So I can entertain them briefly for 30 seconds.
• 47:07
  I can teach them something new. But the next layer will be to make them feel emotionally connected
• 47:13
  with the content. And maybe in long form, I find that to be a little bit easier because I can get
• 47:19
  into some deeper topics. But how do I figure out how to get emotionally connected to the audience
• 47:27
  in a 30 to 45 second clip so that they don't want to go anywhere else for content? They just want
• 47:33
  to come to me repeatedly again and again and again. So it's a great question. And the first thing
• 47:37
  to kind of point out is only 30% of the population views content and communicates through emotions.
• 47:46
  So we use a lot of behavioral psychology in the work that we do. So there's six different ways
• 47:51
  that people perceive and engage in content. This is coming from a data set of over two million
• 47:55
  profiles, a communication assessment profiles. So the largest is emotion. It's 30% of the population.
• 48:01
  So they're going to connect with you based upon how that clip emotionally makes you feel.
• 48:06
  The second largest subset of the population is fact-based. It's 25%. So then it's not about how it
• 48:12
  makes them feel. It's about data information, timeframes. Does this make sense? 20% is fun-based. They
• 48:18
  want just stimulation. They want to know it's going to be exciting. It's going to be engaging.
• 48:22
  It's going to take them on a wild ride. 10% is value-based. So it's more about do I value this person's
• 48:29
  opinions? Do I trust them? Other 10% is reflection-based. So they just, they basically just sit back
• 48:35
  and reflect. Like the best example, I don't know if you saw Oppenheimer with Albert Einstein,
• 48:41
  what is he doing in their movie? He's just staring out at a lake. And that's what Albert Einstein's
• 48:45
  personality was. He came up with his best theories by just reflecting on the world around him.
• 48:49
  And then the smallest subset of the population is action-based, 5%. So they don't think they don't
• 48:54
  feel they just go. Like Tom Cruise, this is his personality type. They're they're fueled by
• 48:59
  incidents. So if you watch Mission Impossible, he's not talking about his feelings. He's not talking
• 49:03
  about opinions or logic. He is jumping off the side of buildings, hanging off the side of planes.
• 49:08
  So when we think about like how do we want to connect with people? Yes, emotion is the largest,
• 49:13
  but you don't need to go overboard. So I'll kind of give you an example as I did work with
• 49:18
  Keller Williams in the real estate. And we did a deep analysis of how people sell homes.
• 49:23
  And almost all of the marketing material is just fact-based. It's like this is this house has
• 49:29
  five bedrooms and an acre of land has a pool and has a nice backyard. So that's just 25% of the
• 49:36
  population. But how would I contextualize that single piece of content to house in these six
• 49:42
  different ways? Well, I was still start with logic. I said this house has five bedrooms on an acre
• 49:47
  land for bathrooms, a pool in the backyard. But can you imagine yourself sitting around this
• 49:54
  amazing fire bliss and Christmas Eve? Like, how is that going to feel when you're sitting with
• 49:59
  your kids opening presents? And I really believe that this is a great house for you because it's
• 50:05
  in the best school district. And that pool in the in the backyard, you are going to have the craziest
• 50:10
  and funnest parties and all your friends are going to be super jealous. But I think you should
• 50:15
  act now because this is the best house on the market. So what I did is I take that same
• 50:19
  content and then just wrapped it in those different ways. So you don't necessarily have to go
• 50:24
  overboard in a certain direction. Now, obviously there are certain if you're talking about podcasts
• 50:32
  or any type of content, there's certain formats or ways that you can kind of manufacture it.
• 50:36
  Like, like, I mentioned Hunter prosper in the beginning, like his format is all emotionally
• 50:41
  driven, like asking people, what was your biggest heartbreak? What was your first love? What was
• 50:46
  your biggest disappointment? Those questions are going to automatically evoke that emotional
• 50:52
  connection. So there's certain things that you can look for in terms of like clips and things of
• 50:56
  that nature where you're again, manufacturing, what do you want the effect of the viewer to have?
• 51:02
  And if you know that ahead of time, it makes it so much easier to kind of back into it. So if
• 51:07
  you're doing a podcast and you're kind of just doing research on it, just think about like,
• 51:13
  okay, what are some emotional responses I can get from this person? Or what are some topics that
• 51:17
  can have an emotionally charged connection with the audience? You know, it's so funny because as
• 51:22
  you're walking me through that Keller Williams example, the way that you said, you know, imagine
• 51:27
  your family sitting around the fireplace enjoying Christmas. And this is how a good agent would
• 51:33
  sell a home. That's how they sell. They make you feel like it's a home before it's even yours.
• 51:40
  Now, why would you apply a different strategy on social? You wouldn't. You do the exact same thing.
• 51:45
  You still tie that emotion into it. Why would you just leave with facts when you can actually
• 51:49
  wrap it into a story that resonates? And to your point, so not every style of content has to
• 51:56
  speak to every kind of person. That's really, it's impossible really to speak to all those
• 52:04
  different categories of people. So you have to figure out which one you want or which are a few
• 52:08
  that you want to tap in. Yeah, typically we say focus on feelings, facts and fun because that's 75
• 52:13
  percent of the population. Feeling facts and fun. So you're you're typically hitting hit it. Like
• 52:16
  another example is it worked with Taylor Swift early on in her career. And one of the,
• 52:21
  so she's the reason for her success is nobody else. Like people have helped her along the way,
• 52:26
  but the reason that she's so successful is she understood that one to one relationship with social
• 52:31
  media. She understood that social media is not a one to many platform. It's a one to one platform
• 52:37
  because people are consuming social media by themselves on their phones and their bed and in the
• 52:42
  Uber, the bus, whatever. But as she scaled because initially she tried to, you know, communicate
• 52:49
  with as many fans as possible, respond to comments, sign autographs and things of that nature.
• 52:52
  But as she scaled it became more and more difficult. So what did she start doing? She would go to
• 52:58
  a fans bridal shower. She would show up with Christmas presents on a doorstep and they would film
• 53:03
  the experience. And what she was subtly doing is saying, I care about all my fans. I love you all.
• 53:10
  I wish I could be with every single one of you. But this is just showing that I care. Now that's,
• 53:14
  she's not saying that. It's all done subtly. And the fans just love her for it. That's why she has
• 53:20
  such a diehard fans is because they truly believe that they care that she cares about them as an
• 53:26
  individual. I said Gary V spoke about this a lot. He spoke about when he was just starting out. He
• 53:31
  would stay up till two, three in the morning responding to people on Twitter who would comment under
• 53:36
  his tweets. And I think they're I think that a lot of people have lost that. They look at social
• 53:40
  media as like a megaphone. And I don't realize that there's real people on the other side of the
• 53:45
  screen. Yeah. And I think the biggest shift is the way that you communicate. It's shifting it
• 53:50
  from hey everybody to I want to tell you a story. Like I want to connect with you as the individual.
• 53:57
  Not hey, I want to connect with the million people. It's just looking at it from that perspective
• 54:02
  and approaching it as if you were creating creating a video for a friend or creating a video for a
• 54:08
  single person. That's where a lot of that connection is built out that trust and that relationship.
• 54:15
  When a business owner starts to create a whole bunch of content on social.
• 54:20
  Because again, most of the people you work with, they're figuring out how do I create a social
• 54:24
  audience for like a commercial objective. That's the goal, right? Not just to amass a whole bunch of
• 54:29
  fans. So I think that they understand that they're social sucks and they could probably be done
• 54:34
  a little bit better and they could probably apply some of these ideas. But I don't think they have a
• 54:38
  clear line between creating the content and building an audience. And then how does this help me with
• 54:44
  my revenue or sales? And the fear is, okay, how much money do I have to invest in this strategy
• 54:51
  before I see revenue in the other side? And I'm almost positive that's 100% the conversation
• 54:55
  that you have. Because if you could say with absolute certainty, well, yeah, you put X amount of
• 55:00
  dollars in and you do it for three months or six months and then you're going to see X amount
• 55:04
  of dollars on the other side of it. It's a very easy sale. So how do you how do you
• 55:10
  set the business owner up or what's the idea that you tell them so that they understand when they
• 55:15
  start doing this? This is going to happen. You're going to get so many fans. So many of those
• 55:20
  fans are going to turn into customers. Then eventually it's going to help your revenue. What's that path
• 55:24
  look like? So the first distinction is are we trying to make a sale or we trying to build an
• 55:30
  audience that will scale your brand and your company to the highest possible levels. If you're
• 55:36
  just trying to make a sale and I'm not faulting people for it, just do paid ads. It's a lot
• 55:42
  easier. Now there's nuances to it. But again, that is a short term fix because you're ultimately
• 55:49
  going to lose out to competition that are building an audience like building an audience is building
• 55:53
  people that know like and trust you will basically buy anything that you want and you're not
• 55:58
  going to have to pay for ads or marketing because they are just exposed to want to support you
• 56:04
  along the way. So again, if we want to make a sale, just focus on paid ads. If you want to build
• 56:08
  an audience and really reach the highest potential of your brand and your company, you have to realize
• 56:13
  that your social media profile is not your website and your organic posts are not ads. People do not
• 56:20
  log on to social media to watch ads. They want to create a connection with people. Now,
• 56:27
  as I've said is like the whole goal with organic is not about selling. It's getting people to
• 56:32
  know like and trust you. So let me give you a prime example of this in action. I'll actually give you
• 56:38
  a few because I just really want to solidify this point because it's a great question that most
• 56:43
  people miss. So we had a leather craftsman that sold leather goods. Amazing guy fell in love with
• 56:48
  creating leather goods at the age of six. He created his first leather jacket. So when he grew up,
• 56:52
  he wanted to create like leather handbags and purses and wallets. So when he came to us, he
• 56:58
  was stuck at 2000 followers. Wasn't breaking through why because he was just creating ads like
• 57:03
  through his organic content. So we helped him create a format that's called is it worth it?
• 57:08
  We'll basically take very expensive handbags like a Chanel handbag deconstructed on screen that's
• 57:14
  like thousands of dollars and tell you whether it's worth the money that you paid for it. So with
• 57:19
  this single format, he is not talking about his products. He doesn't have call to action.
• 57:25
  He exploded. He is over 2.3 million followers across the social media channels. He has over 94
• 57:29
  videos with a million views. So how does that translate into business? He is getting so much exposure.
• 57:35
  He's earning so much trust with the audience because he's building this connection that ultimately
• 57:40
  people want to buy from him because he's expressing his expertise. So he just has a link in his
• 57:46
  bio that you can click on it to find out more information about his products. And previously,
• 57:50
  he was spending money on paper click ads like playing the paid model. He's only generating 10,000
• 57:55
  visitors a month. Once this took off, it jumped to 100,000 visitors and his most expensive products,
• 58:01
  the ones that were custom handmade, thousands of dollars, he can't keep them on the shelf.
• 58:06
  So another example is a dentist. Again, another like unsexy subject matter. Again, he came to us
• 58:13
  Dr. Jordan Davis out of Utah and he was creating commercials and it wasn't breaking through.
• 58:18
  It wasn't resigning. So we helped them design a format that is him breaking down celebrity teeth.
• 58:24
  Like how would he would fix celebrity veneers? Like he has one with Emily Bluntas 21 million views.
• 58:30
  Again, through the format, he exploded. He's not selling his dental practice or any of that stuff
• 58:35
  that he's opening more dental practices than a hairstylist Regina Roth in Florida. You know,
• 58:40
  she's struggling to make $3,000 a month. She had one viral video that was a reveal of a client
• 58:48
  generated 17 million views. She's booked out a year in advance from one video with 17 million views
• 58:54
  and a one from 3,000 to 16,000 in revenue per month. Again, there's no calls to action. It's not
• 59:00
  by my products, by my service now. And I know it's a bit difficult because it's,
• 59:05
  you know, as a business owner, you like, you need to generate revenue. You need to keep the lights on.
• 59:09
  So I don't say like, don't do those other things from like a short-term one perspective.
• 59:14
  But if you're getting serious about building an audience, like you need to give it time to build
• 59:19
  that relationship. Like, like the other analogy I could give you is like, how long,
• 59:24
  like you just, let's just say that we meet somebody today for the first time. How long would it take
• 59:28
  before you ask them to loan you some money? This is not going to happen in the first day.
• 59:32
  You know, if we're friends and years later when she's not going so well for me,
• 59:36
  yeah, exactly. It's not right away. Exactly. And it's the same thing as you're building a
• 59:40
  relationship with your audience. Like you look at Mr. Beast, like his company is now said to be
• 59:46
  valued at $5 billion. His company Feastables, which is a fast selling Chocobar in the world,
• 59:52
  is estimated to do 500 million in revenue this year. Why? Because he spent years building this
• 59:58
  massive relationship with people all over the world that just want to support him because they
• 1:00:03
  like him. They like the content and what he does, not because he's trying to sell it to them.
• 1:00:07
  When you think about, when you think about paid not for conversions, but paid as a strategy to help
• 1:00:15
  sort of augment the content you're already putting out because every platform has boost or promote
• 1:00:21
  or run ads towards content. Is that ever part of someone's strategy? Should they put money
• 1:00:29
  towards driving traffic to a post? Does that help build an audience? I mean, even on YouTube now,
• 1:00:35
  they have a little promote button where you I've tried it. It doesn't work very well. I see like
• 1:00:39
  the listener retention is shit when you do that. Does anything actually work in terms of paid or
• 1:00:46
  is it always going to be just a pure organic play? So I would say if we're talking about organic
• 1:00:52
  content, I would say paid comes into play. If you have a piece of content that's already proven to
• 1:00:56
  work and it's plateaued and you want to push it to that next level. If you're trying to drive
• 1:01:03
  paid to sell something, just run dark ads like and you can retarget the audience that consumed. So
• 1:01:09
  I would focus more on like, how do I pull my retention up? How do I make my content as good as
• 1:01:15
  possible? Because you're not going to fix it with paid paid is not going to make it, you know,
• 1:01:20
  running paid ads is not going to fix your ability to become a better storage dollar. So that's
• 1:01:26
  the way that I would look at it. No, that's smart. And when you think about all the different
• 1:01:30
  creators out there, the people look at as an example of good content. This is something that
• 1:01:35
  I want you to speak on because it's real and I think that it's a mind field out there in terms of
• 1:01:42
  creators who actually create good content and then creators who fake a lot of their engagement
• 1:01:46
  and a lot of their reach. So as a business owner, I'm trying to find examples of good content.
• 1:01:51
  What's the signal that somebody has built a real good audience versus like garbage,
• 1:01:58
  fake engagement? So I think that there's a few things that you can look at. Number like,
• 1:02:02
  basically the number of followers, it's getting difficult like if you're excelling past like
• 1:02:07
  three, four million people of an audience. But then you can just look at the correlation of
• 1:02:12
  views to engagement on content that will tell you. But also is just you can watch the content
• 1:02:19
  yourself and tell like, is it a good story? Like, are you connecting with it? If there's
• 1:02:24
  something that feels off to it, it may not be fake and may not be any other things. Just move on
• 1:02:30
  to the next one. Like, because you want to, if you're going to go and find lessons to learn formats
• 1:02:37
  to to create, like you want to feel that connection to be like, while this person is really on
• 1:02:41
  to something, and oftentimes that goes beyond the numbers, obviously the numbers are in a
• 1:02:47
  barometer of like success. But if the content's not resonating with you, then I would just kind
• 1:02:53
  of move on to something else. What's, you've looked at so many different kinds of formats you
• 1:02:57
  mentioned a few here. What's one of the ones that still sort of fascinate you or that you get
• 1:03:02
  most excited about? What is a certain style of content that you think like, wow, this is like a
• 1:03:08
  game changer, so to speak. Is there anyone in particular who stands out in your head?
• 1:03:13
  I think long form YouTube is a game changer for a brand once they've kind of mastered storytelling
• 1:03:18
  because if you think about long form versus short form, you're building a longer relationship,
• 1:03:22
  10, 20, 30 minutes with an audience versus short form. But it's, again, again, it's super
• 1:03:30
  interesting. The game changing ones are ones that were invented before social media. So man
• 1:03:36
  on the street, 1954, late night television, two characters, one light bulb, Austin Bowers,
• 1:03:41
  you know, Ryan Sirhant, you know, luxury, the lifestyle is a rich and famous, like that's what
• 1:03:48
  fascinates me is the correlation between history of storytelling and what works today. Like,
• 1:03:55
  there's always... Well, it's ties into human psychology and human psychology is forever.
• 1:03:58
  Yes. It's never changing. And storytelling's been around since the caveman, like,
• 1:04:02
  you know, drawing stories on cave walls. But do you think that if somebody's just starting out
• 1:04:08
  out of all the different types of content, and we can really even talk about non-video content,
• 1:04:12
  like Twitter, sub-stack, like newsletters, all, you did say start where you're comfortable.
• 1:04:19
  But say somebody's like, okay, I can do any of it. Where should they start? Short form, long form,
• 1:04:24
  written. What's the... I mean, long form is going to pay the most dividends, but it's the hardest
• 1:04:29
  to execute. I would just make sure that you at least understand the principles of storytelling
• 1:04:37
  through these platforms. And I always recommend starting with short form because you can get your
• 1:04:42
  feet under you. But if you feel like you have the confidence and the knowledge and you spend the
• 1:04:45
  time researching it, then yeah, try and go for long form YouTube videos. But like, again, if you
• 1:04:51
  want to write, you can write. Like, I also have been part of businesses that are successful off
• 1:04:56
  social media. Like, you don't necessarily need social media. Now, social media gives you an edge
• 1:05:00
  and you can scale things a lot bigger and faster. But again, I'm not trying to push anybody into
• 1:05:04
  any specific direction. Hmm. I think it's... Listen, at the end of the day, like,
• 1:05:11
  I was going to ask you, but I know the answer. Like, I was going to ask you, is it quantity or
• 1:05:15
  quality, but it's always quality. And I think that that idea of not just putting out content for
• 1:05:21
  content, sake, but being more purposeful with it, that's really one of the most important ideas.
• 1:05:25
  Learning. Yeah, and learning. And learning. And how... Like, have those feedback loops.
• 1:05:32
  I feel like people just put out content, just to put out content.
• 1:05:34
  Well, they do. It's... And one of the big mistakes that they do is batch producing content.
• 1:05:39
  If you think about, like, let's just say that we're a chef and we have a new recipe for baking cakes.
• 1:05:44
  And we bake all 10 cakes at the same time. And we fold... And they're all in the oven,
• 1:05:48
  and we pull out that first bake cake and it's too dry. Well, what do you do? Like, you've got
• 1:05:54
  nine other in the oven where you're just going to have to throw them out and start it back over
• 1:05:58
  versus, like, let's say that we're going to create the perfect pasta dish. And we're just going
• 1:06:02
  to perfect that sauce. And we just keep, you know, adding an ingredients tasting, adding an
• 1:06:06
  ingredients and tasting, adding... Like, that is the analogy. Because, like, people batch produce,
• 1:06:11
  they put the first video out and it doesn't work. Well, what do you do with the other nine?
• 1:06:15
  You're just... It's human behavior. You spend the time, so you're going to put it up there.
• 1:06:18
  And it doesn't create that opportunity for learning with each one, as in the same thing with, like,
• 1:06:23
  tasting with the pasta sauce is like, just take one step at a time, learn, one step at a time,
• 1:06:30
  and then as you learn and have success and you understand how and why things work, then you can move
• 1:06:35
  to more frequency and pushing out more content. Out of all the clients you've worked with,
• 1:06:40
  this is an unfair question. Because people ask me this question about, you know, who's my favorite
• 1:06:45
  podcast guest? And I always tell them to f off because I can't answer that. But think about sort of
• 1:06:50
  the biggest journey that one of your clients has been on. I want you to walk through that story.
• 1:06:56
  Your favorite story of zero expertise, zero social media presence to where have they gone after
• 1:07:04
  working with you. Yeah, I would say Tanner Leatherstein was a main... Now, he wasn't at zero. He was at,
• 1:07:09
  like, 2000, but he is a perfect example because he didn't feel comfortable in camera. Like, he's like,
• 1:07:14
  I don't know if I really want to be on camera. And even if you watch his videos today, he's not like
• 1:07:21
  a Gary V or a Simon Scribb where he jumps off the screen. But with that, again, we worked with him
• 1:07:30
  to find an avenue that matched his passion, like we were talking about earlier, like your passion,
• 1:07:35
  your authenticity, your connection to the material is super important. And when the,
• 1:07:40
  is it worth it for him, for him that came up of taking a, you know, a thousand-dollar
• 1:07:45
  Chanel handbag, deconstructing on screen and telling you each little elements, like this is good,
• 1:07:50
  this isn't good. This is overpriced. This is not overpriced. You could see the passion going
• 1:07:56
  through the screen, not because he's overinflated in terms of his personality, but just sharing that
• 1:08:02
  expertise and insight. And again, if you watch the videos now, it's not like a Gary V type thing,
• 1:08:08
  but that massive connection that he built with the audience to scaling to 2.3 million
• 1:08:13
  people around the world is amazing. And the most amazing thing is, is the fashion industry is
• 1:08:18
  scared of him. Like they even, they even invited him to Paris Fashion Week, like parties with like
• 1:08:25
  Kendall Jenner's and things like that because they don't, they're scared that he's going to like
• 1:08:30
  break down his bags and stuff. Like, and the amazing thing about him is he will not take any product
• 1:08:36
  deals like to pay to do post. If you want him to break down the product, he makes you sign an
• 1:08:41
  agreement saying that you're going to accept whatever video. And then he also says, you cannot
• 1:08:45
  give me the product for free. I'm going to buy the product and I'm going to do it as a secret shopper,
• 1:08:50
  so you won't know it's me. So it's just that level of authenticity, that connection of a leather
• 1:08:56
  craftsman, like somebody super passionate, but not necessarily like a sexy subject matter.
• 1:09:02
  Could build a connection, build that much influence by just really being himself and finding that
• 1:09:08
  vehicle to express, to express his genius. Last, last thought on, on that particular case study,
• 1:09:15
  because that I think is your most popular YouTube video ever from not mistaken where you broke that
• 1:09:19
  down. And you broke, if somebody sort of goes down the rabbit hole and they research you and they
• 1:09:25
  find that video, they're going to watch that video. And they're going to see you discuss, I think
• 1:09:29
  there's five, five steps. The first step is taking a shift, a mindset shift from just endlessly
• 1:09:38
  scrolling to an expert creator mindset, understanding that there is such thing as a storytelling format,
• 1:09:44
  which again is a blueprint for repeatable success. It's a structure that has proven to work time
• 1:09:50
  and time again that you can insert your message and product into. So once you've made that mindset
• 1:09:56
  shift, you can move to step two, which is selecting and then analyzing your format. So you want to
• 1:10:02
  select the right format for you. What is the resources that you have, even if even an iPhone,
• 1:10:06
  there's formats for you. So you don't need to go beyond your resources. Number two, which format
• 1:10:11
  works best for you? What feels great? We talked both of us, man on the street, not really are kind of
• 1:10:17
  deal. So it needs to fit authentically. And again, we've done 10,000 hours of research,
• 1:10:22
  analyze over 300 different formats. So there are plenty to choose from. Number three is once you
• 1:10:29
  have the number two, once you have the format, then you have to analyze it. So as I mentioned before,
• 1:10:36
  we have gold silver bronze, our analysis process, you cross analyze the high performers in that format
• 1:10:41
  versus the low performers and look at what are the elements that drive success in the high
• 1:10:46
  performers versus low performers. So these things can be facial expressions, reactions, captions,
• 1:10:52
  title cards. There's like over 21 that we kind of used to analyze content. Once you've done that,
• 1:10:57
  number three is coming up with ideas, ideation. So format is the vehicle that makes it super easy
• 1:11:03
  to come up with ideas. Like, is it worth a format with Tanner Leatherstein breaking down
• 1:11:09
  high price leather goods like Chanel handbags, Prada handbags? It makes it super easy. So like,
• 1:11:14
  you know, the first video Chanel, the second video is Prada, the third week is Louis Vuitton.
• 1:11:20
  Like, it makes it so much easier to create high performing ideas because it's a vehicle for it.
• 1:11:24
  And then number four is you produce one video at a time because you want to produce one video at a
• 1:11:32
  time so that you learn with each one and then five is you analyze the performance. And again,
• 1:11:38
  with this model, if it doesn't perform, we have the hook point mirror test where you take the low
• 1:11:43
  performer your video against a high performer and you analyze them against each other to see what
• 1:11:48
  the difference is. Last question. What happens if you're creating a type of content? Because this is
• 1:11:54
  something that I know is with my content. The content that I create that performs the best
• 1:11:59
  is not the content that's actually accomplishing the objective that I want my content to accomplish.
• 1:12:04
  So I'll give you a very, my clips from my podcast, that's what I want to perform. And they do okay,
• 1:12:10
  but they do not do as well as the little graphic images that are hyper shareable. They're a little
• 1:12:15
  tweet sort of square images. So I'm going through a process of okay, so then how do I,
• 1:12:22
  I don't want to stop the thing that drives the most engagement on my page on Instagram.
• 1:12:27
  But I also want to make the podcast clips the priority because that's really my business.
• 1:12:33
  So in that case, would you keep the content that's going viral and test the other at the same time
• 1:12:43
  and then just optimize slowly? If it's serving a purpose and it's driving success for you,
• 1:12:48
  don't stop it. You can keep going with it. But the thing that I would say is in terms of refining
• 1:12:53
  the clips is again, is if you have high performers, you can just do the cross analysis of your own
• 1:12:59
  high performers or low performers or just look at other people, look at Steven Bartlett, look at
• 1:13:03
  somebody else that's doing clips on an Instagram or YouTube shorts and just do that analysis. But no,
• 1:13:07
  you don't, if something is working for you, why stop it? You don't need to stop it. But don't
• 1:13:12
  be complacent with that if there's larger kind of opportunities to scale.
• 1:13:17
  Smart. Any last words of wisdom, things that I didn't ask you about with content, social,
• 1:13:23
  that you think you want to leave the audience with? I would just say like if you've struggled with
• 1:13:27
  success and like you've put your time, energy and resources into something and it doesn't work,
• 1:13:31
  I feel your pain. But I'm just here to tell you it's not luck. And you can succeed even though
• 1:13:37
  there's so much competition, everything that we've talked about today, 99% of people creating content
• 1:13:42
  are not following it. So even though it's a severely competitive marketplace, don't get frustrated
• 1:13:48
  because the beautiful thing is all of the answers are out there. Like we have billions of data points
• 1:13:54
  available to us for absolutely free. Nobody is charging us for it. You can go and do the homework
• 1:13:59
  and study and just focus on one thing. Draw everything out and just focus on how to become
• 1:14:04
  a better storyteller. Don't worry about algorithm changes or shifts or any of that stuff,
• 1:14:09
  just become the best storyteller you can and you will succeed. Amazing. Where can people connect with
• 1:14:14
  you? Where do you want to send them? If they want to learn more about our process and our company,
• 1:14:20
  they can go to hookpoint.com. If they want to get access to my third book, The Guide to Going
• 1:14:25
  Viral, which dives deep into this methodology, they can get it for free by going to hookpoint.com
• 1:14:30
  for a slash clary. I responded DMs on Instagram, LinkedIn. But those are some places. Amazing.
• 1:14:38
  I always ask one question that ended out and this has been like a very tactical podcast. So I
• 1:14:42
  appreciate it. But one thing, I mean, you've built an incredible career, a massive amount of success.
• 1:14:49
  If you were going to sort of pass on one lesson that you've learned over your whole career,
• 1:14:55
  it doesn't have to even be social media related. Just one lesson that you'd want to pass on to
• 1:14:59
  your kids after sort of achieving, you know, I would say you're in the .001 percent of
• 1:15:06
  agency owner of thought leader in social media and you've built an entire career around that.
• 1:15:11
  What would be the lesson for career life that you'd want to pass on to your children?
• 1:15:15
  I would say it's it's patience and persistence, like just be patient, patient with the process,
• 1:15:21
  as long as you are constantly learning, constantly trying to strive for new answers,
• 1:15:30
  not getting overly deflated with failures, you know, failures, you do need to sit with it
• 1:15:35
  for some period of time and like really feel it. But like, it's just keep pushing yourself, keep
• 1:15:41
  trying to be the best person you can be trying to kind of learn as much as possible and be patient
• 1:15:47
  with that process. You know, you will see some people over the course of your life that hit it really
• 1:15:52
  quick. You will see some that will take decades to hit it. But definitively, and I'm sure you know
• 1:15:59
  a lot of people is like, you can spot the people that are going to be successful. You may not be able
• 1:16:03
  to put the pulse on when they will be successful and when it hits. But it's all about that mindset of
• 1:16:09
  just being patient, constantly learning, constantly pushing yourself and just being persistent with
• 1:16:16
  that process that will ultimately lead to the success that you're looking for. And that applies
• 1:16:21
  in personal life, it applies to social media, it applies to anything that you do. But that's really
• 1:16:25
  the key that I would say.