Expert Reveals All Secrets To Creating Viral Content | Brendan Kane
26 Dec 2024 · 75 min
Brendan Kane breaks down what actually makes content go viral across platforms. He covers how to balance organic and paid strategies, why niche audiences sometimes outperform broad ones, and the shift in how influencer marketing works today.
What are you seeing right now? Like you said, you guys have a model. Like, explain to me what the model is.
Where most people go wrong with social media is, is two specific areas. Number one is. And then the second big mistake that people make is when I started taking.
Social Media Seriously in 2020, there wasn't really that many business first people on. Right. There was creator first people talking about business. For anybody who is just getting started in this game, what are your final thoughts? What's going on, wealth builders? Today I've got a social media expert. His company has consulted people who have gotten over 60 billion views in total, over 100 million followers. And we're going to talk about what are the strategies that you need to know to go viral this upcoming year? I've got Brendan Kane. What's up, man?
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Connect in person.
Yeah. So tell me about the hair, dude. People ask me about my hair all the time, but yours, you look like Albert Einstein or something. Like, what's up with it?
Well, the secret is sea salt. So you just spray it with sea salt spray and then dry it and it sticks up like this.
Okay. So, but, like, have. Has your hair always been like that or did you start doing it for social media or what?
No, I think it's been this way for probably like 10 years.
Oh.
I just had a hair stylist that just kind of did it this way one day and just stuck.
Okay. Is that like your gimmick, like people always say, like, did we recognize you for your hair? Do people say that?
It used to be my glasses, and then I got the Lasik eye surgery, and so now it's the hair.
Got it. How important do you think, like, something like that is for somebody to, like, stand out?
It's not at all. It's not. Because, like, I'm sure you can find, like, this is. The whole litmus test is like, you find people. Can you find people with crazy hair that are getting, like, 10 views a video? And the answer is yes. So if you can find somebody that's generating a million views, but then somebody generating 10 views, you know, you can knock out the fact that it's not the hair.
Hmm. Got it. So you've consulted, you were telling me since 2005, you guys. You guys started the first, like, influencer campaign on YouTube. What was that?
So I first started my career working in movie studios. So I built the first digital divisions for movie studios because when I first started, everybody was still focused on traditional media. Print, television, radio, things of that nature. And I noticed I was working for kind of like a mini major studio. Like the films we were working on were between like 10 to 50 million, which sounds like a lot, but when you're comparing to like 100 to 200 million huge studio films, it is a bit smaller, so you have less budget to work with. And I just noticed at the time there was no such thing as an influencer. There was no. The term wasn't created yet in the context of what it means today. And I noticed on YouTube specifically, in like its first year or two, there was young people creating videos that are reaching millions and millions of people and nobody was really paying attention to them. So I just made a list of like the top 20 YouTubers at the time. And I just messaged them and said, do you want to interview a movie star? And it was for a movie called Crank with Jason Statham. And we did like four or five of those videos. And at the time it didn't cost us anything because they just wanted that exposure and that interaction because nobody was really paying attention to them.
So you did that and they got attention to the movie for free.
Yeah.
And then where did that lead your career?
So I worked for the first studio for a few years and I just noticed that it was. People think making movies is so sexy and interesting and creative, but in reality it's another corporation. You're working within a corporation. So people oftentimes say, we want to try new things and break things and innovate, and it doesn't really happen. So while I was working at the first studio, I got the head of the studio to give me some seed money to create a prototype of what was then the first influencer technology platform. Because I noticed Fox and News Corp bought MySpace for the time was like 600 million. And I wanted to understand, well, how are they going to get that return on investment? Because at the time, these platforms didn't have their own advertising platforms. They were leveraging third party banner ad advertising. So they were getting like pennies on the dollar in terms of monetizing these platforms. But what I noticed was happening was people are putting Nike posters or movie trailers or, you know, products they were using on their profiles. But nobody was monetizing that. MySpace wasn't getting cut. The individual that was promoting it to their friends and family weren't getting a cut. So. So I just built a technology platform that essentially could monetize that peer to peer interaction and ended up licensing that to Viacom and MTV and created several iterations of that Technology and other technologies, and then left the studio system and ran those for a few years before I then fostered what became one of the first social media optimization firms. So when Facebook and YouTube started to launch their own ad platforms, nobody really knew how to use them. So we created an agency that was optimizing that ad spend for Fortune 500 companies. And that's where it really opened my eyes to a lot of the inefficiencies in the creative process. Because at the time, and it still holds true today, a lot of the major companies and corporations will use either creative models or creative assets that are designed for television or print or other mediums, and then just try and apply that to social media and it just falls flat. Yeah, so that's where I started building the models that we use today.
Yeah, it's funny, I've done TV commercials and we spent millions on them over the years. And obviously I know social media and I understand like each platform has different, you know, things that the viewers are looking for. Right. I mean, YouTube's long form, Instagram is vertical and short form. And you know, we, we now do a lot of social media ads to buy houses and everything else. And before though, I wanted to just try and see if the commercial would work. I'm like, let's just run it. I mean, the commercial's been successful for many years and it just terrible, you know, because it's not, it doesn't look like an Instagram video.
And that's the interesting thing is when you think about it, it's. The content remains the same whether it's TV or social. It's just the context that changes. And I think that that's where a lot of people get caught up in it. They think my, my social media or even a television commercial, the, the content's not good. It's not the content, it's the context that you wrap it through that determines whether it's successful or not. Paying attention to those minutiae, details of how you're communicating your message to the specific platform that you're focused on.
Yeah, 100%. So, you know, it sounds like you started really in kind of this working for big companies, whether it's studios or with Viacom and these Fortune 500 companies. And that was like kind of your first taste of all of this from I guess the company's perspective of inefficiency. At what point did it switch to, I guess more so on the creators side of it?
Yeah, so a lot of our focus is really on core individuals, like professionals, solopreneurs or people that want to be the face of their companies. And I think it's switched because there's just a greater demand and a greater need. In addition, it's a lot easier to work with those individuals and large organizations because the creative model that we've built takes a lot of unlearning if somebody's coming in with a lot of experience and as I'm sure you've experienced trying to find people for your organization or running into other social media experts. There's a lot of people out there that kind of claim to kind of know and be experts in the field just because they spent a lot of time, when in reality there's specific science to repeatable success on these platforms. So we just noticed that we work extremely well with people that have little to no social media experience because we're starting from a blank white screen, you know, starting from scratch. And we just see there's a greater demand and need for those people because they're trying to kind of leverage these platforms to build a personal brand, to build up their company's brand. And the level of success, I'm sure you've seen it with the success you've had on social media is enormous when you apply it to the specific goals that you have for your business and brand.
Yeah, so. So what are you seeing right now? Like you said, you guys have a model. Like, explain to me what the model is.
Yeah, so where most people go wrong with social media is two specific areas. Number one is they're stuck at a certain place and they just look at their own content over and over again. Like they'll sign up for like a sprout social, or maybe they'll look at their Instagram analytics or TikTok analytics and they just keep looking at their own content over and over again. And if you're stuck at a thousand views, a video, 10,000 views, whatever that may be, if you're just looking at your own content over and over again, you're never gonna learn how to truly break through. And then the second big mistake that people make is they're really just looking at the quantitative layer, meaning they're looking at the numbers, they're looking at how many views did I get, how many likes, how many shares, how many click throughs, those basic core metrics, which is obviously a good indicator of something working or not working. But it doesn't tell you the why behind it. Why did something get a million views versus versus something got 10,000 views? Why did my content not continuously break through so the model that we look at fixes those two core issues. Number one, we look at the larger social ecosystem and understanding how and why certain things work. So what we're looking at is storytelling structures and patterns that are repeatable and can have repeatable success. And what we call them is formats. Some people call them series. So to give you an example, like on Instagram and Tick Tock, one that's popular is we call it two characters, one light bulb, where two people, you know, play the same character and they break down a misconception about an industry. So like Erica Kohlberg does it in law, people do it in finance, nutrition. So that's a repeatable format and structure that has proven to succeed. So there's clues within that. Now when we dissect that format, we look at it through a qualitative lens. We don't just look at, oh, that video got 10 million views. I'm going to repeat what they, what they've done because you won't understand what's truly driving that success. So what we do in our models, we have a qualitative analysis process where we will take 10 to 20 of the high performers. 10, 10 to 20 of the average performers, 10 to 20 of the low performers. And we're looking at what are the contextual elements that are showing up in those high performers that are not showing up in those underperformers. And those things can be things like what happens in the first three seconds, what type of captions, title cards. It can be facial expressions, body cues, environmental aspects, what's happening in the background, what's happening in the foreground, all these different elements. There's about a thousand performance drivers that we've collected over the past six years that we're analyzing these specific formats. So our team's done about 10,000 hours of research across 220 different formats. And obviously, as you know, there's different formats that work for different platforms. Something that works on TikTok is not necessarily going to work on Instagram or YouTube shorts and Vice versa. And so we're looking at content and helping our clients look at it through that lens of looking at the larger ecosystem, not just looking at our own content and not just paying attention to the quantitative element, but the qualitative aspects of what it means to really successfully communicate on these platforms. And I take these learnings for where I started. I went to film school to, to learn the business side of it. But through that you still have to sit down and read screenplays, write screenplays, watch classic movies, Watch movies that aren't great, and look at what does it mean to tell a successful story through that medium. So what we're doing is applying kind of those principles and bringing it to. Specifically to social media. Because, as you know, social media is purely a storytelling platform, and we need to learn how to become expert storytellers if we want to maximize the potential.
So a lot of things you said there that I want to break down. One was, you know, the. I forgot what you called it, but two people, one light bulb, or.
Yeah, the two characters.
One light bulb. Yeah, two characters, one light bulb. It's funny because you, you know, you mentioned Erica, and I'm. I'm not going to take credit by any means for her success, but it was funny because her and I met maybe, like, I don't know, three or four years ago before she blew up. And we were at. I think we were at Fincon. So this would have been in 2021. And she was just asking everybody, because at the time she only had YouTube and I think she had like a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand subscribers, but no TikTok. Really. No Instagram, really. And she's like, man, how are all you guys, like, doing TikTok and stuff? And, you know, there was a lot of people doing that style of content and everything else. And I was like, well, just start making videos. Like, just do it. Like, you're already good at YouTube. There's no reason why you wouldn't be good at these ones. So she starts doing it and, you know, immediately her first one, like, crushed. And I was like. And I had dmd. I was like, dude, good job. And I was like, you should just do that over and over again. Just do as many as possible. And then, sure enough, bam, bam, bam. And then it's just like four years later, still the same thing, right? And so it's interesting, right? But what is also interesting about that, too is, like, those kind of styles, though, kind of come and go. So on one hand, I look at that and I'm like, okay, like, that was super popular a couple of years ago. People still do it, including her today, but I would say that maybe it's less popular today. What do you think?
I think that there's some truth to that, but at the same time, it still works if you, if you dial it in. So, like, I think you made a really valid point as there was a lot of other people before her that were doing it, and people don't realize that she's really succeeding with it. But 99% of people that will try and do the same thing as her will they fail?
Right.
And the reason they fail is they don't understand the storytelling elements of what make it makes it succeed. So I'll give you kind of another example. Like in the film industry, every movie for the past 60 or 70 years has used the same three act structure and how they tell stories, and you don't recognize it when you sit down. In addition, if you think about like a haunted house movie, how many times does a haunted house movie come out? It's just the expression of how you leverage that format, that structure that dictates whether you're successful or not. So these formats can burn out over time, but if you're great, if you do a great job of using them from a storytelling aspect, it will break through and you can evolve with it. Like, for example, a friend of mine, we've done some work with him, his name's Alex Stemp, and he uses the man on the street format and he's a photographer. So he approaches random strangers on the street, offers them a professional photo shoot, and shows the interaction as the story unfolds and then the end result. So he used that to get over 19 million followers on TikTok. Now, we did a session with him a few months ago and we kind of helped him tweak that format just a little bit. And it jumped through, the performance jumped up again. So, yeah, it can in a sense. It just depends. I think sometimes the mindset gets in where people get stuck in a rut where they've done it over and over again and they just need to go back to kind of the core of what drives it, or they may need to tweak it a little bit. You know, look at podcasts. Like we're doing a podcast right now. Like, podcasts, as you know, can be wildly successful in social media, but it's those nuances in it. Like you look at Joe Rogan, he's still killing it with podcasts, but he's mastered that art of that story. So I think that sometimes it can teeter off, but I think it's more of an execution and a mindset than an actual format thing. And I also want to make a big distinction, it's a huge distinction between what's a format and what's a trend. Because, like what Erica is doing, the two characters in the light bulb, that's a format that's repeatable versus a trend. People say, like, you'll see these videos, use this trending song and you'll go Viral. And you look into it, 99% of people that use the song don't, don't go viral. So it's really understanding that distinction of like what has longevity in terms of telling stories versus what is kind of fleeting in a trend.
Yeah, yeah. Speaking of trends, that also makes me think about people who just kind of follow the news. Right? Yeah. So the news reporter type people or the gossip type people. What do you think about all that?
Well, there's still a structure and a format, so I spent two years in journalism, so I worked with journalist Katie Couric when she went to Yahoo. And I did about 220 interviews with her, ranging from Kim Kardashian to DJ Khalid to Joe Biden, all across the board. And the same thing applied. I tested over 70,000 variations of content and just comes down to the structure of it and there's more proof in it. There's a guy on TikTok called Dylan Page and he came out of Mr. Beast camp and he kills it with news based content because he designed it specific for the platform. I don't know how many followers. He's probably got like 9 or 10 million followers. But he used the format as the base structure that you can then plug in the actual information into it. So it can definitely work for news. But people kind of think then just because I'm covering news or trending story that it's automatically going to, you know, go viral. But you can take any story or any celebrity, and just because you cover it doesn't mean it's going to break through. It's the way that you're expressing the contextualization of that message that, that dictates your success or lack thereof. Mm.
What do you think about the idea of, you know, guys like me who do more content like teaching topics and things? Right. Like, you know, on one hand, let's just say, you know, we're talking about storytelling and you got guys like Mr. Beast whose whole thing is a story of, you know, hey, here's the, the stakes that we're about to play and here's the outcome and everything else. And then, you know, he keeps you on the hook until, you know, you get the, to the climax and the ending and all that. And obviously super successful with it. But then, you know, all right, there's podcasts, which obviously involves storytelling and everything else. But then let's just say there's just pure trainings and it's like, hey, you know, here's, here's what we're going to learn today. Obviously you can weave stories into that, and maybe that's the answer. But do you think that that type of content where it's just teaching is different than maybe some of the things like Mr. Beast?
It's definitely requires different formats in different contexts, but it can definitely succeed. There's a lot of examples you can think about. Dr. Mike on YouTube breaks down medical subjects and things of that nature teaches through that. You know, Graham Stephan, he teaches finance through his. His channels and has a lot of success. I mean, he's branched out since the beginning. Ali Abdaal will teach specific subject matters and things of that nature. We have a client, John Malecki, that teaches woodworking to people. We have a.
He was a one on one client of mine too.
Yeah, so. And we also have another client that's a leather craftsman. His name is Tanner Leatherstein, and we helped him design a format that's called Is it worth it? We'll take a $500 Chanel handbag, deconstruct it on screen, tell you the things of what these things are made of at a very nuanced level, and then tell you whether it's worth the money that you pay for it. So definitely education can apply. It just requires different formats and different nuances.
Got it. Okay. So what do you think about how all this plays with conversion? Because one thing I've just realized over the years is, you know, not every view is created equal.
Yeah.
And if I wanted to go get millions of views and go viral, I absolutely know how I could do it, but, you know, it ain't gonna make me money. And so a lot of times all focus on the more niche thing that leads to the product I sell or the person that I really want to be qualified and. And follow and everything else. So, like, how do you balance that between trying to go viral? Because, I mean, just even the thought of going viral means that you're getting way more people to watch a thing than someone else. Right. But the reality is there's just not that many qualified people if you're in a niche, I guess that sells hyper specialized. If you're Mr. Mr. Beast and you sell candy bars, well, obviously, like the niche or the. The audience is huge that can buy candy bars versus somebody who wants to invest in real estate.
No, it's a great question. I mean, first thing I'll definitely say is we never think it shouldn't be going viral. For the sake of going viral. It needs to play to a fundamental business goal or objective. So I. Everything that I talk about with clients or work with them, it's not about like doing a silly cat video or a prank or something that's not related to your subject matter because like you said, it makes no real difference to the business or the brand. So what we look at is what's called the generalist principle is how can we speak to our core niche and core audience but still make it accessible and interesting to the wider possible audience? Because I look at it from a pure math perspective and is, let's just say, you know, you get 10,000 views on average a video, but it's, you know, 80% of the people watching those that of those 10,000 are people that can buy your core products or service. But then let's take it to a million views a video and maybe it drops down from 80% to 10%. So we're down. We're at 100,000 potential buyers versus 8,000. And that's the power of it. So how can that actually apply as your. To your point of a super niche audience? Like, you know, Ryan Sirhant, luxury real estate agent, sells properties, what, 15 to $250 million in Manhattan, New York. So he plays the general's principle. Let me take you on a tour of a $7 million closet. Let me take you on a tour of a 200, $250 million ranch. Like, through that. If less than 1% of the people watching those videos is his core audience, and he's even said this, he sold 30 to $50 million properties off a YouTube video. He's beating out all of his competition. The other example I mentioned.
But even like with Sarah, though, it's a little bit different because that type of content will go viral to everyone. Everybody wants to see a $250 million home. And you know it's going to go viral no matter what. And he's going to get people who actually might buy that versus, versus, not versus. Other things will never go viral because they're just not interesting.
Well, again, like our leather craftsman, you know, before working with us, he was stuck at 2000 followers because leather craftsmanship, leather, leather craftsmanship is, isn't inherently interesting or sexy. Like who cares about leather at its core? But through the is it worth it format, he's over 2.5 million followers across his platforms. And just deconstructing these things and telling whether it's worth it. Anytime he drops a custom release, his most expensive items, people are buying it just because he has a link in his bio. There's no CTAs or calls to action in any of his Video. So I fundamentally believe from our experience, like anything can go viral. Like there's levels of economies of scale of what that means. For some people, 100,000 views is going viral. For other people it's 10 million views.
Right.
But that has a massive impact on the business. Now, like you said, the quality of a view is different. Like it's going to be completely different if you're doing direct response advertising through an ad.
Yeah.
Because through that you're going direct for the sale versus organic. You're not going direct for the sale. Organic is about how do you get people to know like, and trust you? And people know, like, and trust you. They want to take that next step with you.
Yeah.
So understanding the difference between the two.
Well, I guess what I'm getting at is if you're in a business that has hyper niche people, which is a lot of people. Right. So like, let's just take the example of the leather guy. I think the leather guy actually isn't that niche at all. I think that everybody would buy a nice leather anything. I'd buy it. Like, I, I'd, you know, if that guy had a cool video and he made a nice leather bag or something, I'd be like, oh yeah, let's go like it, it applies to everybody. And the same thing is true with Mr. Beast candy bars or you know, Sarah Hant's videos. Like that. It, everybody likes those types of things for the most part. Everybody could buy those tangible goods on that front or everyone likes to be entertained by a $250 million home. But what I'm getting at is just like the ultra niche people. So for example, let's just say photographers, like that's a pretty niche thing with these cameras. Or like I said, somebody who wants to learn how to flip houses. That's pretty niche. Somebody who, I don't know, like, you know, there's, there's just very different niche. Let's just say somebody who's doing tax and they're strictly just doing high income earners and everything else. Like, how would you, I guess, differentiate those people? Where only literally a few people would be interested in the topic and be able to afford the thing that you're selling.
Yeah. So I'll give you some examples. Like tax. There's a YouTube channel called Clear Value Tax. He has over a million subscribers. He went viral during COVID because he was talking about.
He was doing the news.
Yeah, he was doing the news.
But that applies to everyone. That's not even.
But it's still, it's the context is how do you get people interested to what you have to say? Photography mentioned a good friend of mine that we've done some work with, Alex Stemp, he was trying to take photographs and just post them online. Yeah, he used the man on the street format to go approach people, show them the process, the story of interacting with these. I think he does brand deals right now, but he can do photo shoots, any of those things. But that format itself can be used.
Right? No, I get that, but he's not selling anything like, as far as that's niche. He's just getting views and.
But he can't bring bills. But I think the distinction is the format itself can be used for anything.
Right, I agree with that.
So another photographer can use that same format and sell photo shoots. If he wants to sell the photo shoots, the clear value tax guy, Other people can use that. We're working with an immigration attorney that is doing immigration law and helping people get visas and things of that nature. He's covering the news, obviously, with the elections and things of that nature. It heavily impacts super niche audience. But he now just had to triple his prices because he has way too much demand of people that are coming in through his doors. We've used this for mass tort and class action lawsuits going after very specific niche people that, you know, like Camp Lejeune for example. So it really can be used for anything. Now, are they going to be as big as Mr. Beast? Are they going to be as big as you, per se? No, not necessarily. But like if you take somebody from like a thousand views, 200,000 views, that can have massive. Yeah, massive impact. So I think, also I think defining what virality means, it doesn't have to mean Mr. Beast. For some people, it's like 100,000 views. They're killing it with, with their business or brand.
Mm, yeah, no, that makes sense. I've just always like, now that I've been in the game, you know, I started my social media career in 2020 and I've tried everything you can imagine. I tried dancing on TikTok, I tried the back and forth videos. I've tried just what we would now call just like a straight talking head, talking into the camera and all that. And then a lot of my content now is just mainly podcast and repurposing the clips. And you know, I, I like it because it's just easy. I don't have to think about it, you know, whereas a lot of the other things that are more scripted, you got to really like put thought into And I just don't have time for it. Like I'm busy, like running the businesses and stuff. So it's just kind of like accomplishes a different goal, I would say for me. But I guess a lot of business owners are watching this and the number one question they have is just like, yo, how does this get roi? I mean, at the end of the day, I'm just trying to use content as a form of marketing to get more business for my business. And so what would you say is like those discussions you have with people? Because, like the dancing videos didn't get me any roi?
Yeah.
You know, some of my most viral videos of me just talking about random controversial things didn't get me any roi.
Y, it's a great question. And the first place I like to start is because like you, I've been in many businesses and I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. You can have a successful business without social media. Like, there are many different ways that you can grow a business, grow a brand. There's massive upside with social media. If you crack in, a lot of your competition is. But there's kind of two components to social media as you talked about. There's the paid, there's the organic. Paid's a little bit easier to start with. Now, paid is difficult to master in and of itself, but it's less intensive in terms of the content, less intensive of your involvement. It's a little bit easier if you just want to hire somebody to do paid, organic. Much higher upside, but much more difficult to pull off because you're talking about competing against billions of content creators. There's close to 5 billion people on social media today. If any one of us opened up our phone and opened up our favorite app, there's probably at least 100,000 pieces of content the algorithm can serve to us to keep us on the platform. So it's a very stiff competition in terms of that attention. But if you really nail it, you're going to beat out all of your competition and the ROA is going to be massive. But it is, it takes an investment, it takes an understanding. Not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily have to be a huge financial investment, but it's going to take a financial investment or I mean a time investment either from you or members of your team.
Yeah.
So just recapping. You don't have to feel the pressure to go into social media if you find other avenues that work for you. Maybe some businesses still do billboards or still do print advertising and it works for Them. And if it does, that's great. Like, keep going with that. If you want to do it, potentially start with paid advertising. It's a little bit easier to kind of get your foot in the door. And then really, organic has the biggest upside, but there is a lot of nuance. There is a lot of competition, and it is. It does take time.
Yeah. That's the hardest. Sell with it. I tell people this all the time. They're like, dude, I want to build my personal brand. I'm like, well, okay, are you ready to commit years to this? And they're like, well, I mean, just like, how much does it cost? I'm like, just figure it's gonna cost a lot of money and a lot of time over the next couple of years.
It's like any skill set. Like, whatever business you learned, did you learn it overnight? No, it's like, it takes years to master a skill set, but it pays dividends if you.
Yeah.
If you do master it.
Well, that's the hard part. For people who do paid ads, which we do a ton of paid ads, and organic, it's like, paid is instant.
Yeah.
But, you know, you're not building, like, anything sustainable. You got to just keep paying. But, you know, even as I've gone into it now, I realize even organic's not sustainable. You got to keep posting like it. You know, you'll become irrelevant if you stop posting. It just is what it is.
YouTube's a long little bit of longer shelf life where it can. Yeah. You get kind of compound over time. But yeah, it is. I mean, page that same way, too. Is like most of the auctions at this point, if you're not feeding it with new content.
Yeah.
That performance, you know, tends to.
Yeah.
Pretty quickly. Yeah. But I mean, the real. And I'm sure you've seen this with your business, is the real compounding aspect is like when you combine both of them.
Yeah.
Is when both fuel each other. That's when you can really maximize the.
How would you use both in conjunction?
So it's really organic. Is all about getting people to know, like, and trust you. And then just make sure that you have your retargeting dialed in. You know, at the very simplistic level, you have the retargeting pixels on all of your landing pages and things of that nature. But you got to have your email cadence, your text, any type of communication so that you're warming that audience off of that. But I would also. What we've seen a lot of success with is people think paid is kind of a cheat code to social media. But the reality is is paid just put skips you in front of the line. It doesn't. It forces. It allows you to not have to worry about the algorithm as much. Where organic. You have to worry about the algorithm in terms of holding retention. But it's not a substitute for great storytelling. Like you still have to have great ads that stop the scroll and hold attention. So what we see is we apply a lot of the qualitative analysis in terms of storytelling mechanisms in organic and then we apply it to the direct response thing. So like how you start a video, how you hold the attention, how you intertwine the CTAs and things of that nature.
What do you think about. And I guess this would depend on the product, but we've tried it. Okay, let's say it's a. It's a high ticket product. Right. You and I have high ticket consulting. So what do you think about like funny ads for that? Because like I remember when all those transitions, you know, you talk about trends.
Yeah.
Like those transitions where you know it'd be like some random video and the bull would kick something or the car would crash and then you know, you like pop up. How effective do you think those are for ads?
Well, I think. I think that there's two kind of components. The ones that you're talking about I think are like the hack, the attention hacks. Yeah, yeah, I've heard that that's not really effective.
It did not work at all. Yeah, it got super cheap clicks and views. But the conversion was terrible.
But then there's a difference. Like the Harmon brothers. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but they did like Squatty Potty. They did some with Russell Brunson, other ones who really understand comedy and like how to satirically weave a great script into it where that can work. But no, I just don't believe like in just trying to hack the system for things. I think it's just. It's not ultimately not going to lead to kind of the type of content I think it.
When it depends on your avatar. Right. Because like the Squatty Potty. That makes perfect sense why you would have comedy ads.
Yeah.
And I think from what I've seen a lot of like men's e commerce brands work really good with comedy.
Yeah.
Like Manscape is. Does a good job and other things.
Yeah. I was meaning to ask Russell. I was just working with his team, like. Cause he just. I don't know if you saw it for his funnel hacking live. They tested some comedic base skits for selling those tickets, but that'd be interesting. Yeah. It has to be right for the brand. Like for me, I'm not going to do comedic based stuff because it doesn't match kind of like my demeanor and what you sell. Yeah. And just our brand and how we do it. So I think it definitely has to match the brand. And that's one thing that when we work with people like you don't want to force yourself to try and show up as somebody else that you're not on camera because it comes off.
Yeah.
You know, people are professional content consumers. Is like even on a. It may not be happening on a conscious level, but there's a lot of subconscious communication that's happening through the screen that people pick up on.
So like for a lot of our ads, they're just me kind of like here or in my office or whatever. And I'm just talking, doing a direct CTA for the most part. Right. Like, you know, especially for retargeting, it's like, yo, you know, you obviously seen the stuff. Like if you're finally ready to get started in real estate, you know, click the link below. I got a free thing, whatever. Right. How could those be better?
So the one practice that we use in organic thing can be applied to a paid is you create a Google spreadsheet. This isn't like high tech thing. And then you put I don't know how many ads you do, but 5 to 10 of your highest performers in terms of what are the KPIs you have click throughs, conversions, whatever. You're measuring again against 5 to 10 of the average, 5 to 10 of the low performers. And then just have somebody go through and watch and compare what's happening between those high performers and those low performers. And it could be like what happens in the first three seconds. It can be specific captions or title cards. It be could. It could be like how you start the script. Like what type of words, phrases, tones do you shoot in different backgrounds, things of that nature so that you can start identifying the qualitative patterns. Because the challenge that happens with paid is because the metrics are so clear to you, people just typically only look at the metrics and not really look at the qualitative elements of what's happening in the storytelling. We have a communication model that breaks down six different ways that people perceive content. So the largest subset of the population is feeling based, it's 30%. So they're going to engage with the content Based on how it mostly makes them feel. 25% is fact based. So it's like, does this make sense to me? 20% is reaction based. So they want to like fun, stimulating, like kind of movement. 10% is values and opinions. 10% is more reflective and 5% is action. So what we'll do is like we'll break down the same script and then one script will start with like feelings. The next place, the one will start with facts, the next will start with values and opinions. And we'll kind of see where our audience is resonating. But we're looking at and benchmarking certain qualitative elements that we can benchmark. So we're not just solely reliant on the, on the numbers, the, the quantitative aspect.
Got it. So I've been thinking a lot about this lately with ads and just the future and everything else. It's like, where does the future of social media go? Because we know that it's getting harder, right? Competition, like you were saying, like the competition is getting bigger. Right. Attention is becoming more expensive. Like I know that running ads gets more expensive. You know, if the competition organically is tougher than that means you're going to have to spend more resources, whether that's money or time learning and you know, all these things like, where does this all go?
Yeah. So in the short term, and when I say short term, I would say probably the next five years, I think it again comes down to who are going to be the best storytellers and who maximizes it. Just because there's more people on the platforms creating more content. 99% of the people you're competing against aren't doing the things that we're talking about today. So they're not really focused on how do we become the best storyteller on the platforms. That is the reason that Mr. Beast is as big, as big as he is. He's actually focused on telling a story and understanding, mastering that elements. So the people that really focus in double down on that is how do I master the story. Storytelling on each of these platforms is going to win the long term. Like, what does it mean for social media? The best advice I can give, and I don't pay too much attention to this, you just look at what the hardware is doing. The hardware dictates the software. So whether it's going to be glasses or goggles, a watch, whatever that is, an implant 20 years down the road, that's going to dictate how social media is consumed and how it's going to transform I don't see that happening in the next five years. Likely it's not going to happen in the next 10. But honestly any of these kind of communication platforms we've seen over the course of history, look at the printing press and how many books. I think the last time I checked there was 8 million self published books a year. Which ones win? Well, the best written books. It's the same thing going to be with social media. It's the people that really perfect the art of telling a story on these platforms are ultimately going to win. I don't think there's going to be a hack or something that really overcomes that.
Yeah, I guess what I was thinking was, and people always come and go, but from what I've seen, especially with technology, it seems like, you know, the cream always rises to the top and this kind of like, well, in tech it's for sure winner take all. There is no number two when it comes to tech. I mean there's only one need for Amazon, there's only one need for Netflix. Well, I think there's a couple of streaming platforms but you know, there was Uber and Lyft, there was a million others who tried to compete and it's just like winner kind of takes all technology. And I kind of like, I, I don't want to say I see that happening with social media, but it's like, I don't know, at least on a big level in, let's just say the business space. Like I can count on one hand how many people I've seen that I would say have broken through and become like names that everybody in the business world would know and then don't see much else after that. Right. And lots of people try and everything else. And then it's like it just seems like there's becoming less and less people to break through and there's just more and more like the main people. I don't know, it could just be my own view, but it's kind of what I've been seeing.
I mean I see a lot of those people and I work with a lot of the ones that are very successful in business but haven't broken through on social media. And really it's a context problem.
It's just the business people don't get it. Yeah, correct. Yeah. And that's what I see too. Like there's, there's no shortage of extremely successful business people making millions who are really smart, even billionaire. Like I've had multiple billionaires asked to be on the show. And like I look at Their content. I'm like, this sucks.
Yeah.
I'm like, I don't even like it's gonna be so boring. Even though. Yeah, you. You're just. You're a billionaire.
Yeah.
But I kind of, like, look at that. And I'm like, well, to be successful today, actually, let me take a step back. So when I joined, when I started taking social Media Seriously in 2020, there wasn't really that many business first people on. Right. There was creator first people talking about business. So you mentioned Graham Stephan, Great example of that. He's not a business person first. He is a creator first who talks about business.
Yeah.
And most of the guys were like that. And then you started to see all these business people realize, like, oh, dang, this is a crazy tool. And so you saw, like, guys we would know today, like Hormozi and Cody Sanchez. And, you know, my friend Dan Martell is one of the guys who I'd say is really broken through in the last year. You know, guys like Andy Elliott, you know, and then guys who have been doing it longer but really hit another level, like PBD and Ed Mylett. And like, my point is, it now then became like, okay, these guys understood business and everything we're talking about with content. And that's like, such a rare breed to be hyper elite at both.
Yeah. And I think that some of those people broke through because they were master communicators before they got on the platform. Because there's obviously, you know, with successful people, there's some people that have different communication styles, and those communication styles can lend themselves to social media. Like another example, I don't know if you know Myron Golden. Yep.
He was here a couple months ago.
Yeah. So Myron's a good friend, and, like, he's blowing up. Why? Because he used to be a pastor, and he was forced to two or three times a week, go and just make sermons up, make content all the time. Yeah. And he's been communicating for 30 years. And pastors are the best storytellers.
And content.
Yeah. So I think that a lot of those people.
They were already good.
They were already good. Russell Brunson, you know, he's kind of broken through, but his storytelling, he's a master at, like, the webinar and speaking on stage. And that's just a different communication style than necessarily working on social media. I think he will crack it because he's a smart guy and he's already had success.
Yeah.
But breaking through to that next level, you know, and it also depends on like, what's your level of success? Do you need to be at, like, millions of scores or be a billionaire?
Like, what's the.
Yeah, it just depends on what level you want to operate at. Because some people, 100,000 would be. They'd be amazed at. But, yeah, I think that there's a certain shift in terms of. Of. Of time communication, scout communication patterns. You have to learn that. That lend itself to succeeding on these platforms.
Yeah. Russell was here about six months ago, and we spent the whole day together, and we were just talking about that because he was like, dude, I really want to take organic seriously. And, you know, he's obviously has organic, but he's like, I'm, you know, I'm gonna go to your office. I'm gonna go to Andy's office. I'm gonna go check out a couple of people and what they're doing, just pick up some different tips and tricks. And yeah, I mean, we spent the whole day together right here. And it was interesting to hear his perspective. But I agree he does come from a direct response mindset, which is different than an organic content mindset.
And it's also like, the advice that you gave to Erica Kohlberg that I gave to Russell is like, start with one format and just master every new nuance of it.
That's all I did with webinars.
Yeah. And in that process, you will learn everything you need to know about organic, and then if you want to switch formats, you'll know how to do it. But without mastering that first format, you're losing so much opportunity to really learn what it takes to scale on these platforms.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I don't want to say this to anybody as, like, discouragement from getting on social media. I'm not saying that. You know, what I am saying is the best time to start was five years ago or 10 years ago or 15 years ago, whatever. Right. It's only going to keep getting harder, is my point, to break through. Like, it's just everybody's upping their levels, everybody's getting smarter, more talented, bigger teams, you know, just everything. And so if you want to break through, man, you got to really just, like, go all into it. And you brought up a good point, too, about breaking through is different for everybody. So it's like, I mean, I'm talking about the upper echelon of people that everyone knows, the top 1%. Yeah. But, man, if you had a hundred thousand subscribers or followers, like, you can just murder it with that.
Especially going back to what you're talking about in super niche industries.
Oh, for sure. You'll make millions in super niche industries with, with that kind of following.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I would say for anyone who wants to start today, it is absolutely, you know, still okay to do it. It's better today than five years from now.
Yeah, yeah. And it's. And, and also the one thing I want to say is people think that AI is going to be the savior for all their problems with content. And it's. AI is just a tool. If you don't understand these nuances that we're talking about in the storytelling, AI is not going to be able to fix it for you.
Yeah.
Because it's just like the analogy I use is like, if everybody woke up tomorrow and was using AI to produce content, which will probably happen in 10 years, there's going to still be winners and losers. Why? Because there's going to be some people that understand the nuances of it. And that's why we've invested so heavily in data, is you need the data to input it and prompt it, but you also need the ability to analyze it on the back end to make sure that you're getting what you, what you need. Yeah.
You mentioned, like, all the data points that why did one video go viral and the other didn't. And you mentioned it could be something you said in the first three seconds could have been your backdrop, the lighting, the color of your clothes. Like, I guess my question is, real estate investors. I found a brand new way to create cash flow that's better than anything else I've ever done. It's better than rental properties. Airbnb, my flipping business, multifamily. It's the best thing we've done yet. It is building an automated wholesale business. Now, you might be saying, Ryan, how do you build an automated wholesale business? Well, what if you had the same exact leads that I get every single month? What if you had a sales script that was so easy to close deals over the phone that you could do it all across the country? And what if you could sell your deals directly on the MLS without a real estate license and without having to actually own the property and getting top dollar? Well, we do that with this new method. And I made an 11 minute video where I go over how it all works, how you can start doing it today. So if you want to go see that video, go to wealthy investor.com, go click the case study and see what I'm talking about. How in depth do you get with it?
Like, just start. Yeah, just start the process. Typically, it's more typically what people are struggling with is what I talked about with the generalist principle is how do you speak to your core audience but also make your content digestible and interesting to the wider audience. Like I'll give you another example. You've probably seen her, Dr. Julie Smith. She's blown up. She's a clinical psychologist. Millions of followers on TikTok. But she talks about things like PTSD, panic attacks, things of that nature. But the way that she broke through, because there's millions of therapists that try and use social media and just don't have any traction. Yeah, she uses visual metaphors. Social, like talk about like anxiety. She'll put a waste paper basket on the table filled with papers and she talks about trauma therapy, of how you take each paper piece of paper out at a time, fold it cleanly, put it on the desk until all the paper is out, and then when it's all folded, you put the folded stack back in the waste paper basket and it's no longer overflowing. So she uses a visual metaphor format that's easy, it's accessible, it's digestible so that the general audience can track it. Nobody really wants to sit down and watch a lecture on clinical psychology. But because she uses a format in specific ways, she reaches tens of millions, hundreds of people around the world with her specific message. So it's really breaking it down into that digestible format that most people struggle with is they just go too deep, too quick.
To me, what I'm hearing from you is just like the format is the most important thing.
Yeah.
Because even when I think about Mr. Beast. Right. He still has the same format he's had for years and then so many other creators copied him.
Well, he's copied other people too.
Yeah.
Like the one versus, like the one million or the $1 house versus the hundred million dollar house. Buzzfeed originally created that. Yeah, that format. But yeah, he masters the art of that format. Even like he has a Reacts channel on TikTok where he's reacting to content like he's mastered that format. Like they apply that nuance to everything that they do.
Do you think that, I mean, like, because this applies for all businesses now. Right. Like this is the new world where people are going to become aware of your business and, and you and whatever else. Like how important is this skill set to learn? Because I'm just thinking about mastering man for him to master that skill. I mean it's made him. He's probably already a billionaire. Yeah. Right. And you look at all these other guys who are signing these big deals, at least in the entertainment world. Right. Like Joe Rogan signed in his massive deals and um, you're just seeing all these creators come out, which is different things like I guess in terms of what's a valuable skill set? How valuable is the skill set?
It's a great question. And, and, and to put some context to what you asked earlier about ROI is like what is the ROI of social media? Well, it's as big as your business is the biggest you can really dream up.
Yeah.
And I'll give you an example is like there was a, a young beauty influencer named Michelle Fan and she had, you know, there was other beauty influencers that had the same size audience as her and they were doing brand deals and making six figures a year. But what she did is she took her audience and helped found a company called Ipsy, that's a billion dollar valued company. So it's just like what you do with the audience really dictates the ROI that you get. Like the person that introduced us is Tommy Mello and he was like, well I'm concerned about social media because I don't know if I'm going to, you know, monetize or make money off it. I was like, Tommy, you're in a different position than everybody else. You actually have a business that works.
Yeah.
You know, and if you have, you.
Don'T need social media. You already sold your business for 600 million.
Yeah, you're fine. But he has a business that makes money. So it's like if you, as long as your content is aligned with kind of where the business goes, you will make money. But the ROI is dictated based on like how business, how scalable is the business, how solid is the foundation and the infrastructure in the business. If it's, there's a solid foundation, it's, you know, the structures there, the scalability is there, then social media can just, you know, really scale the upper end potential of it.
Yeah, I think it just kind of depends what like, because every business needs marketing. So you're just going to have to decide how you're going to go about it. Because a guy like Tommy, I know his background in marketing, he was a savage with Google and SEO and you know, all these different forms of direct response marketing. He never had to do organic or social media. And you know, for those who don't know, he's been on the pod so we can link to it down below. And you know, he's built a garage door company that does Hundreds and hundreds of millions a year in revenue. And, you know, it's probably going to sell again for over a billion dollars here in the next couple of years. And so for him, it's like, dude, if he's that good at that, why even worry about social media? Like it.
Well, he.
At least from money perspective.
Yeah. He wants to build the personal brand.
Yeah. Now that's a totally. And that's why I was saying, like, these billionaires, their social media is not a good ROI financially. Yeah, they already got it. And I don't think Tommy's is going to be a good ROI if he tries to, you know, go pursue that route. But it has this, you know, this value that can't really be quantified in terms of relationships that it builds in terms of whether people know you or not and how valuable it is to be famous, you know, because just because you're rich doesn't mean you're famous. Gets you in more rooms. It gets you to. To all these things.
Yeah, And I think that's an important point is the ROI may not be direct.
Yeah.
You know, you get offered to speak on stages or podcasts, get into mastermind groups or book deals, things of that nature, which has tangible ROI off the back end of it.
Right. Yeah. And I've said that this whole time, like, for me, the smartest thing I did on social media was start the podcast. And I didn't originally start with the podcast. I started on TikTok and YouTube and I just did by myself, YouTube videos, house tours, teaching concepts with real estate, do the same on TikTok. And the first, you know, year, it did great. And then I was like, let's add the podcast. And I just added the podcast because this was in 2021. I kind of felt like podcasts were going to blow up and ended up being true. Like, they've really kind of blown up in the last couple of years. I mean, they've been around a long time, but I think that now they're kind of like at the point where everybody in the country and in the world really listens to podcast. So I was like, all right, well, let's just try it. And, you know, the first year was good. We had success. You know, I got to meet some cool people. But then in year two was when I started getting, like, in big guests and stuff. And so, like, I had Cardone here and I had, you know, a bunch of the guys I mentioned earlier here and other things, and they would have never just come to hang out, you know, it's like it gives you this opportunity to build a relationship with somebody that you otherwise wouldn't have because it's beneficial for them, it's beneficial for you, and then that leads to whatever it leads to down the road. It's been crazy.
Yeah. And I think that that's a, a great way to kind of sum up the value of social media. And there will be a direct roi, but the things that come off the back end of it can be 10 times more valuable.
Yeah, 100%. And even the, that's just like the direct thing with the guest. I mean, man, just meeting so many people just out and about, you know, and I'm not even like as big as a lot of these guys, but I get recognized almost everywhere I'm at one way or another. And it's just like to hear people say, like, oh, dude, I love the interview you did with this person, or dude, I was flipping couches, man. Like, that changed my life. And you know, I'm doing this real estate thing now and it's like they may have never even bought anything from me.
Yeah.
But there's just this value that's just like, wow, that's cool. Knowing that that led to that.
Definitely.
So what would you say, format wise is something you recommend for business owners? What would be a go to format?
I mean, it really kind of depends on kind of the business that you're in. I mean, that two characters, one light bulb that we talked about can be applied to basically in any industry or vertical. You know, we talked about man on the street and that could be applied for a lot of niche. You see like, you see lawnmower companies go approach a random, you know, stranger house, that their grass is overflowing and they offer to cut their grass for free. Like, like man on the street is a very flexible one that can be used for anything. I think, you know, the school of hard knocks guys that have killed it with that. But it can be applied to any specifically specific industry or vertical. But those are like just two basic ones that you can kind of start looking at. But I think that the biggest piece of advice I could give people is when they start consuming social media is just start consuming it less from a passive experience, something to kill the time. But when you're looking at it and you see something that has a million views on it, try and determine like, what is this format that they're using? Go to their profile. Have they used that exact format to go viral at least five or ten times? Is that a format that you could see that applies to your specific industry or niche. But like, that's how we find all of our, the formats that we research is just by consuming content and we don't like to force formats on people. You find something that you're excited about, do you think actually represents the business or the subject matter that you want to put out there.
What do you think about long form or short form?
Well, long form is 10, 10x more valuable than a short form view, like a subscriber and a view. That does not mean that short form is not valuable. It definitely is. Long form is just more difficult. It's. It's a little bit more nuanced to pull off because you gotta hold people's attention for 10, 20 minutes versus, you know, 30 to 60 seconds. I think that there's a lot of tremendous brand building that happens in long form. I'm sure that's one of the things that you see with the podcast as well and is people are spending an hour, hour and a half with you versus a short form click. You know, it's 30 to 60 seconds. So it just kind of depends on the allocation of time and energy and resources that you have available to you. Short form, I think is a good stepping stone to get into social media and then once you kind of get the handle of it, then you can jump into long form. But if you're ready again, a view and a subscriber on long form is going to be 10x more.
Yeah.
Than short form.
It's interesting because I've met, like I said, when I'm. When I'm just talking to people out and about, it's a really cool thing to see, like, how they know me. Because there will be people who are like, let's just say die hard fans are like, dude, I saw the interview you did was so and so this changed my life. I've been watching for years. Like, okay, that's like one in the extreme. The other end of the extreme is like, I'll get people just like, look at me and they're like, are you like on. So like you're on the Internet, right? And they're like, yeah, like, I've seen your stuff and they don't even know my name or what I do. But they're like, yeah, I just, I recognize, like, I've seen your stuff before. And to me, like, I think that most of those people are like on short form, right? Like, they're just seeing clips they don't really know, but they just recognize from the clips and then know the real, you know, trust and everything is built on the long form.
Yeah. And there's a. Another kind of good analogy about it is VidCon, which is the. The conference for, like, influencers is. If you go to VidCon, you know, the YouTubers there, the YouTuber influencers, there's lines out the door to get to meet them. But then the TikTok influencers, often there's no line at all.
Right.
And sometimes the numbers in terms of the subscribers are way higher.
Yeah.
Than the user hires. But it's just the relationship.
Yeah. That you just don't. You don't really know what somebody's about for 30 seconds.
Yeah.
It don't matter how many videos they make.
You'll also move down to the next one and you've probably forgotten about it. Five videos in.
Yeah. Yeah. That's why I always tell business people, I'm like, look, for me, personally, I've tried every form of content you can imagine, and it's like the podcast still has so many things that a business person would want in that, hey, if somebody does watch it, I mean, they're pretty invested into who you are and what you're doing. But two, it gives you, like, actual business, you know, relationship stuff, too. Like, man, now we know each other. You know, everyone I interview, we know, and they come speak at my events. I can hit them up, you know, if I got a question or they'll introduce me to other people. Like Tommy introduced you to me. So it's just like, there's all these, like, benefits that come from a podcast. And then the best part for me is you still get the short form. Like, we just repurpose it and, you know, we're still there.
Yeah.
And it also gives you the ability to build off of their audience, too. Like, talk about that. Because a lot of people are trying to go at this solo and, you know, just create great content by themselves. But I think one of the reasons the street stuff works, especially if you go interview, like, famous people on the street.
Yeah. It's. It's. It's a collaboration model. It's. If you look at the first wave of influencers, like, just to kind of give analogy, you know, I was living in LA at the time, and there was a building called 1600 vine, and all the YouTubers and influencers moved into the same building. Why? Because they all made videos together so they would share audience together. Yeah. And that's something. Even if you have a friend that's at 100,000 followers, you're at a Hundred thousand followers. That cross collaboration can grow both of your audiences. And the same thing, as you said, is having you going another podcast. Having people on your podcast grows each other's audiences. So there's that sense of collaboration, of leverage, of, you know, combining efforts with other business owners, business experts. It's like, for your example, in the niche world is if you're like a, you know, like Tommy and garage doors, like, you can go talk to other contractors that do other things in houses, or if you mow lawns, you can talk to plumbers and things of that nature to cross collaborate your audiences and things of that nature.
Yeah. I was thinking about that with Mr. Beast this morning, actually. I saw he had been hyping up his video with Ronaldo.
Yep.
And he's like, this is gonna be the craziest video ever, and yada, yada, yada. And, you know, Ronaldo's like, one of the most famous people on the planet, and he had, like, the fastest YouTube channel ever. I was looking, I was like, dude, this dude's already got, like 70 million subscribers. This is crazy. But, yeah, you know, the video, honestly, I mean, it was just kind of like any of his other videos. It had Ronaldo and Tom Brady and Bryce Harper and, you know, some other guys, but, you know, it wasn't like anything crazy, but I would imagine it's going to probably do really good just because of the collapse.
Yeah. And for Mr. Beast, even though he's much bigger, it exposes him to a different audience.
Oh, yeah. People who follow Ronaldo have no idea who Mr. Beast is. A lot of people.
But it's interesting to see how many celebrities like Tom Brady and people wanting to be on Mr. Beast is like, Tom Brady.
Yeah.
This football player, he's now doing YouTube videos and going on Mr. Beast and things of that nature.
Yeah. He was just. Oh, yeah, DeChambeau was on there. And Because Tom Brady was just on Bryson's channel doing a break 50. I like watching those. But, yeah, Dechamba was also on that Mr. Beast video.
Yeah.
And so you just see all these guys cross collaborating because it's. Yeah. It just benefits everyone.
Yeah. And that's how YouTube started, was cross collaboration between influencers is again, that's 1600 vine. It was like Amanda Cerny, King Bach, and like, all of the original. I think Logan Paul may have been in there, too, but just like, all of the original youtubers just got in the same building and just grew each other's audiences.
Yeah. What do you think about what Jake Paul's doing for boxing?
I think it's amazing. I mean, I don't look at it from a sport. I don't know the sport of boxing that well and I know some people don't that are traditional boxing people don't really like what he's doing because he's not fighting like true boxers in their prime. But I think again, it just shows you the power and the influence of, of social media and of YouTube, of what it can actually do. And like he's propping up the sport and bringing a new, completely new audience to the sport.
So yeah, how do you think celebrities are going to be going forward too? Because I was saying this before, it's like before really the last five years, I would say we still had that kind of like old school celebrity mentality where it was like, okay, the most famous people in the world are like Hollywood people, pro athletes. And I don't even know. I think that that would be how you would have defined like the most famous people in the world for a long time, maybe certain politicians, whatever. But now it sure seems like the tides have turned where it's like these influencers like Mr. Beast are becoming the most famous people in the world. And you know, the celebrities, the, the old school style celebrities are wanting to be a part of what they're doing.
Yeah, I would say it's, it's a different relationship. If you think about, and this is kind of how YouTube kind of first started. And social media is, is like. Social media is designed to make you feel like the person that's creating the video for you is like your friend.
Right.
It feels like a one to one. I mean this is the big mistake. So I worked with Taylor Swift early on and one of the things that she realized before anybody else is that social media is a one to one communicating platform. It's not a one to many because when people are consuming content, they're by themselves, usually on their phone or their device. So it's a very different relationship than sitting in a stadium watching a musician or an athlete, or sitting in a movie theater and watching somebody is those mediums are not designed to speak to an individual, but speak to the masses. So that's why there's a different type of allure to like a Brad Pitt versus a Mr. Beast. Even though probably the same amount of people know Mr. Beast as Brad Pitt is, Mr. Beast is kind of a different relationship than a Brad Pitt. Mr. Beast feels like more like you have a connection, like a friend type thing versus Brad Pitt is up on this pedestal and like somebody that you kind of admire from a distance, if that makes sense. So I think that that relationship, you.
Don'T really know much about him.
Yeah.
In his personal life or what he's like or other than what the tabloids would tell you.
So I think there's always going to be that distinction between the two. But I think that the social media influencer, I think, will gain in kind of influence and power. And I think the more brands realize the power of how to leverage the influencer correctly because there's still a lot of brands that do influencer marketing that have no clue what they're doing. And then we'll just lose money because they're choosing the right influencer or trying to put so many restrictions on the influencer that they can't sell it in their voice. But I think the more brands realize how to leverage influencers properly and they see the ROI and impact versus hiring a Brad Pitt, I think that that transition and those dollars will go even more. But the reality is, is even we look at movies today and even Netflix, the amount of money that they're putting behind promoting these properties and these individuals, it's like they don't need the level of social audience because every movie, let's say the Rock, for example, every movie he's in, they're spending $150 million more marketing that movie.
Yeah.
That's still still tremendously power in terms of, you know, awareness and things of that nature.
Yeah.
And there's also hasn't been a powerful crossover the other way because you've seen a lot of people try to take influencers and put them in traditional media.
Yeah.
And it hasn't really reached the highest levels of it. Like, Jake Paul is probably the most successful example of going into boxing, which is kind of a. It's a traditional sport, but in terms of television and film, there hasn't really been that cross over the other way because again, as we were talking about earlier, it's a different muscle. Like, you know, a, you know, like Mr. Beast is not going to go star in the next Mission Impossible movie because he doesn't have that skill set. And he's even talked about the Amazon show that he's doing is like he's testing and learning a lot of things of what it takes to actually create a television show because it's a different length, it's a different medium, it's a different type of communication.
Well, I can tell you like, for me, and I would.
Sure.
And I'm sure the other kind of influencers have this mindset is when you're in control, which I do whatever I want, you know, on this show and with my content, I say whatever I want. Nobody can stop me. Whatever else. A lot of these guys don't want any kind of creative control, loss to. To these other things because they've already proven they know what they're doing. And so when legacy media comes in and they say, hey, we got to do it this way, and it's going to take way longer and costs way more, and all this stuff, you're like, why? This is like, why are we doing it? This doesn't need to be done this way. Like, I had that happen with me multiple times on TV shows for flipping houses. You know, they're like, dude, we should do a TV show. And I remember we got pretty deep a couple of years ago, and then finally I was just like, guys, this ain't it. Like, this is just. I'm not going to spend 60 hours a week of my life doing the show that's not even going to pay me. And, like, I'll get way more views on social media. Why am I going to even do this? Like, TV's dying.
Yeah.
And like, that was my mindset even as a small guy. And so when I look at these guys who are massive streamers and everything, it's like, dude, they would be taking a massive pay cut to go work on something else that they have no control over. That's going to be way harder, way more time. And like, even with Mr. Beast's Amazon show, I'm like, he basically pro. You know, he's the biggest guy. So he, I'm sure, had like all autonomy to just do whatever he wanted anyways.
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's a real thing to what you're saying. I think it comes down to what we were talking about earlier is there's, you know, certain influencers that are going to want to do it just because they want the allure of being in a television or movie and vice versa. You see, Tom Brady wanted to be in YouTube videos and Ronaldo and things of that nature. The same thing happened in the film and television world. There was pre Netflix in that wave. All television actors wanted to be in movies because movies were like the hot things, even though there was more money in television. And now it's flipped. Movie stars want to be in television. And I agree with you 100%. There's more power in social media and that content creation, but there will be a wave of influencers that just Want that, that level of kind of notoriety in a way?
Yeah, 100%. So, you know, as we, as we wrap up here, you know, for anybody who is just getting started in this game, what are your final thoughts?
Study. Just try and use social media and study it. Look for formats. So when you see a viral video, if it has a million views, 10 million views, go to the creator's profile, see if they've repeated that same structure at least five or 10 times. And then what I would do is look at a video that's successful with them using that same format versus unsuccessful and start studying the patterns of it. It's like learning a musical instrument before you start creating and composing your own music. If you're learning the piano, you don't just sit down and start composing your own music. You start by learning classics you like. You get a music sheet and you get a teacher and you learn through that process. The same thing with social media is the blessing. And the curse of social media is the blessing is anybody can take out their phone, click, record and post. The downside of that is anybody can just pick up their camera, press record without a thought.
Yeah.
But it is truly like any other art form out there, and it is an out form. There is a discipline, there is an expertise of how you actually communicate through these platforms. So learn as much as humanly possible of what it means, what causes something to succeed versus what causes something to fail.
Right.
And no, it's not the algorithms that are out to get you that are suppressing you to pay for reach because everybody, nobody would go viral. Mr. Beast wouldn't go viral. And it's not that the algorithms are against you. The reality is the algorithms rely on us. We are the fuel that runs them. It's not like Netflix, you know, YouTube doesn't invest billions and billions of dollars in original content, Instagram, TikTok, any of these platforms. They rely on the content creators to be the fuel that runs them.
Yeah.
So the reality is they want us to succeed. And what do they want? They want content that can grab and hold attention for as long as possible. Because the longer people spend on these platforms, the more ads they can serve, the more profit they generate. So they are looking for the best content, the best content creators out there. So just learn to become a storyteller. Learn to what it takes to become a storyteller on these platforms and you ultimately will succeed. It may not happen tomorrow, to your point, it may take three months, it may take six months, it may take a year, may take longer. But if you learn that underlying skillset, the amount of value that will be driven in anything that you do will be massive.
I love it.
Where can people connect with you on Instagram? Brendan Cain they can go to hookpoint.com to learn more. And for all your listeners, we're giving away my new book for free. They just go to hookpoint.com your last name Panetta. Yeah, so they just go to that URL and they can download a PDF of the book. It's a real book. This isn't like I spent two years writing this. And yeah, the principles, it's not just an e book but they can get it for absolutely free.
So be hookpoint.com/pineda get the book. Cool. Awesome guys. Well we will link to that all down below. Brendan, thank you for coming on the show, sharing the wisdom guys. Make sure you subscribe and we'll catch you on the next one. Peace.