Brock Johnson: 10 Years of Instagram Growth Advice in One Hour

You don't own your social media. You are operating on rented territory that can be taken away from you at any point. So I believe that there's only two extremes in terms of content that are going to be performing in the near future. They are the super cinematic. Or the opposite end of the spectrum, which is the raw, genuine, authentic in the moment's storytelling. The biggest thing is the aesthetics. Those days are gone. Now, what people want more than ever is authenticity, realness, genuineness. Brock Johnson has spent nearly a decade helping creators grow with an audience of over one million. In this episode, he breaks down how to stop overthinking your content. Find what works, reach more people, and turn your audience into customers. How are you producing all of this content while also maintaining such a healthy work-life balance? My phone goes into what I like called dumb mode, where it turns itself into black and white. It removes all the social media and all the work-related apps. We have seen in-scrim shift. We have seen contents shift. We have seen industry shift. We have seen algorithm shift. What do you think is so important about growth today that in five years will still remain true? If someone in your life calls content creation not a real job, I got something for you. Because it's not a real job, it is the dream job. And if you want to turn content into an actual business, there is a system behind the scenes that works for all the top creators, and it is called many chat. I'll tell you more about it later in this episode. Try many chat pro for free at get.manychat.com/reads. You'll dash job with code creator. Quick reminder, if you're listening on Apple podcast or Spotify, follow and leave a review. Every single review that you actually leave helps us out and do more of these podcasts. We can bring on better guests so that you can learn more from it. I love all of you guys, and let's get back into it. One, first of all, Brock. I mean, congratulations on your event. We're gonna be talking a lot about it, but I know how hard it is to run those things and you've done a great job with it. So just congratulations with that. Well, thank you. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I was definitely big time inspired by seeing the event that you did in London. I think you didn't want it in New York too. And it was like, so I loved so much of seeing those and took inspiration for sure. So no, I really appreciate it. I was just telling you before the cameras were rolling that I was really looking forward to this because Brock, you are a stand-up guy. Like when I first met you, just your smile, your energy, your excitement, your kindness. I was like, yeah, I can't wait to have them on and I think you do it the right way. So again, I'm excited for this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, of course, really, really excited to be here and right back at you. I mean, I always feel like in this industry, you can tell really quickly like when someone's genuine and when their heart's in the right place and when they just want to serve people. And when we met earlier this year, I was like, wow, June's like a really, really good dude. Like someone who I want in my circle. So anyways, I'm glad we're good and have this conversation about it. To give some context, me and Brock had met in Can Lion where we were just sweating head to toe. And we are doing our very best. It's impossible to describe how hot that was. I was trying to tell the team was we come back like how ridiculous it was, but I don't know. We got good chance to meet each other. A lot of good people there too. So I think it made for a really good experience. Absolutely, yeah, no, I agree. It was, it was special. It was awesome and just so unbelievably hot. I mean, there's, there's, like for anyone who knows Fahrenheit, it should never be 100 degrees. It was 100 degrees at the beach and humid. It was, it was, but we were all in it together. Like we were all kind of just accepting. Hey, we're all dripping in sweat. So we might as well just deal with it. I love it. Again, thank you so much, Brock, for coming on. There's so much that I want to discuss with you. But Brock, where I want to start is something that you had done recently, which I don't believe many experts in your position would do. You had come onto your page and you had admitted that you want to share more about your life, your interest, do more storytelling on your page. And this goes against the old adage that you and I have been taught, which is to only share value. So it's been to me about that personal evolution. And then moreover, why does this distinction today matter more than ever before for those people listening? Yeah, so this is a really great question back. I mean, I've been growing on Instagram. I've been teaching social media strategy for almost a decade now. And when I was first getting started, I shared a ton of my personal life. And honestly, at that stage, it was in large part because my page was transitioning from what I had previously used as my personal Instagram account into this business Instagram account. So if you scroll far than up down, if you're crazy enough to scroll 17,000 times, you'll find my high school football pictures and my prom photos and all that, like you'll find all that. So it was more of a slow transition right where I was sharing my personal life, sharing about all my interests and passions and hobbies. Oh, yeah. And also here's some social media strategy as well. But over time, I started to see that the more that I shared just value or just about my quote unquote niche or just about growing on social media, the more I was growing. And so I kind of over time just fell out of the habit quite honestly of sharing a ton about my personal life. Then about a year ago, my wife brought something up to me, which I love having a partner who can kind of be my mirror and who can kind of hold up that reflection for me. And she said, you haven't been posting a ton about your personal life on your Instagram, really, at all recently. And I was like, you know, that's a good point. And so I started doing it more on my Instagram stories. I started talking more about my personal life, sharing anything that was going on. Currently, at the time that we're recording this on my Instagram stories is some moose that we're in my backyard yesterday that I thought was just so crazy to see this eight foot tall animal. But as we would both probably agree, you're going to get a lot more views on your feet. The reels, the posts you're making on your feet are always going to get more views and distribution than your Instagram stories. And so even though I've been sharing about my personal life on my stories for the last year, I hadn't been doing it on my feet. And so it was actually at my live event. I hosted a live conference a couple weekends ago and Jesse Jean, who I know is a mutual friend of ours. She was one of our speakers and I got to pick her brain after her presentation and kind of do a live Q&A on stage. And I asked her about this whole idea of sharing about your personal life including these stories on your feed. And she said that the secret to the success of her Yap challenge was that people really care. People cared about her. And she believes that the reason they cared about her was simply because she told stories. She talked about her personal life. She shared these story lines and these life updates. So she was more than just value. She was more than just a talking head or an educator. She was someone who people truly could relate to and someone who people could really identify with. And so in that answer, she also said, "You know, Brock, when you invited me "to speak at your conference, "I wanted to do some snooping as we all do. "Who is this person? "Let me find out if they're a good person. "You know, if they don't get the opportunity "to hang out like you and I did for a few days in France, "the way we get to know people "is we're gonna stalk their page a little bit, right?" She was there up to. And so she said she started stalking my page and she was like, wow, this guy's got a lot of value but I don't really know much about him. I don't know much about his values. I can't tell if he's a good person. I can't really discern these things about him. And she wasn't saying this to intentionally call me out but I was like, oh my God, this is a call out right now and I actually love the way someone phrased it, June. They said she wasn't calling you out. She was calling you up. And I absolutely love that, that reframing. But regardless of how you say it, it was kind of a wake-up call of like, yeah, I need to start sharing these personal stories on my feed. And so over the last few weeks since the live conference, I've been trying to do a much more intentional job of that. If you've ever commented on one of my Instagram posts and you got a DM from me, it is not me staying up till midnight to get back but instead it is actually an automated system by many chat. It's been these systems that I've used on my back end for the last two years and it allows me to take the attention that I'm already generating but actually do something with it. So connecting with the right people, sending them to the right place and ultimately being able to track that data so that I know what to double down on and I know what to correct. So instead of them seeing a post and then swiping away and forgetting about it, I can use that post to spark the conversation to know how to serve my audience better. Then this becomes the perfect opportunity for me to show the different resources that Creative College offers. So it's the perfect integration to every business. Attention is only half the battle. It's what you do with it that really makes it count. And you know, I'm always trying to help you in any capacity to build your dream job with content so that you can have more freedom, more ownership and more opportunities. Many chat will help you do that. So try many chat pro free for a month at get.manychat.com/real-job with code creator. Okay, back to the episode. - I have found that to be one of the biggest competitive advantages once someone does nail that within their respective strategies because it's so easy in the age of AI to copy information or copy tips but is there a way to make you stand out? Can the football version of you and the coaching side of you and then you as a partner like all that come together in a garage? I think you're doing that. Now, talk to me about, let's say, other experts that are listening into this. Maybe people that are wondering, how do I protect my image while also still telling my stories? What is a good first step for them? - Yeah, I think that a good first step is finding ways to incorporate bits and pieces of your personal life of your interests, passions and hobbies into the value that you're delivering. So something that I often do in the winter, which a big part of my life is snowboarding. I moved to Utah away from Southern California so that I could live in the mountains and snowboard. And so I started every winter filming some of my reels on the chairlift when my beard is like covered in icicles and snow. And something though, the reel is not about snowboarding. People are able to see that that's what's going on, right? They're able to see like why is Brock wearing goggles and a helmet and their snow in his beard? you're able to connect those. dots, the people who follow me who are skiers and snowboarders, they recognize them immediately, and they can appreciate those things about me. But even the people who don't necessarily, who maybe have never been to snow in their life, they can start to pick up these little bits and pieces. And so I think that if you can find ways to incorporate these interests and passions, maybe it's cooking and you're going to start cooking a meal during your video. And there's like the visual hook, the dynamicness of you chopping up food and and preparing items while you're also teaching something that maybe has nothing to do with cooking. Those little elements are an easier way that you can start to incorporate storytelling and parts of yourself into your content, while still providing that value. And then over time, I think it's important, I did this early on, and it really created this habit in me. But it's writing down every story, every moment that is like, oh, wow, that was really funny. Well, that was really exciting, or that was out of the norm, or that was that was an experience, right? Even if it's something like, I was going to drive 30 minutes and there was a car wreck on the highway and it ended up being a three hour drive. Write down that story and write down some details and save them in a note in your phone. And what that will do is two things. Number one, over time, you're going to get a lot better at recognizing these moments in your life, because we all feel like, oh, my life isn't that exciting, my life, oh, it's boring, I don't have these stories to tell, we all have crazy things that happen to us all the time. So just start documenting them. Number one, and then number two, in the future, when it comes time to create content, when it comes time to teach a lesson, record a podcast, whatever it may be, you have this bank of stories that you can pull fun. So if you're teaching a lesson about, say, staying consistent in the gym because you're a fitness coach, you could go through your list and say, what from this list of stories is an example of someone who is inconsistent or a time where someone was super consistent or a time where consistency made all the difference, but you don't have to just rack your brain for that story. You have all these stories that are kind of pre-logged and ready to use. I'm interrupting really quickly to tell you about my next five day virtual masterclass happening right around the corner. It is 100% free and inside I'll be showing you exactly how I create content, exactly how I think about content and ultimately how I can take that attention and scale businesses behind it. This is not just about fury. It's going to be very practical and you'll walk away with an exactly made plan for you. If you want to get your free spot before it runs out, then make sure you look at the show notes or the description box. Let's get back into it. I love this and I want to actually keep expanding on it. So let's say that someone listening to this is taking your advice and they have their Apple notes or their phone notes and they're finding events in their life as they come across it. I think it's so important to learn how to read your life. Then how do they make that story interesting? How do you go ahead and take an event and then make a piece of content around it where people will actually want to care? Yeah. Focus on the feelings more than the feelings and what I mean by that is when we try to tell stories oftentimes and I'm thinking of my dad as I'm saying this answer because blesses heart. He loves telling a story but he my mom and I when he starts telling a story we just kind of give each other the look like here we go because he includes details that are unnecessary and moreover. Oftentimes what I feel people get wrong with storytelling is they're just focused on the details in general. People care a lot less about the statistics or to use the phrase I started with the feelings of the story, the exact date and time and temperature. They care a lot more about the feelings to use a story that you and I told at the very beginning of this episode. We were talking about how we're dripping sweat at this creator event in the South of France. I know I shared the detail, the feeling that it was like a hundred degrees but even before that we're talking about how we're dripping sweat. We're not hugging each other because we're all just soaked through our clothes and we're constantly like looking for shade. You don't know necessarily what time of the month it was. You don't know what time of the year it was. You know it was the South of France but like we could have left that detail out. You don't care as much that we were there for four days or seven days or three days. You don't care about all these details. You care about the feelings, right? What were we actually experiencing? And I think not to get too nerdy scientific on you but I think that's because when you focus on the feelings in your storytelling, people's mirror neurons are able to fire and they're able to picture themselves in that experience. Whereas if you focus on the numbers and you focus on the all the details and the logistics of the story that you're telling, the analytical side of people's brains take over instead of just them getting lost in the story. There's a really good framework where I tell my students to do the problem pursuit payoff and it's speaking to a lot of what you're saying here where you can go ahead and it's not even just the details but a lot of times people talk about the successes like people talk about how great they are or what they've achieved and they'll lead with that because of the credibility, the polished component. But if you lead with payoff, not many people will actually recognize that to be their experience but problems we as human beings are common denominator as struggle. So you and I might not have the exact same living experiences today but we've gone through insecurities, imposter syndrome, this fear of trying and failing in public and we have these fears, these problems that we experience if we lead with that. So the same idea with the story about Canline, it's this idea that you and I had experienced the heat and we were struggling, we were nervous, we were insecure coming into it, we were trying to make an experience of it. If we led with that, the people actually care about the pursuit, how did you overcome that and then ultimately that payoff actually has more meaning. I love that we're going like super into this already because I feel like we're going to have a lot to talk about. I want to start a little bit earlier because you are somebody that I've heard say that you're not going to win on creativity or editing or humor or looks alone but you're going to win on share output and you obviously practice what you preach because you post four to five times a day, you do your trial reals, you produce your podcast, you do this beautifully well and I want to speak to your workflow here in a little bit, but where does this dedication come from from? Where does this discipline come from in your childhood? What does actually stem G2B who you are today? Yeah, first of all, I love that you use the word discipline because people often ask how do you find the motivation and I don't. There are plenty of days where I'm not motivated, plenty of days where I'm like, do I really want to do this today? Now we can talk more about systems and workflow and how we can avoid those things but it really ultimately especially early on comes down to discipline, right? Sticking with it and being able to do the hard thing, do the thing that you're committed to, do the thing that you said you were going to do even when you don't feel like it, right? I think where that comes from is I have a background in sports so specifically in football. My grandpa is the winningest coach in Orange County California history, second winning is coach in California state history for football, my dad played professionally, my uncle played professionally so even though people look at me now and they're like, oh you come from a line of entrepreneurs because my mom is an entrepreneur, my grandmother, my mom's father is an entrepreneur so in that sense I do come from entrepreneurs. More so for the first 18 to 20 years of my life, I come from a football family, I come from a family that is considered football royalty in Southern California and so from a young age, I got to be around high schoolers, I got to see them being coached, I got to see what kids went off to play at Stanford and USC and go play professionally and I got to see what kids were really, really talented on the high school team but never made it out of high school. They dropped out or they had drug problems or whatever and I got to see that firsthand and then actually you saying that we're disciplined, I don't know if I've ever shared this before but on one of my youth football teams, I think it was maybe first or second grade, our coach would give us a word of the year every year and we would print off these little laminated labels and put them right on the forehead of our helmet. It's actually where the little ride delts usually logo is the logo of the helmet brand. We would cover that up with our word of the year and I'm pretty sure for maybe first and second, maybe even and third grade, the word was discipline and so from literally age 6, 7, 8, I was getting hammered about discipline, discipline, discipline and we can talk more about perfectionism and things I've had to overcome in my life but I think some really good things that came out of my football life was a lot of discipline and dedication and you know, I don't mean to put any entrepreneurs or content creators down when I say what I'm about to say but personally, I feel like in college, if I was able to wake up which I did every day at 4am, go to a couple hours of meetings, I was a quarterback and then we go to a couple hours of lifting weights and then we'd have some more meetings and then we go out to practice for two hours and then we'd usually have more meetings after practice and then around 1am, I would eat my meal while I was on the way to a couple hours of classes and then I would come home from classes and then I would do my business stuff at home at like 6, 7pm that evening, like in my opinion, if I can do all that stuff, if I can manage my books, ball and business while I was in college then managing the business, creating some reels, creating some content now in my professional career, it feels easy. There's a conversation that me and my co-founder just had and he was asking why am I so non-stop as in why is it when something is achieved that you have the energy to go ahead and do something again, he's like I'm not as young as you, I think we need a little bit of some break and I said the exact same thing that you just said which is when I was in school and getting my degrees in biomedical engineering and I elected to get both my bachelor's and master's, that was so much harder than what I think I am doing today, the willingness because I think nowadays you and I actually see the fruits of our labor, we see that when we actually do something, we do a launch and it's successful, we see that when you're playing football and you're grinding it like every single day and you're not necessarily winning the championship or you're not winning the award, it's hard to show up every single day and the same idea when I was a student And I think it's a really- important message for everyone to be listening in on this because they're probably not at the stage where they made their first million dollars, right? They're in their stage where it's this idea that I'm grinding, I'm grinding, I'm grinding, I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel and I need a little bit of hope. And I think you're the perfect person to ask about this because I always see the content as two parts. There's a tactic side, there's also a mindset side. And it's usually this mindset component that decides whether someone lasts or doesn't. So you talk about football, I'm talking about studying, can you give me a tangible way that other people can practice their discipline ahead of preparing for what is going to be a long-term struggle in content mentally? Yeah, I mean, there's a really great question. Practicing discipline, there's this saying that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. And while I think that you could argue against that in some regards, I think that in many regards that is very true. And so I think that even to this day, I exercise almost every day. And I know that's a huge part of your routine too. I remember when we were in canon, you said, "Oh, like I had this long flight, I traveled all the way over here and I was still up in the hotel this morning getting my workout in, right?" Those sorts of things like discipline, it's all areas of your life. And so it's going to be very hard for you to be disciplined with, let's say, daily content creation if you aren't disciplined with your exercise routine or with your diet or with your family, with your priorities. I'm not saying that you have to be perfect, absolutely not. But I do think that if you let yourself not have discipline in all areas of your life and then you expect yourself to suddenly be disciplined in this one area of content creation or business ownership, it's going to be a real struggle. And so I think that that's number one is apply this discipline to all areas of your life. Number two, give yourself grace. You're not going to be perfect. I think people believe that discipline requires perfection. And as soon as they miss one day, they miss one workout, they miss one post. It leads them into a spiral, right? Even the most disciplined people in the world are going to miss. They're going to have mistakes. They're going to have days where they just literally, they're sick. And you need to take a day off, right? Those sorts of things. And that's important as well. And then the final thing that I'll say that I think it's really underrated is getting accountability partner. Whether it's a spouse, a loved one, a colleague, a business partner, someone in your community find a local entrepreneurship or content creation club or whatever or find someone digitally, like Instagram is full of people just like you, the listener who are trying to grow, trying to build their brand or grow their business, connect with some of the other brand owners and business owners on Instagram. And just reach out and say, Hey, I would love to be your accountability partner. Would you like to be mine? Like I will help hold you accountable. You hold me accountable because we're way more likely to cheat out on ourselves or to use a fitness analogy to skip some reps in the gym when we're doing it by ourselves. But when we have a coach or an accountability partner or someone there who we're working out with, we're a lot less likely to cheat them. And so if you can find an accountability partner, I think that that's a huge unlock for your discipline. It's so true. I mean, using that work analogy, there are many times where I'm in the gym, like there's no way I could lift that weight. And then I'll have a workout partner come with me. They're like, I think you could do it. And then I end up doing it. And I think that you don't realize your own potential unless someone is objectively looking at it and keeping it accountable. I think that is so good. I know you had mentioned your parents earlier. And when I was researching you, what stood out to me about your childhood isn't even that your parents were entrepreneurs, but it was that they allowed you to try different things and also fail. And I'm curious how that has prepared you for the inevitable ups and downs that a crater entrepreneur experiences. Yeah, I'm a big believer that everything is figure outable. And that was something that was taught to me from a young age by my parents. And my parents did an amazing job of teaching me about entrepreneurship as a kid, teaching me really about life as a kid, not through the lessons. We didn't sit down at the dinner table and they lectured me. We didn't sit down and here today you're going to learn about KPI. And today you're going to learn about SOP. And today you're going to learn about customer acquisition costs. No, they instead lived their life as entrepreneurs. And they allowed both my sister and myself to monkey see monkey do to observe and learn. And that allowed us to take our own interest, right? As a kid, you're naturally going to gravitate towards whatever your parents are doing. You're interested in what they're up to. And it's no secret that I know there's been plenty of studies done that have shown that people often end up in the same career that their parents are doing. And I think you're a lot more likely to enjoy that career if you're not forced into it, but you instead get to find it on your own. And so again, my parents lived their life as entrepreneurs. And so that means I got to see all of it. I got to see the pros and the cons. I got to see the fruits of my parents' labor and the successes and the, you know, family vacations we got to go on with our entire family. And the way my parents got to take care of their friends. But I also got to see the struggles. I got to see the tough years. I got to see something that my mom has been open about, which is that she struggled with workaholism. I got to see that firsthand as a child. And so all of those things taught me lessons. And so there was a lot of learning, but I did from that young age about entrepreneurship. So many lessons that I was able to gain from them. And I think that it's a huge part of who I am today and how I got to be where I am is I got to learn from them. And yeah, I think it totally set me up for the future. The brilliant part about you is that you've taken these lessons and you've also applied it to ensure that you don't make the same mistakes. You actually have one of the best work-life balances that I've heard of, like speaking to you, working with you directly, like I know that from you. And I think that you take that very intimately and personally for yourself. So I want to get into your workflow, right? Like how are you producing all of this content while also maintaining such a healthy work-life balance? Talk to me about the system behind it, talk to me about ideation all the way through posting. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I appreciate that. That is a focus for me. Like that is maybe priority number one is my work-life balance. And I do want to say that there are seasons to be more in balance, right? Like you and I both talked about earlier, you and when you were getting your masters. For me, it was as a college football player. There are these seasons where you're grinding harder. You're hustling more. You're working harder. You're maybe spending more hours on the laptop and spending more hours working than you are maybe enjoying the fruits of those labors. Like I love your dedication and the way you were posting in lead up to the story challenge that you recently did, where you were documenting like here's how many hours I've spent building in and ideating and planning out all these things. There are times and seasons for that. I'm absolutely a fan of working hard. I'm a huge fan of working hard. I am not a fan of sacrificing your priorities. I'm not a fan of sacrificing your health. You know, like again, to use my mom as an example, she was a very important for her to not work and to be very present when my sister and I were around. So what that meant was she would put us to bed and then she would stay up until one, two, three A.M. working and then she would wake up at four or five in the morning to go teach a fitness class and be home in time for us to wake up and have breakfast. That means that she was working for four or five hours just overnight while we were sleeping and then while we're at school, she's working more. And so, you know, not to get too lost in that story. But again, that's what taught me a lot about how I want to live and the work life balance that I want to have for myself. And so first of all, it starts with some boundaries, which for me, I never, pretty much never take meetings or calls prior to 10 a.m. This conversation is an exception. We're having this meeting of mountain time. Thank you. I'll make an exception for you. And also, I have some travel today. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to be up anyways. Let's do it. But rarely do I take any meetings before 10 a.m. or even 11 a.m. because I liked out my mornings to be with my wife, make her coffee. I like to, I'm a helper. So I like to do the morning chores and, you know, put away all the dishes and do all the stuff around the house in the morning. I like to have my workout in the morning. That's important for me. My day's going to be way better if I get to get a pump on in the morning rather than putting it off. So usually before 11 a.m., I don't have anything. And then I have a hard stop at 5 p.m. Very, very rarely do I go past 5 p.m. If I'm in the middle of a task, I might push it a few minutes and finish it up. If I have a, you know, a live training at 6 p.m. Sure, there's an exception. But for the most part, 5 p.m. hits, my phone goes off. And I have automations and shortcuts set up in my phone so that at that time, my phone goes into what I like to call dumb mode where it turns itself into black and white. It removes all the social media and all the work related apps. And the only apps that I have left are my anti-productivity apps. Pokemon Go and Wordal and like things that I can do that are not work related at all. Another huge part of my work life balance is my wife. So again, earlier, I talked about an accountability partner. She doesn't have to do this very much at all anymore. But when we first started dating, I was fresh out of college. So I was still transitioning from this grind hustle mindset mentality, this bachelor mentality to now work together. We're spending time. We're moving towards engagement and marriage. And if I was working after 5 p.m. and I had expressed to her that that was a boundary of mine. And she looked over and saw that I was like typing on a Gmail. She'd be like, what, what are you doing? And not even like trying to call me out. Just curious. What are you up to? But even that, I would be like, I'm not hiding it. She knows I'm hurt. She's noticing that I'm working, right? Because as entrepreneurs, we'll always try to sneak it in. We'll be like, oh, it's a commercial break. And my partner is on their phone watching TikTok. So I'll like open my email and type out a or all, open my notes app and type out a post. They notice where your energy goes. They notice. And so even if you're both sitting together on the couch and she's on her phone watching Instagram Reels, if I'm working, they're We're not together. We're not watching Real Sailor. We're not hanging out together. I'm working and she's not right And so she would call me out on that and so that was very helpful But in terms of my overall workflow to really answer this question something that's evolved over time But I really tried to take the idea of Batching or time blocking and break it down even further into individual tasks And so what that means specifically for me is that when I am writing scripts I am only writing scripts. I'm not filming. I'm not ideating. I'm not coming up with ideas I'm not editing. I am just writing scripts. Then when I'm filming I'm filming as much as I possibly can I am filming 15 or 30 or as many real as possible in that sitting. I've already written the scripts I've already ideated. I'm not editing. I'm not planning. I'm not deciding when is this gonna go? What's there gonna? I'm just filming and so I'm able to stay in these different modes rather than constantly having to Mentally shift my attention into a new task and that's very helpful for me And then most practically the way that I break it down is that I will script right probably about two or three times a week I ideate pretty much constantly. There's pretty much every day. I'm seeing ideas. I'm getting inspiration I'm reading a chapter of a book. I'm seeing an amazing post from June I'm watching a podcast whatever I'm getting inspiration, right? And so I'm constantly getting inspired and soaking up the creativity that's around me again a few times a week I'm script writing really only about once a week or sometimes even once every other week Am I actually sitting down to film content and then as much as possible? I try to pass off the stuff that I suck at which is Editing which is the actual like putting together of the post I try to pass that off to an editor or just some sort of software or tool as much as I possibly can I love that and you treat content like a full-on business and we just heard it there even in the mindset of the boundaries And I think you need it because sometimes if we don't have those boundaries It will literally bleed into our life and our life becomes content And I think that scares a lot of people But when they hear the fact that you're treating it like 11 to 5 and keeping your mornings to yourself I think it feels very approachable, so I love that you've spoken about it Talked me in terms of who's on your team and talked me about how you found them and how you're managing them Because what I have learned and I've worked with some of these different creators who go from beginner stage when they're doing everything by themselves From ideation filming to editing to posting to managing analytics and that over time as their business grows They need to bring help on but they don't know which steps to take and you've been doing this for a while So give people a little bit of an insight into that Yeah Higher before you're ready because when you feel like you're ready, it's too late When you feel like okay, I'm ready to hire It's not because you're at like this perfect moment this perfect intersection of now's the time It's because you're you're burnt out. It's because you're like oh my god If I have to read one more email oh my god if I have to manage one more inquiry Oh my god if I have to do one more real that I have to edit You're at that point where you're like you're burnt out you're over it and and that's you don't want to be in that position You're going to hire someone and they're going to get the worst version of you because you're burnt out and you're over it And you're just like here take this so hire before you're ready and I think just like everything else in life people worry about What's the right first step? What's the right post to make? What's the right? What's the right? I think it's much more important to make your decisions right then to make the right decision And so what I mean by that in terms of hiring is There are lots of people you could hire first you could hire a creative director who's gonna come on your team They're going to ideate your entire vision remake your brand hire a bunch of people underneath them like an elder and a content creator and whatnot Or you could start by hiring a content creator or you could start by hiring an elder or you could start by hiring a copywriter There is no right to first hire necessarily What I have found and what I did personally is when I was 19 years old I hired my first assistant And I hired her at that stage when I had made two thousand dollars in total in my business And I had no idea what to give her to do I remember I hired her and I was literally like You're I guess you're gonna work five hours a week and maybe like check my emails for me But even that like she wasn't really checking my emails. I was still checking them I don't I don't even remember what I actually had her doing I think at that time I was also on Snapchat and so I had her doing like Snapchat research which meant every few days she would send me some articles Of that came out from Snapchat and that was about it But again, I hired before I was truly ready to hire But because of that my business in the first month that I hired that assistant at 19 years old Did as much in revenue as the six months prior which was at that point the first six months of my business And no offense to to Joyce my assistant at the time It wasn't because she was really moving the needle like I just described It was in large in large part because I had those little tasks that were off my mind And I had someone else who I was accountable to now the business the revenue the sales everything It wasn't just going to pay me it was also going to pay for my assistant, right? And so that was the first hire that I had now on the team we have an assistant My wife works really closely with me on my personal branch. She's kind of our CFO I like to say that she keeps me out of jail for tax fraud She handles all the money and all the finances and and our bank account I haven't logged into our bank account in like four or five years And so she handles all that and I'm really fortunate to have her on the team in that regard Because I'm not type A. I'm not very organized so she is and that's very that's awesome I do have an editor for my reels However, she doesn't necessarily edit all of my reels for me. She edits more of the complex ones the talking head ones The ones that might require a little bit more B-roll or a little bit more graphic design in them And I would say she does about 16 per month for me currently Also on the personal brand side I have someone who edits my podcasts because that's something I could not do I have someone who produces or you could say manages the podcast So they manage like the uploads the thumbnail getting added the right description being written and all that stuff um And then I recently brought on someone who is I we don't have a formal title for her yet But something along the lines of vice president of content And so she's someone who's basically doing everything that we talked about I'm mainly going my workflow Yeah She's helping me with ideation with discovering formats with script writing with coming up with ideas with repurposing content that I've posted before we have Like 937 videos from that live conference I did a few weeks ago She's turning that into actual content that can be posted and can be used So that's on the personal brand side and then we also have the business brand Which is the insta club hub and on that business we have about 20 people who work on it And that's all the normal You know, we have a head of the program director We have a media buyer someone who does advertising for us We have a few people on the automation side we have a customer service team We have a graphic designer fulfillment all that stuff all the normal business ops But I'm a big fan of stop doing what you suck at I think that as entrepreneurs we need to ask the question who not how Not how can I get a million followers? How can I make a million dollars? How how how instead to ask who who has done this before? Who can I learn from? Who can I hire and bring on the team to do this for me And so I am able to put my ego aside and recognize there's a lot that I suck at And all of those things on that long list that I'm really not good at I'm going to hire someone and pass that off to a team member Who not only is good at that but loves doing it as well It's such a good point because for me in the last 1560 months I've hired more than I've ever had before So it's like a very slow thing for me like I've run a one or two people And then it's kind of exploded and then when I recognize how important these Hires were I started doubling down on it But there's two skills being done there There's the hiring then there's the leadership the management side of it So I want you to speak to that because what I have found a lot of creatives Are really good at coming up with ideas and being inspirational things that need They call it like the vision they're like they're really good defining the vision But they're not so good at the operation side of things And when you have other people that are depending on you for your leadership and your strategic advice It's so important that you make them feel seen So talk to me about best practices around leadership and management Yeah, I think making people feel seen as you just said is very important Every person is not going to be led the same way Every person is going to want to be led in a different way That it reminds me of this quote from Ryan Howard from the office who said I want to be led the way I want to be led when I want to be led That's how you should lead me and as funny as that quote was It's true I mean everyone has their own unique way And I know that even on my team there's certain people who I I need to give long explanations to and I need to give them time And I need to really give them runway to think about the tasks and projects that we're working on And there's some people on our team who I can That they're all about brevity, be concise, be direct Right, sometimes that's like my vice president of content. She's a northern European And she is someone who's like just be direct with me Don't sugar code it. Don't be nice. Don't do the compliment Sandwich thing just like give me the direct feedback So understanding that and that comes from a place of empathy And that comes from a place of listening more than you speak I think that oftentimes when we think of leaders We think of the monologue we think of the speech We think of the person doing the talking When I think the best leaders are actually the best listeners And so the more that you can listen Empathize with your team your staff and truly hear what their needs are The better you're going to be able to lead them And then I would recommend reading the book "Extreme Ownership" by Jocco Willink The word extreme is in the title. It's a little extreme in the book But I think it's a really great leadership book and it's taught me a lot About the way I want to lead my team and the way that I do Lead my organization, but also leadership takes practice It's a skill just like anything else Sure, you know, there's that phrase "natural born leader" No one's a natural born leader We're natural born babies You don't come out of the womb like directing your parents on what to do Sure, there's some, you know, characteristic and behavioral traits, whatever, but ultimately leadership is a skill that can be developed. And the final thing that I will say when we're talking about this who instead of how is if you are truly someone who you're just a you're a creative leaf in the wind. You're someone who just loves having no rules and no one to report to and just being your being your freak flag flying and just being yourself. Well, then maybe you're someone who needs to hire that leader to be the director of operations to be the person who is very regimented and who's going to be that director for your team and then you're just going to be like the crazy visionary behind the scenes who talks with just that one person and then they can disseminate and actually lead the team. I love how nitty gritty we're getting because again I think as you scale you need these types of conversations like I wish I wish that I could have turned on some footage and had someone explain to me what you have just explained when I was making my first five hires because leadership is something that you have to constantly take extreme ownership around like everything that goes wrong is entirely because of you and everything that goes right is because everyone else on your team and it's like you have to constantly nurture that culture and I love it. I want to take a second to zoom out for more of the beginners listening in on this and you're one of the best people to ask because you've been a coach in this space for longer than almost everyone. You've been doing this for the better part of a decade and I want to hear from you how how the paradigm has shifted from 10 years ago how content looked today. What are some things that you stood behind back then that you no longer stand behind because things have evolved? The aesthetics are gone. Again earlier I mentioned you can scroll down to my feed and see my high school football photos. You can also scroll down in my feed and see the 2016 to 2019 era of Instagram where everything was so aesthetic. Everything how to look a certain way you had to pick a font, you had to pick a color, you had to pick a filter. I remember my coaching clients back then part of my services was connecting them with a local photographer to go out and have Instagram photo shoots where you would take a bunch of content, get a bunch of photos for your Instagram, right? Those days are gone. Now what people want more than ever is authenticity, realness, genuineness and the great thing is that we all have phones now that can shoot in 4K your phone is more than high enough quality and so you have the ability. You don't need a production team or a photographer but you have the ability to film and photograph yourself constantly in your real setting, in your real life, in your genuine living space and your genuine emotions and sharing those actual stories. That's something that has really changed on Instagram over the last few years and I think a huge part of that now especially is AI, right? Everything is reproducible to a certain degree with AI and I think that AI is getting better and better and better at professional cinematic high quality content and so I believe that there's only two extremes in terms of content that are going to be performing in the near future. They are the super cinematic, like I am literally a Hollywood cinematographer. I mean, we met people both of us did at Cannes Lions who they're literal Hollywood cinematographers or they had a background in music video production or they worked on X and Y and Z movie and now they're making reels and it's like that's that's the level of cinematic professional quality that we have to compete with or the opposite end of the spectrum which is the raw genuine authentic in the moment story telling the things that show the real human emotion that people are going to want to connect with and the people are connecting with and so the biggest tip that I can give for that authenticity is that authenticity comes from speed. Authenticity comes from reducing the time between idea and execution. The faster that you can get from here's a topic I want to talk about a story I want to tell, a framework I want to teach to actually doing it the more authentic it'll be. Conversely, the longer that you spend editing it, scripting it, I worked with a woman just yesterday I had a conversation and she said you know last year I would film all my reels and they were doing great and then this year I've been taking the extra step of putting them into chat GPT and trying to refine them and make the scripts even stronger and they've been flopping and listen I love chat GPT I love I love Claude I love AI there's there's a lot of really powerful and great uses of these tools and they can really I think make your systems a lot more efficient however she was saying basically she was answering her own question which is that her posts had lost the authenticity because she was overly scripting them and then using AI to refine those scripts and then she was editing them and so it was no longer coming from her it was no longer genuine or authentic it was no longer uniquely her it was a prompt from chat GPT had had executed this script and so again that authenticity the more that you can lean into that and that means the imperfections that means the messy background that means the oh my hair was out of place that means oh I was I was not in in the right setting so to speak I wasn't in the aesthetic background I didn't use the right fonts colors filters whatever I still posted it anyways and people are I think going to connect with that a lot more and they're going to connect with it a lot deeper now and into the future this conversation I think applies significantly to all of my business owners service providers because what happens is they've been trained to show the polished output of their work so maybe it is a photographer a videographer and they're showing their final edit or let's say that they're a wedding planner they're showing the final wedding they're showing the end result maybe they're doing lash tech work and they're showing the final output for their clients but the problem is if you search up lash tech or if you search up wedding planter or if you search up photographer a videographer like you said you were competing with the cream of the crop you were competing with people that are significantly higher production than you that more cinematic experience than you and if you're not going to compete off of aesthetics if you're not going to compete off of even let's say pricing the best way to compete is with authenticity and I think what you're telling us here is that it's a skill to be learned I think a lot of people hear the word authenticity and they're like how the heck am I going to do that like I'm not authentic like I don't know how to show up there and you're making this really good point where if you go from ideation to production of it and streamline that process and make it as fast as possible then someone can't have the time to overthink now I also know that a lot of people are just going to be like brought tell me how long I should take so what is a good recommendation let's say that someone has an idea in their car and they're like I got to go film it I got to post it into Brock's point I got to make that distance as short as possible how long you're recommending because of course there is the process where you do have to flush out the idea you do have to film it correctly and things of that nature so how long are you generally giving us as a good recommendation yeah I think it can really vary but I would say if it's let's say a 30 to 60 second talking head real right you're teaching a lesson telling a story whatever you're talking to the camera yapping as some might say that should take in my opinion 20 minutes or less from start to finish in order to maximize authenticity now eventually like you said it's a skill that can be developed eventually that can be four minutes right it takes a minute or two to think about okay what's my hook that is one thing that I do think is important to think a little bit about how am I going to start this video that might be one element where you might bring in a little bit of AI to refine the hook or the opening statement because that is so important and there's so much studies and and research has been done on the psychology of an effective hook that might be an area where you spend a little bit of time brainstorming but then for the most part you want to lean into the okay I'm going to yeah I'm going to tell my story and if there's a part where I'm like oh I didn't like that sentence you can cut that sentence out in post production or you can rerecord that video and don't say that sentence but really leaning into speed so I would rather if someone's listening today I would rather have them have an idea spend 10 minutes on it and post it and then learn from it then spend 30 minutes on it and post it because and I think everyone listening will will agree with this the post that you're like I'm sure this one's going to go viral this is the best one I spent so much time energy and effort I can't wait to post this you post it and it falls right and then on the flip side there's the post that you're like I just kind of whipped it together I didn't think much of it and I post it and it did my it was my best this week this month this year of my best post ever right and so use that as evidence to lean into under-thinking to talk about this the whole you know again everyone's looking for the perfect moment the perfect right choice the first hire the first step they're also looking for the perfect amount of thinking like on the spectrum of thinking we have under-thinking and overthinking perfect amount of thinking there's no such thing as perfect there's no such thing as the perfect amount of thinking June and so what they do is they go overboard and they end up overthinking and over editing and over scripting and over doing which removes the authenticity from their real and so to the best of your ability lean into under-thinking intentionally spending less time intentionally saying you know what I'm going to set a timer for 10 minutes and whatever I'm done within those 10 minutes I'm done with and I have to post right that means you're going to make some mistakes I make mistakes all the time even just two days ago I made a post that was like super authentic and genuine I was sharing some of the the difficult moments some of the losses from our live conference and on the second slide I said this isn't for pity but I spelled the word pity wrong why not because I was trying to like boost engagement from people who were like used how to typo but because it was a genuine typo because I was focused on the authenticity of telling the story of sharing this moment and not on spell checking every word and making sure that everything was perfect and so that's a small concrete example but the more that you can embrace under thinking the more authentic you will be and the more efficient you'll get with content creation you talk about speed and efficiency And it's such a good point because people don't even realize that that is trainable because when they hear 20 minutes from your Brock, they're thinking I spent 20 hours I spent 20 days making up for you some content 20 minutes is crazy But I've gone through this similar experience where I looked at Parkinson's Law for example where work expands to fill the time Allotted for it and you will always be your biggest critic You will always become imperfectionist if you allow your mind to own you always think it's not good enough I got to make this subtle change and at the end of the day No one's going to really care about the typo. No one's going to really care about that 2.2 second difference No one will care but it's in your constant mind and something that I've done when I was doing this earlier And I think it goes back to how busy we were when we first started like a lot of people might look at us now and look at full-time creatives or entrepreneurs Like they spend all day making their content and it's like we didn't start that way like we we also had these busy occupations around us And you have to train for speed and so I would always have a timer out it basically I would have this little sand timer with me And it would it would mark 20 minutes and I would use to these 20 minute timers to make sure that I could get to that next phase Because I think that everyone listening to this right now has to learn what is good enough like you have to get good at understanding Yeah, this is good enough and get it out into the world So I love the fact that you talk about speed and we can even give these people a challenge like for the next 30 days Try it like you will never get good with speed if you don't practice it and I love how you're leading with that I think it's a really really really helpful point Something that I want you to also help people with are trial reels I think I keep getting that in my DMs all the time and I think it's because a lot of people are speaking to the newest updates for them And obviously meta had cracked down on best practices so things have shifted for us So talk to me about how you're using trial reels today and how people can also implement them for their own content Yes, I love this topic and this is one of those rare times where you can talk about an actual strategy and nitty gritty I don't like using the word hack, but more or less this is a rare opportunity for us to use a feature and take advantage of it and it's working right now So as you said the the rules and the requirements and whatnot are constantly changing so it's important to stay up to date But for the last few months here's the general best practices really two ways that you can approach trial reels One is for testing one is for distribution. Let's talk about the distribution first Every reel that you make you should prior to posting it to your feed your normal feed Posted as a trial real first the reason we post as a trial real first is that one of the New rules that Instagram has in place is that they do not allow duplicate trial reels or to be more specific You can upload you can post a duplicate trial real you can post a trial real that is a duplicate of one that you posted before But the duplicate just won't get any views. It will literally get three or 13 views It will be stuck below 50 and that's a good way to see if Instagram is limiting your views But if you post as a trial real first you can then post it to your normal feed Second and you get double the bang for your buck because the trial real and this is really the Reason trial reels work and the reason that they're such a holy grail is that they're only shown to non-followers So when I post as a trial real it's gonna reach all these new people then I posted to my feed It's going to primarily reach my existing followers and then hopefully it reaches some new people as well But there's no crossover. No one's going to see both. That's just that's not how the algorithms work The algorithm wouldn't show them both reels. So now you get double the opportunity The other thing that I would recommend doing is After you post it to your feed so you've posted it wants to trials a few minutes or a few hours later You've posted to feed post it again to trials, but we need to make some Non-minor changes. We need to make some changes to the real so that Instagram doesn't view it as a duplicate At a minimum usually I recommend mirroring the video. It's a very easy trick as long as you don't have like Text you know in the actual video like on a whiteboard. Let's say you're on a t-shirt Well, then the video is going to look totally fine mirrored left to right and then you can still have your closed captions or whatever else is on The video, but then you can upload that a second time and because it's a mirrored video Instagram's duplicate detection software will not catch it for some people that doesn't work for some people You might have to mirror it and kind of zoom in on the video and maybe change a few of the frames or maybe cut off the first couple Seconds or speed up or slow down the video like basically just make some changes until it's different enough that Instagram Accepts it that way you have one reel and you've posted it three times once to the normal feed and twice to trial real So that for distribution is a huge game changer huge hack The other way that you can use trial reels is the way that they were intended by Instagram Which is for trialing for truly testing your content And the best thing that I would recommend doing here is Upload your trial reel and then give it a few hours give it at least six to eight hours to breathe Give it time to reach an audience and sometimes it takes some time with trial reels to pick up steam And then I want you to pay attention to two statistics one is the retention graph So when you view your insights at the bottom of that page you can see how many people were engaged throughout the duration of this reel If it drops off immediately after the hook, okay, well then my hook wasn't very strong if it steadily slowly declines And then there's a sharp drop off drop off at the 14-second mark Okay, what was going on that did I give an example that didn't make sense that I use a word that was too complicated was There's something unnecessary or redundant in that reel remove that and then you can clean up and improve the overall Retention of your video and then wherever you see the second drop off that's where the video should end So if there's a drop off around the seven-second mark, okay, I'll clean that up Okay, now I'll repost as a trial reel a second time with that middle section removed Okay, now there's just a slow steady decline people are sticking with the reel and then with three seconds left in The reel boom the retention drops off a cliff. That's where the video should end because that's where people are scrolling anyways So it allows you to kind of keep testing and refining this reel and improving it before it gets sent up to the feed And then the second statistic that you should pay attention to is the share rate because share rate ultimately determines virality And the amazing thing about shares is that when someone sends a post to someone else, they are the perfect ideal viewer The algorithm is constantly guessing at like, okay, hey, you've been into storytelling recently So let's show you one of June's posts or hey, you know, you've been into some content strategies You seem like a small business owner trying to grow. Let's show you when it blocks us It's guessing at what each of us wants to see on our feed But you know who's not guessing is our loved ones our best friends our spouses our group chat with our buddies who were always sending Content and reels and TikToks in they're not guessing what we want to see they know us They know us so intimately and so a share isn't just a higher quantity of viewers It's a higher quality of viewers as well. So as you're testing your trial reels pay attention to the share rate of those trial reels as well I think something that we have done recently that has really unlocked even for the storytelling content challenge And it's my first time really seeing this allowed but with our trial reels We actually film different hooks and so anytime that I script right I will always have about five different target avatars that I'm thinking about because the algorithm has gotten so differentiated That it can actually rank per post now usually it was ranking per account And now it's like per post so if I have a post that's calling to a specific avatar And I have no idea if that's gonna work or not We do it their way and then we do it another way then another way another way and the rest of the body actually remains the same It's a lot like how we trial paid ads to it's like the same process and I'm realizing trial reels is a great effective way to do that Where you don't get that duplicate detection and so if you want to do the flip If you want to do the punch and if you want to add a music or change some B roll out too But you also want to get reached by some different target avatars to give it a shot I think that could be another add on to to the support as well I want to highlight something for you that that you have done a really good job of which is not just the attention But it's the business side right so I think a lot of people especially the people listen to this will want to learn that side Content isn't just about getting the right traffic. It's about what do you do with that traffic? So talk to me about Brock's funnel How does someone get aware of you and then also play it by into one of Brock's products? Yeah, the awareness comes in two parts the organic and the paid so my organic social almost at a million followers and then we do paid ads I think we did over a million dollars in advertising spend last year And I think that's important for people to hear because you can have success without advertising You can absolutely grow the business grow a any business without advertising However, and I love that Maria went talks about this a lot on her page is that if you're making any money if you have any revenue or profit in your business Reinvest that in to paid advertising because if you can spend a dollar to make a dollar and fifty cents Wouldn't you do that all day if you can spend a dollar to make fifteen dollars? Wouldn't you do that all day and I think people really overthink and over complicate advertising? You don't have to spend a million dollars year one. You can spend a hundred dollars The first month you can spend a hundred dollars a first year and just test the waters just like trowels test the waters and see what works But ultimately our funnel the top of the funnel is the organic. So we have my podcast. We have social media We have the advertising. I will say it fluctuates But I would estimate roughly 70% of our business comes from the organic the unpaid social whether it's my Instagram the podcast etc And then from there we have a huge plethora of lead magnets freebies digital downloads I think we have like 36 at this point. Basically anytime. There's a topic that that people want And I think of this of like giving a person a fish versus teaching them to fish all of our freebies and lead magnets are Focused on giving people fish. It's chatchy PT prompts. It's hook ideas. It's viral real templates And then there's a little bit in those that start to teach them how to fish a little bit of tip or strategy or Here's how you can do this for your yourself in those freebies. And then ultimately those freebies then lead into let us show you how you can do it yourself. And that is our Insta Club Up. So that's really my primary, if not my only offer is our Insta Club Up, which is a monthly membership. And the way that the funnel progresses is that we have a $7 two week trial. So pretty much everyone once they download one of our freebies, lead magnets, whatever. They get into an email sequence where they are eventually sold the $7 two week trial. And then we have a super high conversion from that trial into being an actual member. I believe it's upwards of 60% of people who start the trial actually end up becoming a member. Membership varies depending on level of membership and monthly versus annual and whatnot. But that's basically how the funnel flows and operates. And for us and for our business, it's very effective. I don't think it's the only way I've had plenty of conversations with business owners who don't do memberships, they just do low ticket or they don't do low ticket or memberships, they just do high ticket. I think there's plenty of ways to have success. I mean, you yourself with the storytelling challenge, that was what I think people would call like a mid ticket offer. And that was super effective. And so I don't think there's one way to skin a cat. But that's that's how we run our business and that's our funnel. I love it. And I know a lot of people that are listening to this will know exactly what you're talking about in terms of lead magnets and being what ups on the backend, given the trial. Let's talk to you the pure beginning group, which is like I have no idea what the heck brock just said. So let's say that you're taking them from a piece of content. We both use many chats. Explain to them how that works. And then ultimately why give them something for free? Why is this lead magnet existing? And then ultimately when are you selling? Is it an email? Explain to them that process too. Absolutely. I'm glad we're breaking this down because this is something that a lot of people gloss over. And it's kind of like there's everyone who knows about what what I just talked about. And they're going to skip over this answer. And then there's everyone who said brock just spoke a different language. What is he saying? June, thank you for asking the follow up because what is brock's out talking about? So essentially people are on Instagram or social media getting dopamine, right? They're scrolling quick video, quick video, quick video, quick video. And so the likelihood that someone's going to go from quick eight second video, 17 second video, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine to pulling out their credit card and spending a lot of money is relatively uncommon. It happens for sure. There are those buyers, but it's relatively uncommon. So the more sustainable or reliable flow is that you take them from social media where they're getting all this value from you, they're trusting you, they're getting all this content, whatever it is that you post. And then they're getting into your business in a easy or inexpensive or literally free way. And so what I mean by that is you can have what are called freebies or freemiums or optins, which are basically oftentimes digital downloads, short playlists. There's something that is it's valuable for sure, but it's kind of like a free sample at Costco, right? It's not meant to be an entire meal, but hey, you're getting this for free and you're getting a little bite of cheese and you're thinking that was pretty good. Maybe I want to buy the whole bag. It's the exact same idea on social media. So if I make a post teaching people about hooks and telling them how they can improve their hooks, I might end that post with a comment to DM keyword automation, which is a big fancy phrase that basically means and everyone's seen this comment the word hook. And I will send you 25 viral hook ideas. What happens then is that people comment the word hook, right? Because they just learn from me on the post or like, oh, this guy knows this stuff. He's talking about hooks. I want his 25 viral hooks. So they comment that word. And when they comment that word, they instantly and automatically receive a direct message from me with the link to that free digital guide. Now the reason that that is effective is because they are now interacting with the post. If I had done the other method, the old school method of click the link in my bio to download the 25 viral hooks. Now the people who don't want the hooks, they're scrolling and the people who do want the hooks are also leaving the post to go click the link in my bio, right? So either way, I'm not getting engagement on that post. Instead, I tell them to comment the keyword. They comment that word. Now my post gets engagement. Now my post gets more views because of that. And the other thing that I like that is often overlooked in this process is how many times have we all gone to click on someone's link in their bio? And it's this olive garden sized menu with like, seriously, different. I wanted the free thing. And now there's like, there's a podcast in this. There's like something flashing. I mean, it's overwhelming, right? So instead with DM automation, they comment the word hook. They instantly get a little notification at the top of their screen, a DM from me with the link. They don't have to go hunting for it. It's in their DMs. It's ready for them. It's going to be unread so that it's kind of reminding them to click on it and open it. And then from there, the the follower at that point is going to call them a customer, the follower. Maybe the lead you could call them at that point simply visits the page. And they either put in their email or in some businesses, they might put in their phone number or you could even explore low cost lead magnets. There's pros and cons to that. But if you charge, let's say, a dollar or $7 or $14 for the lead magnet, are you going to get less people getting it? Yes. Because a lot of people want things for free. And there are some people who can't afford it or don't want to pay. But what you get instead is you get a higher quality customer. You get a higher quality lead because someone's already paid you. They already see the value and they're already willing to pull out their credit card and purchase something. So you get less quantity, but you get higher quality when you do make it a paid lead magnet. We've tested this with whenever we do like a webinar, which is another great way to sell and to promote things, especially if they're a little bit more expensive. Let's say a few hundred dollars or up. It's easier to sell those on a live training, a webinar, if you will, as zoom. And what we've done is we've tested the price point and we've found that from one dollar all the way up to $14, we don't see any change in terms of the number of leads coming in. So whether we price, if we're doing an upcoming webinar and we're selling it, hey, you can get your ticket for this webinar for a dollar or you can get it for seven or nine or 11 or 14. Doesn't change the conversion. The same amount of people are purchasing and signing up for that webinar. But we're going to a, we're going to make more revenue if we're doing $14, which then we can reinvest into ads and into the business. And we're getting a higher quality, a more qualified lead if they're spending $14 to attend a webinar rather than just $1. So that's, you know, really how people get into the flow. And then ultimately business is still done via email marketing. Like as a social media business owner, you know, we can talk all day about going viral and getting followers. If you don't have an email list, if you aren't growing your email marketing, then your business is not very sustainable. Algorithms change, people get hacked, people, they lose favor in the algorithm. So to speak, you stop showing up on people's feed, you can't convert whatever. There's so many things that can go wrong. So every single business owner, every single creator, even any person who wants to make money online, they need an email list. There's a lot that you have just shared, which I'm so happy. That was a lot. I think people are going to really enjoy that. There are a few things that I want to even double down on. One is this idea that with many chat, our greatest leverage for us has been to develop new duplicate landing pages per lead magnet. So we can track conversion rate because I think it's so important that a lot of times your messaging on your content will say something and then your landing page messaging copy will look different. And then you realize that the conversion drops off because you forget that person came from that. And when you have so many automations running, you can forget how many, let's say, people from this piece of content want this specific thing. And so what we have done, I think what many chat allows you to do, which they're so great for, is you can, let's say, have 12 lead magnets, you can also have 12 landing pages with 12 different copies and you can see which one tracks the best, which means that when you're selling something a bit more high ticket, you know, exactly which message you're able to lead with. And there's so much data that you can collect. And I think we're all speaking to this idea that creatives are now becoming business owners. And you have to become really in the needle with this because these are real human beings that you're trying to tend to, that you're trying to actually love on and say, hey, this is the product that I think is right for you. There's also something that you're saying that I think you glossed over, which is so important, you at your stage have one offer. You know how many people have like 55 offers and they're like, they haven't even earned their first $5,000. And it's like they have the link tree and they have all these different links to it. They're like, oh, no, I want to sell some low ticket, mid-ticket and high ticket. Something that we always say is that any one of these can win, in obviously, varies based on your own expertise. So if you're going to sell low ticket for, let's say, a big audience, then you need to have that big audience. But let's say that you're selling high ticket. If you're going to sell high ticket, you're going to have to have the expertise needed to charge a few thousand dollars. And if you have that, then you've got to think about your strategy differently. But any of them can actually win low ticket, mid-ticket, high ticket. But you'll never know if you keep making like 55 different choices and giving so much friction for your viewers. So there's so much that you're breaking down that I think is really, really, really helpful. And I think a really good final question to ask you, Brock, because I think you're going to be the perfect person to ask. And I hope in five years from now that you come back onto this podcast. But we have seen Instagram shift, we have seen contents shift, we have seen industry shift, we've seen algorithm shift. Having a personal brand or just having a brand in general that people can recognize that they can trust that they can rely upon is arguably the most valuable asset moving into the future, especially as AI becomes so much more popular and present and ever present. People are going to be asking the question, who can I trust? And we've all been asking that question since 2020. Where can I get my information? Where, what's my news source? What's my, you know, where am I politically? What, who can I trust? Who can I get my news from? Who can I follow that is truly not giving me BS? And part of that is us as consumers, as viewers, we've gotten really good at smelling that. We've gotten really good at picking up. When is someone lying to me? When is someone be asking me, right? And so I think especially moving forward, the more that you can tell your stories, the more that you can be authentic, the more that you can be genuine, and build that trust, people are going to, that's how people are going to build businesses. And that's what people are going to flock to, right? I think that rather than spending all of our time on social media following 17,000 different influencers and just blindly consuming content, people are going to be a lot more strategic and intentional with who they're following, who they're truly trusting and who they're going back to over and over again for content. When they open up Instagram, sure they might scroll their feet a little bit, but who are they searching? Who are they going to the search bar and specifically hunting out for? When they open up YouTube, sure they might watch a few of the top recommended videos 'cause the algorithms are dang good, but what channels are they consistently going back to? Oh, I always listen to this guy's podcast every week when he puts something out. I always watch her reels whenever she posts one, right? Those sort of content creators, they're going to reach that level because of the storytelling, because they built and earned that trust from their audience. And it's something that takes time, right? Trust isn't developed overnight. I often think of it like dating. When you first go on a date, for the most part, you ain't getting married after that first date. I know there's exceptions, but you ain't getting married after that first date. It takes time to build that trust. It takes time to build that intimacy. It takes time for someone truly know that you are genuine and where your intentions are and that you are aligned with them. And so give it time, but I truly think for anyone watching or listening today, the best thing that you can do to set yourself up for success in the near future and in the next five years is to start leaning into storytelling, lean into authenticity, and ultimately build your personal brand online. It's such a full circle moment because we led with that, right? The idea that even ourselves were trying to do more of it because it is the way. So I love the fact that you practice what you preach. I love the fact that you're leading the way and I love the fact that you love this so much that you've been doing this for the better part of a decade, right? Like you gotta be so passionate about to do it. So I appreciate you, Brock. I'm sure we'll be speaking to you very soon. Thank you so much for coming on the show. - Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor and you are an absolute pleasure. And for anyone watching or listening, June's the real deal. One of the most genuine people I've met in this industry. It's not a show for social. He is truly a light in this industry. So June, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you. - If something in this episode lit you up, don't just leave it there, go and do something about it. And when you're ready to turn that attention into something bigger, an audience you can reach, a business you can grow, and freedom that gives you opportunity to focus on the work you care about. Many chat has got your back. You already have the creativity. Many chat can help build the system that supports it. Try many chat pro-free for a month at get.manychat.com/real-job with code creator. (upbeat music)