3,000 Views, $1M Months, No Paid Ads w/ Briar Cochran

What's going on everybody welcome back. I am your host Nick comedy now I'm here with the man the myth the legend mr. Briar Cochran himself Briar. What's up, dude? Thanks for coming What's up, man? Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure It's it's the first podcast I've ripped in a minute So I'm excited to talk some game I posted on my story that we were gonna do this and I got a wave of Responses. Yeah, everybody saying holy shit. This is the this is the collab that we all wanted to do did So hopefully hopefully we don't disappoint Yeah, probably will but hey, I always shoot the middle. I never shoot I always shoot directly for the middle So you want to give everybody just a quick spark notes if they've never heard of you before Yeah, Briar Cochran. I Guess you could say a contest strategist creative director specializing with personal brands not necessarily business brands like products and services like that Short forms kind of the the core, but also in my business. We have a long form branch, but Yeah, I run a content agency called oak line, but running it for about two years and That's the name of the game. I have a wife of coming up on we got five years together coming soon a two-year-old and a four-month-old And I'm out of the great city of Omaha, Nebraska That's the that's the cliff notes right there. I'm crazy. I love it man. Okay, so you just room. I'm Oranting properly right you are you run fully organic Yeah, no paydads we don't touch paydads. We partner with those agencies to make sure there's synergy between the two all organic Yeah, okay, so we were very synergistic on that front I've never paid for a dollar and adds in my business either so let's I want to start with that conversation right there because Genuinely, I think that organic has become the least tapped in resource in all businesses across the board and there was just this huge Mass adoption of mostly business coaches and ads agencies saying hey, we have the scripts we have the ad formats we have all of this so that you scale on autopilot and I mean, I know my stance. I'll start I'll start with your stance and then we'll we'll charm in there Yeah, I mean paydads work. I'm not like anti-paydads. It is just for a significantly smaller demographic than people who are actually ramping paydads For a couple reasons number one is like if you do not have the skill sets of organic Then you don't have the skill set of paydads. It's an overlapping skill set communication pain points and marketing etc So it's like you can go train the skill set and the intellectual property and get the data on organic for free Which probably takes like six months to a year to even be remotely decent for most people Then you can go over not waste money on paydads and the second thing is most people don't have a follower a quality following Right, so they if you throw paid ads on a following that is not Connected with any Affinity to the follower to the to the creator then the paid ads bring in shitty followers mad cuss on you Sure, right? Absolutely your like It brings it zero filter bro. We'll talk about crazy shit. I promise Brings in like you bring in a bunch of shitty followers because paid ads will attract someone who's not like truly a fan of your content Right, and so you get followers maybe you ramp up to a hundred thousand followers just by spending a ton of money on ads but then They don't really engage with your stuff So then your page looks weird a hundred thousand followers you only get two to three thousand views per video Are you legit are your scammer that stuff starts creeping in and so I see paid ads As like gasoline onto an already amazing fire Not by any means is it they start of the fire Yeah, so I would definitely agree. I mean I I personally like my whole business model is is you can create a hundred thousand dollar a month business organically And then we can talk about ads do I think I was literally about to say that and I think I got that from you I was literally about to say you shouldn't probably touch paid ads. So you hit a hundred thousand dollars a month So I was yeah, that's been a very specific point in my in my page for a while So potentially that was yeah, probably and I have you know, I've the proofs in the pudding I've multiple multiple clients in all different niches that do hundred K months and have hit them and recurring even at a hundred K like I personally think of 100 K a month recurring business That's ultimate freedom especially if you do it organically because you know that you have a product a service of message and a Connection to people that is quite literally unshakable and that's when we even start going into the Conversation of having a cult like following, but you can't build a cult you can't buy a cult like following That's what I'll say you can you can buy people and they get caught in what I called the ads prison Which is where they hire this coach and they're paying them $2,500 a month and then they have to the coach tells them when you need to hire This this ads manager and that's $2,000 a month and then we need you to spend $4,000 a month on ads So these people are paying call it $7,500 a month just for a math sake to get clients and they're You know, they're making 2x row as let's say they're they're making 15k a month and they're going oh my god This is fucking amazing and the issue is once those clients are done They never resign or very a very small amount resign and eventually over time what happens is I think people get so They get so detached from what they're doing and who they're doing it for because this ads agency is saying here's the new scripts to run Here's what's working in the audience right now and eventually over time this this creator or this business owner they don't even remember what their voice sounds like so now you're losing clients just as fast as you're getting them and now all of your Profit is going towards paying your team members paying all of your setters your closers and all of these things that you need to You know people say like oh speed the lead you need to get to a lead as fast as possible in order to activate them It's like dude. I sometimes I take three days to respond to somebody in my DMs and they still close and you have to do all of these Crazy systems when you're building something that's not fully aligned with what I call like your god mission or your god purpose Yeah, yeah, and like Or if you get organic first it becomes the amplifier to the pay that's for three reasons number one is you have data I know the hooks and the videos that have already worked so therefore I'm not gonna gonna just get a two X return I'm gonna get a six eight ten X return Number two is I have the skill set which I already talked about and then number three is there's the authority There's something about already having a cult like following that whenever people see the ad and they're like okay Who is this guy? Let me go explore. Oh, wow. There's amazing videos here with high engagement He's obviously not a scammer or a guru if he has this high of Engagement following right and that's the that's the cult like following so It in a weird way you can kind of rush it stay stuck at two X for as long as you want row-ass or you can build an amazing organic and actually Get exponential compound and return on your paydats down the road, but I don't know much about paydats That's just my thesis. I mean, I like the same with you is like we have people that we partner with inside of our container It's like I'm ever gonna tell somebody don't run paydads I'm just gonna highlight that there's a path forward that doesn't require them and I think that sometimes it's almost like It's almost like a kid starting off brand new in the gym and he's 16 and you're like well, dude just hop on test and Ever genius idea everybody would say whoa, that's crazy Why would you do that and it's like well? He's gonna get the gains anyways, but everybody everybody would stop and say you should build a a solid foundation first You should understand the the basics of nutrition and timing and training and sleep and rest and you should do that for like Six to ten years to max out your potential Naturally and we can switch that with organically first and then take test if you really want to go to that next level Everybody would shake hands and agree on that But for some reason once a brand or money is involved everybody just wants it as fast as possible dude, and it's so crazy I'll I'll have comment. I love threads the app threads bro. I'll be talking shit on threads. I love I love some crazy stuff. I love threads and I'll be talking to people there was one post specifically I actually think you liked my response to this girl where she said like there's no way to grow anymore or have consistent sales without paid ads if you're a in the Coaching space like the health and wellness space and I responded I was like I have multiple coaches in that space doing a hundred K a month. I do this much I don't run ads and people were literally like you are so stupid for making that much money and not running ads You you are leaving so much money on the table. I was like do you hear what you just even Well, you even just said to me that doesn't make any sense to me, but I think that there's this this massive Delusional lens that people put on when money's involved and it's like some people can't comprehend why are you not doing everything possible to maximize as much income as you can and That is that is the purest signature of somebody who's in scarcity and lack and that's the exact reason why that type of person can't build a real following because they don't actually connect with anybody They just secretly want to sail. Yeah exactly. It hurts the long term benefit of the brand tremendously. Yeah, so when when you take this approach of You know testing everything organically and stuff first. What do you think is Missing or maybe we can riff on what most people are missing when it comes to really creating a Just call it a content strategy for lack of a better words to actually get reliable data to look at and and Implement you know because we like you know, I do the business aspect stuff and the amount of times that We hear from clients. I don't know what to post. I don't know what to talk about. We're like have you looked at Anything that's performed will over the last 30 days. Well, no Why not? I don't know. I didn't think about it And it's just like, you know what I mean? So let's riff. What do you think is missing for people to have a content strategy that sticks organically? - Yeah, I mean, not even looking at data is like absurd to think about. I come from a background of like fractional CMO for brands and it's like the level of marketing prowess over there. If you just move over 10% of it over to organic, it makes all the other organic creators look stupid. You know what I mean? It's like, oh yeah, it's like, if I would have said, hey, I don't look back the last 30 days of our marketing over for like a company doing $200 million in revenue, I would have been fired immediately. Like they would have been like, you are not actually a real marketer, you know? Like, you're not even here. - Exactly, exactly. I was gonna say that I went stupid, just kind of watered down a little bit. - But, no, don't water it down. It's okay. - No, yeah, there were parts of Re�ards in this audience for sure. And it's the. - They love it. - And it's like, because the bar to entry for content is pulling out your phone and pressing record and posting, the level of marketing intellect is so low it's absurd. It'd be like, have you seen the bench whimmers where the guy gives $20 to go play? And he's like a 30 year old dude playing his 12 year olds. - He's seen that. - I haven't seen the movie in the years. - Yeah, he gives the umpire $20 bill and says, I am 12 and then he goes and plays center field and he's like hitting a home run every other pitch and like drop kicking kids. That's what it's like to just have like reasonable marketing intellect and moving over to organic because so many people are just like, you know, there's like random teachers that just like decided to like quit their job because their husband makes a lot of money and now we're starting posting content. Which is great. Like I love it, but you wanna like grow in it. So back to your question. Yes, analyzing data. For sure is like the bare minimum. But the second thing is most people don't operate for from a sense of format heavy like strategy. And so for people like me, you and Michael, like we can don't always copy us because there's a level of like communication that can get away with this app or this FaceTime style content. Most people need to drift towards a green screen. And so starting from a format, a visual format like that and working up into that working that into your content strategy is huge. You know, we have creators who have good. I was just gonna say so basically just so I'm hearing you correctly for people in the audience. So you're saying if somebody maybe doesn't have the best oral communication skills to start. And there's another threat I wanna pull on that. But first, you're saying using something like a green screen or maybe even a carousel or just maybe something else that's not the full, that doesn't make them the main hero of the content can almost make up for the gaps that they have in their speaking to start. A million percent. A million percent. Well, you can't get across through storytelling. You can get across through visual storytelling. You could say, right? I would say carousel, I wouldn't lean that way 'cause now you're still not stretching the muscle of storytelling so you're not growing in your communication skill as much. But yeah, everything else applies the same. And then the third is most people are not optimizing for their North Star. There's like this disconnect in their head. Like, okay, if I wanna make a revenue, if I wanna monetize my audience, seven second B-rolls with polarizing on screen text is not gonna keep making any money. - But you're gonna do it. - No, it's not. - You know, and so they chase views and shitty follow-up quality, hoping that they monetize because they just don't know any better. And so there's like a really, there's an extreme lack of reverse engineering from a goal or from a North Star into the inputs that you need to actually be having. And so I would say like those three things, not looking at data or competitors data. Like that's like a bare minimum, not weaving formats in. And then the third is not reverse engineering properly from what you actually want out of your content. Which, these are like the basics, in my opinion. But. - But people miss basics, that's why they go. - Even to the highest level. Like we will come into a creator who is already doing quarter million a month and they're making content about, shit that has nothing to do with our offer. Thinking like, oh, I'm going, I'm going to have a funnel, going to have a funnel. Like there's no through line here. - Yeah. - The person who, yeah, it's brutal. - There's always something that I referenced. Some glad you said that. - Yeah. - So that I wanna pull back a thread that we can that I've into on like the gap style content and using green screen and stuff. And you referenced myself, you and Michael, for example. And what we, what I think all three of us have very, very well is something that I called embodied wisdom. And that's not, it's more of a concept rather than like a declaration that we are wise, if you will. So embodied wisdom is, when we pull out our phones and we speak, it's because we are so embodied in what we do, what the work that we do, we're constantly consuming and tweaking things and we're always searching and looking at data. And we're always in our creative flow. And that creative flow just happens to be tied to the thing that we offer the world right now. And I think so many people lack embodied wisdom and they're talking, there's a big difference between regurgitating knowledge that you read and re-explaining experience that you have lived. And you can feel the difference completely when somebody's talking, when somebody's making a piece of content. It's like, most people's content, it feels like they're reading a, that could demand letter from a kidnafer and they're being held at gunpoint. And they're like trying not to cry. And it's like, hey, pull back. And let's just focus on the things that you've actually lived, the things that you've actually seen or put people through. But so many people overcomplicate and overwhelm themselves, one, because it's an excuse to stay stuck. But two, it's like everybody thinks that they need to be creating content and pretending that they're at level eight. When realistically, they're at level two. And if they only talked about what they did to get past level one, they would hit success out the park almost every single time. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. This and copying. There's so many people that are just so afraid of being a level two creator that they'll just copy a bunch of other creators. You know? It's like, hey, let me go rip this other script verbatim. Or as close as possible. That's one of my common enemies right there. It's the thing that pisses me off as business coach saying, go look at all of your top competitors, the most engaged videos in your nation, then just recreate them. And it's like, what? Yeah. The whole point, the reason, so Neil Patelis, he's a marketer. I feel like I've heard his name. He's pretty big, but he did a study probably six months ago. And he looked at 1,000 videos that all got over 100,000 views. And though one, actually, there's two things that had 100%. It was inside of 100% of the videos that did well. It was a brutal way for me to communicate that. That was rough. But I understand. He looked at 1,000 videos that all got over 100,000 views. And out of the 1,000 videos, 100% of them had novel information. It was a unique take. It was novel. And so if you copy, you're literally taking away your opportunity for the good video because first mover is advantage, being the first person to make a piece of content is actually making the video so good. Sure, there's gonna be the exception where you copy someone and you get your first good video. Now you're just gonna fricking crank your hog to that every day and you're gonna copy that person forever. That's terrible. The worst thing that can happen, and I say it's all the time, is you can use a very poor content strategy and it works right out of the gate. And then your brain creates. (laughing) - Too high a speed of saying. - Your brain creates this connection of that piece of content gave me a lot of dopamine. So now I must continue to recreate that over and over again. And now, same thing, you've lost your path. You're not even on your North Star. You're just going, how do I get a piece of content to hit like that again? 'Cause that's what felt good. And the pursuit of engagement is usually what stops people from getting engagement in the first place. - Yes. - Right? And you actually made a post a couple of weeks ago, maybe you were talking, I don't remember what you were talking about exactly, but you were talking about maybe ways that you turn followers into ghost followers in your account. And one of the things you talked about was niche pivoting. And that is exactly what I did. At like 45 K followers, I was in the fitness industry for a decade. That was my entire fall. I was nick the trainer. That was like, oh, all my videos started with, hey guys, nick the trainer here. And then I was like, this isn't for me anymore. And I pivoted into what I do now. And for three years, my page did not grow at all. I think I went up to maybe like 58 K followers over three years and just stayed there, stayed there, stayed there. And then last year I had like a big explosive six months, went through like 100 K plus. But my engagement is still garbage compared to what it should be for somebody with 111 K followers. But the difference for me is, I don't chase the engagement. I chase the conversion of people in that engagement that want to be a part of my world so that I can help them. And so my entire approach to organic content and organic business scaling is, I think people think in order for me to be a successful creator or for me to have a successful business, I must go viral. And that could not be further from the truth. People really distort what's necessary to live your wildest dreams. Realistically, there's not a single person that needs more than 1,000 die hard fans that are buying from you for you to live life completely financially free. But people just can't focus on like a small sliver of people. You know, they get 2000 views on a video and they go, "This sucks. Nobody sees my stuff." I'm like, "Put me on stage in front of an audience of 2000 people and let me pitch at the end of it and I'm set for the year." Right. Where do you think that disconnect is with people? Well, it's because they don't, they don't, they cannot put faces in people behind the views because you don't always see the faces in people behind the views. So I always ask this question, "Would you rather have 10 million 13-year-olds from Zimbabwe listening to you give a speech?" Okay. Or would you rather have 100 Fortune 500 CEOs listening to you give a presentation? I would have to think about it. Yeah. I mean, defense, defense, depends on the economic state of Zimbabwe. My engagement with RIP, if I had 10 million Zimbabwe kids commenting on it. So it might be worth it. I don't know. Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, like some people can play that game, right? Mass following low-ticket, that's the Mr. Beast game you sell them chocolate bars. Okay. Yeah. Dude, it's crushing. We have a client, I'm going to pull up his statistics right now. He's doing a million dollars a month, just hit it, super proud of him. He sells, he does a full Airbnb. It's a done for you by an Airbnb service. Like, it's not like you create an arbitrage Airbnb arbitrage type thing? No, like what's that you made $3 million and you need to write it off. You work with him and he will consult you to go buy two or three Airbnb's that year, if that makes sense. Okay. So is that Airbnb? I don't think that's Airbnb arbitrage, right? That's not the same thing, is it? Whatever. This is his data. So a million dollars a month, these are his last views on his last recent videos. 1,222, 2013, 3,000, 2015, 1500, 3,000, 1,000, 11,000, 3,000, 7,000, 2,000, 4,000. So we can say this guy is averaging above all, he's averaging less than 5,000 views of video. Yeah, he's basically making probably $3 million, $1 million a month. All because of the people who are watching his content are people who have to have at least, I don't know if I should say this, I don't like your, they have to have at least $170,000 before of expendable income before they can even work with him. Yeah. Right? And so it's a layup. If you have 3,000 people who all have 200 grand in their bank account, ready to use, that's pretty damn good to me. You're set. So let's take this a second. Let's go back because we could say that and then we're going to have people who listen to this and go, yeah, but that's not my business model. All I have in my audience are people who aren't financially qualified. Every time I get on a sales call, people tell me they can't afford it, which that's a whole of their conversation about sales. It's never actually a financial objection. But that's besides the point. I always say it's not a price objection. It's a perceived value objection. It's just they don't actually see that the value and they can't tangibly understand what is going to happen for them because you're missing the mark in your marketing. Five percent of your bandwidth should be towards sales. Ninety-five percent of your sales should be done in your marketing, your branding, your messaging in my opinion. I don't know if you agree or disagree with that. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I think like there's a strong argument to be made. I'm not going to prescribe this as a guarantee, but for a lot of creators, a sales problem can be traced all the way back to a hook problem. And what I mean by that is like what your closers or your sales team or the founder sales experience in on calls could have been a symptom of someone leaving the gate to open at the hook of a 30-second video from a month ago. Right? So I had three videos that I dropped basically back to back. I'm going to change the hooks a little bit for this example. Video number one, how to unlock more creativity. That's it. Video number two, how to unlock more creativity as a content creator. Video number three, how to get your media team to unlock more creativity. You can probably guess which one got the most views. Yep. You probably guess which one maybe the most money. Yep. Right. And so for people who aren't having a visual, number one got them the most amount of views, number three made them the most amount of money. And so I don't think I think whatever route anybody listening to this wants to go with their page and their content is completely fine, but you can't pursue one path and complain about the other path not happening. So you just need to be intentional. My goal, like, dude, I would love to be, I would love to go viral. I would love to have 500,000 a million followers. Absolutely. But I want them to be the right kind of followers. And so if you ask me right now, Nick, would you rather have a million followers or would you rather have a million dollars a month in your business? I'm choosing a million dollars a month in my business, 1000%. If you told me, hey, instead of a million dollars a month, I'll put one million completely aligned followers that are all qualified and ideal clients in your following. I would pay you billions of dollars for that to happen because I know that I would, I know what I could do with an audience like that. And so if your intention is I just want to get views, I just want to go viral because that is the dopamine hit that it makes me convince myself that I've done a good job for the day. Then great, that's your game. But don't take that route and then also attach to it, misery, suffering, complaining, and anxiety because nobody's buying from you. Per what you just alluded to, the more we'll dive into this right now, you're not being specific enough. But the more niche that you are with your content and your hooks, the more likely you are to convert people to trust you and buy from you. The more broad you are with your hooks, the more likely you are for people to engage and have an opinion because you've left a lot of room for nuance. Yeah. So let's dive into specificity because truly, we work with hundreds of clients as well and we see the whole thing. Everybody tells you, man, I feel like I've really been crushing it. I'm nailing my ICA and I watch all, I watch like 12 pieces of their content and I'm on number 12 and I'm like, I don't even know who the hell you're talking to. I have no idea. I'm really big on have a written hook, have a verbal hook, make them two different things and then you talk about hook stacking as well. And so we can dive into all that. But when I see somebody's title hook and it's like the number one mistake that you're making to be stuck, I always say this, right? The first thing you say and the last thing you say have to be very, very specific but they have to be very far away from each other. That way there's a curiosity loop and you are content of what you're speaking should be feeling that gap for them. So for example, instead, let's just say this number one mistake is why your girlfriend's losing attraction to you. Now there's a mistake clearly. My girlfriend losing attraction, that's specific. And if I'm a guy in your audience who's following you for relationship coaching, I probably have some sort of pain in my life where I am feeling my partner drifting or being less receptive to me. So if I see that and maybe you could even add one of my clients to say this, you could add a second every hook under it. She's desperate for you to understand this. Now I'm like, okay, I'm going to at least give this video 20 seconds of my time. And now you have to be specific in what you're talking about as well. Because if you go, oh man, I have so many people that come to me and they're always asking me these questions and it's about being stuck and they're always wondering why they can't push through this level of discomfort to get to the point where they can sit inside of these uncomfortable situations and make their way out. What? Yeah. What? People lose it. People probably just dropped off of the podcast because I was saying that. So when you're really vague, when you have a vague starting point, like when the first thing you say is vague and the last thing you say is vague, there's nothing to tether somebody to care about what's in the middle. There's no understanding. You see what I'm saying on that? 100%. 100%. Yeah, I think in a world where someone is going to scroll past thousands of pieces of content in a day and two days, whatever it is, the only way to stand out is to, I call it sniping their soul. They have these things inside of them. You don't know what it is. And if you can pop that feeling where it's like, oh, that is exactly what I needed to hear. I heard someone say it like that before. That's exactly what I needed to hear. That's the feeling that you want to evoke for most of your content. If you're going to drift towards top of funnel, engagement or entertaining content, then it's a little different. But specifically when you're trying to convert and you're trying to educate and you're trying to nurture the bottom of funnel, this example, it revolves around two things. Specific pain points, specific tree outcomes. I'm wearing a wrestling hat. I was a wrestler in college, high school. If you would have came to me and you would have went into the locker room of a division one wrestling program, the top 0.1% of wrestlers in the nation. And you said, hey, guys, did I want to teach you how to do a takedown? We would have laughed you out. Yeah, we would have started calling you slurs and stuff like that. It would have been crazy. What's that? Slurs, Briar? Go ahead, let's hear them. Yeah, just like the just retarded, just that one. And it's because we learned that in second grade. That's not a specific dream outcome. What we want. If someone would have came in and said, hey, I'm head of nutrition at Harvard University and I've been studying the depletion of water in a short time frame and how to rehydrate within 24 hours after a big weight cut. Here's the five step blueprint after a 8 to 15 pound weight cut that you're going to do to make sure you are back to your optimal hydration state before your match. We would have been like, yeah, let's go. - Right. - I'm ready. Like that's what we were struggling with in that moment that we needed to hear. - So let's do that. - So let's do that. - There are specific things. - Let me circle back on this. Let me do a call back for this. What you're saying is you guys wrote a level eight and the person who came in was talking to you at a level two and wondering why level eight wasn't receptive. But somebody came in at level eight and here's the thing is level eight, those people are gonna buy immediately, but you alienate levels one through seven. So your amount of people that are gonna resonate with your message when you're talking at higher levels is lower, but they convert significantly higher. They respect you more. You guys are talking the same lingo. But if you're pretending, 'cause you saw somebody else's piece of content, and you just say that, but people can feel the difference. And I think 100%. What you said was really, really good of if somebody came in and said that, the level eights would have completely laughed you out of the locker room, so to speak. And kind of going back to the point of, I think there might be, this might be a definitive statement here, and I might take this back, but if you don't know specifically what is going to make the person you're trying to talk to, have that oof moment, you're trying to talk to them at too high of a level. - Yeah, or, or, miss a line. Like you can miss some sideways. It's not always up down, right? What I mean by that is like, okay, let's go back to this wrestling analogy. I, my current wrestling style, leans towards a wrestling move called the ankle pick. It leans really far away from a move called the headlock. If you would have came in and said, hey, I'm an Olympic champion. I want all my matches through a headlock. Here are the nine stages of the best ways to execute a headlock. I would actually, that's a level 10. That's a level, that's an Olympic champ. That's that's technical. It's just miss a line from what I need at that specific moment, right? So this, usually the closer you are to the customer as a viewer and you understand the true pain points with their actually experiencing, they, you know what they need. You know that they're an ankle pick wrestler, right? So you can miss sideways, but still be speaking at an 8, 9, 10. So it's not always, in my opinion, like speaking too high, sometimes it's miss a line. Right? So yeah. - Yeah, that's a good, that's a good idea. - Yeah, no, definitely a caveat there. I think that there's this convoluted stance of people going into business and saying something, like we'll go into like niches now of like, oh, I just want to help people. And they say, you know, I help people achieve and serve extremely vague outcome here. And you read there and you listen to their content or you watch it and it's so all over the place, there's no through line, there's no specificity. Almost anybody could watch that piece of content and go, I don't know who this is for, but the creators in their mind think, well, I'm trying to make this content for everybody because they think that the wider the net, the more they ensure that they catch fish, but the wider the net, the wider the holes. - Yeah. - And the fish are just gonna swim through the net. So when it's coming down to people actually choosing a niche, one of the biggest things that we see of roadblock for people is they go, well, I just don't know who I want to choose and I want to work with. And then they just sit in this state of indecisiveness and they keep making content and they're getting more discouraged because nothing's actually gaining traction. And my whole coaching for people is, I don't care who you're going to work with, you need to pick somebody right now and you need to go all the way on that for 90 days and then you can decide if you want to shift it a little bit. So when it comes to you and how you help people choose niches, what are the main things that you're guiding somebody to do? If they come to you and they have, they're like, I just don't know, I want to offer, let's use, let's use like a, and a person who's running like an investment group, yeah, like they buy it and I teach them investments and stuff, but they don't know who their niche is, their content isn't hitting, they're making maybe like 10K a month. What's the first thing that we're going to do in order to help them really fine tune a niche so that their content can hit? Yeah, it's tailored kind of where they're at in their journey, but the first thing is, I believe I have a thesis that basically your niche should be as close to synonymous as calling on your life as you can get. And here's why because I'm so passionate about the compounding growth of being in creative content for eight, nine, 10 years, like if you niche pivot a ton, this is just a business principle. If I'm just jumping around shiny objects and drum going from a junk removal company then over to a solar company and then over here, I'm never going to like truly get the compounding growth. I might get really good at like starting businesses, but I might not get the compounding growth that really comes from mastery, right? And so I actually, ironically, I have them read the book mastery, that's the first thing. It's a book by Robert Green. And it's like, you only have three and a half of it, but it's just going to challenge you like, what do you want to be known for? Like if you were to die 20 years from now, what do you want to be on your tombstone? And I also asked this, like if you were TV interviewed by Joe Rogan in 10 years, you would be known as the what guy, the what girl? What do you want to be into? He interviews experts, right? Alan, the alien guy, the whatever guy, whatever girl, right? What do you want that to be? What do you want to be known for? What do you feel like is going to be the thing that like if it got tatted onto you, you'd be like, yeah, I can be that person, right? Because if you can work back from there, you're going to win on longevity and being in a niche longer than everyone else and you expand your time horizon, right? So now if I'm discouraged in year one, just part of the game, I'm going to be here for 15, 20 years, right? Just like a business, just like a business. And so I start there. And then the second one is if they're still unsure, they still read that book in a bunch of, I would say like you can post content and kind of find out, you can find out like what you are, what you're able to talk about more often than other things, what you get excited about, what you're better at communicating. But if you post aimlessly for too long, you'll attract an audience that is aimless, right? So it's like, I'm fine with you like, shit posting like random niche exploration stuff, as long as you don't get big while doing it. As long as you like stay under a thousand followers, like I'm okay with you like exploring, but the answer you start catching some traction, it's like, - Yeah, you need to pick. - Yeah, you need to pick, right? - Yeah, there was, there was, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off if you were still. - No, that's it. That's literally like the two steps. - Yeah, there was a point. - And don't quit. - Yeah, that one's the most important. But what I was gonna say is there was a time, maybe like a year or so ago, year and a half ago. Like dude, I can make a post, I could do it right now, and I could say, right, I'm about to get a million views on this post on TikTok and Instagram, I could make it and it would hit, and it's me talking about relationship dynamics. If I go on there and I start my hook, my hook every single time that prints me a million plus views between the platforms is, if a man asks a woman on a first date, should he pay for the bills or not? Yes, and then I start talking about it. No matter what, million views. But with that comes thousands of followers. That are horny cougars that are just looking for, looking for a piece of meat to chew on, really, if you with you will. And then I get people reaching out to me asking if I offer a relationship advice or if I have a question. Or an only thing. Yes, correct. And so I easily can look at that and say, that right there is purely a vanity metric if I keep posting that piece of content. It's clearly bringing in followers that do not align with anything else that I talk about. I don't offer anything in that realm. None of this that mean I won't talk about my views of the world around that sometimes. And of course, I absolutely will, because the people in my following that are quote like they trust me because they also know how I view the world. They know certain stances that I have that are polarizing. And I think a lot of times when you say a stance that's polarizing people think, well, polarizing is offensive. And I say, polarizing is conversational. That's really the word that I try to implement out for that. So I have no problem telling people where I stand and what my opinions are. But the thing is, it doesn't matter if a bajillion people disagree with me, I'm not going to change my opinion. That's when you know that it's a good worldview that you can share in my opinion. And that's what starts creating more of this trust dynamic inside of your audience. Because I think there's your building two brands at the same time always. You're building your business brand and you're building your personal brand. And if you're doing it right, usually they intersect in quite a few places. But for what I said earlier, I was Nick the trainer. My whole personal brand was Nick the trainer. My business brand was Nick the trainer. I didn't have Nick. I didn't have Nick Comadena being built. And so I had this mask on. Okay, I'm only accepted by being Nick the trainer. And eventually that felt exhausting. Because I was like, I don't want people to just see me in public and say Nick the trainer. I want people to say, hey, Nick, I love your content. I love what you do. So I had to pivot and start building me. Me. And Nick is somebody who I might not do the business side of things forever. But I'm always going to do something my through line, my purpose, my calling is to help people heal. Is to help people overcome themselves. Is to help people get out of their own way so they can create the lives that they want. That's my through line. That's my calling. And I used to, I used to, I think business is an artistic expression of your gift that you have for the world. You're calling, if you will. And then the business that you created is just the vehicle that you used to deliver that gift to people. So I used to deliver that gift through fitness. And I would do leadership development. I would help people take back control of their lives there. And then my time had come to an end there. And then I got called into this path right now. And now I'm being called to start going a lot more in real life personal events. But the core of what I do and who I serve doesn't change. And I think that's kind of the same thing that you're saying as well. Yeah, I mean, if you, it's also like, what do you, like, the good thing about a personal brand is it's meant to serve you. It is meant to serve other people. But it's also like, like for you, right? So like my advice is very like financial. Like I'm helping you make money and build a business. It's not as much like mental sanity and like expression in a way. And so like your out is if you were like, Hey, I'm actually going to start helping people heal through pottery. This is my new stage. You're going to have a really strong maybe one to three years of restarting the page and re and re getting it back up. But if you choose that and you are fully okay with the repercussions of, Hey, I'm going to go through the value of the shadow of death. It's going to be fine. I'm going to push through and on the other side, this is what I still want to do knowing that I'm going to probably make less money for a little bit. But in the long term, this is my choice. And you're aware most people aren't aware. They make it flippantly. They're not aware of what's going to happen to them. And so yes and amen. But to the point of if you went too far, miss a line, the good thing is businesses and real life and events have like extreme overlapped. So that's like not as extreme as the pottery example. But even if you did go pottery, you know, it's still like, yeah, I mean, if you've seen some of those things where they're like, it looks sick. Spinning in circles. Yeah, just to summarize that thought is like as long as you have the awareness that like, Hey, you're a hundred thousand followers that came for business or not just going to like all of a sudden be like, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad he went to pottery. I will now equally go by his pottery. Yeah, you know, I think that just like having established in the through line, the North Star, everything that we're saying is like it allows you to have these lateral movements that aren't completely in a different field of play altogether. You know, like no matter where you run on a baseball field, you're still in the game of baseball. Yeah, you know, I heard a yeah, Patty Galloway talks. Do you know how to go away? He's a YouTube strategist who's Mr. Beasts old YouTube strategist. Now he runs a YouTube agency works with like Red Bull and a bunch of other phenomenal brands. He talks about this inside of a YouTube channel. So he says from video to video, there should be at least an 80% overlap. So like if you make video one and then you go make video two, it's okay if like 20 to 30% don't actually care about video one whenever you go make video two or vice versa, right? And I think that's like probably true. Like you're not going to ask a blue to obliterate your follower quality. If you change to a niche or a category, that like 70 to 80% of your audience still care about. So a really easy example of this is like if you're in the investing world, you can kind of like go become a Bitcoin specialist and you can kind of go become a real estate specialist. That's where we're getting a little iffy, but like you're staying in the general finance investment investments exactly. So I'm way more okay with that, even like going to from finished to nutrition, that's like a 98% overlap, right? If you want to like all of a sudden swing that way. So there's there's niche swaps that make a little bit more sense. It's whenever we get a little bit more extreme and we're dipping into like okay, yeah like 20% of my audience might maybe like this because I'm convinced that they're dudes. And so I'm going from you know, something that dudes like to another thing, dudes like that's like that always the case. Yeah, I think I we're very aligned on that. So I'll even tell clients if they're like, hey, I want to change my niche. I want to pivot this even if it is a close overlap to what they're already doing, but it's a completely different angle of messaging. I just tell them that's fine. If you want to do that as long as you are aware that for the next six months, it's probably going to feel like you're not making any progress. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you can't stomach that, if you can't stomach that without reverting back, then you're gonna you're gonna drown. That's what's gonna happen because when you post the whole new niche for three weeks and nothing happens and then you try to go back to the old niche and then nothing's happening now again. And now you're freaking out. You're like, neither of them are working. It's like, well, yeah, you stopped doing one, started doing another. And now you're oscillating before anybody even knows what's going on. So you're giving your audience this this massive whiplash. And when people are confused, they don't lean in. They lean out. Yes. You don't want to confuse your audience. You want to make your audience curious curiosity and confusion are two sides of the exact same coin. So it's it's it's a very delicate balance to have because you can very easily confuse people. And that's why I kind of I kind of do it like this because I think there will be somebody on here who's like, well, how do I transition effectively? People just love numbers for whatever reason. So I always say it like this. Let's say that you post 20 pieces of content a week. And now you want to shift your niche into something that is laterally adjacent to what you currently do. So I say, take 17 pieces of those of that content and keep posting what you know currently works and post three of those pieces of content onto the new thing. Run that for two weeks. Then on week three, go down to 15 and five and then go down to 12 and seven or an eight, you know, and eventually go until it's 50, 50 and then watch for a second and see which videos of each are doing the best. Now which direction do I really want to go all in on? So now I can take the best videos that are performing of that quote unquote old niche and I can pull that down to like 20% of my content. And then the 80% can be fully into that niche that I want to transition into. So I'm still hitting the old followers, assuming that I still have something to give them. And now this 80% has slowly built over time and now I haven't really had much of a dip in engagement or business or anything like that. What would you say if let's say I'm in, you know, whatever niche, I'm in the fitness niche and I get to a point where I hate it so much that I have zero interest in ever being a fitness creator ever again. You couldn't pay me to be a fitness creator. I have made up my mind that I am changing niches no matter what. And let's say I want to move to issues and investments. Would you also still say, hey, let's do the slow burn over or would you say, well, shit, you're not ever coming back? You just ripped the band it off. There's a, you're aware of the hero's journey, right? And so there's like a condensed hero journey if you will that you can put somebody on when they're absolutely like if I make another piece of fitness content, I'll literally kill myself. There's, there's something to be said, all this, all this rule in the book honesty is the best policy. And so what I would instruct that person to do is no doctored piece of content. I mean, pick up your phone, put it on your table and have a full blown honest conversation with your audience about how you've been feeling, where you've been stuck, everything and just say like, I have completely lost myself in the pursuit of fitness and I've got to be honest with you guys like, I love you all so much. And I've been continuously posting fitness because that's the only way I know how to connect with you, but it's killing me. And I've always been interested in investments. I've always been right. And now there's, there's a story. There's me there's me being able to see your character as a person. And in that, that level of vulnerable honesty, not what was me, not everybody feels sorry for me, but like guys, I have to just fucking be honest with you real quick. This is how I've been feeling and this is what I really want. And like, I just can't keep doing this, but I don't want to lose out on you guys because I love you all so much. And so here's what I think I'm going to start doing as a transition. And if some of you guys don't want to be here and follow along with that, that is totally fine. Thank you for being here on this journey. But I genuinely just feel called for this to be my new path. I don't want to say I'll be dumb with fitness content forever, but I know right now I at least need to take a break for my mental health. And now I've captured my audience inside of the story of who I am and my evolution. And now more than likely, they're bought in on what my new path is going to be. One video. Yeah, the core fans. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's really good. It's almost like creating a siphon. Like this hero's journey turns into a little bit of like a bridge over instead of, yeah, instead of ripped the banded off or even instead of like a slow burn. I really like that. That's an interesting strategy. Yeah, just like it's like, you know, everything, everything that you want in life is on the other side of having a very hard and honest conversation. And sometimes that conversation is with your audience. Sometimes it's with yourself. Sometimes it's with a spouse. You know, it's like you and your spouse could be like not on the same page for a long time. And neither of you are voicing it, but you can feel the disconnect. And it grows further and further into one of you finally to sit down and just like, Hey, I am so upset because it's killing me that I feel the space. And I know you feel it too. And neither of us are talking about it. But like, I'm not willing to lose you. And I'll do whatever is necessary. That one conversation changes everything about what you've all been subtly feeling for the last six to 12 months. Your audience feels when you're no longer aligned with what you're talking about, even if you don't think that they do. So I always, always think that being super honest from a space of groundedness, not from a space. Like I said, if you're in the middle of a hysterical cry session, do not press record. Do not press record. Bro, you're laughing. I'm not kidding. I've had clients that have come to us instead that other business coaches told them to get on their Instagrams or their stories and cry so that their audience felt a vulnerable connection to them so that then they could make a pitch the next day because they would get more. That is real, real fucking advice from other people in the coaching space, dude. It's pretty clever. That's clever. Okay, we can call it one of the, that's tough. That's like, anyway, writing down notes. Yeah, I've got a big sale coming up tomorrow. That's crazy. Yeah, I don't know how we got there, but yeah, I like the heroes journey. The heroes' journey bridge, because I thought about this is like, how do you make that pivot? Do you just say, like burn the boats, but I've never thought once about trying to capture your 20 to 30% of core followers inside of your following that love you to death through a hero's journey over. Maybe it's one video. Maybe it's like a three-part series or whatever. And then you can kind of move over the next week depending on how. I think it's. I think there's something to be said that when you master the skill of sharing vulnerably to skill, the difference between a vulnerable sharing trauma dumping for sympathy, when you master the skill of vulnerably sharing and storytelling, there's just something about those pieces of content that hit your audience in such a way. It's almost like another, another soul sniper, but near the heart center. Yeah, I feel like your soul sniper is more like a gut crunch, like, oh fuck you said that. This way is more of like a holy shit. I feel so connected to you because you're talking about this right now. I don't know when you started following me or when we started following each other, but in January I moved into this current spot that I'm in. It was a big penthouse downtown and I've never grew from a trailer park. I've never, ever lived in a place like this. I started an eight part series, wasn't I didn't know how many parts it was going to be, but every single video was a minimum of seven minutes long, crazy. And it was me and the title was a trauma that I'm currently working through. And all I was doing was talking to people about what was coming up for me in the moment, wasn't like, oh my god, I'm so afraid. It was, wow, I'm noticing that once I made a purchase for this apartment, this trailer park kid and me came up and started freaking out and saying, dude, people like us do not belong in places like this. And I started creating a story that I was a bad person that I was, I was feeling super guilty and that because I spent money on myself, my success was going to be taken away. And I was just telling people, this is what's coming up for me and this is what I'm doing to navigate it. And I just to show people, it doesn't matter what level you're at. There's always another layer of work that you have to do on yourself. Didn't teach, didn't pitch, didn't anything. I just shared. And that eight part series, dude, was like, my watch time was 70%. It was absurd. And so I think there's a really clear feedback system. When you share things that are real, you get real engagement, you get a real response. When you share things that are doctored and forced because you're trying to prove yourself, you get significantly less engagement because you're not being real. Yeah. What do you think of percentage? You thought I'm sure you've been asked this before of like how much should be personal. This is something I struggle with. If you look at my page, I have a pretty sterile page. It's a lot of just game. There's not a ton about my personal life. I told myself whenever I get to 50K, I'll start talking more about myself. And I'm still like, I have a little bit of a. You're at 50K plus. I know. I'm having a. I know. I am. It's something that. It's coming soon. That's my verbal commitment. I need to just give myself over the home. My community has definitely challenged me. What date is soon though, by the way? Which we put this on the calendar? June is big. Let's put it on the calendar. You're right. I put it on. How about right when we hang up this podcast, you pull out your phone and you make a piece of content just based on how you're feeling right now and you don't try to tie it to your business. There's my channel. I'll do it. I'll do it. Done. Question number two. Well, we didn't answer question number. That was not even question. Your question was. Go back to question percentage. Personal content, right? So I create this thing. I called it the organic funnel. I actually sent it to you. You can. I would love to see your thoughts on it. But it's this big, huge funnel document that I created for my clients. Basically, how to just always know what to post, how to post and give people along. And I have three main pillars of connection style content. The alignment pillar, the authenticity pillar and the authority pillar. So the authority pillar, obviously, right? Like what we talked about, embodied wisdom, picking up your phone, dropping a bang or about marketing and your business and whatever brandy. That's authority content. You showing that you know what you're talking about. The authentic content is us talking about things that we're doing right now. For example, me talking about the me upgrading to the department, etc. That's authentic. That's me. That's Nick. That's who he is. Another example would be the hero's journey. I'm burning it down. I can't do this anymore. That's authentic. You can also look at this in regards to you sharing what's the word I'm looking for. You do things for fun. Hobbies. Don't know what those are. Yeah, what? Oh, I do his work. Yeah. But like sharing your hobbies, sharing your favorite type of energy drinks, sharing it. These are little things and I call them low-stake connection points. So if, Brian, if you're making this bang or post about all of the things you're doing wrong in your content and I'm in your audience, I might feel stupid. Because I'm like, I didn't know any of that. And that stupid barrier actually stops me from engaging and commenting on your piece of content. But if you make a piece of content, this is the whole bridge I teach. If you make a piece of content talking about, dude, best three energy drinks of all time, not even close. Number one, this, number two, this, number three, this. Don't care what anybody says. What are yours? And now I look at that. The same person who felt stupid and go, oh my God, I share two of his top energy drinks. And I go, dude, I'm with you. I'm with you on one and two. I promise you you need to try this one for three. Something just happened there from a psychological standpoint. This person got over a hump of being afraid to engage and they engaged. Now the second part that's the most important is you respond to that person in good energy. And you go, oh, no way. I'm glad that somebody in my audience has good taste, compliment, right? Somebody in my audience has good taste. Or you could even be, you could even be like sarcastic to them. And you're like, oh my God, I didn't realize people in my audience were psychopaths like you. And what happened right there is they got a response from you and that built more trust that they are safe to engage with your content. So now the next time you post an authority piece of content, that person might now be brave enough to say, hey, I'm a little confused on this. What do you mean? And now they're warmer in my audience. Does that make sense? Makes a hundred percent sense. Cool. I like that. And then the last pillar is the alignment pillar. And I call this, right, it's like no liking trust, basically. And the alignment pillar, the thing that I talk about the most is like the big sibling frame. So if your audience member was your little brother or your little sister, how would you be talking to them about being stuck in the problem that you saw for people? You probably wouldn't say, here are three tips to get over your situation. You would say, hey, look, I know that you keep doing this because you think that it's this, but that's not what's going to change you. You need to do, actually, you need to do why you need to do Z. Otherwise, you're just going to keep complaining post. No. And if you want to learn how to do that, right? None of that. Like a big sibling talking to them. And that's what gets people to really feel like a sibling type of connection to you in a way. And so if you have those three pillars and you're hitting them consistently, like you're building a completely bulletproof personal brand in my opinion. And so this is where I think a lot of people disagree with me. I think 60% of your content should be split between the alignment pillar and the authenticity pillar. And 40% of your content should be the authority. So I actually think more than half of your content should be connection based. And then that 40% should be authority based. How okay? Walk me through the alignment one again. Would this video fall into that category? I made a video and I started by talking, I started by reading off one star reviews from the Grand Canyon. It's like, oh, big rock, one star, blah, blah, blah, one star. I saw that, dude. Do you see that video? That was hysterical. Yeah. It's one of my, it's one of the videos I'm most proud of. But then I say, hey, if you're going to make anything great in this world, especially content, you're going to get hate no matter what. There's no tactics in there. There's no super hook, hook stacking, whatever. It's still Ben's content, right? Would you think, where does that fall? I think like if we go, if we go to your question about the alignment thing, main question that drives the alignment pillar, how do I resonate with my people? So you could also take this into like shared backstory. So if I go on my page and I talk about growing up with a single mom in a trailer park without my father, there's somebody in my audience who follows me. They see my business success and they've created a story in their head that what I have isn't possible for them because they came from a broken home, their father and their super fucked up. But the second that I say, I grew up in a trailer park with a single mom and my father wasn't around, right? That the spirit, they're the soul, the soul spirit. Yeah. We call this sniper. Sure, yeah, we call that sniper. Something happened bad in their in their heart center and he goes, whoa, I didn't realize that Nick had the same upbringing as me. And now there's an alignment that happens. There's this trust that's built and I, and they resonate with me more. So I think a lot of times and for people who are visual right now, a lot of people make content trying to position themselves as the hero up here. Hey, let me show you how to make you guys more like me, but the content that's the most effective is showing people that you are also still like him, them, even though you have these things that they want. That's what shows them that it's possible. Yeah, 100%. That's the by far the biggest weakness in my personal personal brand. It's almost easier for me to help clients get this across than this read executed. I mean, dude, welcome to the wonderful world of being a coach, right? You get, you get clients results better than you do, but that's why every coach needs a coach, right? You can look at other people objectively, but when it's you, we have, we have all of these distortions of our past. We have meta programs. We have memories. We have trauma. We have pain. We have stories. We have all of this shit that comes up and convoluted our ability to do it ourselves. That's why you always need somebody to look objectively and guide you. Yeah, I mean, that's good. Yeah, that's good. Okay, so what was the second question? We really got on a riff there. I don't think there was a second question. I think I accidentally framed the first question as the second question, but it was actually just one question all along. Perfect. We're caught up. We're caught up. We're on that. Okay, so another final I really want to go into here about how people can position themselves organically. One of the words that I always ring true 100% of the time is embodiment. I think embodiment is one of the most underprioritized things when people make content. The best example you can visually see about this is a fitness, health, holistic coach or whatever it is that is overweight, clearly overweight. They wonder why nobody wants to buy from them. They wonder why them talking about these topics doesn't get engagement. I'm just going to be so blunt and I love everybody here who might resonate with this. If you are overweight and not just like, "Oh, I think I'm a healthy weight." You're not. You're not. Carrying next says body fat is not healthy. It doesn't matter what you say. I don't care what your blood work says. There is a very clear sign. You can see somebody's health based on how they look and how they take care of themselves. If you are overweight, if you are wearing an extra large size pant and you are a female, so to speak, and you are coming on telling me, "This is what I should do to prioritize my internal health because health matters." I am not going to listen to you in one way, shape, or form because you do not have anything that I respect enough to listen to what you're saying. Same thing could be said for the business coach who is poor and clearly doesn't have any success and you can just keep going around and around and around. Most people have the audacity and audacity can be good and bad, but the audacity to complain about why people don't trust them to take them on a journey that they themselves have not taken themselves on. They have been able to sustain thoughts. I think I can't remember who says this. It's one of the three guys in my world, Caleb Ralston, Sam, Sam, that are Ronnie Mitchell. One of them says the cheat code to a personal brand is just being great at something. Like just actually being in the top 1% at whatever you want to talk about. Actually having a top 1% physique. Actually being in the top 1% of a marketer. Actually being in the top 1% of tax strategy, whatever it is. That is the cheat code. Now the good news is you can actually develop. Social media is wired where you can actually develop that skill as you build your personal brand. It doesn't have to be like, "I'm not telling you, don't create content until you're one of the best." What I am telling you is what you talked about. Show people the journey as you go from 1 to 2 to 2 to 3 to 3 to 4 to 4 to 5. Unless you have some insane amount of charisma and sense of humor where people actually gravitate towards you as a person over the journey you're going to take them on. If that person was extremely fat but they were also funny and said that they were really fat, they still want to be able to sell. If it was coaching, they would have at least be able to maybe. They'd have a personal brand. Build a following. Exactly. Exactly. It also comes through in the topics you select and your ability to communicate with them. You're going to have to communicate what you want to communicate in videos. You said in Body Quiz. It is like, "I have a thought from a coaching call that I then solve in my head based off of 15 previous coaching calls or experiences or posts that I've posted. I formulated an opinion or a technique on it. I then harden that technique by communicating it to my team members or whatever. Then I go make a video about it." It is not like it is strictly from who I am, a problem I've solved, my intellectual property, things that I have observed. Then because of that, I communicate better. I don't stumble over my words. Michael talks about communicating with conviction. Conviction is the downstream of phenomenal communication in my opinion. The more passionate you are about something, the easier it is for you to communicate without sounding like a robot or whatever. There are videos, what's funny is the hook stacking video. It's actually one of my lower. I got stumbled over my words a little bit. It's a sentence is because I actually don't teach hook stacking a ton. I do a little bit. It happened to strike because there's a topic that people really cared about. If you go look at, let me talk about formats or data. Dude, I have examples. I have analogies. I have frameworks. I have all the shicks. I've communicated so many times about it. This actually turns into this transcends. I'm specifically talking about through a verbal communication style, but the same thing happens with your business, your body, whatever it is. If you are leading from communicating or selling from a place of exaggeration, you're absolutely screwed. You will get found out. But it's not even about if you get found out. It's pretty clear whenever you start to communicate, you don't fully hit the exact niched words that the people at the top get. There are certain words that you can't really know unless you're in the game. Or you're hitting on a problem that people don't actually care about as a subproblem. They're like, "Oh yeah, I thought about that at one point, but I don't actually care about that much." I know we keep referencing the fitness side of things that I think is the most easy thing for people to conceptualize because everybody is living in their body and eating food at all points in times. It's the fitness coaches that are saying, "No, everything's super saturated." It's like, "No, you're making a piece of content saying here's how to get 20 grams of protein in your day." That's just not a problem that most people need solved anymore that they can't just solve on their own. I think there's something to be said. I just made a YouTube video about the psychology of building a quote like following one of the things I talked about was letting people fall in love with the way that your brain works. You just said that in a way without saying it is you're taking your interpretation of things and you're making your view and your framework or your breakdown of how you see it instead of trying to fit into what everybody else is saying. People hire you for your mind more than anything else. If you don't let people see how your mind works because you don't give your mind an opportunity to work because you're too busy copying what everybody else is saying, same thing. You're not going to build people that are loyal to you. Just regurgitating the same bullshit or asking chat GPT to script your content and just going through with what it says and going, "Wow, this really sounds like it's my voice." It's not. If you don't have a mind that really is expansive and it's thinking or very creative around what you're doing, I personally don't think that you're doing something that you're passionate in. Right. We're not thinking it's serious enough. But what you just described is probably the best summary of what has changed my life through my personal brand is people being like, "Whoa, Brian, I've never heard anyone think about content like that and communicate content like that." It's probably why I'm on this podcast, trickle down effects, maybe from it's why Michael followed me and then you said, "Maybe you guys, I don't really know how this all came together. What made you reach out to me?" It's probably some form of that. I closed the guy into my agency, which is a $10,000 product or service in three DMS. Three DMS. "Hey, do you have done for your work?" "Yes, I do. What do you need help with this?" "Here's my price. Done." "Send the link." That was literally the full text and it is because this person had been like, "That dude thinks differently about content. My problems match how he thinks differently. I've worked with other people. They think over here and they weren't able to solve the problem. They were thinking we were going to solve the problem. I need something else. Boom. There I am. Let's go try this guy. 100% right? It's funny. I have an identical story of an actually another business coach reaching out to me and she reached out to me. It's like, "Hey, I obviously don't need business to act. She makes endlessly more money than me." She said, "I see what you're doing on socials. I don't know how to do that. What are your rates?" I sent her a list of all my rates and she said, "Send me the pay in full for three months." Four messages. Done. It's because of people, literally down to niche words. It's just words. Nobody before me that I know about. I'm not even kidding. It's weird. It's like, "Nobody I know that I'm aware of was talking about data and content online as much as I was." Right. We're just talking about it. In the way that I was. Even just saying, people were talking about retention graphs and all that stupid shit. We're just like, "Hey, I know how to analyze data as a content strategist." They're already like, "Can I highlight something for people viewing or listening to what you just said?" You even subconsciously were still in your genius of jargon without even saying it because you were like, "Oh, these people are posting something, something spreadsheets and whatnot. That's bullshit." That wasn't even something that was in my mind whatsoever about that. Because it's so organically ingrained in your mind, you're even saying things that show you're an expert without even realizing you're saying things that show you that you're an expert. Yeah, exactly. It comes from a deep understanding of the field, a deep understanding of the craft, a deep understanding of the competitors, a deep understanding of the niche, your positioning, yourself, who you are as a human being, what you provide to the world. If I had to summarize that, I want more creators to treat content less like a hobby and more like a professional. More like a top 1% athlete that comes in, watches the game film beforehand, creates these exercises for themselves, reads the feedback, watches their own film, goes and gets them in toward, does the off-season training, doesn't take days off, early mornings, late night, diet is dialed, rehab is dialed, mobility is dialed. All of these things play a part into your product and who you are as a personal brand. Yeah, if you want to build a life that's giving you opportunities and financial freedom and time freedom and location freedom, why do you think that's not going to be on the other side of making sacrifices in the short term? You know, one of the biggest things we hear is people saying like, "Content stresses me out." It's not good for my mental health. I don't have the time. I have kids you don't understand I'm like dude. We have on my staff. We have Ashley. She's a mother of four and Is the single income earner for her entire family husband included husband's great But he stays at home with the kid and she just rips content She runs multiple businesses. She mentors inside of my container as well. So Using somebody like that as an example because most people use kids as an excuse and it's like once you see that Somebody else has your situation if not a more intense situation. They're doing the things that you say you can't do You have two choices you either keep pretending that your lie is real or you actually say okay if it's possible for them It's possible for me and yeah, you know, just like you alluded to a professional athlete wants to be the best of what they do And they want the life that comes with that so they're willing to sacrifice Call back to what we originally talked about if you don't want to do that that is totally fine Don't expect a life-changing result without changing your life to get the result Yeah, and even if you can't find that one of these content Come on now even if you can't find the person in your life or it in In socials that has your scenario like the kids or whatever the algorithm in the markets Capitalism does not care. It does not give a fuck the of one leg in one eye and Four moms instead of a mom and dad and you were raised in Appalachia and you only a Kentucky fried chicken until you were 19. Nope literally nobody cares It's like can you make great content provide us for my specific for somebody Hey if the shoe fits I'm joking. I'm sure Anyways, that's not intense honestly. I think that was a good place to kind of close us out here We're a little happy We're gonna stop with KFC until you're passing Briar was let's rip one last thing that you would say that you don't think we've covered yet Advice for the people listening to this that are just like man. I'm struggling so hard with organic content Yeah, I mean I'll get a little a little spiritual for a second Oh, then tick huh look at you. Oh no, no if the content will Really turn into a mirror for how you view yourself worth in the world if you Find yourself not posting because you're afraid of views or how you look or what the low engagement is You're not willing to go through the hard time due to reflection of you attaching this like external validation of who you are onto yourself and You have to rid yourself of that somewhere or another like I Try my best to detach from what the algorithm says about me from what my revenue says about me and attach it to What Jesus says about me that's how I find that avenue like if he says that I am all of these different things then who cares if I have a video that gets underneath five thousand views It's just like not that big of a deal wake up do it the next day But you have to go through this exposure therapy to really find out Who you are and heal as an individual and become more comfortable in yourself and like even if you never got a Single dollar or a single follower it will be one of the greatest adventures you go on because you will be a better person on the other side Absolutely Beautifully said man, I mean that's the ethos of my entire company is what you just said man. So I resonate crazy well If I had to say anything and I'd also get a little spiritual here, you know There's something about your calling right your purpose your calling your mission your vision of the world that You have to realize eventually that it's not about you It's about something that's significantly bigger than you But if all of your decisions are oriented around how you feel or how you might be perceived or whether or not It's going to work for you then you are self-orienting your entire life And that is the fastest way to make sure that all you ever have is just enough to barely get your needs met That's how the world works whatever you focus on if you focus on meeting the needs of one million people Your needs will be met times a million if you just focus on meeting your own needs Then that's all you'll ever have in and it won't be in excess this world and God created us to multiply not just with Like in a love sense, but to multiply his mission through us to multiply your your reach to multiply his influence and Multiply your gifts to other people and if you're not doing that Then of course it's not going to work. There is there is no path of certainty that is also the path of faith Right those two those two things cannot coexist and so if it feels uncertain good That's exactly where God's calling you to go if it feels like you don't know where it's going to lead Perfect that's exactly where God is calling you to go if you stay stuck in the me bubble You'll never have influence in your life will never change 100% Can you say it better cool all right, but I will thank you for the conversation that was fantastic guys You are if you're this this far in and you We're born in Appalachia and you've been eating KFC until you were 19 give us a call We'll have you free one on one. Oh, dude. We'll do a two-way call with you honestly because you need a lot of help Rhyr working it working everybody finds you man. Oh, yeah Just Instagram for the best place first name last name Briar Cochrane feel free to DM me if you just drop in Nick as the first word I'll reply to every DM I get over the next seven days and Hit up any feedback that you guys have appreciate that man All right guys thanks to being here if you guys liked the episode do me a favor take a screenshot tag myself and Briar on your Instagram Give us some external validation because it feels good. We're really insecure and even though I said that It's actually not very good at it. So See you guys in the next one. See ya.