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The Queen of Viral Content: Adley Kinsman Breaks It All Down | #Marketing - Ep. 25

42m 58s

The Queen of Viral Content: Adley Kinsman Breaks It All Down | #Marketing - Ep. 25

Adley, a former independent musician who toured with Blake Shelton, shares her journey from struggling artist to viral content creator, now generating over a billion views monthly since 2020. She discovered that success hinges on "reps" rather than time, and after a chance video went viral, she developed a formula centered on retention and storytelling. Her key technique is the "open loop"—hooking viewers with suspense or curiosity that isn't resolved until the video's end, which keeps them watching longer and signals value to algorithms. She honed this by creating three-minute-plus videos for Facebook monetization, learning that even "cringey" content with high watch time outperforms thoughtful but boring posts. Adley applies this framework to businesses, like a weight loss coach, by transforming standard educational tips into entertaining challenges with raised stakes (e.g., holding a glute raise with a peach on your back) to capture attention and make content memorable. She stresses that in today's AI-leveled playing field, personal brands are scalable, and everyone should be in growth mode, allocating 50% of content to top-of-funnel, widely relatable material to attract new audiences, and the rest to trust-building and conversions. Ultimately, her message is that attention is the currency of business, and mastering retention through compelling storytelling is the key to turning funnels and offers into success.

Transcription

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Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnel will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/podcast. That's sellingonline.com/podcast. This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the show. Today I'm with someone who I'm really pumped to hang out with for the first time, I've been watching her online probably since I don't even know, probably four or five years. I started seeing her videos go viral and they're insanely good. I started watching video after video, I started following her socially, and then started watching her from platform to platform. I have a lot of friends who have videos that get billions of views. Most of them don't ever transition into, let me show you what I'm doing. Just over the last time, I'll find out timelines from her here in a little bit. But in the last year, so that I've been aware of, she started actually teaching her formula and what she's doing. I bought the course, my team's been going through it, and a whole bunch of other things. It's really fun to see someone who is executing at probably one of the highest levels. I don't know if there's a top 10 list of the influencers who are getting the most views, but she'd probably be on it if not, we should make that list. Then also, I'm going to teach it as well, which is the harder part. I think a lot of times is doing it than also being able to teach. Her name is Adley, and I'm super excited to be hanging out there today. Adley, how are you doing? I'm so good. So better now, honor to be here with your community. I've similarly been following you since I was a bankrupt musician. Oh, wow. So many, many years, read the books and then just followed your journey as well. You've inspired so many people as an honor to be here. Oh, thank you. Well, let's start there. They tell us about. So you're a musician who is struggling. How long ago was that that part of your journey began? I feel like I have a similar story to most people who end up being marketers is it's. You step into this from a necessity from a need of knowing that for me, God had a bigger calling on my life. And I was stuck in musicianship waiting for a suit behind a desk to give me permission to entertain is what it was for me permission to serve people. And if and where and how and couldn't why I would ever be successful and that didn't sit very well when you know that you have capabilities for me, it was to entertain. So stumbled into video started making videos while I was touring with Blake Shelton actually. So having a nice run as an independent artist, but just knew that I was always more interested in how to market the music than I was actually making it. I was like, I can sit and write songs and scratch this itch to create. But if nobody ever hears it, then what does it matter? Like it just becomes a hobby at that point. And so started making videos while I was on the road. And by the way, for years, I was just getting my rep sin, right? This isn't a time thing. It's definitely a reps thing. And so just got the rep sin long story short one day put chickens in a bathtub and improv this silly little bit that I was making videos for meme pages and improv this bit and it did 19 million views overnight and grew me 110,000 followers and 24 hours. And I was like, this is it. If I want attention on anything, whatever my mission, messes product or service is, it could be a towel, it could be a water bottle, it could be a company. But if I don't know how to get attention, it's not going to work. And organic social is free. And we are now living in the greatest wave of free advertising the world has ever seen, which is once we started getting our rep sin and accruing a billion views a month. We've done a billion views a month every month since 2020. And once I was so confident we could pretty much do this for anybody. That's when as we were talking about before we started rolling, it just feels really good now to help other people. It shows you your system of formula works when you can have a guy who cleans trash cans for a living or whatever the company is real estate on down. That you can show how to get millions of views on command just by tweaking their content strategy just a little bit. So that's the journey and a nutshell. And behind you, there's all your YouTube things, which you said YouTube is the last platform you went on and you've already like lapped everybody else like 25 times looks like, which is a one. This is crazy Russell one YouTube short 159 second video got us two million subscribers for one of these flags. You get these flags for a million 159 second YouTube short that took us maybe 15 minutes to make. Gained us two million subscribers. I'm working way too hard. I've been trying if I get decade, I'm at like 300,000. So yeah. Well, yours are more meaningful. So for some of them to learn what you did. I won't even show you the video because it's quite in there. So silly right there entertainment. Yeah, with masses, but so in the music world, were you like singer songwriter? Like do you read writing stuff ahead of time, which is why you have. When you transition writing, you know, writing ads and stuff or is that what you were doing in the music side? Exactly. A songwriting and I was an artist too. So I was singing. But I would write my own stuff for the most part. And that was the creator in me and then that it just doesn't go away. But now it's just so much more fulfilled and such a bigger platform. Because I can write an idea, turn on a camera, shoot it in 30 minutes, upload it, get immediate feedback. And so your reps, you can just go so much faster. You get data so much faster. And this actually makes money. This is way better. I'm curious like just. I'm a writer too. So I love big every writing style is different. Like is there similarities from writing music to writing the ads that you're doing or the videos you're doing? Is it similar as was their crossover of like, wow, these are what we did in good song. It also match here. Is it completely night and day different? This stylistically night and day, but you know, one's ever asked me that. That's a great question. You still have to hook the same, right? Like if we're just scrolling through Spotify and we're like, hmm, the song sucks. What is making us flip the song and it doesn't hook us the right way. It's riff, it's melody, it's vibe, it's feel. Same thing with our content. The first three seconds matter more than the next 30 ever will. Because if you this way, the hook is so important. You teach about that really, really well because if you don't hook people in the age of attention. And when our spans are shorter than ever, we have to start there or we don't even have a shot at getting people to our actual message. One thing, we'll probably go deeper in your scripting, but one thing I see you do probably better than I've ever seen anyone. Is not only do you, like a lot of people do hook, they get their attention for a second and then they go into their thing. You like lead at these hooks, but then it like opens this like a thing that you don't close to way later. And so it's like your hooks are so much more efficient and effective than almost anyone have ever seen because of that. I've tried to figure out how to replicate that more so in my world, but you know what I'm talking about? You probably have a name for us. I love you to talk about that because it's not just like grab their attention with the flashy headliner you jumping around. It's like you're hooking it opening a loop that then doesn't get the payoff to a way later. I love to explain that part because it's I think it's the amplifier you're doing is so much more powerful than almost anybody else doing any kind of hooks. I really appreciate that. And you nailed it where you said it's an open loop because as humans when the loop is opened, we're kind of already filling in that blanket our minds. Right. And so if I don't close it, there is a subconscious itch there that I created that I'm not going to scratch. And the reason I think we got so good at this or the reason I know we got so good at this is because we made more money every second that we kept people watching. And this was Facebook 2020 to about mid 2023 24 and still today the money is just different where we were not getting paid unless we were making videos over three minutes long. So we were taking concepts that were six seconds. Most people make it a six second video and we had to hook you so hard and suspend you to watch for at least three minutes with an ad break in the middle. That's very tough, but we wouldn't make any meaningful money unless the video also you made it through that ad break and then also got at least a million views. So we were putting in reps at our high 18 minute three minute or long videos a day every day for years. That's a lot of videos and all we were studying was how to get more retention and how could I get Russell to spin not 30 seconds with me, but three minutes and 30 seconds with me watch 18 minute long Facebook lives and it all follow the same pattern of hook. And then not scratch that itch until the very last three seconds and YouTube follows a similar format right and so does actually every story that we tell we'll get any movie that you watch. I love the taken series with Liam Neeson because I think he's bad boy. He's a bad. It's possible what he's doing and for a good reason, but one, the stakes are very high right so you have to raise the stakes. That's where I think most people go wrong is they just play really low stakes in their videos, but stakes determine why people care. So are you telling people how they make a million dollars with their funnel does a pretty high stakes right it works people care about those things. So what is the theme of your video and are the stakes high enough, but also how are you giving them enough value to where they want to stick around. And we would play with these thresholds and we I won't lie to you and you probably already know if you're familiar with me for years we made videos that were bad you guys. Subjectively like cringe content we made Facebook change their algorithm so many times and actually install watch bait penalties because of these videos because it was fascinating that people say they want to watch really thoughtful and integrity filled content, but in reality they want to watch cat videos. They want to watch things that are surface level that don't that aren't too deep right they're standing in line at the bank the kids talking to their leg they're making dinner they're laying a bed with one eye open. So we realized almost the worst the videos got the more hundreds of millions of views they got and the more we got paid. So we started playing with those thresholds and dialing in this formula to where thousands and thousands of viral videos later we were able to see wow of the ones that earn the most and got the most attention a very clear formula appeared and then we took that formula and started making. videos exclusively with it. And I'm not going to look you or anybody else in the eyes and say if you use this formula, every single video will go viral. No, but I will say our batting average increased to about a seven out of 10 video getting over a million views for sure. And so then we started applying that to different niches because they give out that like if we could compel people, like we won't call it by its street name, which is cringey. We'll call it what it is as marketers, which is compelling concept. We would compel people to watch stuff that was so bad. Right? And that they didn't even like if we could compel people to watch videos they didn't even like. And that we can help imagine good stuff, right? That was the thought. It still is. And so then we just keep testing that storytelling, but it's all built around retention. Because if you and I are going up against each other and Russell has more watch minutes with the algorithm than me, the algorithm is going to say Russell's content is more valuable and he's going to get more eyeballs and more served up more people serving his content, the algorithm. Interesting. So I want to go back so Facebook's been first led into 2020s, right? So like COVID that time and lines when you started publishing on Facebook. And so we get 2019 2019. We'll be for it. We get people example. Because I can I've seen a lot of them, but they you said like a bad thing. How would you? They pull in any random example, but how you do a video? How you'd be hooking them and what they like, what that kind of look like originally? So I love people understand the evolution and kind of where you've gone with it. Sure. But some of these videos look like as a guy dressed up in a gilly suit, right? And so he looks it's like hunting gear, right? He's in full camouflage. He looks like a bush and he'd be sitting there like a tree in someone's house, hooking someone's butt and they're shoulder and then they turn around and be like, who's there? What's that? And then it's like Chinese physical comedy, but people can't stop watching until the person realizes it's the guy dressed like a tree and it's not a real plant. We anchor on pranks a lot because they follow the formula so perfectly. There's a set up and then it doesn't pay off until you realize the prank is executed, right? So we were for a long time not able to crack 10 million 20 million views on a video and all our friends were getting 100 million hitters and I'm like, dang it, what are we doing so wrong? Why can't we get 100 million? We're capped at 20. And it was anchoring and retention for suspense and all of it was suspense. So we did the oldest trick in the book where I put shaving cream cheese in my husband's hand. He's sleeping and then we're going to ticklish face and he then slap himself, right? Everybody knows that bit. And we just raised the stakes a little bit more. I had a fly sound and I'm just buzzing the fly app on YouTube over his head until he's macked himself. That did 110 million views and probably made us 55 grand. That dumb video, that the whole world knew was going to happen. But it was just the watch time was so good. We were confused. I think I thought you think it could be like you just cut the thing where it slaps very fast. But how long did it drag out? How long will you like three minutes and one second? Three or one we hit it and it extends every video is three minutes on the nose, three minutes and one second. So we get paid. But that silly silly video was our first 100 million hitter because we finally understood watch time and retention and that our job in the next three years and still is in our publishing division is just to keep people on these apps for long periods of time. And so that's still your job. That's my job as people who are putting content out there, you get rewarded if you make content that people spend time consuming. So how can we do that? How can we become great storytellers? Whether the video six seconds long now or three minutes long, if you can tell great stories about your business and make people feel something, they're going to stick around in the platforms. I'm going to reward you for it. Yeah. I know in our world there's some people who who look at this and they want to create videos and stuff to get advertising. But most of them, they've got their products on funnels, things like that. And so the question is like, okay, let's say what's the equivalent of this smashing a pie in the face for me? If I'm, let's say I'm selling a product on relationships or weight loss or things like that. So I'm sure that's what you do with a lot now. It's like how do you take your framework and transform it for a very specific type of business? Is it different? Or how would you do it for other businesses like that? Great question. So I just got off coaching on our mastermind. It's all seven and eight figure business owners trying to figure out how to apply those techniques to storytelling their own business. And one of our people is a weight loss coach. So let's go with weight loss. And she's just teaching, here's the right forum for a wall set. And here's all this stuff that everybody else is doing. And she looks like everybody else is she's getting the same results that most people are getting, which is not exciting. And so we're teaching her to master retention and challenges. And how can you entertain the masses and then educate the interested and sell to the committed, right? How is somebody going to why is somebody going to buy Pam's course or be trained by Pam rather than any other fitness trainer? What is her business unique selling point? And what is that marketing angle that all of the content then is a spoke from that wheel? And so we dialed it and dialed it in and she really helps women get great booties. And that's fantastic because people love looking at the human body. Just guys are girls. So if she's doing a wall sit, okay, how can we go from pancake to peach in 90 days? Is we just reform out of her offer a little bit from pancake to peach? Everybody wants that. So now she can do a wall sit video or she can do, I'm standing now, but like a glue extension where her glue you have a girl she's on all fours, glue six thin did it. She's teaching the form in this, but she puts a peach maybe on the girl's booty and says, if this falls off, you have to hold the glute raise that's a whole point. So if this peach falls off, then you have to start all over. So now we're watching this girl shake and hold the thing waiting for the the music styling in the key frames going in on this peach that's shaking. Is it going to fall off? Maybe she makes it difficult and puts Legos under her knees. So if she drops that she's going to step on Legos now, like how can we raise the stakes to turn a challenge and an entertainment factor into teaching the proper form for a glute raise, right? And just make her a little bit more memorable because she has a fantastic personality. So let's use that. So we just help people find ways to use this formula in a way that mimics their offer and helps them tell better stories and be more entertaining. I'm curious because I can see how that works for like a video or even an ad, but let's say, let's say someone's got a YouTube channel like, would you recommend it? You have people where like most of the videos are doing are following this formula consistently on their channel or is this more like you do these every once in a while to increase engagement and subscribers and you could run as that. You know, I mean, well, what's how do you how do you train people? What's the your thoughts on that? We say if if you're in growth mode, which I think right now every single person listening to this should be in growth mode because personal brand is scalable for the first time in history. With AI now the level like the playing field is level and that makes it an arms race. Whoever gets the most attention gets the most business. So how can we help you get more attention? I would say and this may be different for everybody, but if you're in growth mode, I would do 50% what we call top of funnel, which is more widely relatable content to attract new eyeballs and heat up your profiles and show Instagram or whatever platform that you're putting this on all of them, hopefully, but that you're making content that is widely shareable, high engagement and relevant because if they see that if they engage with that, that's going to bring new eyeballs to your account and then they're going to see your middle of the funnel, trust building and bottom of the funnel conversions style content. So I would say a couple things one do 50% top of funnel if you're not already just to get your reps in, get the growth and get new eyeballs to what you're already doing, but then we do teach the formula in every single whether you're doing middle funnel or bottom of the funnel content and what that looks like is just in the way you structure a video. So even if you're doing talking head podcast clips, there's a way that you structure a script to hook really hard, make a subconscious promise that makes people feel something and that creates an itch and then give value value value, but don't scratch that itch until the end of your video. Even if it's 10 seconds or 30 seconds long, you just need the retention because if people, if your video's 30 seconds and people scroll at 10 seconds on average, you're telling the platforms that your content isn't very valuable. They didn't want to stick around once they were exposed to it. So you're not making anything valuable. So that's just the game to play, but if you learn how to archetype these videos well, and provide value the whole time, you're going to be in a much better position. So if you take a good example of this so I can show you a picture would be a Jefferson Fisher. You know who Jefferson Fisher is? Yeah, just recently. I don't know, super well. It's in his car and teaches people how to have better conversations. And avoid conflict. So this guy is a trial lawyer from Texas. He has six million Instagram followers, a trial lawyer from Texas. Do you think he's talking about law? No, he's not advertising his law firm, teaching people on the macro how to have better conversations, how to avoid conflict, how to talk to somebody who's gaslighting you, how to overcome it when somebody says this, and how to just have better conversations. Now he's got a best-selling book. He's crushing it because he's unleashing himself a little bit. He's making himself more widely relatable and now his law firm is doing amazing. But I think people really need to understand that there's two different types of relevance. There's contextual relevance, which is what most people are aiming at. They're the law firm you think about when you're in Austin or they're the rest or anything about when you want a great burger or you're the fitness trainer, right? That people think about. That's contextual relevance. But then there's cultural relevance, which is above that and takes no extra effort to just go a little bit wider. And then you become contextually relevant by default. So now, when I think of trial lawyers, I automatically think of Jefferson as the best because I see his his content all the time because he goes wider. He does at least. 50% top of funnel shareable, engaging content. So now he is who I think about. Another example would be dude wipes. These are butt wipes, you guys. They have a branded content series where they do a makeshift UFC ring and they take really breakable things and they just pendulum swing them until they bust. But they make it feel like a UFC fight where they are wiping, taking dude wipes and wiping the fighters, the breakable things off in between rounds. And it's hilarious and they get hundreds of millions of views. So now when I think of wipes, I buy, I've been accepted. I buy dude wipes now just because they're the only one that I can name, right? And they built an amazing brand going wide and entertaining the masses. And then they have their conversion content all throughout their pages as well. Yeah. But that's my challenge is if everybody would just aim for cultural relevance, it's no extra effort. It's a little bit more fun. And you're just making yourself bigger than you actually are, which is going to attract your right clients. Yeah. A lot of times we try to niche down because they get in an offer and a funnel user, we're trying to niche down. But this is like pretty funnel. Like you want, like you said, a lot higher, a bigger a bigger see people to message. You can bring down and you know, come down the top of the funnel versus the bottom of the funnel. Obviously. It's all the funnel. Yeah. And I'm like, you really is. And you've done such a great job of doing this where you're on the macro. When people, you've aligned yourself with that word, with the word marketing, with the word funnel. So nobody can think about funnels without thinking of you. You're on the macro. You know, and that's just my encouragement to everybody else listening is look at the people you're looking up to. Their chances are you found them because they spoke to the macro more than they just talked to their avatar in every single video. There's another legal one that when you said the other guy, the YouTube channel legal legal. I don't know if you've seen them, but they have like three million followers. But he's interesting too because he's very similar. He's not a law firm. He's got ads throughout his law firm, but his videos are amazing because he'll pick a movie and he's like, like, say, dumb and dumb. And he's like, here's every law that they broke in dumb and dumb. And he goes through this hilarious. You see the funny scene. And then he's like, this is illegal. You know, and all this stuff. And he just, it's like, he has a relevance of all his movies. And new movies come out. He's like riding that trend. He's like, oh, here's all the laws that they broke in home alone 12 or whatever the next thing is. And it's just, it's, it's crazy to see his viralness. And then, but he also hits every political thing. Like everything is top of top of, you know, it's hitting, hitting press like everything. He's got the legal analysis on each thing. And, and it's just been insane watching him. And I was kind of thinking on my side, I'm like, man, how do I, how do I capitalize? Like, because I think I get too stuck in the, the lower end too with funnels and stuff. It's like, I'm talking to my funnel hackers. Like these are the people. And it's like, I got to come a step up. I think also to make my, my stuff go more viral, more viral. You know, I mean, it's interesting. It's so hard. It's so easy to see other people do it and diagnose other people. I feel like marketers are so good at that. But self diagnosing and reading the label from inside the bottle is so, it's so tough. That's what I have coaches. I know you have coaches and we just have to have somebody else kind of just like tell us what to do and what they see in us and ask us the right questions to get us there. Yeah. 100%. Okay. So I'm curious on platform. You said you start on Facebook and you've gone across and, you know, you have systematically dominated probably every platform out there, especially the most recent one too, as we can tell, which is amazing. But like for people nowadays, if they're just getting started, is there a place you, you'd recommend like, they're starting short form and they're starting long. You know, where, I don't know, what do you recommend people do if they're just the beginning of this? They got a funnel up. They're starting to drive some traffic, but they want to start adding viral social stuff. Like where do you, you lead them initially? I'm going to prep as this by saying, once you make the content, post it everywhere. We have people who are like, should I even post on shorts YouTube? I'm like, yes, you made it. Why wouldn't you? Because you may think your audience is on Instagram, you know, or Snapchat or TikTok or whatever. But you might be really surprised when you start posting on shorts that it just pops and that's the one that went for you. And if you didn't give yourself a shot there, you already did the hard work. Why wouldn't you post it everywhere? So I will always say post everywhere because you never know where it's going to pop for you. But I would just look at your avatar. My answer to you would probably be different than Betty down the street. But where are your people hanging out? Are they on LinkedIn? Are they YouTube people? Are they, are you going for a metadata play here? And what are you angling at? But I would say be everywhere. But just think about where your people are hanging out and having conversations. Are they redditors? You know, like, should that be a core strategy for you? But at the end of the day, if you're making good content, it's going to, it's going to go everywhere. Like we have to be first to post all of our stuff everywhere because there's bots now that will crawl all of our pages and they'll take it immediately and throw it on YouTube before I even get a shot. And then I get limited now. Yeah, I'm getting copyright strikes on my own stuff. I didn't think of it. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. But I would say wherever your avatar is, that's where you want to insert yourself in the conversation. Now, you create something different for YouTube versus Instagram versus everything. Are you going, you know, you make a long form of short form version of each video or do you make one this focus like this is our short form we hit across all the platforms and then this is our law. You know, like, what's your, how do you structure that? I would say same, same type of content, maybe in just a different rapper, yeah, to wear the language. Like if I'm doing a text overlay, text overlays on the first three seconds, you guys know what I'm talking about. Like that'll reframe the audience of how to consume the video. So will the music, if it's dark and creepy and suspenseful, you watch it with a totally different tonality than it's if it's sad, sappy, romantic music, same content, right? And so we might test, we should talk about trial rules in a second. But we will, we'll test different rappers of the same type of content. We'll test different three seconds for each platform. And that's just, I wouldn't say everybody has to do that right off the start because it's exhausting. We just built that into our system over time. Yeah. Okay, trial rules. I know this is the newer thing that most of my world probably doesn't know about yet. I actually found about three, I was hanging out with Sean Kelly, his podcast and he says he's posting 40 trial rules a day and from that point. So you have explained first up what it is and then how you guys are using it, because I don't think most of my world even knows that is yet. I have full body chills. This is how I'm excited. I am about this right. I want everybody to pull up your phone and pull up an Instagram. Go as if you're going to post a real and then on the page right before you hit publish, see if you have a toggle that will say trial. And if you don't have it, make sure you have the most updated version of the app, but still like 10% of people, I feel like don't have it yet. And I'm so sorry if that is you keep keep looking every single day. Yeah, because here's what trial rules does. It solves the problem that I think a lot of people get stuck in of not making context. They don't know what to do. They don't know how to show up and they're scared to try and their followers don't want this. When you post a video and toggle on trials, it only goes to non followers. You go straight to recommendations baby. And so what that does is you can test different concepts styles. You can repost your best performing concept and it goes out to people who don't follow you yet and will attract people back to you on my Instagram. Here's the power of this. My Instagram last 30 days, we've done over 100 million views on trial, Reels alone and gained 50,000 new followers. Trial, Reels alone. It is a game changer. So load up all your best pieces of content. If you have podcast clips, throw everything on there. But what you can do this also do with this is split test your content. So when I make a video like we're making videos all afternoon, I will make three or four different versions of each one, meaning I'll do different opening lines. I'll do different opening visual shots. I'll write four different hooks. I'll shoot all of them. I'll also have long versions and short versions to test retention and all load up all five six, seven, 12 versions of this video onto trial, Reels. And I will just let them sit 24 or 48 72 hours and you will see which ones pop in which ones don't maybe some get 300 views, maybe some get 3000 views. And then you can choose of those seven versions of the video. You see which one algorithms preferring what people are preferring. And then you can click publish that one to your page. So your page stays hot. That's right. And you're just split testing at scale. It is so cool. Do you delete the other ones you just let them kind of roll out and just keep just leaving there? I let them run because they're all out there. You know, they're all attracting people. And sometimes they don't pop for a couple of weeks. We have one that it wasn't doing anything for the first three, four weeks and then popped out of nowhere. And then it was gaining several tens of thousands of followers a day. No, sorry, tens of thousands of views a day. But only just because I left it on trial Reels just left it out in the ether. So powerful, especially somebody who's a bank account catalog like you do have just 20 years of events. We got so sure. Right. Those are for like each day we got one or maybe two shots makes something amazing. So I talked to Sean. I was like, Oh my gosh, we could like again, we're going to hire a team just to full time just be just to do anything. Yeah, just to just to speeds up production. And then for us like again, we're we're primarily ads driven company. And so it's also for us. It's like now we find the one, you know, throw out trials, find the winner for the social and that one becomes like now we reform is now you get the best the best ad as well, which saves us, you know, every ad we usually were testing a thousand bucks running an ad. So saves us, you know, it's $20,000 a month, $30,000 a month testing coming out with the best thing that's most likely to hit, which is, you know, that's exciting. I got you. It's so exciting you guys and organic social whether you're using trial rules or not is such an amazing testing ground for your messaging. And it's saving so many people on their ad costs. We have a guy who just joined our program. He goes, my ad cost is cut in half now just from the content. I'm making is better. It's just speaking to the audience. I'm like, this is the most exciting thing that I didn't even plan on to be a result. But it is mastering organic social and just investing in your personal brand right now. I just, I'm going to die on that hill. Say what you die on your hill. I'm like, I found the thing. I don't know. It's personal brand. They're both great. Yes. And I'll even make a pretty bold statement. I, I really believe by 2030, personal brand be more powerful than Bitcoin. Bitcoin may 100x, but your personal brand, 1000x, your income, your influence and your impact on the world. And it is scalable. Like we were talking about for the first time in history. And I think everyone is just out of excuses. We're not going as hard as possible. Because it's free. You have an iPhone. We've never shot a viral video on anything other than an iPhone or a ring camera. So you just spend a little bit of time. I'm begging you, even if it's an hour a day, 30 minutes a day to just work on getting good at this and work on storybraining yourself. And how you can show up on social. I just think it's a non-negotiable and we're all out of excuses for not doing it to the max. Yeah. I also think just, you know, AI is I think going to hurt so many industries because yeah, like software. I had called our software. My development team today, it's like in five years from now, you could literally, you'll be a little bit of like, I want eBay and it'll just code to eBay. I want click fun. It's like it stops becoming.sexy, right? Information in and of itself is is, you know, we need AI in five seconds. You can create a course on anything you want, right? I think the, the AI influence, there's something like that by like by 2030. Whatever that next, the next thing is, I think it's the human connection that people are missing and the brand building because people are no longer going to buy based on anything other than like, who do I connect with that I trust? And then that that's the filter for most of their other decisions, right? And so I think those who pay the money and the energy and the time right now are the ones who have capitalized long term. So I never looked at from Bitcoin though, which is really interesting too. Anyway, it's true. Is this going to go up and down and you're, you know what, your personal brand may be too, but it's you have one, you have one character about yourself, you have one reputation and it will come down to trust because anybody can spit up a course right now. That's really scary because they just need good marketing rappers and they could sell people when they have no business like people, you could make a course now, I have no history or track record. And so I think it's going to come down to the people that are going to have longevity in this business are the ones that have the trust and trust comes from being out there and earning the trust that you have to earn. And I think that that's who's going to last. So cool. Okay, last thing I want to ask you is this selfish question though, I want to understand your process from how you guys do it from idea to scripting to filming like, what does it look like, I don't know, typical week or, you know, I don't know how you have structured, but I'm curious because I get stuck in this right, I get on times where we have a good process in place, but then we'll have an event or something we're doing and everything follows apart and like, we're not consistent. I'm just really curious how you consistently show up doing it at such a high level for so long. Yeah, I love to understand how you guys do that. I appreciate that because I feel like that is my Achilles heel too. If I'm the plumber with leaky pipes, it can be consistency too, as we're doing this people, my own content is struggling because I'm still an entertainer first, but then we also have, you know, education division where we teach people how to do this because that's my heart and that's being a river and not a reservoir. But I think it comes down to, it comes down to systems which I'm, which I'm working on and that's the only reason we're getting anything done. It's finding a way to prioritize this because it is so, so important. So from ideation, once you start seeing like for us as the formula, once we do you understand it, you can't unsee it. Like, I can't think, look at anything and be like, oh, that wouldn't make an awesome video. You know, so part of it's just getting the rep's into where that becomes second nature. But even before that, saying, all right, if here's a format of how I know good videos work, here's a formula in a sense, and even using chat GBT as your buddy to say, okay, I want this bin style framework. I want this billion view formula. I want retention. Here's what I'm aiming for. Here's the pain point that I'm trying to solve. But I want to lead with humor. And you can almost have a creative director in a brain buddy to help you do these things without just relying on you in a pen and paper to come up with all the ideas. So I think if we're solving for the bottleneck, if ideas are where you're stuck, we got a solve for that use chat to just bounce ideas and help you get through that bottleneck. If it's time, it's building, it's blocking your time to just say, okay, here's how I'm getting faster and more efficient on idea generation. I need my whole team block or four people to help me make these videos from two to four every Wednesday. And then I need to hand them off to editing. If editing is the blocker, yet an editor, like whatever your excuse is that you're thinking about in your head that's keeping you from doing this, that's what we got to solve for force first, because nothing else makes sense unless we solve for that first. So from that perspective, I would say identify whatever your blocker is, and we solve, we solve from that first. And if it's ideas and it's going bigger, then I would look at the content that you're inspired by and start looking as you're scrolling, as you're doing scrolling, saying, oh, I'm a student of this now. Why did I stop on this video? Why did my thumb stop? Why did I keep watching this entire video? What is it about it? Why did it psychologically grab me and compelled me to watch something I wasn't planning on watching? And then what is it about it? Identify it, give it a name and then say, how could I do that in my business? And this is actually what we teach people how to do, but it starts with solving for the blocker first. Interesting. So for you, do you have a cycle or each week you start and go through it? Or what's your personal process look like for the videos you're doing? So today we're shooting three videos for brands. And whether we're doing an ad for Land Rover, or like today's Ashley furniture, and then a casino. And we're just storyboarding for them. And so what I'm thinking of is, okay, I need to show that Ashley has this new line of outdoor furniture. And we stage this whole thing up there. And instead of doing what a typical influencer would do is look at this outdoor oasis that Ashley does. And the style is so fresh and it's so durable. Nobody nobody cares. You know, so what we're doing is an opening shot where I we're doing three different versions. But the one that we're going to shoot right after this is I go up to my door and it says, there's a note on my door and it says, I have a confession. And I'm like, open the okay. From sign from my husband, I have a confession. I'm like, what is this? And then I go and I walk in the door. There's another note card. It says, I've been I've been talking to somebody. I'm like, where is this going? So you see immediately we triggered an emotion. My husband has a confession. Everybody could see themselves in that. Then I said, I've been seeing somebody or we tested another version. I've been seeing Ashley. Hi, higher stakes. Who is Ashley? And we're getting I might I bet we have at least 75% retention in the first six seconds. And my goal to everybody from this day forward is to get 90% retention on your first six seconds. This comes directly from our TikTok rep. If you're 90% retention on your first six seconds, you're going to be in the top one percent of content being served up to the algorithm. And that's going to open you up right away. So every time you make a video, how do I get anybody that comes across this video to watch for at least six seconds? So we have to non-negotiably make them feel an emotion and have a curiosity gap. So I end up following these note cards using words from Ashley's campaign brief to pre-frame set the tone. I get up to the roof. Blake's there with a glass of champagne roses. And he designed this whole thing with me him and Ashley and gave me my outdoor away since I'd been begging my husband to do for two years. So we're playing on couples dynamics of humor. We're playing on Ashley's brief and how he's giving me something that I'd always wanted. But it also has that fun bait and switch. So we marry the campaign brief and the messaging points. We have something that's widely relatable and a theme that's authentic for us to. And then we just start filling in the pieces. And we design our videos in reverse. I'd like to say one more thing because I hope this is helpful for people. But we have a method called the Missie Elliott method, which means we gonna put that thing down, flip it and reverse it. We design every single video that we do completely in reverse. So if you're gonna pitch a video at Byrelish, you I don't most people when they describe a video, they say I'm gonna make a video showing people how to say 50% on taxes or I'm gonna show people my amazing three ingredient brown recipe. But what you're describing is the payoff. You're describing the end of the video. Most people, even great videos, people sometimes don't make it to the end, right? So they're never gonna see that amazing tax strategy. They're never gonna see the amazing brownies. So what I want you to describe is the opening three seconds. Don't tell me what the video is about. Tell me your opening three. And then I say yes or no. And I say, okay, if it's yes, what's the next three? What's the next three? And notice how if you design videos like that, it mimics the viewers experience. So I'm able to be an unbiased third party and say yes, I would keep watching. Yes, I would keep watching. So whether you're designing a video that's heavily visual or you're just doing a podcast clip or you're writing a script for yourself every single line, every three seconds say what I keep watching is this good? Why does anyone care? Why do they care? Why do they care? Why do they care? Why do they care? Every three seconds. And that's helped us be very consistent with high performing videos for a very long time. So cool. You're awesome. Okay, everybody go I want everyone to go and watch like just go watch all your videos so I can see this in action. Is it just Adley basically every platform or is there I think it is right? Mostly yeah, Adley on Instagram and then I think that's where you're gonna see the most the most stuff. Instagram is what I tend to care the most most about and start to build my tribe. Yeah, it's a fun one. So cool. And then if anyone in my listeners want to jump into your coaching programs to fight that, where's the best spot for Nicole and look for more info with you for that? Nice DM me the word mastermind on Instagram. On any of your pick a post type of mastermind in the the automations will take off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just yeah, send me a DM and I love talking to people. I can talk about this all day every day. So yes, send me a DM and if you're interested and we can help do this for your business, it'd be an honor. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you. It's super fun to hear just the insights from how you're doing stuff. I said, we've been going through your course as a team here. So it's been top of mind and just wanted to, you know, share some of this with our audience so they can they can all start doing as well. Because so many of our people like I told you before, you started recording like they've got great offers, they've got great funnels and they struggle with getting traffic or they were doing all paid traffic and it's just gotten so out of hand. They can't. They're not profitable anymore. So they're looking for the next things and I think that this is really where people all need to double down they double downing on. And I think your ways, yeah, when you understand your model and the scripting, I get it's pretty powerful. So and did you say how many months in a row, you've got a billion views a month. What was that number on that? Every month since 2020. Are creating and distributing everything. We distribute all over Microsoft. We still snapchats down is lately, but we still operate 25 shows over there. And so we're still just everywhere designing most content. Most people wouldn't even know that we're behind. And I feel like I've talked myself into a desk job the last couple of years. So I'm excited to get back into making more content as well. So I'm going there. Well, I appreciate you hanging out here for the last little bit and everyone go check it out. And add Adley over Instagram and get some more traffic to your funnels. I appreciate that. Thanks Russell. Thank you. Hey, this is Russell. I had a really cool offer for you right now. Shortly after we launched clickfunnels, I remember asking some of our top two comic club award winners, what would they do if they had everything taken away from it? They lost their name, their brand, their email list, their traffic, everything all they had was a clickfunnels account and internet connection for 30 days. What would they do over the next 30 days to get back on top? I asked over 102 comic couple winners and from that 30 people wrote me back and gave me very detailed step by step battle plans. Day number one, they would do this. Day number two, they would do this. And by the time the 30 days was done, they'd be back on top of the very successful business. Do you want to know what these people wrote? If so, I took all of these 30 battle plans and put them inside of one book, you can get free at 30days.com. All you got to do is go to 30days.com and go get a free copy of this book. We'll ship it out to you, just cover the shipping handling. And when you get it in the mailbox, you have a chance to go through and look at all of these detailed step by step blueprints. All you got to do is find one of these blueprints that you'll like. Follow it step by step. And when you're done, you will have your old online business done and launched in life. So we'll get a free copy of one of my favorite books we've ever created at 30days.com. Again, that's 30days.com.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Adley, a former musician and touring artist with Blake Shelton, transitioned to viral content creation after a video of chickens in a bathtub gained 19 million views overnight, leading to 110,000 followers in 24 hours.
  2. She emphasizes that success in content creation comes from "reps" (repetition) rather than time, and has achieved over a billion views per month since 2020 by mastering retention and storytelling.
  3. The core of her formula is the "open loop" technique—hooking viewers with suspense that isn't resolved until the end, which increases watch time and algorithmic reward.
  4. She adapted to Facebook's monetization rules (videos over 3 minutes) by creating engaging, sometimes "cringey" content, learning that higher watch time leads to higher payouts and more views.
  5. Her framework applies to businesses beyond entertainment, such as a weight loss coach, by turning educational content into entertaining challenges (e.g., "pancake to peach" booty transformation) with high stakes to boost retention.
  6. She advises a 50% top-of-funnel strategy (widely relatable content to attract new audiences) and the rest for trust-building and conversion, urging everyone to focus on growth in the current AI-era arms race for attention.

Summary:

Adley, a former independent musician who toured with Blake Shelton, shares her journey from struggling artist to viral content creator, now generating over a billion views monthly since 2020. She discovered that success hinges on "reps" rather than time, and after a chance video went viral, she developed a formula centered on retention and storytelling. Her key technique is the "open loop"—hooking viewers with suspense or curiosity that isn't resolved until the video's end, which keeps them watching longer and signals value to algorithms.

She honed this by creating three-minute-plus videos for Facebook monetization, learning that even "cringey" content with high watch time outperforms thoughtful but boring posts. , holding a glute raise with a peach on your back) to capture attention and make content memorable. She stresses that in today's AI-leveled playing field, personal brands are scalable, and everyone should be in growth mode, allocating 50% of content to top-of-funnel, widely relatable material to attract new audiences, and the rest to trust-building and conversions.

Ultimately, her message is that attention is the currency of business, and mastering retention through compelling storytelling is the key to turning funnels and offers into success.

FAQs

The problem 99.9% of the time is that the funnel is good, but you suck at selling.

She made a silly video with chickens in a bathtub that got 19 million views overnight and grew her 110,000 followers in 24 hours.

The first three seconds matter more than the next 30, and you should open a loop that doesn't get paid off until later to keep viewers watching.

On Facebook from 2020 to mid-2023, she only got paid if videos were over three minutes long, so she hooked viewers hard to keep them watching through ad breaks.

Find your unique selling point and raise the stakes by making challenges entertaining, like a weight loss coach turning a glute raise into a game with a peach falling off.

She recommends doing 50% top-of-funnel content to attract new eyeballs and the rest for trust-building and conversion-style content.

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