Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Brendan Kane - Social Media Expert | The Secret To Going Viral

Transcript

Brendan Kane - Social Media Expert | The Secret To Going Viral · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  As a kid I would watch movies and every time I'd watch a movie I'd be like I want to be that character.
• 0:04
  When I was in high school I picked up a camera and I was the kid that was always shooting.
• 0:07
  Then I decided why don't I go to film school.
• 0:09
  That's how I kind of got the start into really studying this art form.
• 0:13
  In a world where attention is currency,
• 0:14
  Brendan Cain has cracked the code.
• 0:16
  From pioneering the first ever YouTube influencer campaign
• 0:19
  to managing $200 million in marketing spend,
• 0:22
  he's built digital platforms for icons like Taylor Swift,
• 0:25
  Rihanna, and Adriana Lima.
• 0:26
  For years he was the mastermind behind the scenes.
• 0:29
  Until he used his own methods to gain one million followers in just 30 days.
• 0:33
  The first YouTubers would let you in like their your friend.
• 0:36
  And that's a big mistake that people make with social media is they think it's one to many
• 0:40
  when it's really a one to one platform.
• 0:43
  You need to be able to grab that attention and hold that retention through retention.
• 0:47
  And that's what a lot of the top creators were doing at the time.
• 0:50
  When I first started like back in 2005 we're talking maybe a few million people on these platforms.
• 0:54
  Today it's close to five billion.
• 0:56
  Now at hook point his viral content model has generated 60 plus billion views
• 1:00
  and 100 plus million followers redefining what it takes to go viral.
• 1:04
  This is Brendan Cain.
• 1:05
  In some people think of virality as Mr. Beast.
• 1:07
  To me it's like what is important for the impact that you're trying to have
• 1:11
  and the brand that you're trying to build.
• 1:12
  Work on yourself.
• 1:13
  As entrepreneurs as business people we're so focused on optimizing and scaling the business
• 1:17
  when a lot of times the core focus first should be optimizing yourself.
• 1:22
  Welcome to success story.
• 1:26
  I'm your host Scott Clary.
• 1:28
  The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network.
• 1:31
  But HubSpot doesn't just have great podcasts.
• 1:34
  If you're an entrepreneur, if you're a builder they've got your back now.
• 1:37
  Why is that important?
• 1:38
  Because if you're building anything you know that marketing in 2025 is absolutely wild.
• 1:43
  Now why is that important?
• 1:44
  Because you know if you're an entrepreneur,
• 1:46
  if you're building anything marketing in 2025 is wild.
• 1:49
  Savvy customer spot fake messaging.
• 1:51
  Instantly anything AI generated they sniff it out.
• 1:54
  Privacy changes make ad targeting a nightmare.
• 1:57
  And everyone needs more content now than ever.
• 2:00
  And that's why you have to have HubSpot's new marketing trends report.
• 2:04
  It doesn't just show you what's changing.
• 2:06
  It shows you exactly how to deal with it.
• 2:08
  Everything's backed by research but focused on marketing plays that you can use
• 2:12
  for your business tomorrow.
• 2:14
  If you're ready to turn marketing hurdles into results for your business,
• 2:16
  go to HubSpot.com slash marketing to download it for free.
• 2:20
  A huge shout out to Lingoda for supporting today's episode.
• 2:22
  Now if you're ready to master a new language,
• 2:25
  Lingoda is the online language platform trusted by over 100,000 students worldwide.
• 2:30
  Lingoda offers live classes with real teachers available 24-7.
• 2:34
  You can choose from German, English, business English, French, Spanish,
• 2:38
  or their newest addition, Italian.
• 2:40
  What sets Lingoda apart the smallest class size in the market?
• 2:44
  It's just you and up to five other students.
• 2:46
  Or if you want, you can go one-on-one for personalized attention.
• 2:50
  Their native-level teachers don't just teach language.
• 2:53
  They share culture too and you'll speak confidently from day one.
• 2:57
  With Lingoda's flexible scheduling and proven curriculum,
• 3:00
  students report being able to navigate real conversations in weeks,
• 3:04
  not years.
• 3:05
  And if you're using Lingoda for business,
• 3:07
  their CEFR aligned courses ensure that you're learning
• 3:10
  internationally recognized language standards that employers value.
• 3:14
  Between sessions, you're going to reinforce your skills with downloadable materials
• 3:18
  and bite-sized practice exercises.
• 3:20
  And all success story listeners, they put together a special deal.
• 3:23
  Try Lingoda free with three group classes or one private class.
• 3:27
  Plus, you save on any course with my link,
• 3:30
  try.lingoda.com slash success story and code Scott 25.
• 3:35
  Don't miss this chance to transform your life through language learning.
• 3:38
  Today's episode is brought to you by Vanden.
• 3:40
  Now listen up, this matters for your business.
• 3:42
  And today's digital landscape security isn't optional.
• 3:45
  It's essential.
• 3:46
  Without it, deal stall.
• 3:48
  Sales cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult.
• 3:51
  Now why?
• 3:52
  Because investors, customers, and partners all expect businesses
• 3:55
  to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit.
• 3:59
  If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities.
• 4:02
  So whether you're a startup founder,
• 4:04
  trying to land that first big client or an established company,
• 4:08
  scaling your security program,
• 4:10
  Vanden helps businesses of all sizes prove
• 4:13
  that they're trustworthy by automating compliance
• 4:16
  across 35 frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.
• 4:22
  The exact certifications your prospects are demanding.
• 4:25
  Here's why you need to pay attention.
• 4:27
  Vanden gives you back precious time
• 4:29
  that you're currently wasting on compliance.
• 4:31
  Their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance work.
• 4:35
  It helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires
• 4:37
  at the five times faster, and it connects you with experts
• 4:40
  to get your security program running immediately.
• 4:43
  The results speak for themselves.
• 4:45
  A recent IDC report found that Vanden customers
• 4:48
  achieve over $535,000 per year in benefits
• 4:52
  and the platform pays for itself in just three months.
• 4:55
  So you're going to join over 10,000 global companies
• 4:58
  like Atlassian, Korra, and Factory
• 5:01
  who use Vanden to manage risk and prove security in real time.
• 5:05
  And don't miss this for a limited time only.
• 5:07
  My listeners can get $1,000 off Vanta.
• 5:10
  That's real money back in your pocket.
• 5:12
  Visit vanta.com slash scott right now before this offer expires.
• 5:16
  That is vant.com slash scott.
• 5:21
  Vanden, what made you first start studying the mechanics
• 5:35
  behind viral content?
• 5:37
  It actually interestingly started in movies.
• 5:41
  So just kind of take a step back like as a kid,
• 5:44
  I would watch movies and every time it was crazy,
• 5:47
  like every time I'd watch a movie,
• 5:48
  I'd be like, I want to be that character.
• 5:49
  Like it was about firefighters.
• 5:50
  I want to be a firefighter.
• 5:52
  If it was about like a baseball player,
• 5:54
  I want to be a baseball player,
• 5:55
  not realizing that it's really the mechanics of the storytelling.
• 5:59
  So when I went to when I was in high school,
• 6:02
  I picked up a camera and I was the kid
• 6:03
  that was always shooting videos and editing
• 6:06
  in them of our friends.
• 6:06
  And then I decided, well, why don't I go to film school?
• 6:09
  So in film school, that's where you kind of start really
• 6:13
  starting to learn the mechanics of great storytelling.
• 6:15
  It's not necessarily virality in a sense,
• 6:19
  but it's like great storytelling of like
• 6:21
  through this format of a movie
• 6:23
  that can really stand out at the highest levels.
• 6:26
  Then I moved to LA in around 2005,
• 6:30
  the pursuant career in film.
• 6:31
  I wanted to be a film producer.
• 6:33
  And like everybody, I started at the bottom
• 6:35
  making coffee, copies, deliveries,
• 6:37
  and things of that nature.
• 6:38
  And when you're trying to rise in any industry,
• 6:42
  you want to connect with the top people.
• 6:43
  So that was like the head of the studio,
• 6:45
  directors, producers.
• 6:47
  But when they would ask me why did you move to LA?
• 6:48
  And I would tell them that I wanted to be a film producer,
• 6:51
  their eyes would glaze over.
• 6:52
  Like it's just like, oh, this is just one of a million people
• 6:55
  that have the same pipe dream.
• 6:57
  So I really had to take a step back and be like,
• 6:58
  okay, how can I grab that attention
• 7:00
  of these top people and offer the most amount of value?
• 7:03
  And I just noticed at the time for the studio
• 7:06
  that we work on, every time we finished a movie,
• 7:08
  we'd invested tens of millions of dollars
• 7:10
  into this single piece of content.
• 7:12
  And then we were going to invest tens of millions of dollars
• 7:14
  and more marketing this piece of content.
• 7:17
  And this isn't like traditional business
• 7:19
  where you have years or decades to build a brand.
• 7:21
  You're talking about six months to a year
• 7:23
  for hundreds of millions of people
• 7:25
  to know about this piece of content around the world.
• 7:28
  So at the time, like everybody was reliant
• 7:30
  on traditional media.
• 7:31
  So it was television, print, radio, things of that nature.
• 7:35
  And social media was just coming on the scene.
• 7:37
  So it was like, my space was like the predominant player,
• 7:40
  but YouTube was starting to gain some momentum.
• 7:43
  So I just went to the head of the studio
• 7:45
  and I was like, I know we're spending all of our money
• 7:48
  on these traditional media outlets,
• 7:49
  but let's pay attention and create a strategy
• 7:52
  for these new emerging platforms
• 7:54
  because it's going to be a fraction of a cost.
• 7:56
  And in some cases, free in the case of like,
• 7:59
  I did the first influencer campaign on YouTube
• 8:01
  in 2007 for a movie called Crank with Jason Statham.
• 8:05
  And I just kind of realized there was no such thing
• 8:08
  as an influencer at the time.
• 8:09
  There was just these people creating content.
• 8:11
  They were massing millions and millions of views.
• 8:14
  And at first it was, well, why don't we just tap into that
• 8:17
  so that we can market our movies?
• 8:19
  But then it started to introduce me to the psychology
• 8:22
  of like, well, how are these platforms actually operating?
• 8:25
  And why are they gaining so much momentum?
• 8:27
  What is the actual difference between a video
• 8:29
  that's generating millions of views
• 8:30
  and one that's generating thousands of views?
• 8:32
  So that's how I kind of got the start
• 8:34
  into really studying this art form.
• 8:36
  Yeah, no, I was going to say, when you started to look
• 8:39
  into what these individual content creators,
• 8:42
  like really early nascent stages of social we're doing,
• 8:46
  it's interesting.
• 8:47
  I'm sure you saw it from a professional lens
• 8:49
  because this is what you went to school for
• 8:51
  and you worked with the best to the best.
• 8:53
  But were they doing anything that was taught
• 8:56
  in film school at all in sort of best practices
• 9:00
  for creating compelling content at all?
• 9:02
  Was there any similarities or was this radical shift
• 9:05
  in almost a 180 from the way Holly was doing it,
• 9:08
  actually serving them better?
• 9:11
  Yeah, so it's a great question.
• 9:12
  There were some major differences
• 9:15
  and there was also some similarities.
• 9:17
  So in terms of the differences,
• 9:19
  one of the big differences that was kind of overlooked
• 9:22
  in the beginning was you have these,
• 9:24
  most of the kind of like the bigger influencers
• 9:26
  at the time again, they weren't called influencers,
• 9:28
  but there are people in their bedroom
• 9:30
  on web camera, web cameras.
• 9:31
  And a lot of people wrote them off
• 9:33
  because of that, they're like,
• 9:34
  oh, it's just some kid in their bedroom on a web camera.
• 9:37
  But the difference was, you know,
• 9:39
  if you think about movies and television,
• 9:41
  it's a very passive experience.
• 9:43
  Like you're just kind of engaging this
• 9:45
  with this content from a passive,
• 9:47
  you're just watching it, consuming it
• 9:49
  versus in the, and it still holds true today
• 9:51
  with social media, it's a very active experience.
• 9:53
  Like the first YouTubers would let you in,
• 9:56
  like they're your friend,
• 9:58
  like they're connecting with you in a one to one basis.
• 10:02
  And that's a big mistake that people make
• 10:04
  with social media is they think it's one to many
• 10:07
  when it's really a one to one platform.
• 10:09
  Because if you think about one,
• 10:10
  we're mostly consuming social media,
• 10:12
  we're sitting on a couch on the train on a bus,
• 10:14
  whatever that may be by ourselves consuming that content.
• 10:17
  So that's a big distinct difference.
• 10:19
  Now, similarities is you're still having to tell a story.
• 10:23
  Like you need to be able to grab that attention
• 10:26
  and hold that retention through retention
• 10:28
  and have some type of payoff.
• 10:29
  And that's what a lot of the top creators
• 10:33
  were doing at the time.
• 10:34
  That was a different type of storytelling.
• 10:35
  I'm not using like the three-act structure
• 10:37
  in terms of how those stories were unfolding,
• 10:39
  but they were still telling stories,
• 10:41
  even if it was about their day of what unfolded
• 10:44
  or things of that nature.
• 10:45
  That was causing the people that were really rising
• 10:48
  to the top to connect and generate that level
• 10:51
  of engagement initially.
• 10:53
  Yeah, no, I just, if I think about,
• 10:56
  I mean, I've looked at a lot of your work
• 10:58
  and you really pinpoint,
• 10:59
  like you slay some sacred cows
• 11:04
  and really some really sort of,
• 11:06
  you kill some ideas about what creates great viral content
• 11:10
  that I think are incorrect.
• 11:11
  I think that's probably some of the best work that you do.
• 11:14
  And I think that you sort of reposition
• 11:16
  and refocus people on what they should be focusing on.
• 11:20
  And what they should be sort of over indexing on
• 11:22
  what they should be paying attention to
• 11:23
  when it comes to creating viral content.
• 11:24
  That's really, in my opinion, like,
• 11:27
  that is your life's work.
• 11:29
  And when you think about what has created
• 11:32
  these early influencers versus what creates viral content today,
• 11:37
  do you think it's the same things?
• 11:40
  Do you think it's changed over time?
• 11:41
  Do you think that it's evolved?
• 11:43
  Or are like, there's core fundamentals
• 11:45
  that you have studied, you believe to be true,
• 11:47
  you've seen replicated again and again and again
• 11:49
  and again that hold true over the lifetime of social media?
• 11:53
  I think it's definitely changed.
• 11:56
  And there's one, there's one key ingredient
• 11:59
  that's caused that dramatic shift.
• 12:00
  And that's the number of people using social media.
• 12:03
  So when I first started like back in 2005,
• 12:05
  we're talking maybe a few million people
• 12:06
  on these platforms.
• 12:08
  Today it's close to five billion.
• 12:10
  And the reason that shifts that dynamic
• 12:12
  is the sheer amount of content that's being produced.
• 12:15
  And what that means is you have far more competition.
• 12:19
  So what worked and broke through in 2005, 2006,
• 12:23
  even through 2010, the barrier of entry is much lower.
• 12:27
  So your storytelling didn't really need to be
• 12:30
  as dialed in as it needs to be today.
• 12:32
  In addition, people have been using social media
• 12:36
  for so long that they become professional consumers
• 12:39
  of content on these platforms,
• 12:41
  meaning they can tell within like a split second
• 12:44
  or less than a second, and it may not be a conscious decision.
• 12:46
  It may be subconscious.
• 12:48
  Am I going to consume this piece of content
• 12:50
  or am I going to scroll to the next one?
• 12:52
  So there's a lot of fundamental kind of storytelling dynamics
• 12:55
  and nuances that go into what makes successful content today
• 13:00
  versus if you were doing it back in like 2005 through 2010.
• 13:04
  But I want to differentiate between successful content
• 13:10
  and viral content.
• 13:11
  Are those different kinds of content
• 13:15
  or in your mind can all content be viral content?
• 13:20
  I love that question, that's such a great question
• 13:22
  because virality is a term that's like thrown around.
• 13:27
  And in some people think of virality as Mr. Beast,
• 13:29
  but other people getting like 50,000 views on a post is going viral.
• 13:35
  Like to me, it's like what is important for your business?
• 13:39
  What is important for the impact that you're trying to have
• 13:42
  and the brand that you're trying to build?
• 13:43
  Now, when we're analyzing content to try and understand
• 13:46
  what are the patterns, what are the structures that we need to emulate,
• 13:49
  we're looking at a certain benchmark of in the millions of views
• 13:53
  to kind of gauge and dissect the content.
• 13:55
  But for an individual for a business or brand,
• 13:58
  50,000, 100,000, 200,000 may be considered viral
• 14:02
  or more may be success.
• 14:03
  And that's more kind of what we're after
• 14:05
  is like what is going to have the impact
• 14:07
  the bottom line that you're going after with your content
• 14:10
  and not saying that like if you're a, you know,
• 14:13
  a dentist or a nutritionist or something like that,
• 14:17
  maybe 100,000 views is all you need
• 14:19
  and you can consistently do that
• 14:20
  and you have more business, more impact
• 14:22
  than you know what to do with and that's completely fine.
• 14:25
  You know, you've put out work about how to build
• 14:28
  a massive audience, massive following.
• 14:32
  In your mind now, if you sort of like,
• 14:34
  if you look at what's been most impactful in your life,
• 14:37
  in your career and whatever metric you're tracking,
• 14:40
  do you think that brand should even focus on that?
• 14:42
  Because a lot of people throw around the world
• 14:43
  like vanity metric and is it useful?
• 14:45
  Is it not social proof?
• 14:46
  Does it add value?
• 14:48
  Is it actually driving leads, revenue, all that?
• 14:50
  So, I mean, you wrote a whole book on how to grow your following.
• 14:54
  So, is that a metric people should even track anymore?
• 14:58
  Was it ever a metric people should track?
• 15:00
  Talk to me about that.
• 15:02
  Yeah, it's, there's a lot of levels to that question
• 15:05
  and it's really intelligent question.
• 15:08
  So when I first wrote the book, One Million Fowlers,
• 15:11
  that was 2017 that I wrote the first version of it.
• 15:14
  I released like three or four different versions of that book,
• 15:16
  but back then, following meant a little bit more
• 15:20
  than it does today from the standpoint
• 15:21
  is the amount of reach that you would get with each post.
• 15:24
  Like, you, around that time, if you had, say, a million followers,
• 15:30
  you could get like reach of like 30 to 40 to 50 percent
• 15:34
  of that audience with the content that you're publishing.
• 15:37
  But as we just recently discussed,
• 15:39
  like the more people are on the platforms,
• 15:42
  the algorithms really have to determine
• 15:43
  like what are the pieces of content
• 15:45
  they're going to retain audience?
• 15:47
  Because there's a lot of demonization
• 15:49
  and myths around the algorithms.
• 15:51
  They're there to serve one goal.
• 15:52
  And that's just to keep people in the platforms longer.
• 15:54
  The longer people spend on the platforms,
• 15:55
  the more as they can serve.
• 15:57
  99% of the time, they're not shadow batting your,
• 15:59
  shadow batting your content.
• 16:01
  They're not suppressing it to get you to pay for reach.
• 16:03
  It's just they're looking for the best content
• 16:06
  that can grab and hold attention over other content.
• 16:08
  So if any one of us opened up our favorite app today,
• 16:12
  like whether it's TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook,
• 16:16
  there's probably 150,000 pieces of content
• 16:18
  they could see to us based on the accounts
• 16:20
  that we follow, the content that we've engaged with.
• 16:23
  So they can't just because you're following an account,
• 16:27
  make sure that every piece of content
• 16:30
  they're gonna see because there's all
• 16:31
  that's other competition out there.
• 16:33
  So just because you have a lot of followers
• 16:35
  doesn't mean you're going to reach a lot of them.
• 16:38
  So that's kind of number one.
• 16:40
  I always kind of say focus less on the number of followers
• 16:43
  and focus on like what is the impact
• 16:45
  that you're having with that content.
• 16:46
  Typically we're looking at views to see is it breaking through?
• 16:50
  Is it holding attention?
• 16:52
  But to your point is like why are we doing social media?
• 16:55
  And for people it's different reasons.
• 16:57
  Like for some people it's like pure leads.
• 16:59
  Like I need to generate leads for my business
• 17:01
  and I need to generate, you know, sales calls, sell products,
• 17:05
  whatever it may be, whatever that foundational piece is.
• 17:08
  Like that should be your guiding light in goal there.
• 17:11
  For some people it is, you know, getting kind of the recognition
• 17:17
  you're having a number next to their name
• 17:18
  so they can get on stages, get book deals
• 17:21
  and things of that nature.
• 17:22
  So it really kind of depends on the individual.
• 17:25
  The one thing that I will say though is
• 17:28
  there is a big distinction between organic social
• 17:30
  and paid social and a lot of people misunderstand organic.
• 17:34
  They think that organic social is meant to sell your product.
• 17:38
  It's meant like I'm gonna do a product shot.
• 17:39
  I'm gonna talk about my product and things of that nature.
• 17:42
  Organic social is about building that trust
• 17:45
  that what we call to get people to know like and trust you.
• 17:48
  If people know like and trust you with organic
• 17:50
  they're ultimately gonna wanna buy from you
• 17:52
  and take that next step.
• 17:53
  But you can't lead with the sale.
• 17:56
  You know paid media you can kind of lead with the sale
• 17:58
  and go more direct response.
• 18:00
  But that's a big distinction is like organic
• 18:02
  is really about how you build that relationship,
• 18:04
  how you tell that effective story
• 18:06
  so that ultimately people wanna take that next step.
• 18:09
  Then as you get more experience and more success
• 18:11
  you can play paid and organic off of each other.
• 18:14
  That's where you can really maximize it.
• 18:16
  Just to give you an example of that
• 18:18
  because it kind of seems counterintuitive
• 18:20
  is like why am I gonna make content
• 18:21
  if it's not selling my product.
• 18:24
  We were working with a leather craftsman,
• 18:27
  his name's Tanner Leatherstein
• 18:29
  and he came to us really struggling with social media
• 18:31
  to have a lot of experience.
• 18:32
  He has like 2000 followers
• 18:33
  and the challenge I'm probably was having
• 18:35
  was he was trying to sell his products.
• 18:37
  And what his products were with leather goods.
• 18:39
  It was like leather handbags and purses and wallets.
• 18:43
  But we took a step back and said,
• 18:44
  well what is the way that we could best express
• 18:47
  his expertise and genius through a storytelling format.
• 18:50
  Build that no like entrust where it motivates people
• 18:53
  to go and buy the product
• 18:54
  without having to talk about his products.
• 18:56
  So we helped them design a format called Is It Worth It?
• 18:59
  Where he'll be like a $500 Chanel handbag
• 19:02
  deconstructing and answering and telling you
• 19:03
  whether it's worth the money that you paid for it.
• 19:06
  So that format took him from 2000 followers
• 19:08
  to 2.5 million across all of his social channels.
• 19:11
  And if you watch his content, there's no CTAs.
• 19:14
  He just has the link in his bio.
• 19:16
  And previously he was spending ads
• 19:17
  on like paper click advertising search advertising
• 19:20
  he was generating at 10,000 visitors a month.
• 19:23
  But when the organic took off
• 19:24
  it jumped to 100,000 purely organic
• 19:27
  and his most expensive items.
• 19:29
  The items he was selling for thousands and thousands of dollars
• 19:31
  they were custom made.
• 19:32
  He couldn't keep them on the shelves.
• 19:34
  So I just use that as an example.
• 19:36
  It was first he's a very niche kind of like expertise.
• 19:39
  But also he's not trying to kind of sell you the product.
• 19:42
  He's trying to kind of build that relationship
• 19:44
  and by building that relationship
• 19:46
  it ultimately pays that dividends.
• 19:49
  And you think about like why do
• 19:51
  why does Nike and Reebok and Adidas
• 19:54
  and in all these beauty companies
• 19:55
  spend billions of dollars on like celebrity endorsements,
• 19:59
  athlete endorsements and things of that nature
• 20:01
  because that inherent relationship
• 20:02
  is already built there that you're just tapping into it
• 20:05
  that leads to that ultimate sale and conversion.
• 20:08
  A big thank you to indeed for supporting success story
• 20:10
  because hiring people is one of the hardest things
• 20:13
  you're ever gonna have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder
• 20:15
  as somebody who's trying to build a business.
• 20:17
  It's important to hire well and find the right person
• 20:20
  but it takes so much time and it's so labor intensive
• 20:23
  because like most entrepreneurs
• 20:24
  you have a thousand things going on
• 20:26
  and there's a good chance that you just realized
• 20:28
  your business needed to hire somebody yesterday.
• 20:30
  So how can you find that great amazing
• 20:33
  right fit candidate fast?
• 20:34
  It's easy, just use indeed
• 20:36
  because you don't have to waste time struggling
• 20:38
  to get your job post seen on all these other job sites.
• 20:41
  If you're using indeed you can just use their sponsored jobs
• 20:44
  to help you stand out and hire fast.
• 20:46
  Your post jumps right to the top of the page
• 20:48
  for relevant candidates so you can reach out
• 20:50
  to exactly who you're looking for faster
• 20:52
  and the results really speak for themselves.
• 20:53
  According to indeed data,
• 20:54
  sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed
• 20:56
  have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.
• 21:00
  And you know what I love most about indeed?
• 21:02
  It really just makes hiring so fast
• 21:04
  because everything is streamlined in one place.
• 21:06
  No more juggling multiple platforms
• 21:09
  or waiting weeks for the right candidate
• 21:11
  and how fast is indeed in the minute
• 21:13
  I've been talking to you 23 hires were made on indeed
• 21:16
  according to indeed data worldwide.
• 21:18
  There's no need to wait any longer.
• 21:20
  Speed up your hiring right now with indeed
• 21:22
  and listeners of success story will get a $75 sponsor job credit
• 21:26
  to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash clary.
• 21:30
  In terms of this is do apply just go to indeed.com slash clary.
• 21:35
  A huge thank you to net suite for supporting today's episode.
• 21:37
  Now what does the future hold for business?
• 21:40
  If you ask nine experts,
• 21:41
  you're gonna get 10 answers bull market,
• 21:43
  bear market inflation up inflation down.
• 21:45
  Honestly, at this point, you just need a crystal ball.
• 21:48
  But until we get one over 41,000 businesses
• 21:52
  have found the next best thing.
• 21:53
  They future proof their businesses,
• 21:55
  their operations with net suite by Oracle,
• 21:58
  which is the number one cloud ERP.
• 22:00
  Imagine having your accounting,
• 22:02
  your financial management, your inventory, your HR,
• 22:04
  all flowing together in one fluid platform.
• 22:07
  And here's what makes net suite different.
• 22:09
  It gives you one source of truth for your business.
• 22:11
  You get the visibility and control to make quick,
• 22:13
  confident decisions while others are guessing.
• 22:16
  You're working with real time data insights forecasting.
• 22:19
  You're basically looking in the future of your business
• 22:22
  with actionable data,
• 22:23
  whether your company earns a couple million
• 22:25
  or even hundreds of millions.
• 22:27
  And net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges
• 22:30
  and helps you grab your biggest opportunities.
• 22:32
  And speaking of opportunities,
• 22:33
  they put together the CFO's guide to AI
• 22:35
  and machine learning at net suite.com slash Scott Clary.
• 22:39
  This is the playbook for understanding how to use AI
• 22:41
  for your business.
• 22:42
  The guide is free that is net suite.com slash Scott Clary.
• 22:46
  Well, I think that what business owners struggle with
• 22:50
  is bridging the gap between starting
• 22:52
  and when it's actually gonna realize
• 22:53
  some sort of return.
• 22:54
  And they, I think this, they grasp onto this incorrectly
• 22:59
  safe idea that if they're gonna create content,
• 23:02
  well, why not just make it sales content?
• 23:05
  Why not have a CTA because we're making it anyways?
• 23:07
  And, you know, I don't see my account growing
• 23:10
  because I don't have a formula for achieving
• 23:13
  what that leather, that leather guy was achieving.
• 23:16
  So social is kind of just like a necessary requirement.
• 23:20
  And I'm gonna put out half fast content
• 23:23
  with a CTA in it and most of my sales channels coming
• 23:26
  from my outbound or my ads.
• 23:27
  Anyways, I think they really missed the point
• 23:30
  of social media.
• 23:30
  I think most businesses miss the point of social media.
• 23:34
  I'm sure you probably get a ton of,
• 23:37
  a ton of these examples, but I don't understand why
• 23:41
  in 2025, businesses still have such a tough time
• 23:47
  understanding how to create great content.
• 23:49
  It seems like there's case studies, examples everywhere,
• 23:53
  but if you go to an average business owner's Instagram account,
• 23:56
  it's horrible and you will wanna leave it immediately
• 23:59
  and never follow and never consume unless they're a friend.
• 24:03
  Why do business owners have such a hard time?
• 24:06
  Why can't business owners adopt the same creative eye
• 24:10
  as a creative, as an influencer?
• 24:12
  And yeah, do a lingo kills it.
• 24:14
  Great example, but why this 95, 99% of them
• 24:19
  just dropped the ball on it.
• 24:20
  What are they getting wrong?
• 24:21
  Yeah, I think that there's a few different elements.
• 24:24
  One, we talked about where they're approaching social media
• 24:27
  and social media organic content as an ad.
• 24:29
  Let me place a shot of a product.
• 24:31
  Let me put a discount through that.
• 24:33
  Like nobody, just think about yourself
• 24:36
  when you're consuming social media.
• 24:37
  Nobody logs on saying, I wanna see a great ad.
• 24:40
  I wanna see a great brand of piece of content
• 24:42
  or I'm looking for a discount.
• 24:44
  So that's one thing, they're essentially treating
• 24:46
  their social media profile and their content
• 24:49
  as if it's their website.
• 24:50
  And it's just not that.
• 24:53
  Secondarily, we're talking about close to 20 years
• 24:56
  on social media, it's relatively new.
• 24:58
  And the challenge is there's a lot of creative practices
• 25:04
  and creative models that are being used
• 25:06
  that were designed pre-social media.
• 25:09
  So there's a lack of adapting to like a creative process
• 25:14
  that works for these platforms.
• 25:16
  Third, that we talked a little bit earlier,
• 25:18
  I think one of the biggest inhibitors of success
• 25:22
  is the fact that every one of us has one
• 25:25
  of these devices in our pocket, these phones
• 25:28
  that we can literally open, click record and post.
• 25:32
  So it's a true blessing in the fact that we can do that
• 25:35
  and reach the masses.
• 25:36
  It's democratize your ability to reach millions of people
• 25:40
  because pre-social media you had to have connections
• 25:43
  with a television station, radio station, news,
• 25:45
  it wasn't available to anyone.
• 25:47
  The downside is, is it doesn't take a lot of thought.
• 25:51
  So people think just because I took the time
• 25:53
  to pull up my phone and press record and post it
• 25:56
  or just because I took the time to load up Photoshop
• 25:59
  and create a graphic or just because I took the investment
• 26:02
  to hire a social media manager,
• 26:04
  then I am owed that level of success.
• 26:08
  And that's where like the blaming of like algorithms,
• 26:10
  like, oh, it's out to get me a shadow banning.
• 26:12
  It's there to force me to pay for reach, come in.
• 26:19
  But I think also, again, we need to think about the world
• 26:22
  that we live in versus pre-social media.
• 26:25
  Because if you think pre-social media,
• 26:26
  how many content creators are really on the planet?
• 26:29
  Less than 10 million probably.
• 26:31
  Because you had the traditional media,
• 26:33
  but you kind of had bloggers that were coming on
• 26:35
  and news outlets and websites.
• 26:38
  And if you think about 30 years ago,
• 26:39
  it's probably less than a million.
• 26:41
  Maybe it's the hundreds of thousands.
• 26:43
  Today, you're talking about five billion people
• 26:44
  on these platforms.
• 26:46
  There, and even if we think about entertainment in general,
• 26:48
  like it's not like we just go to the movie
• 26:50
  and we just have 300 cable channels.
• 26:52
  Now we've got Netflix and Amazon Prime
• 26:55
  and all these things and YouTube becoming a player
• 26:58
  in this space.
• 26:59
  So again, it's like we have so much content
• 27:02
  to choose from as consumers that we really need
• 27:05
  to up our game and really justify why should somebody
• 27:08
  spend the time, even if it's 30 seconds,
• 27:10
  paying attention to what we have to say
• 27:12
  versus the 100,000 other pieces of content
• 27:15
  that we could be seated engaged with.
• 27:17
  And you know, that's actually,
• 27:19
  I'm curious because I'm in this game,
• 27:21
  I'm in the podcast game and I don't quite understand.
• 27:25
  I don't quite understand why podcasts
• 27:27
  have as much influence as they do.
• 27:29
  Because it seems like everybody loves short form
• 27:32
  because they're always looking for this next dopamine hit.
• 27:35
  And that's how the majority of social set up.
• 27:38
  And a lot of people ask me as somebody who has the podcast,
• 27:42
  the business owner would be like,
• 27:43
  hey, should I start a podcast and I say yes
• 27:46
  because I see a high amount of trust with my audience
• 27:48
  and when I advertise products, those ads do quite well
• 27:52
  and I see what Joe Rogan's doing
• 27:54
  and how he has influence over elections to a degree
• 27:57
  and obviously podcasting was a huge piece of it.
• 27:59
  So when we think about all the different kinds of content
• 28:02
  because you live in the world of social
• 28:04
  and short form social, but you also study all kinds.
• 28:07
  What is the psychology there?
• 28:10
  Why are some consumers sort of going to both ends of the spectrum?
• 28:13
  Super long, three hour podcasts on one end are very popular.
• 28:17
  And on the other end, you have short form,
• 28:19
  15, 30, 45 seconds because the business owner
• 28:22
  who doesn't understand any of it,
• 28:24
  it's very confusing which direction to go in.
• 28:27
  Yeah, so it's really interesting
• 28:28
  because people say we live in a micro-attention world
• 28:31
  and the truth is we do live in a micro-attention world
• 28:34
  in terms of grabbing the attention.
• 28:36
  Once we've grabbed it and justified
• 28:39
  we're worth paying attention to,
• 28:41
  then people are willing to sit there
• 28:43
  and watch and consume long form content.
• 28:45
  Like you just said, people will spend an hour
• 28:49
  with you on your podcast.
• 28:50
  They'll listen to a three hour Joe Rogan podcast.
• 28:53
  Heck, Squid Games 2 just came out.
• 28:54
  They'll sit there and binge watch the whole thing in a day.
• 28:59
  So it's the short attention span is there
• 29:02
  but it's from grabbing that attention.
• 29:05
  But if we're able to sit there and grab that attention
• 29:07
  and justify, this is worth paying attention to,
• 29:10
  people will spend the time with it.
• 29:13
  Now, there's an interesting kind of dynamic
• 29:15
  if you look at the social media platforms
• 29:17
  and this has been going on for over a decade in that
• 29:21
  like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, they're all short form.
• 29:27
  And their consumption behavior that they've ingrained
• 29:32
  in their users is short form.
• 29:34
  People go to TikTok or Instagram Reels or Facebook
• 29:38
  with a train from a subconscious level,
• 29:40
  I'm gonna give a piece of content 30, 60 seconds.
• 29:43
  I'm not there to watch something for three hours.
• 29:47
  Now, Facebook has tried really hard, TikTok has tried
• 29:51
  really hard to shift that dynamic.
• 29:54
  Like you look at like Facebook's history,
• 29:56
  they did Facebook lives, you know, they did, you know,
• 29:58
  Facebook TV, you know, an Instagram,
• 30:01
  Instagram TV to kind of shift that human behavior
• 30:04
  and dynamic and it just really hasn't worked out
• 30:06
  versus YouTube, YouTube from the beginning was ingrained.
• 30:10
  Like this is a long form platform.
• 30:11
  When you go to YouTube, you're going in, knowing,
• 30:15
  again, a lot of this is happening on a subconscious level.
• 30:18
  I'm willing to give something five, 10, 20 minutes.
• 30:21
  Like my behavior, like I use YouTube
• 30:23
  probably more than any other platform.
• 30:24
  I just download podcasts, download clips,
• 30:26
  and then I just listen to it.
• 30:27
  Like that's my behavior.
• 30:29
  And I know the stuff that I listen to,
• 30:31
  like sometimes I'll listen to like a three hour podcast,
• 30:34
  but I know that behavior is ingrained in.
• 30:36
  Now, the interesting thing is YouTube got scared of TikTok
• 30:39
  and created YouTube shorts because they were worried
• 30:41
  that they were gonna lose out in the audience.
• 30:43
  But that's kind of the real kind of element
• 30:46
  of like short form versus long form
• 30:48
  is understanding the dynamics of the platform you're playing on,
• 30:51
  but also understanding you can hold attention.
• 30:53
  Now, the numbers may not be as big as short form,
• 30:56
  but as you've seen, the impact can be massive
• 30:59
  because somebody listening to each one of your podcasts
• 31:03
  for an hour to time, and they spend,
• 31:05
  let's just say they spend five hours with you a month
• 31:09
  versus like on an Instagram reel,
• 31:11
  like maybe they spend equivalent of like 40 minutes a month,
• 31:15
  like there is like a huge difference there.
• 31:18
  Now, that's not to say that you can't play the two off
• 31:20
  of each other or ones that short form can't be valuable.
• 31:23
  It definitely can.
• 31:24
  It's just the strategy and how you deploy it
• 31:26
  for the end goals that you're going after.
• 31:28
  I think that's very smart.
• 31:29
  And if I think about it and how the biggest podcast grow
• 31:32
  in the strategy that we use as well as it's short form
• 31:35
  to capture net new, and then that's sort of the top to funnel
• 31:38
  for lack of a better term.
• 31:39
  And then they sort of start to discover you.
• 31:41
  Well, they do discover you,
• 31:42
  then they explore all the other types of content you create
• 31:45
  and then some of them convert into long form podcast listeners
• 31:47
  and long form YouTube viewers.
• 31:49
  But if you think about that first piece, to your point,
• 31:53
  that viral first piece, the hook that brings them in,
• 31:56
  the captures their attention and sort of is like the,
• 31:59
  for lack of a better term gateway drug
• 32:01
  into all the rest of your content,
• 32:04
  I know that you study what makes that first piece,
• 32:07
  that short form piece so effective
• 32:09
  because you've done it successfully for yourself.
• 32:10
  And this is the playbook that I think people really have
• 32:13
  a hard time wrapping their mind around.
• 32:15
  And I know that you studied all these different
• 32:17
  sort of elements of what creates viral content
• 32:21
  with the good hook and something that captures people.
• 32:24
  So let's talk about some of those elements.
• 32:26
  But I want to first, we can talk about the things that do work.
• 32:29
  But I think what's more important and a little bit more fun
• 32:33
  would be to talk about some of these,
• 32:35
  I mentioned before, these sacred ideas about viral content
• 32:39
  that people hold true, that are definitely not true
• 32:42
  and really have almost zero impact
• 32:45
  on the performance of your content.
• 32:46
  What would some of those be?
• 32:48
  Yeah, so a lot of these myths,
• 32:49
  and I'll say that at some point they may have held true
• 32:54
  because there's less content on the platform.
• 32:56
  So we're talking like 10 years ago.
• 32:57
  So one of the big ones is frequency.
• 32:59
  Frequency is the key to going viral.
• 33:01
  It's just not.
• 33:02
  It's like, it's the storytelling elements.
• 33:05
  And you look at, for example,
• 33:06
  like some of the best content creators,
• 33:08
  like a Mr. Beast or like a Mark Rober or Veritasium,
• 33:12
  like these guys, Mr. Beast has ramped it up.
• 33:15
  But for a long period of time,
• 33:16
  they're producing like one piece of content a month
• 33:18
  or every six weeks and they're engineering every aspect of it.
• 33:22
  You know, frequency can come into play
• 33:24
  once you've kind of really mastered the art form
• 33:26
  of understanding how to tell a story,
• 33:28
  but it's not the driver to your success.
• 33:30
  Like it's not the driver to you breaking through.
• 33:33
  And we can kind of talk a little bit about
• 33:36
  kind of the elements of why this is true.
• 33:39
  But a lot of people will say,
• 33:40
  well, I'm just going to throw a bunch of things at the wall
• 33:43
  and hope that one's one goes viral.
• 33:45
  But the reality is,
• 33:47
  let's just say you post 50 pieces of content
• 33:49
  and one goes viral,
• 33:50
  you don't have a process or a model in place
• 33:52
  to understand why so that you can replicate it.
• 33:54
  We can talk a little bit about that model in a bit.
• 33:58
  But that's one, you know,
• 33:59
  there's an over emphasis on hashtags.
• 34:02
  There's the one thing that I always hate is like still.
• 34:05
  In 2025.
• 34:06
  Yeah, still, you'll see it.
• 34:07
  Yeah, you'll still see it.
• 34:09
  The one thing that I can't stand is use this trending audio
• 34:12
  and you'll go viral
• 34:13
  because if you click on the trending audio
• 34:16
  and you look 99% of the content's not going viral
• 34:19
  because you don't understand the dynamics about it.
• 34:23
  But there's, I think that the biggest thing
• 34:25
  is there's this over emphasis on quantity versus quality.
• 34:30
  The other thing is people are chasing trends.
• 34:32
  You know, that's another big thing is like,
• 34:35
  like if you think about trends
• 34:36
  is like nobody's still doing the ice bucket challenge today.
• 34:39
  You know, it's just like that's a fleeting thing.
• 34:42
  And I kind of think of if we talk about mastery
• 34:46
  and like everything that we focus on is like,
• 34:47
  how do you become the top 1% of on social media?
• 34:52
  If you think about mastery of anything,
• 34:53
  let's just say we want to master a musical instrument.
• 34:57
  Well, you wouldn't like week one start with a piano
• 35:01
  and then week two switched to a saxophone
• 35:03
  and week three switched to a flute.
• 35:05
  Like how are you going to master any one of those,
• 35:08
  those different elements?
• 35:09
  So those are like some of the big mistakes
• 35:11
  that people are falling into.
• 35:14
  And I can kind of dive into the model
• 35:16
  that we built and how they can kind of overcome those
• 35:19
  and they should focus on because it's super easy
• 35:21
  to say all these things don't work.
• 35:22
  But what are the things that do work?
• 35:24
  Like how should you go about it?
• 35:26
  Yeah, no, please.
• 35:27
  I think that's, and I wanted to,
• 35:28
  I wanted to highlight the things that don't work.
• 35:29
  Another thing that I've heard you speak about before,
• 35:33
  even production quality.
• 35:35
  Any of these sort of ideas
• 35:38
  that you have to have the best equipment
• 35:39
  or the best lighting or the best audio,
• 35:42
  does any of that impact at all?
• 35:44
  I believe that you can,
• 35:46
  and I've seen a lot of creators
• 35:47
  with just picking up a phone and recording
• 35:49
  in the middle of nowhere do quite well.
• 35:52
  But is there any merit to that?
• 35:54
  So it depends on the format and structure you're using
• 35:56
  and we can get into what that means in a minute.
• 35:59
  But the quick answer is no.
• 36:02
  Like there are certain formats that do require it.
• 36:05
  Like if you look at it like Diary of the CEO
• 36:07
  and Steven Bartlett, they're creating an experience
• 36:10
  and that experience is reliant
• 36:13
  on certain production elements.
• 36:15
  But like you look at somebody like Robert Croak
• 36:18
  that does walking listicles who walks around the block
• 36:20
  and records himself on his phone super successful.
• 36:23
  You look at the man on the street format,
• 36:25
  which School of Hard Knocks does.
• 36:27
  Simon Skiv is doing my friend Alex Stemp.
• 36:31
  Like we can shoot those things on iPhone.
• 36:33
  So there are certain formats that kind of dictate,
• 36:36
  you know, higher production value.
• 36:37
  But by no means do you need to start there
• 36:40
  and no means is it required for success?
• 36:43
  Okay, so let's talk about the playbook.
• 36:45
  Talk to me about first, how did you build this playbook?
• 36:48
  What were the different things that you studied?
• 36:51
  How did you come to this conclusion?
• 36:52
  How did you test it out?
• 36:53
  Sort of validate the playbook and let's talk about what it is.
• 36:56
  Yeah, so as I mentioned, I started in social like 2005,
• 37:01
  built digital divisions for movie studios
• 37:03
  and then built some technology in that space.
• 37:06
  And then about I think like 2012,
• 37:08
  I helped kind of advise and scale
• 37:12
  one of the first social media advertising agencies.
• 37:17
  So if you think back when social media first started,
• 37:19
  they didn't have their own ad networks.
• 37:21
  Like they were relying on like, you know, bottom basement,
• 37:24
  you know, CPMs of banner ads
• 37:26
  and using third party networks and things of that nature.
• 37:28
  And then I think I could be wrong,
• 37:30
  but I think YouTube was the first one they came out
• 37:34
  and they created TrueView, their advertising platform.
• 37:36
  And our agency was the largest third party provider
• 37:41
  of ad revenue to TrueView when it first launched.
• 37:45
  And we helped scale that agency to managing
• 37:47
  about a hundred million a year in media spend
• 37:50
  across the social platforms for Fortune 500 companies.
• 37:54
  And the reason I say that is I learned so much
• 37:56
  about the inefficiencies in terms of the creative.
• 38:01
  So we had like, you know, major corporations
• 38:04
  and brands you would know come to us
• 38:06
  with a piece of creative that was designed for television
• 38:09
  or for print or radio.
• 38:11
  Or maybe it wasn't, it was designed for social,
• 38:13
  but it was using these outdated models
• 38:16
  of like how you create content for those platforms.
• 38:19
  And what I would ask them is like,
• 38:20
  how do you know that this piece of creative
• 38:22
  is going to like work to the tune of investing millions
• 38:26
  of dollars like they were talking like anywhere
• 38:28
  from like a million to 10 million dollars
• 38:30
  against a single piece of content without testing it
• 38:32
  without any validation that this piece of creative
• 38:34
  is going to work.
• 38:35
  And I just kept seeing that over and over and over again.
• 38:38
  I was like, this isn't sustainable.
• 38:40
  There's got to be, you know, a different way
• 38:42
  of going about this.
• 38:43
  So I left, I left work in that company
• 38:47
  and I started building the foundations of the model
• 38:50
  that we use at hook point today.
• 38:52
  One of the first experiences that kind of really started
• 38:56
  to refine and understand this is I was brought in
• 38:59
  by a journalist named Katie Curric
• 39:01
  when she moved from traditional television
• 39:03
  the today showed to Yahoo.
• 39:05
  And she was really struggling
• 39:06
  because Yahoo didn't have a really strong sense
• 39:08
  of organic social.
• 39:10
  So I helped her kind of reframe the interview process,
• 39:15
  the creative process.
• 39:16
  We did about 220 interviews together
• 39:18
  ranging from like Joe Biden to DJ Khalid,
• 39:21
  to Jessica Chanstein, the Chance the Rapper,
• 39:24
  Kim Kardashian, all these different people.
• 39:26
  But one of the things that I did is I created a system
• 39:28
  in a process that we could rapidly test
• 39:31
  and iterate to understand,
• 39:32
  well, what is the right format and structure
• 39:35
  for each interview?
• 39:36
  Because typically if you think about an interview
• 39:38
  is like you just like what are the questions
• 39:40
  that I'm going to go in and ask this person versus
• 39:42
  I wanted to stake a step back looking at social
• 39:45
  understanding what structures and patterns
• 39:48
  are actually resonating and then back into those.
• 39:51
  So like what are the initial hooks
• 39:53
  that we think are going to perform
• 39:55
  and go in with the hook rather than the question?
• 39:58
  So over those 220 interviews,
• 40:01
  we tested like 75,000 variations of content.
• 40:04
  Just rapidly iterating and testing and testing
• 40:06
  and testing all these variations
• 40:08
  to the tune of generating about a billion views
• 40:11
  in like 18 months.
• 40:13
  So from that, I kind of started seeing
• 40:16
  that the success through that model
• 40:19
  and then that seeded the idea for my first book,
• 40:22
  one million followers of running an experiment
• 40:24
  to myself, a generation of million followers in 30 days.
• 40:27
  And then we kept evolving and evolving
• 40:29
  and evolving and evolving it.
• 40:30
  So this model that I'm about to break down
• 40:32
  this playbook has been in the work for like eight or nine years.
• 40:38
  And the team, we've done about 10,000 hours of research
• 40:43
  into understanding how and why things go viral.
• 40:46
  But the process, the playbook is five different distinct steps.
• 40:50
  So the first step is what we call research.
• 40:53
  So most people at a very simplistic high level
• 40:56
  is they're using social media from a passive experience.
• 40:59
  Meaning they go, they're just consuming content,
• 41:02
  not really paying attention, not really learning versus,
• 41:05
  again, when I went to film school,
• 41:07
  you sit down and watch films and then you dissect them.
• 41:09
  Like you understand like what made this scene work,
• 41:12
  this scene not work like getting into those nuances,
• 41:14
  you read screenplays, all those things.
• 41:16
  So the first step in the research process
• 41:18
  is to understand, and I mentioned this term a few times,
• 41:21
  is that there's these clear storytelling structures
• 41:25
  and patterns that improvements is exceed
• 41:27
  and we call them formats.
• 41:29
  Now with film, it's the three-act structure.
• 41:32
  Everybody uses that format when they make a movie.
• 41:35
  On social media, there's hundreds of these formats.
• 41:38
  So we've done analysis on over 220 formats.
• 41:40
  So I'll give you some examples,
• 41:42
  but I want you to kind of just think
• 41:44
  that there's a lot of choice out there.
• 41:45
  So by no means am I saying these are the examples
• 41:47
  that you have to use to be successful.
• 41:50
  So one of the ones that I mentioned is Man on the Street,
• 41:52
  which everybody is seeing short form,
• 41:54
  you approach a random stranger on the street
• 41:56
  and you interact with them in some way.
• 41:58
  So Simon Squibb is blowing up with this format,
• 42:00
  saying, what is your dream?
• 42:02
  My friend Alex Temp is a fashion photographer.
• 42:04
  He approaches a random stranger on the street,
• 42:06
  offers them a professional photo shoot
• 42:08
  and shows a result.
• 42:09
  School of hard knocks, approaches entrepreneurs
• 42:11
  and asks them like business and entrepreneurial advice.
• 42:13
  So that's a clear format.
• 42:15
  Now that format can be used for any content.
• 42:18
  You could use it for legal, for finance, for nutrition.
• 42:22
  So that's a format.
• 42:23
  Another example of a format we call two characters, one light bulb.
• 42:26
  So it's the same person playing two different characters.
• 42:29
  They play the expert and the novice
• 42:31
  and they break down like a misconception about something.
• 42:34
  So like Erica Colberg uses it for law.
• 42:36
  Like what happens in your AirPods break
• 42:38
  or your flight gets delayed.
• 42:40
  Mark Tillberg uses it for finance.
• 42:42
  So those are examples of formats.
• 42:44
  So in that research phase, all I want you to do
• 42:47
  is to start recognizing these formats.
• 42:51
  Start looking into them and saying,
• 42:52
  oh, this has got 10 million views.
• 42:54
  Is this a format?
• 42:55
  So the way you know it, if it's a format,
• 42:57
  you click on the person's profile
• 42:59
  and then you look, has that person used that same structure
• 43:03
  at least five times and broken through?
• 43:05
  And typically when I say break through, it's a million views.
• 43:08
  Now it can be larger, it can be smaller.
• 43:10
  It's not like a hard rule.
• 43:11
  The format kind of dictates that.
• 43:13
  Like YouTube, the formats, the views can be less
• 43:16
  like in the hundreds of thousands.
• 43:17
  But you want to see, has it been repeatable for success?
• 43:22
  So that's step one, step two is,
• 43:24
  now we're going to choose a format.
• 43:26
  So what format do we want to use?
• 43:28
  Now people ask me this all the time.
• 43:30
  And it's one of the things that we do with our clients.
• 43:32
  The biggest piece of advice I can give you
• 43:34
  is is this a format that you are super excited about?
• 43:38
  Like, are you going to love doing this format?
• 43:41
  And the other thing that I just mentioned
• 43:42
  is when you're doing this analysis,
• 43:44
  don't necessarily look for an apples to apples comparison.
• 43:47
  Like if you want to do man on the street
• 43:49
  and you're a nutritionist
• 43:50
  and you can't find anybody else doing it
• 43:52
  as a nutritionist, that doesn't mean
• 43:53
  it's not going to work for you.
• 43:55
  People kind of need to look at it again
• 43:56
  from the context, not the content.
• 43:59
  So first like, are you going to be excited about this?
• 44:01
  And then to your earlier question resource wise,
• 44:04
  is this a format I can pull off
• 44:06
  with the resources that I have available to me?
• 44:08
  And again, there are formats that literally,
• 44:10
  you can shoot on your iPhone.
• 44:12
  We have a hand doctor that started at zero followers,
• 44:15
  blew up on TikTok, got a TV deal, a book deal,
• 44:18
  and she literally is just shooting content
• 44:20
  on her iPhone, telling stories to her iPhone.
• 44:22
  So making sure that you're choosing the format
• 44:24
  with the resources that you have available to you.
• 44:27
  So once you've chosen that format,
• 44:29
  now we have to do a analysis of it.
• 44:31
  Because most people will look at it
• 44:33
  and be like, oh, school of hard knocks.
• 44:35
  He's just interviewing entrepreneurs on the street.
• 44:36
  I'm just going to do that.
• 44:38
  I guarantee 99% of the people that do that
• 44:40
  will fail.
• 44:41
  Why?
• 44:42
  Because they don't understand what's really
• 44:44
  driving the performance of the formats.
• 44:47
  The format itself is not driving the performance.
• 44:49
  It's the execution of that format.
• 44:52
  So when we think about like a simple exercise
• 44:55
  that everybody can do right now,
• 44:56
  when we think about the format driving the success
• 45:00
  versus the execution of it,
• 45:01
  is you just think about your favorite movie genre,
• 45:04
  whether sci-fi, horror, whatever it is.
• 45:06
  Every time you sit down to watch one of those movies,
• 45:09
  it's not going to be great.
• 45:10
  I'm sure everybody's had an experience
• 45:12
  where they have that level of disappointment of like,
• 45:14
  oh, I love sci-fi, but the movie just sucks.
• 45:16
  Of course, yeah.
• 45:17
  So it's the same thing with social media
• 45:18
  when we look at, again, like the school of hard knocks
• 45:21
  or in Man on the Street or maybe like Erica Colberg
• 45:24
  and the two characters, one light bulb,
• 45:27
  we can't just look at the success and be like,
• 45:29
  I see what they're doing.
• 45:30
  I'm just going to do that.
• 45:31
  So what do we do?
• 45:34
  Like, what is the playbook?
• 45:35
  So we created a process called Gold Silver Bronze.
• 45:38
  So what we'll do is we'll take an account
• 45:40
  like, school of hard knocks, Erica Colberg, one of those,
• 45:44
  and we'll create a spreadsheet,
• 45:45
  and what we'll do is we'll take five to 10
• 45:48
  of the top performers.
• 45:49
  So that's usually in the millions of views
• 45:52
  then we'll take five to 10 of the average performers
• 45:55
  and five to 10 of the under performers.
• 45:57
  And what we're doing is we're watching like,
• 45:59
  what are the things that are happening
• 46:01
  in those top performers that are not happening
• 46:03
  in those under performers?
• 46:05
  And again, it's less about the content,
• 46:06
  it's more about the context.
• 46:08
  So these can be things like, well, what's their pacing?
• 46:11
  What's, you know, a man on the street,
• 46:12
  what type of reaction are they getting?
• 46:14
  What's happening in the first three seconds?
• 46:16
  Like, what type of captions are they using?
• 46:18
  What's their facial expressions, their body cues,
• 46:20
  their environments?
• 46:21
  Like, what's the editing like?
• 46:22
  We're trying to spot the difference of like,
• 46:24
  what happens in that high performer versus that low performer?
• 46:28
  So we call these things performance drivers.
• 46:29
  These are things that can drive the performance up
• 46:32
  or they can detract the performance
• 46:33
  and cause it to fall flat.
• 46:35
  Now, any format, even if they're like the top creators,
• 46:38
  you will see those under performers in there.
• 46:40
  And that's where most people don't look
• 46:42
  as they think of like somebody like an Eric Colberg
• 46:44
  who has millions and millions of followers
• 46:46
  and don't think that they have any under performers,
• 46:49
  but they do.
• 46:50
  And that's really where the clues are
• 46:52
  to understanding what causes that format to succeed
• 46:56
  versus what causes it to fail.
• 46:58
  So once we have that understanding,
• 47:01
  that baseline understanding,
• 47:02
  then we can move to the third step,
• 47:03
  which is creating the ideas.
• 47:05
  Now, this is where most people start.
• 47:07
  As you just say, I'm going to sit down and create some ideas
• 47:09
  for social media and I'm just going to go after it.
• 47:11
  Without that structure to it, it's not going to work.
• 47:15
  It's kind of like thinking about,
• 47:17
  I'm going to come up with an idea for a movie,
• 47:19
  but never understanding like how a script is written
• 47:22
  or what the structure of a script is
• 47:23
  or how dialogue works or things of that nature.
• 47:25
  It's like, we need to have that format and structure first.
• 47:28
  Then we can come up with the ideas.
• 47:29
  And I can definitively tell you,
• 47:31
  it's so much easier to come up with ideas
• 47:33
  once you have the format.
• 47:34
  Like when we were talking about Tanner Leatherstein earlier,
• 47:37
  like that is it worth it format?
• 47:39
  Well, it's super easy.
• 47:40
  Like, okay, why just did this in the handbag?
• 47:42
  Let me buy a thousand dollar product person and deconstruct it.
• 47:45
  Let me do this, this belt, these things.
• 47:48
  It makes it a lot easier to kind of understand
• 47:51
  what the ideas are that fit into that format.
• 47:54
  Then the fourth step is,
• 47:56
  we do a single piece of content at a time.
• 47:59
  Now, why do we do that?
• 48:01
  Because we want to make sure that we're encapsulating
• 48:03
  the learnings of this process that we understood
• 48:07
  everything that we just went through to learn,
• 48:10
  what the format is, what makes it work,
• 48:12
  the idea that goes into it.
• 48:14
  So we produce a single piece of content at a time
• 48:16
  which is the fourth step.
• 48:17
  And then the fifth step we review the results.
• 48:20
  So what typically happens if something doesn't work
• 48:24
  is one of two things.
• 48:26
  Number one, you've paid attention
• 48:28
  to the wrong performance drivers.
• 48:29
  Maybe you thought it was this thing
• 48:31
  that was driving the performance
• 48:33
  like it was the caption,
• 48:34
  but it wasn't really the caption,
• 48:35
  it was this other element.
• 48:36
  Or two, you just didn't execute it properly.
• 48:39
  So one of the exercises that we give people is,
• 48:43
  if something didn't perform,
• 48:45
  is put your piece of content on one side of the screen
• 48:48
  and then the gold standard from the reference
• 48:51
  and the research that you did and play them side by side.
• 48:53
  And often times we'll tell clients
• 48:54
  to do this before they post
• 48:55
  so that you can get a real true honest assessment.
• 48:58
  And if as long as you're honest with yourself,
• 49:00
  you will see a massive difference
• 49:02
  in terms of what like a high performer does
• 49:04
  versus a low performer.
• 49:06
  So the reason that we follow this process
• 49:09
  and do one piece of content at a time
• 49:11
  and analyze it in this way is like,
• 49:13
  most people are batch producing content.
• 49:14
  They're doing 10, 15, 20 pieces of content at a time.
• 49:17
  But the challenge with that is like,
• 49:19
  if you post the first one and it doesn't work,
• 49:21
  what are you gonna do with the other 19?
• 49:23
  Typically you're just gonna post them
• 49:25
  and there's this opportunity loss
• 49:27
  for learning from that first piece of content
• 49:30
  in applying it to the next one and the next one.
• 49:32
  Now, once you've mastered your format and understand it,
• 49:35
  then yeah, by all means you can increase the frequency,
• 49:38
  you can sit down and do multiple posts at a time.
• 49:40
  But we wanna have this underlying structure
• 49:42
  and foundation in this creative model.
• 49:44
  So even if your post doesn't perform,
• 49:48
  there's no lost opportunity here.
• 49:49
  You can learn from it, understand,
• 49:52
  where a fell flat and fix it for the next one.
• 49:55
  In addition, if something does work,
• 49:58
  now we have a foundation to understand why it worked
• 50:01
  because we followed this process
• 50:03
  and we can replicate it over and over again.
• 50:05
  A quick shout out to the HubSpot podcast network
• 50:07
  for supporting success story.
• 50:09
  Now, if you like success story,
• 50:10
  you're gonna love other podcasts in their network.
• 50:12
  One of my favorites is create like the greats.
• 50:14
  It's hosted by Ross Simmons.
• 50:16
  Obviously brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network.
• 50:18
  You're gonna join Ross on create like the greats,
• 50:21
  Ross dissect the genius behind histories
• 50:24
  most remarkable creators and their legendary work.
• 50:27
  So you're gonna get this blend of history
• 50:29
  and business and creativity.
• 50:31
  He has a great voice, always good for a podcast
• 50:34
  and he has a decade of practical experience.
• 50:35
  He's gonna break down some of the best creative processes
• 50:38
  that built influential companies, brands,
• 50:41
  and stories in a way that anyone can apply.
• 50:43
  So whether or not you're fascinated by history,
• 50:46
  creative thinking, or you simply want to improve
• 50:49
  and systematize your own creativity
• 50:52
  without sacrificing productivity.
• 50:54
  This podcast is your perfect lesson.
• 50:57
  Go listen to create like the greats wherever you get
• 50:59
  your podcast.
• 51:00
  A huge shout out to Lingoda for supporting today's episode.
• 51:02
  Now, if you're ready to master a new language,
• 51:04
  Lingoda is the online language platform
• 51:07
  trusted by over 100,000 students worldwide.
• 51:09
  Lingoda offers live classes
• 51:11
  with real teachers available 24-7.
• 51:13
  You can choose from German, English, business English, French,
• 51:17
  Spanish, or their newest addition, Italian.
• 51:19
  What sets Lingoda apart the smallest class size
• 51:22
  in the market?
• 51:23
  It's just you and up to five other students.
• 51:26
  Or if you want, you can go one-on-one
• 51:28
  for personalized attention.
• 51:29
  Their native level teachers don't just teach language.
• 51:32
  They share culture too.
• 51:34
  And you'll speak confidently from day one
• 51:36
  with Lingoda's flexible scheduling
• 51:38
  and proven curriculum.
• 51:39
  Students report being able to navigate
• 51:42
  real conversations in weeks, not years.
• 51:44
  And if you're using Lingoda for business,
• 51:46
  their CEFR aligned courses ensure
• 51:48
  that you're learning internationally recognized language
• 51:51
  standards that employers value.
• 51:53
  Between sessions, you're going to reinforce your skills
• 51:56
  with downloadable materials and bite-sized practice
• 51:59
  exercises.
• 52:00
  And all success story listeners, they put together
• 52:02
  a special deal.
• 52:02
  Try Lingoda free with three group classes or one private class.
• 52:07
  Plus, you save on any course with my link,
• 52:09
  try.lingoda.com slash success story
• 52:13
  and code Scott 25.
• 52:15
  Don't miss this chance to transform your life
• 52:16
  through language learning.
• 52:18
  When people, first of all, thank you.
• 52:20
  I appreciate the breakdown.
• 52:22
  It's very useful.
• 52:23
  When people sort of start on this journey,
• 52:29
  I'm trying to think of, I have a couple
• 52:30
  of different questions in my head.
• 52:30
  I only think about which one I want to ask first,
• 52:32
  because I know that the audience will have questions
• 52:35
  about a few things.
• 52:38
  First of all, is this platform specific,
• 52:41
  meaning that if I execute against this,
• 52:43
  will there be nuances that are slightly different
• 52:46
  from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, shorts?
• 52:48
  Let's start with that.
• 52:48
  I think it's a very obvious question
• 52:49
  if you're trying to sort of be everywhere.
• 52:52
  Yes, so there are performance differences
• 52:54
  in formats from platform to platform.
• 52:56
  And kind of my recommendation is,
• 52:59
  start with one format and one platform master it.
• 53:01
  You can still post the content on other platforms,
• 53:04
  but don't really get caught up in the performance
• 53:06
  of that format and other platforms.
• 53:08
  Focus on dialing it on that platform first
• 53:11
  and then see are there certain tweaks and ways
• 53:15
  that you can get it to perform for others.
• 53:18
  Now, there's some formats that will perform
• 53:21
  on others, it's typically all short form,
• 53:23
  typically long form, doesn't translate,
• 53:25
  especially when you're talking about taking
• 53:27
  like a YouTube video and putting it on like TikTok
• 53:29
  or Instagram or things of that nature.
• 53:31
  But yeah, there is a bit of nuance to it.
• 53:34
  Like you think about like TikTok, for example,
• 53:37
  it's less polished, it's more kind of,
• 53:42
  it's more kind of feels authentic
• 53:44
  in terms of the production value and things.
• 53:48
  Like you see a lot of podcast clips and things
• 53:50
  work and less polished up versus Instagram,
• 53:52
  you can see things that are a little bit more polished.
• 53:55
  But there are nuances to each platform.
• 53:58
  And you can sometimes you can just do small tweaks
• 54:01
  to a format to make it work on different platforms.
• 54:04
  Sometimes it takes a different format.
• 54:06
  But the one thing I want to stress for people is like,
• 54:09
  if you really nail it on one platform,
• 54:11
  you're gonna have more traffic and attention
• 54:13
  than you know what to do with.
• 54:14
  It's like, yes, people say have content in every platform
• 54:18
  and I'm not against posting content and other platforms
• 54:22
  but focus on getting really good at one.
• 54:24
  And if you get really good at one,
• 54:26
  like you're gonna have so much impact
• 54:28
  in terms of what your goals are,
• 54:30
  that it's gonna drive a lot of benefit to you.
• 54:32
  Almost to the point where like I've seen,
• 54:35
  I actually see it a lot with the YouTubers
• 54:37
  and this is more a comment on long-form.
• 54:39
  But when I see people build massive YouTube audiences,
• 54:42
  you see that audience start to trickle down
• 54:46
  and follow them everywhere
• 54:47
  and consume their content everywhere.
• 54:49
  I do believe that some platforms
• 54:50
  have more loyal audiences than others.
• 54:53
  I think YouTube is probably one of the best.
• 54:55
  But yeah, I think that for,
• 54:57
  we're talking to business owners that are looking for leads,
• 55:00
  we're not trying to get somebody that owns like a,
• 55:06
  whatever, a consumer goods brand,
• 55:10
  ice cream shop, a car wash or whatever it is they want to do,
• 55:13
  even a financial consulting, tax advisory,
• 55:16
  they're not trying to be the next Kim Kardashian,
• 55:17
  they're trying to grow their business.
• 55:18
  So we're not looking for followers,
• 55:20
  we're looking for a business impact,
• 55:21
  which is exactly what this is gonna do in spades,
• 55:24
  if you nail it.
• 55:27
  The other question is if somebody's doing this
• 55:31
  and that content is working,
• 55:34
  do they just do this style or this format of content
• 55:38
  for all of their content,
• 55:40
  or should they include other things,
• 55:42
  other styles of content, or does it hurt them
• 55:45
  if not every single piece is like a knock it out
• 55:48
  of the ballpark winner?
• 55:50
  Because even if I look at Erica or Mark Tillsburg,
• 55:53
  like they do other styles of content as well,
• 55:56
  as not just their main format
• 55:59
  that I think got them the majority of their audience.
• 56:03
  So how much should they do?
• 56:05
  Do they oversaturate?
• 56:06
  Is it every single piece?
• 56:07
  Is it a 75%, 25%, how do you think through that?
• 56:12
  I would say that initially starting out,
• 56:15
  just focus on every piece of content
• 56:18
  being in that format until you master it.
• 56:20
  Once you've mastered it, you've gained a skill set
• 56:24
  that can be applied to any format or any piece of content.
• 56:27
  But the challenges like even clients ask me like,
• 56:31
  well, can we do two or three formats?
• 56:33
  I was like, you can do two or three formats,
• 56:34
  but start with one.
• 56:36
  And just really master that skill set.
• 56:38
  Again, it goes back to the analogy
• 56:40
  of learning a musical instrument
• 56:41
  is like, if you want to learn a musical instrument,
• 56:43
  you're not trying to learn three at the same time.
• 56:45
  You take one at a time.
• 56:47
  Yes, I like and believe in diversification of content,
• 56:50
  but I also am a firm believer in like focusing
• 56:53
  on one thing at a time in understanding the dynamics
• 56:57
  of what it means to create a successful piece of content.
• 56:59
  And then once you do through focusing on one format,
• 57:02
  you can apply that to any other piece of content
• 57:05
  that you're creating.
• 57:07
  You mentioned something else about making sure
• 57:09
  that the content you created the format you choose
• 57:11
  is not a trend.
• 57:12
  And you've identified like true formats.
• 57:14
  But is there a lifespan on these styles of content?
• 57:18
  Like, for example, the man in the street,
• 57:20
  that was Daniel Mac and what do you do for living
• 57:23
  going at the people in nice cars
• 57:24
  and then school of hard knocks is the same style
• 57:26
  and they killed it.
• 57:27
  And I love their channel as well.
• 57:30
  But will there be a point where it's so overdone
• 57:33
  and so oversaturated that there's so many man
• 57:35
  on the street, Simon Squibs,
• 57:37
  now that all of a sudden it starts to lose its virality factor?
• 57:42
  It's a great question.
• 57:43
  And I would say the answer is no.
• 57:45
  I think it comes down to the execution.
• 57:46
  So if you think about man on the street,
• 57:48
  like man on the street was well before social media.
• 57:51
  Like I don't know if you ever watched Jay Leno
• 57:52
  the late night show.
• 57:53
  And I think late night hosts did it before,
• 57:55
  but Jay Leno did like Jay Walker's
• 57:57
  where he would he would stop people on the street
• 57:59
  and interact with them.
• 58:01
  It's a universal format that it just comes down
• 58:04
  to the story of how it's executed.
• 58:07
  Like I think that it typically falls out
• 58:10
  when the execution falls.
• 58:12
  So when I see a content creator that is using a format
• 58:16
  and the performance dips,
• 58:18
  it's typically because they've probably come less interested
• 58:21
  in it or they're kind of slipping a little
• 58:24
  on the dynamics of it.
• 58:25
  That doesn't mean as a content creator
• 58:27
  that you have to just only live with that format.
• 58:31
  Like if you don't wanna keep doing it,
• 58:34
  then find something else that you wanna do.
• 58:35
  It's not like a hard rule or a requirement to do that,
• 58:39
  but can formats dwindle over time?
• 58:43
  Sure, some formats can, like it can,
• 58:46
  but I just wanna say like,
• 58:48
  you know, like Alex stepped my friend,
• 58:50
  he's been using man on the street for like three or four years.
• 58:52
  This is not something,
• 58:53
  people think social media is so fleeting.
• 58:55
  They think in concepts of trends
• 58:57
  that I need to be doing something new every week
• 58:59
  or every month and it's just not like that.
• 59:02
  Like also think about like movies,
• 59:04
  like the foundation of movies and the 3X structure
• 59:07
  has been used for like 70 or 80 years.
• 59:11
  So I don't think it shifts as much as it does,
• 59:14
  but also I don't want people to kind of feel like,
• 59:16
  oh, I'm getting locked into this thing
• 59:18
  and I can never like shift or change out of it.
• 59:21
  Out of all the other things that people pay attention to
• 59:24
  that I hear a lot about.
• 59:25
  So hooks, first three seconds, thumbnail,
• 59:28
  whatever or cover image,
• 59:31
  are there any retention?
• 59:33
  Are there any other metrics that are important?
• 59:36
  Outside, of course,
• 59:37
  the lagging indicator of success would be leads,
• 59:40
  revenue, clients, that's lagging indicate.
• 59:43
  What are some other leading indicators
• 59:45
  that you can look at or some other leading components
• 59:47
  that actually make a difference?
• 59:49
  Well, you mentioned the first one
• 59:51
  and the most critical one is retention.
• 59:54
  It's just like how long are people spending with your content?
• 59:56
  Because again, that's how the algorithms determine
• 59:59
  what content gets seen by a thousand
• 1:00:00
  versus 10 million people is.
• 1:00:02
  How long is it able to grab that attention?
• 1:00:04
  Now you mentioned like on YouTube,
• 1:00:06
  you'll click through on thumbnail
• 1:00:07
  and headline is critical
• 1:00:08
  because that's the indicator of intent
• 1:00:10
  to get into the retention.
• 1:00:12
  On short form content,
• 1:00:15
  you can look at things like the number of views
• 1:00:19
  to reach that you have,
• 1:00:20
  which is a good indicator of how good you are
• 1:00:22
  at stopping the scroll.
• 1:00:23
  So typically we're looking at like a minimum ratio
• 1:00:27
  of like 30 to 40% of views to reach
• 1:00:30
  to understand like what is happening
• 1:00:32
  when people are being seated this content
• 1:00:34
  because it's not as straightforward as on YouTube
• 1:00:37
  as like click through on thumbnail or headline.
• 1:00:41
  With Instagram, there's a lot of talk now about shares
• 1:00:45
  because they're dynamic
• 1:00:46
  and they're kind of hypothesis is retention
• 1:00:50
  is the key or one of the keys to retention
• 1:00:53
  is sharing and starting conversations
• 1:00:55
  in DMs around content.
• 1:00:57
  So that's one of the things that to look at,
• 1:01:00
  but at a very basic level
• 1:01:02
  when we're talking about video content,
• 1:01:04
  purely is like is your content generating enough views?
• 1:01:08
  That is an indicator of how good you are
• 1:01:10
  at grabbing and holding attention.
• 1:01:11
  So if you look at nothing else at a very simplistic level,
• 1:01:14
  you can look at that
• 1:01:15
  but then you can start diving in granularly
• 1:01:17
  of like what is happening in the retention graph?
• 1:01:19
  Where are they falling off?
• 1:01:21
  What's happening at that fall off point?
• 1:01:22
  Like how can I fix that for the next time?
• 1:01:24
  You're creating thumbnails and headlines
• 1:01:26
  what's the click through percentage
• 1:01:27
  of things of that nature.
• 1:01:28
  But everything is through the lens of how effective am I
• 1:01:31
  at grabbing that attention, stopping the scroll
• 1:01:33
  or earning the click
• 1:01:34
  and then holding attention once I've gotten it.
• 1:01:36
  Amazing, last idea that I just want to float to
• 1:01:40
  because you see it a lot with the business to work with.
• 1:01:43
  In terms of creator economy influencers,
• 1:01:48
  do you see that if,
• 1:01:50
  do you see that they still have a place in the future
• 1:01:53
  if businesses understand how to create great content
• 1:01:57
  or do you feel in the future that businesses
• 1:01:58
  are gonna build their own influencers
• 1:02:00
  and their own influence kind of like Duolingo has?
• 1:02:04
  That's like a great example
• 1:02:06
  and how Wendy's does it on Twitter.
• 1:02:08
  There's some great examples of awesome business content
• 1:02:11
  but do you see that influencers and creators
• 1:02:13
  also have a place outside of businesses
• 1:02:15
  or do you think they're gonna be more
• 1:02:17
  even equity and incentive aligned
• 1:02:20
  or just built up through the business
• 1:02:23
  may be employees that that business makes famous.
• 1:02:26
  Where do you see this economy going if businesses get it?
• 1:02:30
  Well, I think I wish that businesses would get it.
• 1:02:33
  I think that some business they will get it
• 1:02:36
  but I think there's gonna be a place for both.
• 1:02:38
  I mean, you even look at, for example,
• 1:02:40
  like you look at another, like you look at Nike.
• 1:02:42
  Like Nike is a master or Red Bull.
• 1:02:45
  They're masters at marketing
• 1:02:46
  but they're still doing endorsement deals
• 1:02:48
  with athletes and celebrities and things of that nature.
• 1:02:52
  I think there's always gonna be the creator and the influencer
• 1:02:54
  and I think that there's always gonna be
• 1:02:56
  the businesses that get it.
• 1:02:57
  I'm hoping that more businesses will get it.
• 1:03:00
  I just like the stage to where it right now
• 1:03:02
  is like this is still kind of early
• 1:03:04
  and they're still trying to apply old principles
• 1:03:08
  to these platforms.
• 1:03:09
  So I'm hoping over the next five or 10 years
• 1:03:12
  more business will grow
• 1:03:13
  but there's always gonna be a demand
• 1:03:15
  and a need for influencers.
• 1:03:16
  Even like businesses that get it,
• 1:03:18
  like why wouldn't you use influencers?
• 1:03:20
  Like as long as you're really dialing in
• 1:03:24
  the performance of each channel that you're doing,
• 1:03:27
  like you dial in your organic,
• 1:03:29
  you maximize the potential of it
• 1:03:30
  but you can still leverage influencers and paid
• 1:03:34
  and things of that nature to really amplify
• 1:03:36
  and scale even further.
• 1:03:38
  I guess I was really thinking along the lines of
• 1:03:42
  going forward are we still gonna have
• 1:03:45
  these like two separate entities
• 1:03:47
  or are you gonna have people that are influencers
• 1:03:50
  that start to take equity positions in small businesses
• 1:03:53
  and start to work like hand in hand with them
• 1:03:55
  as opposed to being these two separate, disparate groups.
• 1:03:59
  I don't know.
• 1:04:00
  I mean that's honestly it's one of the core focuses
• 1:04:02
  of our company going forward.
• 1:04:04
  We're kind of an incubator for identifying talent,
• 1:04:08
  grooming talent and then either partnering them
• 1:04:11
  with businesses from an equity stake
• 1:04:14
  or helping them cultivate their own business from it.
• 1:04:17
  But I think you hit it spot on is like you look
• 1:04:20
  at some of the most successful businesses
• 1:04:22
  and it spawned out of that type of relationship.
• 1:04:25
  I mean at the highest level you look at Elon Musk
• 1:04:27
  and what he's done with his businesses
• 1:04:29
  and the amount of tension and growth of that has driven.
• 1:04:33
  So I definitely think that there's gonna be more
• 1:04:35
  of that type of model in the future.
• 1:04:38
  He's spoken about a lot of different topics
• 1:04:40
  regarding to sort of what's worked for you in the past
• 1:04:43
  and what's worked for you now as well with hook point
• 1:04:45
  and some of your clients.
• 1:04:46
  What are some new ideas?
• 1:04:48
  Some social media opportunities that maybe I didn't ask you
• 1:04:53
  about that you're looking into now
• 1:04:54
  that you think could be opportunities for businesses
• 1:04:56
  in the next six months, one year I know things move fast
• 1:05:00
  but what are some new things that you're researching?
• 1:05:03
  I mean one of the big things that we're researching is AI
• 1:05:06
  and we've built one of the largest data sets
• 1:05:10
  of qualitative analysis of what content goes viral
• 1:05:13
  and we're very excited about the future
• 1:05:17
  of the visual aspect of AI, less about where chat GPT is today
• 1:05:23
  and more about what Sora and Google are building
• 1:05:27
  for a visual standpoint.
• 1:05:28
  I don't know how quickly that's gonna happen.
• 1:05:31
  I mean it seems to move very quick
• 1:05:34
  but I think in the next few years
• 1:05:35
  you're gonna see amazing kind of tool sets
• 1:05:38
  of your fingertips that are going to lower the barrier
• 1:05:42
  of entry for creating content in different formats
• 1:05:47
  so that you're not reliant on,
• 1:05:49
  even the higher production formats
• 1:05:51
  you're not solely reliant on that.
• 1:05:53
  I think that's gonna present a unique opportunity.
• 1:05:55
  The one thing I will say about AI is a lot of people think
• 1:05:59
  it's the solution and it's not a solution, it's just a tool.
• 1:06:02
  So it's like the analogy I use is if everybody tomorrow
• 1:06:05
  woke up and was using AI to create social media content
• 1:06:07
  there's gonna be winners and losers.
• 1:06:09
  Just because you use the tool doesn't mean
• 1:06:11
  you're gonna be successful.
• 1:06:13
  So it definitely wouldn't rely on the future of AI solving
• 1:06:18
  your problems of performance and your content
• 1:06:20
  but more how you can learn and leverage these skillsets
• 1:06:23
  to become a master story teller.
• 1:06:25
  I've actually seen it do the opposite in the short term
• 1:06:27
  where it actually hurts content performance
• 1:06:29
  because people are too reliant on it.
• 1:06:31
  Yes.
• 1:06:32
  Exactly.
• 1:06:33
  Some of the copy that you see, some of the captions,
• 1:06:36
  it's just garbage and then you see AI,
• 1:06:39
  generative AI tools, dicing up video without people
• 1:06:43
  even looking at what that 30 to 45 second clip happens.
• 1:06:47
  Yeah, it's open.
• 1:06:48
  Yeah, which is a great tool.
• 1:06:49
  I use Opus tool, I can find timestamps
• 1:06:52
  but then after I find the timestamp
• 1:06:54
  I'm still finding a hook and I'm still going in,
• 1:06:56
  I'm still editing, like I'm not just clipping it and posting it
• 1:07:00
  I've seen channels post 10, 15 clips a day
• 1:07:03
  just directly from Opus and you can tell
• 1:07:05
  and it looks like garbage.
• 1:07:07
  So yes, 100% it's a tool.
• 1:07:10
  Yeah, you're using it as a tool, you're an expert storyteller
• 1:07:12
  so you know what to look in the output
• 1:07:15
  and you know what the prompt should be
• 1:07:17
  so you can leverage it successfully
• 1:07:19
  but I agree with you.
• 1:07:20
  90% of people using AI are using it the opposite way.
• 1:07:23
  I'm just like, oh, it's gonna figure it out for me.
• 1:07:26
  That's never the answer.
• 1:07:28
  If people want to connect with you,
• 1:07:31
  if they want to work with hook point,
• 1:07:33
  where should they go?
• 1:07:34
  Socials, website, give anything else?
• 1:07:36
  Like are you writing a new book?
• 1:07:37
  I mean, I don't have a book.
• 1:07:39
  Yeah, I just launched a new book called The Guide to Going Viral
• 1:07:44
  that breaks down the entire model.
• 1:07:46
  Amazing.
• 1:07:47
  And just for your listeners, we're giving it away for free.
• 1:07:49
  I worked on this book for two books.
• 1:07:50
  It's not like an ebook or something
• 1:07:51
  like you can go and buy it on Amazon
• 1:07:53
  but I'm gonna give it to your listeners for free the PDF
• 1:07:56
  so that they just go to hookpoint.com forward slash
• 1:07:59
  clary your last name.
• 1:08:00
  They can download the PDF for free.
• 1:08:02
  And it's like it details the entire model
• 1:08:05
  that we talked about today.
• 1:08:08
  And if they just want to learn more about working with us,
• 1:08:10
  then go to hookpoint.com.
• 1:08:12
  They can reach out on Instagram.
• 1:08:13
  My name is Brendan Cain.
• 1:08:15
  I'm LinkedIn as well.
• 1:08:16
  Amazing.
• 1:08:17
  Last question I like to ask.
• 1:08:19
  And this is more of, I mean, you've had an incredible career.
• 1:08:21
  You've built a massive business.
• 1:08:24
  A lot of entrepreneurs listen to this show.
• 1:08:27
  And I like to pull out one piece of advice
• 1:08:29
  at the end of these shows just because
• 1:08:31
  we spoke a lot about tactics,
• 1:08:33
  but obviously success is not just about tactics.
• 1:08:35
  So, I'd have everything that you've done in your life.
• 1:08:38
  If you could pass on one lesson to your kids,
• 1:08:40
  one of the most important lessons,
• 1:08:41
  it could be business lesson,
• 1:08:42
  it could be life lesson, whatever it is.
• 1:08:45
  What would that lesson be and why?
• 1:08:47
  I think it's to work on yourself.
• 1:08:49
  Like, you know, as entrepreneurs,
• 1:08:52
  as business people,
• 1:08:52
  we're so focused on optimizing and scaling the business
• 1:08:56
  when a lot of times the core focus first
• 1:08:59
  should be optimizing yourself.
• 1:09:02
  Like, what are the things that you need to work on?
• 1:09:05
  What are the past traumas you've experienced?
• 1:09:06
  How do you overcome them?
• 1:09:08
  Really, because everything that,
• 1:09:10
  every experience that we've had,
• 1:09:11
  good or bad drives how we perceive the world
• 1:09:14
  and the decisions that we make.
• 1:09:16
  And the more we've worked on ourselves,
• 1:09:18
  the more we understand how and why we do things,
• 1:09:20
  the better that we can show up
• 1:09:22
  and the more impact that we can have
• 1:09:23
  through the decisions, through our company,
• 1:09:25
  through our customers, through our employees,
• 1:09:27
  things of that nature.
• 1:09:28
  So, I would say that that would be
• 1:09:30
  the piece of advice that I would give.