Everything He Learned Building the Top 0.01% Personal Brands W/ Caleb Ralston

So if you're feeling overwhelmed by most content advice out there— post less, post more, niche down, don't niche down— I get it. You're probably feeling like you're being pulled in so many different directions right now. But here's the truth. Most content looks the same because the strategy behind it is the same. My guest today has worked with some of the biggest entrepreneurs online today, people like Alex Hormozi, Gary Vee. And we're about to dive deep on what's actually going to work to stand out in 2026. This is 17 years' worth of knowledge in 50 minutes. So before we get into the strategy today, we're going to get a ton of tactics to share with everybody. What is the first thing you think about when you're advising a content creator entrepreneur on how to stand out in 2026?

I actually have something that I want to hit that I think is a little interesting and not really talked about much, which is that I believe the potential of your personal brand is actually predicated on the success or lack of success you've had in your career or life. And so the point being, We need to do epic shit so that people want to follow and actually listen to what we have to say. I think so many people are trying to force a personal brand in, you know, Instagram, YouTube, whatever, and they're wondering why people aren't listening to them. And it's because maybe we haven't done the thing that the people who should be following us want to do. And so I believe that there needs to be a a focus on doing epic shit, right? Like you mentioned some people that I've worked for in the past. I believe that is a big reason why we have had the success in building my personal brand the way that we have in the first year. Like the fact that we have almost 90,000 subscribers on YouTube within the first year or 53,000 people on our email list. This comes from the fact that I have the credibility in my background and then I continue to do epic shit. We released a 6.5-hour free course. I don't know if any wild characters in here have seen that, but we put out a free 6.5-hour course on YouTube in, I think, month 3 or 4 of making content. And the number one thing that I get asked on almost every podcast is about that course, that crazy thing that we did, right? The majority of the industry is selling that behind a paywall. We put it out for free, completely for anybody to consume. On YouTube.

And then that thing generated 53,000 leads.

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's still cranking today. Like right now, if we looked at it, I think Trevor and I noticed in the last 48 hours it still has gotten 3,600 views. Like it's almost a year old now and it's still just cranking for us.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's like the ultimate VSL. He's teaching everything that he knows. And then if you'd like to learn more or you want to work with him, you can do it in the comments. Now I know the skeptic in the room or watching or listening online is going to be like, well, Neil or Caleb, I haven't done epic things. I've only been in real estate for 10 years. I've only been in finance for this many years. And I'm like, okay, hold on a second, only? So you survived like all the ups and downs, you have done well, maybe you make 6 figures, 7 figures. Oh, you're in the top 1% or top 2% of the industry? And you've done, so I would argue that somebody in the room was like, well, that kills my content 'cause I haven't done epic shit. You are doing epic shit. You have done epic things. You've done better than many other people. If you've gone from A to B, you are qualified to help people go. You're actually the most qualified to help someone go from A to B if you've just done it. And so don't discount your knowledge. But I think what you're saying is you do need to have done something. Like, you can't just be showing up talking about things you don't know about.

And you can chunk up or chunk down. You can pond up or pond down. Like, if you haven't done anything super great— like what you just described, that's amazing. It's going to be tough to compete with you. Right. And so what I think a lot of people need to recognize is maybe you're trying to compete with the top dog in your space and you're trying to exist in a pond that is just a little too big for you right now. And so I think a lot of people need to recognize the level that they're at and understand that that is where your personal brand can go. And so I believe that a lot of people, because the number one question people are asking with educational content is, why would I listen to you? Right? Like, why would I trust what you have to say about the subject matter? And your credibility, the success, the wins that you've had in your career are the thing that is going to cause them to trust what you have to say. And so the point is that you need to— one, we need to always be getting better results and doing more epic shit. But two, you need to be sharing with your audience the things that you have done in your career that give you credibility to speak to that specific subject matter. We talk a lot about this. It's called contextual credibility, right? If you make a video on marketing, right, I would love to hear your credibility statement be something more around the amount of money that you spent on advertising over the last 10 years on Meta or something of that nature. And so we just believe that credibility and really honing in on what your credibility is is incredibly important because this is the number one thing that is going to cause people who have no idea who the hell you are to actually listen to what you have to say.

Yeah, that's huge. So think about making sure— this is one of the things you talk about is answering that question, why should I watch or why should I listen? And so this is big on YouTube. It's just one line, just a tactical— should I put that in the beginning of every video?

Yes. So we have an intro framework that we utilize. It's called the 4 Cs. You have your callout, you your credibility, your compass, and your core learning. And Neil was hitting on this earlier, which is really important, actually completely off script, but it's really important to hit. Your intro is insanely important and more than ever before, you need to get to the learning. To your point, so many people are doing these bullshit montages in the beginning that nobody gives a shit about. If you make educational content, the one thing that people are looking to do is learn. And so if you give them a learning in the opening 30 seconds, you get right to the action that indicates to them that they are going to continue to learn. And so they're more likely to consume it. But credibility, yeah, we typically like to put that. Sometimes you can even just get away if we're talking a YouTube video with it in the packaging. But ultimately you want to be providing the reason why the random person who clicked on your video is going to actually listen to what you have to say. And so you need to show them the background that you have, the chops that you have, the wins that you've had that give you the information, the knowledge, the experience to be able to speak on that subject matter.

Yes. And this is what you're talking about is YouTube. The same can be done on Instagram, but it's a different, you know, 100% different. So the two platforms we're going to focus on today are going to be— and these are based on your surveys and submissions. Is Instagram and then some people on YouTube, long form. So short form, I think Instagram, a lot of people are also taking some of that content for TikTok and maybe repurposing it. But a lot of people prefer Instagram because of the DMs and the messaging and how you could use that to grow your community, build your brand, and also get customers. So for somebody who's watching or listening or in this room, like, and they feel like their personal brand is broken, maybe like it's just not working. They've tried content, it's not connecting, they're not getting the views. Maybe they were in the past, but it's not working as well as it is, you know, as it used to last year. Would you have a framework or something you could teach on how to fix a personal brand? Because I feel like a lot of people are just stuck right there.

Well, I think one thing that we have a real, uh, problem with right now online is everyone looking the same and nobody really standing out. And I'm sure a lot of you probably feel like, man, my shit is not popping, it's not standing out, I look like the person to my right left. I think of it kind of like, um, I love Coca-Cola. I'm a big Coca-Cola fan. I've been this way since I was a kid. Now I've transitioned to Coke Zero, but I really like Coca-Cola. And if you go into your local grocery store, there's typically an off-brand or grocery brand version of it, right? I grew up near an Albertsons, and so their version was Big Cola with a K, I believe. And if you look at it, right, it's seemingly very similar to Coca-Cola. Uh, it costs a little bit less and sales are dramatically though heavy on Coca-Cola. Everyone wants Coca-Cola. No one wants Big Cola. Unfortunately, I think the majority of you guys and everyone making content is acting like Big Cola, not Coca-Cola. You're listening to the individuals online who are telling you to just go find the top 20 videos in your niche, rip the transcript, and then rerecord it exactly for yourself. And I get why people preach this. This is a very good way to get started, right? It's kind of like learning how to ride a bicycle with training wheels. We got to start with the training wheels, right? I learned to ride a bike, I think, in like kindergarten or first grade. If I was still riding my bicycle with training wheels right now, it'd be a little weird, right? And so I think a lot of us need to start— what?

That'd be super weird.

It'd be super, very strange. Yeah, I mean, me on a bicycle is funny.

How tall are you, bro?

Like 6'7". I'm a little big, so me on a bicycle is a little hilarious anyways. But I really believe that so many of us, we make this very strange mistake when we start to make content and when we're building our personal brand. We start with our competitors in mind, not our customers. And it makes no sense to me. And when I say it out loud, you're like, yeah, duh, obvious. But we're all doing this. And what I want people to flip the script on is I want you, instead of starting with your competitor in mind when you're making content, I want you to start with your customer. Okay? I'm gonna give you actually an exercise that I'd love for you to do within, you know, an hour of this ending before you get on the plane, before you go home. I want you to write out 5 problems, 5 painful problems that your ideal customer faces. Okay. And then with those 5 painful problems, I want you to pair each one with your unique solution. These are your content ideas. This is what you're gonna make content about. I wanna be very clear. I'm not the guy that's gonna teach you how to get millions of views and go viral. This is not the recipe for going viral. This is the recipe for actually getting customers and getting people to trust you. I believe that trust is purely a measure that people believe that you are going to meet or exceed expectations based on what you've done in the past. So the way you build trust with your customer and your base is you set the expectation of a problem that they face, and then you give them your unique solution and make it easier for them to solve that problem. And if you do that over and over again, guess what? They are going to believe that you are going to solve their problems in the future. So when you make them aware of an offer that you have, they have a higher belief that your offer is going to be worth it for them. They're going to get a better return on their investment. Okay. And so I really think it's a big thing right now. I understand. But for anyone who has been doing that for more than 2 months, you need a transition. You need to start thinking about the customer first, not your competitor.

And then, okay, so now you're thinking about this. You got problems that they face, how you solve them. And you said the word in there, unique. Okay, now a lot of us do the same things, but maybe we have a unique take on them.

Yes.

So how—

thank you.

Okay, we have a lot of people who are offering similar solutions. We have similar products and services. How do we stand out from the guy or gal sitting two chairs down?

Yeah, I think this comes down to even just your silly little quirks and isms and how you operate, right? So I think there's the human element, but I think all of us, even if we're doing the exact same things, we go about it slightly differently, right? You're hilariously funny, but this is something we were talking about like a while ago. Like, your approach and the way that you make content is you inject a lot of humor into it. What I want you to do, another exercise for you, is if you feel like, okay, there's no way for me to differentiate between me and Sally or me and Sarah. Well, there's a little simple exercise that I want you to do. You draw a line down a piece of paper and you're gonna have two columns, okay? A left and a right side. On the left side, I want you to write out everything that your competitors, everyone else in the space, that they do or say that you would like to do differently or you disagree with, right? Maybe it's not what they're saying, but it's the actions they take, right? Maybe, you know, if you're meeting with a client, for example, you know what kind of beverage they love and the snack they prefer. Prefer. And so every time you meet with them, you show up with the beverage and snack. That's my favorite go-to, right? All of these tiny little details. On the left side, you're going to write out what they do that you disagree with or would do differently. And then on the right side, all you're going to do is write out the exact opposite— your approach, what you're going to do with this. Something that I like to use as an example is like, uh, agencies, right? A lot of like video editing agencies, they are notoriously horrible with communication and they're wildly slow. And so on the left side, I would say slow with communication. And on the right side, I would put we respond within 1 hour every time or something of that nature. If you do this, this is the way that you can stand out. This is exactly what I did when I first started making content. I posted my first video February 28th, 2025. And the first thing that you'll notice if you look at my YouTube channel, it's the video that's like 16 years of building brands to 30 million plus followers. There's no crazy shit going on with the thumbnail. It's very simple. I don't have photos of people that I've worked with that I'm leveraging in the thumbnail. These were all very intentional decisions. Why? Because I looked at what the majority of the industry was doing and I wanted to do the opposite. And by doing that, you stand out so much more.

Yeah, I think, um, it's kind of tough because I do hear the advice of— I just was on a podcast with somebody and they told me use validated content, right? I think everybody on YouTube, even on Instagram, is like, okay, yeah, I saw this. This concept did well for Caleb. Maybe I could make my version of that. And that's what you talked about in the beginning where people do get lost. So what do you have to say about that? Because it is a tried and true principle and I'm seeing this all the way up to the top personal brands. I'll see a video come out from Alex or Dan Martell and then I'll see that same packaging on like 17 other videos over the next month, which kind of sucks.

It's disgusting.

Yeah, I hate it. Yeah, it's gross. But like, It works for them. Maybe. I don't know.

I think it works to a certain degree. I think there's a difference between having attention and having a brand where people actually give a shit. So if you are no longer being served in the algorithm, the people that are just getting attention, they fade, they disappear. The people who build a strong brand— once my content stops being served to you for whatever reason, hopefully I've built enough trust with you that you're searching my name out to consume more of my shit. And so I think in the short term it works really well because you get all this attention, but I don't think you build a brand that is actually distinguishable from other individuals in your space. You just are at most second best. And I love validated content. I just want you to look outside your niche. That's all right. What, what a lot of people don't talk about is these top personal brands, the top, top ones, That's what they're doing. They're creating these new formats or new formats. They're formats from gardening YouTube or from tech review channels or from camping channels. That is the way that you want to do this. You wanna look at what is working really well in other niches, and then you want to layer on top your opinion, your subject matter, so that you're able to actually stand out and not look like every other person.

Yeah, I think, um, I love the, being in our industry when it comes to media because I feel like there's something to be said for go where the competition is weak. And from a content marketing perspective, our industry is very weak. Like it's very salesy. People don't really get creative. There's a small group growing over the years, but I think they don't really do this one thing. And I'll give you guys a practical example. I saw conferences that were boring. And the same old thing. I went to a conference that wasn't real estate mortgage related and I saw, wow, they had these crazy— they had these amazing speakers. And this guy was— this marketing guy was there and this motivation. And then this person, I was like— and then there was energy in the room. I was like, whoa, well, why can't we take that packaging of that conference or event and apply it to my industry? So when we did that, unique. So you take like, it's just something stale and you apply new life to something stale. So if some of the content ideas in this room are stale, we can apply new life from something else.

You know that trend of like 15 years of marketing advice in 15 minutes? That didn't start in the business world. That started in the video game niche. Okay? What 30,123 hours of Call of Duty gameplay looks like in 13 minutes. I'm telling you, this is what you need to be doing. If you are going to just keep regurgitating what everybody else is doing, you are not going to stand out.

Okay, so practically, how would we apply this on Instagram? Okay, so I'm scrolling Instagram and I see, you know, what's weird is if you start watching content on how to get views, it's all these people who are going viral teaching you how to go viral so that you could teach other people how to go viral who are talking to people who want to go viral. It's just like this, like I feel like we're in this thing, we're all in this spiral. And so I'm always looking at, okay, people who are talking to an actual audience, not just creators, even though that, that is a niche that can work for you, but like people are talking to us and this video took off and maybe it's something about a totally different topic, like what Case teaches. And so I was talking about Case and he's talking about viral content and he's meeting the customer where they're at. Making them feel seen and heard. So then I took that hook, applied it to our stuff, and it was our top performing, uh, in terms of views, but then also in terms of how many leads we generated in it.

Yes. You know that little save button on Instagram? I want you guys to create a new folder, call it your wrapping paper library, or whatever you want to call it. Don't— yeah, whatever you want to call it. I'm a Christmas guy. I love gift giving, and wrapping paper is my favorite thing in the world.

W-R-A-P-S. Bang.

And anytime you see a video that one, caught your attention, you started consuming it. Anytime you see a carousel that you suddenly realize, holy shit, I'm on the third slide and I've been reading this for the last, you know, 60 seconds. Anytime that you have one of those, I want you to save it into that folder. Now, preferably it's not from somebody else in your niche. It's from something else, which means a lot of you are going to need to reset your algorithm or set up another account entirely. I sometimes go as crazy as to get a new phone and set up an account on that phone.

Well, you have a burner.

Boom. Oh yeah, like Team Gary days, we had probably like 10, 15 different burners.

Yeah, all kinds. You can reset in IG, there's a form, there's a thing you can do. It's an option to reset your algorithm. The other thing you can do, which is kind of easy, the algorithm is so quick at readapting. If you've ever gotten into politics for a minute, it sends you like deep in the rabbit hole, you know, in one direction or the other. But I notice if you go to the Explore page, tap on something, and then it'll take you down that highway.

Yeah.

And you can rewire it. So like, for example, somebody posted a video. They said, hey, if you ever get into a death spiral on your phone and negativity, Go find a positive video about gardening, about this, about this, and watch what happens. Every second or third video is going to be that thing. So you can quickly refresh your thing, but I would encourage you to hit the magnifying glass, go to the explore page. Some of you might be shocked what's on your explore page. Some of you may not want to do that publicly if anyone's around.

Nobody else around.

Yeah, but yeah, you go to that explore page. I've done— the reason I said that, I did that live with somebody on a call and it was embarrassing, but for— but that's a terrible thing to bring up right now. But I will just tell you, you should look at some of these ideas and then save them in your wraps folder, and then we can review these. And like, now I want to teach something on what's happening in the market, the biggest opportunity in Las Vegas right now, and I can look at those wraps, see if my— I could apply this wrapping paper to my content. Is that the strategy?

100%. Same thing works for LinkedIn, literally any platform anywhere. But what you wanna be looking at is two things. So I'm gonna share it with YouTube and then I'll translate it to Instagram. On YouTube, we believe that there are actually two different formats that you're looking at. There's packaging formats and then there's content formats. Packaging is your title and thumbnail and the content format is the structure that you share the information in, okay? We believe that packaging formats fatigue faster than content formats. Now let me translate it to Instagram. It's basically the same thing, but you have your hook structure or hook formats, and then you have your content formats, how you're going to go about the structure of the Short. I want you guys to be saving things based on either one of those two things. Either you loved the hook and you want to save that so that you can utilize it later, or you loved the structure, how they flowed through the information, and you want to come back and recycle or redo that in your content. Those are the two things that you're looking for. Uh, the same thing, real quick, I'll just hit on with LinkedIn. It's the same exact thing. You just screenshot. A buddy of mine, uh, Sinan, he has probably an iPhoto album of 800 to 1,000 screenshots of top-performing LinkedIn posts. And I'm fortunate enough that he added me to the, to the album. And so whenever we go to write a LinkedIn post, I know, back to what we talked about earlier, my concept. What is my concept? It's a problem, a painful problem that my customer faces, plus my unique solution. I call that a gift. That's why I use the wrapping term, because it's a gift that I'm giving my audience. So I want to wrap it correctly. Then I look at all the screenshots. And I see what structure do I like the most to convey this information. And so it just— all it is, every single platform you need to be saving. Now here's the key. Uh, what a lot of people might do is just start screenshotting or saving random things. The better version of this is you actually are only taking note of things that outperformed the average. Okay, there's tools out there that you can utilize to do this, but usually I'm scrolling through and see a random creator on my phone. And so all I want to do is I'm just going to go onto their page, look at their last 15 posts, and if their average is 1,000 likes and the one that caught my attention got 2,500, cool, I'm going to screenshot it. That's a 2.5x outlier. I'm going to want to utilize that in the future.

And so there's a tool you guys can use. This is one of 10.

It's great for YouTube.

Yeah, 1 of 10 on YouTube. And you can put— it's a— I think it's an add-on in Chrome. So when I pull up YouTube, it tells me the outlier and, and I look at like a 5x, 10x. You can make the category of whatever you want to see, but it shows you anything that's an outlier. It puts an X next to it. I noticed this guy Sam, he works with Dan Martell and he was talking about Gangster.

I love Sam.

He is a great guy. He's always sending me something like it has like a VPM or something category and like, is that another outlier thing for tracking?

I think that's like a vidIQ.

vidIQ.

Okay.

So you can use vidIQ.

There's a lot of tools. There's ViewStats. That's MrBeast's tool. All they are is they're basically, they're showing you very easily, hey, this is how much this performed above or below the average for the channel. So you know there's something there because it did better than average, which means if you do it, it has a higher likelihood of doing better than average for you.

The unique way of applying this, which is different than what everybody else is telling you to do, is just taking something from outside the niche.

Exactly.

And applying it to your niche.

Yes.

Same packaging.

Yes.

Different content.

Start getting upset. And like what, what Trevor and I do— Trevor, the mysterious man who I'm mentioning, he's walking around over here. He's my content director. We spend probably— it's usually a little bit more than this, but let's just be conservative here— an hour every single week scrolling through 1 of 10, not when we need a video, not when we need packaging. We just scroll through to see what catches our attention. We screenshot it and we save it. We use like a Notion board. It's very simple, drag and drop. It's very, very basic. But we are just grabbing this when it catches our attention, not when we need it. So we're developing— it's why I call it the wrapping paper library. We're developing this wrapping paper library So when we do have a video that we do know what the problem and solution are, we then look at what wrapper is going to wrap this best to make it most appealing to my audience.

Yes, this is awesome. Okay, so this is packaging in terms of hook on Instagram, title thumbnail on YouTube. Okay. And then you get into the structure, you're delivering the content. I've noticed this, and maybe you can help the audience with this. There's certain people when they speak, the audience listens. And there's other people where, you know, I don't know what it is and it's hard to put your finger on this, where they're not magnetic, they don't have that delivery. And so what do you say to the person who's maybe not gifted on camera when they're talking? You know, they speak in a way where— is there certain strategies or tactics you would advise that? Because I know you help entrepreneurs all the time with their content. And when they're talking, do you ever see the guy who's kind of dead behind the eyes and monotone, and you're like, who is going to watch this video?

Yeah, you know, I have an interesting take. One, I think the thing that causes people to be magnetic towards you and want to listen to you the most is the shit you've done in the past. It's what I said at the top. It's the credibility that you have. All these characters that you're mentioning, I guarantee they did something fucking big in their past, right? Or recently. So that's one big one. I just realized I didn't ask you, can we— can we say the F word?

Yeah, you're okay. Bro asked if he could curse, 17 curses in. Yes, you're allowed. We did have one complaint, but it's okay.

That's so funny. The other thing that I do think about is I think so many people think that delivery is creating this caricature, right? It's putting on a performance and Again, I'm not the guy that's gonna teach you how to go viral. I'm the guy that's teaching you how to build real trust with your customer base. I think if you try to put on all these tactics of how to communicate, you're less likely to stick with it. So I actually encourage people to figure out who you are, who you truly are and how you communicate. And proper delivery is just removing all the things that keep you from showing up that way. I truly believe more than ever before, who you are as a human is the number one reason why you're going to stand out more and more as we go further into all the AI-generated content, right? Everyone's talking about building a personal brand. More and more people are gonna be making content online. The information is the interchangeable commodity, but the thing that actually makes somebody stick with you is you, the human. And so if you are monotone, maybe you're not gonna have as big of an audience, But I would encourage you, be that because it's the thing that you're going to actually stick with. The only way you win the game of personal branding is if you actually play the game for a long time. And so many people, I believe, aren't building a personal brand. They're building a prison. They're becoming a prisoner to this thing that they— this character that they've made online, talking about things they don't care about, trying to be charismatic in a way that they normally aren't in everyday life. And they hate it. Like, I'm sure some of you probably see a content day on your calendar and get a pit of anxiety or stress. You're like, ugh, right? I have met with thousands of people who are tired of what they have built. And so I think there's little tactics that you can get to improve your delivery. But the number one thing that I encourage people to do is lean in fully to who you actually are. I am a nervous kind of anxious character, and I bring that out in my content. I call it out all the time, right? Like, I will always address that, and I make sure that I share that, because what a lot of people would think is that's going to make people listen to me less. And sure, some people maybe, but the people who relate to me, who are also like, yeah, I too am anxious about being in front of the camera, that sounds awful, they actually double down. They get closer with me. They're more attached to my brand, not less.

So obviously not in the hook, but you would if you hate making content or you're anxious about doing it, would you actually say that in the video?

100%.

So you're like, whatever your hook is, you know, if you're feeling like this, I'm with you. I actually have a solution for this. By the way, I actually don't like making these videos, but I'm doing it anyway to help people. Like something like that.

You could say something like that. The way that I usually do is I try to inject it organically. So maybe my first point is around, you know, there's actually a video on my YouTube channel. It's called, if you struggle with making content, please watch this. I would recommend if you struggle with watching content, please watch it. It is really, I think, very useful. But in that video, one of my points is, you know, overcoming the fear of showing up on camera. And I immediately call out the fact that like, I'm terrified. Trevor is filming me at a Chevron gas station right now. I filmed it out in the wild, in the real world, and I'm literally like thanking the clerk as I'm buying a Red Bull and then turning to the line or to the camera and delivering a line. And my line is like talking about how scared I am doing this, right? And so, I believe that like you could do it very on the nose. You can also have it be a little bit more integrated into your outline or whatever, but I like calling those things out. I like sharing. Let's go here for a second. I believe that the best way to build proximity, to get closer with your audience, is to give them more at-bats to connect with you. There's a podcaster out there that people either love or hate, but he's huge, Joe Rogan. And he has done an incredible job about talking about so many different subject matters. So he gives his audience so many different ways to connect with him, right? If you like MMA, if you like politics, if you like conspiracy theories, if you like human optimization, you're probably gonna like what he has to say. If you like all of those, you're probably a super freak fan. Right? You care about anything that he has to say. And so a big thing that I'm always trying to do is bring out the little personal details of myself, my interests, my fears, my values, my preferences, so that the audience can connect with those things. Anyone who is anxious making content, hearing me talk about that, they're going to relate to me more. If they then hear me talk about how obsessed I am with my 3 Harley-Davidsons, or the fact that I love to go to hardcore shows and get punched in the face, If they're into those things, they really fuck with me after that, right? And so it's just, it's stacking values and interests so that your audience has more ability to get closer.

Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the best ways to stand out on short form today is to just insert the thing that you are interested in in the content, but they are completely unrelated. They're disparate. So like, for example, you love cooking But you see the person teaching personal brand while cooking. There's a gal, I can't remember her name right.

It's Sarah Snow.

Sarah Snow.

I fucking love her. She's the best. Everyone should follow Sarah Snow on Instagram. She's incredible.

She's so into cooking, but she included cooking in this. Well, her videos are cinematic and it looks cool because she's also a filmmaker. But like, okay, let's get a more practical example. I was talking to Chris yesterday and Chris is golfing and I was like, bro, he brought a videographer with you. And I was like, dude, you need to teach some of these topics about real estate and investing and buying these properties and the programs available in Texas while golfing. So like, I was like, you're literally picking up the clubs and, and you were like, you could tie the two together with a, with this drive that you have to make. And then, you know what, this is also kind of like this program where it's kind of like you can connect the two. And I noticed people do this at the gym. So whatever the thing is and it has to— and the more unrelated, the better.

Yes. The most interesting people in life have two completely unrelated things.

This is contrast.

Yes, it makes people very interesting. Uh, here's a couple of things on this point. So yes, it makes the content interesting also for the viewer, but here's what I would argue is the more important point. I believe— walk with me here— I believe branding is just simply a pairing of things, and good branding is an intentional pairing of relevant things consistently. So many of us are branding content creation in a negative way because we film it in an environment that we hate. We have a videographer behind the camera that we don't like, that makes us frustrated, that makes us feel self-conscious, that doesn't make us feel like what we're saying is actually good. And so by filming on the golf course, or for me, that video I just mentioned, I'm riding my Harley-Davidson during the video. I loved making that video. You're pairing content creation with something you love, and if you do that consistently, the byproduct is a brand. The association of content creation changes. You suddenly start to enjoy it.

So we need to pair things with our interests.

Yeah, like, I, I am really crazy with this one. Like, this is what I optimize. Like, everybody that I've worked for, every client that we work with, this is what I actually optimize almost more than brand positioning is number one, I'd say this, and then content strategy is number three, is the film environment. Like, we make sure that this is an environment that you get energy from, not drained. We make sure that the person running the camera you actually really like. A great example of this is Wednesday this last week. I had an insane day. I had back-to-backs all freaking day, starting at 8 AM all the way until the end of the day. And then Trevor and I were going to go film a video afterwards, which was insane. And I could tell he was nervous, like, yo, are you going to have enough energy by the end of the day? And I told him, I was like, dude, that's the thing that's pulling me through the day. I love filming with Trevor, with Trevor specifically, not just filming videos, but I love filming with Trevor. I love just shooting the shit with him, just talking for fun. And because of that, when I see a film session on the calendar, I don't get anxious or stressed. I get stoked. I'm building the brand of filming. We bring my favorite beverages and snacks on set every time. It sounds silly, but it is wildly useful. I've done this for every single person that I have filmed with, and it has changed the game in how they look at film sessions. They start to look forward to it.

Yeah, Sour Patch Kids.

Boom, there you go.

Boom, there you go.

So a little gnarly though, because, you know, you might be given the— yeah, yeah.

So these are just ways to make it remove the friction from creating content. And we're going to get into some questions from you guys. I know we got a little bit of time here. We're going to do questions and then afterwards, if you want to come jam with Caleb, he'll hang around for a little bit before we go to lunch here. But I want to get into a few things with interests. I have found, and you could tell me your opinion on this, that most people have interests. Obviously, they're not just a one-dimensional person and they're hiding the thing that would honestly connect them with the most people. So, um, Gio, you remember last time we had Pat Flynn here? And if you look at Pat Flynn's videos, he's got like Back to the Future, the background, the tchotchkes on the thing, and, and like all these nerdy things. And, and that's why Gio's a fan, like the Pokémon, all those kinds of stuff. Somebody else may not be, and they don't even notice that. But the guys who notice it become like your best fans. They share your stuff, they become evangelists, because— and the thing has nothing to do with the content. So I'm just thinking like if you are into skateboarding now, I guess one way to do it is like actually skate while you're doing this while teaching. But that's tough. You might injure yourself and it's noisy. What if the board is just in the background, like on the wall, you know, while you're teaching that your brand is now unique. So you're teaching the same thing. So I just think one way to differentiate in the sea of sameness is not necessarily burdening yourself with, man, I can't come up with a really, really unique solution. My solution is only kind of unique. And the way I'm saying it is not that different than where Neil or Susie or Sally said it, but I got skateboards in the background. I got like— so packaging could just be the setting, or you are the biggest Dallas Cowboys fan like my brother. What if he wears the Dallas— dang, bro, he got one person here.

Tough life, tough life. Go Hawks! Go Seahawks, bro! Seahawks! Damn right.

I made a big bet on the Seahawks this year, uh, made a lot of friends.

Good. Do it again next year. Yes.

Um, so Dallas Cowboys. Oh yeah, so Dallas Cowboys. What if he wore the hat in this content?

Like, some weird references. Yeah, some you can reference it.

Yeah, something weird about guys especially, and this is probably for women too, is like, uh, they're like really cool with people who like the same teams. Like, you're just instant friends. So you just bypass a lot of the trust building by just including that in the content.

100%, or the music you like, the books that you like to read. You know, if you're reading those trendy smut books or whatever and you want to bring those into your content.

What? Hold on a second. What's a smut book?

I'm not going to describe it. I'm going to let you guys look it up.

What is that? Did you?

It's a big thing right now. It's a big—

I don't even know.

Yeah, you got to listen to Alex Cooper talk about it.

Oh, dang, bro. So you guys ever see the Get Ready With Me, all these different things? Those influencers are into certain things and they're doing— they're teaching while doing it, talking about something totally different while teaching. So this is great packaging ideas. So we're going to get into some questions, but I want to make sure that everybody here just feels more empowered. It is a personal brand. We're here, we're leveraging our interests, we're leveraging standing out from people. This whole theme of the weekend and in our event coming up is Escape the Middle. I feel like average is just kind of dead. And being punished, and excellence or intention is being rewarded. And so if you just do a few things, like it doesn't have to be like, oh, I'm going to become a whole new person and do this. Like, no, just like start making some intentional tweaks with the way you package the content. You will stand out. This is— it's not as far-fetched as some of you might think. So how many in the room have a question or something about your specific content strategy that you want Caleb to answer? We can do it live right now. That'd be cool for, for Q&A. We can get into it. We'll go with Aaron first over here. Let me get a mic over to Aaron and then we could film the question as well.

So talking about filming in your environment that you like, how do you keep that from draining what you love? Great question. Great question. Not overdoing it. So I am fortunate and I think a lot of people in here have multiple environments that they enjoy, right? I love being on my Harley. I love being out in nature. I also am one of those weird characters who gets wildly excited by cool Airbnbs. And so I'm constantly like, if you go to my YouTube channel, you'll see that we're always in a different setting. It won't always be that way, but I'm in my first— now entering my second year of making content. So I'm optimizing for actually sticking with this, not for anything other than that. Like, my main goal is just to keep doing it. And so I'm constantly booking cool new Airbnbs in new locations because I know that that's something that I enjoy. And so I think there's that part.

You're booking, uh, an Airbnb for the purpose of batch creation, uh, or like, yeah, work.

And for most people, they would do batching. Uh, we're psychotic and we do a lot of 3-hour, 4-hour, 5-hour, 6-hour long videos on YouTube. So it's batching but for one video.

But yes, to that point, essentially same concept.

100%. Yeah, exactly. So that's something where I know myself and I know what I get out of that, right? What I would say is, to Neil's point earlier, you don't always have to be skateboarding. You can have the elements in the background. You can mention them, right? You can figure out— I don't know skateboarding very well, but I know there's wheels, trucks, and other things like that. Maybe you can use it as an analogy, right? I'm always trying to inject these things. The majority of my videos, you don't see a Harley in the background. I'm not wearing a Harley shirt, but I almost always somehow figure a way to mention it, right? And so that's the way that I'm trying to get my interest in. Great question. Thank you.

Who had another question over here? So you say to package your content with something that you love, but what about package it with something that you're maybe doing a journey of like a 75-day hard or training for a marathon or something like that? Do you think that would still work the same?

I, I love doing it. Here's the key. I think a lot of people And actually, I'm so glad that you said this so I can clarify. A lot of people may hear what we're talking about here and think they need to make an entire piece of content on their interest. The big thing that we're talking about here is injecting the interest into the content. So I have a ratio that I talk about that I think a lot of you should do. 75% of your content should be niche-wide. 20% should be niche, and then 5% is going to be personal content. But it's not that 5% needs to be a solo piece about it. It's just that you're injecting it. So for example, whatever you're teaching or educating your audience on, I think that absolutely could happen vlog style, Casey Neistat style throughout your day as you do 75 Hard. If you guys study Casey Neistat, if any of you do like vlog style content, I really recommend looking at Casey through this lens. What a lot of people don't realize is Casey is communicating one core message throughout his whole video, but it takes place when he's in his office, then he goes for a run, then he's at a meeting, then he's, you know, in the back of a cab or something like that, right? Traditional vlogging would just have all of those be their own moments, but the best version is taking the one core message or problem that you're helping people solve and carrying that throughout your day. And if 75 Hard is something you're doing, then when you're going rucking or whatever, you could be having a, you know, an Osmo camera and do a selfie moment like that. That could be something very interesting. I love things like that.

And this is the thing, like people had the question before we brought this up in the intro. Should you niche down and only talk about this? Or, you know, there's other people like, you are the niche, you should be whatever you want to be. And then like it turns into a variety show sometimes.

I think the majority of hardcore black and white advice is wrong because all of this has so much more nuance to it. So I believe that you want to be making really deep content. So 75— I said it wrong earlier, sorry, rewrite it. 75% of your content should be deep content. 20% should be niche-wide. 5% should be personal. Niche-wide is it's going to service my ideal customer and customer-adjacent individuals. Let me give you an example. The content, the, the video that I mentioned earlier, if you struggle with making content, please watch this. That is a niche-wide video. All of my ideal customers struggle with this. I'm talking like the big dog CEOs that are making the big videos that are getting millions of views. They struggle with making content. And so the video serves them, but it also serves a much wider person in my niche. It also serves the dad and mom who are posting photos for their friends of their family. And they're afraid about that. And so it's, it's clearly gonna serve my ideal customer, but it also serves more people within that niche that maybe aren't gonna be customers right now, but I want them in my world for when they will be. Does that make sense? It was a great question. Thank you.

Who had another question over here? If we're making, like, say my YouTube channel is for buyers and sellers in like Toronto, then am I making like a vlog style of like coming to the Forward event where maybe that would be more agent-centric focused? Like, does it need to be niche towards Like, that is a great question.

So many people make content that attracts more of the people doing what they do, not your customers. And so again, it comes back to always thinking through what are the problems that they are facing and how do I help them solve it? Like, I, I will just keep repeating that until the day I die. That's all we do when we make content is literally thinking, what are the problems that you guys are facing with your brand positioning, with your content strategy, with your media team? And then how do we make it as easy as possible to solve it? I'll give you guys a little golden nugget here, but this is very heady, so please walk with me here and then ask me follow-up questions on this. I make educational content is a statement that a lot of people make, but the reality is, is that education is a byproduct. Okay? Education means behavior change. They took action. So what we're actually saying is we make content with the goal of behavior change. I make a video that for Neil might be educational and for Sarah might be entertainment because Neil did something different afterwards and Sarah didn't. Does that make sense? And so if you know this to be true, it tells you what to do in your content. All you need to do. Literally the only thing that you need to optimize for is making it as easy as possible for your audience to understand the actions they need to take to solve the problem. Which means that half of the bullshit graphics that you guys are doing or seeing in YouTube videos makes it harder because it actually distracts the audience from knowing what they need to do, okay? And so every decision you make in your outlining, in your filming, and your editing whether it's a short or a YouTube video, needs to be, does this make it easier for the audience to understand what they need to change afterwards in their thinking or their actions? If you do that, you will make content that is actually useful, that actually helps people, not just makes you sound smart, but actually gets people real results.

When you think about putting it out there in terms of, okay, I want to come up with these things and, and like a lot of this, I, I feel like for the average person is gonna be like, well, okay, practically, Neil, how do I do this? So when you're working with a new client, and just so you know, when Caleb keeps saying, hey, I'm not the guy who's gonna tell you to go viral, I'm the guy who's gonna help you make content that actually gets you clients, that is important. I think everybody here wants to make an impact on their business, but I also know that for their, whether it's ego or, or even just a practicality, we are also optimizing to reach more people and Incidentally, you're not trying to go viral, but you accidentally go viral. You know, like if you look at Caleb's content, I don't think you meant to go viral, but you do.

It's like Phil Jackson's philosophy with the Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers. They did not optimize for winning. They optimized for brotherhood. And if you have true brotherhood on a team, winning takes care of itself. I don't optimize for going viral. I optimize for solving your problems. And by doing that, you're more likely to want to consume my content in the future.

And that makes it go viral. By accident.

Get views, yeah.

Get views, yeah. He just didn't like the term. Okay, I got you. So, and I get it, 'cause I don't like that either. It's just clickbait almost at this point. Okay, so practically you're working with the client. They have some ideas, they have knowledge to share. They don't understand packaging at all. They've been, they're an expert, they're a thought leader in their industry. And they come to you, Caleb, and they say, help me, bro. What do I do? And they're thinking about, I want to start with Instagram, I want to start with short-form content, I want to put it out and I want it to, to be packaged in a way where people will receive it. What is like your process that you take that client through? Because I know it's a big, long question, but like, how does that person start? Because I think some people here maybe went down the wrong road or they're restarting their personal brand right now and they want to know, hey, could you tell me the right way to go so that I don't climb this mountain and then realize they climbed the wrong mountain?

Yeah, well, to be clear, that's never really the case with our clients because I'm, I'm very self-aware and I know I'm not a fire starter. I'm gasoline on a fire. If even if you bring me a little lighter, I just need a little flame and then I can get it going. So I rarely take people from 0 to 1. It's usually like the—

maybe like they're posting content, but they're not getting results essentially. And that's why they came to you.

Well, if they're starting from zero and they're literally beginning, I'm actually not going to try to optimize anything other than them showing up. I'm going to do what I did with myself, right? What I did in the first year is we did not have any single number in mind for views or subscribers. Like, in the back of my head when we put the course out, I was like, God, if we get 10,000 views on this in 2 or 3 years, I will be like ecstatic. It has 850,000+ views right now on YouTube. It's crazy. It's insane. I never could have imagined. And so I think so many people are— they're, they're like getting into— it's like getting into lifting, right? I don't know if you guys know who Chris Bumstead is, but he was, uh, I think he's won the Mr. Olympia like 6 or 7 times. It's like crazy. He's jacked out of his mind. And if I go into the gym tomorrow and I try to do Chris's routine, I'm going to break every limb imaginable, right? And I think so many people who get into content look at the top dogs, the people I've worked for, other amazing individuals, and they try to replicate what they have done. And that is a losing formula. And so I would encourage you, pick one primary platform that you're going to focus on. Okay? This is your main platform. For us, it was YouTube. I just wanted to build an insane amount of trust with y'all, and I believe that trust is, uh, expedited by the amount of problems that I can help you solve in a short amount of time. And so I'm trying to do that. Instagram was going to be our second, and LinkedIn was going to be our third. Very quickly. And this is coming from the guy who has, you know, been on the teams and led the teams that are the highest volume out there. And I told Trevor, I was like, we're not going for volume at all. We're going to do one YouTube video a month and we're going to try to get an Instagram post and a LinkedIn post out a week, and that's it. And I was like wanting to put all of my effort into the pieces of content. The point being, I picked a number that felt realistic stuck with it, and the moment that I had capacity to increase it, we're increasing it. We're gonna double our output on YouTube this year. And guess what we'll do in the next year? We'll probably double it from there. The biggest thing that so many people get hung up on is they think that they need to start at the volume that they aspire to be at from day one. It doesn't matter where you start as long as you every month, every 2 months, every 3 months, whatever your cadence is, are increasing the amount that you do. So I think that's a big one. I also would say that in the beginning, you wanna do a lot of volume. Contrary to what I just said, you should do volume. This is a moment where it's like, you know, uh, listen to what I say, not what I do. I've been making content for other people. It had been 16 years when I started making my own content, so I understood this. I had met in just 2024 alone over 1,000 business owners that were asking me questions and sharing their problems. I knew what I needed to make, but a lot of you don't know what you need to make. And so you need to utilize what I call the accordion method. You need to use the expansion phase where you do way more volume It's like an accordion, an accordion, right? And so you're gonna expand it, do more volume, not to show up everywhere and bug all your friends on Instagram, but to get data. You need data on what your audience wants more of. So if you post more, you're gonna get that data quicker, right? And in the beginning, what this looks like is every video averages 103 views and then one video gets 417. And that's your data that your audience wants more of that one. And that's what you have to go off of in the beginning. And then over time, you can start to add in all the optimization. But I, like, whenever I meet with somebody, I am telling them, like, keep it as simple as possible. It's just like fitness. If you try and track every macro calorie and you do all the crazy workouts and you do the red light sauna and all this shit, it's just overwhelming. It's like, let's just get the habit of going into the gym first.

Yeah, we did once a month, then biweekly, and then now we're on weekly.

That's incredible. I'm going to try to catch, but it's hard. Oh, so hard.

Like you think, oh, once a week, no big deal. It is a lift. And we had to bring in someone to help, you know, on the team. So if you're trying to start with weekly, you know, it's like, oh, that doesn't sound like much. You will fall off. So I think what Caleb's saying is like, hey, let's pick something more sustainable. And then stick with it. I would rather see someone continue to show up 52 weeks a year than come go hard for 2 months and then we never see them again, which is what happens normally.

That's the majority. Yeah. Yeah. Or, or you build something and 18 months, 24 months later you're like, what the hell have we been doing? Like, I don't even know if this is working or not.

Yes. Chasing the wrong metric. Okay, so we'll do one question from Cap and then, guys, is this helping you content-wise? Awesome, dude. Thank you again for being here. This is awesome.

Thank you.

Hey Caleb, thank you. Um, so I feel like my YouTube's like this mixed bag of tricks. I've tried a bunch of stuff and I was doing Shorts and I got really good traffic with it and got a bunch of subs, but now it's like, what do I do with it? Should I go back and hide those, delete them? Should I like, or just keep plowing through it? It's like a dead audience basically. Yeah.

What is your goal?

My goal is to go direct consumer is what I'm trying to do. Teach wealth tips, debt elimination, tax advantage.

Um, and are you wanting to do that via long form? Yes. Okay, so a big trap that we see a lot of people fall into, and I'm gonna give a qualifier in a second, please wait for the qualifier, but a lot of people make Shorts on YouTube, and I've seen channels who get— and I know you've seen this too— a million, 2 million, 3 million subscribers. It's crazy. And then they upload a long-form video, 13 views. I'm not— here's the qualifier. I'm not saying don't make Shorts on YouTube. I am. We do it. I think it's great. But I would highly encourage you to take a break for a second from Shorts and focus on long-form. The thing that we have started to notice over the last couple of years is People just want more of what they consumed. Whatever brought them into your world, they just want more of. This is why I don't like chasing virality, because when you chase virality, you talk about stupid shit that you don't care about, like your Starbucks order. Unless you're really into it, talk about it by all means, if that's an interest of yours, right? But a lot of people will do their, you know, fast food order or whatever, not because they want to actually share it, but because they've been told by some agency that it's going to get views. But guess what all those viewers want more of? That. Exactly. And so it's the same, not only in topic and subject matter, it's also in format, right? If they're consuming short form, like, have you guys ever like actually scrolled through YouTube Shorts before? A lot of people actually haven't. Uh, it is a totally different psychology. I don't even like to think of it like it's YouTube. I literally like to think of it like it is a separate platform. I'm sure this will change. I remember back in the day everyone was saying, don't make Shorts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I do think Shorts are important, but for you, with what you've articulated, I would say you need to focus on long form for the next 3 months. And then when you can, cool, upload Shorts, but that needs to be what you optimize around. That's what I've done. I optimize around long form all day, and I believe it has led to a lot of really good results. Awesome. Thank you.

Yeah, this is great. So guys, if you're watching or listening, I'm going to— I'm going to talk to the YouTube audience now. Okay. So if you're watching or listening, hope you got value from this. Let us know what questions you have from things you brought up, because I read every single comment and I want to inform me for the future videos that we put out on this channel. If you want to connect with Caleb, his links are going to be in the description. If you want to get that crazy lead magnet, we'll put it in the description. And also, do you think like I've noticed this This is a problem and it's a great question to end with. I see a video take off on YouTube and I see a video sometimes take off on Instagram that doesn't lead to follower growth or subscriber growth. And this is maybe unique problem now. Used to be like a year ago when one took off, you would see your account grow. And now like I don't feel like people hit the button. Should we be asking, like, should I be like intentionally asking in the video, hey, I noticed most of you guys aren't subscribed to the channel, but you're watching. Please hit the subscribe button, you know, or like, do you even care about doing that?

I think you can. I think this is one of those things that it's like, it's, it's not good or bad. I never will do it. Um, because I just always want my, my work to do the talking and the asking for me. If I did a good enough job helping you solve a problem, you're going to subscribe. I look at these things, the followers, the subscribers, not as something to optimize around, but as an indicator that they want more. So just because a video got a lot of views, it may have solved a problem, but maybe they didn't feel like they want you to solve their future problems. They were just like, I just needed this and that's it.

So if you do want to optimize, because people will come to me typically like, hey, I want to double my account size. I'm like, well, followers don't matter. Remember we said that? They're like, yeah, I get it, but I still want it. I'm like, okay, well, you know, you don't— you just need— you just need this. Like, no, I still want that because it's a vanity metric and it does get you in certain conversations and stuff like that. So I'm like, okay, fine. How would you create a piece of content that's optimized for follower growth?

I think so. I don't do that, but I think what I do is— I almost said doo-doo. What I try to do is I try to preview future things that I can, or future problems that I can help you solve, right? So I'll be sharing, for example, we're probably at some point this year gonna— this is something we've been doing behind the scenes with clients that maybe I'm gonna bring out into the public, which is a whole thing around world building. I think the most— one of the most important things you can do is build a strong world that you invite people into. And so, I will do like what I just did right there, right? I will tease future shit. I literally just actually did it, like, without realizing it. I'm constantly going really deep on my content, but the thing is, is I've been in this shit for a long time, and so there's so many levels to it that I can preview something that I'm gonna help solve in the future, and I do tend to believe that a lot of people subscribe so they don't miss that if I mention their painful problem that they're currently dealing with.

So if you're feeling stuck in this sea of sameness, I'm going to be doing future videos on how to position yourself to just stand out and more importantly, dominate the competition, optimizing for more customers, creating content that actually brings you clients. So stay tuned for that and we'll see you on the next video.