Content Strategy for Business Owners (That Actually Works)​

This is where 99% of people fail in this process. And once we just gave these small insights. Her Next video did 59 million views.

Wow.

She went from a few thousand followers to 134,000 followers. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to master the nuances within the wheel, to become an expert storyteller.

At the core of it. The foundation part of your post should be a really good, compelling story. So do you have a formula for what makes a good story?

The first place that I want people.

To start is, well, I can certainly back that comment up. So if I do that video and it does well, you'll know the source of it was right here.

Well, we're going to work together on it, but I want to make sure this works. I'm an insurance agent, I'm a real estate agent, I'm a nutritionist. I can't go viral. The reality is anything can go viral with the right context. So they think that formats restrict creativity, when in reality they unlock creativity.

What if you're at video 400, you're like, I'm not making progress.

99.9% of the time you're not being shadowbanned unless you're an only fans person or you're doing something illegal. It's just your content is not holding attention long enough. Your social media profile is not your website and your organic content is not your ads. There is a long game to this. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to hit a million subscribers or million followers to make a living.

Brand is a force multiplier. It takes whatever you're doing. It grows it exponentially, it ramps faster, it reaches more people, and you can do it organically. You've given us a lot of lots of process and think about how are we going to get our first million views.

The biggest mindset shift that you can make is just.

Aside from me getting roasted and getting our videos critiqued by Brendan and just me feeling attacked personally, what else are we going to cover.

Today, Brendan, we're going to reveal 20 brutal truths that are going to help you succeed and reach the highest level of social media. And if you watch the end of the video, you will have the tools and skill sets that you need to reach your first million views. Or maybe if you reach your first million views, how to reach your next ten or a hundred million plus.

Let's get right into it. What's the first social media truth?

Well, I think we should just kind of set a baseline because, you know, I've Been in this space for 20 years, and we were talking beforehand. There's a lot of social media experts out there, and some of these people only have like two, three, four years. And there's a lot of talks about hacks and tricks and frequency. But the number one thing is it's just storytelling. People forget that that social media is just another storytelling medium. And the people that win at social media are the ones that tell the best stories. Now, as we know from doing this for decades, telling a great story is not necessarily easy, but it is simple in terms of what drives success. So I want everybody to forget about algorithms, tricks, hacks, how many times you post, and let's just get to the core of what tells a great story.

Well, I can certainly back that comment up because people ask me, what are you doing? Like, I don't know. I just write a story. And I don't really care what the algorithm is doing or what the new features are, because story transcends all. And you can layer on top certain whatever the. The hack of the day is. But at the core of it, the foundation part of your post should be a really good, compelling story. So do you have a formula for what makes a good story?

Yeah, I think that the first place that I want people to start is people are endlessly scrolling social media. We all use social media, but we're using it more from a passive perspective. And I just want the audience to make this active creator mindset shift, actually starting to look at, at content, to start seeing like, oh, this has 10 million views. Like, why does that 10 million views? Oh, this only has a thousand views. Why does it have a thousand views? And what I really want them to start looking at is what we call formats. And what is a format. It's a storytelling blueprint or structure that has been used repeatedly over and over again. So one of the things that we created at hook point is called the hook point format finder. So let's just say that you're scrolling through and TikTok or Instagram Reels and you see a video that has 10 million views. Well, you want to click on that creator's profile and go, have they used that same structure at least five or 10 times? Because they haven't. It's not a blueprint for success. It's either a trend or maybe they got lucky. So we really want to make that shift from passive to active to understand that there's this thing called formats. Because most people, as they're creating content, what do they do is they're just Jumping to idea, to idea, to idea. They're not looking for like what is the blueprint? So for example, I started my career in the movie industry. Now the interesting thing about the movie industry, almost every movie over the past 100 years is used the same format and that is the three act structure. They don't deviate from it. Why? Because it works. Now in social media, there's hundreds of these formats at hook point. We've spent 10,000 hours to date. We have about 300 formats in our library. We hope to have about 500 by the end of the year. And I just say that because there are so many options out there. So that first step in terms of that blueprint is just making that, that shift to understand there are these things called blueprints and then going through and identifying them.

So what you're saying is, and this is a Jim Rohn quote, success leaves clues. When you see something that works, go and figure it out. Don't just be passively consuming, Be an active learner. Look at their profile, see if they've used this multiple times and see what the commonality is between what they're doing and figure out what the format is. And you to date have discovered over 300 formats and hopefully by the end of the year, 200 more that you're going to figure out, Right?

Yeah. And you know what the fascinating thing is about some of these formats? People think that social media is like this new innovative thing, that it's so original. But if you look at some of the top formats and top creators, they're using storytelling structures that were invented pre social media. So let's like go through a few man on the Street. A lot of people use man on the Street. We have like Alex Stump that uses it for photography. We have School of Hard Knocks that uses it for business advice. We have Body by Mark that uses it for fitness. It's used in all these different sectors. The man on the street format was invented in 1954 in the first season of the Tonight show and it's been around ever since. Another one that's popular is called Two Characters, One Light Bulb, where it's the same person that plays two different characters. So we have like Erica Kohlberg that uses it to break down what happens when your flight gets delayed or your AirPods break or mark Tilbury does it for finance. If we think back to 1997 in Austin Powers, he was doing Austin Powers and Dr. Evil and doing this banter back and forth. You think about Mr. Beast, you know, he does these Challenge videos. Well, you go back to 1995, when they had the Road Rules challenges on MTV, or in 2000 where Mark Burnett introduced Survivor. So you have all of these examples of storytelling formats working pre social media. So that's where it just shows you, again, that it's not about these tips or tricks or hacks. It's just how do we become a masterful storyteller? And that's why you see some of these structures play out over decades. Why? Because they work.

I think it's pretty obvious. The benefit of figuring out a format versus going from one type of content to the next to the next idea. What is the compelling reason why anybody should want to figure out what a format is?

Because it gives you a blueprint for success. Now, I know some people, and we hear this from clients, and some people may be thinking this. Brendan, it sounds interesting. I know formats are successful, but I want to be authentic. I want to be original. So they think that formats restrict creativity, when in reality, they unlock creativity. So what do I mean? Again, starting my career in the film industry, I went to film school, and you have to study the top filmmakers in the world. So if you think about one of the best storytellers of our generation, Steven Spielberg, so he's used this single format to tell stories like ET vs Jurassic Park, Jaws vs Indiana Jones, Lincoln vs Saban, Pry, Orion, they're so distinctly different when we sit down. The experience that we have with allows us a massive amount of creativity. But what he did, and most film directors do, is they spend decades mastering the nuances of how to master that specific type of format. So what a format does is like you were mentioning success leads, clues. What it does is it gives you a structure to become a master of something. So the. Another analogy I can give you is a lot of people talk about trends, you know, and trends, you know, why I advise against them is they're fleeting. Like, you think about one of the biggest trends back in the day, the ice bucket challenge. You know, nobody uses that today, so you're switching from trend to trend to trend. So let's just say as an analogy, we wanted to learn a musical instrument, and there's two paths we could take the trend route or the format route. So the trend route would say, week one, we're going to start with the piano. Week two, we're going to move to the violin. Week three, we're going to move to the guitar. Week four, we're going to move to the drums. Like, how are you going to master any musical instrument if you're changing the goalpost each time versus a format says, well, let's spend six months learning the piano and let's master all the nuances of it so that we can, our creativity can flow within it. So that format gives you a tremendous amount of creativity, but it also gives you a foundation for success. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to master the nuances within the wheel to become an expert storyteller.

I want to add to this a lot of creatives, and I taught creatives for many years prior to getting onto social media. They, they swim in chaos and they like this idea. Like, I'll just figure it out, I'll invent things. And they're delusional because what they think is original is just a lack history what's come before. And so that, that expression is cliche at this point. Don't reinvent the wheel. Reinvent how it's used. And that becomes much more interesting. What structures allow us to do is to have a higher probability of success and removes a lot of like, what am I going to start with? Where does it end? And then it allows you to play within the variables themselves. If we think about like cooking, there's a recipe, there's a formula, and if you want to have success and you want to be able to not only do that dish right one time, but a hundred times, especially when it's critical if you're trying to impress the in laws, you know, if you had an important guest over, you want to be able to make that again and again. So believe it or not, structure and creativity go really well together, whereas chaos and creativity, it's just a mess because you don't know what. And it's probably one of the reasons why a lot of super creative people struggle with creating consistently and getting consistent results. So I'm all for that, by the way.

Yeah. And you can even see the success you have, especially in your short form. Content is you use like a seminar format that has worked for you and you keep going back to it. But even within that format, the unique value you provide each time feels unique. It feels different. It's not like you're repeating the same thing over and over again. So it's again, it's more about. And people say, well, I don't want to copy other people. You're not copying other people, copying a structure. And oftentimes that structure was invented before social media and you're using that structure to deliver your own unique insights, your own unique value to it.

Okay, is there Anything else you want to say about formats?

No. Well, so that's the step one of the process. And you talk about recipes. This is my favorite recipe. It's the recipe for success in social media, the recipe for virality. So once we kind of made that mindset shift and at least understand that formats exist and what they look like, and we talked about a few. We talked about man on the Street. We talked about two characters, one light bulb. There's another one called Walking listicles. I don't know if you know Robert Krok, the founder of Silly Bands, but he just walks around with an iPhone around the block and lists things out. So once we have understood what a format is, the second thing that we need to do is select a format and then analyze it. So one of the two questions that I give clients in terms of selecting a format are very simplistic but super critically important. The first is, what resources do you have? Social media and formats? You don't need to extend beyond your resources. You know, I think a lot of people will tell you, well, you need a fancy camera, you need a social media manager, you need a big team or a big budget. But there's literally formats like we work with. You know, like we worked with this hand doctor, Dr. Hernandez, literally, she had no experience in social media. And we're just like, okay, we're going to design a format around that and she's just recording it on her iPhone. So I want people to start with the resources they have. You don't need to extend beyond that because again, there's hundreds of these formats out there. And then the second question is, well, what format excites you? What? Like, you look at it and you're like, I would love to wake up every single day and create content with this format because if it doesn't excite you, you're going to burn yourself out or that inauthenticity is going to come off on screen. And again, there's hundreds of these formats to choose from. So don't just jump at the first one and be like, you know what he is, you know, generating tens of millions of views with this. So I'm going to do it. Just because he's having success, that's a recipe for a disaster because you're just not going to keep up with it. So those are two key questions to ask yourself. Now, once we have gone through that process, we found our format. This is where 99% of people fail in this process. They will look at like the man on the street format and they'll be like, oh man, that's super easy. Or they'll look at your format. Oh, he's just sitting there at a whiteboard just writing down things. I know what he's doing. You got 50 million views on that video. I can do the same. The reality is you don't understand why it had success. So we need to analyze that format and study it in the same way. When I went to film school, you have to like sit down and watch classic movies, write screenplays and things of that nature. So we created a proprietary process called Gold, Silver Bronze. So we'll take a format. Let's just take man on the street for right now and we'll open up a Google spreadsheet. We'll put 5 to 10 of the high performers in that format from a single creator. In that format. It's at least 5 million views plus. That's the gold standard. Then we have the average which is like 500,000 to a million. We'll do five or ten of those and then five or ten of the underperformers, the bronze. So once we have that, then we're going to do a cross analysis. What that means is we're going to watch the gold, the high standard ones, and then we're going to cross analyze it against the low performer, the bronze ones. And we're going to look is what is the difference? And oftentimes it is not the content but the context. So it's like, is there a promise of value? What's the pacing? If it's a reaction based thing, what are the reactions of the person you're interacting with? What are the title cards, what are the captions, these small nuances that make up the telling of the story. Because if you don't take that process, you don't really understand well what drives success, but more importantly, what detracts from success. Because without doing that analysis, maybe you hit it once but you won't be able to repeat it. So again, step two of the of the recipe is how to choose your format and then making sure that you analyze it.

I get nervous every time I talk to you because I keep thinking about a content dream or bouncing from things to things. We have more bronzes and silvers and every once in a while we get a gold. So I feel so called out right now.

Well, we'll do a little bit of exercise at the end. We'll do a little compare some of your golds and, and bronze.

So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna tease this if you make it to the end of the video, you'll get to see Brendan roast me or give me.

No, it's not gonna be a roast.

It's not gonna be. Okay.

It's not gonna. Because again, like, that's the thing about this process. This process is never about getting down about something not working. It's about learning from it.

Yeah, I agree with you, by the way, but the kids like to hear me get roasted. Okay, are we ready to move on to the next thing? Okay, so what's is it now? We're on point two.

So that was zero. Point two.

That was point two.

That was point two. So point three is now we come up with the ideas. It's the ideation phase. So where do most people start with social media? Well, they just come up with ideas. Well, why does coming up with ideas first typically lead to lack of success? Well, one, there's no format in mind. So you're just coming up with ideas. There's no format or structure that you're putting that idea into. And number two is if you're going from idea to idea idea, how are you going to master storytelling? It's like the analogy we just talked about with learning a musical instrument. If we're changing the goalpost and changing from instrument to instrument. Instrument, how do we ever get good? So once we have a format, it becomes the vehicle for ideas. So to give you an example, we worked with an amazing guy, his name's Tanner Leatherstein, with a leather expert. And he. He has a fascinating.

Is it. Is that his name?

No, it's not. It's not his real.

It's too good of a name too.

It's amazing. But like, he has an amazing story. At age 9, he created his first leather jacket. Like, he just loves leather goods. But before coming to us, he was struggling with social media because he was doing like everybody else. He was just creating ads, promote his products. So we helped him design a format called is it worth it? Where he'll take, you know, very expensive handbags, like $3,000 Chanel handbag. He actually, he actually buys these things he pays for with his own money, deconstructs it on screen, and tells you whether it's worth the money you have for it. So we have this container, this format of is it worth it? Now that we have this format, high performing ideas are super easy. So one week it's a Chanel handbag, the next week it's Louis Vuitton shoes, the next it's a Prada handbag. It's an expensive wallet, it's expensive belt. You have this container that makes it super easy to find high performing ideas because it's vetted through this structure to the point where like, he didn't even really feel comfortable being on camera. He has 94 videos with over 1 million views. Why? Because it makes the ideation process, coming up with high power ideas a lot more effective and a lot more, a lot easier.

I think one of the reasons why his videos work is there's some shock value. These are coveted objects that he takes. So somebody's like probably having a fit just watching him rip these things apart. He scrapes the coating, he sets them on fire. He's just pushing and pulling every little thing. Then he goes into like the cops, the material costs, the finishes, the trim, and then the labor cost to make a point. Like, when you buy this thing, you're not buying it because it's this value. You're buying it because of some other reason which he doesn't get into. But there's shock value there. If you're watching that or if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking to yourself, well, how does a guy afford to buy 2 to $3,000 worth of bags for each video and then to be able to do this sustainably? Do you have an answer for that?

Yeah. So it's a great question. And one of the things, and I'll just insert this brutal truth into social media because most people don't get it. Your social media profile is not your website and your organic content is not your ads. People do not log onto social media to see you sell things. So what Tanner is doing through that format is he's building a strong relationship with them. He's getting people to know, like and trust him. And because the format is so high performing, where he has 94 of these videos with over a million views, you know, he has a bunch over 10 million views. He's getting so much exposure on him as an individual, building that relationship, building that trust that they ultimately want to take that next step with him. So if you watch his content, there's no calls to action, there's no visit the website. He just has a link in his bio. And before this format, he would pay per every click going to his website, he was generating 10,000 visitors. After this, he was generating 100,000 visitors A plus organically. And his most expensive products, the ones that were handcrafted, would sell out. So I'm not suggesting that every person goes out there and buys a $5,000 handbag or piece of equipment and deconstruct it again, match the resources to where you're at. But he has a fundamental business model behind it that he understands that translates into people that want to buy from him. Again, you can look at like Mr. Beast, where he'll spend 5 million, $10 million on a video. Again, we're not recommending that people do that, but he has an underlying business model that he has proven out over time. It's not like Tanner or Mr. B started at that point. They just built into it and knew that they got a positive ROI from it.

I thought the answer was going to be because social media rewards them financially so that they have a positive return on that investment. So if they spend $3,000 TikTok or Instagram, I pay them 5. And so they can just keep doing this infinitely. But there's the real business, the business behind all the social is he makes bags that you can buy.

Yes.

Rebecca's model is he actually makes more money in ad revenue and sponsors than he. Than he spends on making the videos. Right. That's what I understand.

So that's a really great point. Mr. Beast hit a saturation point where he was generating so many views that a sponsor couldn't underwrite it for the value that he was providing. He wasn't getting enough return out of it. So that's where he started building his own companies like he built. Beast Burger was the first one. Feastables is like the fastest selling chocolate bar in the world now. I think it's projected this year to do 500 million in revenue. So it hit a saturation point. And this is another kind of brutal truth I talk people through. Because you, you bring up a really valid point that we get asked a lot is like, well, what is the true ROI of social media? Like, if I'm going to invest my time or energy into social media, if I'm in a higher a social media manager, if I'm going to hire Brendan or Hook Point, like, what is my return? I'm going to be. The reality is the return is the size of your vision. How big can your business scale? Like, I'll give you an example. I don't know if you know Michelle Fan, but she was one of the original beauty influencers. She's a friend of mine.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah. So she's amazing, brilliant woman. She started YouTube in 2007 and she, you know, she got in very early and where most people saw it as like a novelty of YouTube because it was still like karaoke videos and Cat videos. She's like, no, like, the people of the future that are going to lead industries are the people that have the largest audience. So I'm going to invest into it. And she was very successful. She built millions of subscribers, millions of views, but instead of just doing what most beauty influencers do, which is do brand deals, she's like, no, I'm going to do something bigger. So she founded a company called Ipsy with a few of her friends, which was a quarterly subscription box and community where they would deliver beauty samples to you. In the first three years, it ramped to 120 million in revenue. At one point, it was valued at 800 million in revenue. Then from there, L' Oreal was like, we see the value you're creating. We want to partner with you, not give you a brand deal to create a brand new cosmetics line from scratch. Now, before this, l' Oreal had never done that. The only brand they created was l'. Oreal. They would just acquire business businesses. So where most people get stuck in a kind of short term mindset of like, well, what is my ROI going to be from AdSense or ad revenue or my next client or brand deal, like, the reality is social media is a platform for creating something truly extraordinary. And your roi, your true ROI, is as big as you can humanly think. As big as possible.

Drigo, I don't know about you, but I'm feeling even more called out. We're only on brutal truth number three. What Brendan is saying is if you're too cheap to pay for this stuff, it means you have a really small, small vision.

That's what you're saying it is, but it's. It's. It's also. It's like, if you want a small vision, that's fine. I'm not telling people you have to have a large vision. I'm just saying I don't know where to go.

Well, I brew the truth 3, and I don't know if I can make it to number 20. You guys, I just feel so called out right now. Okay, let's get into this. Right, so here's the thing. We've been speaking to some people recently. One. One person in particular is Dan Martell, who's only in the last couple years has grown his social media presence, and he said something at the dinner table. He said, what I've come to realize is as much as I was against all this stuff, brand is a force multiplier. It takes whatever you're doing it, it grows it exponentially. It ramps faster it reaches more people, and you can do it organically. So all you thoroughbred hardcore entrepreneurs like the Hermosis and the Martells of the world sit there and think, maybe this is the day of the year that I invest in this. And almost to. To the person, their biggest regret or the insight is, I should have done this earlier. I should have done this sooner. And I'm part of that camp. I started doing social about 10 years ago. And the thing. The number one question is, what would you do differently, Chris? I would just started when I was 19, because if you start earlier, you can really get to a really amazing place now. So we're all playing this game at long, long timeline, and we're not looking at it just like, as a substitute for advertising or marketing, which you still need to do. Everybody. But this is a great alternative that you can do in parallel.

Well, I think that. And I want to pull up because I did some research on it, because I think it plays. Plays to what you were saying of kind of the mindset going into. And this is kind of like another brutal truth is like, how long does it take to get to a million subscribers on YouTube? So the average is 492 videos. On the low end, it's 123. The highest is 1600. Now, if you would ask, you know, a lot of people that have scaled their audience that it would take that long, there'd be a good percentage of them that would just probably, like, give up or quit. So, like, to your point, there is a long game to this. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to hit a million subscribers or a million followers to make a living, to build, you know, revenue, to sustain yourself, to do whatever you want. But it's just to kind of have that mindset shift of, like, I think people see, like, a Mr. Beast and they don't realize, well, he started, you know, 10 years ago at 12 years old in his bedroom, you know, you started 10 years ago. I started. I don't even know when I started seven or eight years ago on content. The way you set that up.

Like, you started 10 years ago, and you're already 45 years old. I was like, God damn, you're gonna call me out on that, too? Brandon. He woke up this morning. He chose violence, everybody. I thought we were gonna have a friendly conversation. My God.

But this is another secret that we can. Another brutal truth to social media. You need tension in your videos. We're creating this tension.

Why is it only directed in one. One direction here? Holy cow. Okay. I don't do that to my guests. I thought we were better friends. Okay.

Hey, I'm a true friend. We're watching each other.

What is it? Friends will stab you in front? True friends will stab you in the back or something. No, I got that the wrong way. Yeah, fake friends stab you in the back. True friends just go straight into face. Okay, look, I don't know the exact number. Did you say 492? What was that number?

Yeah, it's 492 videos on average.

Okay, so on average on YouTube to get to a million subs, because that's a pretty important threshold to break. It's going to take you 492 videos. We don't want to worry about the outliers, the ones who takes a really long time and the ones who get there really fast. Let's just look at averages. 492 videos. I want to reference something by Seth. God in the dip. The dip is like, there's this thing where it's fun in the beginning. You get a lot of followers and attraction, attention and energy and return on investment. Then you go into the cul de sac or whatever, and it starts to get harder and harder, and it feels like you're putting a lot of work and not getting a lot of results. And then you get into the valley, the dip. This is where most people will quit. I'm just saying this to everybody. What if you're at video 400 and you're like, I'm not making progress. It could be 92 more videos where you actually have that breakthrough. The question I have to throw at you is, what do you think happens in creating almost 500 pieces of content that allows you to get to that breakthrough?

It's pure learning. So. So I'll give you another kind of brutal truth that plays into this. And it's. You know, what is one thing that people don't know about Mr. Beast? You know, because everybody looks at Mr. Beast today and they're like, oh, yeah, he's just spending 5 to 10 million easy on a video. It's easy to have that level of success. But the reality, when he first started out, you know, he was going to university, and he's like, you know what? I'm quitting. Like, I love YouTube. I just want to create YouTube videos. And it wasn't an easy decision because his mom kicked him out of the house. She's like, if you want to do this, then you're going on your own and you're going to support yourself. So when he did and made that decision. He spent. He got three other YouTubers or college dropouts, and they spent a thousand days straight, eight hours a day on Skype, breaking down every single nuance about YouTube videos. Like, they would look at a thousand thumbnails. They would look at, you know, the first three seconds, captions, title cards, and things of all these small nuances. So if you're at. Even if you're at 50 video, because I don't, you know, because we work with clients all the time where it doesn't necessarily need to take 400, 500 videos, but if you're at 1002-003004-00500 or beyond and you're not seeing success, well, I would take a step back and say, well, what are you learning with each video? How are you becoming a better storyteller? How many other creators have you studied to understand what makes them successful? That is the biggest contributing factor. And like I had. I had the luck of actually going to film school, you know, where I wanted to be a movie producer. But even going in, being a movie producer, they make you take acting classes, they make you take directing, editing, they make you write a screenplay. Why? Because you need to understand all of these elements that go into making a movie. It's not just one thing. And the same thing applies to social media. And I think it gets lost because social media is a relatively new thing. And I think the downside of social media is anybody can pull out their phone, click, record, and post something. So what does that mean? Not a lot of thought goes into it. Now, there's a massive upside in terms of it democratizing communication to the masses. But because it becomes so easy, I think it forces. Forces a lot of people not to put a tremendous amount of thought into it. So. So step three is ideation coming up with ideas. Step four is one video at a time. So what do most people do when they create content? They batch produce. They sit down and they produce 10 pieces of content. Which I'm not saying, like, once you become a good storyteller, you can't do, but when you're starting out, it sets you up for failure. And let me give you an analogy. Let's say that we are trying a new recipe for a cake, and we're baking 10 cakes at the same time with the new recipe, and all 10 are in the oven. We pull the first one out and it's too dry. Well, what do we do with the other nine? We have to throw them out and start from scratch. Now, most people on Social media won't throw out the other nine. They'll just post it and learn absolutely nothing and just repeat that process over time. Versus if we're gonna cook the perfect pasta sauce, we wanna really impress our in laws with a pasta dish. Well, what do we do is we're stirring the pasta sauce, we put in a little bit of salt, a little bit of vinegar, these ingredients, and we just keep tasting it along the way to refine it. So with content, as you're starting out and mastering storytelling, you wanna just produce one video at a time so that you can actually analyze what you're doing and testing your hypothesis, testing your ability to become a better content creator as you go along.

Yeah, you want to iterate and learn and adapt because otherwise you're just pushing it out there. Like in the example when you're going to make 10 pies or 10 cakes at a time, what people don't realize is it's pretty crappy. And you serve the other nine cakes too. And that changes the relationship you have with the viewer or your customer at this point because the people who are showing up are going to say it was not good. But now I got nine more not good things to deal with. So maybe I'm giving up on this person and you've lost that opportunity.

Absolutely right.

So guys, before you get into it, really, you want to innovate and you want to learn as you go versus moving towards efficiency. Efficiency is good once you figure out your formula and you can repeat it over and over again. But until then, stay away from that.

Yeah, and it may slow you down in the beginning and that's fine. Like you want to crawl before you run. So just start with one video at a time, learn, master. And then once you master it, if you want to speed things up, then you can.

Okay, okay, what's step five?

So step five is now we've produced the content, now we want to do the analysis and really understand what happens. So remember in step two we did that gold, silver and bronze process. So if we have a video that succeeds, well, now we have a blueprint, we actually understand why it succeeds because in the TikTok era and you know, YouTube shorts followed, Instagram, reels followed, it made a little bit easier to have that quick win. You'll see people that'll get a million views, a 10 million views on a video, but they can never reproduce it. Why? Because they don't understand why what elements of the story that worked. Now, as I mentioned before, if a video doesn't perform, we're not sitting there being like, oh, man, it's the end of the world. I suck as a content creator. My team sucks. All this stuff. It's. No. Now we have a blueprint to benchmark it again. So we use what's called the hook point mirror process. So when we did that gold, silver and bronze process, let's just say it's man on the street or one of yours. The seminar education format, we have the high performer. So we can pull out one of those high performers, put it on one side of the screen and put your low performer on the other side of the screen and play them side by side. And if you're really honest with yourself and you're open, you'll be able to spot the differences. It'll be pretty clear. And that gives you a benchmark to understand, well, what did I miss? Did I just execute something wrong? Or maybe I just missed something in that initial analysis. I just didn't see this one thing that the gold video did that I didn't do in my video, so that I'm going to perfect it for the next time around. So it kind of closes the loop there that once you're producing, you're producing one piece of content at a time. You give yourself space and in a platform to really learn and refine. And that's what the best content creators are doing, is they're constantly learning and refining as they go along.

Okay. Have you heard the expression it's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar?

No.

Okay, well, easy for you to say, but most people are not that objective when they're making stuff because they're involved. They have a attachment, subjectivity, biases. Like, I worked really hard on this one. I wanted to do better. And it's very hard for them to be objective. That's why people hire coaches and consultants. So for someone who's listening to this and that feels like what they're going through, what kind of advice, if any, do you have for them?

Well, I think that one of the things that potentially holds people back from that is being honest with themselves because they don't want to be hard on themselves or they don't want to look at glaring gaps. And kind of one of the things that I would just tell people that if something's not performing, it's not about you. It's not really about your message. It's just the context of how you're delivering it. And I'll give you an analogy. How many movies are there about World War II?

Countless. It feels like, yeah.

And there's great ones and then there's bad ones. The content is the same. We're talking about the same thing. It's just the way that we tell the story. And the same goes for whether you're a financial expert, a nutritionist, a fitness instructor, a real estate agent. Like, it's not about the content. It's not about you. It's just how you're delivering it. And if you just look at it from that lens, it's like, hey, I'm one or two tweaks away from figuring out how to really break through. Because I think oftentimes, and it's hard. Like, I don't know if you experience it. Sometimes I do is like, you'll take social media personally, you know, because you're exposing yourself out there is like, whether it's the comments or the numbers or things of that nature, and sometimes you get caught up as a human being in emotions that you get caught up in that emotional side of it. And I know it's hard, but just trying to detach yourself from that and not look at it from the standpoint of what that you're bad at content creation. It's what can I learn to ensure that I can continuously improve? Because, like, everybody that is trying to do social media is probably an expert in another field. And like, the question I have is, well, how long did it take you to become an expert in that field? It took time, it took practice, it took refinement.

Okay, so the hook point mirror is like where you look at and you look yourself in the mirror and kind of have an honest conversation. Like, that shirt makes you look fat.

Well, it's not that harsh.

Right?

But like, to give you an example is like, we worked with a, a puppy yoga business and everybody thinks dog videos go viral. Well, they don't, because they don't all follow formats. And she was, she was really struggling. And like, her content is a format where she's just capturing content of puppy yoga in her studio. But she was struggling to break through. She was getting like 10,000, 15,000 videos. But when we did the mirror test against a gold standard, we saw a few things. One, there was like captions, like the first thing on the screen, which was detracting from the actual action that was happening. The reactions of the people, the chaos that the puppies create. And then number two, there was just a misaligned focus. They were focusing too much on the puppies and not enough on the people. And kind of like, what are these people going to do? How are they going to respond? And once we just gave these small insights, her Next video did 59 million views.

Wow.

She went from a few thousand followers to 134,000 followers. She did 250 million views total. And like she's getting asked to go all over the world now. We didn't completely change, like, who she is, what her business is. We're just making small tweaks in terms of how she's telling those stories.

Okay, so you're saying that it's nothing wrong with you per se, not even anything wrong with the things you're creating. You're maybe one or two tweaks away from getting the results that you want. And it's your ability to look in the mirror and have an honest conversation to say, what if I change that? That's what's missing from this. And it's usually it's human connection and emotions that really drive things. Right?

Yeah. So one of the top aspects that we mentioned earlier with the Brutal Truth part is one of the key elements to going viral is tension, is you need to build tension in it. And if you think about like an analogy in like most hero movies, what happens in a hero movie, you know, they go out, they do a battle, they fail, they go out, they do another battle, they fail, they go out and, you know, and they keep going until the climax of the end of the movie where they finally succeed. And Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, you know, says it's, you know, somebody gets in a jam and they get out of a jam. Like that is what, you know, kind of what we're looking for in terms of storytelling. Now if we think about like Mr. Beast, like one of his videos is 1 billion or $1 boat versus $1 billion boat, there's added tension with each boat that you go through. Or you look at Mike Mark Rober, who is a former NASA engineer, and he does like, I'm going to make a pool out of Jell. Oh, he doesn't start at the end results. He's building that anticipation. Or if you think about man on the street, like, why does man on the street work? Is because there's this initial thing. You're approaching this random stranger, like, what's going to happen? How is this person going to respond? And a lot of this stuff happens on a subconscious level, but there needs to be that inherent kind of tension throughout of that ebbs and flows, even if it's in like a 60 second video. Because if it's just monotone or flat, it's Going to fail. And you just think about, like, that one person, you know, in the office or that one friend of yours that just has that monotone thing where it's, like, almost difficult to stay awake during the conversation. It's the same thing with social media content.

Yeah, that one friend who has that monotone voice. Who could that be? I don't know. Let's keep going. You're getting caught in the crosshair. It's just called collateral damage. Okay, so are we done with the first brutal truth?

I think we're through like, 10 or 15 at this point.

Okay, okay. All right, what's next then?

So I think we can get into the algorithms. So there's a lot of misinformation in myths about the algorithms, and I'm just going to kind of like, break down at the simplest level why they exist. So I started on social media in 2005. MySpace or friends started. So at that time, there was 25 million people on MySpace, 6 million on Facebook, 8 million on YouTube. So it's a far cry from what it was today. And then, you know, 2010, it jumped to about 2 billion. 2015, 3 billion. 2024 billion. Today it's about like 5 billion, just in rough numbers. So obviously, as more people came on to the scene, more content was being produced. And the social media algorithms didn't exist in the beginning. They weren't there. Social media was very simple and straightforward for the first five years. You get somebody to follow or connect with you, you post content, and people see it. Pretty simple premise.

The good old days.

Yeah. But when. When more people are creating more content, these systems had to invent the algorithms. Why? Because they needed to prioritize content. Like today, if we opened up our favorite app, there's probably 150,000 pieces of content it could see to you based on the content you engage with and the people you follow. Now, obviously, they can't push 150,000 pieces of content to you because you just couldn't absorb that much information. So they need to prioritize. Well, what are the first 5, 10, 15 posts that I'm going to push this person? So the way they make that decision is they have one goal, and that is just to keep people on the platforms longer, because the longer people spend on those platforms, the more ads they serve, the more profit they generate. So what they're designed to do is purely retention. So what they are looking for is the best storytellers, the storytellers that can stop the scroll and hold attention longer than others. So that is just like a simple truth about how these algorithms work. Now there's other things that people say and I'm just gonna break down these false truths that people think, oh, I'm being shadowbanned 99.9% of the time. You're not being shadowbanned unless you're an only fans person or you're doing something illegal. It's just your content is not holding attention long enough. Again, we're not saying you're a bad person or you know that your content or your underlying message isn't there. It's just the context isn't grabbing and holding attention. So that's one truth to it. The next one is the other people say, well, they're just suppressing your reach on purpose to get you to pay for it, to boost for it. Well, I know that's false for two reasons. Once I've managed over $200 million in advertising spending and I can definitively tell you these platforms don't make money off of the average person paying $20 to boost a post. They make money off of Apple, Coca Cola, Pepsi, these companies that spend billions and billions of dollars a year on advertising. Number two is, well, how would MrBeast be the most subscribed person on YouTube? A 12 year old kid starting in his bedroom in North Carolina. If they were favoring people with more money then it would be Apple is the most subscribed or Coke or Pepsi or you know, Gatorade or one of these, these major brands. But that's just not the case.

Okay, I'm there with you. People don't want to hear that. That is a brutal truth. It's easier to blame something that you can't put your finger on than it is to take accountability that you can actually work on this and make it better.

I'm with you 100% and that's. And I just want to kind of empathize with people. Like I know what it means to like put your time, energy, heart and soul resources into something and it just doesn't work. And I feel your pain because I've been there. I'm sure you've been there. But the reality is it's not these external factors that are driving that down. It's just your ability to be a great storyteller. Now the hope that I give people is everything that we're talking about today. 99% of the content creators out there are not doing this. So if you just start integrating, Even just like 10% of this, it's going to put you ahead of Everybody else.

Yeah. I don't like the way you looked at me when you said, I know you're paying that. Why don't you look at the camera when you say that? Why you look at me like, I. I'm not in pain right now. Okay. What Brendan is saying, and I'm quoting here, here, directly, that if you think you're shadow banned, the reality is your content sucks. And he said that? No, he didn't say that. Brennan's saying there's. There's a very low likelihood that you're being shadow banned. It's just you need to learn how to use the right context to capture attention.

Yeah, right, Absolutely.

Okay.

So another kind of thing that we get asked a lot that is a. Is a really truth to confront is, well, Brennan, it's going viral. Okay? I don't really care. I just want to grow my business. And it's a valid question. It's a valid point. So when I think about the term virality, which is pretty. It's thrown out a lot, you know, and it's. There's a lot of, I would say, definitions of it for my definition and what we do at hook point, it's. It's not necessarily the number of views. It's the impact that you're having. So the reality is, what is the impact that you're looking for on your business? First off, I would never tell somebody to do something that has nothing to do with their business just for the sake of going viral. Like, it has to correlate to your business, your goals and objectives. Otherwise it's a waste of time. It's not going to translate into anything. But beyond that, for some people, 10,000 views is enough, and they can, you know, generate a lot of business. For other people, it's hundreds of thousands. Others, it's millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions. I honestly don't care about the size. I care about, again, that foundation. What is the size of your vision and how are you actually going to capitalize off that attention? Because I'm sure you and I know people that have millions of followers or subscribers that maybe make six figures, and we probably need know people less than that that are making seven, eight figures. So it's not necessarily the size of your audience. It's what you do with the size of the audience that counts. So how does virality and getting exposure drive a correlation to business? So one of the first things that we have to look at is, well, what causes virality? And it's another kind of truth that I'll Intertwine into this is like, is my business sexy enough? Like, I'm an insurance agent, I'm a real estate agent, I'm a nutritionist. I can't go viral. I'm a tax accountant. That doesn't go viral. The reality is, anything can go viral with the right context. But how do you actually do that? How do you actually achieve that? Well, most people are creating content from the old paradigm that was created pre social media, and I'm talking specifically organic, social. And the old paradigm tells you create a niche message or a niche piece of content with a niche audience. Now, obviously, as business owners, we want to communicate to that niche because they pay our bills. But how do we still communicate to them? Connect with them, while still making your content accessible to a wider possible audience? Because remember, the algorithms have. There's over a billion pieces of content uploaded to all the social media platforms combined every day. So they have so much content to choose from. And again, what do they want? They want content that can grab and hold attention with the masses. So if you create a niche piece of content with a niche audience, the minute it sees beyond that, it's typically going to fail. In addition, it's not just that you're competing with your dark competition. The people that you're reaching follow thousands of other people, engage with thousands of other pieces of content. So it's fighting for attention there. So as business owners in a niche industry, we have to make our content, again, accessible to our niche audience, but accessible to a wider audience. So what are some examples of this? We have Ryan Sirhant, luxury real estate agent, Manhattan, New York. So he represents properties anywhere from 15 to $250 million. So it's a pretty very small number of people that can afford those properties. But what he does is he plays the generalist principle. He does videos like, Let me take you on a tour of a $7 million closet. Let me take you on a tour of $125 million penthouse. Well, that is. First off, that's a format that was created before social media. Do you know what TV show that was?

Lifestyles with Rich and Famous.

Exactly.

Hey, I got one right? He's getting ready to rip me a new one. Thank God I got that one right.

So again, storytelling, repeating patterns. So with those formats, he generates tens of millions of views. Because who doesn't want to see what a $7 million closet look like? Who doesn't want to see what $125 million penthouse is? And he knows if less than 1% of the tens of Millions of people viewing his content or his core audience, he will beat out all of his competition. He has even said that he has sold a $30 million penthouse property. Another account, Amalfi jets on TikTok. It's got, like, a million followers. And basically, it's a simple format where they have the owner of the jet company and they have on speakerphone, like, crazy requests from clients about jets and things of that nature. And it's millions of views because they want to see, like, what does this experience look like? And it beats out all of the competition that way. So I think people get a little bit flustered with, well, how does it translate into business? And I don't want to just talk to everybody. I want to just talk to my core audience. Well, if you really want to win, you still got to talk to your core audience, but expand beyond that to drive it. And you see that in your content, too. Like, you do amazing content, like the ones that have, like, 50 million, 40 million views. You're talking about kind of universal truths and principles about, like, how do you value yourself? Like, how from a pricing standpoint, things of that nature that anybody would be interested in consuming. And then through that, even if a small percentage of that is the core audience that's gonna buy your products, services, you ultimately win.

I get asked this question a lot from people who are coaches, who think what they do is pretty boring. How can. What kind of format can they use so that there are more people looking at their content?

Well, there's so many formats out there, and I'll go through a few. Like, man on the street is a simple one that can be used for any industry or sector. I'll give another example called visual metaphors. So there's a woman that's a clinical psychologist named Dr. Julie Smith, and she breaks down, like, PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, and she basically just uses visual metaphors. So she'll have, like, one of her most viral videos is waste paper basket on the desk that's overflowing with papers. And she talks about trauma processing of, like, taking each paper out, folding it neatly on the desk until it's a stack, a clean stack, and putting it back into there. We have another client that used it, Chris Cobb, that uses it for car insurance, of explaining how car insurance works through kind of like little toy cars and action figures and things of that nature. So that one, again, can be used for any type of industry. We talked about Walking Listicles with Robert Croke that can be used for any industry, of just walking around the block and going through three tips. We talked about two characters, one light bulb. But it's kind of more about how you take that core content and contextualize it for anybody that's interested. So like I'll give you another example. Like tax accountants, like that's a pretty dry subject matter. So there's a, there's an account clear value tax. And it went viral during COVID because they were covering videos. And like if you watch his videos, it's like the most bland background. He's sitting behind a desk. There's not a fancy camera or anything like that. And he was breaking down like when are you going to get your stimulus checks? Like what are the updates? And it would get millions of views. Or another one. A dentist, like, how do you make a dentist interesting? Well, we were working with a dentist out of Utah, Dr. Jordan Davis. And again previously he was just doing like commercials and things and nobody wants to see a commercial. So we did a kind of like a react format. But he would like break down celebrity veneer teeth. So he like, he would do a breakdown of Emily Blunt and, and like go the progression of her veneers and tell you like how he would do it better. And that video got 21 million views. So it, it brings people in or another client of ours, Regina Roth, a hairstylist, she just did this like amazing short reveal like of, of this woman's hair and her reaction to it and that generated 17 million views and she was booked out a full year in advance from, from one video. So. So it's really about kind of finding that format and that context that can make it interesting and accessible to anyone.

You've given us a lot to process and to think about how are we going to get our first million views? Brendan.

So again, going back to the five step process, the biggest mindset shift that you can make is just understand that this thing called formats exist. And as you start consuming content, start looking for viral videos and click on the creator that created it and see if they've used that same format, the same structure at least five or 10 times. And keep doing that over and over again until you find a format that you are really excited about that you can get behind. And one of the big pieces of advice I can get is most people are looking for apples to apples comparisons. Like I am only going to look, I'm a nutritionist, I'm only going to look at examples of nutritionist or I'm a real estate. I'm only look at examples of, of real estate. Some of the Biggest breakthroughs is breaking the mold of your industry and looking at creators using formats in different industries and applying it to you. Because, remember, with these formats, it's not about the content. It's about the context. It's how you insert your message and deliver it in there. So as you're going through these formats, just be open to other industries, other sectors, and just find the one that really drives your passion. And once you find one, and I'm not saying you have to do the full analysis that we do, because we spend like 15 hours dissecting a format. Just at least look at a high performer versus a low performer and see if you can spot the differences before you start creating. And if you do that, if you follow that process, you are well on your way to your first million views.

I just want to take a moment to caution people. If you're in the real estate industry, don't copy other real estate professionals, because you'll just be seen as a copycat. Nobody wants that. I'm going to butcher the quote. I think it's Picasso who said something like, the secret to originality is your ability to hide your sources. So when you go outside, when you are influenced by, like, if you're in cinema, be inspired by. By music or be inspired by plays, not other directors directing the same genre of film that you are, because you'll just be the poor person's version of that. Just want to warn you.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Cool.

Now what do I need to do to go viral? Now I'm going to ask you some questions.

Okay, let's do it. All right.

I want to do man on the Street. What would work for me? Because now I have Drigo here and we can go on the street.

And do you want to do man on the Street? Because I can just tell you I tested it and I didn't like it.

Humor me. Let's pretend I really want to be man on the Street. What can we do that's more interactive? I'll tell you why. Okay. Earlier you have to go back to that part. You talked about looking at your resources. And on the other side of resources are your constraints. Right? Like, what tools do you have? What time do you have? Work within that. That's a great place to be a springboard for creativity. But your resources could be like, what skills do you have? I feel like I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet. I'm a pretend standup comic, and I want to see what I can do in real time.

We did a lot of research on man on the street. I think we've done 10 research projects. One thing specifically for you that I'll just point out that I think will be really helpful is understanding the difference of who the star of the man on the street is. So if you look at Simon Squibb, he is the star of man on the Street. But if you look at like School of Hard Knocks, and I love what they've done, don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking them in any way, but he's not the star of it. So if you're trying to build a personal brand around man on the street, like in School of Hard Knocks, he's just asking the other person questions. He's not the authority leader. The other person's the authority leader versus the way that you're. I'm thinking you want to approach it, you want to be the authority leader. So you have to set up the interaction from that standpoint. So. But what are your most viral short videos?

It's a leading question. You already know the answer to this. Yep, I'll answer yes. The most viral short videos that we've made are usually in a workshop format. There's a whiteboard and there's a heated topic that really riles people up emotionally and you can, you can actually be on either side of the argument and still feel like you're still right. So the local pricing one is the most high producing video we've ever made.

But, and correct me if I'm wrong, most of the underlying subject matter and themes is how you value yourself.

Yes, that's the underlying thing. Because money, what you charge is an extension of how you see yourself in terms of your value.

So to me, that is one of the first places I would start is underlying themes of how you value yourself is interacting with people in a way that determines how much do they charge for their value of their time. It doesn't necessarily be that literal, but along the lines of what you've seen in terms of that interaction in that seminar type environment. Because it's just interacting with other people and breaking down this misconception of kind of like how people perceive themselves, how they perceive value, how they perceive pricing, how they perceive charging, which again all comes down to one fundamental thing, is like, how do you kind of value yourself? So it could be, you know, I don't know if you've seen Caleb Simpson, he does man on the street, but he asks people how much they charge for rent and then ask them to do like a home tour. So just one idea is like, how much do you charge an hour? And, like, getting into, like, why do you only charge that? And kind of you want to have this paradigm shift, and you see this happen with Simon Squibb, and, like, he has the biggest, like, kind of easy, universal one. And we would need to think through what is that? Universal is like, what is your dream? Yeah, like, everybody has a dream. Not everybody kind of charges by the hour, but kind of that concept of, like, how do we ask a question that gets to the underlying thing of how they value themselves, and then through that, you can coach them through that experience to have that mindset shift.

Okay, I think I can try that.

Yeah.

So if I do that video and it does well, you'll know the source of it was right here on this episode.

Well, we're going to work together on it then. I want to make sure this thing works. I'm going to be held accountable for the success. I want to work with you on this. There's a lot of stabs.

Drigo, you're just reading slightly below the layer there. He's saying, I don't trust you enough to do.

No, I don't want to be on the line for.

No, I was just giving you credit. I was saying, if it works, it's going to be Brendan.

I was.

No, it's not.

If it's going to work, it's going to work.

It's going to work. Okay, so where can this go wrong? And let's work on that.

There's a few areas that can go wrong. Number one, it relies heavily on the person that you're interacting with and the reactions of that person. So if you are interacting with somebody, you need to have that. And this is a big part of, kind of the way that we're thinking about. There needs to be that, aha, light bulb moment, and you need to be able to capture that, aha, light bulb moment, because if you don't, it's just gonna fall flat. Number two is it has to have that generalist principle, universal appeal of getting down to something. And I'm not saying that you would do this, but, like, how much would you charge me to design a logo versus, you know, what. What is your hourly rate? Or, like, I want to hire you. How much are you going to charge me for an hour type conversation? But a lot of it is. Is really choosing the right person, that personality, and capturing that, aha, light bulb moment.

I imagine that to be just an issue of tonnage. You got to go through a bunch of people, and then that's the one.

That'S the reason I didn't like it.

Okay.

It's because my personality. I'm not extroverted. So, like, just going up to a bunch of random people, like, for Simon, you know, his personality, like, he's. He's primed for that. Like, if you can do man on the street, like, there is a massive amount of potential with it. It's just like you said. Like, I think he goes through, like, 60 people and he gets, like, two or three clips out of it.

Yeah.

From a personality standpoint, it just takes a toll on you if you don't have the right personality structure for it.

Okay. That's too much extroverted energy for you.

Yeah.

All right, let's. Let's try it right here. Hey.

Hey.

Excuse me. Can you tell me how much you charge an hour?

Why are you asking me that? Why should I tell you?

I'm trying to figure out what people charge because I'd like to hire you.

Hire me for what?

Whatever it is. Whatever it is that you do. Why are you being such a difficult prick is what I want to know.

Hold on a second. Tension, yeah. Is another part of it.

He's doing this on purpose.

Okay, I charge 25 an hour.

And what do you do for 25 an hour?

I do graphic design.

Anything specific?

I design websites.

Okay. So why not 50 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? How'd you arrive at 25?

I think it's probably too much for people to pay for my experience.

And do you have evidence that had led you to this conclusion?

No.

So what are you basing your beliefs on?

Honestly, I don't know.

What if I told you there are a lot of people who are just like you, who are charging 10 times more than you and happily doing it with happy customers? How would you respond to that?

I would ask, how do I do that?

Great. Let's have a conversation.

Okay, let's do that.

All right. That's the episode that's gonna get four views.

But the important thing is, I wanna point out, tension is a big thing. Like, you will see. Like, we saw this with Alex Stemp when we did some work with him. Like, sometimes he would put a rejection in before somebody that stops. So you'll put in, like, somebody says, no, I don't want to talk. And then it goes into the success part of it.

I like those. In fact, when I look at Simon's Instagram account, I see that some of the more popular videos are when they turn him down, because I think it's just riling up a lot of emotions. There's one video where he offered $10,000 to pay a woman to stop vaping. She thinks about it and she goes, no, I don't want it. Yeah, it was incredible. Like, what are you doing? Take the money. Yeah, not vape for a day or two.

And he does it with books, too. Like, I'll pay you. Yeah, yeah. Because again, it just goes back to the. The tension part of it. We don't want something that's monotone or flat. There needs to be some unpredictability about it. And again, a lot of this stuff happens on a subconscious level. And automatically with man on the street, there is this. This initial subconscious, like, what is going to happen? What is going to happen? That hooks people in. Now you need to continuously hook them throughout, right. To make sure that they stick around.

I like that. Hey, do. Do me a favor, everybody. If you saw that short, how many views do you think that would get? Put it in the comments below. And then secondly, what do you think about this format? Do you think I should try this? And if you do, let me know in the comments and I'll go out there and try it. Just say, chris, go for it. Okay.

I think I want to see it.

Okay, well, we'll. We'll chop this one up. It'll be the four of us or the three of us in this room, like watching it four times, and that'll be 12 views. Okay, I like it. I can do that. Now, it's interesting that you say this, because I was going to do a series telling people how much I think their work is worth.

So how would that work?

Okay, it's like, basically send me a description of what you do a video and show me a little bit of your work and what you charge, and I'll tell you if you're worth it or not. And how my experience.

And how would that look visually?

It'd be probably the first couple of clips. The first few seconds would be them saying, oh, I do, and this is my work, and this is what I charge an hour. And then I would go through it, and then I would respond to that in so.

But they would be submitting video clips.

Yeah, they would be tagging me on social and saying, tag me, and using hashtag, how much am I worth?

So it's just gonna. It's gonna heavily depend on the video of the person submitting it. Because it's kind of like a reaction. Yeah, it's kind of like a reaction video. And reaction videos are highly, highly, highly dependent on the video that you're reacting to.

Okay.

But another good format that I think you could test, I think would be good for what you do is Tips on the move. Have you seen Mark Tilbury do that?

No.

Where he'll basically just break down tips going from location to location. Location.

Okay.

So it's just kind of like this movement and kind of this visual cue to kind of what you're talking about that does extremely well. And it's less intensive than like man on the street because it's very structured and scripted.

How does it work? Tips on the Move. What kind of tips is he giving?

We can look at one.

All right. Yeah.

So like, here's another example.

If you're really a millionaire, sell me this pen. Okay. Do you need a pen? Nah, not right now. Well, why would I sell you this pen then? Because I want to see if you're really a millionaire. Duh. Look, lots of people make a quick buck selling rubbish to people that don't need it. Real wealth comes from selling some of value to people that actually need it. Oh, whatever. Then give me my pen back. That'd be $5 then. That's a good twist at the end there.

That one's that. That one's not really that, but it's. You see that in that environment. But here's another one.

I'll teach it to you in less than one minute. To become rich, you need multiple income streams. I have seven and they generate me over a hundred thousand dollars per week. First is my retail store where I sell radio, control cars, planes, helicopters and more. Second is my own brand and product range which I manufacture in China and distribute all over the world. Third is my ebay store where I buy stocks and failing businesses and sell it online. Fourth is a stock market where I invest my money and let it grow over time. Fifth is my residential real estate which I rent out to family. 6th is my commercial real estate which I rent out to other businesses. Seventh is my personal brand where I post videos online to help the next generation grow their wealth. It took me 10 years.

So like, you know, he's doing it around money, but I think you could do it around like pricing, valuing yourself.

Okay.

Things of that nature. And it's, it's very high performing format. And again, it's just a little bit easier to execute. More predictable than like man on the street. I still think you should test man on the street because there's a lot of high end potential there. So I wanted to, you know, go over kind of like at a High level, like a viral script formula, just at a high level. And then look at one of your very viral videos and kind of break it down.

Okay.

Through that lens. So if we look at it, there's. There's five kind of key elements here. So, you know, there's a lot about talk about like hooking. So we need to hook the viewer, and then we need to create tension with two different methods. So that hook needs to create that tension. We've talked about quite a bit about tension today. So there's two different methods to do this. You can promise you will share something they care about, or you can create a gap in understanding of a topic that they're already familiar with. And you do an amazing job with this. So we'll look at one of your videos. Then we establish context for the situation. Then we insert a second hook because we need to keep people going. People just focus on like the first three second hook. But you have to continue going through. And number four, you answer a burning question from the viewer and then we conclude with a CTA. So let's watch one of your most viewed YouTube shorts, which has 40 million views. The title is, when clients don't want to pay what you're worth, do this instead. So let's just watch it and then we'll kind of break it down through that viral script formula.

I really, really don't want to spend.

More than a thousand dollars.

I understand thousand dollars is a lot for you. I'd like to propose something else. I'll do the video for you for free. If we get the results that you want, I'd like a percentage of the results. Can we do that? No risk to you at all. That sounds fantastic. What's the percentage that you're thinking? We're talking about measuring the difference between traffic and revenue that you get. There's lots of things I can't control, so all I want to do is get paid per new customer walks in your door. How about since you say each customer is going to spend $100 with you, so half 50 bucks, no risk to you. I take all the risk and I rely on your honesty. What's the hesitation? Concerned that you're going to make a banger video and then we're going to get a lot of clients in the door, and then I'm going to be out 50% of that revenue. What if it exceeds a thousand? It's going to exceed a thousand. That's the whole point. I take all the risk. Or you can just pay me what I'm Worth and you keep all the profit. I really, really.

So that's the video. So 40 million views. So let's understand why it was so successful through that viral script formula. So hooking the viewer, number one. So there's a promise of value, and we see that right away with the title. When clients don't want to pay what you're worth, do this instead. So you're saying, like, I'm going to deliver a lot of value in this video up front. But there's immediate tension, like, just the way that he's asking that question. There is initial conflict there because it's kind of like, what's going to happen? How are you going to react to that? It's very subtle, but that initial tension is there. So then number two, gapped. There's a major gap in understanding that you're breaking down. So most people, you know, it first starts with the rejecting the offer, but most people don't even think to charge from a percentage of revenue. So you're introducing this whole new way of looking to things that again, we're talking about, like, the millions of people that don't understand. Like, obviously experts have heard of that before, but a majority don't. So you're bridging this major gap in understanding with the audience. So that hooks them in even further. And then we have a clear context that's set up. A client feels that $1,000 is too expensive and it's hesitant to pay. It's very straightforward of, like, what is playing out here. But then it doesn't stop there. There's a second hook introduced where he goes in and if you give 50% of the revenue, what if it exceeds a thousand? He is like, he's rejecting it again. You know, he's saying, like, well, that's crazy. I'm not going to do that. And then it's introducing, well, how are you going to respond to that second tension? That's that second conflict. When I say conflict, it's like a mini conflict, but you still feel it in this small container of a video. And then finally you have a solid conclusion of tying it all back to reinforcing the importance of knowing and standing by what you're truly worth, which we were talking about earlier. So that's where you can kind of look at, like, well, how are a lot of viral videos from a short form constructed and then looking at it through the lens of your own video? And you could do the same process if, like, something didn't work, is you, like, map those elements out.

Okay, I Always thought that my videos need Mo in it because Mo likes to argue. And Mo brings this kind of like.

Well, there's that tension. Energy.

Yeah. Like what our audience feels in. In him is that he represents a certain kind of low level. I don't want to say it, but like a scumbaggy kind of client who. Who wants their cake and eat it. They don't want to pay you, and they don't want to pay you. So there's no way around this. And I'm asking them to confront that issue. And I think.

Which is true.

Yeah.

But you don't have to rely on Mo to do it every time. As long as you understand that that is a driver in success. There's other ways that you can manufacture that. Like, man on the street is another one we just talked about. Like Simon Squibb. Some of his most viewed ones are the ones where he gets rejected.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay.

All right. You want to break down some. Some of your content now?

Yes.

Okay. So we're gonna do a fun little exercise, and I think.

Fun for who? This is fun for Brendan, because let me just say, he's like a guy who sprinkles salt on a slug, watches it.

This is all about learning. It's all about growing. And no matter what format, you know, we'll work with you on both. That's my commitment and promise to you. Whether you're gonna do man on the street or Tips on the Move, we're gonna. We're gonna make it super viral.

Okay.

But. So we typically do this. We play two videos side by side. We don't tell the audience which one was the high performer versus low performer. You're going to know, but we'll let the audience guess, and then we'll break down which one's the high performer.

Yeah, this one will be really fun. This is the man in the Mirror, I believe.

We'Ll break down how many views they did and why. So let's watch the first one where.

My $18,000 is going. Does that mean if I work less.

Hours, I should charge you less?

Yeah. So if I go over those hours, I should charge you more? Sure. Really? Yeah. Okay, so you're saying to me, you value this logo taking longer rather than shorter. So it means if I just tell you it took me four months to work on it, you will now owe me $36,000 if it's in my budget and if I think you're worth it. But I would also ask, why would it take that long to.

To make that Logo.

I wouldn't put a lot of effort.

Into it, but I could hire somebody else who would charge me the same.

Rate but do it quicker.

So you value time over money, then?

Sure.

As a business person.

Yeah. So here's the deal. I work really fast. I can come up with a logo, but I'm being punished for me being efficient and really good. You understand the logic doesn't work now. Sure. That's the problem. So if I could do a logo.

For you right now and you love.

It in five minutes, are you saying it's worth less than 18 or is it worth more now?

It's worth more.

So charging by the hour punishes me for being good. All right, that's video number one, everybody.

Yeah.

Hold on to the second video, because now you'll see another one and you can vote. Social proof is the new cv.

I know.

Roll your eyes. I know, but it's the real thing. Because, like, when you say, like, you're an entertaining thought influencer leader, and then you have, like, four followers, like, are you really. Because, you know everybody can fudge their own cv because everybody does. The value of that is decreasing. And I. I know people that are within my broader circle of friends who wrote that they went to Stanford one semester. That's. That's kind of deceptive, you guys, but most people don't look past it. So we all have this feeling now, the CVs, you can write whatever you want because no one's really checking that. But it's hard to fake this part. It's hard, not impossible, but it's harder to fake the social proof. That's why it's carrying more weight these days, because there's safety in. In numbers. So when a lot of people rate a movie, a restaurant, or a car dealership or a book or a product on Amazon, we tend to just buy these days. I don't read any more reviews. I just.

Okay, so if. If the audience wants a second, they can push.

Okay, so you can. You can hit pause right now and. And lock in your answer by commenting. One, for the first video, if you think. Think you got more views, or number two, if you think the second video got more views.

Okay, so the first video.

Are you using this in a presentation?

The first video, 50 million views. The second video, 9100. Now, this is, again, why we do this exercise, because you're using the same format and it's you. But there's a massive difference. 50 million versus 9100. Because as we were talking earlier, most people would just See you in that 50 million view video and be like, oh, I know what he's doing. He's just, I'm going to get some people in a room and I'm just going to talk and educate and I'm going to go viral. So what's the big difference? So we have these things that are called performance drivers now, typically. So we have a list of like, 21 different performance drivers that we look at for this exercise. I'm just going to break down one for each one. But when we look at a format, we're typically looking at like three to five. So what's the big performance driver here? It's the perspective shift that's happening is, you know, charging by the hour. The high performer. We're really, or you're really transforming the viewer's perspective. You're challenging their assumptions. There's unexpected insights, and you're really prompting the viewer to rethink how they value themselves at a core level versus the other one. There's not really that massive perspective shift. There's a lot of. I'm not going to say it's like all the time, but like, I've heard and most people heard, like, your resume doesn't matter as much. There's not a lot of new information that challenges the viewer. And another thing is, like, we know what CV is, but if you're talking about 50 million people, I would say more than 50% don't know what the term CV is. So that just terminology there can turn off a big portion of the audience. So that's just a slight perspective shift. Want to do another one?

Yeah, I'd love to have you go through another one.

Okay, so again, two videos and pause it after we watch both. And put down your answer in the comment to see if you get the the right one.

You guys buy bottled water, right? Where do you buy the bottled water from at the gas station? And how did the gas station get the bottled water? A distributor. Where'd the water company get the water from? Bottled at the source. And where did the source get it from? From the sky. I mean, you wouldn't want to do it, but you can hike over to the lake or the creek, take up a bunch of ball buckets and scoop it up. And that's what people have to do in developing countries. And that's why when the cost of the bottled water is less than you asking God for the water, you will buy it.

It's called the handoff tax.

Every time something touches another hand, they have to make a little bit of money. And we created. People forget that there's a whole supply chain creates value each time you go.

Up the supply chain.

Because we can actually be God, we come up with ideas. We can plant the seeds, like lay out the vector. We can be the farmer and assemble that with images on a page. We can do the coding to develop the websites. So we just sell it for one price. This is a big difference between the entrepreneurial mindset and the solopreneur freelancer mindset. And when you understand this, you're gonna approach this in a whole different way.

Okay.

Okay, we'll call that video three, everybody. So we're not confused. We'll call that video three. Number three, if you think that's it. But wait, wait till you watch the second video. We're showing up to blend in to being average. In Jungian ideology, the ego regulates between the shadow self, the things that you have anxiety, that makes you nervous, that makes you feel some sense of shame or guilt, and the Persona who you show up in the world to be accepted. Most of us live in the Persona and we don't even know it. We pursue a professional career because someone told us that's what you do. To be accepted as social creatures, we need to feel connected to other humans. We've gotten really good at blending in, being, quote, unquote, normal. If you look up in the dictionary the word normal, it kind of means the average. So we're okay saying I want to be normal. I don't think we're okay with saying I want to be average. This seems counterintuitive if you want to build any kind of social media following, if you want to be any kind of thought leader. In fact, to be a thought leader, you have to be a contrarian. You have to go against what everybody believes. You have to find, like, where everyone goes this way. You're going to go this way, but you have to be right. And that's the difficult part. Okay, so that's. We'll call that video four. So video three, if you think got more views, type in the number three. And if you think the second video, video four got more views, type in the number four. And I'm sure Brendan's about to reveal the answer in about two seconds.

Okay, so video three, 1.9 million views. Video four, 7,100 views. Again, just to kind of solidify the point, this is why we do the analysis, is because it's the same format, obviously it's you, but massive difference in performance. So this time around, we're going to look at a performance driver called work to wow ratio. So what that means is how hard do we have to work to get the information or that aha moment. And again, remember, like, our subconscious is trained to be professional content consumers. Like, you have seconds before the subconscious is like, we're going to move on. So the amount of effort that you have to put in dictates how long you're actually going to watch. So if we look at that high performer from a work to wow ratio, there is a very clear insight. There's a logical flow to it. You do an amazing job. This is one of my favorite videos that you've done for viewers to kind of absorb the information. We don't have to overthink it because you lay it out so brilliantly, like step by step. And the other thing is you are breaking down a pretty complex topic like supply chain, and it went viral. So when we're talking about things that are not sexy or interesting, supply chain's not on the top of the list. But because you break down this complex topic in a simple way with this entrepreneur mindset and using this analogy and visual diagram, it helps us as viewers understand what you're trying to convey to us in a very simplistic way versus the Are you blending in the explanation? It kind of rambles on. We kind of just get thrown into the beginning of it without a lot of.

I blame the editors, by the way.

And it could be, no, I'm just.

Messing around.

The visuals. You can't really see the visuals on the board. It's kind of distracting in a way. We're like, should we be paying attention to that whiteboard or not? And the main point is lost about halfway through. And again, we're feeling like we get left behind. And one thing we know is once the subconscious feels like it's being left behind, it's just going to move on to the next video. So there's also a lack of a clear promise of value in the hook that we have here. And there's not kind of like this massive perspective shift with the hook that happens.

Okay, one more. My ego can barely handle it, but yes, let's do one more.

We're killing it.

Yes, we are totally killing it.

We just watched a 50 million view video. How many people can say they have 50 million views on the video?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, so again, so this will be 5 and 6.

Yep, 5 and 6. We're going to talk about how to find and do work that you love. Let me introduce you to this Concept, it's called Icky guy. And it means thing that you live for. And it's broken down into four circles like this. And it talks about what do you love, what does the world need, what do you get paid money for and what are you good at? So what happens if you love something and the world needs this? This is considered a mission. Now if you're good at something and you love it, but you don't get paid for it, that would be considered your passion. And if you're good at it and you're paid for it, that's called your profession, a job. And then the last one is the world needs it and you're paid for it, but you may not be good at it. So we're going to call this vocation, so icky guy is to say that we must find something here, our reason for being. And this is really important, you must love it, you got to get paid for it. So all these things are in balance. And if we can design our lives around that idea, we'll be happier, healthier and wealthier than we've ever been.

So that's video five.

Video five, everybody.

Now the video six.

Have you been able to identify the real problem? Are you asking clarifying questions? Is there a deep follow up to demonstrate that you're listening, understanding, processing and summarizing? Do you understand what they need or what the problems and challenges are? Can you help identify how they will measure if it's a good outcome for them? Are you maintaining a neutral balance zone throughout or do you feel needy, desperate or overly excited for something, or angry? How are you handling the objections? The resistance in the buying process and all of this could be, I guess you can add it up as to listening skills, but we're just going to separate that because it's so important that we need to point it out.

So that is going to be a.

Work to wow ratio.

What do you think?

I feel like it.

So let's look at the findings. So the first video, 1.6 million views. The second video, 11 million views or 11,000 views. And there is a work to wow ratio in there. But each one of these exercises, if we were kind of like doing this all together, we would do each of the ones. But there's definitely work to our ratio aspect to there. But for this one I want to look at the promise of value because like you do a beautiful job of the promise of value in that the number five video. So you grab attention fast by teasing this solution to, you know, common problem. Like and you see that with a lot of your most viral videos is you're, you're tapping into kind of like this core essence of what people are thinking like daily about themselves. But in the first five seconds you promise that the video will reveal how to find what they love to do, which is a lot of people, if you think about the majority of the population, a lot of them are stuck in jobs that they don't fully love and they're always looking for that answer of how do I kind of find that? And you set that up and hit it hard in those first five seconds. So it's very clear. The promise of value that you're going to be delivering in this video versus the other one, we just kind of get again thrown in to the mix and we don't even kind of initially know what you're talking about. And there's a lot of jargon, heavy questions and things of that nature. And it takes us about 35 seconds to reveal what the actual topic of the video is. And again, our subconscious, if it feels like it's left behind, it's not going to stay for 35 seconds. So there's really just a lack of the promise of value in that video which drives down the performance. So again, it's just like this is kind of the types of steps people can make in terms of getting the first million views. Now you've had a lot of success so we can do kind of that side by side comparison. If you haven't had that success, then you just find a gold reference to do that comparison with.

You take somebody else's thing and you look at your thing and you're like.

What am I in the same format?

Got it. Yeah, makes sense. This is very interesting. I actually don't even look at my content that much. So both are taken from multi hour long workshop. One editor finds what they think is interesting or cutting it up. So they have the promise of value that they break it down either with visuals and diagrams. And the other editor, we won't name that name Drago, it just grabs the clip and shows it and doesn't. The, the thing that I want to warn everybody about is this and I, I tell my team, we know what we're talking about, but we're not cutting the video for us. We have to cut it for someone who's coming in cold. And when they understand that they would edit the videos differently versus like, oh, we know these terms, we know what the context of the conversation is. So they just edit it kind of almost like head to tail here you go, you should understand it 100%. Now we're seeing it kind of highlighted.

Yeah. One of the performance drivers that we look at is called effect on viewer, which is exactly what you said is like, we're always designing content for ourselves, not the other person. So when you're designing content for yourself, just imagine what is the effect that I want to have on the viewer of the other side of the screen. So it takes you out of the creator experience and more into the audience experience, which helps tremendously in terms of doing it. And one of the things like I did with, I worked with Katie Couric for two years in journalism when she went to Yahoo. And one of the things we did when we looked at long form is kind of getting out of kind of what are the questions we can ask and what are the hooks so that you kind of have those beats like, and I know you in your long form, you have specific things you want to deliver. But even if you have like three to five beats that, you know, like just in your head, that it can be that kind of output clip, it can, you know, create a higher likelihood that you get that, you know, that tidbit out of the actual long form.

Okay, it's good to know we're, we're one of those channels. I think it's kind of strange that we actually get more views for our long form content than we do of the cut down of that long form content. Because people who like our stuff, who like the kind of teaching that I do, are in for the long haul. Something we're thinking, because I don't speak in sound bites, I'm not thinking about the hooks, which maybe I need to if I want to, if I want to grow the audience much faster.

To me, and it's a, it's a perfect point. Like, typically all creators struggle when they're trying to do cut downs. A long form, like long form is designed for long form, short forms designed for short form. So that's why I think it's just a really smart idea to try these other formats like man on the street.

Or as short form content.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that because it just works better. But like, just to kind of like show you kind of, we did, we just covered like the surface level of, of kind of like how we do the analysis. But we did just like a light, gold, silver, bronze of kind of, you know, looking at kind of the, the elements of kind of like the high performers versus the low performers to get it. And then we, you know, turn it into you know, these key kind of insights there. So we just kind of did like a surface level, scratch the surface of it. But when we kind of do work with you on, like, man on the street or Tips on the Move, like, we'll go, like, super deep into, like, the findings of it so that again, before you get out there into the world, like, you know exactly what you're looking for.

Yeah. You're doing exactly what you recommend people do in this video. You're really getting analytical. It's very structured, and you're way nerdier about this than I would be. I'm like, oh, it kind of feels like this and that. But you need this so that all your team and. And your collaborators can get on the same page and say, okay, what is working? What isn't working? Let's try to change some of these variables so that we can produce hits more consistently.

Yeah, definitely.

Okay. Very systematic, very analytical.

Yeah.

Is that how you're naturally hardwired?

Yes. Now, the thing is, with this process, it's very qualitative driven. Where most people, I would say, are struggling with social media, they're very quantitative driven.

Right.

And quantitative is. It's good indicator of what's working or not working, but it doesn't undercover the why.

Right.

So it's very systematic and it looks kind of analytical from a process standpoint, but the actual core substance of the insights and the true value is in the qualitative nature.

Right.

And that's why it takes so much time to do.

Right. Okay, so this has 63.8 thousand. So Brennan is not prepared for this. He's just going to take a look at it and he'll give us his raw reaction.

Whoops.

From Risk, Peter Drucker. So whoever is willing to carry the risk makes more money, concerned that you're going to make a banger video, and then we're going to get a lot of clients in the door, and then I'm going to be out 50% of that revenue.

What if it exceeds a thousand?

It's gonna exceed a thousand. That's the whole point. I take all the risk, or you can just pay me what I'm worth and you keep all the profit. So you know what? 50 is a little bit high. Why don't we bring that down a little bit? What's fair? We would just negotiate that. Everybody makes money.

Play devil's advocate here.

I think for a lot of us seen this, like, whoa, you gotta make.

5K now on the video that you're.

Gonna charge me a cheap Thousand dollars?

How is that fair?

Why don't you pay the thousand dollars the first place? And the whole point of setting up this deal was to let them know that the thousand dollars is really cheap. Just pay the thousand dollars. Ready, you cheap bastard. Just pay it. You don't have to deal with any of this stuff.

Is that why you chose those numbers?

50%? Because I'm going to take the risk. If you take on the risk, you need to make more money than that. Now some people are also saying, Kris, 50% is lunacy. It's outrageous. It kind of is. And they knew that, fully expecting them to negotiate with me, but I'm not going to negotiate myself to like 10% right away. Then they will say 3%. This is where we get stuck. It's like, I don't want to work for 3%. I can send you 600 new customers before I actually see any kind of real margins on this. Doesn't make sense for me. In business, all profit comes from risk. Peter.

I'm going to watch the first hook again.

In business, all profit comes from risk. Peter Drucker. So whoever is willing to carry the risk makes more money. Concerned that you're going to make a banger video.

And then so the issue is in the hook.

Like, in business, all profit comes from risk. Peter Drucker.

Okay, so, so if I just stop there, like, why do I need to watch anymore? I kind of, I already know. Like, even though you have a unique perspective, like one of the things that drives performance is if I feel like I've already heard the same thing before, I'm going to move on to the next one. So if I just listen to that, I'm like, oh, well, I already know that. Like I, I need to do wrist in business. I've heard that a thousand times. So that's the first challenge. And then the second time, if we go from the hook into that, that clip, there's no context switching into it. So if we just watch again, pretty raw.

Peter Drucker. So whoever is willing to carry the risk makes more money. Concerned that you're gonna make a banger video. And then we're gonna get a lot of clients in the door and then I'm gonna be out 50.

So there's, there's no context set up of that. Like in the viral version of it. Like you have this build up to that where he, you're starting with a thousand dollar price point. He's like, it's too expensive. And then you go into the counter offer which creates that A little tension right now. If you wanted to do that breakdown the way that you, you know, wanted to break down, like why this was the way it was. Like, I would just test playing the raw video, the viral video, and then just doing the breakdown right at the back end of it.

Right? Start with the viral video and do a reaction breakdown to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I see there.

So what you're saying is you're. You're an advocate, actually, for really good editing, understanding the structure of this. And maybe you're the entrepreneur, the owner, and you're making the content and you're realizing that the content isn't taken off. It could be a function of the editors that know what they're doing, that they don't know how to set things up, they don't know what is working. So they're just putting, throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.

And that's the. And that's the challenge. If we want to talk about another brutal truth is, AI is like, people are treating AI like it's the solution when it's just a tool. Like, if you don't know how to prompt properly, but just as important, if you don't know how to analyze the back end, you're not going to get something that's successful. The analogy that I use is if everybody woke up tomorrow and was using AI to create content, there's going to be winners and losers. Not everybody can win. But, like, the biggest piece of advice that I could give is like, you've got to understand storytelling structures. Like, understand how and why stories work. Like, without that fundamental understanding, like you just said, you're throwing spaghetti at the wall, which is what most people are doing. And that's why they think virality is pure luck. Because you are playing the lottery that way. And the challenge is even if you hit it once or maybe twice, you don't know why. And if you don't know why, then let's just say your hit rate is good and it's one out of 20 videos. Well, then you've got to produce 19 bad videos to get to one good video. Now, most people, it's like one out of 50, one out of 100. Just think about the amount of time, energy and resources that you waste when in reality, if you could just sit down and I know it seems like a lot of work, but think about how much work it takes to create 50 videos, 100 videos. If you just sat down for, let's just say for like a few hours or take A week or two weeks at a bare minimum and just start kind of learning some of the things that we're talking about of like, well, what makes this content creator successful, what happens when they're not successful. And just try and spot the patterns. Like that's where, you know, real success and consistency comes from.

Brendan, should we delete our non performing social media posts?

I would say yes. I don't say it's a requirement, but again, if it's not doing a good job of telling a story and people are flipping through, I would say more for short form, less for long form. Because long form has a longer shelf life than short form. Short form shelf life is very short. But from a short form perspective, if somebody's on your profile and they're scrolling through videos, why would you want them to just stick with content that's, that's not a great structure or story? So I would take those down, maybe not for long form because like videos have been known to take off six months or a year later.

So it's like you make 10 bad cakes. Get rid of the 10 so people don't have a bad sample.

Exactly.

Okay, good. Do you think it's possible to go viral and get clients without showing your face?

It's 100% possible. I would just say showing your face will tend to a stronger relationship with people and will tend to lead to more clients. There's no definitive answer for anything, but there's people like Dan Ko that started off with, you know, kind of the animations and did really well with that, but he's now started to move towards, you know, putting his face in the content. There's a guy like Hunter Prosper that does man in the street, but he doesn't show his face. You just hear his voice. There's company media companies like Vox that do kind of explainer videos through that. I would just like, I'm not pushing people in any direction. I tend to ask people the underlying question of like, what is behind the reason you don't want to show your face on it? Because typically it has nothing to do with social media. It has something to do with some past trauma or something like that. So again, just understanding the fundamental reason why you're actually making that decision, because it does lend itself and both you and I are faces of our companies and brands. There is something to having that connection, but I'm never going to definitively say no, you can't do it because there's all this, this rage of faceless content and things of that nature. It can work. But it is a bit difficult to build a brand around.

I would have answered this question differently two years ago, but I'm answer it this way. With the onslaught of AI generated video, voice and scripts, it's now more important than ever to put you in it so that people know a human is involved. Every time I realize it's an AI content, I don't want to consume it at all. That doesn't mean you have to put your face in it, but your voice, if you have a really good voice and maybe not such a good face, use your voice, use what you've got. Things that make you uniquely you.

And I would just say like there's so many examples of unique people, different ages, different genders, different backgrounds, like different parts of the world. Like you don't need to feel, I'm not gonna say you don't need to. I feel self conscious sometimes. But like we looked at like Mark Tilbury today. Like, I don't know, he's an older gentleman, I don't know what his, his exact ages, but he's killing it on, on social media. Like you have, you know, people from all different backgrounds, all different parts of the world that come together. Like we talked about Tanner Leatherstein, like he didn't feel comfortable on camera at the beginning and he's not like this like a Simon Squibb or Gary Vee that's overly, you know, energetic. So don't feel like you need to be somebody else to show up on camera. There are plenty of examples of different personality types working.

So Brendan, when it comes to Instagram, should you post via your personal account or your business account? And we've heard rumors that getting that blue check mark helps your content get seen more.

So let's start with the personal versus company account. I mean we just talked about personal brands typically drive more connection than a company account. I'm not saying it can't. You look at something like Duolingo or Ryanair where they, they do an extremely good job with their content. But founder led businesses and oftentimes you look at an Elon Musk or these founders that have far more of an audience on social than the company does because it's easier to make that initial connection. It just depends on what are the resources that you have. If you have the resources and team, then do both. But if you have to choose between one and you feel comfortable being on camera, I would do it through a personal brand rather than a company brand initially to build the traction. Once you build the traction, then you can redirect that traffic to your company account. In terms of the blue check mark, let's just say there's a lot of information that says that I don't know that I fully buy into that. I think that the reality is these platforms are going to favor the best stories and the best content creators. And why would they suppress a piece of content just because there's an associated blue check mark with it? Now maybe there's some. It's easier to build trust. Like if you're a great storyteller with it. If you can afford it. It's not that expensive. I don't know how much it is now. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month. It's not super expensive. Like, if you can afford it, I would do it, but I'm, I'm not going to say it's a requirement by any means. Do you have it on Instagram? I do.

Okay, so you made.

But there's no free wins. No, but I got verified before.

Oh, you got it. So you didn't pay for it?

No, I was, but I was very humble.

Brag. I got you.

It was verified before they offered it. If I didn't have it right and offered like on Twitter. I did it.

I did on Twitter too, for some reason. Yeah, but I won't do it on Instagram.

Yeah, but it's like there's no free wins. Like, just because you have a blue check mark doesn't mean your content's going to perform right.

Just means you paid for it.

Yeah.

Okay, here's your last question. How do we get out of our own algorithm to learn more about what we need to be doing? Because the assumption is the algorithm keeps feeding us the things we're consuming. And that's true to a degree, I believe.

So there's two ways you can do it is you just change your search behavior and content. And all of these platforms have search based functions. And once you start searching for content, it'll start seeding you more of that. If you don't want to mess with your personal feed, then you can open up new accounts. You can go like in an incognito window in Chrome or another browser and just create a brand new account just for specifically researching content. So it's pretty simple and straightforward. It's just kind of the decision of how you want to do it. Do you want to do it through your personal account or just open a new account to do it?

All right, super. Thanks for answering those questions, Brandon.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Maybe next time we'll roast you.

Let's do it.

We'll focus on you.

You can roast me about pricing and business and design.

We'll do it about design. I looked at the spreadsheet in the keynote.

I want to be the. I want to go to your. I want to go to your webinar and be there. So next time you're doing a workshop.

That would be great, actually.

Let's do it.

Yeah. I'm surprised we have not done anything somewhere in the world where I'm traveling to and I'm available.

We should do a partnership together. We should do like. We should do a workshop together.

Why not? Yeah, let's put that in the books.

Yeah.

Because you're fulfilling the promise that was made, I think the last time we recorded in la where you're like, hey, I'll help you. I'll break it down for you. And so here we are. Yeah, Right? The man has follow through. What can I say?

If you want to take action on this, find your format, one with millions of views and try and replicate that format with your own voice, your own originality into Chris's advice. Find a format in a different industry or sector and if you put the link to that video with millions of views from another creator using that format, and your video will break down even if it's not successful or even if it is successful, we'll break down the difference between the two.

Great. I have an idea for a wild piece of content when I do the man on the street video. It'd be great if you were standing over there and I did it and then you critiqued me right after I did it.

Let's do it.

That would be wild.

I'll do it.

That's a double, like, whammy.

As long as I don't have to approach a stranger and say, hey, I want to talk to you about something.

Are you really that creeped out by talking to people?

No, I mean, I can do it. It just expends a lot of energy.

Yeah. What do you do to recover?

Take a nap. I take naps every day.

What is the most exhausting social thing you've done and how long did it take you to recover?

Man on the Street's probably the most recent one because I love speaking. Speaking, like, energizes me, which is kind of interesting from an introvert. I don't like going to events where people. I don't know people or people don't know me. That's exhausting. Same like, if I love, like, interacting with people if they want to come up, but I'M not like, the person that, like, goes up and starts, right. Oh, so I'll give you an example. So we were. We were talking about the event that I was at, and they put us on, like, this. This yacht party, and it was, like, seven hours long, and we were out at sea.

Oh, you couldn't escape?

I couldn't escape. Funny story about it. So, like, I. I don't know if you've seen. You've been to Miami, right?

Yeah.

So you know how, like, they have all these bridges that have to come up with the big boats? So we started from a place where they had to open, like, 10 bridges. So it takes, like, an hour and a half to get. Get out. And then as we're getting going back, it was gonna take an hour and a half back. And this one guy that owned the boat, he's like, I'm not gonna wait because it's gonna take an hour and a half. So just drop me off and I'm gonna get off the boat here and call an Uber. I was like, I'm doing it anyways. But the thing is, they made us take our shoes off and left it at the destination.

Oh, shoot.

So I wanted to get off so bad that I left my shoes and I went barefoot into an Uber to get back to my hotel and had somebody bring my shoes the next day. That's how much I wanted to get out of that situation.

Okay. On this episode of Confessions of an Introvert, we explored Brendan's aversion to social interactions where he doesn't know people. And that's a very common feeling a lot of us know about. Look, I'll tell you this. There may be more in common with us than meets the eye. Besides the hair. All the hair. People do that for you. The thing is, I don't like going into rooms of strangers. I don't think anybody does. But extroverts can just swim in there and just like, yeah, hey, you. And then they're all best friends by the time the party's over. For me, it's like, there's a whole strategy about how to do that. But I found that through creating content, you get invited to speak. And when you speak, there's this introduction, so they know you before you know them. So technically, you never really walk into a room full of strangers. You just have to wait long enough and deal with your discomfort so that somebody who's seen you, who wants to talk to you, will come up to you. And I try to make myself to be as approachable as possible. In all formats so that there's not this weird, like he doesn't want to be talked to.

And I think that's also just like the underlying reason why we build personal brands. Because I've built businesses where you actually have to go out and knock on doors. And like not literally knock on doors, but you have to go out and seek out the business versus the business coming to you.

Right.

And that's why I invested in a personal brand is because I just, I just know my personality and I don't want to be that person banging on doors. And like, I wanted always to have an influx of people wanting to work with us because it takes so much time and energy to do it the other way.

What is the brand of Brandon Cain?

So we're reinventing that right now. Before it was like the science of virality, but that was created, that messaging was created four years ago. I don't know if you know Ernest Luponacci, but he's one of the top copywriters and he helped me create the title of my third book, the guide to going Viral. And we created that title like three or four years ago. And it started out like a keynote. But then you fast forward today as we were talking about. Everybody's talking about virality, so it's moving more into storytelling and formats like getting out of just pure virality because there's just so much noise around that. And I think we, like, as we talked about, I think we need to get to our roots of like, how do we all become better storytellers? That's where success really comes from.

You told me you answered that question in a funny way. You're a we and there's a team strip all that way. Like when somebody meets you for the first time and they're going to have an impression about who you are. Just testing your own self awareness here. What is Brennan Kane's personal brand? Like, who are you? Like, what do you. How do you think people see you?

Well, a lot of people see me for my first book, one million followers. So that's where a lot of that comes from. My second book is starting to gain more traction, but more in like the cult marketing audiences. Hook point. But how I would prefer to be seen. I don't know exactly how I'm seen because I think it, it's interesting. My three books are distinctly different and how people kind of pick up. But like, the interesting thing is like all three of my books have the same dedication and that is like, I believe that there's people all over the world have the ability to transform it in a positive way, but their voice is being suppressed in some way, shape or form, whether it's by a government or dictator at the extreme end, or maybe it's suppressed by the algorithms because they don't know how to tell a story or they just don't have the right insights. So I just want to help people reach their fullest potential by standing out, like, rising above the noise so their voice can be heard. And again, like as we talked about, maybe it's 10,000 people, maybe it's a hundred thousand, maybe it's a hundred million, whatever that is. But that's really what drives me at the end of the day.

Okay, I'll tell you what.

I roast me.

I don't want to roast you, but I'll tell you what I see. And people in the comments will happily do it without even us asking. Here's what I see. I see a guy who's very serious. I see a guy who's very researched and analytical and how he looks at the world in moving things into categories and trying to qualitatively look at the world and kind of break things down. And. And there's a beautiful brain in there. There's not like this natural, like, let's. Let's laugh and let's have a good time until you're roasting me and I'm having a hard time. Then the warmth comes out. So you're a little cool in the temperature. Wise, but very professional and very deliberate and intentional in the way you communicate.

Well, I can break it down from a personality structure because we use.

You answer that just like the most.

Analytical, but it's like, you're going to understand when I break it down.

No, no, no. Hold on, hold on. Do you understand what he just did? I just told him exactly everything.

Now it's coming back. Now it's coming back.

See, you give some, you get some. That's how this world works. Okay, look at what he just did there. I just told him what he does. He's.

More tension building.

Let me break down exactly why you say that. It's like, all right, go ahead.

Communication model. It's been around.

Who's this we? Isn't it you? Yeah, but I just speak an eye.

But I have a company. I have people, people that contribute to it.

I don't.

I. I never like where I do because they put in a lot of time.

It's always. I don't worry. The Grish show. It's always me.

DRO doesn't exist, but we use a communication model. It's been around since the 70s and it breaks down. The people perceive content in the world in six different ways. So the largest subset of the population is feelings based. That's 30%. So they connect based upon how it emotionally makes them feel. 25% is fact and logic based. So it's not feelings, it's who, what, when, where, why. 20% is fun based, you know, reactions, laughing, things of that nature. 10% is value and opinions. So it's, it's like, do I trust this? Are you dedicated or committed? 10% is reflection based. They just reflect on the world. Like, he's not thinking, talking about values, he's not having fun. He's jumping off the side of buildings and hanging off the side of airplanes. So we have access to all six, but we have our strengths and we have our weaknesses. So my top one is facts and logic base, which is what you're calling out. My second lowest one is the fun base. So that's where it's like you're bringing that, that part out.

Yeah.

But an interesting thing is, and they don't talk about it, Pixar, all of their scripts are based. So if you go watch like Inside out two, like they'll have a character that's designed for each one. So that is why, broken down in a very analytical way, why you see a lot of that, that, that cold logic analysis part.

Yeah. Very good at doing specific tasks and jobs in the world. Right. My older brother, he's a software engineer from Stanford. Like, this is what he does and everything he does is very binary. It's like it's this or it's that. It's either yes or it's no. And at first, if you don't understand him, he comes across really cold. And I was like, there's a cold killer inside my brother's eyes. My older brother. And then after a while I learned, like, this is how he processed the world. And then you can see the heart in the way he asks questions and that he doesn't really care, just expresses it very differently.

And that's where a lot of conflict in the world comes from, is you don't understand that people perceive the world in different ways. You could be seeing the exact same thing, but it's like you're completely disconnecting because you're saying it in a different way.

Yeah. And I think all of us live on this massive spectrum of emotions all the way and just pure logic on the other side and somewhere in between.

Yeah.

And to share a little personal note with you. I was talking to my therapist many years ago and she goes, are you a fan of Star Trek? I'm like, yes. She says, which. Which character do you most identify with? Like, I aspired to be Spock. And she goes, I've never seen or heard anybody describe it like that. Like, you don't see yourself as Spock, but you aspire to be like him. And she thought what I described as my hero, she thought was such a tragic character, a person struggling to find their humanity. Where I was like, spock always makes the right decision, no matter what. And the line, the needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few. Yeah, I was like, I aspire to be like that, definitely. But maybe you're just already Spock, so live long, Brendan.

I need to. I need to. I need to. I need to get into like the.

Proper send off to that Star Trek thing. Do you even know it? No, don't worry about it. Don't worry. I didn't even know. Yeah, you're supposed to say back to me. He just steamrolled over that fun. Well, he's all facts. Go ahead.

There we go.

So there's another show called Go Off.

There's a show.

Do you know about the show?

No.

Fact Off. Yeah, it's pretty funny. It's on npr.

I haven't seen it.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

It's. It's been fun at points. There's been a lot of facts and I'll help you.

And there's been a lot of tension.

There's been roasting both ways. Now there's some feelings in there and so watch this video and then take some action, everybody. Thanks for sticking around to the very end. Bye, everybody.