More Followers Won't Make You Rich, But This Will

I have zero desire to become famous for the sake of being famous. Like, none. There's actually just a lot of costs with that. What I wanted was business owners. And so we tested out actually the last 90 days. So leading up to 2 weeks ago, I made almost exclusively very wide content. So it was like relationship stuff. We made fitness stuff like food, you know, food video. We made like, you know, advice to my younger self, like things like that. And so we got more overall views. But in terms of throughput from those views to high-quality like applications into the business or just even book sales, which I use as like kind of a looser metric for quality of eyeballs, went way down. And so we have completely, like, so one of the big shifts I'm doing is I'm basically making almost exclusively business content now. So I mean like I have no marriage to anything. Like if relationship videos is what would generate the most business owners, 'cause there's this theory in the, in the content world that like, so there's, there's two theories that I, at least the data that we looked at just completely didn't agree with, which was one is that Shorts viewers become Longs viewers. And I just haven't seen that. Like I hear it all the time, but when I looked at it, that just wasn't the case. People who watch Longs want more Longs. People want Shorts, watch more Shorts. Caveat, if you find me in Shorts in one platform, but you're a YouTube Longs viewer, then you might watch my YouTube long view, like, content. And so, but it's like, if you only watch YouTube Shorts, you're not going to become a longs viewer. You will just keep watching whatever you normally consume. So people have consumption preferences by platform. And so I kind of see them as they're like in separate tracks in terms of bringing people in. For the CTA, like the give to ask ratio, right? As soon as you start running ads, in my opinion, everything becomes gives and then the ads do all the asking for you, which will help you out as a content creator. 'Cause then it's like I'm just trying to push as much value as I possibly can. In Shorts, I do zero CTAs. Stories I do think is appropriate for CTAs. I don't think it hurts your reach. And so if you do like one or two of those a week, I don't think that's gonna hurt anything. Longs I see as somewhat different in that it depends on the CTA. And so if I was like, I see me providing free stuff as also gives. And so me having a CTA for free stuff, I don't see as a take from the audience. And so the reason that I have the books, for example, that are free on the site and free on my podcast and whatnot is so that it's like it's free. You can have it if you want to. And if there's alternative formats where they can do it like for a fee, then that's because of their consumption preference. But if you're broke, then use whatever. And so the TL;DR of this is that I think you can absolutely have CTAs in content that drive to stuff that's, as long as it's relevant in how you integrate it, I think it actually works fine. So like my number 1 YouTube video across my whole channel has a 14-minute CTA at the end. Number 1 video.

What do you define as your CTA though? Because I think CTA, some people have this perception that it's like, go do this now, click my link. But what is— what does that CTA mean for you?

So I say, if you're a business owner who's trying to scale, I've got books and courses that you can check out at acquisition.com. If you're someone who's, you know, trying to start a business or get started, I put all these resources together for you, and you can start, you know, you can start on school. And so I just do that.

So you just point them towards your free stuff, not even just to buy?

Yeah, just for my organic. Now ads then turn around and just scoop. So like by, I mean, all ads are CTAs. So like that's, that's, so I basically, you chunk up a level and then you think about the give-ask ratio across everything people see. And so ads now take up a percentage of what people are gonna see in the marketplace. And so I have to compensate for that ask with give. Does that make sense? Now the gives that I have, I still have CTAs for free stuff so they can still, you know, join the email list and they still might buy books or whatever it is. But that's been the evolution of now that we run ads with school. I was like, okay, I have to compensate for that.

You've seen Hormozy's ads, right?

You want to win $1,000? I'm giving it to you for free. I want $1,000 too.

That's how they scoop up, right? Like you've engaged with something of Hormozy's, so the ads follow. Yeah.

Yeah. So I see the purpose of organic as getting free, free facial recognition. And ideally, like at the coldest edges of this, it's how many people recognize my face. That in and of itself is gonna create higher CTRs, higher conversion rates, and at higher prices. One level underneath of that is people who recognize my face and have gotten some sort of positive experience with the content that I had. Even if it was just one video, they're like, you know, I did like that video that guy made. Cool. Like the next level is like, they also know my name. You know what I mean? And then belief that is like, oh, I watch a lot of his stuff like all the time and I'm a regular. Viewer, right? So there's these circles of awareness. And so the purpose of content as I see it is like Shorts absolutely have ROI, just way more with ads than they do with like trying to take a Short and then like provide value and have CTA. Really tough. Yeah, really, really tough. And so I don't even do it.

Because I throw in, you can't even, I don't even mention the community in my Shorts. I'll just like talk about a relevant subject in that's involved in the community. Then I'll be like a meals video. I do a grocery haul. If you want recipes for these meals in like the last 3 seconds, It's only 5% of the people who watch the video all the way through get to there, but the conversion's still pretty good.

So I, me personally, just cuz like this is how I think, I put it in the, in the description and I put it as like first comment and I, and I have it in profile. And so I kind of see it as like if someone wants to take the next step, they'll, they'll immediately be able to do that. And that way, like I might get 10 times the views by not having 3 or 4 more seconds where people want to dip. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's, that's the trade that I make in terms of short content. In terms of what we do on Instagram, we just do reels right now for the most part because they just get the most views in terms of new audience. I do see like a picture on Instagram as like an email now. So if you've ever seen it, like you'll get way more likes and way more like, and you'll almost like, at least for me, I get like guaranteed reach, but it goes to no one new. And so it's like if there's a picture of me or doing something, whatever, or carousel, I basically almost like guarantee way higher reach just within people who know who I am. And so I think those are like, you market with the reels and what the platform is saying, like this is what we're gonna show to new people right now. But then I make, you could make your kind of like CTAs with the images. Does that make sense?

So it's like nurturing through the, like pictures more nurture your audience rather than— Exactly, exactly.

Is that why you do your tweets as reels?

Yeah, yeah, they bang too. They're really good.

Yeah, they crush. Yeah, super high leverage.

One thing we've seen a lot of client success with on organic CTAs, like if you have to do organic, if you can't run paid ads, but you also need CTAs to make money, is instead of offering more, like instead of here's this one recipe, if you want more, go to my school group, offer custom. So like I can make custom recipes based on your macros. Because like if you're on organic, there's an infinite amount of more content. Like they can just keep scrolling. Really good. But to get custom, they have to go through your thing. And if you offer like one-on-one coaching or group coaching or whatever, like that's their option to get custom. It's cool.

'Cause you over— more is overused.

Like everyone says you can get more. Yeah.

Really good.

So how do you give, um, something custom to each member if you really wanna scale to like 1,000+ members?

Group calls, small groups is good.

Customs.

Good.

How close does your content need to actually be to the people that you're trying to find? So if you're trying to find business owners and now you're going broad, and now you guys will talk about going like you're doing loads of different things, but if you're just trying to find like—

oh, I stopped. That's the point of me doing that 90-day test is I'm not doing that anymore. Yeah.

So if now you, you now you know what you know, if you had to go back in time to find businesses, only businesses, to get them onto Skool, to build a platform on Skool, how would you do that?

You make business content and business adjacent content. So I see like, I see personal development as like one step below but still adjacent, like productivity stuff I see as adjacent to business. I see like time management, well, time management's kind of like productivity, like things like that I see as both wide but still semi-relevant to the audience. Um, but the idea that like I do a relationship video and then business owners also have relations— like, it's, it's too many steps to get the right people because it's really just people who consume relationship stuff just want more relationship stuff, which I have no desire to make.

The thing is, what I struggle with the most— obviously everyone here probably doesn't because you've gone through— is like that, that first kind of step to start when you are like, who am I? Who's this guy? Like, why is he talking to me? Like, so when you click on a profile that has zero followers and zero views, like, is it just the content that you're saying? The words need to carry your profile, and that's the only thing that's going to build that trust with you and the client to get them over to fill out a form. It's just evidence. It's just— so how do you— sorry, how would you use someone that has business experience and background with results to then showcase that to get them back?

You use that in the profile to edify who you are. It doesn't come across arrogant and like So there's, I mean, there's different, like one of our big marketing laws my team can tell you is state the facts and tell the truth. Just like, it's just like that's the big bold thing. And underneath of that, it's say what no one else can say and show what no one else can show from a marketing perspective. And I do that in ads, I do that in content. It's like, state the facts and tell the truth. Say what no one else can say, show what no one else can show. 'Cause there's always things that you have unique to your brand that only you can show. A lot of people just don't, Show it. And there's things that you can say that no one else is saying.

So your unique selling proposition?

No, not even. This is just for, just for proving who I am, right? So it's like even, even when I had like, like to your point, like, how's it like you see me now? But like when I started in the gym space, I was a very, very small fish and there was like very established players who were like gym gurus who were all older than me, who all like were just older than me. Just put it that way, right? It's all way older. And so I just had to overcompensate by just being so much better than they were in terms of the content that I was putting out. And I was like, this is a model that everyone's teaching. Here's my model. Mine makes more money. I was like, it doesn't matter if he's been here forever. I was like, these gyms outcompete these gyms.

And so I feel like the only thing that I've got is I, I feel like this platform like just has this massive like opportunity for businesses, agencies, like what I've done for me. But I feel like no one else is doing that. So now I finally have something I feel like could bring to social media to showcase to people, look, I did this for myself with no following. You can too. Bring that forward.

Yeah, I mean, you put the proof. So as far as I'm concerned, the content serves the audience as the give. If they're curious for more, they will then click your profile, which is what most people do. If you see something new, you click over. Like, at least for me, that's almost always what I'll do if I see something interesting. And then the profile tell me in one snippet who this person is and why I should listen to them. And then you have your, your link or your DM or your, you know, whatever your CTA is that's in their profile. And again, you can put that as the first comment. You can put it in the description. Like you have 3 different places you can put the CTA outside of the actual content itself that I think will carry the content a lot further in my opinion.

I think, I think one thing as well that you mentioned where it's like say what no one else is saying. I feel like that for me at first was something that was very overwhelming. It's like I'm talking about wellness and eating healthy and fitness, which is the most saturated information on the internet. And so in my head I was like, okay, it's going to be kind of hard to not say what everyone else is saying, but how can I say it differently? Right? And so I think with whatever you're doing, it's like you want to be able to explain things in the most digestible form possible. That at least is something that's helped me a lot. So I speak faster than normal. Just to like, you know, keep people engaged and stuff like that. And I'd really try and dumb things down.

Did you just find ways to like distinguish or like how did you, you know, create that separation between that saturation?

So before I was making finance content, I had like this one day I just had an epiphany. I was like, dude, like how can you turn people's heads? Like these, like you need to like, I mean, unless you're like extremely professional, know what you're talking about. Like you need to be able to turn people's heads and make them listen to you. And so I was just like, dude, I'm going to start speaking faster, like really bringing the enthusiasm and passion and Big shift is how-to to how-I.

I say this a lot, but people still don't do it. Like if you say like how-to, 3 ways to blah blah blah, kind of sucks. Like everyone says it, like the amount of people's profiles that I see that have like 5 followers, they're like 6 neat tricks that just like no one gives a shit, right? It's 6 ways I helped this person do something, or 6 ways I, because the thing is, is like how is it unique? Well, there's only one of you. And you have the clients that you've worked with, like my case study stuff or videos that I make, I'm like, no one else can make this content.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. I notice it in the school games. It's like opinion pieces versus like a story about something that happened. Right. Like the worst thing, I hate it when I see someone do a post and it's like how to be successful, 6 things. I look at their profile, they've got 1 member in their group, which is them. Yeah. And they haven't even commented on anyone's stuff. So I'm like, shut up, basically, like, in my mind. Um, but then you see Evelyn, for example, say, I, over the last 30 days, I spent this much money on ads and here's what I found. And she just lays out the facts. That's the difference, right?

It's state the facts and tell the truth because no one's doing anything.

Everyone's just talking shit on the internet.

So, so if you don't have evidence— so this is for everybody who's listening who's back home So the best version of this is like, you know, I helped all these people just like you do this thing. One degree below that is like, I did this thing that you also want to do and you just are like me. And so you want the same thing. A version before that is I did this work that you're not willing to do. And so I will show you the result of that work. And so I could just as easily have a title for the YouTube video that I have for the 6 big shifts that we're making our content as like I got 8 million people across these platforms like over the last 3 years. This is what I learned. If I didn't have the proof from the 8 million, I could just say I made 35,000 posts. This is what I like. I'd be like, well, shit. I mean, he probably learned something, you know what I mean? And so like, that is the edification. And so like the action creates the proof.

For the people at home that don't want to do the actual hard thing, like they're not the expert, they don't want to do the actual hard thing. You can make an observation of like how someone else did the hard thing. And like back into their process. And then it's even more believable because like ideally you're doing it about a big person who's like really successful and the metrics are easy to, to prove and you're just like connecting the dots for the audience.

You know, when I started my channel, I had no credibility, so I talked about stoicism and what Marcus Aurelius said. It's like no one cares what I say, but people care what he said because he has the credibility. Super strong.

Yeah.

With education content, everyone wants a deal on time. So if you think of a fundamental education is it's like I spent all this time learning math and I'm going to teach it to you in less time than it took me to learn it. And so people are like, wow, I don't want to do all those 10,000 problems. Show me the 3-step way that you do it from this big thing you did. And so, I mean, I think this is how civilization moves forward, is that like it takes us all this time to learn this thing. We then distill it down. Someone starts one step further and then like, that's how you put a brick in the wall. And so like, if we are, quote, educators, which almost everybody here is, I think, is anyone here an entertainer? No. Okay. So if everybody here's an educator, then all we want to demonstrate is huge ROI on time for them. And so the more time you can show, the more cost you can show. So Evelyn did both. She's like, I spent all this time making these ads and I spent all this money doing it. And it's like, well, wow, I don't have to spend that time or that money and I can get the same lesson. This is a good deal. And then they really, they listen, they buy, and then they, they follow her or whatever.

That, that was definitely one of my biggest takeaways in the last 3 years of making content in the beginning. Cherry-picking facts and not wasting a damn second of anyone's time and just delivering the value as quick as possible is the only way, is the fastest way to build that initial audience. Because once people know who you are, then you can kind of fluff it up a little bit more because they're going to listen unconsciously. But I mean, like you were saying before, in the beginning, that portfolio, that garden of content that you're building in the beginning, it's just straight delivery, cherry-picking.

And my theory is that you keep doing that. And actually don't get fluffy. Yeah, that's like, this is what we saw in our stuff. You can because you have an audience, right? And so the idea there is if I, like, if by percent I grew the most when I treated everyone like they didn't know who I was and I had to earn every single second, it's continuing, like, the guy who dates his wife like it's at the first date on their 10 years keeps the wife, right? The one who keeps the audience is the one who treats them like they don't know who he is and he has to keep earning it every day. And so like one of the 6 shifts that we have from the 35,000 pieces of content we put out is that we are no longer doing basically what I consider branded content, meaning basically like Alex Hormozi's diet, Alex Hormozi's version of branding. Because if you don't know who I am, who gives a shit? And if the point of me making content is to get more people to find out about me, then I have to not say who I am. I have to say what I've done. And then that becomes the reference point for the content. Just as something, I mean, do whatever you want, but that's what I'm doing. So first off, I'll open up to you guys. What's been working well for you right now in terms of getting members to school off organic? ManyChat. What was that? ManyChat.

ManyChat?

So running— so you post and then have a ManyChat link and then—

yeah, just have them comment and then a ManyChat will automatically DM them the link to join.

So comment CTA.

Is this on Instagram? Yeah, I've heard many people using this successfully. Yeah.

We actually have a funnel built out. So instead of sending them straight to school, because some people can't really articulate anything, just see school. So send to a funnel.

Yeah, it just warms them up. You can send them like a lead magnet, like something free. For example, I've made this free guide for you. As well, while they see the free value, at the bottom, there'll be like the VSL there, the sales letter there. Then they're like, oh wow, 'He really helped me, so I'll join the thing.' So it warms them up for the school.

And maybe we should really— because I know this works well— maybe we should really flesh this out.

It does really work.

So first of all, you've got to have an Instagram page with the following, right? And then you post, you do a post. What are you saying? What does this post look like?

So we do direct DM CTAs, like send us a keyword. You can also do a comment. I haven't done the comment before. But it's been the most effective strategy because you can pre-automate voice messages and then at the end bring in the virtual sales letter, which is the offer.

But what is the actual post?

So basically it's like you giving free value at the start. Here's how to lose weight in 3 different ways. And then you say the free value. After that, you'd be like, I've actually made a full guide if you want more on this. So because you've already given them value, you say DM me, fat loss, um, ManyChat will see that and they will send that over to their DM. So when something's sent over to DM, it's more warm because it seems like we sent it. So when you do that, they're like, wow, this guy messaged me. They'll click it and they'll consume the free guide, allowing them to be more warm to get into your program.

So you use the comment trigger So we—

I do, if I'm on live and they comment a certain word on my live, they'll get sent a DM. If they comment a certain word on my post, even if they can spell it, we'll—

Oh, so you get it on the live too? You get a ton of— I'll bet you get a ton during the live.

Yeah, during the live. And then also if they send me a DM, um, they'll get it. So one of the— I just had one of my first posts that just went viral. Um, I actually learned this from Jose, where I'll start the post off with a hook. So the first thing I said was, this is what I would do if I had less than $100 in my name and I wanted to make $10,000 or $20,000. And so that right there just grabbed people's attention. And then just throughout the post, it was like maybe a 1-minute or less post. I just gave them free, like, game on step by step to this, that, and the third, made it real simple. You want more information about this? Comment the word deals under this post. I'm going to DM you a link to my community, and then they'll get sent to our funnel. We get their phone number, we get their email address, we get their name.. So even if they don't sign up for the school community, you have their contact information. So now they're getting text messages, they're getting emails. So we're just constantly marketing to them.

So you lead capture and then it's a school on the thank you page, like a school, like redirects after you, after they opt in.

Exactly. They'll opt in and then it'll take them to a second page and then they just, they'll collect their payment and then that'll send it over to the school community. Okay.

Got it. Understood.

To add on to what Rashida said, with the, like, Instagram Lives and TikTok Lives, what you can do is you can automate the live as well. So what we did to actually really get ourselves in this position is to go live literally twice to three times a day. And yeah, and what we did was we've give out profile reviews. So we're basically help people grow their social media. So we sent— we told them comment down, um, in the live guide, and they will like get sent the school. So we did profile like reviews. So we're like holding their profile up and reviewing it, giving them like personalized value, and people will be like, wow, I want that. And so if you want a full review, hop over to my school. We have group calls like this every single week. Imagine if I gave you this every single week, right? And speaking actually one-on-one with you. And you can run that automation through, through live as well.

I like that a lot. So either a comment CTA, which you can do on lives— I feel, I mean, me just shooting from the hip here, if you're live with a lot of people and you're saying comment this if you want it, you're going to get a ton of comments, right? And then all of them shot over to ManyChat, and then they get either the lead magnet, which was your method, or for your method, you just send them straight to the funnel to opt in. And then go to the school community after they collect, you collect a payment.

The cool one about the comment is it probably boosts the reach of the post because as soon as they comment, then it'll automatically have me send a comment under their post saying check your DM.

And it's a lower friction thing than sending a DM, I think. Yeah. Have you tested the comment one?

We haven't done the comment one yet.

That would be interesting.

Yeah, the follow-up comment's a nice little nugget too, because then you get double the comment.

What's the follow-up comment?

I missed it. So yeah, go ahead. It'll just—

so they'll comment with where it deals, and then it'll leave a follow-up comment saying, I just sent you a DM, or check your DM.

So it's like, yeah, like, you know, like you can say like in 5 minutes, like if they've seen it, in like 10 minutes they'll follow up, hey bro, how'd you go with the link? Or hey bro, how'd you go with this? Yeah, so then it like allows them to follow up.

Yeah, so check your DM comment You send the DM and then if they haven't responded yet, 5 minutes later it's like, hey, did you like it? Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you just set like a string, like a tight, like a board and it just goes. Yeah, it's, it's quite seamless.

Anyone else have any other strategies they did organic?

Yeah, go for it.

Yeah, so me just pulling out my camera and just recording, like just very non-edited raw content for some, I don't understand it. It's working very well. 2 shorts a day. I used to do long videos. That's how I started. And this is doing better. And just posting those same reels on every single social media is just doing everything.

I don't know why. I believe it. I posted a raw, uncut one the other day and it's done very, very well. I know, you know, raw and uncut. It's just bare. Anyways.

So the main way we grow— are we just talking about social media? Because we do have another— or the main way we grow our community is through free webinars. Yeah, so we do weekly webinars every week.

Email your list. Say it again. Do you email your list? How do you get people to the webinar? Yeah, free.

We'll send out emails, send out text messages, promote it on social media. My business partner has a huge following, um, so we'll do weekly webinars, and then at the end of the webinar, we offer them a bonus if they join our community. So at the end of the webinar, we're upselling into a 3 to 5 day boot camp Usually those boot camps are a few hundred dollars, but now we're telling them if you buy a ticket to enter into our school community, you'll get, you'll get a free ticket to the boot camp. And so that's the biggest way of being able to bring on a community that's been the most successful.

So the bonus is the free ticket bonus for joining school?

Joining school and then you get a free ticket to a 5-day boot camp. And the 5-day boot camp is really upselling to a high-ticket mentorship. But for those who aren't in position for the high ticket, we can still keep them in the low ticket in the school, and we're just nurturing them so they're ready for the high ticket.

So free virtual event, which is the webinar, and then from there, join my school. And if you do that, you can attend this other event that normally you'd have to pay for, but it's also free. Is that one virtual too?

Yeah, it's virtual. So the webinar is we're selling the boot camp. Okay, so yeah, we're selling a boot camp and then, okay, you get free access if you join the school.

So you do the whole pitch of selling the boot camp and say you could pay for it or just join it. One of my favorite pitch strategies.

Yeah, so that's, that's been a huge success.

Love that strategy.

So did you already have that boot camp established before you launched your school?

We did, but surprisingly a lot of people haven't really— don't know about it. The boot camp is valuable, like we just give them so So we pack so much information in those 5 days so that they don't want to miss that bootcamp. We just make sure that we make sure that— 5 days?

Yes, a 5-day bootcamp.

So do you pay for the, like, do you pay for the, like, the place where they stay or? It's virtual.

It's a 5-day virtual bootcamp. Oh, gotcha.

How's it built out on your school? Is it just like a couple different sections of the module saying bootcamp part 1, bootcamp part 2?

We just put the link on a calendar. We just have them put the Zoom links on the calendar. So you have to be in the school community to access the bootcamp.

Also, it's like interaction and co—

or pay $10,000, which they—

and then everybody that's already in the school community have access to every bootcamp every month. Cuz again, we're trying to upsell instead of high ticket.

So you hold one 5-day bootcamp every month?

3 to 5 days. Yeah.

And so that's a huge part of the delivery from the the school perspective is that they get— do they only get one or they just get that free boot camp every time?

As long as they're in the community, they can attend every boot camp.

How do you get 450 posts out in 2 days worth of effort? Like, what's your process?

Where's my guys? Work. A lot of work.

I mean, is it like writing to like then shooting?

The biggest secret weapon that I have is Twitter or X, whatever. That's actually like, no one knows that, but like everything is, so I just, I tweet all day long on X and then the stuff that does well, we then use the crap out of. So that then obviously gets me people on X. I take that, that turns into Instagram Reels. From there, I will read the Instagram Reels that I already know perform into a camera and then those become clips that also crush. Literally different format for the same thing. And then I'll take 20 of those and string them together and make them a YouTube video. And then when we caption all of the posts that we do, we use other high-performing tweets to caption the other tweets. Like my captions are just 2 tweets. It's tweet 1, which is the real, tweet 2, which is the caption, is just another tweet. So if you ever see anything written from acquisition.com or me, I wrote it. Everything. It's just all on my Twitter. And so they'll search like friendship, loyalty, sales, whatever. And there's, you know, 50 tweets about it and they'll just grab one that goes, you know, is closest with the tweet that they made for the reel. And that becomes that.

So you just like get inspired like every day you're tweeting?

Yeah. And then you just take the best one? Yeah. I wouldn't even say inspired. There's just like stuff happens and I'd be like, don't do rev shares for equity. Like don't do advice for equity. It does not work unless you're doing minuscule amounts. And even then people people hate you.

That's super interesting. So you use Twitter as the smallest friction, just proof of concept, whatever tweets do the best, you use those to create reels, generate a question from that, and then you bulk those for the bigger, higher value YouTube videos.

And there's zero penalty for tweeting a lot. The platform's built for it.

So, so what— so if you had, uh, let's say you were to start your Twitter account from zero, like, how would you start from zero? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, uh, let's say right now you basically had zero followers, zero no one knows that your power towards, your value towards scripting, how would you start a Twitter account? And would you even start a Twitter account if you already have Instagram? 100%.

I would. It's literally the core of everything I do. So yes, I'm a, so which, so I'm a writer first. People don't know this. Like the reason the books do well is like I write them. Like no one else writes. I don't have a ghostwriter. I write them. That's why they're good. And so, well, I'll say this. The reason they still sell 2 years later is 'cause they're good. Like if I had a ghostwriter, I could sell a million copies on one day because people will buy something that's associated with me, but not necessarily, they won't tell their friends about it. And that's what I want, I want the long tail. So from, if I said to start over from Twitter, I would have two proof points that I try. So one is gonna be in the description, which is like who I am, what have I done? Now if you've done nothing, then everything has to be around documenting stuff that you've, that you're actively working on. Like the, to the person who's like, here's how to like get yourself to be motivated. It's like, dude, you have three, or like, I hate this. It's like, I help people grow their, their Instagram followings and they have like 79 followers. I'm like, what are you doing? You don't pass the first check of proof. It's just like, duh, you have a Vegas sign that just says like bullshit. Description. And then because the way Twitter works, you can pin one tweet. And so that tweet, what I would have is a long tweet that's like, here's who I am, by the way. And then the tweets, everything after that is going to be consumed within that context. Do you guys database your tweets in any way for reference or you let it just search? You can search. I mean, it's searchable. Already as is. There's a Chrome extension called Tweet Hunter. Yeah. Or there's Twitter Advanced. It is all that stuff. I don't even use any. I literally like, I only have one thing that I use that just allows me to schedule tweets out because sometimes I'll think of like 3 or 4 and I'll just like, oh well, I'm not going to do them in a row, so I'll just space them out a couple hours. That's how I do it. And the clips, where do you post the clips? The, like you said, you do the reels and then you just reshoot a clip. So we do, we do different. So our content is different across YouTube Shorts. You don't need to do this. We do this. It's different on all platforms. And so YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok are the three short-form platforms that we're on right now. And so that's what we do. And then we have a couple longs per week that go out on YouTube. I do podcasts as well, which a lot of the audio from YouTube turns into podcasts. And yeah, that's like, that's the content system. We just do like 5 or 7 YouTube Shorts a day. I do, I tweet like 5 to 7 times a day. We post just, this is just my account. We do 2 or 3 Instagram Reels a day. I think we do like 4 TikToks a day. And then we have whatever one I'm missing. That one has it too. And then I have Layla. So times 2. What's the—

why do you guys have a different strategy for what you post on Instagram or what you post on TikTok?

Because Instagram penalizes you. You can't— it doesn't— like, if I posted 11 times, we wouldn't get the same— we, I mean, I'm happy to do volume, um, but no, we saw 2 to 3 was where we kind of max out.

That's what most people don't realize, like, you can't, can't spam Instagram. Cannot.

Yeah, it still functions more like a, uh, like an email list. Still compared to like Twitter and TikTok, which are more, TikTok's actually moved more in the Instagram direction, but where your stuff gets shown to followers even if it's not as good of content. But the original TikTok was like anyone could go viral because they just prioritized the quality of the content and basically followers had zero influence on who saw your stuff. And I think just based on what I'm saying, it's shifting a little bit more towards like some, like they will put your stuff towards some followers.

Do you ever— I mean, I'm sure you do— you A/B test? Let's say one tweet does well, um, you shoot— you'd say it one certain way for Reels and then a different way for YouTube Shorts, or 100%?

We remix and repurpose as much as we can. So same topic, different, different structure. If we see— if we see that a tweet does really well, then I know that that topic is interesting to people, or at least that phrasing is interesting to people. And so I'll say it direct to camera, it'll go into an email, it'll be a caption on a different platform. Like, we use the crap out of Tweets are my home base. That's the actual only direct content that I make. Everything else is multiplied from there. Yeah.

Do you have a plan to repost the same exact content over a long enough time horizon or do you?

Yeah, like greatest hits. Greatest hits. Yeah, I'm fine with greatest hits. I think we do a bad job of doing it right now. Something I was like, hey, we should maybe post this stuff again. But yeah, that's actually something that we're working on. But up to this point it's been almost entirely de novo. But yeah, so recycling like your top 10% of content and then just sprinkling that back out even once or twice a week, your greatest hits from a year ago, 'cause you have new followers to them, it's new.

How long in advance would you post it? For example, I made a piece of content that banged.

Depends on the platform. So I can take something that was a tweet from 6 months ago And I could do it again today and it'll crush the same. If I think, I think basically the more, so like Instagram I think has the longest, the longest memory and the least amount that you can post per day. Like YouTube, you just can't do it at all. Like you can't repost a video 'cause the videos kind of live forever. So like I guess YouTube would be the extreme on this side. And then Twitter is probably the shortest, shortest memory, most forgiving in terms of volume. Reuse. I'd say TikTok's like here. Yeah, exactly. So the amount of time that you— that elapses between reusing the same thing, I think it also depends on how fast you're growing.

I think your definition of repurposing is like, like sometimes reshooting as well, right? And not just reposting. Yeah. So do you just have two, or do you have more forms of reposting? Uh, sorry, repurposing.

Those are the— I mean, cross-platform, different format, and then literally just redoing the same thing and just posting an old clip again. It's like 4 different ways you can remix the same thing.

YouTube's Content ID system is really, really good because they check the copyright, right? They've got those processes built out.

You can't repost like that.

How long did you go from just you independently doing your content before you brought in the whole team and stuff? Because I like— my screen time is just outrageous, like between shooting on for reals, TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and long-form YouTube. I thought about adding Twitter last week, but like like, at this point, it's like I need to out—

how many hours? How many hours are you getting? I'm curious.

Like 9.

9 every day. And I was in school, so it was like all day, it's just like stimulation.

And so, yeah, no, I, uh, I mean, so if you've read the Leads book, I talk about agencies. There's a chapter on agencies. I— that's the strategy I use. So day one, I had agencies for everything, for content creation. And then I told them day one, like, my goal is to bring this in-house over time. And so I'm gonna learn whatever I can. And a lot of those guys, like, they don't know as much as I know now, but they knew more than I did then. And so I just learned what I could way faster and just like try to avoid like a lot of newbie mistakes. And then I just make intermediary mistakes and just had to learn how to like not make those, you know what I mean? But yeah, a lot of, for me though, like capital wasn't an issue. And so it was just like, I'm willing to pay to just almost like be accountable to making 3 YouTube videos a week or whatever it was. Yeah. And then they would like trim them, cut them, put a pack, you know, put the headline and the thumbnail on it, which I hated half the time. And I was just like, whatever, we'll deal with it later. Yeah.

I know along that same line, do you ever get tired? Like, I mean, like— Never.

I haven't slept since the '90s.

It's so much value and for so long consistent.

Like, do you ever feel like— I think it's as long as you talk about stuff that you like.. And so my team knows this and that like there's sometimes, and they're really good about it. And I think setting that precedent with the team is like, hey, I need you to come with like 10 cool video ideas. And like honestly half the time I'm like, cool, I don't wanna do any of those. I wanna talk about this 'cause it's top of mind. And so I talk about the stuff that I want to talk about. And I think so that also just kind of gives natural like kind of variety to the content in general. 'Cause I'll be like really focused on LTV stuff for a while and I'll be like, you know what, like I'll get into like there's a sales issue for one of the companies and like I'll just kind of like rewash myself into sales stuff and I get in sales mode and I was talking about sales and all my content for a little bit. And so I just kind of let that happen naturally rather than if you're like, I have to do one thing on family, I have to do one thing. Like I have, we have never had content buckets ever. If content buckets happen, it's because they have occurred more than because we planned them, which you had the observation point. This is a total side note. The amount of like Alex Hormozi breakdowns that are just completely false, I find hilarious. I'm like, oh, is that my 4 pillars? Like, I don't do any of that. And so no, it's way more— I talk about stuff that I enjoy talking about. And from a content strategy perspective, I had this roommate, brilliant, one of the 2 smartest people I ever met in my life. And he had this— he read this book and it was called Too Good to Fail. And I was like, what's your marketing strategy? He was like, that. He's like, if I just make the stuff that I have so fucking good, like if I just make it so that even if one person sees it, they will share it, then eventually I'll win. And he now runs a $100 million company. And so like, and we were roommates back then. And so I very much have taken that perspective. Like if you're brand new, you just need to make this stuff as good as humanly possible. And the reality is that it will still suck, but you still have to have that bar because you'll look at what you did 2 years ago and be like, oh my God, that was dog shit., right? But just like holding nothing back, like, and the reason I talk about that a lot is because somebody who's new holding nothing back is still like barely valuable, right? And so like people still will consume this stuff, see that you're really good, and then still pay you for help. They will. Like they will pay you for implementation. So just give away the secrets.

It does not matter. Are you happy that you're as famous as you are now?

It has pros and cons, honestly.

It has pros and cons. What's one, what's one biggest con and what's one biggest pro?

Biggest pro is that we can recruit anyone from anywhere.

That's what I want, but I don't want any attention.

Privacy is the cost of fame. Like, it's a price. Um, the con is privacy. It just doesn't exist. So like, every single time I go out to eat with Layla, I'll have 3 or 4 people interrupt us because it's the one time they're going to see me and they want to take a picture, they want to tell me about their business, and And like the first 2 times it's awesome, you know, and then like the 100th time it's like, you know, you still wanna be really excited about it because the thing is, is like I also don't want the reputation of like, yeah, I met him in person, he's a dick. And it's just 'cause like it's my 10,000th of this and it's the first time and the last time this will ever happen for you. And just trying to, and so I think on some level it actually changes your behavior because if you basically realize that everyone is recording you at all times, like mentally or literally recording you, you just, you're like, okay, I just can't have bad days.

Sorry, do you guys get that? Because like, you're obviously doing that with like, you guys are big, but like, do you get recognized, interrupted, bitches, stuff like that?

I choose to live in Alaska.

I mean, for me it's just been, I mean, it's been 10 months since I started and it's definitely like, it's like surreal at this point. Like now, just like, I'm in college, so if I go to like, I went to a college bar, I was just like, what fuck walking around. Like, yeah, it's, it's weird, but I feel like it's that trade-off you have to kind of accept, especially if you— I mean, in my head it's just like, I want to continue to grow on social media and then leverage that to grow my business. And like, if I want to do that, that's just—

yeah, it was a choice. I did it on purpose. And like, it took me a long time to get there because I was like, I really don't know if I want to do this. But it was a choice. And the one thing about it is that it is like a tattoo, is like having a kid. It is irreversible. Which is why it took a really long time to like think about whether I wanted to do it or not. So like if you have a skill and you don't really particularly care for it, then I would say don't worry about it. Just go get the businesses the way you know how to get them and then just let them funnel the people into it and do the work that you know how to do. Okay, so we covered, I think we covered organic stuff. Let me see if there's any other.

If you had to assign a value, like a net worth, to your social presence, what valuation did you give that brand?

It's probably worth about $1 billion right now, honestly. Like, that's not me exaggerating. That's just from the amount— like, if I were to just quantify what we— like, the amount of media that we get and the conversion value of that media. So like, if I had an elegant— like, the most elegant conversion system would be like, we go public and I said, hey, do you guys want to invest in this? I've taken this thing from here to $250 million a year. I think a lot of my audience would be like, yeah, I'm in. And then that would immediately, acquisition.com would be a multi-billion dollar company.