The Science of Viral Content - With Brendan Kane | Episode 316

Social media is a one-to-one communication method, not a one-to-many. Most people are communicating on social media as it's you're standing on a stage speaking to hundreds of thousands or millions of people. But that really drives performance 'cause you're not creating that personal connection. It does not matter what subject matter you cover, it can go viral. You don't feel like you need to change who you are or what you represent. Like taxes, real estate, finance, nutrition. - I can create content based on my knowledge experience, but what I need to do is contextualize it so that it's more accessible. So if your audience is big enough, the percentage of those people are going to be your customer will be bigger than 100% of your niche audience. (upbeat music) - What is up everybody? We're here at the Intercontinental Hotel. I guess it's the tallest hotel in the west coast, and I'm joined today by Brendan Kane. He's off of several books, but he's got a new book, it's The Guide to Going viral. And the reason why we're having him on the show today is because the last video just blew up. It has over 657,000 views. So you haven't seen that video yet. Go watch that first, but I'm eager to catch up with them because I believe he's kind of figured out the viral code. The premise is that it's not magic, it's not emotion. It's actually quite scientific. And he's got a very analytical mind. If you've ever watched any of his Instagram content or he breaks down the virality of slightly different videos and why one gets a couple hundred thousand views and some get hundreds of millions of views. So Brendan, for people who are not sure like what they're getting into today, what are the couple of things that you think we can tease them with? That'll be the way that we open the show. - Well like you said, the first thing is people think going viral is luck, but there is a science and a model to it. We spent the past six years building one and we'll break down that model today. And really we're gonna show people how to consistently break through. So that's another big thing. We're not talking about how do you get one video to go viral but how do you consistently break through build a brand? But also this is not about tricking people doing silly cat videos or pranks, but actually we're gonna break down how to turn that into scalable commerce so that you can drive your business and brand growth. - That sounds pretty amazing. Oh, well let's get into that because there's lots of things that are so you're saying we can create a hit. We can do it consistently and we can do in a way that helps our business to grow. That sounds like a pretty compelling reason to watch this episode I think. Okay, so let's get into it. I've been watching Instagram and you will break down videos from different people, also from the same person and kind of really pool in the strings as to why it's working. So explain some of the observations that you built up in the last six years so that someone, and it should be almost everybody is listening or watching this video, wants to do themselves because that's the thing. I mean a lot of times what they'll say is, oh, I've been shadow band or the algorithm's broken and it's not working anymore and they just want to give up. So how do we address that emotional kind of reaction to it and then let's get into some of your strategies? - Yeah, first off I feel your pain 'cause I'm sure you do too. We've both been in business, we've been creating content for a while and you put your heart and soul and time and energy and effort into it and then it just falls flat. And you're left like, man, should I just keep doing this? The biggest thing to know is you're not alone that 99% of people that are producing content and social media are experiencing that same pain and hopefully today we can alleviate it. But one of the first things that we have to kind of understand is the world that we live in today. So when I started in social media, I started back 2005, back when Friendster and Myspace are the predominant players. You think back then there's only a few million people on these platforms creating content. Today we're about to surpass five billion people on social media. So that's how many people are producing content on these platforms. And the reality is of how do we get views? How do we get followers? How do we get audience? It's all controlled on the algorithms. And most people, like you said, demonize the algorithms and say, oh, they're shadow banning me. They're suppressing my reach on purpose to pay for it. But that's not the reality. These algorithms have a fundamental goal and it's a business goal. And how do all these platforms make money? They make money by serving ads. So these algorithms are designed solely to find the content they can grab and hold attention as long as possible at scale to keep people on the platforms longer. Because if people don't spend time on their platforms, they go elsewhere and thus their profit dwindles. So first understanding the purpose of the algorithm, they want to partner with us. They want to be our best friend. It's not about trying to beat the algorithm or hack the algorithm. Because this isn't like Netflix, where Netflix invests billions of dollars in original content to keep people on their platform. They rely on us as content creators to be the fuel that runs them. So that's the first thing to understand is what controls the reach and distribution. The next thing to understand is like, well, how do we actually generate views? Because views generate followers. They generate leads. They generate commerce. Well, each platform is a little bit different. But on Instagram and TikTok, typically, a view is counted at three seconds. And that happened a while back when advertisers were up in arms when they were getting charged for views on the ad platform at one second, because one second doesn't show intent. But then you look at YouTube, you have to get the thumbnail and a headline clicked on and then watch 30 seconds to generate that specific view. So that's where kind of the views start. But this isn't about just grabbing the attention. It's about holding that attention and making sure that retaining that audience that we're getting. So we're not talking about clickbait or tricking people or any of those things. So you're saying that they're incentivized. And their whole business model is built on the premise that they want to serve the best content to the most number of people at scale. So if your every content is not being seen and this might be heartbreaking to some folks, it's just because it's just not that good. Can I say that? Or you're not doing the right things? - It's a great question. So most people have great content. And it's not the content. It's the context of how you're representing that content. So one of the biggest, and we use this word performance driver. So a performance driver is something that drives up the performance and increases the chance of virality or a downward performance driver decreases that ability. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. But one of the kind of performance drivers are things that really hold people back, especially when we're talking about organic social media, is there operating off the old paradigm of create a niche piece of content for a niche audience? The social media algorithms are not really looking for that. They're not gonna do the heavy lifting for you. They're just looking at the retention metrics. Are you able to stop the scroll and how long can you hold their attention for? One of the biggest principles that we talk about in terms of that contextual element to drive success around your content is called the generalist principle. So how do we make your content interesting to the average person while not losing the subtext of our core audience? So I'll give you an example. I'm sure you know the YouTuber Graham Stephan who teaches finance to millennials. He's built a massive audience on YouTube. His most viewed video is how I bought a Tesla for $78 a month. So right there that hook, anybody would be interested of saying, well, how did he actually get a Tesla for $78 per month? But if you watch the video, he's actually breaking down finance principles like understanding what it means to finance a car. Versus if you were to say, I'm gonna teach you the top five principles I've learned in leasing a Tesla, it would have gotten 10,000 views instead of nine million views. So it's understanding how you can take your content but contextualize it in such a way that still points to your core business objectives and goals in your audience, but also playing to the general principle. There's another amazing woman on TikTok, Dr. Julie Smith. And she is a clinical psychologist and she breaks down very difficult subjects like PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, things of that nature. And she uses a format called a visual metaphor where like one of her most viewed videos that's got 12 million views is she has a waste paper basket overflowing with papers, talking about what it means to be overwhelmed with emotion. And then she takes those papers out, I wanted a time, folds them neatly and then puts them back in there to show kind of what trauma processing and going through therapy looks like. Now like therapy, especially in TikTok, most people think TikTok is like silly kids dancing and stuff but like clinical psychology is not really a sexy or viral subject matter on the surface but the contextual nature of how she's representing that information allows her to scale her message and brand without losing the subtext of what she's actually trying to get across as a business and a personal brand. I'm familiar with both of those people, Dr. Julie Smith, I'm a fan so she does a great job. And I point to her as an example of how you can take abstract ideas that are hard to understand and create an easy to understand model that's physical so those are good things. And then how she creates tension in like what is happening right now? There's one where she's like filling a jug with water and holding a drill. I'm like what is happening? So she captures my attention but she's maintaining it and then it all makes sense because she starts to drill holes and it's like that's exercise, that's meditation. And so it's not overflowing on the kitchen table anymore. So that's an excellent example. Gramm seven, my estimation with the ethics behind him but good strategy, things for point that out. Just want to say this is on endorsement of Gramm Seven. Okay, put that out there. So how do we apply this principle that you talk about this generous principle by giving people context? Because are people watching this video because they want to make YouTube videos or Instagram Reels pop? Is that journalist? enough or do we have to make it even more relatable than that? The reality of this situation is even if you want to go after a specific niche audience, you need to kind of break through to that generalist principle. I'll give you another prime example because most people think of, "I have a very specific niche audience that I want to reach with my message that can only kind of buy my products or services." So there's Ryan Sirhant, who now has a show in Netflix, but his success is really driven by understanding social. It's not by external factors or things of that nature. But if you think about Ryan Sirhant, what does he do? He sells luxury properties in Manhattan that start at like $15 million going up to $250 million. So using this generalist principle, he does videos like, "I'm going to take you in a two or a seven million dollar closet. I'm going to take you in a $250 million ranch." In that context, he's playing against the generalist principle of anybody would be interested to see that, but even if less than 1% of the millions and millions of people that watch those videos, see it. He's tapping into that core audience he's going after and he's even said he sold a $30 million property off of a YouTube video. A lot of our clients initially resist that so much of like, "Well, I need to talk to this specific person that has this specific problem that views the world in this specific way." And it's just like, "Yes, you can do that if you want to go just strict paid acquisition and even paid acquisition, people misinterpret because even if you're running a paid ad, it's not guaranteeing somebody's going to watch it. It's only guaranteeing that you're going to get it in front of somebody." So that paid ad has to compete with organic. So we just have to kind of understand that that principle applies no matter the specific goal or objective that you have in terms of how you're tackling social media. I want to stay on this one because I think it's going to address a lot of fears and concerns that people have. And this is a very common thing with entrepreneurs who are somewhat creative, who want to create content. It's not really interesting to come in influencer. I don't care about a lot of views and followers. I want to get clients. So they're doing the opposite of what you're saying. They're creating very niche content for a niche audience because they want sales. What are they missing here? And really just, I want to pull on this so that they understand and have a breakthrough moment. It's a great question and I completely understand where people's mindset is coming from. As I have a very specific business objective in goal and I want to leverage social media to achieve that specific business objective in goal. So let's just do an exercise here. Let's just imagine whoever's watching this, they can just think in their head like, what is the average number of views or people that see your content? So let's take that number and let's just imagine it's 10,000 views. Okay. Out of those 10,000 views, let's just say 50% of those people are my core target audience because it's never going to be 100%. It's not going to happen with 50% of those 10,000 people are my core target audience. So that's 5,000 people. Now if we take and I want people to do this exercise and write it down on a piece of paper, imagine if we multiplied the number of views the on average you get by 10, then by 100, then by a thousand. So let's just say we take it from an average of 10,000 views to just 100,000 views on average. And let's just say our core target drops from 50% to 20%. So we just went from 5,000 to 20,000 potential customers viewing our content. Now let's put it up to a million people on average and let's just decrease that down to 10%. So 10% of a million people could buy our products or services. That's going from 5,000 to 100,000 people potentially buying your products and services. And that's the core aspect of this. And a big difference of like what we're talking about right now versus what other people may talk about. Virality is we're not talking about content that's not aligned with your product or service. That's not aligned to your brand. We're not talking about doing silly cap videos if you're not a pet brand or jumping off a roof and doing prank videos. And I can give you a prime example of kind of how this works. So we had a client that came to us with very little to no social media experience at all. His name is Tanner Leatherstein and he's a leather craftsman. So it's a very niche subject matter. So he sells leather goods like purses, handbags, wallets, things of that nature. And he was stuck at like 2,000 followers on social media. And the reason he was stuck is he was creating commercials. So it was just a commercial featuring his like leather wallet. It looked good. It looked beautiful. But nobody really cared because nobody really logs onto social media saying, I want to see a great branded piece of content. I want to see an ad. They want to be engaged in some way. So we worked with him to design a format called Is It Worth It? Where he buys a $500 Chanel handbag, deconstructs it on screen and tells you whether it's worth the money that you've paid for it. So that simple concept is not creating an ad but providing insight, building trust and credibility. We say that the goal of social media is not to sell your product, is to get people to know like and trust you. And if people know like and trust you, they're ultimately going to want to take that next step. So with this concept of Is It Worth It? He's gone from 2000 followers to 2.5 million across his social media channels and over 200 million organic views. And the interesting thing is if you watch his content, there is no calls to action for any of his products or services. He just has a link in his bio. The traffic is so large that people automatically build that trust and want to take that next step. So they just click the link in his bio. And before he was spending money on Google ads and he was generating 10,000 visitors off of organic, it jumped to 100,000 visitors. And his most expensive products, the products he sells for thousands of dollars, he can't even keep them on the shelf. So I'm not saying you can include calls to actions in your content, you can. But it's just, I just wanted to demonstrate that example because it's really about getting people to know like and trust you. And I think you've done an amazing job with your brand and your channel. It's really about providing that value, that insight and then people automatically want to take that next step and work with you, do a workshop with you, book you to speak or those elements. And I think people kind of get that wrong with social media. They treat their social media profile as if it was a website or their organic content as if it was an advertisement. There's lots of go into here, but I've seen you feature Tanner and I didn't know you guys were behind us. So are you the ones who helped him to go from 2000 to two plus million followers? And you looked at him and it took him on as a client, consulted, coached him and said, hey, here's the format that you need to try. Is that you guys? Yeah. So we worked with him. He did all the work. So like we're kind of the strategy engine behind clients like that, but yes. Wow. Okay. Well, Kudos to you. I have lots of questions now. If we don't mind, we can stay here for a little bit. Number one, he would buy probably some vintage luxury bags and do the most horrific thing. He would rip them apart. He would scrape them. He would burn them and he would do all kinds of things and say, well, here are the material costs, here are the labor costs. And you get to decide if it's worth it on. He would kind of rank it a little bit. I understood the play because he's a leather maker of similar bags or high quality bags. So I get the play. He didn't need to tell me I can't figure it out pretty quickly. There's a lot of different questions. Number one is, if I'm a business owner, that seems like a lot of work and a lot of money to do something that you're not quite sure it's going to work. Did he need convincing or was he like, I'm all in guys. You tell me to do something. I'm going to go out there and do that. It took him some time. So when we initially worked with him, we developed the strategy, trained him in our model. He went off and we didn't hear from him for six months because he went in there and kind of like really digested it and understood it. And he was super motivated in that. And I would say that is the biggest challenge, I think with anybody in social media, especially with our clients, like we have clients that have no social media experience like Tanner or we worked with a hand doctor that exploded on TikTok. She generally like 700,000 followers in TikTok and got a TV deal and a book deal. So it's not about the experience. It's almost about the mindset because sometimes we work with people or teams that have a lot of social media experience and we have to kind of untrain them. So I would say social media is a lot of work, but I think the biggest barrier is really the mindset going into it is one of the questions that I ask clients is like, why do you actually want to do social media? Like what is your ultimate outcome and how important is that outcome to you? And if it's a really important outcome, then you should invest the time and energy and resources into it. But like any skill set that you have, it's going to take time and energy and resources to master. I think people will misinterpret social media because anybody can pull out a phone, press record and post something. They think that automatically just because they do that action that millions of people should see their content or they look at like a Mr. Beast or some young kid that's generating millions of followers and be like, oh, they're just locking into it so I can do it myself. If I'm a business owner of a business that's a doing about $5 million a year, I'm listening to this like, wow, they sounds freaking wonderful. You guys are the mastermind behind some of the most viral videos out there on the internet. People will define their own category because I will say to people, you know this is guy he does letter breakdowns. Like, yeah, I know he talked about, I don't remember to do his name, but I know I follow him and I look at his content. So I'm curious if they're like, well, we want to do that. First of all, like what is the process like? What does it cost? How does one do this because we can all look at say Tanner and see like, he's got a lot of success. But there was a moment in time when that outcome was not certain. It was not an inevitable outcome. Right? So now he's going to go on, he's going to buy things, he's going to rip it apart and really, you know, you don't have so many times to deconstruct a bag. So if you screw it up, you're out a couple of grand because of the bag. Yeah. You know, and I think I know why it works. But let's talk a little bit about that. What kind of commitment do I need to make? You said the mindset. And what else do I need to do to prepare myself so that if I receive these kinds of strategies or watching this video, that I can commit to doing this. that. Yeah, so as you mentioned the mindset and just making the commitment to do it like we've done, I mean, I've been in the space for 20 years. I believe so much in our process that if you follow it, it is inevitable for success. That's why I guarantee that in the first 120 days after working with us, if you don't at least see a million views, we'll keep working with you until you do. Like that's how much I kind of believe in that process. And a really important question is like, where is it start? Where do you have to start on this success path? And I go back to where I started my career, which is the film industry. And I started in going to film school. And what do you do in film school? You sit down and you watch movies, you read scripts, you break down and understand what it means to tell a successful story versus an unsuccessful story. The way that we look at social media is very different than what most kind of social media agencies or gurus will tell you to do, which is follow the trends. And what is a trend? So a trend is something that's very fleeting. So it typically will ask for like a few weeks, maybe a few months at last. Like the biggest trend that I can think of is like the ice bucket challenge. It's like people don't do the ice bucket challenge today. And the other problem is looking at a trend is 99% of people that do that don't break through with viral success. We only see the people at the top. So the way that we look at it is we don't want people to go and do trends because you're not mastering a skill set. We tell people to look at a format. So when we think about movies the past 50 years, every movie follows the three acts structure in terms of how stories are told. So when Steven Spielberg makes a movie, he's not reinventing that structure. He's using that structure every time we become one of the best storytellers on the planet. So we look at social media in terms of what we call a format. And there's our team has done about 10,000 hours of research and we cross 220 different formats. So there's many to choose from. I'm not by any means saying it has to be like these three formats are the only ones that work. So you have to do them if you don't love them. So what's an example? We broke down Tanner Leather scenes. Is it worth it format where he deconstructs a $500 Chanel handbag tells you whether it's worth it. Another one that you've probably seen a lot on Tik Toker in Instagram is we call two characters one like both where it's the same person that plays two different characters. So they play the expert and the novice and they break down a misconception about something. So an example is Erica Colberg is a master of this format with legal industry where she breaks down the fine print of what happens when your flight is cancelled. What happens when your AirPods break? There's other people like Mark Terrellberry that breaks it down about finance. So that core format can be used for any industry people use it for legal like Erica, finance, real estate, nutrition, any kind of subject matter can be put into that format. So the first place to understand is the formula starts with understanding what a format is versus a trend because I can guarantee you will not master the artist storytelling and really break through without that fundamental understanding. So once we understand what a format is now we can start looking at what format do I want to tackle? What format am I passionate about? And that's why we do so much research because I never want to push a client or anybody to do a format that they're not passionate about that they don't enjoy because you and I both know like creator Bern out in fatigue is real. Like if you don't enjoy it or you don't see the business results with it you're just going to stop doing it. So once we have the format then we need to do the analysis of that format because most people will look at Tanner and see he did 15 million views on that video or Erica Colberg with the two characters or Michael oh she did 10 million views on that video I know what they're doing. I'm just going to go out and do that without any analysis and 99% of people that try that fail because they don't really understand what drives the performance of that format. So what we do next with the client is we have a process called gold silver bronze where it will take an account like Erica or any creator that's using a format successfully and we'll choose 10 of their highest performing videos for the format. So like two characters one like the high performers are probably five to 10 million views. Then we'll take 10 to 20 of the average performers at the silver which is in the few hundred thousand views and then we'll take the under performers the bronze which is like 10 to 100,000 views. And what we're doing is as I mentioned earlier is we're looking for performance drivers not the content but the contacts like what is happening in those high performers that's not showing up in those low performers and vice versa. So we're doing what we call qualitative analysis. So we're most people are spending their time on social media's quantitative analysis meaning clear looking how many views that I get how many shares how many lights comments conversions which is a great indicator something working or not working but it doesn't uncover the why. So this is where we do the qualitative analysis of comparing the high performers in that same format against the low performers to really determine what are the variables that cause the success or the underperformance in that format. So we mentioned Dr. Julie Smith earlier like when the examples I do is I break down that waste paper basket video that she has versus one where she just has a kind of cars in front of her from a visual metaphor. Now the waste paper basket video generated 12 million views versus the cars one generates I think two or three hundred thousand views. So we're talking about the same format the visual metaphor format same creator 12 million views versus 200,000 views. So there's a huge discrepancy in kind of that performance and that's where the real learning comes in. It's not to point out oh Dr. Julie Smith didn't master that video. It's more about what drives that success so that if you're going to tackle that format like the visual metaphor format you can understand the contextual elements that allow that successful storytelling mechanism. So a couple of things that you mentioned prior to me asking that question was people make this mistake and they think social media is an extension of the website. The content is very advertising heavy and no one shows up on social will say I'm looking forward to seeing all your ads today. In fact we pay money not to see ads on many platforms. So the mistake that people keep making I'm imagining a couple of my friends and I'm trying to help them grow their social but almost 99% of the content is so heavily based on trying to have a call to action. It's very clear what's happening here. How do we help them break that pattern outside of what you've already said is there a way to help them because no matter they'll hear this video and they go right back to making more sales content that is thinly veiled as educational but it's just really here's how you can hire me here's what I do. I don't break them out of that. Well the first question is are you do want to continue to have the same performance like oh okay you just punch them in the gut. I mean that's the reality of the situation is if you're happy with the performance that you're getting then keep doing what you're doing like why change anything but if it's not working then why would you keep doing the same thing over and over again that's the reality of the first place to start and then you look at the most successful people on social media not just from an audience perspective but even people that are building massive brands and businesses off the back of social media and what are they doing. I can guarantee you none of them are creating organic content that is ad driven. You look at one of the most successful influencers in the world Mr. Beast at this point. Now he has feastables and Beast Burger and these elements but he didn't start that way and if you watch the calls to action the content's not about how do I insert a call to action to sell product. It's how do I drive as much value and entertain and engage my clients so that they ultimately want to kind of support me and take that next step. So the first place that I always start with somebody that says that is just like listen I can only help you if you want to be helped if you're happy with what you're doing already then just keep doing that or some businesses just maybe not cut out for social media. There's other ways to grow businesses social media is not the only way. It is a huge benefit if you can master it but social media is not required to be successful or to build a successful business. Fine, fair enough. So you're saying if you come to me and if it's already working why fix what I am broke so stay with that or social media is not for you investor money time and energy doing what you feel most connected to there's lots of ways that's going to cat as they say. Yeah. Now getting back to this person okay let's apply some of the lessons here. Number one is don't advertise me all the time if you have call to action you can have it but it needs to be a little softer and you can grow your audience beyond who you think your core audience is and attract a much wider following which has its own benefits authority and more likely for someone to watch your video versus another person it's good morale for the team but it'll actually lead to more business given your 50% to 10% example going from 10,000 views to say a million views. So okay you have to contextualize your content for a general audience understand and then you can then still make it about your core expertise and talk about the things that are aligned with you and your personnel in your brand. You also talked about there are multiple formats and formats trends trends are fleeting they're not highly replicable and they only serve a few people especially early adopters it doesn't serve everybody yet there's a lot of folks out there like follow the trend follow the trend so for you in your church that's heresy right don't follow trends understand formats because formats last they passed the test of time so your company looks at the creator looks at their business and finds the appropriate format that might be most suitable for what they do and how they present and then you're also analyzing using the folks in that format, what are the key repeatable triggers that can be applied to just about anybody? And if you follow that, you have a pretty good shot of getting a million views in 120 days to get that right so far. At least, yeah. At least, yeah. Okay, so I have a really selfish question I'm going to ask you right now. Man, I cannot get grow on TikTok. I'm not really trying that much. So I'm not saying that you know what my content is, but based on the generic kind of feeling of how I make content, what would you advise me to do so that our content gets viewed more? Now, here's a weird thing, Brendan. People who reshare our exact content get more views than I do, which is really weird. Or sometimes they apply some crazy ass like art filters on it. And those get a lot of views. It's because they're account. What are they doing differently? Because it's almost literally the same content. Yes, so there's a few things to that. One, it can be their account because what happens with these algorithms is, for example, if you watch when Mr. Beast launches a video, he'll get like 10 million views in like the first 30 minutes. Right. Why? Because YouTube's giving him that reach automatically because he's proven that he is a trustworthy kind of content provider from a retention standpoint. So that can happen where accounts have built up enough favor with the algorithms that it'll automatically get reach and distribution. But you would mention like adding some type of filter like there are such small nuances that can mean the difference between 10,000 views or 10 million views. So in terms of kind of advice for you, it's specific to TikTok is people often think that just because TikTok is short form Instagram reels a short form in YouTube, short form that it should perform the same across those platforms, but it's completely different. And it's completely different typically because of the consumption behavior in terms of the user interface of how these user interfaces are kind of constructed to keep people on the platform longer. So the first place that I would really start is focusing in on what happens in those first three to five seconds and start there because that's the easiest lift where you can take some of your content and modify those first three to five seconds to kind of get people into it. And where I would really want to start is look at specific content creators that are in a similar kind of format. It doesn't have to be the same content and looking at how they're constructing that kind of first three to five seconds. And then how do we identify the difference of what they're doing versus what you're doing? Because oftentimes you may not have to create new content. It's just the way that you contextualize it within that kind of user interface and that format to drive performance. Does that make sense? It does. And that's why you said before your content doesn't suck, but the context might be honest. Yes. Because your content's amazing. Like you're one of the top content creators out there and like you said, that same content goes viral and other platforms, but it's just not going viral on TikTok. Yeah. But I think one of the other massive mistakes that creators or brands make is they're just so focused on their own content. They only analyze their own channel. And like how do you expect to break through if you just keep looking at your own content over and over again? And that's where like one of the exercises that we do with our clients is very simple, but it's a huge learning curve is we will do the research on the format. We'll have our client create content in that format. And if it underperforms, we put the reference to high performer on one side of the screen. In your video on the other side of the screen, we play them side by side. And if you're really honest with yourself, you will see the differences. So one of the things that you can do is with the videos that have been taken on other accounts, put it up on one side of screen, put your video on the other side of screen, and just see if there's any subtle differences. Maybe they cut off one or two seconds at the beginning. Maybe they kind of reformatted it in a certain way. They can give you some clues there. So that's just kind of like an easy win that most people just don't even think about doing is comparing yourself to the reference to the high performer to identify again, not the content, but the contextual elements that you're missing that could lead that clue to the next level. That was super strategic, highly tactical things that you can do, a highly actionable advice everybody. So if you just make content and you only look at your own content, your ability to grow is pretty finite. So look at a high performer and put them side by side and really be honest with yourself and see any differences. And this is like a big moment for me. The smallest difference could actually be the thing that drives them 10X, 100X, what you're doing. So they're very little things. I know what it is that they did, by the way, but I couldn't do it. That's the problem. The video has a description of me, like says coach owns somebody or something like sales expert owns fool or bad client. I could never do that because I don't want to describe myself as ever owning somebody. And so that was highly charged emotionally. It was like one of those moments like I get that part. We just called it something much simpler and that was like burned into the title. So it had that kind of hook to it, like how you said, Graham Stephens said, how I bought a Tesla or for $36 or $67 a month, it had that hook to it. So the big learning lesson there is when you put them side by side, you know that's the driver. It doesn't mean you have to do the exact thing. But what can you take away and learn from that to apply to your content? Because I bet one of the big drivers was that there was a clear visual hierarchy of where they had the viewer pay attention in those first few seconds. So even though you don't resonate with kind of that meme card or the caption that's up there, that's what drove the performance because it got a majority of people to stop, understand the context of what the video is and be like, oh, I want to watch the rest of it. So I agree with you. You don't want to do things that there go against kind of what you want to represent yourself as. But you can still learn a tremendous amount about that and how do you take that learning and apply it to the next video. So for you, you could take that learning and put another type of caption or title card with a context that you feel comfortable with that's achieving the same thing. Re-upload it and see what happens. Good. I'm glad you addressed that. And the other thing that you said was it could just be their channel, their account has that algo love already built into it. It's true. I think that account has a million followers, mine has 100,000. And they feature a lot of business related content that's super spicy. So people who show up for that want that and maybe even if I post a exact same video on my channel, it's not going to do the same because it's not the kind of audience or community I'm trying to foster. So I just want to put it out there. There's a small chance that your content just posted by someone else is going to do better. But let's just take that off the table because that's not going to be often that that's the case. We want to focus on the things that we can change and things that we work on, right? And control. And control. So there's little things that you're talking about our spectacum. I got another question for you. You said you and your team have spent over 10,000 hours, last six to 20 years, either in social or actually building this business, understanding this, but the format's where it's at. How many different formats are there that you guys have cataloged? Our library is about 220. Wow. And we're adding probably like three to five a week. So there is, I mean, there's probably hundreds more that we haven't uncovered, but there's so many different options out there. And that's what I want to people here, the word format and they kind of be like, oh, it's going to constrict my creativity. But if you think about like any movie that you sit down and watch is following the same format in terms of the three extra. Another term that we use that may also help people like a series, like we can also call it a series. Like there's hot ones, the show or the eat high spicy hot wings. Or another way to kind of think about it is think about your favorite TV show. Like if you think about like friends, one of the most successful TV shows of all time or sign felt every episode is following the same format and structure. And that's one of the reasons it's so successful. Now if friends completely change that dynamic each time they did an episode, it wouldn't have been successful to have lost your interest along the way. But it's very formulaic. But within that formula, the stories can be completely different in terms of how you engage audiences. And I think the old term that they would use to describe that is like it's a situational comedy that the characters you know, they behave it very specific way. It's fairly predictable. They just change some variables so that the world resets every single time. Like no character ever moves away. No one ever gets the voice and they just keep going through it. And we really enjoy that because it's very familiar to us. And once they master that, it's like printing money. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to say that. Like printing money. Yeah. The same thing happens with social media. Most people get it wrong. It's not about chasing trends. It's not about reinventing the wheel or reinventing the wheel, each piece of content. It's mastery of a single format. The minute you master a single format, you can print money. And it happens all the time. To give you an example, I have a personal friend that we've worked with that uses a format called Man on the Street where you approach random stranger on the street and you interact with them. He is a professional photographer. His name is Alex Stepb. He is a mass and audience of 20 million people with that same format where he approaches a random stranger on a street and offers them a professional photo shoot, interact with them, and then does a reveal at the end. Right. That's all he did is that single format and built an audience of 20 million people. And I asked people watching this, if you have a business or brand, what would be the impact if you had 20 million people following your business or brand? Getting back to Tanner for half a second, but then have another selfish question to ask you. I noticed on your socials, you posted this thing of him holding some kind of plaque or an reward saying he's achieved a certain thing. Is that something that you guys are doing, sending your clients some kind of recognition that they've hit us on milestone? Yes. Tell me about the award and how many people have you given that to. So we have. have different awards. We have one million, five million, 10 million, 50 million, 100 million, 200 million. And I think we have like one or two billion view awards as well. We've probably given it to over 100 clients at this point. We're probably adding like three to five every week in terms of new clients. But it's kind of, I like to make sure people can recognize their successes because what we talked about earlier is crater burnout and fatigue is a real thing. And I even saw this in the earliest stages of the first wave of influencers back in like 2006, 2007, getting involved in the first content creators on YouTube is there was a stage where the YouTube algorithm shifted because there was more people coming on the platform. And there was a significant dip in performance. And the creators that had the right mindset and motivation to keep going, meaning they had some kind of underlying business goal and objective that can fuel kind of the engine of the reason they were creating the content. They all stuck with it and succeeded to that next level. The other people that didn't just dropped off and you never heard from them again. So I'm just a big believer in making sure that you give the psychological recognition and needs to the people that are creating the content. So they can constantly remember how and why they're doing it. Because if you lose your way in terms of how and why you're producing the content and not realizing like, like one of the things that I I didn't come up with it. And I don't know who I heard it from. But sometimes if I have an underperforming video with like 60,000 views, I'm like, that's underperforming. If you think about a football stadium. Yeah. And if you're standing in the middle of a football stadium and there's 60,000 people there, like just think about from an impact level that side. I think sometimes like you and I were operating at a whole different level that it's like sometimes you don't think about the power of just like 60,000 people seeing your content. So that's why we like to have that type of recognition. So kind of make sure that they have the right motivation to realize what they've actually accomplished. And 60,000 people in a stadium would be a really big stadium, I think. It's like, it's like 30,000 people can fit in a normal stadium or something like that. Yeah. I don't know whether they're massive amounts, right? And I don't take it for granted at all. We always sell our team. If we can get past 30, 40,000 views, it's broken through and over time because our content is less viral and more evergreen that eventually gets to the big numbers. Like you and our own content with you, it started off pretty strong and it just keeps producing because it's very evergreen as I hope that this video will be as well. It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. Hey guys, it's Rich here. I wanted to ask you, what is something that works so well that it's basically magic air conditioning noise, canceling headphones? What about selling with Shopify? Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business from the launcher online shop stage to the first real life store stage all the way to the did we just hit a million order stage. Shopify's going to be there to help you grow, whether you're selling shipping supplies or promoting productivity programs, they're going to be there to help you sell everywhere. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US and Shopify's the global force behind all birds, frothies and Brooklyn and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across, listen to this 175 countries plus Shopify's award winning help is there to support your success every step of the way because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/Future. Are you committed to making 2024 your best year in business? We want to help you make it happen with expert guidance, a supportive community and exclusive trainings. The future pro membership was created to give you everything you need to take your business to the next level. Go to the future.com/pro to learn more and join us inside. Okay, back to the conversation. And we're back. Welcome back to our conversation. I think I found my jam what makes me unique and I want to tell you a little about it and then I'd love to see what you think the format should be. I feel that our best content is almost always with me live with some level of studio audience. It happens because they bring a little bit more spice out of me and I like that and a more alive I feel have to be on point. Number two is if I have a piece of paper and a marker with the live audience, those videos tend to do really well. Not millions of views, but hundreds of thousands of views. So if I want to make that in a shorter form, more viral piece of content of the 220 formats that you've uncovered, what format should I be doing? So it's a great question. And I kind of want to point something out before I answer the format because I have watched your content and I've looked at the most viral content versus the content that doesn't reach that level. And I think one of the biggest drivers of your virality is perspective shift is when there is a massive perspective shift based on the audience members question, that's when there's virality. And I don't know the exact language and maybe you can kind of lend the context to it. But I think one of your most viral videos is somebody talking to you about logos and pricing. And you're going back and forth about them saying, well, I don't want to pay that much money and breaking down the value of what your services are. That is a massive perspective shift. Even if you're not a designer, like you can take something away in terms of how you value yourself and how you value what you do in the world. One of the big performance drivers that I would focus on in that kind of short form. And when you're kind of working with audiences is how do you master that perspective shift as much as possible with kind of the questions that are being answered? The other kind of format that I would look at that's not a direct correlation, but it is pretty close is man on the street. The number one performance driver on man on street is the reaction of the other person. And I think the combination of doing what you're doing of the perspective shift and capturing that reaction of that person, which you have to kind of cast a little bit of understanding and you do a good job of it. I've been to your workshops. You can understand even talking to people like their facial expressions and things of that nature. If you can engage with those people that have like, oh my god, I didn't realize that in an authentic way. That can really drive the overall performance. So I think looking at the man on the street format from that perspective and maybe even studying some of the storytelling elements of the two characters one like, well, not for you to use it, but you kind of acting as the expert and the audience member acting as kind of the novice and breaking down that specific misconception. No, most people try and do that format of like responding to people either they try and cut down podcast clips or they try and do that, but it's just it falls flat because they're not understanding what they're trying to kind of get out of the person. And I can give you an example of kind of how I came to those conclusions. I worked with a journalist in the US Katie Curric and I was brought in once you went to Yahoo. So she went from being on the Today Show and TV for 20 years to being in social media and it's a completely different dynamic because television, there's the ingrained behavioral element of I wake up every morning. I'm making breakfast for the kids and I turn on the Today Show and I'll watch it no matter what it is versus as we know with social media and digital, it's completely different. So I did 220 interviews with her ranging from like Joe Biden to DJ Khaled to Jessica Chess, they need a chance to wrap it all across the board. And a lot of people think that it's celebrity that drives performance, but it's not because like when we interview Kim Kardashian, Kim Kardashian has been interviewed 200 to 300 times like a lot of these things have been covered. So one of the things that I started and that you could use in this process is that I started with is I said Katie, we're no longer going to craft questions. We're going to start with what is the hook? I want to look at what is the outcome that I'm looking for and then reverse back to how I want to guide that because if you start with a question, oftentimes you're not going to get the response that you want and it makes it more difficult to guide the person to the place because it just comes off like you're asking them questions versus if I know what the end hook is, like you said that that meme card that went viral on another account, if I know what that hook is and I have like three to five of those that I think are going to go viral, then I can kind of as I'm doing those reactions, I can kind of think about that in the back of my head and as somebody asked me a question, I can kind of guide it and shape it into that specific area because most people are just mindlessly answering questions and then you'll stumble on something that works. But if you can kind of start just thinking about that process as you're answering questions from the crowd, it can kind of have that jumping off point. Another example of this, it's different, but it's similar as Matt Rice, the comedian, where he did the crowd work. He's super intelligent of he understands kind of like what the end output is going to be on social media. So he can kind of craft the joke, craft the interaction based on that kind of bite size clip. It does. Okay. So give me an example of this conversation and how if we started at the end outcome that we wanted, how would we craft the hook? And if we were to go back in time, we had the time still in order that is we can go back and start just over again. How might the hook begin? So from this conversation, I would always start with research. So like an easy exercise I do with Katie Kirk is going to Google trends, go into Google search, type in social media. Look at the headlines that are going viral. Go into So, in three-member, these platforms see what the short form clips that are going the most viral in terms of the hook so it can start populating it. And one of the parts of our model is the ideation process, where we're very regiment about how we do ideation. Most people just jump to the first idea that comes up. But what we do is we create a spreadsheet, and this example we create a spreadsheet of like 50 hooks. And then our team would go through in rank from like one to five with five being the most potential to go viral in one with the least. And go through those so that we can really gauge kind of what kind of ideas really have the highest potential and narrow that down to like five or ten. So that would be the way that I would kind of do it. And then if I were the one doing the interviewing, I would just go back to kind of like that output, that output. Like what does it look like on social media? What does it look like on social media in that short form content? And as you talked about earlier and I loved you using the analogy printing money, like people look at Matt Rice and like that crowd work and be like, oh, what's that? He made $25 million last year because he kind of mastered that understanding of what the output would look like and mastering that. They're not doing it as intentionally, but you look at Joe Rogan or Lex Friedman. They have like the biggest shows on the planet. And those shows are driven by the clips. The clips fuel the actual full length interviews. Most people are watching the clip and then deciding they want to do the full length interviews. So if you look at the clips that drive the most performance, it really starts with kind of a hook to that generalist principle that we started kind of in the beginning. That was the theory really well explained, but like literally if you were talking to you and you had the hook because you know what you want to talk about, you know your area of expertise and you know the formulas and the formats, how should we have begun this episode? I mean, I think there's several areas, you know, how social media can actually print money for your business is one, the number one reason that your content fails or that your content sucks. Why you should fire your social media manager today or why you fire social media agency. But I think leaning into more of the pain and the misinformation about it, why the algorithms aren't against you or why the algorithms want to be your best friend or partner. What Netflix can teach you about social media algorithms. So kind of those types of concepts I think would bring people in wonderful. So editing team just cut all this together and put them in the head of the show and we'll see how this episode performs, right? That's the idea. Speaking of which and we were talking about this and I had mentioned Steven Barlett, he begins a lot of his episodes like we're really quick soundbites. The reason why someone should watch the show or listen to the podcast and you said your team has gone through and done a deep dive and broken it down. What can we learn from that deep dive? Well, I think the first place to start is to understand their process for creating podcasts. They do extensive research on their guests to the point where they're even thinking about is there a song that has caused somebody to cry? Is there a question or a subject matter that's caused an emotional side? So they'll kind of dissect like 500 interviews to kind of find those emotional triggers or emotional points and you'll see in a lot of Steven Bartlett's trailers, there's people crying. They're like famous people crying or famous people revealing information. They didn't just look on that. It was the underlying preparation of that. The other element and we talked to Steven's team about this and we kind of just talked about it a little bit earlier is oftentimes if you're focused on the question, the person can skirt around the answer, maybe not on purpose, but they don't necessarily know what you're going for. So again, crafting the hooks and understanding the outcome of what you're trying to do. And again, if you look at Steven's trailers, a lot of it is emotional based, bringing things in, asking questions that have never been asked before to those individuals that is underlying driving that performance. Another element that they do that drives a lot of their successes, their thumbnail and headline and the approach that Steven talks about in we detail a very similar approach in my first book, One Million Followers, is they'll use the Facebook ad platform to ab test like a hundred variations of thumbnails and headlines and measure which one has the highest click through percentage. And even when the interview is not out, they'll just send it to a coming soon page so that they can really get an understanding of what is going to drive that click through percentage because as you know, with YouTube, there's two really key variables that cause viability. It's that click through percentage than the thumbnail and headline. And the second one is that retention base. So again, they're methodically testing and understanding what is actually driving that audience and that can be played into the trailer as well. Yeah, I've heard there's an extensive amount of testing. And that testing is not really that difficult. Like it can take a few hours, but it's not as rocket science, he has a may seen. Okay. And in case you're listening to this because you don't want to dedicate your entire business to creating social media content, there's some very simple tools that are available to you right now. You can literally AB test thumbnails built into the YouTube platform. I think they rolled that out for everybody, at least in America they have. And so you can test up to, I believe, three thumbnails and you'll start to see a performance. And over time, if you're paying attention to it, there is a certain predictability to which ones will do well. I can almost without running the test tell you this one will do better than the other ones. Everyone's well, I'm surprised, but you can run those kinds of tests. But if you want to take the next level, it doesn't even cost a lot of money to run these AB tests and you can just keep testing different headlines, different designs, different colors, different position, the story that's captured inside that frame, which I think that's kind of the state we're in right now, that your frame shouldn't be a replication or repeat what you're saying in the title, but it's like a little mini story. There's a little tension in storytelling that's happening within that. Like Mr. B is like, what will happen? And he's got a giant blender and a Lamborghini in it. So you kind of like, literally that's not what's happening, but it tells you the story about what's going to happen. And I think another another important thing for people watching to understand is sometimes we interact with people that don't have a lot of social media experience or they're professionals that didn't grow really use social media a lot and they're like, well, I just don't have the experience. I don't think I can make this work. That's what kind of also choosing the right format comes in is there's formats that are advanced formats and there's formats that are for beginners. Like I mentioned in the beginning, we have a client that was a hand doctor like top of the world in terms of understanding the hands and certain hands are doing stuff. No social media experience. And we just started out with a simple format where she can create it on her iPhone and she exploded to over 700,000 followers in TikTok and got a book deal on a TV deal. There's another guy Robert Kroak on, he's got a million followers. He does walking listicles where he's walking around the block talking to his camera. So understanding if you have that concern or hesitation is like, I don't have a big team. I don't have a camera crew. I don't know what to do on social media is picking a format that you can just get started and really just kind of get into that process of creating it. Now again, it's, you don't just walk it, look at like Robert and his walking listicles and just say, well, I'm just going to walk around the block, try and do some analysis of like, what's the difference between a high performer and a low performer? But that's an important point because I think a lot of people just don't get started or don't want to make that leap because they don't believe they can actually do it. There's something kind of holding them back either consciously or subconsciously. There's just like, I don't know that I can be in front of a million people. I don't know that a million people will actually want to watch what I have to say or I don't have the team or the resources to make that happen. You've been studying formats for a long time and you've helped people you create content so you're not only a coach consultant or advisor, you're actually kind of eating the dog food yourself because you produce content on the regular, especially on Instagram where I see a lot of your content. So I don't know the top five things that you can give to someone who is a professional service provider that's doing between $2 to $5 million annually that has been stuck and is ready to get some help. Is there anything off the top where you can do this, this, this, and that and it's going to start to perform better outside of what we already talked about? Well, I think the first part is just the mindset perspective. Do you actually see that social media is going to help your business? Are you willing to invest the time and energy into it? Because I think that there's a lot of people out there that just want to pay $500 to a social media manager in the next back to remarkable results. I'm not saying you can't make that, but if you're looking for breakthrough results and for business in the 2 to 5 million range to really take it to the next level to add another 5, 10, 15, 20 million or even beyond, it's going to take some dedication and understanding of it. So that is just a pure mindset thing. And if you pass that test is the first thing is after listening to this conversation is start actually consuming social media or if you have a team from an active perspective instead of passive. So start looking for the formats that would be right for your business. And a lot of people want to jump to their competition, but 9 times out of 10, your competition is not following anything that we talked about today. So they're not the best benchmark. And you don't always have to look for a format that is following the same content that you have. So oftentimes we'll work with an insurance agent and we'll look at like a nutritionist or we'll work with a real estate agent and we'll look at it at like a personal trainer. And we'll see kind of how that format kind of applies to them. So that second part is like what is the format that you're excited about that you feel can best represent your product or service or I should step back. Now you're part of service, but your expertise, which moves to the third thing is don't try and create ads, try and create content that gets people to know, like, and trust you. So make that shift off of, you know, I'm going to create an ad for my organic social strategy versus I'm going to create content that people know, like, and trust me. Now that doesn't prohibit you from running ads and ads are completely. different ballgame. You can be more direct to sell your product, your services, but in terms of organic. So that's the third thing. The fourth thing as you look at the format that you find, make sure that it's repeatable. So if you see a format and it's gotten 10 million views, go to that person's profile and make sure that they've at least used that format five times to go viral because if they just done it once, then it might not be repeatable. And then again, is you may not go to the level of detail that we do, but start at least putting side by side, the high performer of that format with the same creator and a low performer of that format. And start jotting down notes as you press play. What are the differences in there? So as you execute, you have a clear blueprint. And then the fifth thing is, as you start producing that content, don't just look at your own performance. So if something underperforms, that is not necessarily a bad thing. That is an opportunity to learn something. And as we started earlier, one of the learning exercises that you can do is pull up that high performer that you started with, which is kind of typically a reference. Now as you get more success, it can start being, I mean, your content, in your case, you can pull up your own high performers compared to your low performers, but pull up the high performer and pull up your low performer, watch them side by side and determine what was the difference? What did I miss? What did I not execute properly so that for the next video that you produce, you can take those learnings and apply it and repeat that process over and over again. So those are, I would say the top five things for those individuals in the two to five million range that can take it to the next level. I noticed on your reels, you will say something like comment this on us and you my guide. Is there a resource you want to share with our community? Yeah, I'll actually give you a link below this video where anybody can get my new book, the guide, the drawing viral, a PDF or a Kindle version for absolutely free, not charging anything for it, but I think that that would be the best place to start is if they want to dive deeper into the methodology, they can get the book absolutely free. They want to just learn more about my business, they can go to hookpoint.com, schedule call 13, see more of those success case studies and dive a little bit deeper. Somebody out there's listening to this as a thoroughbred entrepreneur, values of their time and has more money than time and wants to dump money to solve a problem out more time. What does an engagement look like with you and can you wallpark it so that something's like, I want to be the Tanner leatherstein of my industry. I need that help. I want to go from 2000 to two million. What do I have to do? How does an engagement work with your agency? So there's two core elements that we focus on. It's strategy and training. So as we talk about kind of a research methodology, we develop a strategy. So we have a kickoff call with a client. We basically understand their goals and objectives. We'll typically bring a few formats to the call because we have them fill out like an intake form before that call. We'll bring like three or four formats that call to gauge kind of what's interesting to them. We'll determine a direction. And then our team will do that deep qualitative analysis for them. It typically takes us like eight to 15 hours to do a deep dive into a specific format. So we do all that work for them. So we have a clear blueprint. This is the format we're going after. These are the things we have to pay attention to in terms of the performance drivers both upward and then downward. And then what we also do is we train them in our model so that they understand whether they want to do it or not. They understand how we do our research, how we do our ideation, how we review analytics and data. So we do the strategy, the training in our model. And then for some clients will actually do the analytics will measure it, will do creative reviews, will be basically act as their external creative director. And for some clients that don't have a team and want to hire a team, we have an HR partner that we will help build their team and train their team in that model. Okay, so different levels of service and engagement, but strategy and training seem pretty core to this. Yes. What does it cost? So yeah, I mean base levels, it starts up to 10,000. It starts at 10,000. It can go all the way up to 200,000. It just kind of depends on kind of the level of kind of scope and detail that we're going into. I mean, we have some clients where we're executing everything for them and they pay us, you know, six, five years a month. But you can get the strategy and training starting at 10,000. And some of our best case studies and success people have gone through that. So I would say that with social media specifically, not just with us, but in general, it's not about how much you spend that dictates your level of success. It's just your knowledge, your commitment to kind of facts, cune on it and your ability to kind of learn is really the determining factor. Awesome. Alright, so let me channel what some of roddings are probably thinking which is, and this comes up a lot, they have a business brand and they have a personal rent. So they might have two accounts. And they're always like, what do I post content as as the business or as a person? And do you have a strategy for that? So either can work, I would say more times than not a personal brand will drive the business and a personal brand is a little bit easier to build because the minute you have a brand account, that's where the mindset typically always comes in as I'm creating a commercial and my account is a website. But there are examples like you look at do a lingo and look at their TikTok account and the mass of success, I mean, they're a billion dollar company and they drove their success off of social media. So it can be done. But if there's just a very interesting mindset shift, when somebody is creating content through a personal account and a personal brand versus a company brand. So it can be done, but I often see personal brands and accounts drive more success. And if you want to look at them, you know, probably soon to be the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, I mean, he doesn't spend any money on advertising and it's just his personal brand drives everything that he does. Yeah, sometimes up, sometimes down. Sadly, okay, there's a couple of follow up questions to that. What is your best guess at the psychological trigger that somebody creates something for their company versus for themselves? Because it should be the same, but I agree with you. When you do stuff for your company, it's always like very sanitized. It's very like we did this is in the school. Don't you want to hire us? And then when it comes to expressing themselves, we give ourselves different permission to speak in a whole different way and to talk about things that are of interest us versus like here's client work. There's an interesting correlation to that and also working with influencers because we've worked with a lot of companies that are using influencers and I did the first influencer campaign in YouTube in 2007. So I've seen this massive evolution, but there is an interesting shift in mindset, even when you're working with an influencer, the minute a brand engages them, their mindset shifts against everything that they typically do in their content to try and sell somebody else's product or service. But I think that the shift in terms of what you're talking about is when you're posting something with a through a company account, you're automatically thinking that this needs to sell a product or service. Like I can't tell you how many brands that we work with and their idea of content is a product shot like of a bottle, like a vitamin supplement bottle or something talking about their business or brand. But I think it's automatically if you're posting something through a brand account or company account, you think that that social media account is just serve to sell your product or service versus if it's a personal brand, it's more like I want to connect with kind of an audience and convey kind of an expertise or some type of information. And I want to layer in one other thing that can be another hook for your editors. I work to a Taylor Swift, I think like 2010, 2011. So early before she was a global superstar, but there is one thing that I learned from her and the one of the things that drove her to massive success that almost everybody gets wrong with social media is she understood that social media is a one-to-one communication method, not a one-to-many. Meaning when we're watching social media, we're typically sitting by ourselves on her phone, laying on the couch or the bed or on the train, whatever it may be. But most people are communicating on social media as it's you're standing on a stage, speaking to hundreds of thousands or millions of people. So you'll see people say, "Hey you and hey everybody, but that really drives performance because you're not creating that personal connection." And that was also the interesting part of the first wave of YouTube influencers if you remember is like, you have these teenagers sitting in their bedroom building massive audiences of millions of subscribers and nobody could really figure it out. And it was because you felt like that person was talking to you that they were your friend. They were letting you into your world. And there was a time early on when the first wave of YouTube influencers took off. There was a poll with teenagers of like who their favorite celebrity was. And they're like top six or seven out of ten were YouTube influencers. And there was above like Leonardo DiCaprio or Robert Downey Jr. And the reason was is there was this personal connection. You felt like this person actually cared about you that this person was your friend, not just somebody, a celebrity that's kind of a passive kind of engagement of just watching them on a screen. There is a level of intimacy versus the distance that's created with traditional Hollywood celebrities. I think also one of the reasons why people are very confused about what content to make and why they tend to veer towards advertising is because we have decades of examples of what we do on media. And they're mostly ads. So we assume that that must be the model. So social media relative to the time in which advertising been around is very short. And we have way more examples of that. And that's shifting obviously. But and that's why. So here's the last follow up question, that original question, which is, okay, so I'm used to creating content for my brand. Say I'm a cinematographer and I shoot really high quality videos. I know how to shoot that until that story. Now I'm going to make content about what? Because it's going to start to feel like I'm going to sell again. So what kind of content should I be making? As a cinematographer? Yeah. like, because that's the, that's so sweet. I'm gonna come up, right? - I'll just give you an example of that. And for some reason, I can't remember the name of the creator, but I'll try and send it to you afterward. If you wanna link it below, but there's a creator that teaches people camera tricks. So they'll teach you like on the iPhone, like how you can make amazing effects or amazing videos. There's also, I think your name's Karen Chang that also does this with kind of visual effects where she's kind of breaking down how she's creating these amazing kind of aspects with it. So she's leveraging her expertise or this guy, I think he's a cinematographer, is leveraging his expertise, so sticking with his kind of zone and being authentic, but then figuring out a way to correlate it and make it interesting to the general population. So the one thing that I wanna say definitively, it does not matter what subject matter you cover, it can go viral. Like for example, taxes go viral. There's a channel on YouTube, clear tax value or clear value tax, has over a million subscribers and the guy talks about taxes, taxes real estate, finance, nutrition. So if you're at a place where you're a cinematographer and you're used to kind of these polished things and you can still leverage that expertise. Like everything that we believe in our company is not trying to change somebody and who they are and what they represent. We're just trying to help them contextualize their genius in a different way so it can translate to this new medium. - Now, so what you're saying is an interpretation of that is if I'm rich and I'm a cinematographer, I can create content based on my knowledge experience, but what I need to do is contextualize it so that it's more accessible. So if he's whipping out like an Aria Alexa camera and talking about a $100,000 shoot, that's gonna make niche content for niche audience that's not gonna really help him to reach a lot of people. But if you dip the same principles and use an iPhone or something like that, then all of a sudden, the number is like, oh, here are three ways that you can frame your next selfie video. Super relatable, everybody can see that. And then if you showed us something new or did it in an entertaining way, he has a much bigger chance of growing his audience. And according to the new thing that we learned today, if your audience is big enough, the percentage of those people are going to be a customer will be bigger than 100% of your niche audience, right? Because some people would be thrilled to have 10,000 views. So in that first example, like 10,000 views, they're getting 450 views. - Yeah, absolutely. But I would say is even when we're doing our analysis of looking at creators with tens of millions of views, even if your goal is not tens of millions of views, you still need to learn what drives their performance to even for most people to get to 10,000 views. Because if you don't study that art form, then it can fall apart. Going back to that example of, Richie shooting on an Alexa, like one element that could be done, and I could see it as like a YouTube and thumbnail is like, I'm a professional cinematographer. I've done X, Y, and Z. I typically shoot on this 10,000 dollar camera, but what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna show you how to get the same visual effects on your iPhone. So you're kind of leveraging your expertise, what you've done, what you typically do, so that if people want to hire you to do those things, but then going to the general audience of how you can get those similar effects for an iPhone and things of that nature. - Yeah, and there's super click-bitty version of the thumbnail is him holding two products, the iPhone, the Alexa and one spot to go into the garbage, right? 'Cause like, you don't really need that anymore. All right, last final follow up question to this theme of a cinematographer. Let's say you work with global brands or celebrities, and you have to sign non-disclosure agreements, so you can't really share that work, and it feels like, well, what I'm gonna talk about now. I'm sure you have some strategies on how we can not talk about something. - Yeah, so we, you know, I experienced that as well. I mean, you can generalize it to say I work with mainstream celebrities, A-list celebrities, Fortune 500 companies, but I also think that with the mindset, and as you get more and more work, is just ask the client. If it's a wedding or a private event, I can understand people are not gonna want you to disclose or reveal the photos or the videos or things, but my experience of working with high profile, celebrities or brands, like if you just ask me like, hey, I'm totally cool with signing this NDA, it would be really helpful if we could get some type of testimonial or just talk about the fact that we've worked with you. We don't have to reveal any details about that work, but oftentimes they'll understand, and then they'll allow you to at least talk about it, especially if they like your work. I mean, appreciate and work with you over and over again. That's the way that I would approach it is, don't kind of resist, but at least just take the time to kind of just ask the question. 'Cause oftentimes the client doesn't even know the NDA is in there as a standard thing from their attorney or their lawyer or things of that nature. - There's this weird space that some people exist in. When your audience is so small, they'll not let you do the work, but when your audience is so big, they'll pay you because they want you to share that stuff on social. - Yeah. - So we're in that weird gap in between. So even more reason for you to figure out your viral formula so that you can do this, so that you're sought after because of your audience, and that's a wonderful place to be in, right? - 'Cause it's amazing, 'cause I know I have a lot of clients in high-end fashion, and so many of them are scared of tantalathers thing because of his success, and he even had to put up some pretty strong boundaries with brands reaching out to him where he, I don't know if you've seen some of his new series, but he has a form that brands can fill out for him to dissect. - Yeah, I think I saw that. - But he says he will use a secret shopper to buy the product, he won't take any free product, and filling out the form, they have to be okay with him, saying whatever. - Saying whatever with it. - 'Cause the minute he breaks that code with the audience, and you're done. - Yeah, the loser trust. - You're done, yeah. Okay, that was really cool. I thought what you were going to say was, I'm at this four-time Grammy Award winning person's wedding. I can't tell you who it is, but they spent over a million and a half on this wedding alone in here, three things that we do to prepare for a shoot like this. And you could just be in an abstract background, right? So you're keeping certain specificity, but you're not revealing anybody, and you're not violating your non-disclosure agreement. It's like, I can't tell you this celebrity. - And that can work towards your advantage too. But what I would just suggest, again, I think that that's a great hook and that can work, but don't be afraid to ask. - Yes, of course. - Especially if it's a repeat client or the client seems nice, it doesn't hesitate to ask. - Yeah, you should ask first, but coming from the world of commercial production, clients or freaks, they're like, we don't want to give any of our competitors, any other marketing people, any glimpse of insight into anything that we do and swear it paid you, we kind of own all the content. Like Apple doesn't even allow you to mention that you worked with them, period. And there was a period in time which they let you, and also they just put the clamp down on that. They just stop folks from saying anything at all. - And so funny, 'cause we just had experience, we were working with a law firm on a mass torque campaign and we were saving them a million dollars a month in claim and acquisition costs and they would not reveal our name to their litigation funder because they don't want them to know what their competitive advantage is. So that does definitely happen from time to time. - That's sad, but that's often the case. So if you have a personal relationship, if they've hired you and you're relatable, you should just ask and see what happens and then there's strategies to work around that if that doesn't happen. Sorry, the last question to ask you, Brennan is, so we got the format, we got the strategy, we know what we're doing and we'll do one or two things and then we start to fall off. What do we do about that? How do you help those kinds of people? - So I think it bring them back to the center of, well, first up understanding why did they fall off. Is it a motivation thing? Is it a resource thing? Is it the performance is dipping off? 'Cause each one of those is completely different, but in terms of consistency, we say consistency within a format. So again, it's mastery of that single format and becoming consistent. And if that drops off, if performance drops off, as we kind of talked about, take your highest performer, go back to the low performer and dissect the differences between the two. There are some instances, it's rare, but sometimes formats can fall off in terms of their effectiveness. I will say that typically if that does happen, it takes years. It doesn't happen in a week. It doesn't happen in months. Oftentimes, people want to switch a format right away because one video didn't work. And I think the format's broken when it's the execution of the format, but I think always bringing it back to that. And if you're at a stage where you're burned out from a format and you want to move on, you just repeat the process again. If you're kind of demotivated for some reason where you're not seeing the business results, then again, center what aspect of it is falling apart. Because oftentimes if your content's performing, it's not the content that's driving the different performance. It's something broken in your business, whether it's your landing page or remarketing sequence, your email cadence, something's broken in your cart that's decreasing the lifetime value of those things. So I think first I know why the fall off happened, and then you can kind of tackle a specific solution to that fall off. - Okay, that makes sense. And I think that question comes up mostly because there's a lack of commitment. And that was your number one tip, are you committed to this social media strategy? Is this critical to your business because there's a lot of other things you can do? So I think a lot of people enter into this kind of like dipping their toes in the water versus going for a swim. 'Cause I heard everybody's doing this, it feels like I'm not missing out on something and not 100% committed. But the reality is that if you're committed and you have a strategy on a plan, you follow the format and you do the best to learn and to analyze and you do that over and over again. Not only do you get the results that you want, and you even guarantee it like 120 days of that doesn't happen, something else is wrong, we'll fix that part for you. But it's like, if something works for you, why the hell are you not doing more of it? Like if somebody runs an advertising campaign or promotion and they're getting more sales, and then ask you why aren't I consistent? There's something is off. Some part of the story doesn't line up. And I think a lot of people are half-heartedly engaging in social content, organic content. And they'll say to me, I tried for 90 days, I didn't work him out. How about you try it for like six months? That doesn't seem like a very big commitment. Like I tried my marriage out for 30 days, Brendan, it didn't work. I'm out. Right? You have to be committed. Otherwise, do something else with your time. Yeah, if I look at all the variables of all the clients that I've worked with over the past 20 years, what is the biggest reoccurring theme with the people that have the most amount of success in its purely mindset? Like, it's just mindset. Like, and I can give you an analogy to like pro football. Like, I don't know if you follow pro football, but San Francisco 49ers, their quarterback was the last pick in the draft. And they made it to the Super Bowl last year. Or you look at Tom Brady, who's considered one of the greatest football players of all time. He was one of the last picks in the draft. And it was just their pure mindset to say, I am not going to let this drive me down. I have the core skill sets here, and I'm just going to be dedicated. And there's so many other players that get drafted higher in the process that just fall off after a year and don't make it. And it's the same thing to creating content and creating business. Yes, there are skill sets and things to master, but I can definitively tell you, especially with the clients that we work with, I am never scared of working with somebody that has no social media experience. Oftentimes, I get more excited about working with somebody that has no social media experience than somebody that has 10 years of social media experience. But I always am looking at the mindset as like, is this person really going to put the work in? Is this person really motivated? Do they have a big vision of this? Because I think this is something that we didn't touch upon that's, I think, really important is there's so much opportunity with social media. And that opportunity is capped at how big you can dream. So I'll give you an example is like, think about beauty influencers. A lot of beauty influencers that have millions of followers make six figures a year doing brand deals and things of that nature. But I have a friend that I worked with a little bit named Michelle Fan. And she was one of the original beauty influencers built millions of followers. But what she did is she got together with a few friends used her expertise, her audience, to create a company called Ipsy. And Ipsy is a multi billion dollar corporation. So two fashion or beauty influencers, same size, one can be making six figures, one can build a billion dollar company. That is the beauty of social media. Like that is the massive upside that you can create. Like some people say Mr. Beast is valid at $10 or $15 billion. Even if he's valid at $1 billion, he started YouTube in his bedroom when he was like 14 years old, thinking about the opportunity of what social media can really do for you and don't kind of minimize what that impact can be. Because if you minimize that impact, I think oftentimes that minimizes the effort and energy that you're going to put into it. So those of you guys that are watching this episode, thanks for staying to the very end. We're going to include a link to Brennan's book. And the book is called The Guide to Going Biro. That's totally free. You can get the PDF or the ebook version of that to help you get a going. And if you want to reach out to Brennan to get his help, his expertise, and his team on it will also include the link to his website in the link below. Brennan's been a pleasure. My hope is that this one beats the previous video, because we got all the hooks in this one. Thanks, because I appreciate it. You have me, it was a pleasure to connect with everybody that was turning in for this. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The future podcast is hosted by Christo and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show and investing yourself while you're at it, visit thefuture.com. And you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.