From 10K to 10 Million Views: Brendan Kane’s Blueprint for Social Media Dominance

So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on Rag Bone, Madewell, Vince, AllSaints, and more of your favorites. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Why do we rack?

For the hottest deals.

Just so many good brands. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate to see. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have 4 times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today I've got a special guest who's in the office today that I'm excited to introduce you guys to. We just got done recording the podcast and this is someone who I've been watching online for a long time. I read one of his books, I don't know, 2 or 3 years ago initially as I was trying to figure out the social media game. And we've been doing a lot of social media and I think, I feel like on our side we have ups and downs and peaks and valleys and we're still trying to master it. And he actually reached out to me and said, hey, we'd love to connect. He decided to fly here and spend a day with my team kind of going through helping with our social media strategy. And we used this morning to spend about an hour, me asking and picking his brain to kind of figure out what to do. But I'm excited. His name is Brandon Cain. He's someone, he wrote a bunch of different books. We'll talk about those during the podcast. But if you want to figure out a social media strategy that's consistent, we're not bouncing from trend to trend to trend, idea to idea, but like picking a lane, focusing on it and growing and getting spot where you're instead of getting, you know, 10,000 views on a video, getting, $500,000 to $1 million or more. That's the kind of stuff that he does with his clients, with a lot of people you know from the ClickFunnels world, and he's doing it with us right now as well. And so I'm excited for this podcast, help you guys grow yourself socially, get more views, get more traction, get more leads, and with that said, we'll jump right into the podcast with Brandon Caden. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over $1 billion of my own products and services online. This show's gonna show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. All right, everyone. I'm here today with Brandon Cain, and I'm pumped because you're here in Boise, Idaho for your first time, right? Yeah, coming here, and he's gonna be spending time with our team today helping us on our social media and a whole bunch of things like that. And so I thought before we get started to spend an hour with him doing a podcast interview, getting some private consulting. For those who don't know Brandon, he's written a lot of books. We've got Hook Point, which is the first book I read, which I was first familiar with him, and then we've What's the order of these?

So 1 Million Followers was the first, Hook Point was the second. Okay. And The Guide to Going Viral is the latest one.

Okay. So I'm curious, um, I've written 3 books as well and I have a favorite of my books. Do you have a favorite of your 3 books?

Uh, probably the, the more recent one. Now we are just finishing an update on Hook Point, which will probably become the favorite, but the, the Guide to Going Viral is like 6 years of of kind of information into one book.

So that's very cool. So what year did you write The 1 Million Followers?

So initially wrote it 2017, and then we've updated it like 2 or 3 times since then.

Very cool. Um, all right. So for those who aren't familiar with you or your work yet, I love to step back in time because I know you and I are from different worlds. I'm very much the direct response, uh, you know, a bunch of guys in our garages trying to figure out how to make money. You're more, um, more the professional side of things, but yet we're here in the middle meeting with similar concepts and interests and stuff like that. So I'm curious, will you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got into this side of the world?

Yeah, so I've been in social media since 2005. So I started way back when, when like Friendster and MySpace were predominant players. And how I got in is a little bit of an interesting story. So I initially wanted to be a film producer, so I went to film school to learn the business side of the entertainment industry. I show up and I quickly realized they teach you nothing about business in film school. So I figured the best way to learn about business is to start your own, and the most cost-efficient way at the time was to start online companies. So I started a few online companies while I was going to college just to learn and experiment of like what it takes to get something up and running and manage it. Uh, and then I moved to LA to pursue a career in 2005, and at that time like, like anybody, you start at the bottom making coffee, copies, deliveries. And when anybody would ask me, like especially the higher-ups, because when you start in any industry, you want to connect with the heads of the company. In my case was the heads of the studios or directors or actors, things of that nature. When people ask, well, why was I in LA? I would say I wanted to be a film producer and everybody's eyes would glaze over. I was just one of a million people. Another one of those. Yeah, another one of those. Exactly. So I had to take a step back and kind of understand like, well, how can I actually forge those connections? How can I provide the most value? And I would recognize I was working for a movie studio at the time, is every time we finished a film, there'd be a sense of anxiety and stress that would come over the office because we were spending tens of millions of dollars on a single piece of content. And then we were investing tens of millions of dollars to market that single piece of content. But it wasn't like any other industry where you had years or decades to build a brand or awareness. You literally had months. Each movie is a new brand, right? Hundreds of millions of people around the world needed to know about this new brand in a very short period of time. And so I noticed that at the time, this was 2005, we were using traditional medium like TV, print, radio, but nobody was really tapping into digital because it was relatively new. And, you know, people were starting to kind of look at it after the dot-com bust, but it wasn't— people weren't taking it seriously. So I just went to the head of the studio and I said, "Listen, we can tap into these online traffic sources for a fraction of the cost, in some cases no cost at all." So that's where I started building digital divisions for movie studios and kind of pioneering like the first influencer campaigns and influencer technologies to help get the word out.

So you're launching those on MySpace and Friendster? 'Cause by the way, that's the same time I got started. I was trying to figure out how to monetize Friendster, I remember, in college, and MySpace, so Very few people I know have gone back that far as well, which is cool.

Yeah, so I did the, um, I built the first ever influencer technology platform on top of MySpace at the time and licensed it to MTV and Viacom, but there's no such thing as an influencer. So the ceiling was capped pretty low. And then I did the first influencer, um, campaign on YouTube in 2006, 2007 for a movie called Crank with Jason Statham.

Hmm. How did that work? Just— there were a lot of YouTube influencers at that point popping up.

There was no such thing as an influencer. I was just like, there's these young kids that are generating millions of views on videos. So I just made a list of the top like 50 or 100 and I started direct messaging them and I said, do you want to interview a movie star? So it just kind of started off that way. Yeah. And it was— I mean, we didn't pay anything for it and people were very open and receptive because it's not like today where everybody's DMing everybody to get them to do something. So at the time, like these young content creators were all about that type of access, that type of interaction.

You're giving them what they need, which is content and access to unique people, and they just had the views. Yeah. That's really cool. That was 2006. Interesting. So walk me, so after that, then what happened next?

What was the next part of the transition? So I started building technology platforms on top of of social media, the influencer tech platform being one.

And I had— are you a developer or you worked with developers?

No, it was more kind of product designer, kind of understanding the concept. And then I would hire developers to help create the code around it and created several different partnerships with Viacom and MTV at the time. And those partnerships opened up the doors to kind of work with big mainstream celebrities or musicians like Taylor Swift and people like that. Of trying to understand at a very early stage of like, how do you turn social audience into commerce and convert that into meaningful revenue and meaningful kind of fan participation? So I did that for a few years and then I got heavily involved in the paid media space and helped build a firm from scratch that was optimizing the first wave of social media advertising. Like, for example, like we were the biggest third-party partner of YouTube's TrueView when it first launched. So we grew that company to managing about $100 million a year in paid spend, but predominantly Fortune 500 and 100 companies. And through that experience, uh, it's very different than direct response and kind of that world. It's like we're gonna take traditional TV assets and traditional assets and put it through social media. And they're not really focused, focused on direct response. They're more focused on big brand awareness and brand building. Uh, so I saw a lot of the the missteps that they were taking in terms of the investments they were making behind content that you could clearly see wasn't going to kind of translate. Because if you take like a television or traditional creative asset and put it on social media, it's a completely different communication mechanism. And when I would ask these companies like, where's the data to support this creative decision? Because they were investing millions of dollars against a single piece of content. They didn't have a process or a model behind it. And that's where I left and started building the foundations of the models that we use today of really understanding how, how content performs and why content performs. But just as important, why content doesn't perform and understanding those patterns and structures to allow companies or brands really effectively go and produce content for these new mediums. Because people don't realize social media is like still brand new. And even at the time when we were doing this, it was only around for like 8 or 9 years. Yeah. Interesting.

What I love about you too, I was this morning, I was on Instagram just preparing for this and I was on your channel looking through and I watched probably, I don't know, 40 of your reels going through it. And I love it because you're very, at least it seems from the outside, maybe I'm wrong, but you're very like for me, I'm very obsessed with like looking at the process, like, but for me, my art is funnels, right? So I look at, I buy everyone's product, look every single funnel, look at the sales messages, upsells, the downsells, the sequencing. The emails, like I geek out about that at a level I don't know anybody else on the planet that does. And by just watching your short form on Instagram, I was just like, man, like you're doing the same thing on like every viral video. Like so many of those, like there's this video versus this video. They look almost identical. And like this one got 3 million views and got 48 million views. Here's the reason why. And like the analytical, like the how deep you look into the reason why things are working is really fascinating. I'm curious, is that like, is that from your standpoint, that same, is that what you're geeking out on? Is that your favorite thing to look at those kind of things or what's your, how do you, how do you learn this stuff, I guess?

Yeah. So we've built the foundation of our entire company based off that. So it's exactly what you said in terms of like analyzing every funnel and breaking it down and every single nuance of it. Because I think in your world, like you are looking at this at such a granular level, like you could see a specific headline or a word or a phrase or an order bump or an upsell. Making all the difference in terms of whether that funnel is successful or not successful. We're doing the exact same thing with social media. We're looking at it at a very granular level, and you have to— like, the biggest mistakes that people are making with organic social are, are two things. One, they are just looking at their own content. So let's just say you're stuck at 10,000 views a video. If you keep looking at your own content, how do you expect to break through to that next level? The second element is they're just focused on the quantitative layer, meaning they're just looking at their metrics like views, um, click-throughs, engagements, any type of engagement, shares, likes, comments. That tells you something works or doesn't work. But in terms of organic social, you need to look at the qualitative element of why things work in the same way that you would dissect a funnel. You're looking at the qualitative elements that drive that success or detract from that success. So that's the lens that we're looking through social media. So we've assembled a team that over the past 6 years, we've done 10,000 hours of research of breaking down social content. And the way that we're looking at it is what we call a format. So in a sense, like the perfect analogy I could use is like, there's different types of funnels. You know, there's like a book funnel, there's a VSL funnel, there's a webinar funnel. There's all these different types of funnels. And each funnel requires its own kind of nuance of how to execute on it. So we look at social media from a format format perspective. So for example, like if you've seen me coming from the film industry, if you've watched a movie that's been made over the past 50 years, every movie follows the 3-act structure. That's the format that people use. And like you think about Steven Spielberg, one of the best storytellers of all time, he doesn't reinvent that 3-act structure every time he makes a movie. He masters that over decades. So in terms of like a format, a few examples, Um, one's called Man on the Street that you've probably seen on TikTok or Instagram, where basically you interact with somebody on the street in some way and capture their reaction. So I have a friend, friend that we've worked with named Alex Stemp that uses this as a photographer. So he approaches random strangers on the street, offers them a professional photo shoot, and shows the end result. So he's used that format over the course of years to amass an audience of 20 million followers. Uh, there's another one that uses it, uh, called School of Hard Knocks, which I'm I'm sure you've probably seen where they interview successful people on the street. So that's an example of a format. Another one is called Two Characters, One Lightbulb, where it's the same person that plays an expert and a novice, and they go back and forth and debunk a common myth or misconception about whether it's finance, nutrition, legal, any of those things. So the way that we look at social media is we look at it through that specific format and a specific platform. And then we go really deep in it. And the way that we go deep is a process that we call gold, silver, bronze. So we'll look at somebody using a specific format, for example, like School of Hard Knocks. On the surface level, it looks very simple, but there's a lot of depth to it. So what we would do is we would take a channel like that and pull 10 to 20 of the top performers, which is gold. In that case, it's, you know, a few million views plus. Then we would take the average performers, which we call silver, 10 to 20 of those, and then 10 to 20 of the underperformers, which are bronze. So those are like less than 100,000. And what we're looking at is we're looking for something called performance drivers, which are contextual elements of how you express a specific format. So those can be things like pacing, tonality, what's happening in the first 3 seconds, captions, title cards. In the example of man on the street, the reaction of the person that you're interacting with. So We have a library of like 200 of these performance drivers, and what we're looking for is what's happening in those high performers that's not happening in those low performers. Again, not from a content perspective, but from a context perspective, and really kind of measuring those elements. And through that process, you're learning a lot about what actually drives up your chances of using that format versus driving it down, because most people will see a format like Man on the Street or any format out there and be like, oh, I see what they're doing. They're just interviewing a person on the street. I'm going to do that. And 99% of people fail because they just— they're not paying attention from the contextual element.

Like, I have a book funnel too, but it's not working. Like, I don't know why. It looks similar.

Why not? Well, I mean, I can attest to it. Is like, I ran book funnels on ClickFunnels for 3 years, and it took us a long time to figure that out. Is it on the surface level? It looks super easy. Oh, you just say you give away your book for free charge shipping and handling. But there's so much nuance in kind of all those different elements. And we're looking at social media in the same way.

Interesting. So there's the, the, what'd you call it? You call it, you call it not frameworks. What'd you call the, the formats? Formats. Yeah. Do you have, is there a known number for it? It's just, there's infinite number of types of formats. So you guys have, these are the 20 that work the best.

So we've done analysis on over like 220 and we have a team that researches like 3 to 5 new ones every week. Um, but there's like different levels, like man on the street, we've done 10 different research projects on that. So typically the way that we work with clients is there's kind of like beginner formats and advanced formats. So like there's 20 or 30 kind of beginner ones. And as a beginner, it's not about like the content. It's more like if you're just getting into social media and you're trying to master the nuances of, of communication, you may want to start there before going on. Um, but it's also that there are specific formats to specific platforms. It's not like one platform is going to succeed across every single platform. It's, they're typically dialed in for each one.

In one of your books, you talk about the different formats. Like, is there, where's the best spot for them to learn? Like, here's the ones to even look at.

Uh, The Guide to Going Viral. So we break down our entire model that we spent the past 6 years, um, building and invested several million dollars. For that. And, and I'll actually— we're giving away that book for free. It's not even shipping and handling. If they go to hookpoint.com/russell, they can download the PDF, um, or Kindle version of it. But I break— so we have a model called the viral content model that includes that gold, silver, bronze, and we break down the entire model and process in that book.

That's cool. So you have the formats, and then inside the formats, you say there's 200 things you're looking for. Is that what the number was?

Yeah. Typically what we do when we break down a format, we distill it down to like 3 or 5, but we kind of, cause you don't want to be looking, analyzing content at like a level of 200. It just becomes too messy. But we kind of look at again, those high performers versus low performers, the core things, those core, those core elements of it.

Yeah. So when you work with somebody, is it better for somebody to like pick a format and you just double down and all your ones are man in the street or all your ones, whatever, or is it Do you change things around? What's typically the best?

So typically we say stick with one format. Obviously pick the format that you think best represents the message you want to put out, but also format that you enjoy. It's like, that's the reason when we do so much analysis is I don't want to sit here and say, oh, there's only 3 to 5 formats. You have to choose one whether you like it or not. But we typically say stick with one until you've mastered it and really understand that format.. And then once you understand that, then you can make the choice. Do I want to add another format into it? Because just that process of mastering one sets you up for success to master the next one. But if you try and do like 2 or 3 formats at the same time, then you're kind of learn— you're losing that kind of learning opportunity. And it's one of the reasons that I really recommend people stay away from trends because trends obviously are very fleeting and you're kind of trying to learn each trend as you go versus with a format, you're mastering the nuances of becoming a storyteller on a platform. And those learnings can be applied to either the next format or to the next platform that you go, go after.

Very cool. With Venmo Stash, a taco on one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. With Venmo Stash, get up to 5% cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Vimmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Max $100 cashback per month. See terms at vimmo.me/stashterms. Um, so for your specific, and I know we're talking across a lot of platforms, Instagram, YouTube, like things like that, what are the formats you use personally for yourself on each of the, are they different or are they similar across all of them?

Yeah, so for, for, we're predominantly focused on Instagram right now and it's, it's more kind of explainer, short form explainer breakdown videos of what you've seen, the side-by-side comparison of of videos, which is kind of like a very surface-level introduction to, to our model. But now we're gonna be getting into YouTube on kind of more in-depth explainer, uh, breakdowns and videos, uh, using the explainer format for that.

Is it similar though? You're still gonna be doing like showing the A and B split test and going deeper on it?

Yeah. More context wrapped around it. It will be in it, but it'll be like 5 minutes of like a 20 to 30-minute video breakdown.

Yeah, very cool. Okay, so I'm gonna, since you're here in Boise and you're gonna be working with my team later, I'm gonna use this time hopefully selfishly for like a mini consult. So on my side, so what we're really good at, we're really good at funnels and paid ads. We're really good at building email lists and promoting through there. Social is where we have like peaks and valleys where we like do something and it's working and then it doesn't work and back and forth. I think we've tried a lot of different formats, some with some success but not consistency. Same thing like Instagram, there's different strategy on YouTube versus TikTok. And I was just curious, like if you were working with someone like me from the very beginning, what would be, what's the process? Like what's something if we're like, okay, Russell, you've got stuff happening, but we're starting over to make sure we're doing this correctly. What would, what does that look like if you walked in on a consult day like that?

[Speaker] So the first place to start is what is the format that we're going after? And you may have done the format in the past or you may not, it may be something completely new. But really sitting down, determining what is the format that we can focus on mastering the nuances of, because we see this a lot, and I understand why it happens, is like a format doesn't work, so we're like, oh, this isn't working, I move on to the next one. But when you don't have kind of a foundational model to kind of use the creative process to produce that format, that's when it can kind of feel like, oh, this just isn't working for me. I'm going to move on to the next thing.

So, or sometimes we create something that does well, views, gets a lot of views and no comments or views and comments, but no one's clicking or like, you know what I mean? It's like, do we still do those things? Cause there's, there's brand equity potentially in there, but then it's not driving the metric we're looking for of actual, like, this is how we make money in our business. You know what I mean? Like those are the things I think we get stuck in on. And so for us, we're like, well, we see it could be a trend or it could be something where, oh, let's just try this type. And it works for one of the metrics engagement, but not for whatever, you know? And so like, I think that's where we keep getting stuck on is just like not knowing the consistency of like, this is the message, this is what we're pushing to, this is the goal.

You know what I mean? So, so it's a, it's a great question. And you know, I, I experience this a lot, especially with people that have done really well with paid ads. So approaching organic is completely different than paid. So organic is all about how to get people to know, like, and trust you. It's not about how do we sell or push a conversion. So what, what, what we work with in our clients, we're working with people that want to be the top 1% of social media. Like we're not the people you work with if you just want to hire a social media manager and like do okay and just kind of have content. Like we work with people to be that top 1%, the kind of the elite that are pushing millions, if not tens of millions or hundreds of millions of views through their channel. So the way that we look at organic is how do we build formats that really drive that performance, take you from, you know, 50 or 100,000 views a video to 1 million views a video and look at the economies of scale of how you're building that trust, that credibility with that audience. And once we have that dialed in, then we can look at how do we integrate calls to actions. Because if you start with call to actions in the beginning, you can't tell if your content is underperforming because of the call to action or it's underperforming because of something else. So the first goal is how do we just drive the massive economy of scale? So let's just say the person watching this, on average, they generate 10,000 views a video. And of those 10,000 people watching that, maybe 50% are its core target audience. It'll never be 100%. It's the same thing with paid ads. It'll never be 100%. But let's say we can take them from 10,000 views a video to 500,000 video views a video. And it's, you know, 10% of the core target audience. So we went from, you know, a potential 5,000 to 50,000 people that can buy our products or service. And if you scale it even higher and higher, that's where the benefit organic comes in. And I'm not saying you can't layer in calls to action. You definitely can. Like you'll see it in our content. Like we do a call to action report. Yeah. Yeah. For, for free copy of the, of the book. Um, but we perfected that format before we layered in the call to action. So we know if a video underperforms, it's not that. But another element of the model that we do from an exercise standpoint is, uh, if you have used a format, like you said, and you have an extreme high performer, what you can start doing is using that high performer on one side of the screen. So you pull up the high performer on one side and a low performer on the other side, and you do a side-by-side comparison. And now you're doing an apples-to-apples comparison, you can see why that piece of content performed versus the, the underperformer and vice versa. If you have an underperforming video, you play it side by side with the high performer and then you can start, you know, diving into the nuances of what the difference is in terms of how you executed that video. But if you're kind of going from trend to trend to trend or from format to format format, that side-by-side comparison It's like comparing apples to oranges. It just doesn't work. The same thing, I'm sure it's in funnels, is like you can't compare like a book funnel with like a VSL funnel. They're completely two different things. And that's where having that solid foundation of choosing a format and optimizing against that format really leads to not just incremental success, but breakthrough and consistent success. Because again, if anything ever underperforms, you just pull it up on, on one side of the screen versus a high performer and play them side by side.

Okay, so for me, let's say, let's talk about Instagram for a minute. So if you were, for what you know about me and my brand and what we do, what would you recommend? Like, what format do you think would be the best for me to be consistent on Instagram? Well, I think there's probably not man on the street because that one makes me super, super interested. You don't definitely need to do that. Introverted Russell's like, I don't want to talk to people.

I think that there's, there, there's a few. I think that the fact that you break down Funnels could be extended for a wider audience where you could not just break down funnels, but look at kind of some of the most successful websites or launches of brands or new brands, ads, um, commercials, you know, even like break down Taylor Swift's e-commerce store. Like how is her kind of language and things of that nature I think could be really interesting. I think also the two characters, one light bulb of breaking down misconceptions about business, about marketing, uh, could be an interesting one. I think that for you is how do we take, you know, one of the, the, the performance drivers that we look at is called the generalist principle is how do we take your core expertise and make it interesting to the widest possible audience while still not losing the subtext of the core audience that you're speaking at. So we really want to kind of look at it from that perspective, but you know, as we're breaking down viral content, I think there's elements that you can break down of what it means to make money online and kind of the specific elements of that. Yeah.

And I was watching yours today. I kept thinking about similar. I was just like, man, I could do something. I mean, it wouldn't be like yours is very much A/B, this versus this, but ours, um, it potentially could.

Do you remember that website back in the day that, that, and I don't know if it's still around, but the A/B test website.

Oh, uh, whichtest1.com. Yeah.

It's gone now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I tried to buy it from back in the day cause I, I tried to buy ads on their site for a split testing book we had and then they went— then I tried to buy the company and then they shut down.

So yeah, I mean, people are enamored.

It was actually really cool. People had to guess like, did this one or this one? And that was kind of the test.

I mean, people are enamored by comparisons and breakdowns of things.

It's interesting. We have thousands. I mean, we're running split tests in every funnel every single day. So we have thousands of like just our own data.

Um, but I think kind of broadening it out to Maybe not using the word funnel, but using like landing or like website or something like more general language to bring people into the ecosystem and introduce them to the concept of funnel.

Yeah. Interesting. So if we decide that was the direction, would you say 100% then a post of reels on Instagram or all folks in that, would you still rotate through other things? Like, do you bring family and do you bring extracurricular videos in to try to build rapport or do you focus on I feel like with you, you guys just focus on the one format style.

I mean, if it was me, I would say focus on one thing. I'm not gonna tell you never to post other stuff if you don't want. I just don't want the to lose the core focus of we're trying to perfect this format. If you wanna post family stuff or other things, uh, you can. Um, but I think that there's just a real learning curve in terms of focusing on one format, mastering it, going on. And I'm sure you probably give that advice with funnels is you don't, if you're working on your first funnel or, you know, trying to really scale your business, focus on one funnel first before you introduce other funnels into your business. Cool.

Okay. Um, anything else on like the Instagram side that you would do or would say that we should be aware of outside of the focusing on the one content type?

Um, I mean, we do it. I mean, Instagram I think is having a major resurgence in terms of lead gen. You know, you see a lot of people doing this. We do it of like comment to, you know, get some type of free opt-in or opt into something you can generate. I mean, we're, our business is generating like 3 or 4,000 leads a month through that. So that is a massive, like if you're thinking about like what's the difference between choosing TikTok or Instagram Reels, like there's a massive upside to Instagram right now. But I just kind of stress that like, that's just a tool that can only be integrated once you've mastered the art of communicating, because just because you use it doesn't mean you're going to generate leads for your business. You need to wrap your organic strategy around that and master those communication elements, uh, towards that. But again, like any platform, Instagram included, it's really choosing that format and layering in kind of the qualitative elements of really understanding what drives that. And again, 9 times out of 10, it's not the content of what you're talking about that's driving the performance. It's the context of how you wrap it. And I'll kind of break down another mistake that people make with short-form video, Instagram included, is those first 3 seconds are critically important in terms of getting somebody to stop the scroll, because there's 2 core metrics that drive virality. It's, um, stopping the scroll and kind of the retention of how long you're holding that audience for. And most people are messing up those first 3 seconds because they have too much going on. They have like a caption or they have a title card, captions, and somebody speaking at the same time. So there's 3 different things that somebody has to focus on in those first 3 seconds. And once the subconscious feels like it's getting left behind, it's just going to move on to the next video. So be very clear on what your visual hierarchy is in those first 3 seconds. And it does not have to be you speaking. It could be focusing on a caption or a caption at the bottom or a, um, a title card at the top. So that's a big kind of element to really understand as you're going into this. And then with Instagram or any other platform is really understanding what drives performance, what causes you to break through versus causes you to suppress. And that's the algorithms and the algorithms are really there's a lot of misinformation and frustration about them. One being that they suppress your reach on purpose to get you to pay for reach, which you and I know they don't make money off of you getting you to boost your post. They get money off of like the best direct response and biggest brands spending millions or tens of millions of dollars a month. The algorithms are designed to do one thing, and that's keep people on the platforms longer. So the longer they're watching your videos, the more ads they can serve, the more profit they generate. So this isn't like Netflix where they invest billions of dollars in original content to keep you on their platform. They rely on us as content creators to be the fuel that runs them. So they want to see us succeed. They want to partner with us. And the way the algorithms work is, um, a high-level analogy is like you'll post something and let's say they seed it to 100 people and they'll measure how effective you are in terms of stopping the scroll and retaining that audience. And if it's successful, then I'll do another 100. And if it's successful there, they'll keep extending out, out, out, out there. But if with those first 100 people or any of those benchmarks, it's not effective in stopping the scroll, um, and holding attention, they'll cut the reach right there because they're just going to favor other content. So they'll just suppress your reach. And that's oftentimes where you see people with a large audience that have low number of views or engagement. It's just because that piece of content's not holding up to the standards in the world that we live in today. There's no free wins with social media. It's not like back 10 years ago where just because you had a certain audience size, you're automatically gonna reach 30 to 50% of that. And the reason is we've gone from a world when I started with a few million people on social media, now there's close to 5 billion people on social media. And every time any one of us opens up our favorite app, there's probably at least 150,000 pieces of content that could see to us. Based on the people that we follow, the content that we've engaged with. So they're looking for that content that's going to grab and hold attention as long as possible. So it's critically important to understand these variables about how the algorithm works. It's not out to get you, it's just telling you that the way that you're trying to contextualize your message is not breaking through. And another big thing that I always implore to people is any subject matter can go viral. So some people come to me sometimes and say, my subject matter is not sexy. It's not interesting. Taxes go viral. Insurance goes viral. Real estate, you know, nutrition. We've worked in all these industries or sectors and we have research to prove that any subject matter can go viral. It's just the way that you're contextualizing it and bringing it to the world.

Interesting. Um, yeah, I'm not gonna lie. It's something that frustrates me when I see some of the content that goes viral that I'm just like, man, frustrating. Like in different industries and weird things. And then mine, I'm like, sometimes I'm pushing so hard. I'm like, I don't understand like why, you know, like I'm a better communicator, our videos are better edited, all kinds of stuff. And it's like nothing versus some other ones. And it's just like those little, those little things that, yeah.

It's just, it's pure context just to show you kind of the nuance to it. So, Earlier I mentioned a friend and somebody that we work with, Alex Stemp, that does the man on the street photography shoot. At one point we did a breakdown of his most viewed video, which is 100 million views on TikTok versus another video that was 5 million views. And the retention graph on the 100 million view video, meaning the length of time people spent watching it, was 27 seconds versus the 5 million view one was 21 seconds. So we're talking about a 6-second differential that represented 95 million views in performance. And I'm sure you see similar things with funnels, like just this slight tweak, the slight word or the slight placement of this in different areas in the background.

Yeah.

Dumb stuff. Yeah. So that's, that's, it's 9 times out of 10, it is not about the content. It's, it's just the way that you're contextualizing that content, the qualitative elements of how you're delivering it. That is causing it to not perform compared to what you see out there in the market.

One of the ones I watched today that you did, it was like this, this really cool looking thing of cement. It had two different videos, right? And one of them, the guy put the cement and put on a really thin, thin piece of wood. And one was on a thick piece of wood. And like, because it was on a thin piece of wood, people had the anxiety like, what if it falls off? Like, as little as that thing was, and one, I can't remember, one was like, you know, $100,000, one was like $40 million. And it was just like, that little thing that— so I'm curious, like, as you guys are creating the content, are you thinking, are you thinking those kind of things, or in post looking back like, oh, we should have— there's not enough curiosity here, there wasn't enough, you know what I mean? Like, how much prep work are you doing ahead of time to create the piece to know that you're going to hit as many of those things as possible?

Uh, it's both. It's, it's pre and post because you want to set the hypothesis of what you're doing, like for certain clients, um, and we'll probably do this with your team eventually is we, when we choose a format, we'll create a script template. And sometimes people actually want like written out scripts. It doesn't have to be that it can be kind of like a story structured one where we break down the format based upon the key elements of it so that you kind of have the reference on one side in your, you know, script or what you're gonna say on the other side so that you're hitting those specific performance drivers and those elements in it. So that, you know, going into it that I've done enough prep based on the research of we understand what's going on, but if it doesn't perform, we never look at it like, like, oh my God, that's the end of the world. It didn't perform. Again, our model accounts for that so that if it didn't perform, we just go back and we just have an open conversation. Okay. What did we miss? And typically it's, we just forgot to do something completely, or there was a performance driver element that just, just didn't click. And that's where, again, if you have a high performer in that format, you can do a side-by-side comparison, which is always the best. But as you're starting out, you may have to use a reference of somebody else doing that format. And it may be somebody from a completely different industry, because again, it's not about the content, it's about the context. But you want to set the stage both in the beginning and at the end. Like with that format that you're talking about, we've done it quite a few times and we just know at this point that it's the clips that we choose. That drive the performance. So we just had a conversation with our team internally where we're having our team spend 2 hours of research per video instead of 1 hour to make sure that we're finding the right video that we're gonna be reacting to.

That's awesome. Okay. Um, I'm excited to see the work you do with my team to figure out some of those things. So this episode is brought to you by Nespresso, introducing Virtuo Up.

The latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso.

It's innovation you can touch, sense, and taste in every single cup. With a 3-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew-over-ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself.

Shop VertuoUp exclusively at nespresso.com. The all-new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here. Building on everything drivers know and love about Toyota. With a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. The new RAV4 comes standard as a hybrid, providing smooth, efficient performance for both city streets and longer journeys. Enjoy the legendary reliability Toyota is known for in the all-new 2026 RAV4. Learn and shop more at toyota.com.

Toyota, let's go places. Okay, I wanna transition now. So let's say, let's say we master the one format type on Instagram, it's working. Actually I'll go backwards. So would you, would you replicate that in TikTok or would you just come a completely different strategy in TikTok?

Like, are those two similar enough that you just replicate the clips or how do you? So they seem similar, but they're very different in terms of the interaction user interface. So the way that we would look at it is, does that format, has it been proven to work? So let's just say we're focused on Instagram Reels. We get that format dialed in. Then we look at TikTok and we see, does that format prove to work on that platform? And if it does, what are the kind of subtle nuances between it working on TikTok versus Instagram? Because it's very rarely are you ever going to just say, take it from Instagram Reels, put it on TikTok, and it's going to perform the same or vice versa. So there's certain formats where it may perform, uh, as well on TikTok, but we just need to do a slight different edit. Maybe it's like the first 3 seconds or just a slight variation of it. In most cases, if we really want to excel at that level, we'll typically choose a different format. But what I say with most people I work with is like, if you just master like Instagram Reels and you, you blow it out of the water and you're generating millions of views a video, like you're going to have more business, you know what to do with just off of that. Then you can make that determination. Maybe I'm just okay with average performance of reposting it, or I want to tackle that next challenge and find a format that can, can drive growth on that platform as well.

For you guys. Um, and I'm not a TikToker, so I don't even have the app. I don't know. I haven't seen— do you, are you on TikTok doing the same kind of stuff or do you have something different strategy there?

We are. I mean, we're, we're kind of in that boat of like, we're just focused on Instagram and Instagram Reels and we're just reposting to TikTok by not expecting kind of massive performance. More of my effort right now and our team's effort is just going to be investing in long form on YouTube. Um, and that's obviously different, uh, formats.

That's the next direction I want to go because I'm, I'm the same way. Instagram, I think, is one of our sweet spots, and you and YouTube, those are the two that we focus primarily on. So that's my next question. So we, we've, we've picked a format type on Instagram that's working. As you transition out to YouTube, are you using something similar or is it completely different strategy, or what does that look like?

It's completely different strategy. Um, you can find adjacent kind of subject matter. Obviously the subject matter you want to be the same, but adjacent kind of like similar type formats in the way that you're going after it. But the strategy, strategy of I'm going to create long form content and cut it down into bite-sized clips and use those for my short form content strategy is not a recipe for reaching the top 1%.

But would you use the same format? Like if you're doing the, this, you know, your A/B split test, that kind of thing. Would the YouTube video be the same principles or it'd be a different storytelling type?

You know, it's completely different storytelling. Like in terms of the direction that we're going in for, there will be an element of it, but it'll be like 3 to 5 minutes of like a 20-minute video. So there's a lot more kind of long-form storytelling, a lot more buildup and explanation of going into kind of those breakdowns that can occur.

Yeah. Okay.

Interesting.

So we have similar thing on YouTube where we keep testing different formats, some with, you know, we're still kind of bouncing around trying to figure out the right format. If it's me talking to camera versus, you know, event footage, we have more event footage than anyone on the planet. So it's like we're pulling those in, we're trying, we're in the spot, we're testing a lot of things. With other clients you've worked with, what's the, what's the core as you're moving into YouTube? What's the core, foundational principles you're, you're focusing on with them?

It's the same exact principle. So, um, you know, in terms of like my advice to you would be is like select the format that you really want to do and just don't waver from it because if you really want to do it and you follow kind of the model that we've outlined today, you will master it, especially somebody with your skillset of understanding kind of the nuance of storytelling. I think that people give up on formats too easily, and especially in YouTube where it takes a lot more of an investment from a, a long-form perspective. Um, but really start with that core format, find a key reference. Again, the reference does not have to be, obviously there's nobody like you, so that reference is probably gonna be in a separate kind of subject matter industry and study that reference from the high performers to low performers to really layer into kind of how you're gonna tackle and go after long form.

Okay. Um, okay. Next questions are, um, the way that you and your clients are moving people from social to the other things, right? Because as much fun as it is getting a million views or 10 million views on a video, it doesn't pay the bills for anybody. So I'm curious, like, what you're— what's the core focus? I'll lead with, like, one of the biggest problems I've had in the past that we're trying to, like, remedy is I have so many funnels that when I come out and it's like, we do a piece of content, it focuses here or this one here, different places that like it waters it all down. And so we're trying to figure out the right strategy. And I'm just curious, what is the right strategy to move people from social to, to the next step?

So I'll give you an example. So again, the way that we perceive organic is how do we leverage it to get people to know, like, and trust us to the point where they just want to ultimately take that next step. This is the reason that big brands spend billions of dollars engaging celebrities, athletes, influencers, things of that nature, because people know, like, and trust them. And if that person says, you know, go buy this, or just automatically if they're associated with it, they sell a lot of product. So, um, we worked, uh, with a, a, a very niche industry, a leather craftsman,, that had very little to no experience in social media, was stuck at 2,000 followers, and he was stuck there because he was creating commercials of his products because he sells like leather wallets, handbags, purses, briefcases, things of that nature. So he was just approaching social media the way most people do is like, I'm going to create an ad and use it for organic content. So we followed this model in this process to help him develop a format called Is It Worth It, where he'll take like a $500 Chanel handbag and deconstruct it on screen and tell you whether it's worth the money that you paid for it. So in his content, there's no calls to action, but he used this format to build an audience of 2.5 million followers across the social media channels, channels, and he's generated like 200 or 300 million organic views at this point. And the format is so successful, people getting to know him, his expertise, they trust him. He just has a link in his bio. And through that, he sells out his most expensive inventory because he's built so much trust into that. Now I'm not saying you don't have, don't have calls to action in your videos. Like I said, you have them once you've mastered that. But as you know, when you're reaching that level of organic lift, the retargeting element, the retargeting audience that you can build through that is massive and it brings down your effective cost per action. So understanding your ability to retarget these audiences,, with your, your specific ads. Long form is a little bit easier to layer in kind of more organic CTAs of, especially with you, of having different funnels. You can layer it in and just say, click the link below, um, that video. Um, but the way that we're kind of using it with organic, as I mentioned earlier, is specifically with Instagram, which you're focused on, is okay, let's master the format. Get that format performance up, and then that CTA can be super subtle. And with that CTA, you can change kind of what you're giving away with it. And I'll actually, now that I think about it, another kind of, um, tip that I can give in terms of CTAs specifically on Instagram that we've found is don't have the CTA at the end of the video, have the CTA about 3/4 of the way into the video. So, you know, if you'll see in, in, in my videos, we'll be breaking down, you know, like 4, 4 elements of why this, you know, video did 10 million views versus 100,000 views. And after like the third point, I'll be like, and if you're enjoying this video, you know, comment below to get your free guide to going viral. And then I go, and finally, let's break down the last element of why this video went viral, because it kind of gives people a reason to stick around versus if you put it directly at the end of the video. It cuts off automatically. Yeah. So at a high level, it's, um, understanding like organic. If you reach that top 1%, the numbers will be so big that you'll have a massive retargeting audience. The numbers will be so big that you'll just have people that ultimately want to take that, that next step. And then once you've mastered that element, then you can start layering in CTAs on a, on a kind of an authentic level that fits into the content.

Yeah. Very cool. With yours, um, the ones I watched today, they're all pushing towards this guide right here.

What's the CTA for this guide right here?

Guide to Going Viral. They want to get a free copy, how do they get it? Uh, hookpoint.com/russell. Oh yeah. Um, okay, so I want to walk through strategy. So you're doing the viral, not every time, but, but strategically, 3/4 of the way you're putting a link or putting a message for them to go download this. And what's kind of a funnel, guys? What's the rest of the funnel? What's it look like afterwards?

I'm curious on that side. Um, so we have an outbound team so that we'll, we'll reach out to them and then we put them in our, our email cadence. We're thinking, and I'd love to pick your brain, but trying to reverse the book funnel from instead of book funnel free shipping, like free book and then into to something. But we haven't mastered that yet because we get so many leads from the organic because the organic works so well. And another tip that you can do is on the organic side is If you have a video that is working, once it plateaus, don't be afraid to put paid behind it. 'Cause there's a lot of people that think, oh, if you put paid behind organic, they're automatically gonna suppress your reach. So you have to pay for organic or you have to pay for views or reach each time. It doesn't work that way. We've proven it time and time again. So if you start getting into this and you have like an Instagram Reel that's doing well, and has a CTA in it and it's, let's just say it hit a million views, but it kind of plateaued. Don't be afraid to put paid behind it and kind of keep pushing it because that will, A, kind of push. We've seen the cost for acquisition of a strategy call for our team just completely decrease using this, this model.

But also you can get organic lift off of putting paid behind content as well. Yeah. Very cool. Interesting. Yeah, I'm curious. I'm gonna have to go through the whole funnel now and see exactly what you guys are doing. It's interesting 'cause we're seeing, you asked earlier about the free plus shipping book funnels, like transitioning from a free book person into a high ticket client. Do you, my question, sorry, I'm flipping this around now, but my question is, do you have like a, do you have a virtual event that you ever do to sell? Or is 100% of everything happening from the phones into your high ticket?

Everything's 100% through the phones. Going to try and figure out how to do a virtual event. We've never done one. Okay. I have like a 45-minute masterclass.

Yeah, that's kind of like evergreen, but it's not set up like a live event.

Yeah.

Yeah. We're seeing really well right now in a couple of our high-end clients too. They're coming in, pushing, pushing a free book offer and then the rest of the funnel is like into pushing into a paid challenge to get somebody to show up. Now you got a 3-day period of time to send them to higher ticket or things like that. 'Cause it is harder to go straight from a book to like, hey, register for strategy call, or come give me $20,000, $25,000. Like, it's such a, you know, there's such a gap between like, I got a free thing to $25,000.

And so, anyway, that's— Does it matter between 3 or 5 days for the challenge, or just—

It doesn't matter, different strategies. There's like, yeah, no, it doesn't really matter. As long as you're hitting same thing, as long as you hit all the beats. You know, there's core things, there's 5 core things you gotta hit and it can be in a 90-minute webinar, it could be in a 3-day, it could be in a 5-day, it could be in a, yeah, as long as you hit all the core beats that you gotta do to break false beliefs and move somebody into the next level. So anyway, so fun.

Cool.

So outside of short form and long form with your clients, is 100% what you do and focus on is video or do you guys do any of the the other, like Facebook and the other ones, or I don't know about you, we've struggled with Facebook over the last couple years getting anything to go past, you know, like getting any kind of organic viral growth out of anything. Is that just a use case for us?

Are you seeing success there with, with your people? Um, we see success there when you focus on it. Uh, it's just, again, it's, there's different formats that work well for Facebook and, and you have to just dial those in. Um, but I think for your business and kind of where you're at is Instagram and YouTube is, is a really good focus. Uh, Facebook still has a lot of legs to it. I think they have like 3 or 4 billion users at this point. A big percentage is international, but it still can work in terms of 90% of our work is video-based. Um, just because from a retention standpoint, like the algorithms want to serve that more. Our model works for anything. It can work for, for, for text, for images, things of that nature. Um, you know, there's so much talk about slideshows. It's like the one thing that kind of like drives me crazy is like, you know, like these videos that say, oh, if you use this trending song, you're going to go viral, and 99% of people use it, don't go viral because they don't understand the context. Same thing with the slideshows. It's like, well, if you use a slideshow, you'll go viral. It's like, it's not, it's not the the slideshow itself, it's the expression of it. It's the same thing with formats. It's like just because you're using a format doesn't mean you're going to succeed and go viral with it. So I think in any platform that you focus on, any format, whether it be text or image or any of those things, is just make sure to kind of do the research and understand what's the difference between, you know, high performer and a low performer. Yeah.

It's funny because you're saying that reminds me in the funnel world I was talking about because I mean, people like, I have a funnel, why isn't it working? And for me it's like there's always an art and a science. I'm like, the science is the structure. It's the, the pages, the like all the sequence. That's the, that's the science of it, right? But then the art is your message, your story, your offer, your— and that's the harder thing to teach people through because it's like you have to like, you got to put your message into it correctly, you know what I mean? Because the science part's easy. It's like, oh yeah, there's a page here and there's going to be an order form bump and an upsell down. You know, this is what it looks like. I think the same thing. You know, someone picks a format, like there's the science of it, but then you got to weave your art into it to make it actually, actually work.

Right. It's 100% correct. It's just because you have a funnel doesn't mean it's going to work. And I think it's a little bit more frustrating on our end because with social media, anybody can pull out their phone, press record and post something. I'm a superstar. So it's like, it's a blessing because it's truly democratized communication. But the downside is, is everybody thinks it should just be that easy because you can pull out a phone and just record and post something.

But it's, It just really comes down to the nuances of mastering these skill sets. Yeah, very cool. Well, man, I'm— first off, thank you for coming to Boise and hanging out, being on the podcast. I really appreciate that. And working with my team, which is going to be really, really cool as well. For those who are in my whole world, we're all trying to figure out either paid, organic, or both. Everyone's thinking about that. Where's the best spot? Like, if they should go to get the guide, going viral first, they read something else first. My people are book readers too, so I what's the best—

where's the best place for them to start following you and doing all the things? Yeah. So if they want, like, the book breaks down our model, they can go to hookpoint.com/russell to get it. Um, if they just want to kind of reach out to us and see how we can help them, go to hookpoint.com. And you mentioned some of the breakdowns and stuff. They can go to my Instagram, uh, Brendan Cain, and get a sense of kind of what we were talking about as a breakdown.

Yeah, that's cool. And then you guys, you're not, you're not an agency. You don't do done-for-you work. But you guys do coach and consult and, and teach people the processes, right?

Yeah. So we developed the strategy. So we have a team of researchers that, that will do the research for companies, break it down. And we also train teams or individuals in the model. And we work with people with like no social media experience all the way up to like multi-billion dollar corporations. Like it doesn't matter to us because the model has been proven across, like the model has been used to generate 60 billion views, 100 million followers, and a billion in revenue at this point. We've, proven against every skill level in industry or sector. Yeah.

So cool. Well, I'm pumped, man. I'm excited to see how ours evolves and changes after this day with you and hanging out with you. And I really appreciate you doing it. So everyone go to hookpoint.com/russell, R-U-S-S-E-L-L, double L's, and, uh, and go get a free copy of the Guide to Going Viral. And I appreciate you hanging out, man, and being part of the podcast. Thanks, Russell. I appreciate it. Thank you.