Why Your Social Media Strategy From The Last Decade Is USELESS | 4Ds Consultation - PART 1

- You do know that you could go from two to eight million in sales in a year based on one organic TikTok post. As I scroll to my TikTok, this video right here got 1.9 million views. Here's the most remarkable part. The next post, which crushed for me on Instagram, different content, different platform, big part of the thesis, 5,834 views. (laughing) So the social media I grew up with, that you all grew up with, was as many followers as you had was an indicator to the general range every post would get. All those best practices got completely annihilated when TikTok hit the scene and made it about the individual piece of content. And I think it's gonna continue to get more extreme 'cause it benefits the platforms. Look, TikTok has the most virality chance. I wasn't kidding what I said about 8 million for them. It doesn't fit everyone here. Good news, every platform's going through the TikTok thing. LinkedIn, same thing. One video I have, 4,000, next one, 400,000. YouTube short, same shit. First video, 1,000, next one, 250,000. So they're all about to go through it 'cause it's the right thing for all of us. It's the right for the platform, it's right for us. This is why I wrote the book. This is why I'm yelling from the loudest way I can that organic social is important but you have to get good at the craft. Like the first three seconds, the thumbnail, all of it. Until you're great at the craft of the video or the picture or the written words in social, everything will be hard. I promise you. 'Cause everything else is getting more expensive because they're all losing market share to this machine. Newspaper ads are more expensive than they were five years ago. The number one goal you should all care about is views achieved organically. There's people on my team that are fast, there's people on my team that are slower. But if player one got me three videos a day and those three videos got me 100,000 views, the player two was slower but she fucking made bad ass shit and only made me one and that video got 4 million views, which one do I like better? But when people play, well, but Gary, my shit's good. I'm like, no, it's not. You took a day and your video got 8,000 views and over here they got me three videos at 8,000 a piece and that got me 24,000 views. When you make views achieved gross and per post as a North Star, it's gonna help you answer a lot of these tough questions. - The first question I think is how to balance personal branding versus business branding, especially from a social media perspective and then also across multiple brands if you're trying to do more than one company like you did. - There's so much to that. First of all, I think that we out academia ourselves a lot of times. So we sit in this room and think about the strategy of personal brand versus the business versus multiple businesses when the consumer on the other side doesn't care about what we're doing in a boardroom. That's always been the case. It's now been compounded by how social media now works, right? The reason I wrote the latest book is social media has really changed in the last two, three years. So best practices on how many handles do you need? What's personal? All those best practices got completely annihilated when TikTok hit the scene and made it about the individual piece of content. And I think it's gonna continue to get more extreme 'cause it benefits the platforms. The more we stay on it, the more money they make, the more you see things you wanna see, the more you will stay, the more you see things you don't wanna see. A lot of you follow me, but you may not want the wine content or the crying about the Jets content. You might want the business content. You might want the silly content. I don't know, but as you all know, I do a lot of different stuff compared to most people. I would say good news, my friend. It doesn't fucking matter. That's right. So if you decide to go one platform under your name and do half of the content about the business and half yours and another business, that individual piece of content's gonna find the audience. If you wanna have seven different accounts, I'm like even thinking about new strategies for clients, like if they're a cereal brand, let's just use Cheerios, they're not a client. If we get Cheerios, should I create another account called @morningbreakfast so that I can just post on it with Cheerios content just so they don't have to deal with the poll? Like it's so crazy what happened and all of you should take advantage of this. You should no longer be paralyzed by any of the ridiculous things we think about for strategy, including even the name of the handle. It's like all out the window. It's now the individual piece of content. Whether you post on your account, your account, or the company's account, the individual piece of teaporn content is gonna be the punchline. - We have this a t-shirt, teaporn. - There you go. (audience laughing) So that's the answer to that, Christian. I don't think you need to cripple yourselves, the three of you on this issue. One account, five accounts, one for each of you. What you need to do is be fucking psychotic about the individual piece of content. - So my question's maybe really specific to financial companies. Is there anything you're seeing either good, bad, or otherwise that companies like ours are focused on helping people better their financial lives? Is there anything you're seeing out there? - Yeah, of course, but let's bring this down a little bit. So what would you like them to do after they've been affected by your good content to make their financial lives better? Like a non-profit would just like it to be good. A profit, like what do you want them to do? What is your business KPI? What would you like them to buy from you? - Oh, mostly we sell life insurance, just like sophisticated life insurance based strategies. - How much LinkedIn content do you put out a day? - One post a day. - What kind? - Mostly video. - Mostly video, a clip from the podcast? - Sometimes, a lot of times it's just like a short that I've done. We have had like outside FMOs, third-party FMOs doing most of it for the last couple years. And so we've mostly done what they said until more recently where I'm like, "I gotta own this more." - That part's good. How's it been going? - Slow. - Not very well, not very well, I would say. - Because it's challenging to get views on it or because you're challenged to come up with ideas to make content for? - I think more challenging to get views. I mean, like when I put out a short, I get like, sometimes I get a YouTube short. - What about LinkedIn? - Okay, sorry, back to LinkedIn. I would say every once in a while, I'll get like a good post that has like 10,000 views. But for the most part, I'm getting like a few hundred impressions on it. - And that's per day, one a day. - Yes, or you're being kind or that's what we're doing, five a week. - Five a week, yep, we are dedicated at least to that at this point. - Understood, have you thought about, were you based? - Salt Lake, but we're totally virtual. - Understood, yeah. - And the consumers that you're trying to reach can be national? - Yep, that's been a huge advantage first 'cause we started doing that 10 years ago. - I think a couple things, if I was to join the business, the first thing I would do is pitch the idea of hosting a dinner within Salt Lake, running ads on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn on a 10 to 15 mile radius of our office where the video was an invitation to fill out a form to join this dinner in a private room in one of Salt Lake's nice restaurants where you would send them to a Google form to fill out who they are. What you're gonna talk about is overall entrepreneurship and business, a little bit of like Salt Lake, local entrepreneur and business in Salt Lake life 'cause that's obviously such a tight knit community, I know it pretty well. And for this lovely dinner we're all gonna have, you're gonna have to bear with us, we have a five minute halftime show, commercial for what we do for a living, but the general thing is, I Christian, we would like to be more part of the community and the business community and the growth of the city and the energy of everything that's going on. We have a hockey team now. - Yep, we do. - We would like, you know, again, I don't know like, you know, whether it's steak dinner, whether it's alcohol, no alcohol, whatever the dynamics are. We're gonna do this nice dinner. There's only 12 seats. What, we're just running this ad within 20 months? Like this is literally the video. We are running this ad for like-minded, ambitious people. Footnote, we're also doing this for our social media content. So this dinner is gonna be filmed. You don't need to be in it. It's for my content. So your face can be blurred, it can be back in your head. By the way, you can be in it and can get a nice little plug for your local business. I believe what you're doing in that scenario is a couple of things. One, I think it would explode your local business. I think scaling, this is for everyone, I think scaling the unscalable is the move right now in a world of AI. So like a monthly dinner with 12 to 20 prospects who don't forget, filled out a form that you're gonna ask the questions you wanna know answers to. Are you happy with your insurance provider? Yes, okay, you're not invited. You know, like you could, you could do whatever the hell you want in that form. But you will create an engine for your content. My team, as John may know, like, yeah, literally, as many of you may know, if you follow me closely, yesterday I did tea with Gary Vee. I brought it back. It was a show I did a lot during COVID. I did it for two reasons. One, it's one of my best format shows. Like people like it the most for me 'cause I'm providing real depth. It's a little, it's what this is at some level. And two, I really believe in social media shopping and I wanted to do it on what not to show people that you can do it on these platforms. There's a lot of, like, I'll definitely get into it with them. But here's the punchline why I'm telling you that story. Because I put myself in my best position to make good content. We made a piece of content. Like, I made a piece of content in reaction to the question. My team clipped it yesterday. We normally go into testing. We test under different accounts how well the content does and then do it on my main channel. I felt so good about it intuitively. We ran it last night. It was the one where I ran it about like, nobody gives a fuck about you. Humility's the key. Right, that video, that is the first video that wasn't tested that got over a million views in years. And the reason I think it did that, 'cause the other 50 I've done that way, I thought we're gonna hit. But when I, this morning when I woke up, I was like, it's I put myself in a position to make that video. Right, like I'm putting myself for an hour in my best spot. I get most excited when I talk to a human and I'm just trying to break through to them. And that gets me to a different place. I think you in that setting has the chance to make better content. - Yeah, that makes sense. - So you're gonna get local. And by the way, you're gonna run ads on Meta and LinkedIn to the tune about $200 in media spend. Because when you're in a very confined area of a 10 mile radius, you don't need a lot of dollars. - Yeah. - That's what I would do. - Very cool. Thank you. - I think you'll get the right kind of content. And by the way, your production day is gonna be a sales pitch. You see what's happening for the low, low cost of like, listen, I don't underestimate covering 12 people's dinner. Like I view that, you know, a couple of like, I think you're gonna win. I think you get a, I think it's gonna work. I like this non scalable, local, physical to film to then scale. Got it? Putting all of you have to put yourself in a position to make the best possible content. - Good stuff. Thank you. - You got it. - Yeah. So I think we're here because we are growing really, really fast and we wanna like make sure we have the right plan. So. - Is it all direct to consumer? - Yes. - Shopify? - Yeah. I'll Shopify and then I'd say like 75% through Shopify, 25% through Instagram and Facebook. - Okay. - Direct playing. - Direct in within it, right? Like you're doing it by hand or you got using shop or what's happening? - Yes. - Is it like DM if you wanna buy and you're like kind of hand holding it? - No, honestly, just through the meta as we're running, like meta will give them the option to either buy through our website or buy just in platform. - Right. So the buying in platform, it's passing on to your Shopify. - Yeah, exactly. - And they're taking a rake. And so we basically just for context, like we did 250,000 in sales last year and I think we're on track to do 2 million in November. - Amazing. - And we're growing 30 to 50% month over month and most of it is on just meta ad spend. - Of course. - And that meta ad spend and it's been really profitable too so. - So that's good. That means you have a product that's fit the market against the attention. - Yes. - Okay. - Who's running those ads? You? - All me. - And how good do you feel about your capability in that? - Well. - Like if you had a self guess, 'cause you probably don't have a lot of, I have a thousand social media buyers, literally in this company. So I can assess like Ronnie versus Sally. I'm aware that you don't have a context point, but what's your gut tell you? - So I'm 100% self-taught. - Which is good. - Yeah. I think Advantage Plus ads have made me feel a lot smarter this year than in the past. - Yep. - So like, basically how we're doing is we're testing a bunch of creatives, but we're like 100% of our ads have been in Advantage Plus campaigns, which has been working for us. - How much organic social are you doing? - Probably two posts a day on Instagram. - Just Instagram? - On TikTok, but TikTok's just not going very well, but we're still. - Well, it's not going well because you look at all of this as like conversion funnels, right? - Yes. - So you live in cack and LTV life and that's your rendering. Back to what I just showed you, you do know that you could go from two to eight million in sales in a year based on one organic TikTok post. So that's a good thing for everyone to hear. Like you noticed, if you followed along of how we were just talking, where they'll eventually go is eventually the math won't work. That's what happens to everybody. That might be six million, that might be 11 million. I don't know, right? I'd have to like look under the hood. But by the way, if they're destined to do 20 million before the math doesn't work out, people are going to watch them and figure it out and do the same thing. And then it's going to slow that. Like the copycat thing will happen very fast. - And what I was going to say is that's kind of where we're getting to the point where when I said two million in November, I mean the month of November, we think we'll do two million. And so we think like next year we could hit 20 million. - Okay, I see. That's staggering. So you're not going from 250,000 to two million. You think you're going from 250 to 20 million. - Yes. - So a couple of things real quick for the rest of the room. This is what's happening in social media when you do it right. Just like so everybody wraps their head around it. It's that real. But keep going. - Yeah, so I'm just getting kind of nervous that like, okay, we've been riding this wave all year. I feel like we were pretty early on like the Advantage Plus ads, Power BI, like getting really good targeting. But now I feel like we kind of have experience with a couple of other small businesses where we've run them, you know, up to like maybe five, you know, three to five million in annual sales. Getting to this point where we're like, - Did you come from like that angle where you like servicing other businesses and then started, like when you say that, why did that happen? - So like I owned a business with my dad and my brother selling like really niche horse related products. - Awesome. - And so we've grown that business that it does. It'll probably do about five or six million this year. But that's kind of like the biggest business we've ever been involved with. - And this one, just the products hitting and the nature of how social is, right? The addressable market's bigger just given the nature of all women are in play, but then just the way women are shopping, just the reality of the business, okay? - So basically I'm coming to like, okay, we're on track to do two million in November. I think it's really realistic. We'll do 20 million. - So let's go backwards. Instead of like what you're gonna do in November, 'cause I've been through that rodeo, let's talk about what you did do in August. So like sales wise, I think we hit close to 600,000. - And you're anticipating by just putting more dollars into the machine, 'cause you're reinvesting what you're making, that's how you see it, right? - Yes. - Because for everybody, like the reason, when I said this is how it works, the reason not everyone does it is, if your first 100,000 doesn't work 'cause you weren't good at it, then you're out. If you only had 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000, like these are small bit, right? If you got 10,000 and you go and spend 10,000 on social ads and you don't convert, then the game's over. On the flip side, if it does convert, you see what's happening, right? If your 10,000 makes you 40,000, you take 20,000, and then all of a sudden you just see what he's doing, he's stacking. Got it? But this is why I want to talk about, this is why I wrote the book. This is why I'm yelling from the loudest way I can that organic social is important when people don't think it's important because they're in one, two places. One, they're advanced and paid. And so like, why guess? He's just fucking running it, right? You can see, think about being at 600,000 in August and sitting here and having confidence, and I believe him, by the way, that he's gonna do two million in November. That's just like, okay, I know what works, but then things change too. And so that's why creative is the whole variable. The targeting's there. The people are on social. Keep going. - So I guess my question is like, going into next year and thinking like, okay, we could take this business to 20 million dollars. And it's just so open-ended, I feel that I'm almost asking it, but like, how would you be thinking about-- - Yeah, no, I don't think it's dumb. I think you're, first of all, you need to reconcile something. You're in the sales business, not in the brand and marketing business. - Right. - Notice what's happening, it's all math. So he's selling. So the biggest fear I have, brother, Lexi, is are you building a brand? 'Cause if you're not, you're gonna get copied out. Somebody's gonna buy something close enough from China and start pounding against your own, the same audience for half the price. - We see it happening. - Already, that's right. Because people are watching everything. Got it? So my number one recommendation in the way I hear everything is don't worry about 20 or 30 or 18. Worry that you're in trouble unless you build a brand. Do you know how many people have social media agencies and wanna be Gary Vee? Half the people on social media. But the brand is what allows me, I gotta back it up by being good and I gotta show up in this room and bring, but it's all brand. Everything is a commodity besides brand. Everything. So by far what's obvious to me is brand, brand, brand. What does that mean? First off, I think the biggest asset you have is Lexi and her sister. So to me, that's not replicatable. There's only, what's your sister's name? - Tekel. - Tekel and Lexi or Tekel and Lexi? There could be other sisters doing it, but they're them. I don't know you like that, Lex, but if you and Tekel are willing to go out in front, I think that is a very important part of the next step. Joint podcast, original content, showing them in the field. Like you're gonna, what's the name of the brand? - Oakland, Oakland and Tine. - Oakland and Tine. You've gotta make people give a fuck about that. That, like jingle, like this is some madman shit. Like what's the, like, oh, Clementine, like there's like a song you should make. I'm being serious. Like I think you should make a jingle and that jingle should be an organic post and maybe the first three seconds of every video or at the end of every video, the jingle should play. You know, 1877 car for kids. Like if you're from the Jersey, New York area, like P.C. Richards, the whistle. Like everything is a commodity except brand. So I think the biggest thing that's obvious to me is for you to go all in on organic and all in on ownable shit. But like I would give up a lot of money. If I ran the business, I would give up instead of pouring, like what you're just gonna do is pouring it back in, pouring it back in. I would take some of that money and bring it to zero. I would level out your cat. I'd pay more, I'd take a hundred K of it to be awesome at organic, to be awesome at brand building. - Mostly investing that in like basically a team to help us do more of it. - Yes, that's right. External or internal building at the best cost association against the results to get as many views organically with a complete lens on brand. The other thing you're gonna fall in love with and as great as the AI is for Meta and it's the same AI that gets an organic post to a lot of views and then that one, that one on organic will outperform the AI generated testing. So there's double benefit from organic social. The organic ad, the organic post that gets three million views when you bring it back and slightly tweak it to make it a conversion ad. So just a video of the two girls walking down the street talking about something and just hit. You taking that video back and at the bottom put, maybe they just tell a story about their pet, I'm literally making shit up right now. They're pet dog, Carol, in the video. It gets 14 million views, four million. Now you run it again as an ad, but at the bottom, you take the bottom of the video and you put used, ad checkout, put code Carol to get free shipping because you know it's gonna emotionally hit. It may end up being your best cat ad. The thing that fucks up all the mathematicians in the game that I play is when I get an organic thing going viral and I convert it into performance, it outperforms all their best shit and they're like how the fuck did this happen? 'Cause it's the fucking creative. - Yeah. - Okay. - Got it? - Totally. - Thank you.