In this live call for the Hey Creator community, host Matt Ragland interviews video creator and entrepreneur Cam Hauser about generating a steady flow of video ideas. Cam introduces the three‑step HIT framework—Hook, Idea, Takeaway—emphasizing brevity and memorability. He explains that a hook can be visual (a "clap hook") rather than purely verbal, and illustrates the framework with a story about noticing expensive cantaloupes at Whole Foods, turning the observation into a pricing lesson about scarcity. Cam stresses that each video should quickly move to the next, and he avoids traditional calls to action like “like and subscribe.” Instead, he directs viewers to his newsletter via on‑screen links, aiming to build a relationship before asking for purchases. The conversation also references Peter McKinnon’s use of visual hooks and discusses the strategic choice of a newsletter as the primary CTA.
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After today's video, you're never going to run out of ideas again. I'm serious. Today's episode is with Cam Hauser. He's a video creator, founder, teacher, and entrepreneur who helps people look great and feel comfortable on camera. In this call with the Hey Creator community, Cam stopped by to help us generate more and better ideas for our videos. He taught us how to actually hook viewers in, how to find ideas and stories for content in everyday life. He also told us the one phrase that you should never put in your videos. One of the things that people watching or listening to this live or on replay are thinking is, are there interesting things happening to me on a daily basis? Are there interesting things that have happened to me in the past that are worth talking about? What, what is the framework, or what is the system that you have for that?
So in terms of how do we come up with content that is straightforward, easy to talk about, interesting, so it's good storytelling and maps to our business, I use something called HIT, H-I-T, hook, idea, takeaway. First of all, I don't believe in any frameworks longer than 3 items because it's hard to remember. So what's nice about this one is it's just super easy. Your hook is the first line. Note also that video is a visual medium, so you don't always have to state some really interesting verbal hook. There's something called a clap hook. Which is when you just go, okay.
Peter McKinnon does that a lot. That is like one of his things.
Yeah, it's a very, it's a visual, interesting thing. It's showing us some moment, some momentum. And I find that when I do it, when I just go, okay, let's talk about this framework, it gives me energy. It gets me a little pumped up, which is good. We want to convey more energy. So hook, idea, takeaway. So come up with something interesting. The idea refers to the actual story you're gonna tell. That could be anything from you walk by the cantaloupes at Whole Foods and you notice how expensive they are and you I'm like, oh God, these cantaloupes are expensive. Well, that would constitute our idea, right? We don't really know what we're doing with it. The T, the takeaway, that's when we come up with what's something useful or helpful, and hopefully that's aligned with the work that we do. So I build startup programs for a living. That's a lot of my work. A lot of times I am teaching entrepreneurs how do they price their products. So if I'm walking through Whole Foods and I see the cantaloupe's expensive, I can think, Oh man, the cantaloupe seems expensive. Expensive ties to pricing. I'm going to do a quick video about this. Off the rip, I'd say something like, so I'm walking through Whole Foods the other day and the cantaloupe is $4. How are they charging $4 for a cantaloupe? Well, it's because I'm in a part of the country where they don't have them. The scarcity, the rarity of having cantaloupes in this particular state is why they must be able to get away with that, which takes us to a good lesson. If you've got scarcity, if you're unique, and there's not enough of what you sell around, you can charge a premium.
That's good for, for overpriced cantaloupe. That's pretty good.
I don't even know what states don't have, have, you know, the other thing is that we want to not worry about making any one particular video great. The general takeaway here is to always move on to the next one. And one good thing to do with it, I didn't include something about a call to action, which is to go tell people to subscribe or go buy my stuff. And the reason I don't like saying that verbally is it honestly, I'm not trying to sell people right away. I want to build a relationship. I know one, because they see my 1-minute video on LinkedIn is going to go buy a really huge entrepreneurship program for me. I'm not going to convince the Ministry of Innovation of Belgium to buy a big program from me from just one video. So rather than even say that at the end of my video, what I'm going to do is have a link, you know, in the post or maybe on screen that refers them to my newsletter. And if they get in my newsletter now, they can kind of get into my general workflows and all that kind of thing. So I actually, one of the things I do, it's a little bit atypical, is I don't like begging people to like and subscribe. Subscribe. I don't like asking them to go buy things. I want to say a lot of things that are useful, resonant, helpful. And over time, if they got a relationship, then I'll be able to ask them to buy.
I really like that. And it sounds like you're saying that the newsletter is like the number one CTA that you're, you're pushing to. Is that— has that always been the case? Is that something that is, is pretty— is on the newer side for you? I mean, we've known each other for a while, and I know that the newsletter has always been a priority for you, but has that always been your primary CTA or next step for people, whether it's buying a course or doing a program with you?
Yes. And first off, I wanna introduce my co-star. This is Pinky. She's happy to be here. She says hello to all of you. So as far as where I'm pushing people all the time, it's always a newsletter. And you all probably know this, but building audiences on socials is building a house on borrowed land, whereas email is not owned by anyone, right? If someone signs up for your email list, they're saying they want to hear from you, and it's going through this platform called email that luckily no one owns. There's no billionaire behind the wheel steering an algorithm algorithm that may disfavor you down the road. And I think one of the greatest, you know, tricks that Zuckerberg ever pulled was convincing people to buy ads on Facebook just to reach people that already want to hear from them, right? But that's how it is. So I personally am always steering people towards my newsletter. The other reason with that is my newsletter has been fun, and I'm a big believer in— I want to optimize for what do I want to keep doing. I've written this newsletter for 4 years. It's brought friends into my life. It's given me great opportunities, speaking gigs, deals, all kinds of things. But at the end of the day, I'm not writing an overly optimized newsletter that's obsessed with serving value and driving sales, because that would be boring to me, and I don't think people want to read that. What I focus on is being useful to people, sharing updates and stories of what's going on in my life. It in many ways motivates me to try new and different things so I have fodder for the newsletter, but I really optimize for what do I enjoy doing, and the newsletter is one of those things. And because of that, I've been able to keep going. And one of those great rules of business is don't die. If you can keep at it, if you can just survive and be around, you're alive. You still have runway for good things to come your way. And so that's how this newsletter has functioned for me, and that's why I take that strategy.
