How To Turn Boring Jobs Into Viral Videos

Something that is probably the most unsexy topic you could think of. So all the time people ask me, well, Brendan, you've worked with some of the biggest brands and celebrities on the planet, but what about me? Can it work for my small business or my niche business? For some reason, people think that when you're helping a big celebrity or brand or a corporation, it's somehow so much easier. And I can definitively tell you there really is no difference. If you have the right strategy, if you have the right process, if you have the right hook point. And hook point is designed to grab your attention, to get you to stop. You can win with any product, with any brand, with any service, with any company in any industry. And today I want to prove that to you. So today we're going to focus on a few YouTube channels and breaking this down with some clear examples. So the first example I'm going to dive into is Dr. Mike. So Dr. Mike has quickly become one of the most famous doctors in the world. And it's all because he's used effective hooks on social media to draw people in. You asked for it, so you got it. So looking at Dr. Mike's YouTube channel, just looking at this right here, he's got 6.4 million subscribers. And if I go to his about page, he has over 683 million views. This is for a doctor, just a regular doctor, who could imagine? So let's actually dive into his videos. And one of the things that I always like to do is I go to the sort by and go to the most popular tab because this is going to show you the videos that drove the most traffic, brought the most people into his brand. So Right here is two most viewed videos. Both have over 24 million views. And it has real doctor reacts to Grey's Anatomy, and real doctor reacts to the good doctor. So what is he doing here? He's doing something really smart. He's just labeling himself as a real doctor and tying it to a brand that most people know. Tying it to Grey's Anatomy, one of the most successful TV shows of all time, and the good doctor. So by him creating a hook of tying himself and not labeling his name, but labeling the fact that he's a real doctor reacting to these shows is going to get the average person to stop and say, I want to. I watch this show. I watch Grey's Anatomy. I want to see what a real doctor thinks. Put your mask on. Put your mask on, Sean. Between those two videos, they've amassed over 48 million views. And if you look at his subscribers. There's only 6.44 million now. He's growing dramatically. So at the time these videos launched, I believe he was well below 1 million subscribers. So it shows you that he was able to create a hook that amplified his reach, that brought people in that knew nothing about him. Reactions, if you. If you dive into YouTube, work extremely well because people love to see an emotional reaction or an insight reaction. Oh, my God. Please tell me she's not gonna. No, no. What are you doing? Grey's Anatomy. All of his top five videos are doct. Reacts. Dr. Reacts. Dr. Reats. It's not saying that he. He doesn't have substance and what he's talking about. He does. He's a really intelligent and successful doctor, but he understands that, first and foremost, I have to capture attention. Well, when we see this, a real doctor reacts or anybody reacts, what is our first inclination? Well, what is his reaction going to be? A ton of people watch Grey's Anatomy. It's one of the longest running shows on television today, and the good doctor generated a significant amount of promotion. So for me, if I'm watching this TV show, well, I want to know, like, is this doctor going to say that the information and the depictions of what's going on real or not? Never heard a doctor speak like that. Welcome to the game. And if you look at the two thumbnails here, the Gray's Anatomy one, he's thinking really hard. It almost feels like he's in disbelief. And then the second one for the real doctor reacts to the good doctor. He's almost in shock. So that right there, not just the headline, but the thumbnail gets you to click. He's using a hook to grab your attention. And then once he has your attention, then he can dive in and express his real expertise, his real genius, and bring you on the path of. Of where he wants to take you when it comes to his brand. When we talk about just reactions in general, it can work for any industry. However, just because you're seeing it work here for a doctor and you'll see other examples from other industries, doesn't guarantee that it's going to work for you. Now, why would it fall flat for you if it said Dr. Mike reacts to Grey's Anatomy, I do not believe that it would perform as well. If I'm saying Dr. Mike reacts to Grey's Anatomy, and I have no idea who Dr. Mike is, I'm gonna say, I don't care and move on. This is unprofessional, folks. It's Gonna lead to drama versus a real doctor reacts. That slight tweak to the wording will bring people in. The hook needs to be strong. Also, he's anchoring himself to popular TV shows. So if he was anchoring himself to a medical drama that completely bombed or nobody's heard of, people really wouldn't care. The second element of why it will fall flat is, is your content good? Is your insight good? Do people believe you? Do you have charisma? Not great at it. So it comes off very awkward. It's funny. But this is very accurate because it's not just a matter of getting the click. You have to retain that attention throughout. And that's where Dr. Mike does an amazing job. It's not that he's creating clickbait here, because if he was creating clickbait, YouTube would catch on and he wouldn't have these videos with tens of millions of views on each of them. And if you've seen any of my other videos or read any of my books, when we talk about the algorithms, the algorithms are looking for two things. One, are you getting people to stop and pay attention to you? And two, how long are they spending with your content? And if both of those things match up, then you'll get mass distribution. You'll go viral, because the algorithms will give you reach. The algorithms love these videos, and they want to push it to as many people as possible because they know it's going to keep people on the platform longer. So let's dive into another example that normally you would think is not a very sexy or viral subject matter, and that is being a real estate agent, one of my favorite channels. And I absolutely love this guy because I think he's brilliant and his content is amazing, and his use of hooks is truly remarkable. Is Ryan Serhant? Some people may say, well, he started off through a TV show, and maybe that's the reason for success. It's not because I've seen plenty of people on television, on, in movies that don't really take off with social media. Ryan is successful because he's mastered the art of hooks around this subject matter of selling real estate. What in the world is this place? I'm sure right off the bat, you're going to see a reoccurring theme here with these hooks. So he has touring a massive $188 million California mega mansion. Okay. And then we go to touring the world's biggest closet, touring a massive $280 million Colorado mansion inside an $18 million New York mega home. And it says, Lady Gaga stayed here. It's like, I want to see what $188 million mansion looks like or the touring the world's biggest closet. I want to see it. Even if me, the viewer, can't afford afford this, I still want to see it. Ryan understands that 99.9999% of people that watch this video can't afford these things. But he understands the hook is going to bring in this larger audience, build his brand on a whole new level. But he understands that out of those 17 million views, there may be at least one, if not five, 10, 15 people that can actually afford it. And Ryan's actually express that he has sold properties through these YouTube videos. As people see the property and then reach out and oftentimes they'll buy it without even going to view it in person. They'll do a virtual showing or they see enough in a video. This is crazy. He's played to what the algorithms want, which is to get people to stop, which he does with the hooks. And he retains that audience because he gets people to watch all the way through it. And because of that, he'll get massive reach and distribution from the algorithms. And within that, he will find his core target. On top of the fact that his brand just keeps building and building and building. Now, Ryan has had so much success with this model that he's actually created his own brokerage and his own media company. He. He's seen the benefit of hooks to drive his business that he's now created several media channels and a whole entire media company around the content that they're producing around real estate. Look what I found. So what Ryan is tapping into here is people's curiosity. People love to know what is it like to be a celebrity? What is it like to be a billionaire? He's tapping into that desire of our culture of money, of wealth, of fame, and people wanting to see on the other side of the velvet rope. The average real estate agent does is the average real estate agent will just say on social media, hey, I'm selling a $2.5 million home with five bedrooms in 1200 square feet. If I was advising, and I am advising a lot of real estate agents now, I would start with, what is the hook around that property? Instead of just saying, hey, I have this home for sale, or, or, hey, I just sold this home, or I'm leasing this home, what is the unique factor like again, what, what Ryan Sirhanted here is touring the world's biggest closet. So you have a bar in your closet, champagne bar. In your closet. Now that's crazy interesting. Like, I want to see what the world's biggest closet is. Now, if you're an average real estate agent, maybe you don't have access to that. So maybe it's the most amazing backyard in your zip code or the most amazing pool that you'll never believe or the five most amazing pools in your specific zip code. One of the most epic property tours you will ever see in New York City. The interesting thing about Ryan is I believe that most of these top five videos, if not all of them, he wasn't representing this property. I know that the $188 million California mega mansion, and I believe also the $280 million million Colorado mansion, he wasn't representing that property. So if that property sold, he doesn't get any benefit out it. But what he realized is this is an amazing hook into my brand. If I go tour this property, it's going to bring a lot of people in and the other realtor loves it because it's getting exposure for him. So think bigger. All right, so now we're going to move to another one. And this. If you guys are not convinced after this that a hook point can work for anybody and drive massive growth, then I don't know what to tell tell you. So it's going to this YouTube channel, which I absolutely love what they do and it's really remarkable on how they leveraged hooks in a timely manner to drive massive growth for something that is probably the most unsexy topic you could think of, which is taxes. The channel Clear Tax Value has managed to master this on the social media realm. So today they have over 1 million subscribers and they are growing like crazy. They. They joined just in 2018 and 132 million views. That is a huge number for taxes. About six months ago, they had a few videos go extremely viral. So the first one with 3.2 million views. Will there be a second round of stimulus checks? Then the other one stimulus check, frequently asked questions. So what you can see here is he tapped into something that people were really interested in because it was a major pain point. People keep commenting and asking me to cover this topic. When Covid hit, a lot of people were out of work and they didn't know, how am I going to make a living? How am I going to put food on the table? How am I going to pay my rent? And when the government started talking about stimulus checks, people are clamoring for as much information as possible. When is my check coming? How much is my Check going to be do I qualify? And what he did so brilliantly is he tied himself as an expert in taxes and designed hook points specific around that subject matter. You're not going to hear another YouTuber talking about what I'm talking about. And it paid off significantly. Here's another one addressing fake news from people saying they already received their stimulus checks. Those are his top five videos. And you see 3.2 million views. 2.7 million views. 2.5 million views. 2 million views, 1.8 million views. And again, we're talking about taxes here. We're not talking about a movie, we're not talking about music. We're talking about a guy. And if you look at his background and if you go to his channel, watch some of his videos, there's very little production value, just him talking to the camera. And if you even look at his thumbnails, they're not very sexy, they're not even very well designed. But the sheer fact that he's tying into something that's probably keeping a lot of people up at night. Now, again, it's not just about getting people to click, it's about getting people to pay attention. And again, he has expertise, so people are listening to him. Am I going to say he's the most charismatic person in the world? No, he's not. But because the subject matter is of such importance to so many people out there, people will hang on his every word. I do believe there will be a second stimulus check for four major reasons and that's what made him so successful. So again, if you're sitting out there and saying, well, I'm in some specific niche industry, a hook point's not going to work for me or social media is not going to work for me. Look at Clear Tax Value because it's the perfect channel and the perfect analogy that you can make anything any interesting. So what Clear Tax Value did is he based this off of a timely subject that was going on in the world. Now, does that mean it always have to be that case? No, there's different ways that you can craft hooks. When we look back at Dr. Mike, for example, he's tying it into pop culture. Now Grey's Anatomy, I don't know how long they've been in the air, but years and years and years. So it's not necessarily have to be at the exact moment. Now what Clear Tactic Value did is they were taking advantage of what was happening in the world, in the economy, and tying that to specific pain point that everybody was experiencing. We need help right now to avoid economic collapse, but you don't have to tie it into what is happening today right now. The benefit of these hook points is to bring in the widest audience possible for two reasons. One, because the algorithms love content that does that. Number two, if you think about it from a business perspective, is how can you influence the decision maker? So if we're selling a piece of real estate or a home, yes, there's one person that's pretty much going to cut that check, but there's other people that are influential in that decision, or there's other people that can bring that property to somebody's awareness. So we think about a spouse. If the wife is the one cutting the check, you know, the husband could be an influential person or vice versa. So understand that, yes, you may have a core target market that you're going after, but there's other people that can bring you in. For example, I was doing a Mother's Day campaign for a company called Chatbooks, and they're an online photo printer, and they're the largest online photo printer in the world. At the time I was working with them, they had over a million subscribers. I'm sure it's well past that now. And they came to me with a Mother's Day campaign with a piece of creative that said, we want to target this to moms 45 plus. And I said, that's great. I will test that audience, but let me broaden it out and test other audiences. And as I was testing, what I noticed is it was actually resonating more with females 18 to 25. And as I dove deeper, what was happening is these females 18 to 25 were sharing it with their mothers and tagging them saying, mom, I love you. Happy Mother's Day. So what was happening is the daughters were actually bringing it to our core target in a far more powerful way. It was far more powerful for a daughter to say, happy Mother's Day. Checked out this video. I think you're going to love it. Than from us as a brand saying, happy Mother's Day. Check out this video. I think you're going to love it. Details. So think bigger. Think about the holistic picture of all the people that that make your target audience act on a certain decision that you want them to make, the reality of the situation is, no matter what industry you're in, you're in the game of winning attention. If you cannot win attention, if you can't get people to stop their scrolling, stop on a busy street, stop in their conversation to check something out, it's going to make your job of scaling, making your job of being successful incredibly difficult. And across all of these different channels, we've seen that no matter what industry you are, you can make it interesting to the general population. You can bring people into the conversation that you want to have. But first and foremost, you have to create a hook to get people to stop, to get people into the conversation that you want. So your job is to just win the first part of the conversation to get to the next part of the conversation. Now that doesn't mean that you have to water down your message or change who you are or change your product or service. You've got to change the way to contextualize it to bring people in to that larger conversation you want to have with them. So just to recap here, I first want you to understand that you do not have to be a celebrity. You don't have to be a musician or a movie star to capture people's attention. You don't have to be any of those things to go viral. And these examples that we went over today, you could work in something that most people think, think as boring and make it fun, make it engaging, make it sexy and entertaining for people to want to watch you, to make people want to learn more about your subject matter. So really, at the end of the day, your job right now is to win that first three to five seconds because without it, you're not going to win no matter what industry you're in. And just to give you an example is even the movie industry. If you go watch movie trailers on Facebook or Instagram, they are starting their trailer with a 3 to 5 second trailer before the actual trailer plays. So even the biggest movie studios in the world are using these tactics. So I asked you what is your hook? And I want to see you comment below. What is your hook around your business? What did you learn from this that you can apply to your business today? And if you want to dive in further about how to understand how to develop your hook point, click the link below and check out my book, how to Stand out in a 3 second world where we dive deep into this subject matter and if you enjoyed this video, click the subscribe button, turn on your notifications and hit that like button. I really do appreciate it and I look forward to connecting with you on the next video.