How to Build a Content Team That Actually Works | AOAB Episode 34 w/ Oren John

Most brands think one person can fix their content strategy. Orrin says that thinking will get you nowhere. My whole goal on top of funnel content, viral content, is to reach your target demographic. That is your number one goal. That content is job is to reach your target consumer. It does not matter what it's about, whether your products include or not. Orrin's insights into brand strategy are sought after by people all over the world. He dropped a video about building a marketing team in 2026 and within two weeks it had over a million views. More people are coming in at the top that are in your target demo. There's going to be a fall off like any funnel between them and who watches your actual product informational. But because of the way the algorithms work, they're at least going to get shown it. Your next video is going to get shown to the people that watch your viral video in a small chunk. And if it goes well, it's going to get shown to more of them. If it goes mediocre, it will stop. But you still got that demographic you didn't get before. This is episode 34 of Anatomy of a Brand. I'm Chris Cruz, and this is my conversation with Orrin, the internet's creative director and brand strategist. All right, so Orrin, you have turned content for a really long time. You've done it for all kinds of people for yourself. You've been a marketing director. You've been a CMO, Creative Director. You are the internet creative director. But you've recently released this video on YouTube that within two weeks has already a million views, which is insane enough itself. But that video is talking about how to build a marketing team in 2026. And you go through all these different things. If people want to go in depth, go watch that YouTube. But I want to pull out a couple areas of that conversation that I think are fascinating. You said something that really struck me, which was, what, this is what makes your marketing fly will have the highest kind of ROI with the least amount of spend. And that stood out because I hear that so often. Like, what's my ROI? Am I going to actually get something out of this? And you call it out and you say, this is the way you do it. Yeah, so I think, look, all these marketing teams, business of small and large, deal with the same challenge, and they kind of attack it the wrong way. And everyone knows that they need to take advantage of organic content, right? Getting organic attention on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn is the most affordable form of attention compared to traditional advertising. So when I recommend in that video, what I've worked on with a lot of these brands, and the way I think to attack it is why I call it a pod system, right? Where it's not just one person. That's the first mistake all these brands make. I'm going to hire one person. They're going to fix it over, we're going to test it with one person. You're going to fail. And I'm going to burn out. What's better is, this role that kind of used to be the social media manager, but is now turning into more of a creative strategist role, where it's kind of one person that helps facilitate the content flywheel. They don't make any content. They are responsible for briefing. So basically writing out ideas for people to create, feedbacking. So when content comes back in, they help make sure that it's better. Kind of running analytics around that, and then making sure the content is distributed to all the places in the business where it can make an impact. And so they're really like an ideator, or someone who understands the network, or someone who can communicate with other creatives. And you support those people with, typically at least one person in house who actually makes content, that's their full job. One of the biggest things I've realized is, those people often don't have the same zine and yang. And that creates a person. You start putting them in analytics. You start putting them in a bunch of meetings. Their efficacy just falls off. Don't even do that. Let the creates try to put them into these rigid systems. And they're like, they're failing. I have a quick question on those two roles. So you have this kind of creative strategist, which I love that. And then you have this creator. Now, are you saying this creators, for those that are like, all right, I need to take this. They're for some reason, I've not taken this seriously, and we're in 2026. But they're like, I'm gonna take it seriously now. Are you talking about like a videographer, or are you talking about a personality, or are you talking about like, what is that person that you're hiring on the creator side? - Yeah, so let me go into like the extended universe of this. So basically, usually what is most important for that person is someone who can create content that works for your brand. And as a single person. So either that is someone that's on camera, is most likely someone who does, they can go down, they can do a product unboxing, they can do an explainer, they can do a app. It could also be someone who just makes really nice content that doesn't involve them being on camera, right? Oh, I do. - Okay. - You have first person view videos, we do unboxings, I do like fancier editor stuff. So it could be a more traditional shooter editor. But it's someone who can make a finished video between shooting and editing it, and it does not need other human beings to represent your brand. - They're so significant in themselves. They can do all of that. - Yeah, exactly. So they are gonna be able to give you finished assets, of which now, any, you go look at 3% of the people over 18 in the US who are in the TikTok generation, no, I don't make some videos. So it made some stuff. They have some of the basics of that. It's just a person who's kind of commodified it, right? But then the pilot system is like, you get an extended universe there of like, all right, what other assets are within our company? Do I have a graphic designer that I can get seven hours a week from? Awesome, that's an asset to help us make carousels, right? Do we have a video team and can they make higher production stuff? I get a CEO talk on camera and I get him every other Friday, right? You begin to piece together your universe and then you add UGC. So for those that don't know, UGC is a user generated content, quote unquote, but that's a contrived term where it's like, you hire someone at a per video basis or on a retainer, whether they're a creator or through a service to make additional videos. So then you have your strategist, briefing out the creator they work with every day, sending some stuff to the designers, okay, we have a shoot the CEO once a month. I'm able to get some briefs together for that. We have some UGC people. So every week they're sending out ideas, they're receiving content back, making sure it's on time, they're feedbacking it, and then they're making sure it goes where it needs to go. Oh, this, our meta ads team could use this. Oh, this is okay, we're gonna try this on LinkedIn. Hey, the sales team should be including this content in their emails, right? As outreach, just as collateral, I pre-call assets. And so by coordinating that, one strategist can usually handle a handful of people, and then when they can't or you need a new thing, you just add another pod, right? And then eventually you'll get our, you have a career director and I have a couple of strategies underneath them, but that is the most effective flywheel in modern media and it doesn't take 10% video teams and stuff. Okay, so in this process, what I love about this is there seems like a lot of empowerment and the strategist actually needs something given to them to do this. Like if you're looking at a brand like, what do you need to be telling this strategist so that they can function well in this role? Like what handicaps them even? Yeah, so the roles have to run analytics. The biggest, the other biggest thing I found is that you get in two scenarios. One is creative, so I want to be quantified. Create as go like, I don't want to run analytics every month, right? It's hit the packet of your creative's head. I get it. I will say to you right now if you're watching this and like that's in your head, get as close to the quantification because close to the money is possible. If you're able to be like, look, look at the money. That is good. You're all your life problems. So that's issue number one, then issue number two is that the business doesn't know what's good or bad or doesn't, or wants to have their own opinions. The CEO or the VP of marketing or the CMO or someone's cousin has opinions. And you can't, and you have no way to dispel them. You have to do them. Every social media manager knows what I'm saying. They're like, oh, god, yeah, I have to go to these seven videos because the CEO wants them, but they are going to perform. So I've always been the span of this thing we teach you to cut 30, called the pillar system, where it's like, okay, every month, you take your different content types and you run analytics on them. And basically you look at the prior month, you look at the four or five videos you did in that pillar. So for instance, if you had carousel, product breakdown carousels versus unboxings, versus historical explainers, might be three pillars you do. And you go and you look at the hook rates, the average wash time, the share rate, the save rate. You start to compare those by platform, by content pillar, and be like, okay, what's doing good and bad? And that those two things, we wanted to be able to be like, oh, we're improving at this. We get more views. And the other is, okay, if I'm, if we're bad at it, what can we change? But then most importantly, if someone gives you a terrible idea, if the CEO is like, we have to do this because the other company does it. And you do six of them. And you do six of them again another month. And you show them, look, this just sucks compared to everything else. You are now armed with the kind of information that they will use to make decisions, not the social media person being like, I don't like that. And that's just very important to get in that cycle because then that allows you autonomy. 90 days of running that system and showing any executive that you run actual analytics, and that you're improving and you know what you're doing, they're gonna leave you alone. The reason they don't leave social alone right now is because they don't know. They have no ability to look at that. So you need to solve that for them. - Yes, I love it. So you're kind of getting out of the subjective space of, I like this, this is what my friends are doing. The like, hey, I want to compare myself to these really cool people that are doing this, but you're going, hey, it doesn't work. Here's the metrics that's showing. - Yeah, exactly. And then trying to get to, you know, anything that you can quantify that ties the leads or sales. So one of my favorites is, and we just did this on a huge brand, implement this. It was a win, is many chat. Like even like the comment ratio, right? Brands are always afraid of stuff like that. I was like, look, you're doing a big product launch. You're a brand with some love. Get people to comment to get on the wait list. And like, low and behold, on the teaser, we did one of those and it was a big brand. Do you have like, it wasn't a, they're, they're, they're happy being a front runner, right? So it was like, they were excited. But yeah, that's thousand plus signups on their email list. If you haven't been a day where they've gotten the thousand signups in years, right? Like, and then they can quantify that social team can be like, great, we can add that to the list of things that we're driving value for. So there's just a lot of stuff you can win with. - I love that. So, okay, before we get out of this part of the pod and the strategist and the creator, when I think 'cause things are changing so fast, things are evolving, we're seeing roles that adapt and change and morph. When someone is going, all right, I hear Orrin, I'm gonna follow what he's saying. He's been a guide on the outside and I'm gonna go this direction. But then they go to like the traditional routes on how to figure out how to pay somebody. And they're like, how the heck do I pay this strategist? What should I be paying them and how do I even figure that out? You can't go to Glassdoor and put strategists in there and see it. - Yeah, it's funny. And so you'll see, look, so there's two scenarios, right? There's you have an experienced strategist you can find through hiring or you find them on X or you post whatever. Those people cost a lot of money. I think the minimum you're paying a good strategist who has experience is 120. They're getting up to like 250, right? Mr. Wonderful, how to treat the other day by how he's paying his like social team around that. you'll see, you just go on exon search, and you'll see what people are paying. They are paying top dollar for it. But the problem is, a lot of those people don't exist. What you're usually gonna have to do is like, enable somebody to do it. So there are a lot of, 80 to 90K social media professionals who are pretty good at some stuff, who have done some variety of roles, who would succeed in this position with like some mentorship, they could spend some money on some support education, they'll run a system, be in a cohort, that kind of thing, who you are gonna basically enable into it. That's way more common, where you're like, look, we know we need to run our team like this, we're gonna give this person a shot, here's some structure. And that's harder, right? 'Cause then you have to mentor and be in on it. That's way more realistic, is you're taking that 80, 90K person and working them up. - Yeah, you're upskilling them, you're making that investment. So in that process though, when they're going into that role and you're doing that with them, are they able, so when it's one person to one brand, I have that question. But then when this, you've mentioned like, hey, you could actually run multiple brands through this one person. And so, are you saying, - I'm almost like creators at least. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay, so multiple creators can, is there a way, like you've mentioned this in the video, you can outsource this to an agency. When do you know when to do that? Like how, and how do you know when that's going on? - There are not many agencies that are, so the couple of uses of agencies. There are not many agencies who are capable of managing the creative strategy process, right? Agencies that run social media teams for brands, there's basically, if you're operating at the highest level, and you get the right people at Vayner, you're in good shape. Almost nobody else is any good, right? Especially a lot of the smaller folks. What they are good at is making some of the content, right? So for instance, a lot of the carousels I do online, and some of my video edits and stuff are done by Darkroom. Darkroom is a great person to do the assets, right? We would still like, maybe they're involved in some of the briefings, but you still would want your strategies being like, here's some of the ideas, here's some of the briefs, here's some of the concepts. And so it's just another tool in the toolkit. So you have to look at, okay, if I have a strategist, who are they getting content from? We have an in-house creator. I encourage everyone has to have an in-house person making content. There's just no way around it, in my opinion. It's a mandatory for any org who wants to do well on social. So they have them, then they can do have an agency that supports us on design or some editing or motion graphics. I can get eight or 10 assets from, like really that person is able to do an audit of where all the places I can get content every month. We have this videographer, and we have our founder for a couple hours a week. We have an agency. I have a $4,000 budget to do a shoot every two weeks. Like they need to have their toolkit. They're able to work within for media. And is this role, like, are you seeing this role kind of leapfrog the CMO role? And are we-- - Well, not just in that aspect. - The CMO has to look at everything, right? They have to look at paid media. They have to look at, this is just a, who makes content work for brands? And there's content for organic and there's content for ads. Someone has to be responsible. Are these roles making a lot of money? Higher than your average marketing employee? Absolutely. And it's very similar to the creative director role what it used to be, but it's way more tactical. A lot of the people who came up being a creative director are like, I'm more of an idea person. Oh, I'll put together the shoot, but they're not in the flywheel of like, yeah, I'm gonna feedback every TikTok. They'll all of them won't sign up for that. And if they will, it's basically the same job. Right? And that's fine. But then the CMO's supposed to look at things really high level and more tactically. And like, all right, how it was happening in our retail channel. How am I explaining lift? What's happening on Amazon? Where's the paid media going? And they have to do all these other things that which organic is simply a portion. - Okay, that's a great call out. I love that. And so then when you're looking for this strategy and you just roll that you're gonna see develop in your org or your brand, what are some of the qualities? You're like, oh, that's a thing I would look out for this. I look out for this. I look out for that. - Yeah, it's really, there's three things. Can they brief? Can they come up with an idea and break it down simply enough someone else can make it? And it's easier than it sounds, but a lot of people just haven't done it. But if you are, there are a lot of creative agents who've just been briefing for, you know, people who work in influencer marketing is another great example. They're briefing all the time. - Yeah. - Okay, then you can find that, but like that has to exist, but that's probably the most easily trainable. Second is they have to understand social media. That's the biggest ones. Usually end up someone who's at least a quasi creator or who's diagnosed a lot with like, I understand Instagram, I understand hook rate, I understand reels, I follow the functions, I know the different social media places. And that's why you end up with so many creators who have like, who end up in kind of jobs like this because they're like, okay, cool, maybe I couldn't make all this money on brand deals, but like I now better equipped in my job. But like, that's the biggest one. You have to be like, can they tell you what the hot shit is right now on Instagram and how that was different than a month ago? Great. And then the third is the comms. The comms is the hardest one because they have to be able to politely feedback other creators who are extremely sensitive. And they're okay saying, it's that there's a book called The Courage to Be Disliked, which is a great one for us. Where it's like, yeah, hey, guess what? We can do the hook better. And I've seen what we've seen this hook and I perform, can you give me these two variants and have them be okay saying it and have the creative be like, yeah, you know what, you're right. And so, and that's a soft skill that, that's a soft skill. And Kiel Walsh in the other day on the podcast even called that out too. Like when he's seeing like that skill of like communication, not being the skill creatives want to develop but realizing that is what would set them apart in their industry because they all have the first two. They're like, yeah, I got these other this social ability and this ability to brief but I can't communicate worth anything. And look at this journal. I've had this come up a lot because, look, when I was like, S.U.P. marketing, managing whole teams, you have to be someone, and actually I meant sales teams for a decent amount of my career where you just have to be a dick. At all times, right? Like they had this expectation, right? Like you could be friendly, you can coach through it but they don't respond if you're not like, that's bad. Don't do that. Yeah. And so it's working. Yeah, they're like, slap the hand, you have to here. But the way with marketers now, usually even now, like I'll come in as a strategist on like a launch project. That's like a, when I was still doing consults I was a very common, common thing. And then I would come and be like, look, I, my only care, I want everyone in this room to walk away with one of the biggest, like most viral numbers based successes that they've ever had. That you're gonna be able to put in your case studies and whatever and to get there to put up more views than we've ever put up before, then like that's gonna require feedback on all this content. It's gonna require when a hook sucks to call it out. And just know when you see me do that, I want us all to have a win on the board. And if I come in like that, usually people get it. Yeah, which again, that is something inside of you. Where would you say that developed in you? Where would you say that skill set developed for you? Oh, just, I mean, look, honestly, it worked. Look, this is the, like, when people look back and they're like, oh, what are the things that allowed you to talk like this or be able to feedback like this as a content that's like, I just had, I was in scenarios. Like I worked for an amazing VPN marketing at one point. This guy, Mike Bevel, who had been like previous agency work who taught me a lot of the fundamentals of like, this is how you pitch ideas to executives. This is how you think about like ideation for messaging. Stuff I just didn't wouldn't have learned as a graphic designer prior. Yeah. And I think, I think why I love you saying that, why I love calling that out is because right now the wave is the a solo pernure life where you've never been on a team or never have actually been in this and you're getting feedback in your, and they're, they break in a moment. You're like, wait, you've actually never been a part of anything because you, you've never had this growth moment. And I love that you call that out because I think a lot of people are missing that step. Yeah, well, okay, it's also really useful. And I noticed it was interesting. I became, you know, in director level, like younger in my career. I like moved up some ladders and various stuff. And I was still like, I love hiring the guy who I mentioned. He was so good at, he'd be like, we need to get a message for this product. And I need to prove that message through the CEO. And I realized as a younger person, even if my message was good, I couldn't articulate it right in a way that they would respect. I could do all these other things. And so look, I hired him all the time to be like, craft this message, present this thing. I'll execute it, but like, I need someone to do that. That's when you are a marketing leader. What do you hire out? What are you good at or bad at? But look, managing sales teams and doing part of round rob and sales calls and stuff like that was probably the most useful part of my career. Which again came from being entrepreneurial, right? I ended up in the scenario when I was, I was employee four at a startup and it was like, cool, now you're going to have sales. And I was like, okay. And then the same thing, we bought a company at one point and it was like, no, I'm an energy sales team. And just being a lot of those scenarios, sales is the most tactical one, right? You have to feedback, you have to talk to clients, you're interfacing. I cannot recommend enough anybody to do a year or two in sales roles. Yeah, because in there you learn something so overlooked and underrated in this, because they can get growth fast in other places and then you try to get them to work in these contexts and they don't. So I have a unique question for you because there's a, you have an ability to exude a confidence around your communication and the way that your ideas go. And that helps translate investment from people listening to you. There's a buy-in that you present that is easy to jump in. How are you honing that? How are you honing that communication skill? Content. If you meet me three years ago, before I started making videos, four years ago. And even as an executive, I was quieter, smart. I could still talk intellectually about stuff. People would listen, but I did not have, I didn't speak in the same cadence. I didn't have the same confidence around the speaking that came from, I'm a thousand videos deep. So now I know if I want to present an idea, it's like you hook with the idea, you follow it up with a basis and then you like and you exert your confidence on it after because that's how people respond to media. And so that changed my career in the way I position things. And now, especially with social, I'm confident in it because I've worked on all these projects, right, and all these campaigns, I'm working with all these brands and I'm doing it. And so I'm like, and it's with cut 30 and all the data from it. I'm like, it's like 2,500 creators, whatever through it now, I am 100% confident. I, we can fix this, we can hit it. Like it is done. There is no doubt in my mind when I'm saying is correct. And I also have never had that level of like, even when you're working at a job, you're like, okay, well, I think, now I'm like, no, I know. And that's when you have it, you got a hammered. If you really know, we'd let people know. - Yeah. And for those even watching, like I've, and listening, like I've cut 30 alumni, I'm not the best content creator on the planet, but like I went through the course to learn so much of what you guys taught there that was like spending my evenings, putting my kids to sleep, they were asleep, and I've put my headphones on, getting on the live call, listening, putting my stuff in for feedback. And I think, I think one thing about cut 30 that I loved that is so vulnerable for people that I think they avoid is, and I love for you to even speak into this because it's some of what you talked about, is putting your content for review before it goes live because you invest time, energy, and doing it something, and then someone comes in and goes, yeah, just not good enough. And you're like, you have to overcome this hurdle of like, oh my gosh, I just put myself out there and it's just not good enough. Talk about that. Yeah, so look, most people, this is one of the benefits of cut 30. Most people never hear something negative anymore. Like they'll hear it in the news, but we are so careful in work environments and whatever it would be like. It's a compliment sandwich, it's positive reinforcement, and we've just had years of this, years and years. And that's not necessarily a horrible thing, but it is for the development of your content. And so one of the decisions we made on cut 30 was like, look, this is gonna be one of the only times we're gonna have 30 days where people are gonna tell you, not in a mean way, we have no mean no malice, we are going to give you real critique. And if you just do this stuff, you will immediately see the changes of the results. That's the best part of content. You go make a video tomorrow, and you do the changes, it's gonna get more views. You're like, got it. This is why I do this feedback. And so, but yeah, look, that was a conscious decision because we're like, look, people don't like being told that their stuff is wrong. But if we're those people, and we just do it without, again, any ill intention, you're not being mean, not being whatever, it goes a long way. And look, I want that around everything. That's even the hardest part now is like, I want people more experienced to me who are like, that adds bad, that hooks bad. I don't know any of them anymore, right? - Do you, do you, what do you do? What do you do with that internally? When someone says that's not, like how do you handle that moment? Like what do you go through in your head? Do you have a moment of like, oh man, that sucks. And I'm, or do you like, quick, I'm gonna go, not take it personally. - Yeah, we're gonna slow those first mentality. - It's always that, okay, does this person know what they're doing? And if I change that, it will be, is it gonna make a real result? And then how much of the work to change it versus to the result, reward of the result? That's always like my look, like very quickly run through that, right? And if they know what they're doing, and there is enough reward from the time put into making the change, yeah, you make the change. And I think when you end up in, look, if you ever, ever been in like a really high performing team of like creating a product, launching an agency, whatever it is, you know that like that critique and the willingness to cut stuff off as early as possible, be like, that's fixed, this is crucial. A lot of people have been in those scenarios. So I almost look at that. Like the hardest part of my life is I don't have, like my manager will say some stuff, but I don't have a lot of people being like, this could be better. And also there's a lot of people that know when you operate a really high level of content, even like my buddies who are other huge creators, like we're all like, okay, hopefully. - Yeah, you're like, well this works, hopefully. You've gotten to a level that you're like, hey, it's hard to actually find that, those peers that can speak to the level I'm at to help me with this. The other question I have in this is like, when you get an executive or someone from a brand that they look at content and they say, my customer isn't on social media. - Yeah, I know that that occurs then. To look at it, so basically the first to come is everyone's on social media. (laughing) And I look at this and I look, I am obsessive about consumer habits. My, almost all my content now is about a consumer habit or a consumer insight. - Okay. - And I encourage anyone who's in those scenarios to kind of think like that, to be like, okay, like what is my consumer do? So one of my favorites is like when people like, oh, these decision makers aren't on Instagram for instance. - Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, like word for word. - And, but it's like, okay, you know what a habit is? A habit that I see all the time from millennial and Gen X leaders is that they are on Instagram. They have 150 followers and they follow their kids and they're also following stuff in the niche of their business. And that usually ends up being a lot of my content, Ashwin's content, stuff like that. And they are forwarding it. They are taking links and they are sending it to their team in a slack or a group chat and they are saying, why aren't we doing this? And, oh, did you see this news? And when you start to notice that, you'd be like, oh yeah, guess what, 75% of all fucking executives in that age bracket, male and female do that. And so all of a sudden, you're like, oh, okay, cool, our race car entire model is. And people used to say that on YouTube, you'll like, you choose Gen Z, Gen Alpha. My number one source of bookings for like workshops from execs and stuff is from YouTube. But guess what, they're a second order effect. They're the opposite of that. I'm always trying to trace it down. But basically, I had three workshop bookings off this one video I did. It was like the worst marketing of 2025, I think, or 2024. - Okay. - And they all have the same habit. A junior person on the team who watches a lot of YouTube, put the video in their marketing team group slack or group teams. - And this is so valuable right now. - I fucking love this video. I'll watch a lot of YouTube but I watch this 20 minute video, get me this guy. And so then you're like, oh, well, think about the second order effect. If your guy isn't on social media, do they have a chat with their team where people post social media links? 'Cause every single team does, right? And so then you start to be like, oh, this is the way people consume. And so I think that's a useful one. The other, the real tactical one is on. There's a piece of software called Outer Signal. Not highly recommend that does personas. So basically, you put in your customer list or your clavio list, whatever your email list. And it will basically do the personas of your customers and your elites and it works the same thing for B2B. And it will give you like five profiles. It will be like, you know, the personas you've seen in marketing, hey, Jenny, she's a 30 to 38 year old Latina living in Riverside with these areas and she can sue these things. And you'll get a four or five of those but it will tell you things, like social media consumption habits. And you can be like, look, these are database personas from a cutting edge company in this game telling us how our people consume. And you can use that as a real proof point to convince leadership based on data. - I've not heard about that one. What was that one called again? - Outer Signal. And that's a 21, that's a newer one that we had used a brand of mine. We're, we're, we're, let's see, focus on influencers in our customer base. We send mailers to influencers in our customer base and you can that use that for that too. But then I kept seeing every time I logged in, like their logo wall was getting like more aggressive. And I was like, oh, like, like SD Lauder, you know, like, like, yeah, I'm like, oh, but you probably pay a lot of attention to these guys. - Yes, yes, you like this is, that's fascinating. Okay, inside of this, you've, you've, you've been a creative director, all these kinds of different positions. What makes a good creative director and what is a bad creative director? - Yeah, so look, there used to be this era where you could be an idea person. And there was a lot of people who were creative director so we're like, I'm the idea person. That role is like extremely tactical now. So what makes a good person is that if you need to put together a campaign or a shoot or you have a, like some initiative for your company, a person that can pull in within the constraints, timing, budget, whatever it is, you give them 10 grand, you give them a million dollars, you give them two weeks, you give them three months, they are able to pull in a group of creatives, whether it's internal or internal and external, to execute on that problem. And whatever the holes are, someone can't do something, you know, the designer fell out, whatever, they'll just do it. Like those are the best creative directors. The ones who are like, yeah, I have a person for that. Okay, no, I be a cheap person or versus, oh, I got the best person, they'll drop something to work with me like because like they respect me. And all right, okay, you know what? But no one's good at the messaging, I'll do the messaging. Like that's who the killers are. - Yeah, those, like we had a conversation as our team the other day we're going, hey, if this is the deliverables, this designer can do anything that doesn't fall into that category, I'm doing. (laughing) - And that's the kind of difference between that previous gen of like, well, I'm just the idea person, to like the people that like, the creative directors now, the ones that are solid are like, pulling the whole shit across the finish line, right? Like look, it's on their back. But that's such an amazing opportunity. Whenever anyone like responds negatively to that idea, I'm like, you have the basically, the most ideal job in the universe. You get to pull a complete creative concept, like with a budget to life, to change your brand's entire trajectory. And if you don't wanna be all in on making that amazing, like this isn't the job for you. - Bro. Right there, like, oh my gosh. Like if people would just reverse back five seconds there and just listen, you're like, that's not the job for you. If you don't wanna do that, that attitude, that kind of tenacity with it. Okay, that answered my question that I had there that I loved. So here's something I wanted to ask you, 'cause I've watched your content for a long time. You have this ongoing thing. I don't know how long it's been going or if it's even continuing, but brand versus product. And you kind of highlight whether you're buying the brand or you're buying the product. What's not only, what is, why did, not, I don't wanna ask, why does that hit? I wanna ask, what's the ethos behind that? What is the frame of mind that you have that you're evaluating that and why that matters? - Yeah, and so this was one of the biggest inspirations for this was the recommendations engines that we've grown up with, right? Like, like, wire cutter, for instance. I bought several bad things on wire cutter, right? I just didn't like their recommended choice. And so I started thinking like, why, right? Why don't I like this? Why are they recommending something kind of arbitrarily wrong for most people? And then I started to kind of have this idea like, "Oh, guess what? "People buy things for different reasons." And when someone looks at something purely as a function of price to value versus it, and you start adding on taste, or you start adding on like the level of kind of sore that person is inside the category, it becomes very nuanced. And then when you have a marketing knowledge on top of that, my thought is a marketer. Every time I see anything, I'm jaded. I'm like, okay, well, why are they charging free times the price? Oh, it's made of aerospace grade aluminum like sick. - Right, so you still be thinking - Yeah, it's like you're in the recent video about Truffle. You're like, you've never tasted no Truffle. - Yeah, he's really, so we are constantly being sold stuff and you get jaded, right? The more you time you spend in marketing, because you know everything's being sold to you. And then you start to get a little bit more - I see your friends, right? Or you see people who are just buying in, right? And the biggest one, one of the biggest impetus is on the pro versus brand one was the R-place pans, where my wife was so excited about the R-place pans and she bought them and they sucked and then they wouldn't let them return them. And then I realized when we looked online, that was like a shared millennial experience. Like thousands of people had the same thing where they wouldn't accept the return and I was like, "Oh, that's like a lot of great videos are born from a shared insight." Or like a shared thing, everyone's like, "Yeah, that happened to me, that's funny." Like I had another one where I was trashing on sonos. If you've had a sonos, you're like, "Sonos sucks." Like at least once in the arc, you were like, "This thing is whack." And so like that's a shared experience. And you're like, "Why is it so whack?" If I spent all the money, and everyone has it. And so you start to like lean into that. But yeah, so it was really about, you know, why it hits is because it gets people to think about why they buy and people get tribal. If you say that-- - Yes. - I say you make a bad purchase. They're like, "Well, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah." And then you'll start to realize, you'll see they'll either achieve self-actualization and they'll be like, "Oh, I got got." - Yeah. - Or they'll be like, "I've developed enough conviction in my purchase that like, you know, like, or they'll like become even more entrenched in the brand." And I think it's just a really interesting dynamic to bring up. And I do that, that series less now, because it's like very copied, which is fine. And that's gonna copy stuff. But I'm still hunting after the same thing, which is like, "What is the consumer insight? And how do you get people to think about why they buy and present thesis on it, that they can then debate, whether it's with themselves, with others in the chat, or like in the comments?" - Yeah. Okay, I didn't plan to ask this question, but you said something there that makes me think about this. Two industries, I love to get your like, you to rapid fire about, 'cause I'm seeing so many different likeness and the fitness, hydration, the golf. Like, you're seeing so much of the same, that I'm like, "I actually wanna hear your take on these, these spaces and go, what's working? What do you think about them, the future of it?" - Yeah, look, there's so many brands in so many spaces. I look at it two ways. One is that I do think that everyone says, "Aining saturated, even golf gear, even electrolytes." - Yeah. - Look at the tan, the total of the old market. Look at how big is it really? And I always look at it like, okay, it does unilever or any huge conglomerates. Do they own still some ridiculous market share? 65% of the category? And that all moves through Costco or through C or whatever? Oh, cool, you know what? There's probably a lot there. Like, even with golf, I was like, how much golf is just like, kind of whack older brands being sold in Dick's Sporting goods? Like, if that's still above 40%, there's still room. I basically look at it like, every single one of those poor experiences is just getting eroded. And 1% of that market share for a new brand is enough to make those people rich and have a fully successful company. And so I do think that there is just a lot of great perspective. - That's a great perspective. - But the problem is, while that might exist, if your brand is not unique enough in both its product mechanism and its distribution mechanism, it's not gonna reach that opportunity. And that's why I think a lot of the issues come. - I'm packed that's more. - All right, I'm packed that's more. - Start that other brand and it has to be a better product in some way. You have to be able to articulate a value proposition somewhere. Even if it's just like, this is a better product for you 'cause you have this particular fashion sense for proclivity or allergy or whatever, you have to have something. And then you also then have to have, how are we getting attention at a way that is cheaper or better than what we're replacing? And if you don't have both of those really, it's kind of a matter of time before you're washed out in the great electrolyte or protein bar wars, you know? - Okay, so I'm gonna stay here for a second because when you're looking at helping a brand distinguish that thing, that differentiator, that, hey, like what some of the things you think about or that you ask maybe when you're like, is it just what makes you different? Is it just purely, yeah? - Yeah, and also it doesn't really matter, right? The protein bar one's a great one. Where like, David is destroying the protein bar category versus the competition because they have a distinct product advantage. They have, they bought technology that means that their macros will be better than anyone else can do and then they excluded the competition from also having that technology. And so they are, they have a value prop that every other brand has to compete with. So if you wanna succeed in that niche, it's like, okay, what is something that a consumer will choose on the shelf better than a better macro? And so then you have a couple options there. It's like, all right, everyone cares about what goes in their body. So you can 100% be like 100% natural. But then hundreds of natural, it's kinda taste whack. So it's like, okay, can you make it taste good? Okay, does not have too much sugar. You just start to find your way to that customer. Like, all right, people were allergic to a specific ingredient, lifestyle. I was like countercultures always one. You can always go liquid death, black rifle coffee, death wish coffee. You can always say, I'm gonna make it black. I'm gonna put zombies on it. There's an, you may not dominate the market, but there's an angle, right? And so you start to look like water these pieces. - So, okay, in that, is that not, like are we saying in that conversation at that point, even bringing it back to brand versus product? Are we essentially going, hey, the product is just as good, but you won't win here without brand. - Yeah, we're saying. - So basically, your offices, do you have a differentiator in terms of like an actual product feature? And if not, if you're not, if you're just liquid death, okay, do you have a brand advantage that is good enough to make up for that? That is good enough to just sell water, the same as every other water. Then your brand has to be incredible. And an incredible brand isn't like sick logos, isn't whatever, it's like liquid death is a good example. It's a true insanity at this point, right? And there's very other few examples that aren't picking a, oh, I'm going to pick, I'm going to target the right, you know, or I'm going to target like, I'm going to get some entrenched lifestyle ideology and like nail it down. And so you don't have a lot of options in that space. Like honestly, you start rolling through that. It's really like ingredient natural, hippie and like beach doesn't work anymore. You know, it's like, okay, so you kind of get like extreme, like you only have a few angles to go on. And I think it obviously like products still heals all wounds. I think this morning, greens got acquired by Unilever. Oh wow, I didn't see that. Yeah. And so and like, look, they had a product differential. They said there's been trench category, AG1 has taken the greens category. AG1 is a bad product experience. You have to mix disgusting tasting greens in a fucking water cup. That's a crazy, crazy product, right? Like people want it bad enough, they want their greens bad enough, they're willing to do this insane user experience. And they're like, we're cool. We're just going to make it American. It has sugar down. Here you go. And it's a gummy. And it's down there. That is a prior to that. You know. And yes, you're like, I love that because like the reality of what you're saying is so it's just so real real there. When you're when we're, I want to go back a couple steps here and then we'll begin to land this plane. Because when we're, when we're seeing these brands developing their media companies, I want to go back to this media company play here because I thought about liquid death. You said liquid death and I remember seeing the, the outlandishness of the media they created, the things like that. But I also have this question. Like we, we even eternally try to do content like we're, we're doing this thing. We do the show called field trip where we, it's nothing specific brand. It's like Anthony Bourdain style, like going to Nashville and we go to experiences in Nashville. But it lives on our social. When, but the question I get from people when they start engaging with content that doesn't deliberately mention their product, doesn't deliberately mention these things is, where is the ROI on this and how are we going to actually make a difference with this for our business? Yeah, and so look at that. I talk about this every day. Topic I'm passionate about and I look at content as a funnel. So if you're like cool, we may only make videos about our products and they all do okay. And you're like, okay, if you make viral content, even if it's not about your product, even if it's just about your category. My whole goal on like top of funnel content, viral content is to reach your target demographic. There's plenty of ways to do it with your product, but even if you were just doing again, you're a company and you're doing tour guide about whatever. You know, and your product side I mentioned, does it hit your consumer like a large chunk of that viewership is your consumer? What's going to happen there is it's going to raise the floor of the rest of your content. Your middle of funnel content, it's more educational about your product and your bottom of funnel content where you have a CTA. You weren't even going to get a view from them if you only did middle of funnel. And so that's like a conversation I have all the time with brands where like it's just going to raise the floor on your views for all your other content. That's why you attack it. And like the more that you do of that, the more you find a synergy of it, oh, our product is in our top of funnel content. The better it goes, but even if it's not, you have to raise that floor. If your floor is still, oh, we only get 10,000 views or we only get 40,000 views of video, it's because you're not doing enough top of funnel. - Hmm, that's good. That's good right there. All right, we're going to begin to land this plane here. I want to ask you, when we asked you about brand versus product, you said something, you said, I'm no longer doing this as much. Why are you, what's the metrics you're deciding to not do certain things? Is it just because other people are doing it? And yeah, I'm literally running the same pillar system. So I just look at views. And I've also noticed there's like series, I have a bunch of series. I have the series that's hot. I had before product versus brand, I had a similar series called status, I had a red flag, green flag. I've always been like versus content. And you'll sort to notice like dwindling efficacy, where it's like cool. Like when I'm looking at the pillars, it's like cool, if I do that, it's product reviews in general. I thought, because that's was the pillar. It's like those pro versus brand, also just do like a buying God. And I kind of was like, yeah, I guess January, February, March, those just fall off. The views aren't there, some of it's seasonal. I'm sure back next November, December, I'll be ripping it again, because people are in the mood to buy Christmas. But then I just look at that data, we're like, cool, I'm not, I tried some more in January, it was all down, even though the content was pretty good. I was like, cool, that's just like that pillars gone, new pillars in. So now like I'm doing more travel content and doing more like psychology of a purchase content where I'm still like hitting my base in a different way and then I'm gonna test back into it, right? I may try in April, May, or like I may not. It all depends on if you have enough good ideas where your content goes. I am, I also think like content styles in general get saturated. People used to really want buying recommendations two years ago, even last year. I think a lot now we're overwhelmed with buying recommendations. People are way more interested in why they buy and what's going on in culture and being educated. And I love making content like that. And so like I'm attacking that angle. In a year it's probably gonna be different. People are probably gonna be like, please stop teaching me shit. Okay, then what's the content gonna be, you know? (laughing) - 'Cause I noticed the psychology of buying stuff that you're doing, like watching you unpack golf unpack like some of the, you've never actually eaten real wasabi or never you actually eaten real trouble. Like if tied me back to a con, a statement you made a long time ago, this is just kind of like how deep I've been in your content before, is like you wanted to be this kind of like the generation Seth Godin, like thinking, going, I want to bring ideas, refresh to this thing. Now if you're going, hey, right now, something I'm chewing on that I'm wondering like, hey, is this gonna make progress or is this gonna die? Like what's something that you're like, man, it's on the custom of my thinking right now. - I mean, I have a look, so I'm always, my life for content is like I workshop bits basically. Like. - Okay. - Like almost like a comedian. I learned this from a friend of mine who's a popular YouTuber where we hung out and he was like, workshopping a bit. I don't know if he used to know, so I almost say it's actually hilarious, but he had this whole thing. I'm like, oh, he, I didn't thought like that before, but I have a bunch of these bits. I always have bits in my videos. And so I'm always like, workshopping a concept. So for instance, that golf video is anchored by this bit that like, there's so many golf brands just with this letter M. Like Malbin Manor, Juzuno, Makad, Belar, Matthews, Melon, like you can just keep going. I was like, oh, that's funny. Like I can make, I can anchor a video just in that idea. And so I'm always thinking in bits. And I'm working on one right now about tech introspection. Like I don't know if you saw the Mark Andrewsson had the like, to, and I was like, so I'm like, how do I connect that to like a, some other trend and culture? Like that, I can like make a connection. So I was like, oh, like, there's also that's trend single till series B. We're like guys are saying cool, I'm not gonna date until we get series B. And so I was like, okay, look, the lack of introspection in tech comes from the lack of sex in tech. Like that's a, that's a bit, right? And it's like, you know, like, and so I'm like, workshopping this idea to see if it has legs. And what I'll literally do is like, I was like, I'll do how come I was like this? But like, okay, he laughed. That's a good sign. I'll probably like talking to people being like, yo, is this like a thing? You know, I'm like, okay, how do you feel about this? And like my wife's opinion or like her friends would be like, and you start to be like, you piece together a picture of, is this a real scenario? And then it's like, how do you expound around that? And so I have like a hundred of those bits in all times. Mm-hmm. Wow, bro, I love that. I love that. Well, man, I think there's a treasure trove here. And there's so much that you dive into even on your YouTube where people can get so much more in depth on some of these topics we discussed. I'm really grateful for the time, man. Thank you for spending some time with us. - Of course, happy, happy to do it. And yeah, thanks for having me.