Give Me 17 Minutes and I’ll Make 2026 The Best Year Yet...

Stop setting goals and start focusing on your systems. Attention is the new currency. You have to put out at least 7 hours of video content and somebody has to watch your stuff for 7 hours before they even consider trusting you enough to buy something. One problem with AI content, it's— it doesn't have a soul and it doesn't have a personality behind it. If you don't hop on and start using it, then you're going to fall very far behind and they're going to become irrelevant very quickly. Welcome back to the Brand Builders Podcast. I'm your host, Darren Pacheco. Today we're going to be talking about the 3 main things that you need to do to get ahead for 2026, to be a business that is in the top 1%, ahead of 99% of all other businesses. And how to reach those goals. So it's just me today. So hope you like what I have to say because there's nobody else here to say it with me. But let's go ahead and get into it. Number 1, these are some of the things that I'm implementing within my own business as well. So number 1 is stop setting goals and start focusing on your systems. Whenever I think about what we have going on, I had the conversation earlier with one of the employees who work here who started— he was like, Hey, what are some of your goals for the next year? Started listing off these basic goals, but it really all boils down to how can we implement systems that make this thing run in the most efficient way possible? Like revenue's great and all those things, but if we don't have a good system in place to really capitalize this and allow us to kind of buy back our time, then there's really no point in doing it because we can always set goals of more money. We can set goals of more followers, but at the end of the day, it's the systems that matter and it's the systems that do the day-to-day things within the business. And so some of the things that come to my mind whenever building these systems, this has to do with content, this has to do with AI, this has to do with fulfillment of the product or service that you're doing within your business. We use AI heavily here. At Howdy Media and partially is because we are a media company and we have a lot of tools within our industry to help with video stuff. But there are also a lot of tools within your industry because in 2026, going into 2026 now, the amount of AI tools available to you are getting more and more and more every single day. It seems like there's a new AI tool that comes out. And at least for me, I get overwhelmed sometimes. Yeah. So focus on the systems and stop setting goals. Number 2, attention is the new currency. This has been taking place for the last few years. Gary Vee actually talks about this in one of his new books. He talks about how attention is the new currency. Day Trading Attention is the book. I haven't got to read it yet. I want to read it. It's on my list. Go check it out. If you have read it, let me know in the comments down below. But attention is the real currency. I look around and there are so many content creators, so many quote unquote influencers. Anybody can be an influencer nowadays. All it takes is picking up a camera and filming content for a few minutes every day. But it's something that has become so valuable. Because whenever you create content, you attract a certain type of audience. And if you're a business owner and this is an audience that you don't have, but you want to get in front of, then you may explore going into kind of the influencer marketing space, whatever that looks like to you. But the reason these content creators and these influencers are making so much money and getting so much attention is because these brands want to get in front of that specific type of audience and that specific type of person. So if I have somebody who is selling lawn mowers, then if I see a content creator who is making courses or being a coach to other people building lawn mowing businesses or landscaping businesses, I want to put my product in front of them. And so I'm willing to pay thousands of dollars as a business owner to put my product in front of their audience. So you pay the content creator, they put an ad, everybody who sees that video sees, hey, this person sells this type of thing for this price. If it's a good product, then you're probably going to get a lot of sales from doing that. Attention is currency. One of the biggest ways to earn attention, obviously there's the traditional marketing routes, traditional method— methods like billboards, TV commercials, newspapers, magazines. The one that I like to focus in on, obviously, if you watch this channel or this podcast, it's content. Content being primarily video on social media platforms, Instagram Reels, YouTube videos, just like you're watching now. This is probably the greatest opportunity in the last— well, not in the last— ever. Like, in the history of the Earth, you've never been able to reach the planet like you are able to now. TikTok has made it to where— this is an example— you can literally post a video and you're like, you could have zero followers, the next video you post could go viral, could reach millions of people if you do it right. Part of it's luck, part of it's skill. And so the era that we live in has never been experienced before. And so there's so many people capitalizing on it. And the business owners who do utilize these things and these tools are going to actually be in that top 1% going into 2026, especially with AI coming out. It's making it easier for people to post more content and that sort of thing. So the more original you can be within your content, it's going to give you actually an edge on the AI people. That's one question that I get all the time. It's like, oh my gosh, do you think AI is going to take your job? Do you think AI is going to replace you? Do you think AI creators are going to become more relevant than you? There's only one problem with AI content. It's, it doesn't have a soul and it doesn't have a personality behind it. It's all just a bunch of code. It can feel real. It can appear real from a distance, but whenever it boils down to it, the way that you're going to stick out in 2026 is being real, being authentic, being yourself on camera because people want to follow you. For you. They want to do business because they like you over— hopefully you have a good service and good product. But at the end of the day, if they had to look at two different options, one person they really enjoy and really like listening to, the other one they don't know who they are, they're going to pick the person that they know 10 times out of 10. And so this is a reason it's so important to build that trust through your content. A stat that I always bring up constantly, constantly, constantly is from Google itself. It's you have to put out at least 7 hours of video content and somebody has to watch your stuff for 7 hours before they even consider trusting you enough to buy something from you. So if you're selling an online product, an in-person product, and you've never met the person in real life before, you're going to need at least 7 hours of content. So that's the first thing for 2026. If you don't have 7 hours of content, go make 7 hours of content. Another thing, you have to show up on at least 3 or 4 platforms. People will trust you when they see you in different places. You're a familiar face. They find you on YouTube, then they go follow you on Instagram, or they find you on TikTok. It just is another touchpoint. And then they sign up for a free lead magnet that you put out and boom, voilà, they're on your email list. But creating content is how you earn the attention in order to do these things like get their email address, get their phone number. And you can do it in a way where it's a fair value exchange. Um, the lead magnets and the things that you sell, the offers that you make online don't always have to cost money. For example, if I put out a free cheat sheet to 1,000x your views on social media, which I did, it's on my Instagram right now. The value exchange there is not money, and it's super valuable to you, the viewer, and it's valuable to me because I'm getting your contact information and I'm putting you on the email list so you can stay tuned for all the big things and all the help, um, and value that I'm going to be providing you in the future. But it's a value exchange, and I, I'd say it's a dang good value exchange because it's a things that I— it took me 5 to 10 years to learn how to do these things. And so I went and got the reps. I had the failures so that you can jump to the front of the line now with my help. And now you're on the email list. I can contact you whenever I want and contact you about future promotions or offers, that sort of thing. That's how business works. If you can build out your email list, you'll always have clients, I believe. So yeah, consistency is another thing that I wanted to touch on. Uh, consistency when it comes to online, I want you to think of it kind of like the stock market. Uh, it moves a little bit quicker than the stock market does because that next video you post could go viral. So why not post it? But you want to think of it from a, a wide angle view. Like a very high-level view because you're going to be posting. I don't want you to think, oh, I've been posting for 3 months, nothing's happening, this content thing doesn't work. I want you to be thinking, I'm going to be posting videos until Jesus comes back, which nobody knows when that is. So I want you to be thinking about that, and that's how you need to approach creating consistent content. Um, in other words, there's no end in sight. This is a part of your life. This is a part of your business. Make it a point to schedule it in there, whatever that looks like, to make sure it happens, especially if you're the business owner. Um, put it on the schedule. I have to put myself on the schedule, like usually Mondays and Tuesdays in the mornings I'll sit down and try to come up with the ideas, film everything, edit right after that, and get it ready to post throughout the week. It doesn't always work out like that, but I definitely try to do that. Hey, really quick, I wanted to let you guys know about a 5-day challenge. It's called 5-Day Build Loop Video Challenge that we put together exactly for you, because if you're watching this, you're probably an entrepreneur, a business person, or a creator who's looking to monetize. And so if that's you, there's gonna be a link in the description. We're gonna be going over all of the things that I've learned and took away from over the last 4 or 5 years to figure out how to make content work for your business and not against your business. And so for us, this is how we get about 90% of our clients within our business, and it's 10x, sometimes 100x our engagement and views and even leads. Same exact thing goes for all of our clients. And so if you're interested in this, click the link below and apply today. There's only a limited number of spots because it is one-on-one. And so hope to see you in the challenge. Let's get back to the episode. The number 3 thing that you need to know to be part of the 1% is you have to realize that AI, artificial intelligence, is not out to get you. You need to leverage AI within your business. And there's a lot of different tools, not just with content creation, but there's literally AI implemented in everything now, and there's probably a platform that can help you do your job better, faster, and for less cost. And so look into tools that could potentially do this for your business. AI saves time, which time is infinitely more valuable than money. You couldn't pay me enough to take away 4 hours of my life. So these are the 3 main things. A couple things on, um, the AI portion. There's a few tools like ChatGPT, like Grok, like Gemini. They're getting better constantly. As of 2025, we're in December right now, the model I think is ChatGPT 5.2. And if you're not familiar with the models, that's like the most up-to-date version. Um, it's gotten a lot smarter in the last year. And so if you haven't tried it in a while, it used to hallucinate a lot. I, I rarely find it hallucinating anymore, but where this becomes so beneficial for you as a user and a business owner, you can explain any situation to it, give it as much context and detail as you possibly can, and use that to your advantage because it doesn't forget. It refers back to your conversations as the knowledge base, so it doesn't forget about what you're talking about. So for example, I wrote out how I like my email blasts to be written. So if I have an email that I'm sending out to my email list, ChatGPT already knows exactly how I like that to be written. And so I said, hey, this is how I like to write it for future reference. Anytime I ask moving forward, this is how I want my emails written. It said, okay, got it. Perfect. I'll remember it. So now anytime I have a piece of content, Anytime I have something that I want to put into an email campaign, I put the transcript of the video, usually like a YouTube video like this. I'll put the transcript, put it into ChatGPT, say, hey, give me an email campaign in the way that I like it written. And then it sounds like me. I have to make a few tweaks every now and then, but it's spot on with the things I said in the conversation. So things like this, and I'm not even, really getting past the, the tip of the iceberg here because there's automation side of things like Zapier, like GoHighLevel, these types of platforms that really can do anything on a computer with what's called APIs. Anyways, that's getting into complex stuff. If you want to go look at it, uh, there's tons of content out there on APIs and how to connect the webhooks and do all the things. That's not my specialty. I do use some of it, but it's not my specialty. I want to learn more about it. But leverage AI. Don't think of it as an enemy because everybody in 2026 is going to adopt it, and those who adopt it will be ahead and doing things at a much larger scale, much faster, at much less expensive prices. So if you don't hop on and and start using it, then you're gonna fall very far behind and you're gonna become irrelevant very quickly. So it's just happening in front of all of our eyes. The same thing happened with computers, the same things happened with internet whenever it came out, but it's becoming so integrated into our lives and our businesses that it's crucial that you understand how this stuff works. And so, yeah, ask yourself these 3 things. Are you focusing on these 3 things? How are you going to go out and execute? What is it going to look like? I want to challenge you to think about this before you even get into 2026. Comment down below. I want to know what are some of your goals? What are some of your challenges that you're facing within your business and building a brand or creating content? Let's start a conversation. So yeah, if you resonated with this episode whatsoever, make sure to hit the like button, make sure to subscribe to the channel because it truly does help. And make sure to share with a friend if you think this will be valuable for them. I put out videos like this every single week. Also a quick shout out to our sponsor, which is Howdy Media, who we host a 5-day free Build With Video challenge for you and your business. Completely for free, 5 days. Me and you work one-on-one for 45 minutes each. Uh, we have limited spots, so make sure to apply today. Uh, we're running a few upcoming in January, so make sure to hit the link in the description for that. Uh, but other than that, we'll see you guys next week on the Brand Builders Podcast. Peace.