00:00:00In the last 12 months, my social media had a grand total of 3 billion impressions
00:00:03and brought in four and a half million new subscribers.
00:00:05And with that, I'm interested to break the world record for the fastest selling
00:00:08nonfiction book of all time during just over $105 million in sales in a weekend.
00:00:12And here are my top lessons that I've learned when it comes
00:00:15to building a personal record.
00:00:16You guys don't hear something absolutely insane.
00:00:19I was able to take home more in a year than the CEOs of McDonald's,
00:00:23IKEA, Ford, Motorola, and Yahoo combined as a kid in his twenties.
00:00:31And I have continued to for over half a decade, which resulted in a $200 million
00:00:37per year portfolio and $100 million net worth by age 32.
00:00:41And no one is more surprised than me.
00:00:43Me expressing that fact will create envy in some, anger in others,
00:00:49skepticism in most, confusion in old people, and inspire a select few.
00:00:55You are who I made this presentation for.
00:00:57But before I dive in, raise your hand if you'd like any of
00:01:01the following things to happen.
00:01:02To be able to charge two times, five times, 10 times more than your competition
00:01:08for the exact same thing, like Yeti, we have basically identical cups
00:01:12and somehow they're able to charge $40 versus $10 simply because of what's on the cup.
00:01:18If you'd like to be able to have customers buy from you over
00:01:21and over and over again, without considering competition like Harley.
00:01:25Once you're a Harley guy, you stay a Harley guy for life.
00:01:29And if you'd like to virtually guarantee sales in any new business or product
00:01:35that you launch like Apple, a lot of people just wait in line.
00:01:38They say, just leave my credit card, just bill me and send whatever
00:01:40you're going to come out with.
00:01:41And that's more or less how a lot of Apple buyers are.
00:01:43Once they become an Apple person, they become an Apple person for life.
00:01:49So if you like that stuff, great.
00:01:50Cause that's what this talk is about.
00:01:52And so I couldn't figure out how these brands, these companies were able
00:01:57to do this, demand these prices, get people to stay loyal for a really long time.
00:02:01And I felt like for me, I always had to like beg, borrow, and steal.
00:02:07And I had to squeeze and push so hard just to get people to buy.
00:02:10Whereas these companies made it look effortless.
00:02:13And it's because I didn't understand this one thing.
00:02:16And that's the subject of the talk today.
00:02:18Brand.
00:02:19And the thing is, even people who claim to understand it often don't.
00:02:24And the few who do understand it, do a terrible job teaching it.
00:02:28So this definitely isn't going to be marketing 101 class on branding,
00:02:32presentation, colors, and logos.
00:02:33And this definitely isn't going to be about feelings, presence,
00:02:37intuition, or whatever.
00:02:39This is about making money.
00:02:41And this concept that I'm going to explain to you is how I built a 7.8
00:02:45million person audience across all these platforms in the past 40 months or so.
00:02:50I sold over a million copies of my last two books and your deals
00:02:54worth hundreds of million dollars in our holding company acquisition.com.
00:02:56That is why you build a brand or at least that's why I built mine.
00:03:01And so today I'm gonna cover three things.
00:03:03Number one, what branding is.
00:03:06You don't know what it is.
00:03:07You certainly can't build one.
00:03:08Number two, why it makes money.
00:03:11Because once you have it built, you're like, okay, well, how do I trade this
00:03:13thing for doll hairs, which is what we want.
00:03:16And then third, how to start and grow yours.
00:03:18So let's start with the first one, what branding is.
00:03:21So when I decided to build a brand, I looked at what many
00:03:25popular marketers said about it.
00:03:26Here are some popular definitions that I have removed the marketers from them.
00:03:31This is not throwing shade.
00:03:33So I'm just saying them.
00:03:34A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.
00:03:38A brand is not what you say it is.
00:03:39It's what they say it is.
00:03:40A brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories, and relations to that.
00:03:43Take it together, account for a customer's decision to choose one
00:03:46product or service over another.
00:03:48A brand is emotional shorthand for accumulated and assumed information.
00:03:51A brand is present when the value of what the product, service, or
00:03:54personality means to its audience is greater than what it does for the audience.
00:03:58A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished
00:04:00from other products, services, or concepts, so they can be easily
00:04:03communicated and usually marketed.
00:04:04Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name,
00:04:08its qualities, and personality.
00:04:09The promotion of a particular product or company by means of
00:04:12advertising and distinctive design.
00:04:13If these sound vague and confusing, it's because they are.
00:04:20And I was just as confused as you when I was trying to figure this out.
00:04:23Because none of them told me what to do.
00:04:26And so after looking at all these marketers' words, I think I pieced it together.
00:04:31At least enough that once I started thinking about it this way, in a
00:04:35different way than I'm about to share with you, my brand grew and it grew fast.
00:04:39And the reason this is so important is that if you don't know what to do,
00:04:42nothing's going to change.
00:04:43Fundamentally, if you don't change your behavior, obviously nothing's
00:04:45going to change as a result.
00:04:46And so I wanted to find this one term before we get going.
00:04:49Learning.
00:04:50Who here came to learn?
00:04:52Raise your hands.
00:04:53Fantastic.
00:04:54Or in other words, just be talking to the wall.
00:04:56So learning means same condition, new behavior.
00:05:00And so if I wanted to teach someone a phone script, then after teaching
00:05:05you, the phone rings again and you say the new script, you learned.
00:05:11Learning occurred. On the other hand, if I tried to teach you the script and
00:05:16then the phone rings again, and then you change nothing, no learning occurred.
00:05:21You learned nothing.
00:05:22And that's why none of this stuff that these guys said helped me because
00:05:27I didn't know what I could do.
00:05:28I didn't know what behavior I had to change as a result of this.
00:05:31So I didn't know how to do it.
00:05:33And so here's how branding happens.
00:05:37Branding is a deliberate pairing of things through an outcome.
00:05:42So I'll say that again.
00:05:43Branding is a deliberate pairing of things through an outcome.
00:05:47So let's use Coca-Cola drinking it and liking it as our example.
00:05:52The yum, AKA the outcome.
00:05:55That's what people get.
00:05:56They pair that with drinking the action.
00:06:00So they do to get it with Coca-Cola, the product.
00:06:05So the next time you want some yum, you're probably going to reach
00:06:08for a Coca-Cola if that was paired for you successfully.
00:06:12And so branding is a deliberate pairing of things through an outcome.
00:06:16That's it.
00:06:17But sometimes businesses pair stuff, pair their stuff with
00:06:21things that people don't like.
00:06:23That's bad branding.
00:06:26This leads to losses for the business.
00:06:29Now, some of you guys may have seen this.
00:06:32This is Dylan Mulvaney doing a collaboration with Bud Light.
00:06:36There was a lot of press around this advertisement.
00:06:38This advertisement was actually a great advertisement.
00:06:41And you might think I'm crazy, but it was.
00:06:44Let me explain.
00:06:45It's just not the way you might think it was.
00:06:47This is a great advertisement because it let a lot of
00:06:50people know about their stuff.
00:06:51It let a lot of people know about the product, about Bud Light.
00:06:54By the way, if you're curious, that is the definition of advertising, not branding.
00:07:00Advertising is letting people know about your stuff.
00:07:02Branding is the pairing that occurs as a result.
00:07:06So it was good advertising, but bad branding.
00:07:08Many customers hated this pairing.
00:07:11Lots of people found out, but a lot of people hated it.
00:07:14Good advertising, bad branding.
00:07:16And so as a result of this bad branding, people not liking the pairing,
00:07:20fewer people bought the product, which netted a loss for the business.
00:07:24And so to fix this, Bud Light paired the product with stuff the audience liked.
00:07:31Like Shane Gillis, who was a man's man comedian and the UFC, a man's
00:07:36man of sports, if you will, and sales began to recover.
00:07:40So that's the 101 explanation of branding.
00:07:45Let's go on to 201.
00:07:47So to go a little deeper, because the better you get at this, the more money
00:07:51you will make, like the more nuance you can understand how to brand and build
00:07:54a brand for yourself, the more money you will make, I promise you that.
00:07:57And so to some people, the Dylan Mulvaney pairing was actually good.
00:08:02In general, both good advertising and good branding.
00:08:05Hear me out.
00:08:06For others, it was bad, obviously.
00:08:08All pairings have positive and negative results.
00:08:13And that's because everyone's different.
00:08:15Everyone has different preferences.
00:08:17But for a business, you can objectively see if a pairing was good or bad,
00:08:22whether it netted you more money.
00:08:25So, more people dislike the Dylan Mulvaney pairing.
00:08:31So sales suffered making it a bad pairing.
00:08:34So this isn't opinion.
00:08:36They objectively made less money.
00:08:38And so this pairing was a bad one for their ideal audience.
00:08:42Now the 301 version of this is, is there a company or a product where the Dylan
00:08:47Mulvaney pairing could have been both good advertising and good branding so that the
00:08:51majority of people would have bought?
00:08:52I think the answer is yes.
00:08:54It just doesn't necessarily mean it's Bud Light for conservative
00:08:57males as the primary audience.
00:08:58And on the other hand, some people love the new Gilles and UFC pairings.
00:09:02And some hated it.
00:09:05But more of the audience that is their ideal customer liked it, saw it as good.
00:09:11And so the business netted sales a result and they made more money.
00:09:14Good branding.
00:09:16And so for Budweiser, and I just want to call this out.
00:09:20This is specifically for Budweiser and their customer base.
00:09:22It's not that Shane Gillers or the UFC is magic in some way, or Dylan
00:09:26Mulvaney is unmagic in some way, but for that specific audience, yes, the pairing
00:09:31mattered and how much of the base liked it or disliked it.
00:09:34So if you're anything like me, making money is the point.
00:09:39So let's drive this home.
00:09:40If you made a pairing of your thing and your customer, and you got to choose
00:09:46which outcome you had happen.
00:09:48So you have your product and they drink it.
00:09:51There's an outcome that happens afterwards, right?
00:09:53That pairs with it.
00:09:55On one hand, 75% like it and 25 hate it.
00:09:57Or on the other hand, 25% like it and 75% hate it, which
00:10:02would be the bottom example.
00:10:03Which would you choose?
00:10:05More money.
00:10:07Good.
00:10:07The big, the big green one.
00:10:09Yes.
00:10:09Of course, the top one, because it would make you the most money.
00:10:13And so to be clear for the 201 level of understanding, branding always happens.
00:10:21Branding always occurs, but our goal is good branding.
00:10:26And good branding is a deliberate pairing of our business with good
00:10:30outcomes for our ideal customers.
00:10:33And so what you pair your business with determines two key things.
00:10:38One, who pays attention to your business and two, whether they go towards your
00:10:43business, like the UFC example or away from your business, like the Dylan Mulvaney example.
00:10:50And so the beginning of this, I said, I was going to cover three things.
00:10:53The first thing I said is what is branding?
00:10:55But now that we have gone through that, I want to resay what I walked us through,
00:11:00which is what good branding is.
00:11:03Ideally what we're shooting for.
00:11:05So now that we covered that, let's talk about why it makes you money.
00:11:08Why good branding makes you money.
00:11:10Branding as I define it happens everywhere all the time, but
00:11:14businesses use it for profit.
00:11:15So let's look at some of the earliest uses of branding to figure out how we can use it.
00:11:19So these are the first entrepreneurs who use branding to make money.
00:11:23Real quick.
00:11:24I'm going to show you the exact 10 stage roadmap from zero to a hundred
00:11:27million plus that less than 1% of companies finish I've now done multiple times.
00:11:32And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount
00:11:35increases that you need to get through.
00:11:37And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business.
00:11:41What the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going
00:11:44through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate.
00:11:46And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses,
00:11:51brick and mortar, all of this, and it works.
00:11:53And it's my gift to you.
00:11:54It's absolutely free.
00:11:55And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap.
00:11:59Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you all free.
00:12:01The earliest version of branding that we can think of, or at least that I can
00:12:06think of happened on livestock.
00:12:09It was literally a brand.
00:12:10They would heat up metal.
00:12:11They'd sear it into the side of a cattle and they would get a lovely little logo.
00:12:15Maybe we'll have a Nike swoosh cow someday.
00:12:17And so they literally burned these symbols into animals.
00:12:20And those symbols had a magical effect.
00:12:23So let's say you're walking around and you see a cow with no brand.
00:12:27You say, hello, cow.
00:12:28The cow says, move back.
00:12:29And it has nothing on it.
00:12:30This is just a cow.
00:12:32You might leave it alone.
00:12:34And that might be it.
00:12:36On the other hand, let's say the cow has a brand you recognize.
00:12:40Say it's your neighbors.
00:12:41You might be like, Hey, that's Bill's cow.
00:12:44Now, if you like Bill, you might grab the cow and pull him by the, whatever you pull
00:12:50cows by and probably return it to Bill.
00:12:53If you hate Bill, then the cow may stay lost in the wilderness forever and become
00:12:59lunch for your family for the next month or two in the form of delicious burgers.
00:13:03Moo.
00:13:04But either way, for better or for worse, the brand affected what you did.
00:13:11It affected your behavior.
00:13:14And so to take this to the 201 level.
00:13:16What if you see a branded cow, but you don't recognize the brand?
00:13:21You might be like, who dis?
00:13:22I see a logo, but I don't know anything about it.
00:13:25Well, then you would treat it how you treat branded animals in general.
00:13:29And that you just know that it belongs to someone.
00:13:32And so you would treat it the way that you treat it as though it belonged to anybody else.
00:13:36And even if only a tiny bit, you would treat a wild cow different
00:13:41from a branded cow in general.
00:13:43So if you had one that was wild and you had one that you didn't
00:13:46recognize, but was branded, you would still probably treat them differently.
00:13:49So that just shows you the power of brand as a concept, because it dictates
00:13:52a tie between that cow and a human being or some complex animal that can brand cows.
00:13:58And so these are all effects of brand in general.
00:14:01So that's how it affects what people do.
00:14:04And so now I want to get tactical on how to get, how we translate that
00:14:07concept and getting them to buy.
00:14:09So let's say we pair our brands.
00:14:11So this is where we get really tactile.
00:14:12And this is like, okay, if you don't have a brand, this
00:14:14is the step-by-step right now.
00:14:16So you have a weak brand and we say it's a weak brand because it's starting up.
00:14:20You don't really have a lot of association.
00:14:21Fantastic.
00:14:22So now you want to pair it with people, experiences, other stuff
00:14:26that your ideal customer likes.
00:14:28So in this instance, I'm using little Nike pairing with Lebron and Tiger, who
00:14:32are champions or class coats, et cetera.
00:14:34And so people who like sports and competition would see that
00:14:37probably as a positive pairing.
00:14:39AKA good stuff.
00:14:42And so if we do that pairing or we make that pairing for the majority
00:14:46of people, branding will occur.
00:14:47And so the brand grows.
00:14:48And so the question then follows, what's the benefit of a
00:14:53strong brand versus a weak brand.
00:14:55And so the, the, the weak brand is before the pairing, the
00:14:59stronger brand is after the pairing.
00:15:00So a strong brand turns commoditized products like a $5 white t-shirt plus
00:15:06the strong brand into a premium product, a higher value brand name product.
00:15:12And premium products with a strong brand then get customers to want to pair
00:15:17themselves with the product so that they can associate the outcome themselves
00:15:24with the outcome the brand delivers, which they do with their money.
00:15:28So how do they make that association?
00:15:30They give money, they get the shirt.
00:15:33The association happens based on what they've seen, where
00:15:35that logo has been elsewhere.
00:15:36And so then they go from, I want to be a winner to exchanging money
00:15:41and saying, now I am a winner, or I feel like a winner.
00:15:43That's how this works.
00:15:45And so this means that if the ideal customer likes boards, winning
00:15:48and competition, et cetera, then they're more likely to buy stuff from
00:15:52a brand paired with those things.
00:15:53So let's lay it all out.
00:15:55Weak brand paired with stuff customers like creates a strong brand.
00:16:02Strong brand gets put onto a winning product, transforms a generic to winning
00:16:07product, then the customers want to associate with that winning product.
00:16:11So they buy the product and they put money into your bank account in order to do it.
00:16:16And so as long as you net a positive between what it costs you to
00:16:20associate with Tiger and Lebron and how many t-shirts you can
00:16:24sell a result, you make money.
00:16:26And so here are some steps in words for those of you who are more word people.
00:16:31You start with a brand that means nothing.
00:16:34You have a logo, just like the cow that the other person didn't recognize.
00:16:37People know that it is a brand.
00:16:38They just don't know what that brand means yet.
00:16:40So it means nothing right now.
00:16:42Then you pair that brand with something or someone that
00:16:45your customers ideally like.
00:16:46Third, your brand starts to mean the thing customer likes to them.
00:16:52Then they want to associate themselves with that thing
00:16:56they like or get more of it.
00:16:57But they can't buy that thing, but they can buy a tiny
00:17:02sliver of that association.
00:17:04So they buy the shirt with the logo that means that thing to them.
00:17:07And so they get the shirt, you get the money, and it all
00:17:11happened because you deliberately paired it with something they like.
00:17:13And this happens everywhere.
00:17:16So Dolce & Gabbana, classic example, they paired with Kim Kardashian.
00:17:20They made a line specifically for her.
00:17:22And so for a lady who wants to associate with fame, beauty, wealth,
00:17:29that would be a pairing that makes sense.
00:17:32And so that lady who wants other people to associate her with
00:17:36fame, high-class, money, luxury.
00:17:38Well, we'll then buy Dolce & Gabbana and be like, I'm just like him.
00:17:41Now she might not say that directly because she might just associate with
00:17:44the values, but the transfer still happens.
00:17:47And so when someone looks at two products that on the
00:17:52surface are generically the same.
00:17:53You've got two t-shirts, one that has a weak brand or no brand.
00:17:57And the other that has the strong brand, the person that has the strong
00:18:02brand, they're going to be more likely to buy and pay more for.
00:18:06And this happens because they actually buy the elements that we've deliberately
00:18:11paired with the brand, which they identify with.
00:18:13And at this point of building a brand, you do this to change customer behavior.
00:18:19And that is, excuse me, that is the point of building a brand to change
00:18:22customer behavior in your favor when they see it with a product.
00:18:26And so this is a quote from Warren Buff that I like a lot, kind of
00:18:30signifying some of the elements of the benefits of brand.
00:18:33So the single most important decision in evaluating business is pricing power.
00:18:37If you've got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor,
00:18:40you've got a very good business.
00:18:42And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10%,
00:18:46then you've got a terrible business.
00:18:47And so if we have an unbranded t-shirt for $5 and we say, you know what?
00:18:51We think we have a strong enough brand that we can raise the price.
00:18:54And then boom, we can raise the price and still not lose that many sales.
00:18:58But we, in this case, 12X the price, good branding drives that premium pricing.
00:19:04Good branding also improves advertising.
00:19:09So with the generic brand, if you're marketing this white t-shirt, you
00:19:12might get half a percent of people.
00:19:13There are many white t-shirts.
00:19:15There are many like it.
00:19:16This one is mine.
00:19:17Just kidding.
00:19:17So the point for those of you who got the reference, so if you have a 0.5%
00:19:23click through rate on something that's generic, there's nothing special about it.
00:19:25On the flip side, if you have a Nike brand t-shirt, same identical
00:19:30t-shirt, and it has the swoosh.
00:19:31Now you might get six times as many people to click and buy at a higher price.
00:19:36See how these things stack together.
00:19:37That is why these brands exist for such a long period of
00:19:40time and make so much money.
00:19:43So they get cheaper customers, they get higher returns and they have better
00:19:47response rates in advertising.
00:19:48And on top of that, if this, as if that weren't enough, good branding
00:19:53also drives customer loyalty, AKA, they buy more stuff more times.
00:19:58And so like the Apple example I gave earlier, once you buy one Apple
00:20:01product, you tend to buy more and you tend to keep buying them.
00:20:04And so this also a good brand also protects your business from competitors
00:20:09stealing that customer in the future.
00:20:10And so, as I promised in the beginning, who's seeing how this, all this
00:20:14stuff allows you to one, be able to charge 10 times more than your competition.
00:20:19Two, get higher returns in advertising.
00:20:22So you can scale that much more, that much faster.
00:20:23And then three, get people to keep buying for life, compounding your
00:20:27money-making skills for good.
00:20:29Okay.
00:20:31Which is why building a brand will make you lots of money.
00:20:34It's also why brands outperform commodities in every single industry
00:20:39and give a lasting competitive advantage that to be fair is theirs to lose.
00:20:44So here's another quote from uncle Warren.
00:20:46It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
00:20:50If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
00:20:52And so I said that I was going to cover three things.
00:20:55One, what branding is, which we read in what good branding is.
00:20:58Second, why it makes you money.
00:21:00And we got that.
00:21:01So now let's go to how to start or grow your own brand.
00:21:04So branding is the deliberate pairing of things, your thing, plus what your
00:21:08ideal customer has through an outcome.
00:21:10And good branding is the deliberate pairing of your thing with something good.
00:21:15To start a brand, we have to know what we want to pair it with
00:21:20to attract ideal customers.
00:21:22So here we've got Bud Light, UFC, good outcome for the majority of the audience.
00:21:26And we want to understand that just as much as we should also understand
00:21:31what to avoid pairing our brand with to lose customers like the Dylan Mulvaney example.
00:21:36And so here's how I like to think about assembling the pairings for brand.
00:21:41So if you're a ground zero, you have, you have no brand.
00:21:44You've got these elements that haven't been put together yet.
00:21:46So I think about it like a table full of flowers.
00:21:52So if you want to put it in bouquet together, you start by having lots of
00:21:55different flowers all over the place.
00:21:56On their own, those flowers are not a bouquet.
00:22:00Just as products, values, experiences, people, et cetera on their own are not a brand.
00:22:05The flowers are like the brand element that we pair with stuff our audience is like.
00:22:12With enough pairing over and over and over again, they form a bouquet.
00:22:16Now replace the word bouquet with brand.
00:22:20And so that assembly is the connection.
00:22:24It's the association between those things because the brand
00:22:26fundamentally doesn't actually exist.
00:22:28If I take the flowers out of the vase and scatter them across, was
00:22:32there ever a brand to begin with?
00:22:34It's simply the association we make between those things that
00:22:37creates the one of one brand.
00:22:42And if we unravel it, the brand disappears.
00:22:44And so the deliberate pairing of those things makes the brand.
00:22:47And if we want to get narrower on our brand.
00:22:51So let's say I talk about tacos, lifting, and philosophy.
00:22:55If I want to narrow my brand, I'll just talk a bunch about tacos.
00:22:59And then all of my flowers are just taco related.
00:23:02If I'm only talking about tacos, but I want to expand the stuff I'm talking about to my
00:23:07audience and maybe capture a wider audience, then I might talk about tacos, quesadillas,
00:23:12burritos, things that are tangential.
00:23:14And then if I wanted to expand even broader, I might just talk about food in general.
00:23:17And then I might talk in alcohol and I might talk in restaurants and then
00:23:21things that go wider and wider from there.
00:23:24And so we get narrower as we niche down and we go double down on
00:23:28one type of topic and we go broader when we branch out.
00:23:31But distant and random pairings hurt a brand because they're so
00:23:38hard to make the associations with.
00:23:41And this is what most brands are and do.
00:23:43Most people's brands happen by accident.
00:23:47It's just whatever they appear next to, whatever their people
00:23:51associate their stuff with.
00:23:52Good branding happens on purpose.
00:23:55Because like, what are we looking at with a bike, a single
00:23:58flower, some socks, and a burger?
00:23:59Not a lot, not a lot to hold together there.
00:24:02And so think about it like curating a garden.
00:24:05You want some flowers to grow and you want to pull out the weeds.
00:24:08You have to do both.
00:24:10You have to add the good and take away the bad in order to
00:24:13assemble the ideal brand for you.
00:24:14And in the beginning, our brand won't be strong.
00:24:18Just like yours won.
00:24:19If you're building it, then you might only have a couple flowers there.
00:24:22And it's because you haven't had that many instances to pair
00:24:26your brand for that customer.
00:24:28But the more good stuff we pair with our brand for the
00:24:34customer, the stronger it gets.
00:24:35You go from one flower to many red flowers or many red roses that
00:24:39become a bouquet of red roses.
00:24:41That's what you're about.
00:24:42And the more you're about it, the more the brand strengthens.
00:24:45Now, what if we make a branding mistake and pair with the wrong
00:24:50thing, because it's going to happen.
00:24:51One bad pairing can absolutely hurt a brand.
00:24:55So if I now give my, this lovely red rose bouquet to my wife and I say,
00:24:59Hey, don't you love this bouquet?
00:25:02And she sees this rotten flower sticking out of the front.
00:25:04She might be like, Ooh, this bouquet sucks.
00:25:07Or this brand sucks or, Hey, that guy got a DUI.
00:25:11And I thought he was this paramount of good ethics.
00:25:12Well, that would hurt the brand.
00:25:15And so just like one ugly flower messes up the whole bouquet, it
00:25:19changes how everyone sees the brand.
00:25:21This bouquet sucks.
00:25:23Now to recover from something like that, you just have to overwhelm
00:25:27customers with the stuff they like until eventually the bad pairing
00:25:30shrinks into a relevance.
00:25:31So we don't try and eliminate the DUI.
00:25:34We don't try and eliminate the dead rose.
00:25:35It happened.
00:25:35There's nothing we can do about it.
00:25:37But what we try to do is just overwhelm it with way more of the stuff that the
00:25:41majority of our people actually like.
00:25:42And so Kanye, for example, has said some things that people don't like.
00:25:47But he also comes out with products that people love.
00:25:50He made a Superbowl ad.
00:25:52He sold shoes.
00:25:53He just came out with an album that came out after having some cancel culture
00:25:57stuff around him and things he had said.
00:25:58And so over time, people forgot the bad stuff and associated the good stuff
00:26:02back with him and purchased.
00:26:05They still bought and so you need to decide what values people experience,
00:26:10et cetera, that you want to use to connect the audience to your product.
00:26:14And equally importantly, what things you want to avoid, remove or
00:26:21ignore from the stuff they hate.
00:26:22And so it goes without saying that even if you say you're premium, but people
00:26:28think your thing sucks, that suck will stick.
00:26:31And so up to this point, everything I've talked about has been the
00:26:34things external to the product.
00:26:35They've been the people you associate the product with.
00:26:37Now almost all of that occurs prior to purchase.
00:26:41So you can absolutely get someone to buy the thing, but how many experiences
00:26:46are people are going to have with the thing once they've purchased it?
00:26:50Probably far more than they have with your advertisement.
00:26:53And so the advertisement can let people know about it.
00:26:56The branding makes a good association with the person.
00:26:58They make the purchase.
00:26:59And then afterwards, the product does a lot of the branding after that.
00:27:03Because if I buy that amazing Nike t-shirt and there's a hole in the
00:27:07armpit when it comes in, I might say, this is the first time I've ever
00:27:10bought a Nike product, this product sucks.
00:27:12Therefore, Nike sucks.
00:27:14And then I think the whole thing is a sham.
00:27:16And then I also start to hate LeBron for even recommending, right?
00:27:19Starts to transfer backwards.
00:27:21Now on the flip side, brand can influence how people see the product.
00:27:26So if the product is what I would call good enough, so it's,
00:27:29it doesn't have any holes in it.
00:27:31Now, is it the highest quality it possibly could be?
00:27:34Maybe not, but it's good enough that no one's going to find an
00:27:37immediate problem with the product.
00:27:38That's where brand can carry you the extra distance to still make it a
00:27:43positive experience for the person.
00:27:44And so brand in a very real way can affect how people perceive
00:27:47value through products.
00:27:49Now, I mean, personally, this is a pro tip here.
00:27:52If I'm going to charge a premium price, I absolutely want to make sure that the
00:27:57product is dialed so that I only further reinforce how much they like my brand.
00:28:01Rather than let my brand carry me or at worst, have it conflict with the
00:28:07impression that I gave them of the thing they're going to buy prior to them buying it.
00:28:10This is a quote from Warren.
00:28:11Your premium brand had better be delivering something special or it's
00:28:15not going to get the business.
00:28:16And the only tweak I'd have on this is that it's not going to keep the business.
00:28:19You'll get the first purchase.
00:28:21You just won't get the ones after that.
00:28:22And so all these things are like, okay, got it.
00:28:27So brand is pairing.
00:28:29I get how the pairing makes me money.
00:28:30I have these big margins.
00:28:32I got more CTRs, more people buy.
00:28:34And as long as my thing doesn't suck and ideally that it's good, people keep buying.
00:28:37Awesome.
00:28:38But how do I even measure that?
00:28:39So brand has three main metrics.
00:28:42One, which is influence, which is how likely it is to change someone's behavior.
00:28:47So if I show someone a brand and they react in any way, they recognize it and they do
00:28:53something about it, then we have influence.
00:28:55Second is direction.
00:28:57Are they changing the way we wanted?
00:29:00Or are they running away?
00:29:01And third, how many people it changes for?
00:29:05That's it.
00:29:06So if I show them a hundred people and a hundred people react versus two people
00:29:10react, the hundred person reacting, at least recognition, that is the reach.
00:29:14How many people it changes it for.
00:29:16So taken to the hypothetical extreme, a small, weak and neutral brand, very few
00:29:21people recognize, and the people that do don't care that much about it either way.
00:29:27And on the other polar extreme, you have a large, large, strong, positive brand.
00:29:31So that would be lots of people recognize the brand.
00:29:33It changes behavior when they see the brand and the behavior is generally towards.
00:29:37So they try to do in accordance with what that brand is asking someone to do.
00:29:40And I want to make this point.
00:29:44A lot of people have this misnomer that any strong brand is polar.
00:29:49That because lots of people love it, lots of people also have to have it.
00:29:53Now I say this by percentage, not necessarily by absolute.
00:29:56If you have, if the whole United States says you are, you're going to have a
00:29:59percentage of people that hate you just because there's crazy people.
00:30:01And that's not what we're talking about.
00:30:03I'm saying, is there a brand that can't have that kind of status that isn't polar?
00:30:07So I'll give a polar example first.
00:30:10So I have the silhouette of Donald Trump here and he has a very strong brand.
00:30:14He has a big reach.
00:30:16Lots of people recognize him.
00:30:17Even just the silhouette alone, people recognize he has strong influence as in
00:30:22the percentage of people that when they see this have a reaction in either direction.
00:30:26Positive or negative, but just that they react shows that he has strong influence.
00:30:30And the third is the direction.
00:30:32Now for him, he is polar, meaning many people move towards him very strongly and
00:30:37many people move away from him very strongly.
00:30:39And so many assume that all brands are that way.
00:30:43And that's just because there are many examples of that, but that
00:30:46doesn't mean it has to be that way.
00:30:47And so I'll give you a different example.
00:30:50So some brands manage to change many people's behavior towards them all at once.
00:30:56And so like Taylor Swift, sure.
00:30:58I'm sure she's got some crazies.
00:31:00Don't get me wrong.
00:31:00But the vast majority of people who see Taylor Swift recognize her.
00:31:05She changed their behavior and most of the time it's towards her.
00:31:08So she is a large, positive, strong brand.
00:31:11This is also personally why I think the idea of like seeking out controversy
00:31:15absolutely gets you recognized, but you don't have to make that trade.
00:31:20You can't absolutely just build a strong, positive brand.
00:31:22Mother Teresa has a strong, positive brand.
00:31:24A lot of people know her, influenced a lot of behavior, did a lot of good stuff.
00:31:27Most people are like, I hate Mother Teresa.
00:31:29Some people do, but most people don't.
00:31:32And the same thing goes with Apple.
00:31:34A lot of people like their products.
00:31:36I'm sure there are some tech geeks that are like, Android's way better, right?
00:31:40Or like PC's awesome.
00:31:40And that's great.
00:31:41That's good for them.
00:31:42But the vast majority of people who encounter the product like it, which is
00:31:45why they're one of the largest companies in the world.
00:31:50So all those examples that I gave to you up to this point have assumed a large
00:31:53audience, and I do that because this is a prostitution and it makes more sense for
00:31:56me to work with you on stuff that you already know, but this concept carries
00:32:00independent of whether you have large reach, and this is why it applies to you.
00:32:03So if you had a small audience with high influence, what would you have?
00:32:07Got mom and dad.
00:32:09They are high influence as in most people when they see their
00:32:15parents, their behavior changes.
00:32:17They have low reach because for you, they're only your parents.
00:32:21They might not have any other people's parents, but not very
00:32:25many people's parents as you have low reach.
00:32:27And it will be your behavior will towards for some and a way for others.
00:32:33Meaning some people hate their parents that don't want to do anything they say.
00:32:36And some people like their parents to do whatever they say.
00:32:38And there's a lot of people in between.
00:32:39And so that's how we measure if what we're doing to grow our
00:32:43brand is actually working.
00:32:44Are more people finding out about it?
00:32:47Are more people changing their behavior when they do it?
00:32:49And ideally, are they doing that towards the direction that we want them to go?
00:32:52So if I say, Hey, everybody go click here, go download this thing, go attend this
00:32:56event, go buy this product, whatever it is, if a lot of people do that, then
00:33:01we know that the brand is growing.
00:33:02And so we want, when we want to build our brand, we want to pair our stuff with the
00:33:08things, the highest percentage of our ideal audience like, and so whenever we pair
00:33:12anything with a brand, because especially if you're starting out, everything is new.
00:33:16And so every new pairing has risk.
00:33:18And so you risk losing a certain percentage of your audience who has a
00:33:22bad experience with the thing you pair.
00:33:23There's always that risk.
00:33:25There's always going to be some people who don't like something you do.
00:33:27If anyone's seen a small town band, go hit it big.
00:33:30Some of the old towners are like, Oh, they sold out.
00:33:33They did whatever.
00:33:34But what they did was they gambled the short-term loss of that local audience,
00:33:38potentially, for a much broader, bigger audience.
00:33:41So they made a bet.
00:33:41They did lose people.
00:33:42They did gain people.
00:33:43They just gained more than they lost.
00:33:45And so to the same degree, when you make that bet as the local band,
00:33:48you risk gaining other people who have had a positive experience with this new thing.
00:33:52And ideally we have more green than red.
00:33:54And so those news pairings, the new pairings you make with a
00:33:58brand always lose audience, right?
00:33:59He sold out.
00:34:00I like the old stuff better.
00:34:01This also happens with content, by the way.
00:34:03And so this person is the red bucket.
00:34:05Fantastic.
00:34:06And the new stuff might also cause people to say, no, this new stuff rocks.
00:34:11And that person is in the green bucket.
00:34:14And so whenever you try to grow and you make any new pairing, meaning you
00:34:18make new content, you make a new genre, you make a new song, you make a new
00:34:23anything, you make a bet that more people from your ideal audience will like
00:34:28the pairing than people who don't.
00:34:29TLDR that you'll net an increase in reach, influence, and positive direction.
00:34:34And so my ask for word here is don't let the five mean comments
00:34:40stop you from gaining the 500 new people who like the new thing.
00:34:45So let me finish the real life example to make this whole thing real for you.
00:34:47I want to associate myself with business value.
00:34:50So I associate myself with making people money and growing their businesses.
00:34:55So there's me, there's me making content and then ideally money.
00:34:59And so the best way I can do this is make content for the small business
00:35:03owner kits to consume and books for them to read and use so that they then profit.
00:35:09The good thing.
00:35:12And then they associate that growth and profit with me.
00:35:17And so then they consume more of my stuff.
00:35:19They drink the next soda, they buy the next shirt.
00:35:23And so the next time they want it to happen again, they take the action or they
00:35:28have a higher likelihood of taking the desired action and equally important.
00:35:32People who don't like business stuff, won't like my stuff, or they'll
00:35:36just prefer to watch other things.
00:35:37So you've got this married couple.
00:35:38They say, we hate people who talk about money.
00:35:40They're probably not going to like my stuff.
00:35:42And that's okay.
00:35:44But people who like business, have a business, or are trying
00:35:52to start one might want more.
00:35:53And this grows the brand because people consume the stuff and they say,
00:35:57Hey, you got to check out Horosi stuff.
00:35:58And then that person, they tell it to you, says right on, they check it out.
00:36:01They get that positive outcome.
00:36:03They make the pairing as well.
00:36:04And the brand grows.
00:36:05And ideally with my ideal audience.
00:36:07And so to see this in action, if you use this information from today to make
00:36:12money, good branding has occurred.
00:36:15And so I said, I was going to cover three things.
00:36:18What branding is ideally what good branding is.
00:36:20Why it makes you money and how to start and grow yours.
00:36:23So hopefully you feel like I've fulfilled those three things.
00:36:25And so now we can test if the pairing good branding actually occurred.
00:36:30So if you were my ideal customer, so here's a business owner.
00:36:34Okay, awesome.
00:36:36Lot of you, fantastic.
00:36:37We can see objectively of this provided value.
00:36:41Did we get a good positive outcome, a neutral outcome, or a negative one?
00:36:45You might be like, I hate this guy to talk about money or you know what?
00:36:47I think this could make me a ton of money.
00:36:48Well, we'll see.
00:36:49So I want you further as soon as I save myself with value in making you
00:36:54money and growing your business.
00:36:55So I'm going to give you guys two gifts for free.
00:36:57The first is for existing business owners who want to scale.
00:37:00So I want you guys to raise your hands.
00:37:01I have two books, a hundred million dollar offers, a hundred million dollar leads.
00:37:05People say they made them money.
00:37:07There's a lot of five star reviews on them.
00:37:09Fantastic.
00:37:11And I made video versions of these books that you can get absolutely free on
00:37:14my site at acquisition.com/training.
00:37:16This is me further associating.
00:37:18If you, if you like this, you're going to love that.
00:37:21And they'll make you more money for free.
00:37:24That's what it looks like on the inside.
00:37:25These are legit courses.
00:37:26And you can get those video versions on my site.
00:37:29Again, absolutely free.
00:37:30acquisition.com/training.
00:37:31Now, if you're like, man, I don't like watching stuff.
00:37:35I like listening to stuff.
00:37:36I want to provide value for a different type of ideal audience, which is
00:37:40still business owners, but business owners who listen rather than business
00:37:43owners who watch, which is also fine.
00:37:44And so if you are somebody who's not a reader or not a watcher, I've got the
00:37:48books on my podcast, absolutely free.
00:37:51Called the game.
00:37:52They started episode five 70 something.
00:37:55And so that's what I have for business owners who here is earlier on.
00:37:58And they're like, I want to start a brand.
00:38:00Okay, cool.
00:38:01So this is for you.
00:38:03So I just became a co-owner of school.com really awesome platform helps
00:38:06people get started the business.
00:38:08And so anybody here who watches this or listening to this and wants the tools,
00:38:12the training, and a community of other people, starting brands with a little
00:38:17friendly competition and some prizes.
00:38:18We made a step-by-step process on school to help you get started
00:38:22and you can start for free.
00:38:24So hopefully I succeed in providing value and a good pairing occurred.
00:38:28Ideally good branding happened.
00:38:30Otherwise I'm sorry for everybody else.
00:38:32I hope good branding occurred.
00:38:34And for those of you who either start the school games for free or use
00:38:37my stuff to grow your business.
00:38:39I will see you guys soon.
00:38:40So go to school games, school.com/games, activism.com/training.
00:38:44And I'll see you guys all there.
00:38:46Thank you guys so much for your time.
00:38:47So next I want to talk about how I gave 7.8 million followers in just
00:38:50three months and the six key lessons that you can use today.
00:38:52Let's rock.
00:38:53So you guys want to hear something absolutely insane.
00:38:55Well, in the last 40 months, My YouTube grew from zero to 2.23 million subscribers.
00:39:03My Instagram grew from 7,000 to two and a half million subscribers.
00:39:08Followers, you get the idea.
00:39:09My LinkedIn went from zero to 324,000 followers.
00:39:12My TikTok went from zero to 856,000 followers.
00:39:17My Twitter slash X artists, formerly known as Twitter went from zero to 617,000.
00:39:24My Facebook, which we just started went from zero to 25,000.
00:39:28There we go.
00:39:28Going in big Facebook.
00:39:30My podcast went from 3,000 downloads to 25 million downloads.
00:39:34And my email subscribers went from zero to 700,000 for a grand total of two billion
00:39:41impressions over that time period and 7.8 million new subscribers.
00:39:47And for a grand total of a million copies sold of my book.
00:39:52For those of you who are like, well, what does that mean?
00:39:54And I'll get to that in a second.
00:39:55So in 40 ish months, all of that happened.
00:39:59And I show all of this as proof to start this, to show one thing
00:40:05is that this actually works.
00:40:08And you can build a brand without babes, without stunts or kittens.
00:40:16And I start this proof because lots of people talk about stuff that they haven't
00:40:20done and teach a lot of sucky fluff.
00:40:23As a result, you can see the man there.
00:40:25He's saying the truth.
00:40:26This, this fluff sucks.
00:40:29And I refuse to do that.
00:40:30And so before we got the two billion impressions and the 7.8 million
00:40:35subscribers, it wasn't like this because 40 months ago I started with zero
00:40:40subscribers and a big quote, fancy plan.
00:40:43And my fancy plan had three steps.
00:40:47Step one, make as much good stuff as I could.
00:40:50Step two, post it everywhere I could.
00:40:53And step three, learn as much as I could.
00:40:57And after 40 ish months, $4 million in team, equipment, vendors, studios, and
00:41:05software, a thousand hours of me on camera recording and 35,000 pieces of content.
00:41:13Let me say that again, 35,000 as in count to a thousand, and then
00:41:18do that 35 times in a row.
00:41:20I learned a lot of what not to do, but I did learn six things that made
00:41:27money and grew my brand that you can use today.
00:41:30Now, what I'd like to do is for the remainder of the presentation, save you
00:41:36the three and a half years and $4 million.
00:41:39So you can just get the lessons without the scars.
00:41:42So that little box is our box of six lessons.
00:41:45Cool.
00:41:46All right, let's rock.
00:41:48So here are the six changes that we observed over the last four 40
00:41:53ish months that actually worked.
00:41:56Number one, going from edutainment to education.
00:42:00Number two, for us to, for you.
00:42:03Number three, wide to narrow.
00:42:05Number four, views to revenue.
00:42:08Number five, shorts to longs.
00:42:10Number six, assume more to assume nothing.
00:42:14Now, most of those, I promise you, I will explain.
00:42:18And if it looks like a, I think I know what that means.
00:42:20Believe me, there's a lot more underneath of it.
00:42:23So let's start with the first one edutainment to education.
00:42:26So I see content in three buckets on one extreme.
00:42:31You've got entertainment, which is the entire point of entertainment.
00:42:35Just to define the term is to get people to watch.
00:42:38The only point of the entertainment is to just get people to consume it.
00:42:42That's it.
00:42:43If it accomplishes that it has succeeded.
00:42:45On the other side, you have education where the point of education is to
00:42:51get someone to change what they do.
00:42:52Right?
00:42:52If you try and teach someone how to answer a phone.
00:42:55And then in the same situation, the phone rings and they don't do something.
00:42:58And then after they watch you do something, they then change what they do.
00:43:02And the phone rings the second time they have learned.
00:43:04So the point is to change their behavior.
00:43:05If educate, if the video or the content does that, then you
00:43:09succeeded at educating them.
00:43:10And lastly, you have edutainment, which has the point of both trying to
00:43:15teach and entertaining at the same time.
00:43:19And to be clear, it's less that you make entertaining content or that
00:43:23you make educational content.
00:43:24It's more that you make content and people are either entertained
00:43:29or educated as a result.
00:43:31And so you can mix one thing that entertains some people.
00:43:37And then that same thing educates other people.
00:43:40And so I just want to make this very clear that you don't control the audience.
00:43:45You make something and then education or entertainment occurs.
00:43:49But for our purposes, I'll define the content category as the most
00:43:53common outcome of your content.
00:43:54And so if a lot of people are entertained, then you've made entertaining content for
00:43:59the purpose of this presentation, even if one or two people learn something.
00:44:02So for example, some creators might learn stuff from MrBeast videos.
00:44:06Well, I learned how to make videos, but the vast majority of people are entertained.
00:44:09They watch just to watch.
00:44:11On the other hand, Wala, who's one of the number one educators on YouTube.
00:44:15You can even see the different looking fields and don't worry, I'm going to get into that.
00:44:19He may entertain some enthusiasts around that subject, but mostly he educates students.
00:44:25And until recently, I've been trying to figure this out.
00:44:29I've spent a lot of time really working through this.
00:44:32And so I actually have videos in all three buckets.
00:44:35I have entertainment videos where the point is to get people to watch.
00:44:37I've edutainment videos where we try and teach and entertain at the same time.
00:44:41And then we have education videos where we just want to change people's behavior.
00:44:45We just want to teach them something.
00:44:47And so the first change, number one, that we see over lots of data, I'll support in a second,
00:44:51is that I'm going all in on education for three reasons.
00:44:55Number one is that we looked at all of our data.
00:44:58All views are not created equal.
00:45:00I'll dive into that in a second.
00:45:01Number two is I like educational videos.
00:45:03And number three is I like people who like educational videos, too.
00:45:08And or people who educate themselves, people who want to learn.
00:45:11And so let me explain these.
00:45:13So all views are not created equal.
00:45:16So there's this theory and this is going to this will be one that's going to rattle some cages.
00:45:20There's a theory that media works like a funnel.
00:45:23In fact, the vast majority of marketing infographics and things like that, almost all are funnels.
00:45:28And the theory goes like this, you make entertaining content.
00:45:34And then the theory states that people who watch that content then will go to more educational content.
00:45:41OK, sounds simple enough, we've got something wide, we've got something narrow, fantastic.
00:45:46But in our experience, in my experience and based on our book sales, based on our email
00:45:53opt ins and based on the applications we receive at acquisition.com to become portfolio companies,
00:45:57it works much more like this, which is that entertainment people want more entertainment content
00:46:04and education people want more, say with me, education content.
00:46:09And so, in other words, these people do not become these people.
00:46:16Not in any appreciable rate that we would build a business around.
00:46:19And they certainly don't read the books, join the email list or apply to become portfolio businesses.
00:46:25So if I want more of these people, then they deserve the stuff that they value.
00:46:33And so that's the first reason that I'm doubling down on education.
00:46:37All views are not created equal.
00:46:39Number two, the next is that I simply like doing it.
00:46:42All right, so, you know, I do believe that you should try and do stuff that you like doing and if it
00:46:47happens to also be aligned with your goals, awesome.
00:46:48It's much tougher when the thing you like doing isn't aligned with your goals.
00:46:51But in this instance, when I got that first piece of data, I was like, thank God, because this is stuff
00:46:55I like making most.
00:46:55All right. And so when I talk to ideal customers in my mind, they are business owners and business
00:47:01interested people, because if you know me and anybody who's close to me would probably attest to this
00:47:06is that like if you hang out with me for any amount of time, we will probably talk about business
00:47:11because it's what I love talking about. I eat it.
00:47:13I sleep it. I drink it.
00:47:14I work seven days on it.
00:47:15And like I skip holidays for it because for me it is the holiday.
00:47:18So this is what I like doing.
00:47:21And this is what the people that I like serving also like.
00:47:24And so they like it better, too.
00:47:27And this is where it got confusing for me leading up to this.
00:47:32And why this is so important is that it got very confusing when you have so many people saying, man, I
00:47:38really like the entertaining content.
00:47:39And this is where it gets difficult.
00:47:41This is where you have to read between the lines of the comments rather than just reading the comments
00:47:45themselves.
00:47:46All right.
00:47:47Because the thing is, is for us, or at least for me, they weren't necessarily who I was trying to attract.
00:47:53Again, there's nothing wrong with that.
00:47:54I mean, hey, if I could serve the whole world, I will.
00:47:56But I know that I tend to do better serving people who want to educate themselves than people who just
00:48:02want to watch or consume just for the sake of it.
00:48:06And so that's why I'm doubling down on going from edutainment, some edutainment, some entertainment to
00:48:12education.
00:48:13So that's number one.
00:48:14So let's talk about change number two that we saw.
00:48:17Going from for us to for you, you know, what does that mean?
00:48:20Let me explain.
00:48:21So recently, a mutual friend came to the headquarters and he said, hey, I've been consuming your stuff for
00:48:26years, but recently I just haven't been watching as much.
00:48:29And he said it offhandedly.
00:48:30He wasn't like trying to smash my ego into bits.
00:48:33And he failed at that.
00:48:37But when he said it, I really took it to heart, right?
00:48:39It was very gut wrenching.
00:48:40He said it just doesn't resonate as much.
00:48:42I was like, OK, got it.
00:48:43It felt like a gut punch since he's literally the person I could help most.
00:48:47This is a business owner doing 10 million plus a year.
00:48:49And I was like, man, well, that sucks.
00:48:51And that's when I realized that reading the comments actually led me a little bit astray.
00:48:56And for you, it might be leading you astray.
00:48:58And I'll give you some data to support that.
00:49:00And so some people loved our different styles, but not the people that I ultimately wanted to help.
00:49:05Or am best suited to serve.
00:49:07And so we realized that we were serving the wrong who.
00:49:10And that had some very significant downstream impacts on what we made and how we made it.
00:49:16So what is making for them or for business owners content really mean?
00:49:22Let me break this down into tactics.
00:49:23All right.
00:49:24So tactically, it meant five things.
00:49:25Number one, different packaging.
00:49:29Number two, different introductions.
00:49:32Number three, different meat.
00:49:35Number four, different visuals.
00:49:37And number five, different what I'll call pre-work.
00:49:40All right.
00:49:41So let's start with number one.
00:49:42So the difference between these two thumbnails is going from vague to clear.
00:49:47All right.
00:49:48So if I looked at all the stuff that we did in the past, if I said, what is the video on the left about?
00:49:52You'd probably be like, I a rule of some sort that might have to do with money.
00:49:57Not sure if I said, what's the what's the video on the right?
00:50:01The yellow background video.
00:50:02If I were to describe it, I'd probably say a map.
00:50:06Or a blueprint or schematics of some sort that go from zero to a million.
00:50:09Okay.
00:50:10Well, guess what?
00:50:11The one on the right is exactly that.
00:50:15The one on the left actually has nothing to do with what that thumbnail looks like.
00:50:19And what do you know?
00:50:21When people click on something that they don't know what it's about, they have a smaller percentage of getting something they actually want.
00:50:26Then if you say this is what this is about, and then they get exactly what they think it's about.
00:50:31So we're going from vague to clear in both what it looks like the thumbnails and what we say about it, the headlines.
00:50:38So that's number one from a packaging perspective that we will be changing and or going more all in on.
00:50:44And I want to take a pause here for a second about this.
00:50:48There was also kind of a pervasive narrative in in the kind of marketing world.
00:50:52It's like you got to have curiosity.
00:50:53You got to like you don't want to tell them everything you want them to be able to get.
00:50:57No, like if they want that thing, they will click on that thing and then you just give them that thing.
00:51:02And that has been a very hard lesson for me to learn.
00:51:05And so I share it with you now.
00:51:06So the second is different introductions.
00:51:09You guys feeling this?
00:51:10OK, good.
00:51:11OK, different introductions.
00:51:13Now, this one is really big.
00:51:15So going from confirming the thumbnail or confirming the headline to proof, and this is super important.
00:51:23I'll explain the difference.
00:51:24So a lot of the things that I learned, like many of you, if you are trying to get into content creation of any sort or media, is that you look at the people who are who are the biggest.
00:51:32Right. And so oftentimes the biggest people in media are entertainers.
00:51:37Now, why is that? Because everyone gets value from entertainment.
00:51:41But there is no one thing from an education perspective that can provide value to everyone.
00:51:46Why? Because everyone already knows different stuff.
00:51:49So if I educate a wide slice of people, there's still already people who know that thing.
00:51:54And then do not get value.
00:51:55So entertainment, by definition, will always be greater or larger, the followings for those people than people who educate.
00:52:02There is no bones about it like it is that way.
00:52:05And so a lot of the lessons that entertainment teaches, everyone listens to because they have the biggest followings.
00:52:12But I don't think the actual tactics they subscribe or espouse are correct at a tactical level.
00:52:19At a principle level, yes.
00:52:21And so let me just say a second about what that principle is.
00:52:25Is that the person who's going to consume the content, we want to increase their perceived likelihood that they will get what they clicked.
00:52:33So just like the headline and just like the thumbnails.
00:52:35Now, when they said an entertainment, you want to confirm it.
00:52:38Well, that's because most of the sensational entertainment is something crazy.
00:52:43And so the likelihood that someone just got the click so that they could not do that crazy thing is pretty high.
00:52:49And so if you want people to watch you smash the Lamborghini, then you better have the Lamborghini next to you or people are going to believe that you're actually going to smash it.
00:52:55Now, let's flip to entertainment for a second.
00:53:00Sorry, let's switch to education for a second.
00:53:03If I say I'm going to teach you a physics thing, I'm going to teach you about the law of, I don't even know what the first law of physics is, but if you push it, it will move, something like that.
00:53:14Anyways, if I want to have proof or increase the perceived likelihood that they're going to be well taught, then what I actually have to do is edify the person.
00:53:27Why should I listen to you?
00:53:29If I'm the viewer, there's a zillion people that could write something on a board.
00:53:33But if you're a PhD physicist, then the likelihood that I will listen to you and that I will get what I want is much higher.
00:53:39And so in both of these examples, we are actually doing the same thing, but we do it differently if you want to educate.
00:53:45And for me, when I looked at my videos and I'll explain the data in a second, it became really clear.
00:53:50And so in entertainment, it's say the title again and then literally show them what was on the thumbnail.
00:53:57In education, it's show them that you can do what you promised them in the thumbnail.
00:54:01And that's the difference.
00:54:04And to figure out what made intros for our videos work, I actually re-watched my top 35 educational videos.
00:54:11This actually took some time.
00:54:13And so let me just save you like a lot of hours and just give you the nugget.
00:54:16And so I actually developed a new moniker around how to think about introductions for ourselves that I'm spreading throughout my whole team and you can just steal it.
00:54:25Proof, promise, plan.
00:54:29So I'll break down all three of these.
00:54:32So all of the introductions of the best education videos that we had, had these three characteristics.
00:54:39And I want to make one point about the order of these is that you can have these three mixed in any order you want.
00:54:46I would emphasize the one that is the most important for that particular piece of content.
00:54:50So if you have something that you're making that you think the proof is going to be really important, then lead with that.
00:54:55If you have a promise that's incredibly important for the audience, then lead with that.
00:54:59If you have a plan that for some reason is going to be more emphasized, then lead with that.
00:55:03But I would say that for our content for the most, because I'm a business educator about making money in general.
00:55:08Most people have this big glaring sign above their head before they can even turn on the volume of their brain, which is why should I listen to you?
00:55:16And so I tend to lead with proof.
00:55:18And so proof is that you prove that you know what you're talking about.
00:55:22You give people a reason to believe you.
00:55:24The promise is to tell them what they're going to get or learn from the video.
00:55:29And the plan sets the expectations of what will happen next.
00:55:32So let me give you a real world example of this.
00:55:35I started this presentation with data that shows that I've done what I'm talking about.
00:55:39If I went up here and just skipped this part, you might be like, OK, all of this up to this point, why should I listen to you?
00:55:45And you'd be right in thinking that because you have no idea who I am.
00:55:48I could just be some random dude who looks like a Birkenstock, slightly lumberjack-ish, weirdly dressed man.
00:55:54Like, why would you listen?
00:55:55And you'd be reasonable to believe that, right?
00:55:58But if you start with that, then you're like, OK, well, you know something.
00:56:00The promise was what I said you would get at the beginning.
00:56:05I said, I learned six things that made money and grew my brand that you can use today.
00:56:08And I'm going to save you four million dollars in three and a half years and you'll just get all the lessons that I learned.
00:56:12That was the promise.
00:56:14Making sense? OK.
00:56:16And then finally, at the plan, I said, how are we going to get there?
00:56:19How am I going to complete that promise?
00:56:20I said, well, there's six changes and I'm going to walk through them.
00:56:22That's the plan.
00:56:24And so leading with those things, we found got business owners or the people that I'm interested in to actually better frame and perceive and get educated on the content that we're talking about.
00:56:34And so that's what we're changing out of our introductions.
00:56:37Third, now let's talk about how this strategy changes the meat of the content, what we're actually like the real bones, the potatoes.
00:56:45All right.
00:56:46Is that going from be real slash vlog stuff, because we have made that, to list steps and stories.
00:56:53When we looked at the educational content, they did the best.
00:56:55They had more of the right and less of the left.
00:56:58From razzle, I would love to say to dazzle, but really it's just razzle on the left.
00:57:03And so I actually wanted to show a different type of content.
00:57:05So I don't want to make this seem like this is all YouTube.
00:57:07I just have like long form video.
00:57:09There has all of the elements and some platforms don't have all of them.
00:57:12So YouTube is a very easy platform to base this off of.
00:57:15But this is from Instagram and TikTok would function the same way, et cetera.
00:57:19So if you look at the squares here, I just pulled the last 30 days of content that we made and I looked at our bottom performing over the last 30 days that we posted that were reels.
00:57:29And then I looked at the top.
00:57:31Now, interestingly, it was almost a perfect reversal.
00:57:36So the bottom 12 videos that we made, eight out of 12, I would say had more razzle emphasized.
00:57:44It was more about effects, a little bit higher production.
00:57:48And on the flip side, and this is what was crazy.
00:57:51And this is why I'm sharing this stuff with you, because like I would I would literally never have guessed it.
00:57:54And that's why we look nine out of 12.
00:57:57Seventy five percent of the best videos we had emphasized language, emphasized the actual message more than the production.
00:58:05And so it was about emphasizing the language rather than the razzle.
00:58:09I find this very fascinating.
00:58:11Now, to be really clear, you can have really bad language.
00:58:14You're like poor, vague, unclear language and it won't do well.
00:58:17And you might have razzle that just absolutely crushes.
00:58:19I just look at the trends of 75 percent on this side were this style or this type and 75 percent that weren't as good were this style.
00:58:28Well, then let's do more of this and less of that.
00:58:31And so those are the main meat changers that we're doing in the videos.
00:58:35We're emphasizing language.
00:58:36This also is true with longs as well.
00:58:38So if I go and show you this real quick language that's on the screen and that's one of our best videos ever.
00:58:44And that takes up 70, 80 percent of the video is actually just words.
00:58:47Interesting for me, at least.
00:58:49I mean, I was a little offended because I thought I had a good face, but apparently no one cares.
00:58:54So that's what we're changing about the meat.
00:58:58So let's talk about visuals. This one's a big one.
00:59:00All right. So going from overproduction and I want to be clear, not overproduction, overproduction for the objective.
00:59:09So it's not like we did like my team did anything wrong or anything like that.
00:59:13It's just that if we want to educate, sometimes production distracts from the objective of education.
00:59:18If the point for entertainment is to get someone to watch, then adding lots of things can be a good thing.
00:59:24But if you're trying to learn physics and there's whiz bangs and pop ups and changing backgrounds, it's really hard to learn.
00:59:32And if that's the throughput or that's the point of the video, that it actually detracts rather than adds.
00:59:38And so the difference that I put in this example here is we have a background that changes colors while I'm teaching something.
00:59:43It does not help someone understand the subject matter better.
00:59:46Fundamentally, changing background color will not help anyone learn more.
00:59:49On the flip side, clarifying what words on a screen, because maybe my handwriting is not that good, would help people understand.
00:59:57That's the difference. So overproduction to effective production.
01:00:02From distracting to enhancing. From visual effects to visualizing data.
01:00:09So instead of having flames behind me, it's what does this look like on a chart?
01:00:14So we can give relative scale, so we have scope, so we can show changes over time.
01:00:17And so that's how the visuals that did the best looked like.
01:00:24And then number five, let's talk about pre-work for a second.
01:00:29So going from post-production to pre-search.
01:00:33So instead of saying, hey, let's just record something and then fix it in post.
01:00:37Anybody who's in the media side knows what I'm talking about.
01:00:39Four weeks of editing after, you know, almost no prep to get a video out.
01:00:44Well, what if we did four weeks of research and then we have almost no editing because we thought of everything ahead of time?
01:00:49Well, guess what? The videos where we spent, I mean, the hour to hour ratio is stupid and I'll get to that in a second.
01:00:58But if we spend a quarter of the time that we used to spend on post in pre, we eliminate 90 percent,
01:01:0690, maybe 95 percent of our post edit work and man hours.
01:01:12And for the business owners in the room, that's real cost.
01:01:15That's real savings. And for the also business owners in the room, that also means increased production.
01:01:21So if I can take the quarter of the time and I can get almost zero time on the back end, that's four times the videos.
01:01:28But not only is it four times the output, it's also higher quality for your goal and your audience.
01:01:34So this is a big thing that we notice.
01:01:36The videos that we spent the most time on the front end, we spent less time on the back and they did better.
01:01:40And so we want to spend more time before than after.
01:01:44And so this is my little quote.
01:01:46If you want to write something down, an ounce of pre-work is worth a pound of post.
01:01:51So that was my little my little take on this.
01:01:54And so by focusing more on what educates and what it means, we do great.
01:01:58And everything else distracts from that goal.
01:02:00And so those are the five things that we're changing tactically and that we're doubling down on to cater to business owners.
01:02:08This, at least for my audience, is what they cared about.
01:02:11And I happen to be in that audience and I feel that way, too.
01:02:14So I'm happy about it. So that's how we went from for us as media people to a degree, because I've gotten into this now,
01:02:22to for you or for your audience.
01:02:24And for me, that means for business owners.
01:02:26So now let's talk about wide to narrow.
01:02:29All right. And this will also ruffle some feathers and rattle some cages.
01:02:33So instead of talking about relationships and college and food and lifestyle.
01:02:40I'm going to be narrowing down or doubling down on, if you will, business, business models, business leverage and selling in a business.
01:02:52Notice business being in all of these videos and all these topics.
01:02:56And so that's how I'm going narrow. Very simple.
01:02:59Now that I'm going to go back a slide because I want to head on this for a second.
01:03:05Just like I said earlier, that people who like entertainment also just want more entertainment.
01:03:12What we also found is that people who go back quick, people who watch relationship stuff, want more relationship stuff.
01:03:20And as they should, that's what they clicked on.
01:03:23That's what they want. That makes sense.
01:03:24And people who want to learn about college are people trying to make a decision about college.
01:03:28Guess what those people probably aren't? Business owners.
01:03:30And people who want to learn about food, they watch other food videos.
01:03:35And people who want to learn about lifestyle probably watch other lifestyle videos.
01:03:38But for me, those are not necessarily the people that vibe the most with my stuff.
01:03:44And that makes sense because to be fair, this is a little bit more foreign to me.
01:03:47When I talk about business, I feel very comfortable.
01:03:49When I talk about these things, I just give what I would consider hot takes.
01:03:52This is my perspective.
01:03:53So that is what we're doubling down on in terms of the topics that we're choosing for the content we make.
01:04:01So that's number three. Let's go number four in terms of the things we're doubling down on.
01:04:07So before this, we used to track views.
01:04:10This is another big one. Man, all six of these are big.
01:04:12Man, I'm glad I made a presentation about it.
01:04:14So for this, we used to track views as our primary metric.
01:04:18So I'll take a second here.
01:04:19Who uses, be honest, be honest.
01:04:22Everybody's like, likes don't, you can't trade likes for paying rent.
01:04:26You can't pay payroll with views.
01:04:27Sure. OK. Got it.
01:04:28Who here actually tracks something besides views?
01:04:31Say it again. Who makes views the most important metric you track?
01:04:36All right. Right.
01:04:39A lot of you. That's OK. Me too.
01:04:41But I'm going to give you a good metric that you can track.
01:04:43And this is after pouring through, believe me, I'm a big data guy.
01:04:47A metric that you might not expect.
01:04:49So the main reason is that I had a six to 12 month deal cycle.
01:04:54So I started by using views because I really had no other metric because for those you don't know what I do.
01:04:59Well, I'll explain in a second. But we had no idea what it would do besides driving awareness.
01:05:03And I didn't really have any other objective.
01:05:05Right. But in that time period of doing a deal in every six to 12 months because we buy companies, that's more or less what we do.
01:05:10We begin seeing a much closer correlation with faster feedback metrics.
01:05:14And ideally, in any business, you want as little latency between the metrics you track and the behavior you want to change.
01:05:20And so if you want to get people to change something and you want to look at something that takes a year to get feedback, really tough to change behavior.
01:05:27But if you can have a metric that you can see daily changes or hourly changes, then those are things that are going to much more quickly change behavior so that you can have 100 feedback loops in terms of changing and getting better than one every year.
01:05:41And so besides book sales, opt-ins, and applications, there was a metric that stood out as fastest and most measurable.
01:05:48It was ad revenue. And this is really surprising to me.
01:05:52So this is the point I want to make real quick, is that to be clear, for those who don't know who I am, ad revenue is not how I make my money.
01:05:58Just very clearly. For those who don't know, my wife and I exited our first big company for $46.2 million in December 2021.
01:06:06You can Google it. American Pacific Group was the private equity firm.
01:06:09Jim Lauter, Prestige Labs were two of those companies. And since then, we invested and bought a number of companies that have grown a lot and do over $200 million a year.
01:06:15So I do media to feed a lot of different things, but I don't directly monetize the media.
01:06:21And like ad revenue is, I'll explain why in a second, is an important metric that we can use for everything else.
01:06:27OK, so these are companies that we own. Great.
01:06:30So for me, I pretty much always ignored ad revenue and just saw it as something that could offset some of the cost of my media team.
01:06:35There's really nothing else.
01:06:37But I was wrong. It's actually so much more.
01:06:39So let's let's dive into a little bit for a second.
01:06:42Like, how does ad revenue come to be?
01:06:44So it comes from two things. This number of views times revenue per views.
01:06:48Now, the actual term is RPM, which is revenue per mille, which is French for thousand.
01:06:51But it's number of views times the revenue that you get.
01:06:55OK, per view. Fantastic.
01:06:56So it takes into account. And this is why this is important, because we thought views and that was the only metric we had.
01:07:01But we had to have something to counter it, because otherwise then you get views for view's sake.
01:07:06But we needed a quality metric with a quantity metric, which, by the way, paired metrics.
01:07:10If you're ever tracking something for a department having like number of tickets resolved with rating against the resolution of how well those customer service reps resolve, paired metrics allow you to get to the best or most effective throughput for any department.
01:07:24And I just didn't know enough about media to find out what our paired metric was.
01:07:28And this happens to be a single metric that pairs both.
01:07:32And so it takes account the quality of the audience, which for me was business owners who have amongst the highest spending power.
01:07:38And so RPMs are the highest.
01:07:39Now, so for me, the RPMs go up.
01:07:41It means I'm getting more of the quality people that I want.
01:07:43And so this gave me and my team something that we could shoot for that bounce making videos for the right people who wanted to watch.
01:07:50So, I mean, ideally, we absolutely want to crank views with the right people.
01:07:53And that's what that was able to track for us.
01:07:58And looking backwards, the month with the highest RPMs and ad revenue also created the most book sales, the most opt-ins and the most business applications.
01:08:06And this had nothing to do with how many views we got.
01:08:10In fact, we did kind of an experiment lately where we did 90 days of almost no business stuff.
01:08:15We just did more edutainment and entertainment style content.
01:08:21And our views went through the roof, like way up to 3x what we're accustomed to.
01:08:26But even with the increase in views, our ad revenue dropped by half.
01:08:30So we're actually getting the wrong people.
01:08:33And I share this with you so you don't have to.
01:08:36Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish.
01:08:43I've now done multiple times.
01:08:44And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through.
01:08:50And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business.
01:08:53What the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it?
01:08:57And then what steps we actually took to graduate.
01:08:59And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this.
01:09:05And it works.
01:09:06And it's my gift to you.
01:09:07It's absolutely free.
01:09:08And so the link's in the description.
01:09:09But you just go acquisition.com/roadmap, just enter info, and it'll spit it right back to you all free.
01:09:13And so the nice thing about this from a team perspective, for those of you who do have larger teams and want to translate this over, is that my team now has real-time access to this.
01:09:23So they can see every single piece of content in the ad revenue that it generates.
01:09:27And they can quickly generate baselines in their mind of what's good and what's bad on an objective metric that really is good and bad, rather than just like, hey, this video cranked.
01:09:34Yeah, but it didn't bring any of the right people.
01:09:37We got this thing that had 10 million views.
01:09:38OK, but it drove nothing.
01:09:40Versus we had this video that had 100,000 views and it made more ad revenue than the one that had 10 million.
01:09:47And we saw the corresponding increase in the metrics that matter to us.
01:09:53And so that's why we switched from views being the metric that we're optimizing for to ad revenue, because it's a leading performance indicator.
01:10:00It happens almost in real time rather than something that happens in a big, in arrears, to give a fancy word, later.
01:10:06So that's number four in terms of the things that we're doubling down on.
01:10:09So let's talk about the fifth one.
01:10:12Shorts to longs.
01:10:14All right, this is yet again another big one that's going to ruffle some feathers.
01:10:17So for a long time, the prevailing idea in content marketing was again a funnel.
01:10:23It's like everything's a funnel.
01:10:23All right.
01:10:24And it was believed that shorts viewers got more people to then watch longs.
01:10:31And then those long viewers would then translate into becoming customers.
01:10:34Right.
01:10:35So people watch shorts and then they watch longs and they give you money.
01:10:38Right.
01:10:39That was kind of the prevailing thought.
01:10:40But again, when we looked at the data, it looked more like this.
01:10:45Shorts viewers watch more shorts.
01:10:48And long viewers watch more longs.
01:10:52And customers buy more.
01:10:53And so the point is that these are different audiences.
01:10:57And I will make a note here that this can change my platform.
01:11:02So I might be a long viewer on one platform and a shorts viewer on another.
01:11:07And where I do think the magic happens is where you can have shorts in one thing.
01:11:13And so someone finds you on TikTok, but then they are a longs viewer on YouTube and then
01:11:19they watch your longs there.
01:11:21So I do think there's an element there, but not the way the narrative goes.
01:11:24And so for us, longs drive a lot more conversions than shorts.
01:11:28Conversions being book sales, opt-ins, applications.
01:11:31Right.
01:11:32And business related content, unsurprisingly, brings more business owners than not
01:11:36business related content.
01:11:37And so we are going to double down on more longs about that stuff.
01:11:42And change our short strategy to keep the volume the same, but focus more on business
01:11:47overall.
01:11:49And again, people watch differently on different platforms.
01:11:51So making shorts in order for people to on a different platform watch long still carries as
01:11:58far as we know.
01:11:58So despite the mega obsession with shorts that has kind of prevailed for the last few years
01:12:03because it was a new format of content, we're putting now more emphasis on longs overall.
01:12:08For now, as far as we have data.
01:12:11So that's number five.
01:12:13Now let's talk about the sixth one that I'm going all in on.
01:12:18Assume more to assume nothing.
01:12:20All right.
01:12:21So what does this mean?
01:12:22So let's start with assume more and what that really means broken down.
01:12:26Assume more means I made content assuming people already knew me.
01:12:30Okay.
01:12:32So here's an example.
01:12:35The Alex Tramozzi guide to haters.
01:12:38I might be like, if I don't know who Alex Tramozzi is, or I've never seen that face before.
01:12:42Why do I care?
01:12:44If I see the day in the life of Alex Tramozzi, yet again, I assume everyone knows me in this.
01:12:49I'm sharing these mistakes with you as far as I'm concerned for getting new people into my world.
01:12:53It wasn't made.
01:12:55I assumed like everybody's going to know me.
01:12:57The Alex Tramozzi diet.
01:12:59Everyone knows me.
01:13:00No, they're like, who is this guy?
01:13:02Right.
01:13:03And here's why this matters.
01:13:03If you want your content to bring people who don't know you, which is why many of you guys make content, then you can't assume they do.
01:13:09And so this is what this looks like.
01:13:11Tactically from a headlines perspective, if I were to remake these today, I might try a first crack at business influencer crushes haters and shows how you can too.
01:13:20Okay.
01:13:21So now if I'm clicking, I would understand at least that this guy is a business influencer of some sort and he crushes haters.
01:13:27Okay.
01:13:27Well, I might want to see haters get crushed.
01:13:28Day in the life of $200 million per year CEO.
01:13:31Okay.
01:13:32Now the jet tells me that this Alex Tramozzi from the first one before Alex Tramozzi is maybe rich, or maybe he can afford a private jet.
01:13:38But now I know he's a CEO because I could be a rapper.
01:13:40I could be more realistically, when I walk around the place that I live, all the people that in my community assume that I'm a football player.
01:13:47It's the number one thing.
01:13:48I was like, so you, uh, play football or you're on the hockey team.
01:13:50And, uh, I, I say, no, I can, Nope, nothing wrong with that, but no, that's not what I do.
01:13:55Um, and then the third one there, Alex Tramozzi diet, 16 hour workday, six pack diet for business owners, whatever the point is, is that we actually make it welcoming to everyone.
01:14:05And so here's how we do this tactically within the content itself.
01:14:10So we go from, they know me to introducing yourself every time.
01:14:15So earlier I was like, I'm Alex Tramozzi.
01:14:16This is what I do.
01:14:17This is the, the, the subscribers I've gotten, whatever we introduce ourselves to.
01:14:22They know why they should listen to me tell people why they should listen to you every time.
01:14:28Three, the inside jokes, you know how I get, no, I don't know how you get, please fully explain the reference because that references another piece of content that I haven't seen.
01:14:36Cause it's the first video I've seen from you.
01:14:38And if you tell an inside joke and someone doesn't understand the inside joke, guess where they are on the outside and guess where people don't want to be on the outside and guess where people spend money on the inside.
01:14:50And number four, going from acting like you're already friends to pretending everything goes to people who have no idea who you are.
01:14:58And when you make content, so people who don't know you can enjoy it more do.
01:15:07And for those of you who are worried, cause I can already hear the thoughts that are coming up.
01:15:09So let me just address those right now.
01:15:11I see you.
01:15:11I'm going to lose retention if I introduce myself.
01:15:16Okay, well let's play the equal opposite.
01:15:18Would you rather fewer people know who you are or more people who have no clue?
01:15:22Because on one hand we have some people who know you.
01:15:26And on the other hand, we have lots of people who also don't know you.
01:15:29So you're in the exact same position you were before.
01:15:31Two, well, aren't people going to get sick of this?
01:15:36You're going to keep saying your name every time or keep introducing yourself?
01:15:39Well, from what I can tell, warm people like the reminders and cold people need the introduction.
01:15:45And as a total side note, this is a fun little experiment for everyone here.
01:15:51You can run this when you leave here.
01:15:52Who here actually has posted content in the last year?
01:15:57Okay, good.
01:15:59Okay, good.
01:16:00For a second, I was like, this would have been really bad if no one had raised their hand.
01:16:02Fantastic.
01:16:03Okay, I want you to look at last year and I want you to look at your number one piece of content.
01:16:08And this is what I want you to do.
01:16:09Just post it again.
01:16:13And then let me know how it does.
01:16:15And I will bet you that it does just as well or better than the stuff that you're posting right now.
01:16:22And let me tell you one reason why I believe that to be true.
01:16:25Because if you have been posting consistently, guess what's also happened?
01:16:28More people have entered your audience.
01:16:31And guess what they haven't seen?
01:16:33That amazing piece of content that everyone from last year said was the number one best thing you ever made.
01:16:38And you know what you said?
01:16:39New people, you don't get that.
01:16:40That was only for my old folks.
01:16:42My OGs, they only get that.
01:16:43No, you've got to reintroduce some of the stuff, your greatest hits.
01:16:46You've got to bring that stuff in so that the new people also know what your greatest hits are.
01:16:49So that the lore continues to compound and grow.
01:16:52So, number three.
01:16:55And this one, or sub point.
01:16:57And this is one for me personally.
01:16:59I follow a bunch of quote accounts.
01:17:02I, you know, I like comedy and philosophy and like fighting.
01:17:04There's like kind of categories that I follow and gym equipment.
01:17:07And so I get quotes a lot on my newsfeed.
01:17:10But you know what happens when I see a quote from Sophocles or Epictetus yet again?
01:17:16That reminds me that I should just toughen up and keep going.
01:17:20I like the reminder.
01:17:21I'm not like Epictetus, God, you live 4000 years ago.
01:17:25Like, get over yourself.
01:17:26No, he's not making new content.
01:17:28But guess what? People still post it and people still read it.
01:17:31Because we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.
01:17:33At least I do.
01:17:35To give a little tactical one on this from mainstream, because this might resonate for some of the older people in the crowd.
01:17:42There was this thing called television a while back.
01:17:44Used to be big.
01:17:44Anyways, instead of having it on your phone, it was like this big screen on a wall.
01:17:48It was a whole thing.
01:17:49Anyways, I don't get into it.
01:17:50It's like floppy disk. Regardless, floppy disk.
01:17:53OK. So, so there used to be this thing where at the beginning of every show there was a theme song, right?
01:17:59So they'd be like, cheers, where everybody knows your name.
01:18:01And there's always a little introduction.
01:18:02It says produce by and all that stuff.
01:18:04And if those shows that's been gazillions of dollars on testing chose to think that despite selling more advertising space, it was worth having the same exact theme song introduction for the show.
01:18:19Don't you think it might be worth that for us, too?
01:18:21And here's an interesting thing.
01:18:23The last thing, positive associations and sticks.
01:18:25If you actually get sing song about how you introduce yourself or the things that you relate to you, it starts to become something that people expect.
01:18:32And then they start associating it with all the positive other experiences they had with you.
01:18:35So if I always introduce something a certain way and then I deliver value afterwards, they associate the introduction with the value.
01:18:42And guess who else did they associate that with?
01:18:43You.
01:18:49And so for those of you who are concerned, you can add variety to this, and I want to show you a cool little real world example of this.
01:18:56So The Simpsons has the longest standing show, to my knowledge, that has existed on television.
01:19:02And the introduction is the same.
01:19:05Now, Bart would be like 70 by now or whatever his actual age would be if it was actually humans.
01:19:09But it isn't, right?
01:19:10And every introduction has Bart at some point in detention writing something on the board.
01:19:16For those of you who don't know The Simpsons, every one of the introductions actually changes.
01:19:21Every one of them.
01:19:25And so they still have the introduction that has all the positive associations with the funny times and the humor and the laugh that you've had with the show.
01:19:35But they introduce a tiny bit of variety into them to keep it interesting.
01:19:40And then what happens is people look forward to these introductions because they want to find the Easter egg.
01:19:46The real fans now get catered to, and the new fans don't know about it yet, but they will.
01:19:52And so now you actually serve both sides of the audience, the people who know you and the people who first who are just coming cold.
01:19:58And so that's it.
01:20:01Small variation, same introduction.
01:20:03You let the new people in and you give something to the people who already know you.
01:20:07So, title it like they don't know you.
01:20:11Introduce yourself.
01:20:12Say why they should listen.
01:20:14Prioritize the content that makes sense for strangers.
01:20:16Deprioritizing the vlogs, the hot takes, the opinions, because if you can serve both audiences, serve both.
01:20:23Let the new people in rather than have a wall they have to jump over.
01:20:26Let them in on the joke.
01:20:28Fully explain the references that you make.
01:20:30Make all jokes, inside jokes for everyone.
01:20:33And then finally, mentally act as though you're always talking to a stranger, because if the content does well, you are.
01:20:44At least that's what I'm going to be doing.
01:20:46And so that's the six big change that we're doubling down on.
01:20:49And so now that we cover those changes in my strategy, I just want to get real for a second.
01:20:53Everything has a cost.
01:20:55And it's not that other types of media or other topics or other formats don't work.
01:21:00Obviously, we had a smorgasbord, we had a huge variety of cornucopia, myriad content types that we did over the last 40-ish months.
01:21:09And obviously, we had 7.8 million subscribers and 2 billion views during that time period in a niche audience of business owners.
01:21:15Pretty good.
01:21:16And so it's not to say that other things don't work.
01:21:19I'd even say that my mess-ups also work to a small degree.
01:21:24It's just that they didn't work as well as something else might have.
01:21:27And so the game, at least as I see it in entrepreneurship, is figuring out what's my biggest bang for buck, right?
01:21:34What's the content that gets me the most of everything?
01:21:36Because you only have limited resources.
01:21:38You have time, money, energy, you put it into your team and that goes on to social media or the media that you market on.
01:21:43And then that has output.
01:21:45And so if you can become more efficient with the inputs you get, you get more output on the other side.
01:21:50And so the question becomes, with the resources I have, how can I maximize the number of the right people who find out about my stuff?
01:21:57And so this is something that I live by.
01:22:00Anything works better than nothing.
01:22:02So raise your hand right now if you haven't made a piece of content in 90 days.
01:22:06OK, just do something, because if you do something, you will do better than what you're currently doing.
01:22:12Two, some things work better than others.
01:22:17And three, nothing works forever.
01:22:21And so the requirement of the entrepreneur is to start doing something, see what works better, and then do as much of that as they possibly can for as long as they can until it slows down
01:22:35and then figure out what the next thing to do is.
01:22:37And then do as much as they can with that.
01:22:39So is that helpful in terms of understanding content and media?
01:22:43Awesome. Do you feel like you got at least one lesson without the scar, saved at least a tiny percentage of the $4 million that I spent learning what didn't work so I could show you these six things that do?
01:22:53OK, good. Would you like more stuff like this?
01:22:57OK. Well, then I've got a bunch of stuff that I can give you to help you grow your brand and make some money.
01:23:03That'd be all right? OK.
01:23:05So if you're just starting a business right now, raise your hand.
01:23:08OK, this is for you.
01:23:10I'm the co-founder of the School Games.
01:23:12Inside you'll find courses, full day trainings, the easiest business model they know of to use this media stuff, because it's one thing to say like, oh, great, I just watched this whole thing on media.
01:23:22Now do I do? Well, this gives you somewhere to actually practice it like a sandbox.
01:23:26You can learn it and you learn by doing.
01:23:28This is one of the lowest stakes way to make money.
01:23:30Get your first dollar across the finish line.
01:23:32And so fun fact, something I'm very proud of is that right now 30.44 percent of people finish their first month, make their first dollar online by starting an online community.
01:23:39I think that's pretty cool. And so you can start that for free by going to school.com/games.
01:23:45All right. Tell them I sent you.
01:23:48So that's for everybody. Raise your hand if you're starting a business right now.
01:23:52OK, that's for you.
01:23:53Now, if you're a little further along in your business journey, I've got free stuff for you, too.
01:23:58All right. Trying to feel like Santa Claus today.
01:24:00I wrote these two books right now, which have twenty five thousand five star reviews, and they sold a million plus copies.
01:24:05And I made courses for each of those books that are free on my site.
01:24:10You can go to acquisition.com/training.
01:24:11So if you like this stuff, you want to learn about offers, you want to learn about advertising, more about getting leads, paid ads, content, all of that stuff so that you can start making money within your business or scale it from wherever you are to where you want to go.
01:24:21I've made this stuff for you. These are real courses.
01:24:23It's not barred anywhere. You can click there.
01:24:25Watch them all. All right.
01:24:29See, I put that for myself because this is how I get in the zone.
01:24:32So otherwise, you guys are all amazing.
01:24:34You can go there for stuff that will help you practice this stuff, actually do it in the real world, because if you just walk away from here today and you do not execute anything, you learned nothing.
01:24:46And so for the love of God, just do one of the things so that you can get a tiny percent of that four million dollars and the thirty five thousand pieces of content in the thousand hours that I spent recording.
01:24:55Just do one of them so you can take that lesson for you.
01:24:57Thank you, guys.
01:24:59Now, building your personal brand can sometimes be overwhelming, so I want to help you cut through the noise and give you one more quick tactic that's helped me grow my audience.
01:25:09I'm about to teach you a rarely used method that I use to grow my audience by five million people in under twenty four months.
01:25:17And the crazy thing is, is twenty four months ago, I had less than ten thousand followers and I knew nothing about YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or any of these other platforms.
01:25:25And the reason that I was able to catapult to a top one percent creator in that twenty four month period is using this method that for some reason no one really talks about.
01:25:35Whenever I enter a new space, whether it's trying to learn a new skill, a new platform, a new anything, I realize there's a massive amount of skill deficiency that I have to overcome as fast as humanly possible.
01:25:45And so I can either deploy time or I can deploy money to save myself time.
01:25:51So within the world of organic content, I was like, who can I pay to shortcut my path to getting to where they are?
01:25:56So on one hand, I could go to like celebrities and I did go to some of them and they would give me their strategies.
01:26:01But it was like very personalized and tailored to them.
01:26:03And I didn't think it would apply to like how I run acquisition.com in my daily life.
01:26:07On the other hand, there was like the coaches, gurus, et cetera, that I could go to.
01:26:11And I didn't want to do that because they might be using something that worked like five years ago, which honestly I see all the time.
01:26:16They're like, guys, you've got to do hashtags on YouTube videos.
01:26:19I'm like, what are you talking about?
01:26:20Like that's not true.
01:26:21And the third option, which I ultimately went with, are advertising agencies.
01:26:25And what an agency is, is just a business that sells services of advertising on your behalf.
01:26:31I can pay someone to run ads for me.
01:26:33I can pay someone to cut, edit and distribute content on my behalf.
01:26:37So what I want to do is help you decide whether or not you should use an agency and avoid what I call the agency trap.
01:26:42There's different tiers of agencies.
01:26:44There's the guys who just make stuff and then there's the people who are real pros contextually here for one brand on one platform.
01:26:51A small one might cost three ish, maybe five thousand a month.
01:26:54The more advanced ones are usually in the fifteen to thirty thousand dollars a month.
01:26:58So it's significantly more money.
01:26:59So here's how I use agencies now and how you can too.
01:27:02Phase one is I get what I would consider a basic agency.
01:27:07So long from getting into YouTube, the first step I did was I hired three to five thousand a month agency and they just got me to commit to doing three videos a week.
01:27:13They just trimmed it, which means you take out the oohs and ahhs, put an intro and a thumbnail.
01:27:17The main objective of that first phase was just to get the basics down, forcing me to create content on a regular cadence.
01:27:23Once I have more context, because I've spent three, six months working with them, seeing what the audience likes, then I'm like, OK, now I want to learn everything.
01:27:30So I go from beginner of learning the basics and doing the fundamentals to how do the top creators create on this platform?
01:27:37No business owner should change their business for one client.
01:27:40And so it makes sense for both me and the small agency or for you and a small agency to part ways at some point when your demands for what you want exceed their capacity.
01:27:50So then I work with the much better, more advanced agency works with the top creators to learn all of the more nuanced pieces of the platform.
01:27:58So rather than agree to their initial terms, which is basically pay us as long as humanly possible and we hope you pay until you die.
01:28:03This is exactly what I say.
01:28:05Gather round. I want to do what you do in my business, but I don't know how.
01:28:11I'd like to work with you for six months so I can learn how you do it.
01:28:14Plus, I'll pay extra for you to break down why you make the decisions you do and the steps you take to make them.
01:28:19Then after I get a good idea of how it all works, I'll start training my team on it.
01:28:22And once they can do it well enough, I'd like to change to a lower cost consulting agreement.
01:28:26This way, you can still help us if we run into problems. Are you opposed to this?
01:28:30When you start that way, I like it because you're starting with very clear intentions and you're saying, hey, I'm going to commit to six months.
01:28:35This is what I want from you. And I'm also saying I'm going to continue to pay you after the engagement's over for a much higher leverage,
01:28:40much more profitable consulting engagement. So that's what a lot of agencies would ultimately want.
01:28:45And if I need to pay a little bit more than the agency fee upfront, then I'm willing to do that.
01:28:49I also understand that as I start to train my team on it internally, there will be a period of time where I'm paying both them and my team.
01:28:55So you're paying twice. The thing is, is that when you do that, you're actually building the enterprise value of your business and you're building the asset that you own,
01:29:02rather than being reliant on somebody else who eventually could, if you wanted to, cut you off and then you'd be dead in the water.
01:29:10Or what more realistically happens is they gouge you and they continue to raise their price because they can see how much money you're making from the thing.
01:29:15With that new agency, we ran the same play. Hey, we want to learn from you.
01:29:19We want to understand why you're picking these things. We want to understand the decision making process, et cetera.
01:29:23I start documenting what they're doing into our processes internally.
01:29:27We want to start co-creating. So they're making stuff for us and we're making stuff for us.
01:29:32And eventually our stuff for us starts to be as good and eventually better than the stuff that they make for us.
01:29:37And it should be because I'm only one client of many to them and I'm basically renting them as fractional labor with expertise at a premium.
01:29:46Once your team has the same amount of expertise or more, they should be better because one, they have more time because they're going to fully allocate their time to you.
01:29:53And secondly, because they will always have more context on your brand than an agent will.
01:29:57By having more time and more context, all we have to fill is the gap of expertise.
01:30:02And so once we have the expertise gap, then the in-house team should be better than the advanced team.
01:30:08And then at that point, you decouple and you let them go.
01:30:11You want to make sure that you have a clear deadline for when you want to make that transition.
01:30:15And this is good for a couple reasons. One is because it sets expectations with them.
01:30:18They can also see the LTV and you can talk in terms of that.
01:30:20Let's say it's $6,000 a month. I'm committing to $36,000.
01:30:23All right. So like you're going to get that from me as long as you're not an idiot.
01:30:25But the real real is that your team also knows that you're like, hey, we're one month down.
01:30:30We've got to understand this stuff in five months. Hey, we're two months down.
01:30:32We've got to understand this stuff in four months. And so it drives you towards the outcome of getting your team up to speed faster.
01:30:38Now you have that deadline, but what if your team is not as good as theirs by the time the deadline comes?
01:30:42Well, in my opinion, you either need to change the people or they're not teaching you everything that needs to happen,
01:30:46because if they're low skilled people are doing better than your team, some who is a problem, either them or you.
01:30:51Let's assume that the people are right and maybe it's just a more complex platform, whatever.
01:30:55I keep going until our team matches theirs. Once our team matches theirs, then I drop it off.
01:30:59We downgrade it to a consulting agreement just for insurance.
01:31:01One or two months later, if we feel like we're not learning anything on the calls that we have from a consulting perspective, we cut it.
01:31:06And we do so amicably because we set that as the expectation. That's how I grew my YouTube.
01:31:11So now let's approach the same concept, but on a different platform.
01:31:13I didn't understand TikTok at all. I didn't use it. I wasn't on it.
01:31:17I actually had an agency reach out to me outbound, which is not common for me to accept that.
01:31:21But they said, listen, you do no work. So from a value perspective, the offer was you already have enough content out there.
01:31:27I can repurpose it, make sure it's out of it. I was like, OK, sure.
01:31:29If you want to do all the work and involve me at nothing and just make content for me, sounds good.
01:31:33And so that's what they did. And they started getting traction with the short videos and were like, OK, this stuff works.
01:31:39And then for me, my director of brand actually had a super deep history on short form content.
01:31:45And so normally I would have had that second phase where I would go for that premium agency.
01:31:50But that individual worked at a premium agency.
01:31:53And so I actually bought the SOPs automatically and we were able to massively scale our output on short content within six or so months of working with that original agency.
01:32:04And again, we're on good terms with the person in the agency.
01:32:06If you set the expectation up front, which is I want to learn from you and I want to be transparent about my intentions.
01:32:11And I want to eventually bring this in house because it's my belief that my team will be able to allocate more time to my thing and understand my brand better.
01:32:16And if they had your skills, they will be able to do more output at higher quality than you could ever do.
01:32:21You have to make a margin. I don't. I'm going to cover costs and get five times more output.
01:32:25This is what I believe has married the best parts of agency and the best part of building an enterprise and making a valuable business and avoided the agency trap so many people fall into, myself included.
01:32:36So the first agency experience I ever had was actually really good.
01:32:39I then worked with like 10 more agencies and all of them were terrible.
01:32:43And this is the exact process what happened.
01:32:45So reading directly from 100 million dollar leads.
01:32:48Step one, they got me excited about all the new leads they would bring.
01:32:51Step two, I'd go through an onboarding process that felt valuable and sometimes was.
01:32:55Step three, they assigned their best senior rep to my account.
01:32:58Step four, I saw some results.
01:33:00Step five, they moved my senior rep to the newest customer.
01:33:03Step six, a junior rep starts managing my account.
01:33:06My results suffer.
01:33:07Step seven, I complain.
01:33:09Step eight, the senior rep would come back once in a while to make me feel better.
01:33:12Step nine, the results still never got back to where they were before.
01:33:15And I'd eventually cancel.
01:33:16Step 10, I'd search for another agency and repeat the cycle of insanity.
01:33:19Step 11, for the zillionth time,
01:33:21start wondering why I wasn't getting results like the first time.
01:33:24So how do you decide if using an agency is right for you?
01:33:26First off, do you have more money or more time?
01:33:29If you don't have any money, then you got to learn it.
01:33:31And it's going to take time.
01:33:31And you know what? That's part of life.
01:33:33Usually you master one platform, you get some success,
01:33:35you get a little bit of cash flow,
01:33:36and then you can more quickly pay to learn the other ones.
01:33:39You pay down your ignorance much faster.
01:33:40If you have the money, then for me,
01:33:42it's always worth paying down that debt.
01:33:44And that process is how we approach LinkedIn,
01:33:46how we approach podcasts, how we approach paid ads.
01:33:49All of them, I run the same playbook.
01:33:51But when it comes to building a stronger personal brand,
01:33:53you need to build influence, not just have views.
01:33:56So here's how to do that.
01:33:57We got 32.7 million views on YouTube this month.
01:34:00Here's how.
01:34:01So I posted 35,000 pieces of content this year.
01:34:03We did a $100 million book launch
01:34:05for $100 million money models in 72 hours or three days.
01:34:08We did over $100 million in sales.
01:34:09The issue that most people struggle with
01:34:10is that you're making not enough content, number one,
01:34:13and the types of content that you're making
01:34:14are not attracting the types of customers you want.
01:34:16The promise that I have for you today
01:34:17is that I will show you a framework that I have
01:34:19called SPCL, like special, if you want,
01:34:21but it's how to build influence
01:34:23rather than how to get as many views as possible
01:34:25or anything like that, all right?
01:34:27But it's a four-part framework,
01:34:28and I wanna break down each of the four components for you
01:34:30so that you can think about
01:34:31how you want to approach making content, all right,
01:34:33and building a brand in general.
01:34:35SPCL, these are letters,
01:34:37and hopefully overhead cam works all right.
01:34:38So S-P-C-L.
01:34:42So what do these actually stand for, all right?
01:34:44So number one is status,
01:34:46and this is why you hear me talk about proof so much,
01:34:49but how do you define status from an operational perspective?
01:34:51For those of you who are new to the channel,
01:34:52I like to operationalize things,
01:34:53meaning I like to look at objective reality
01:34:55and describe how you would see with your eyes
01:34:57rather than try and put a whole bunch
01:34:59of emotional words around stuff
01:35:01because that type of language is what confused me
01:35:04for a very long time when I was coming up,
01:35:05and it was only after I started defining things
01:35:07by what I could see, what I could observe,
01:35:09did reality feel like sharper, more crisp to me,
01:35:12and my ability to predict what was going to happen next
01:35:14increased by a lot, and so this is why I talk in this way.
01:35:18So how do I find status?
01:35:19So status is someone who controls reinforcers
01:35:22in a given environment, so that's a little bit fancy word,
01:35:24but fundamentally, if you control the good stuff
01:35:26that people want, then you will have status
01:35:29no matter what it is, right?
01:35:30And so the simplest example I have is like
01:35:32if you go to a bar, and it's a busy bar,
01:35:34and there's a bartender,
01:35:35and you have to get the bartender's attention
01:35:37in order to get a drink or booze,
01:35:39that guy in that moment has status.
01:35:40He controls a scarce resource, right?
01:35:42But if that guy walks out of the bar,
01:35:45no longer controlling that scarce resource,
01:35:46he does not have the same status or even close to it, right?
01:35:49Like outside of the bar, he's not getting tips
01:35:51every single five seconds when he moves his hands
01:35:53a little bit and says something nice.
01:35:54People aren't waving money at him as he walks in the street.
01:35:57Of course not.
01:35:57It's because he has status in one condition,
01:35:59and he doesn't have another.
01:36:00Now what's interesting about all four of these elements
01:36:02I'm gonna break down, they all can work independently,
01:36:05but the idea is that you want all four
01:36:06to be stacked together, and this is what
01:36:08gives you the most influence, right?
01:36:09So like any of these four on their own
01:36:11would give you influence.
01:36:12Like that bartender, if he just has that,
01:36:13he would have some level of influence,
01:36:14and I'll give you a different example of this.
01:36:16If a kid inherits money, right,
01:36:18they're going to have status, right?
01:36:20Like if you have money, even if you didn't earn it,
01:36:23even if you didn't anything, if you have money,
01:36:25you will have some degree of status
01:36:27because you control something other people want, period.
01:36:29That's how it works, all right?
01:36:30But would that kid who has money have the same status
01:36:35as a kid who has money who also gave you, you know,
01:36:4010 different crypto coin picks that all popped off, right?
01:36:43Well if he gave you 10 different picks,
01:36:45and you followed them, and they all popped off,
01:36:47how much more influence would that person have
01:36:49over them saying, "Hey, you should put money in this,"
01:36:51or, "Hey, you should, you know, give me money for XYZ,"
01:36:53or whatever it is, obviously I'm talking money
01:36:54'cause I'm a business person first,
01:36:55but like, think about how much more influence
01:36:57version two would have with just two of those things
01:37:00versus version one.
01:37:00That's the difference, but if you have all four,
01:37:02that's when you get, you become super sad.
01:37:04So, status is number one, so you control scarce resources.
01:37:07Power is number two.
01:37:08I would say if I had to only pick one,
01:37:10I would pick power, and I'll explain why.
01:37:13Power comes from something in the behavioral dynamics role
01:37:16called say-do correspondence.
01:37:18What that means is if I say something,
01:37:21and then you do it, and then a good thing occurs,
01:37:23a reinforcing event happens afterwards,
01:37:25you are more likely to comply with a following request, right?
01:37:29So, said differently.
01:37:31I gave you the example of the guy who says,
01:37:33"Hey, here's 10 stock picks, you buy them,
01:37:34"and then a good thing happens."
01:37:36The thing goes up, great.
01:37:37So, that person has status and power,
01:37:39which is why they are more influential
01:37:40than the trust fund kid who just has money.
01:37:42And so, to the same degree,
01:37:44for many of you who are trying to make content,
01:37:45one is like, okay, status, I want to demonstrate
01:37:49that I control a scarce resource
01:37:50that some people might want, right?
01:37:52And so, what makes this a little bit more muddied
01:37:55is that sometimes one event can check multiple boxes.
01:37:59And so, I'll give you a simple example.
01:38:00When we launched the book,
01:38:01we did 100 million plus in sales.
01:38:03That in and of itself,
01:38:04me having money from the event gives me status.
01:38:07Me saying, "Hey, you can launch stuff in this way,"
01:38:11gives me credibility, right?
01:38:12Because I show that I have an event,
01:38:14I have something that has happened
01:38:15as a result of me doing it
01:38:17that gives me third-party credibility.
01:38:18There's something that you can observe with your eyes, right?
01:38:20The reason that my ads do well
01:38:21when I have my $10 million building behind me
01:38:23is like, oh, well, that's hard to fake, right?
01:38:26And so, you have credibility there.
01:38:27And so, one event, like selling a company,
01:38:30can give you money, it can give you credibility.
01:38:32And then if I give people directions
01:38:33on how they can do things that are similar,
01:38:35and then good things happen,
01:38:37then all of a sudden you get power.
01:38:38And then the last is likeness.
01:38:40I know I'm skipping around, but hey, we're live.
01:38:41We're having a good time, all right?
01:38:42And so, credibility is number three.
01:38:44And I'm gonna go in more detail on all these, all right?
01:38:48And then likeness.
01:38:49So, what's likeness?
01:38:52So, likeness is that you see some,
01:38:55this is some people say relatability.
01:38:56This can be both psychological
01:38:58in terms of you share similar values with this person.
01:39:00You like their vibe, whatever you wanna say, right?
01:39:02You like their behavior set,
01:39:03and that behavior set matches to people
01:39:05who have been positive in your life in the past,
01:39:06or they literally just look like you, right?
01:39:08So, like Layla and I could talk about the exact same stuff,
01:39:11but she's a girl.
01:39:12And so, she's gonna have more chicks who follow her than me.
01:39:15And for the few ladies who do follow me, I appreciate you.
01:39:17I really do.
01:39:18But I have like an 89% male audience.
01:39:21And so, maybe it's because of the topic,
01:39:23but I would think, at my onset, I think,
01:39:24oh, it's because I talk about money
01:39:26and I talk about business.
01:39:27That's why I have a more male audience.
01:39:27But Layla, I think, is like 54% female.
01:39:29And she talks about almost exclusively money and business.
01:39:31Obviously, she talks about some mindset stuff, too.
01:39:33But I say this to say, okay, if we have these four things,
01:39:37and these are the things that create influence,
01:39:39and I would find influence as high likelihood
01:39:42of compliance with requests.
01:39:43So, what does that mean?
01:39:45So, if I say, hey, you know, grab my new book.
01:39:47Or I say, hey, come to this webinar.
01:39:49Hey, I'm going live, like, come check it out.
01:39:51Or hey, you should come to a workshop.
01:39:52Whatever it is, right?
01:39:53You make some sort of solicitation.
01:39:54It could be like or subscribe, it doesn't matter.
01:39:56Like, there's levels of how, quote,
01:39:58big of an ass something is.
01:39:59If anybody's played, like, a video game,
01:40:00it's like you have, like, a role for, like,
01:40:02Dungeons and Dragons.
01:40:03And it, like, depends on how carers matter.
01:40:05How much influence you have.
01:40:06How high of a role, or how low of a role, rather,
01:40:09you'd need in order to be successful with the request, right?
01:40:12And so, if you want to stack that stat for you,
01:40:15then, if you want to min-max your influence, if you will,
01:40:17then you want to stack all four of these things.
01:40:19Okay, you're like, okay, I think I'm following with this.
01:40:21So, how does this relate to content?
01:40:23So, first off, starting from the back, likeness.
01:40:25I think so much more of it is just, like, just be you.
01:40:28There's zero ROI in trying to be or act in a way
01:40:33that is different than who you are.
01:40:35It's a relatively trite message,
01:40:36but, like, most people are NPCs.
01:40:39Most people say pre-recorded scripts.
01:40:41They look at, like, the four different outfit,
01:40:42you know, combinations that exist
01:40:44for different kind of mental stereotypes.
01:40:47It's like, oh yeah, guy who loves barbecue and craft beers.
01:40:51Oh yeah, that's that archetype.
01:40:53I'm just gonna be that archetype.
01:40:54Or you've got, like, hipster bro who likes hipster shit,
01:40:57right, or you've got, you know, like, just bro, right?
01:41:01You've got just, like, stir bro.
01:41:02And people, some will put me in that status,
01:41:04but I also, like, for a few years was wearing, like,
01:41:07sandals that looked, like, really weird.
01:41:09And I wore those, and that was not bro-y at all,
01:41:11but I wore them 'cause they were super comfortable,
01:41:13and I didn't have to, like, wear socks,
01:41:14which is a big thing for me.
01:41:15Anyways, the point is just, like,
01:41:16I think what makes you unique
01:41:18is if you actually lean into the nuances that make you you
01:41:21and actually have a way to defend why you do what you do.
01:41:23Because most people don't even think about
01:41:25why they do what they do.
01:41:26And if you do things and you don't know why,
01:41:28it's not, it's because you're following someone else's
01:41:30directions for your life rather than your own.
01:41:32Weird, like, real.
01:41:33And so, so much of us have been programmed
01:41:36by people earlier in our lives.
01:41:38And I say programmed as though we were, like, machines,
01:41:39but what person do you think in your life
01:41:42has super high max status, power, credibility, and likeness?
01:41:45Maxed out earlier on in your life?
01:41:47It's your parents, right?
01:41:49It's your parents.
01:41:50So, think about all four of these elements.
01:41:51Status, do your parents control scarce resources,
01:41:54things you want?
01:41:55They've got money and they've got toys that they can buy you.
01:41:58They've got food.
01:41:59They act like they control your shelter.
01:42:02Like, they have huge amounts of status in your life
01:42:05'cause they control all the scarcest resources,
01:42:06all the things you want.
01:42:07These are not binaries.
01:42:09So, don't think, like, oh, I have status.
01:42:10I don't have status.
01:42:11It's to what degree do you have status, right?
01:42:13Like, if somebody's got more money than you,
01:42:15they might have some status.
01:42:16If you've got $1 and somebody's got 10 grand,
01:42:18they got more status than you, right?
01:42:19But if someone's a billionaire,
01:42:20they have way more status than the guy who's 10,000, right?
01:42:23So, again, think not in binaries, yes or no,
01:42:26but think in continuums.
01:42:27So, the next one is, think about your parents, power.
01:42:29How many reinforcement cycles do you assume
01:42:32that your parents had from the time you were born?
01:42:35And when I say reinforcement cycles,
01:42:36it means, like, they said, do this, you did that thing,
01:42:39and then a good thing happened.
01:42:40Now, you might be like, ah, I hate my dad,
01:42:41or I hate my mom, or whatever your thing is.
01:42:43I don't really care.
01:42:43That doesn't matter for this purpose.
01:42:45The idea is that they probably said,
01:42:46don't go in the street, or don't do that,
01:42:49and you avoided a bad thing, or do this,
01:42:51and then a good thing happened, right?
01:42:52You tied your shoes the first time,
01:42:53you put the two bunny ears together, you tied your shoes,
01:42:55a good thing happened, you followed their directions.
01:42:57Think about how many times a parent has given you directions
01:43:00and you followed them, and a bad thing was avoided,
01:43:02or a good thing happened.
01:43:03Many.
01:43:03And so, it makes sense that not only do they have
01:43:05a lot of status, they have a lot of power.
01:43:06What else do they have?
01:43:07Credibility.
01:43:08Now, this is one where I think parents sometimes
01:43:11might lack compared to the other things.
01:43:13If you have a parent who also has credibility
01:43:14in that specific, you know, realm of whatever it is
01:43:17that they're talking about, then you have even more.
01:43:19Influence on you.
01:43:20And then finally, for parents, are they like you?
01:43:23Yeah, they literally look like you, right?
01:43:25And oftentimes, they share similar values to you,
01:43:28to a degree.
01:43:29Obviously, some people just go polar opposite
01:43:31from their parents, that's fine, but I'm talking
01:43:33in sweeping generalities for most people.
01:43:35This should at least explain or break down,
01:43:37like, why do parents have so much power over us?
01:43:42How do they have so much influence over our behaviors?
01:43:44You might not even wanna listen to your parents.
01:43:46You might not even like your parents.
01:43:48But you can still feel that you have to resist
01:43:52their requests, because you are so programmed,
01:43:56based on these elements of behavior,
01:43:58to comply with their requests, all right?
01:44:00And so then the idea is, how do we take these four elements,
01:44:04and then how do we reverse engineer these
01:44:06into the content that we have, so that we can build up
01:44:09true influence?
01:44:10Like, again, we're defining influence as the likelihood
01:44:13of a compliance with a request, right?
01:44:15And that likelihood will depend on the nature of the request,
01:44:18and how much your SPCL is in relation to that thing, right?
01:44:22If I was giving out fashion tips, I probably don't have
01:44:25a lot of credibility for fashion tips, right?
01:44:28I don't know if I control any scarce resources
01:44:30around fashion, I have no fashion hookups.
01:44:33I probably haven't given anyone specific fashion tips.
01:44:36I have no third party anything for credibility for it,
01:44:39and you probably don't look like me.
01:44:42And so, like, I probably would have very low influence,
01:44:44to some degree, they can generalize
01:44:46as you go up and up and up, but you have more influence
01:44:50in domain specificity.
01:44:51If we know these are the four things,
01:44:52status, power, credibility, likeness,
01:44:54then for each of these things in our videos, right,
01:44:57we want to demonstrate that we control scarce resources.
01:45:00And so for me, like at the very beginning,
01:45:02if you think about what the intro was, right,
01:45:04so I said we did, you know, 32.7 million views,
01:45:08and we did over 105 point something million dollars in sales
01:45:12for the book launch in 72 hours,
01:45:14and so that's me demonstrating status.
01:45:17I have these things, right.
01:45:18Then, power.
01:45:20So, what I'm gonna do in this video,
01:45:22is I'm gonna break down four things you can follow,
01:45:24and if you follow these things,
01:45:25you're gonna be more likely to get people
01:45:27who are gonna comply with your future request.
01:45:28And so that means that they're not just going
01:45:30to watch your video, but they're going to be more likely
01:45:32to one, watch the next video,
01:45:34and if you have any kind of call to action in the video,
01:45:37whatever level of call to action that is for you,
01:45:39whether it's subscribe or like or share or, you know,
01:45:41buy something that's small or, you know, set up a call
01:45:44or whatever it is that you sell,
01:45:45then this is going to be second, right.
01:45:48Like, you'll have included that in your content.
01:45:51So then, credibility is gonna be the third party stuff.
01:45:53So the reason that I had at my launch, for example,
01:45:55I had Guinness, I had to pay those judges to be on site
01:45:59was because I wanted to validate that the books that we did
01:46:04and the revenue that we generated was legit, right.
01:46:05So I had a third party that most people respect
01:46:09as like a legitimate corporation that their entire business
01:46:12is based on trust that they validate and verify proof
01:46:16that these records were broken.
01:46:17And so that gives credibility.
01:46:19The likeness piece, like I said earlier,
01:46:20is just you being you, right.
01:46:21And so that's why I'm actually super pumped
01:46:23through these live streams.
01:46:24Cause this is like, I honestly hate making YouTube videos.
01:46:26What I mean that is like staring at a camera and having like,
01:46:30you know, prompts to, you know, solicit me to say stuff.
01:46:33Like I will do it because I have a relatively high pain
01:46:35tolerance and I'll do what is required to get what I want.
01:46:38But like, I'm going all in on this.
01:46:40So if you guys are like, what's Alex's kind of like media
01:46:42strategy for the future, I'm focusing on two words.
01:46:45You can write this down.
01:46:46Live, interactive.
01:46:49Those are the two things that is describing the ACQ 3.0
01:46:53or multimedia 3.0 vision for what's going forward.
01:46:55Like that is what I'm focusing on.
01:46:57And I'll tell you a story of why I think this is so interesting.
01:47:00So I had a conversation with a mega influencer.
01:47:03I don't think you would mind with MrBeast a few weeks ago.
01:47:06And we were talking about kind of like the future
01:47:08of media and content.
01:47:09One of the things that he was talking about
01:47:11was the soccer game that came up that they do like UK versus US.
01:47:16What ends up happening is that they
01:47:17have all these different celebrities or influencers
01:47:19from different platforms, right?
01:47:21And so starting from the lowest, the lowest people
01:47:24on this little totem pole, they would walk out in the stadium.
01:47:27And this became the kind of the defacto like measuring stick
01:47:30for who had the most cool points, right?
01:47:31These are the A-listers.
01:47:33And so this is your typical kind of celebs
01:47:35from like movies and like '90s and the 2000s or whatever, right?
01:47:37People like they recognize because they're celebs,
01:47:39but like they don't have like huge--
01:47:41I guess they have some media presence,
01:47:42but it's more like traditional media.
01:47:43The level of applause for these guys was almost nothing.
01:47:46Barely anyone cared.
01:47:48So then the next level that came up was the shorts, the shorts
01:47:53creators.
01:47:54So this is your like only TikTokers
01:47:56or people who only make reels, but like only short videos.
01:47:59And so they had a little bit more applause on the applause-o-meter
01:48:02compared to the A-listers.
01:48:05Then the long-form guys came out.
01:48:07And this is when the audience got way rowdier, all right?
01:48:10So this is your podcasters, your YouTubers,
01:48:14the people who make long-form pieces of content.
01:48:16And I'm going to pause here for a second
01:48:17to kind of like highlight why I think this is.
01:48:19I don't think there's anything wrong with shorts.
01:48:20We make tons of shorts.
01:48:21But I see the purpose of shorts as many times a way
01:48:25to get someone to watch along, right?
01:48:27They watch a couple shorts and then think,
01:48:29OK, this guy seems legit or this gal seems legit.
01:48:32I'm going to risk my time, because that's the risk.
01:48:33They're making an investment, right?
01:48:34You're making an investment today.
01:48:35I'm going to risk them to get a good return on this, right?
01:48:37And so shorts then lead to longs.
01:48:39But let me show you the difference
01:48:41from an influence perspective.
01:48:42How many reinforcing cycles do you
01:48:43think you can have in 30 seconds compared to two hours?
01:48:48It's like not even close.
01:48:49And so if someone watched two one-hour pieces of content
01:48:51for me, period, OK, two one-hour pieces, 120 minutes,
01:48:54for me to get that same level of exposure
01:48:57and kind of cycles of reinforcing with a prospect
01:48:59and they were only consuming shorts, right?
01:49:01Let's say my average short, let's say it's 15 seconds.
01:49:04So that means it's four shorts per minute.
01:49:07So if I have 120 minutes for longs,
01:49:09someone would have to watch 480 shorts
01:49:13to have the same level of exposure
01:49:14as watching two hours with me.
01:49:16And think about how important this is.
01:49:18What were the things that people said,
01:49:20this was the, quote, podcast election.
01:49:22Trump went on, and I don't care about the politics behind it,
01:49:24but I do care about influence and persuasion.
01:49:26And so why is it that the two podcasts that I think really
01:49:30nudged this election, my opinion,
01:49:32is the Trump three-hour-plus podcast
01:49:35that he did with Rogan like a week or whatever it was.
01:49:37I think that was a huge influential event.
01:49:39I think Elon getting on Tucker Carlson
01:49:43and doing that interview.
01:49:44I think those two interviews were some of the interviews
01:49:46that really nudged the election.
01:49:47And again, I don't care who you voted for.
01:49:49It doesn't matter to me.
01:49:49I think about this from marketing persuasion, OK?
01:49:51And so because of that, audiences who were not sure
01:49:54got to spend three hours with a presidential candidate,
01:49:57and as a result, it just nudged some of them
01:49:59in the direction to ultimately vote, OK?
01:50:01Now, back to our little story.
01:50:02A-listers have almost no applause.
01:50:04Shorts have slight applause.
01:50:06Longs have legit applause.
01:50:08Then the live streamers.
01:50:18When the live streamers came out, it
01:50:20was like the entire auditorium or stadium or arena erupted.
01:50:25And when I heard that, it was such a visual example
01:50:29of, I mean, we have this saying, which is like, butts in seats.
01:50:32If you just make a bunch of meme content,
01:50:34you demonstrate almost none of these things.
01:50:36Some of you guys are chasing views
01:50:38when what I think you want is you want
01:50:40to have prospects who are more likely to comply
01:50:43with the future request.
01:50:44And so we need to change our behavior to maximize
01:50:46the likelihood that it occurs.
01:50:48And so in looking at this thing, this
01:50:50is why I'm telling you, showing my cards,
01:50:52I'm going to be doing more live streams.
01:50:54And I think it's also-- and this is me outside of SPCL,
01:50:57but I think like meta themes overall.
01:50:59I think that the internet will always move towards truth.
01:51:01And so I think the A-listers, everything's super curated.
01:51:05Everything's super polished.
01:51:06It's Photoshopped.
01:51:07It's scripted.
01:51:08And as you move closer this way, it's rawer.
01:51:11Like, you have a three-hour podcast.
01:51:13They're not scripted, right?
01:51:14Or most of them aren't, right?
01:51:16Streaming, it's like, yeah, we're live, right?
01:51:18I can't do anything.
01:51:18Like, we're live.
01:51:19This idea of how can we approximate the rawest reality
01:51:25of you-- us hanging out, right?
01:51:27And actually going through this stuff,
01:51:29I think that is what will unlock the most influence as long
01:51:31as you are still including these SPCL elements into it.
01:51:35And I think that's the marriage.
01:51:36Do SPCL and do it as many times as I possibly can.
01:51:41That's the idea.
01:51:42And so live streaming provides that opportunity.
01:51:44Let's also think about this from a context of volume.
01:51:46Whether you like it or not, Rogan, tremendous influence,
01:51:49right?
01:51:49To the same degree, PBD, tremendous influence.
01:51:52Dave Ramsey, tremendous influence.
01:51:53What is it that these guys have in common?
01:51:55They're putting out hours of content every single day.
01:52:01So I said earlier that we have 35,000 pieces of content, right?
01:52:03I hear plenty of times there's tons of $1 million businesses,
01:52:06$2 million businesses, things like that.
01:52:08They put out one piece of content a day, right?
01:52:10And there's nothing wrong with that.
01:52:11That's 365 pieces of content a year.
01:52:14And if you think about the size of acquisition.com
01:52:16in terms of our revenue, right?
01:52:17Compared to somebody who's doing $1 or $2 million a year,
01:52:20and they're doing 365 pieces of content,
01:52:22we're just quite literally doing 100 times more.
01:52:25And as a result of that 100 times the volume,
01:52:27what do you think's happening?
01:52:28We get 100 times the prospect.
01:52:30And so people want to try and outsmart themselves
01:52:33in thinking that they can not do the work that's required.
01:52:37But it's actually far more linear than you would expect.
01:52:39So we just know that 1 out of 10 shorts
01:52:42is going to be a 2 or 3x outlier.
01:52:44We just know what that math looks like.
01:52:46Same thing for longs.
01:52:47How do I just jam as much into that input/output machine
01:52:50as I possibly can?
01:52:51And as long as I'm checking these boxes
01:52:53like I'm making the right kind of content,
01:52:55then you're going to get the right kind of prospects.
01:52:58So I'll give you one more nugget, like I said,
01:53:00which is that some of you guys may have heard this,
01:53:02and it's a concept of social media
01:53:06is now turning into interest media, okay?
01:53:10So what does this mean?
01:53:11Let's unpack this for a second.
01:53:12If you make content and you judge it by views,
01:53:16I think that's dumb, and I'll explain why.
01:53:17If I have a grandma in public come and just do a running slap
01:53:21and just slaps me across the face,
01:53:23that video will probably get views.
01:53:26But does it get the grandma views?
01:53:27No.
01:53:28Does it get me any more people
01:53:29who now believe more in my stuff?
01:53:31No.
01:53:33But what it will do is it will show it to people
01:53:34who are interested in humor, which is a lot of people, right?
01:53:37But those might not be your customers,
01:53:39and they probably aren't.
01:53:40So assuming you're not an entertainer
01:53:42and you are somebody who's a business person,
01:53:44if you sell services to anyone,
01:53:46you're likely going to be an educator, not an entertainer,
01:53:49meaning you're trying to provide value to people
01:53:51to change their behavior in some way,
01:53:52and ideally changing the behavior
01:53:53that gets them to walk closer to you and buy stuff, okay?
01:53:56So what do I mean by social versus interest?
01:53:58If you want to attract the right avatar,
01:54:01make content for that avatar.
01:54:03That sounds so obvious and simple,
01:54:05and the thing is that no one does it,
01:54:07because here's the write-or-downer.
01:54:08The content is the targeting.
01:54:10The algorithm is so good now.
01:54:11It knows what you're talking about.
01:54:13It can literally judge your background.
01:54:16It judges what you're wearing.
01:54:17It judges who you are, and will display it
01:54:19to the people that they know,
01:54:20who have a history of watching content
01:54:22that is similar to that, that people find valuable.
01:54:24And so if you're making stuff about how to fix pianos,
01:54:27because you're a piano repair guy,
01:54:28then you will find people
01:54:30who are trying to fix their pianos.
01:54:31But if you're making that type of content,
01:54:32you might be like, man, I'm only getting,
01:54:34you know, a thousand views of video.
01:54:35It's like, yeah, but the market of people
01:54:37who are buying pianos might be significantly smaller
01:54:38than the market of people
01:54:39who just want to be entertained or distracted.
01:54:41So it's not fair to compare your views against MrBeast's.
01:54:45It doesn't make any sense.
01:54:46If I were to think to myself,
01:54:47like, I have a room of a thousand people
01:54:49that are going to watch this,
01:54:50and all of them are only interested in fixing pianos,
01:54:53that's a hell of an opportunity.
01:54:54I care so much more about IRL responses.
01:54:57So what I mean by that, if I make a video,
01:54:59and then I get texts from business owners that I like,
01:55:02and that I respect, being like, yo, that was fire,
01:55:04then I'm like, okay, I'm on the right track.
01:55:06And so some of you guys, let me know in the comments,
01:55:08you guys have seen a format that we've talked about.
01:55:11We call it cash cows, but basically it's me.
01:55:14There's a business owner
01:55:15that presents a little bit about their business,
01:55:16and they come to this side,
01:55:16and we talk about how to like,
01:55:17how to improve their business, right?
01:55:18So let me know in the comments if you like that style.
01:55:21And if you do, let me know if you're a business owner or not.
01:55:24Okay, so like, I like that style,
01:55:27and I'm not a business owner.
01:55:28I like that style, and I am a business owner.
01:55:29Or I don't like that style, and I'm a business owner.
01:55:32Or I don't like that style, and I'm not a business owner.
01:55:34If you are a business owner,
01:55:35when I have people who are here in person,
01:55:36IRL, in real life, in Vegas, right?
01:55:38Business owners who fly out.
01:55:39I ask, I say, what is your favorite type of content?
01:55:43Dollars to Donuts, that's their favorite type of content.
01:55:45And so I make more of that, even though,
01:55:47and it would make sense.
01:55:48It would make sense that there's fewer of those people, right?
01:55:51Just think about math.
01:55:53If you've got the whole population here.
01:55:56I'll show you a little graph on this.
01:55:57So let's say that 100% of people,
01:56:00like this represents 100%,
01:56:02let's just use USA,
01:56:02'cause I already know all the numbers for USA, okay?
01:56:05So let's say this is 100%, all right?
01:56:07You get 100% of people who are interested.
01:56:08Okay, well, right now,
01:56:10only 9% of people even own a business, like 9%.
01:56:14So right off the bat,
01:56:16I'm gonna have a huge percentage of people
01:56:18that aren't my ideal audience.
01:56:19Now, of course, I do have people who are business interested,
01:56:21and that's why I'm a co-founder of Skool,
01:56:24and we give people a way to go start a business online
01:56:27in a low-cost way, right?
01:56:29Which you can do, it's nine bucks a month
01:56:30after a 14-day trial, you guys can check it out.
01:56:32And there's a bunch of training and community
01:56:34and all that good stuff, all right?
01:56:35But you can go to skool.com/hormozi.
01:56:37I think it's below this video, doesn't matter.
01:56:39Point being, 9% is what I'm competing for, okay?
01:56:42Now, that means that there's about 32 to 33 million
01:56:46business owners in the U.S., okay?
01:56:4832 million, that's 100% of all business owners.
01:56:51Now, within that, 95% of that 9%
01:56:56is below $1 million in revenue, 95%.
01:57:01Then I've got 5% of that 9% that are over a million.
01:57:05Now, if you wanna get weird with it,
01:57:09what percent do you think is over 10 million?
01:57:120.4%, one in 250.
01:57:15And then 100 million, nine figures,
01:57:18is I think one in roughly 3,000,
01:57:21depending on your data source.
01:57:22One in 3,000 businesses gets to 100 million a year, this big.
01:57:27And so it would make sense then
01:57:30that we've given these numbers, right?
01:57:329% is 32 million, so I know 5% of that
01:57:35is gonna be a million and a half people.
01:57:37There's only a million and a half people
01:57:38who are business owners doing over a million,
01:57:40based on the math that, this is Census Bureau data.
01:57:42Maybe theirs isn't correct, but that's the math, right?
01:57:44And so if we're looking at that's the market,
01:57:47then it would make sense that I'm not gonna get
01:57:50all 100% of them to watch my video, right?
01:57:52If I got one and a half million views
01:57:53and 100% of them were business owners, that'd be insane, right?
01:57:56And so it would make sense that if I get 100,000 views
01:57:58on a video that's really made
01:58:01for that level of business owner, then I'm crushing it, right?
01:58:04And it doesn't make sense to look at MrBeast's video
01:58:06with 100 million views and be like, oh man, I suck.
01:58:09It's like, dude, we're going after,
01:58:11we have different games, right?
01:58:13And so I'd encourage you to create accurate expectations
01:58:16of the size of the market that you're going after.
01:58:18And also think about the translation
01:58:20of these numbers into IRL.
01:58:21I have two businesses that I looked at in the last year
01:58:23that were doing over a million dollars a year
01:58:25with less than 5,000 followers.
01:58:26You absolutely can make plenty of money
01:58:29with a very small following as long as you make content
01:58:31that's directly valuable for that following.
01:58:33All right, with that being said, we just went over
01:58:38SPCL, status, power, credibility and likeness,
01:58:40what you would include in videos,
01:58:41why I'm going all in on live stream
01:58:43and why the whole point is you want to get as much time
01:58:45with your prospects as humanly possible.
01:58:47You want to make the topics of your content
01:58:50based on the things that those people find interesting,
01:58:52not based on like being social, but being interesting.
01:58:55If you make it interesting for them,
01:58:56they will keep watching it.
01:58:58And then being realistic about your expectations
01:59:00on how many views you can get based on your size of market.
01:59:05So since you've built a personal brand,
01:59:06here's how I would monetize an audience to make more money.
01:59:09- In my second company, Prestige Labs,
01:59:11I built up to over 5,000 affiliates
01:59:13that generated 20 plus million dollars a year in revenue.
01:59:15And that business continues to this day.
01:59:18In Allen, my software company,
01:59:19which was my third big company,
01:59:21we built up to over a thousand affiliates
01:59:23that were agencies white labeling that software.
01:59:26For my book launch for a hundred million dollar leads,
01:59:28we got 30,000 affiliates who promoted the actual book launch.
01:59:33I've also invested in companies that I've personally endorsed.
01:59:35And so I bring all these things up
01:59:37because most people don't know how to quote,
01:59:39monetize an audience.
01:59:40And after talking to a lot of creators or celebrities
01:59:45and influencers and also business owners
01:59:47who want to do deals with those people,
01:59:50a lot of people don't share a construct
01:59:51in terms of thinking through how to make those deals happen.
01:59:54And so I wanted to make this video to outline the four ways
01:59:57that I see those deals happening
01:59:59and the combinations between them
02:00:00and what considerations you might have,
02:00:02whether you're on the doing the deal side
02:00:04of having an audience or being the person
02:00:07who wants to quote, buy, license, rent the audience
02:00:09from an influencer or somebody who has those eyeballs.
02:00:12All right, so four ways to monetize an audience.
02:00:16Let's use a good marker.
02:00:17That doesn't suck.
02:00:19Step one, have good markers.
02:00:24Four ways to monetize an audience.
02:00:35All right, now, right off the bat,
02:00:39number one, we've got affiliates,
02:00:41which is what I was saying earlier.
02:00:43The second way that you can monetize an audience
02:00:47is through sponsorships.
02:00:48Some people call these endorsements.
02:00:50The third way that you can do this is through partnerships,
02:00:57which usually involve equity.
02:01:03And the fourth way that we can do this,
02:01:05through starting your own,
02:01:07if you're the influencer in this instance.
02:01:09All right, so we have affiliates,
02:01:14which is where you are getting paid
02:01:18after you make sales for a business.
02:01:20Sponsorships where they pay you first
02:01:22to advertise on behalf of the business
02:01:24and typically endorse it via your brand.
02:01:26Partnerships where you go into a business
02:01:29that already has a product, already has an infrastructure,
02:01:33and you do one of these two things
02:01:34or a combination of these two things for equity.
02:01:38And so the behaviors between affiliates,
02:01:40sponsorships, and partnerships are more or less the same.
02:01:42The difference is simply how you get compensated.
02:01:45And then the fourth is where you just start
02:01:46your entirely owned brand to then promote to your audience.
02:01:50All right, so let's break down which of these
02:01:52and kind of where they sit on the continuum.
02:01:54And the reason I want to bring this up
02:01:55is because I'm having so many conversations
02:01:57with people who are like, I have this audience,
02:01:59I've built it for four years, I just don't know what to do.
02:02:02And so I think of these four on a continuum, all right?
02:02:06And I can think of this continuum
02:02:08in terms of difficulty and risk and value, all right?
02:02:11And so on this side, you've got the affiliates.
02:02:15This is the fastest way that you can immediately make money.
02:02:19Most businesses that have affiliate programs,
02:02:22you can sign up automatically.
02:02:24They have predetermined terms
02:02:26that are associated with this agreement.
02:02:28And unless you do something that's really nefarious or weird,
02:02:32they're happy to have you sell their stuff.
02:02:35So one is this one's fastest.
02:02:37This is low risk for kind of both parties
02:02:40because if you are an affiliate and you're promoting it,
02:02:45they don't have to pay you until after you make a sale.
02:02:48Now for you, you also don't get capped.
02:02:50And so if you can make a ton of sales
02:02:52and you feel like you're being undervalued,
02:02:53then you just get to prove
02:02:55that you are actually good at promoting
02:02:56and that your audience is actually a good fit
02:02:58for whatever that product is.
02:03:00But from a value perspective,
02:03:02so I'll call it exit value,
02:03:03affiliate revenue streams are not typically that valuable.
02:03:09So they will contribute to the sellability of the company,
02:03:12but the majority of that value
02:03:14would come in the terms of a multiple
02:03:16of the cash flow that you're receiving as an affiliate,
02:03:19multiplied or discounted by how reliable
02:03:22the business that you're doing business with is.
02:03:24And so if I'm an affiliate of the US government,
02:03:27you know what I mean?
02:03:28And I recruit people for the military,
02:03:29then I probably can say that my business model
02:03:31is sound and the US government's not gonna go away.
02:03:34I'm not getting, notwithstanding theories and whatnot.
02:03:37All right, but by and large,
02:03:38it's gonna be a trustworthy third party.
02:03:40On the flip side, if I have some info thing
02:03:44that is gonna disappear tomorrow
02:03:45because there's some arbitrage opportunity
02:03:47that's your business opportunity,
02:03:49then this is gonna be, basically have no value
02:03:52because that business that underlines that cash flow
02:03:54has no value.
02:03:55All right, and so we're moving along here.
02:03:57So this is the lowest value,
02:03:59probably middle work, lowish risk for you.
02:04:03All right, the next is you've got sponsorships.
02:04:06So sponsorships is where someone pays you first.
02:04:13All right, so you receive cash
02:04:14and then you make the endorsement.
02:04:16And so usually this is in two forms.
02:04:18You advertise to your audience.
02:04:20And the reason I say advertise rather than here at sell,
02:04:24here you only get paid after people buy.
02:04:26With sponsorships, you get paid first.
02:04:28And so that means that you are advertising.
02:04:30You are a traffic source for the business.
02:04:33And so you will get paid as a traffic source,
02:04:35typically based on CPMs, meaning cost per thousand impressions
02:04:39that you can have in terms of views to an audience.
02:04:42Now, these sponsorships come in the form of you posting stuff
02:04:46to your audience, which for them,
02:04:48they see this as free traffic.
02:04:49They're technically paying for it,
02:04:51but you're monetizing the traffic that you have.
02:04:53The other way, which is the more scalable way,
02:04:56is something called whitelisting,
02:04:58which is basically them taking whatever your posts are
02:05:02and then running them as ads.
02:05:04And so let's say I have a million person audience.
02:05:06I make a post and only 200,000 people see it.
02:05:09And as most content creators would do,
02:05:12you wouldn't want to post over and over again
02:05:14about that thing 'cause it would kind of be like,
02:05:15oh, this guy's just promoting this thing over and over again.
02:05:17It wouldn't feel good, right?
02:05:18And so you might make a post or two every so often
02:05:22to not interrupt the value that you're providing
02:05:24to your audience too much.
02:05:26And so the way to solve this really for both parties
02:05:29is you make an advertisement saying,
02:05:31hey, I just partnered with so-and-so.
02:05:33Their thing is awesome.
02:05:34I've actually been using it for years.
02:05:36Finally came to an agreement.
02:05:37I think you guys might like it, check it out, right?
02:05:39And so that whitelisting then allows them to blast it
02:05:42to people way outside of your audience.
02:05:45I like this a lot as a win-win
02:05:47because the business pays money to advertise your brand.
02:05:51So they make you bigger
02:05:52and they're spending money to advertise you.
02:05:54But at the same time, they get higher conversion rate
02:05:56'cause you're probably better on camera,
02:05:57you're better spoken,
02:05:58and you already have a certain amount of warm audience
02:06:00that recognize you, at least your face or your mannerisms.
02:06:03So you converted a higher percentage.
02:06:05So the business makes money, you grow your brand.
02:06:07This is a really nice partnership.
02:06:09Now, these deals, sponsorships,
02:06:11are harder to come by than affiliate deals
02:06:14because most affiliate companies just have a program,
02:06:16an influencer program, an affiliate program,
02:06:18and you just sign up on the standard terms.
02:06:20Sponsorships tend to be more a la carte
02:06:22depending on the size of the influencer
02:06:24relative to the size of the company.
02:06:26And so for extreme examples,
02:06:28if you're a huge influencer and there's a tiny company,
02:06:30you'll be able to get an amazing sponsorship deal.
02:06:32If it's a huge company like Nike
02:06:34and you're a small influencer,
02:06:36you might not get any deal and you still wear their stuff.
02:06:38And so it's really the balance
02:06:39between who has how much leverage in the negotiation.
02:06:42Which brings us to the fourth one.
02:06:45I'm sorry, the third one, which is partnerships, all right?
02:06:48Now, as we move along here,
02:06:51sponsorships also don't have kind of like affiliates,
02:06:56huge exit value.
02:06:57The only place that sponsorships
02:06:59really become exitable value for a business
02:07:03is if you have a true media company.
02:07:05Now, if you're a personal brand,
02:07:06it's really tough to exit your personal brand.
02:07:09But if I have an army of influencers
02:07:12and I negotiate deals through my network and say,
02:07:14hey, you know, Pabst Blue Ribbon or Budweiser, whatever,
02:07:19I have a thousand influencers that fit your ideal profile
02:07:22for customers and I'll negotiate an umbrella deal.
02:07:25And then all of them are forced
02:07:26because they have with them to promote your stuff.
02:07:29Now you have a media company,
02:07:30which is very similar to a talent agency,
02:07:32slightly different, but has a lot of similarities.
02:07:35And so then that sponsorship revenue
02:07:37is really the main revenue of your business,
02:07:39which is that you sell traffic at a discount, right?
02:07:41But for the influencer individually,
02:07:46these two things, very hard to sell,
02:07:50not really sellable, not much.
02:07:52Now, once we get into this side,
02:07:54these deals get harder and harder to do
02:07:56and you do fewer and fewer of them
02:07:57as you go down this line.
02:07:59So a partnership can either be a minority deal
02:08:02or a majority deal.
02:08:04Again, if you're gonna go partner with a company
02:08:06and you're huge and they're tiny,
02:08:08then it might be a majority deal.
02:08:09If they're huge and you're tiny relative to them,
02:08:11then it might be a minority deal,
02:08:13meaning you're not gonna get all of the company.
02:08:15And that can range from 0.01% of the business
02:08:20all the way to you getting 99% of the business
02:08:24in terms of the range.
02:08:25And so anything that you can imagine
02:08:26in terms of economics here is gonna be negotiable.
02:08:28But some of the things that I would consider here
02:08:31is performance, which is, this is again for both parties.
02:08:35You can have equity as the form of compensation
02:08:39rather than necessarily cash.
02:08:41And you say, hey, if I bring you an extra 1,000 customers,
02:08:43I get 1% per 1,000 customers
02:08:48that I bring you to the platform or whatever.
02:08:51And then you put a cap on that at some point.
02:08:53We say up to 10%.
02:08:57Great.
02:08:58And so that way it's a little bit balanced for you
02:09:00and for the business.
02:09:01Now, one of the considerations that you have to have
02:09:03if you were the content creator or the influencer
02:09:06is that the association that you make
02:09:10with their brand is permanent.
02:09:11As soon as you make that public decoration,
02:09:13you transfer all of that goodwill,
02:09:14you transfer that association to them.
02:09:16And so if you are gonna do a deal like this,
02:09:18my recommendation is that you wanna have
02:09:20at least something up front.
02:09:22So no matter what for doing this deal,
02:09:26you get some amount of this equity up front
02:09:28and then some percentage that's based on performance.
02:09:30Now, one of the last components that I'll say,
02:09:33and there's obviously a lot of ways that you can do deals,
02:09:35but these are just the things that I think through, is time.
02:09:39And so somebody who's on the business owner side is like,
02:09:41well, I don't want you to just make one association.
02:09:42I want you to keep doing this for a long period of time.
02:09:44And so they can take some of this equity
02:09:46that they wanna give you and say, all right,
02:09:48I'm gonna give you 25% of your equity up front.
02:09:52I'm gonna give you 25% based on performance,
02:09:56and I'm gonna give you 50% over time.
02:09:58And so I want you to promote for the next four years.
02:10:00And if for some reason something happens,
02:10:02then you're not gonna get that vesting
02:10:04because we had some sort of breakup, right?
02:10:06And so whenever I think through these terms,
02:10:08I just like to think of through all the Ws,
02:10:11which is who, what, where, when, why, how, right?
02:10:13Which is, okay, I want you to post.
02:10:15And if you're the content creator,
02:10:15you should be asking that same thing,
02:10:16which is how much do you want me to post, right?
02:10:19And about what?
02:10:20And you have to take into consideration
02:10:21that you have to keep building your brand, right?
02:10:23And so you don't wanna just be like,
02:10:24all of a sudden some shill, like that's not good.
02:10:27You wanna tastefully be able to integrate
02:10:30that promotion into the content that you have.
02:10:32And so you just have to say, okay,
02:10:33well, I think the best way for us to do this
02:10:35is for me to put your links in my bio,
02:10:39and I'll put it up for one week of the month,
02:10:41and I will make one long form thing that mentions it,
02:10:45and five short form things via posts or stories.
02:10:49And then when you define that,
02:10:50and the reason this is so important is that
02:10:51you define that stuff up front so that it's just very clear.
02:10:54Don't just say like, I will promote the business and whatnot,
02:10:57'cause it just doesn't work as well.
02:10:58And you might say, I will also record ads once a month
02:11:02that you can then use for whitelisting.
02:11:04And so all of these things,
02:11:05and this is where this gets more nuanced than deal-making,
02:11:08is you can be a partner and still have affiliate revenue.
02:11:11You can be a partner and still get paid
02:11:12from a sponsorship perspective.
02:11:14And so these things are not mutually exclusive.
02:11:16But you might have a primarily sponsorship deal
02:11:19with some element of equity.
02:11:21But I will say on a personal level,
02:11:23the more money you have right now,
02:11:25the more you wanna lean this way,
02:11:27because the equity, the sponsorship cash
02:11:31that you choose to take, you do at the expense of equity.
02:11:34And if you believe in the product,
02:11:35and you believe that the company is exitable in the future,
02:11:38then in my opinion, it makes sense to delay it
02:11:40for the little bit longer run.
02:11:41But this takes on more risk,
02:11:43because here you get paid today no matter what.
02:11:45Here you might not ever get paid if the company doesn't sell.
02:11:48And so by taking on more risk,
02:11:50you wanna make sure that you're getting
02:11:51a disproportionate reward in the form of stock,
02:11:53shares, options, equity, and things like that, all right?
02:11:56And so as we're walking through this and you're thinking,
02:11:58okay, how can I monetize my brand?
02:11:59It's like, okay, the first level, I can do affiliates
02:12:01and just promote other people's stuff and get paid for it.
02:12:04The next level, I can be a media source for them.
02:12:06I can be traffic for them via sponsorship, right?
02:12:09These are a little bit more nuanced deals.
02:12:11Taking another step, I can actually partner with the brand
02:12:13and say, hey, I wanna own 1%, 5%, 10%, 50%
02:12:17depending on how big you are and how big your audience is.
02:12:20And then finally, you can start your own brand.
02:12:25And when I say brand, I say that all inclusive
02:12:31in terms of products and brand.
02:12:33And when you do this, you can either white label,
02:12:38which means you go to somebody who manufactures stuff already
02:12:40and say, can you slap my logo on it, which is an option.
02:12:43And the other option is that you do custom formulations.
02:12:46Custom, I'll just say custom stuff, all right?
02:12:49And so if I were selling supplements, for example,
02:12:51I might go to a company that already has a product
02:12:54that's done and I just say, hey,
02:12:55I wanna slap my label on it.
02:12:56On the custom version of this, it's like,
02:12:58hey, I want this gram of this.
02:12:59We're gonna test out flavors together
02:13:00and we're gonna put it together
02:13:01and make a custom product that no one else has.
02:13:03Same things works with merchandise.
02:13:05So if you said, hey, I wanna get a white t-shirt
02:13:07and you just try six different white t-shirts
02:13:09that people have off the shelf that are manufacturers,
02:13:11they say, okay, just slap my logo on it and let's go.
02:13:14Or you say, hey, what are the different fabrics?
02:13:17What are the different materials that I can put together?
02:13:18These are the cuts that I wanna look at.
02:13:20This is how I want it to fit, right?
02:13:21That becomes more custom.
02:13:23And so white label is faster and easier
02:13:27from a speed perspective, but usually, me personally,
02:13:31I prefer to do custom stuff because I don't like anyone else
02:13:33being able to sell something that's identical to me
02:13:35and be able to have any kind of pricing power
02:13:37over what I have.
02:13:38'Cause the moment that people find out
02:13:40that you just have a generic product
02:13:42that you slap the label on, it's not a good look, right?
02:13:45And so again, I don't think there's anything,
02:13:47like I wanna be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong
02:13:49with doing white label.
02:13:50I just think that if we were to put this on this sphere,
02:13:52like white label would be here and custom would be here.
02:13:54But if you're gonna take the risk on
02:13:56of starting your own brand,
02:13:57I might as well get all the benefits of doing it.
02:14:00But this costs more money.
02:14:03White label tends to cost less
02:14:04because you don't have to get custom templates,
02:14:06custom forms, and pay and incur all those costs.
02:14:08'Cause someone else, their whole business
02:14:10is based around doing this for other people, right?
02:14:13Now, the difference here is that for all of these situations,
02:14:16you're going to promote stuff that already exists.
02:14:19Here, you're starting the thing from ground zero,
02:14:22which means that you're on the other side of the table now.
02:14:25You start with 100% equity,
02:14:27and then you start paying people this way down the line.
02:14:32And so if you are an influencer,
02:14:34you have an audience or you're a business owner
02:14:36and you're trying to make deals with influencers,
02:14:39this is how I think through this.
02:14:41And I try and see there are elements
02:14:43that you can borrow from each of these kind of verticals
02:14:46to tweak the deal to make it right for everyone.
02:14:50And so I think about it in terms of what's the exit value,
02:14:54what cash is gonna be going in or out of the business,
02:14:57how much work is the person gonna do,
02:14:59and then how much risk am I or are they exposed to.
02:15:02And by balancing those four things,
02:15:04you can usually navigate along this continuum
02:15:06to find the right part, the right deal
02:15:09that's right for you and the product.
02:15:11As a bonus, I wanna take you behind the scenes
02:15:13to what I've just learned with my personal brand
02:15:15so you can make more money and grow your business.
02:15:16I made 35,000 posts over 40 months
02:15:19and grew a 7.8 million person audience.
02:15:21And three weeks ago, I made six big shifts in my content.
02:15:25And I wanna show you behind the scenes
02:15:28what we found from those six big shifts
02:15:30with screenshots of the data
02:15:33so that you can use this to make more money
02:15:35in your business in whatever you promote.
02:15:36And so the first was we went from edutainment to education.
02:15:40So instead of being kind of halfway through
02:15:42to all the way all in on education.
02:15:44Now that had downstream impacts in terms of how we package,
02:15:46how we title things,
02:15:47even the number of special effects we have.
02:15:49And the purpose of education as I see it
02:15:51is to change behavior.
02:15:51And so my point is with this video,
02:15:53once I show you the data of what's happened
02:15:54since that change, since we made these six shifts,
02:15:57that hopefully, or hopefully not,
02:15:59we'll see what you decide to do,
02:16:00but it will change how you make content to make more money.
02:16:03So number one is edutainment to education.
02:16:06Number two is going from for us to for you.
02:16:08Now when I say for us,
02:16:09what ended up happening with the mistakes I made
02:16:11was that, I mean unknowingly,
02:16:13was that I would be like,
02:16:14"Team, what do you guys think about content?"
02:16:15And so they'd be like, "Hey, we should make a video on this.
02:16:17"Hey, we should make a video on this."
02:16:18And so what ended up happening
02:16:19is I started making videos for my team,
02:16:21not my ideal customer, a business owner.
02:16:23And so I actually had a friend come into town
02:16:25and say, "Hey, you know, it's weird.
02:16:26"I actually haven't been paying attention to your content."
02:16:28He does about 10 million books a year.
02:16:29And he's like, "Well, I guess I'm not really your avatar."
02:16:32And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa."
02:16:33I was like, "You are 100% my avatar.
02:16:35"What's going on?"
02:16:36And so as soon as I realized that, I was like, "Oh man."
02:16:39He's like, "It just didn't feel as relevant to me."
02:16:41And so I was making stuff for my team rather than my avatar.
02:16:43And so if you are somebody who makes content,
02:16:45something to be mindful of is your team might not be
02:16:48the type of people you're trying to make content for.
02:16:49So just something interesting for me.
02:16:50So it went from for us, our team, to for you,
02:16:53the viewer, for business owners.
02:16:55Number three, we just went from wide to narrow.
02:16:57So fitness, relationships, et cetera,
02:16:59those are wider topics.
02:17:00More people are in a relationship, more people eat food,
02:17:02more people are trying to lose weight.
02:17:02Compared to, only 9% of people are business owners.
02:17:05And so we went much narrower on the topic of like,
02:17:07I'm just talking about business,
02:17:08'cause that's what I love talking about, too,
02:17:09as a side note.
02:17:10And so it turns out, business owners like it more
02:17:12when I talk about business,
02:17:13and I like it more as a business owner.
02:17:14So everybody wins, at least for me.
02:17:16Number four is we went from views to revenue.
02:17:18Now this is key.
02:17:19So when you just have views as a metric,
02:17:21then you kind of do chase wider,
02:17:23because it was the only real metric we were tracking.
02:17:24And we didn't really have anything better at the time,
02:17:26and so that's what we focused on.
02:17:27Since then, we've transitioned to ad revenue.
02:17:29And here's why.
02:17:30Ad revenue takes into account views,
02:17:32but it has a second metric that's paired with it,
02:17:34which is RPMs, which is revenue per 1,000 eyeballs.
02:17:38So if YouTube pays lots of money for the eyeball,
02:17:42then it means they're more valuable.
02:17:43And if they're more valuable to advertisers,
02:17:44they're more valuable to me.
02:17:45And so my idea here is that I wanna make sure
02:17:49that we're showing our videos to the right people,
02:17:50or rather that the right people are watching.
02:17:52Now once we can control for that,
02:17:53and we stay or keep our RPMs,
02:17:55or the amount that advertisers are willing
02:17:56to pay for these eyeballs high,
02:17:58then we get as many views as we can.
02:18:00And as a total pro tip for business stuff in general,
02:18:03paired KPIs works exceptionally well.
02:18:05So if you're a customer success,
02:18:06you want the speed of resolution,
02:18:08but you also want a quality metric.
02:18:09If you had a company that did cleaning,
02:18:11it'd be the same thing as you'd pair reviews from customers
02:18:14with the number of cleans per day.
02:18:15And so you like to have both edges
02:18:17so that you can control for both sides.
02:18:18And you should do that with any department you can.
02:18:20Now, so I said number four was views to ad revenue
02:18:23as our primary metric that we were optimizing for.
02:18:25So we no longer cared, oh this one had a lot of views.
02:18:27We don't care about that.
02:18:28It's just, do we have as many views with the right people?
02:18:31Number five is from emphasizing shorts to emphasizing longs.
02:18:34We saw that longs got the best people,
02:18:38and the whole thesis around shorts creates longs viewers.
02:18:41We actually haven't seen any evidence that supports that.
02:18:44People who watch shorts want more shorts.
02:18:45People who want longs want more longs,
02:18:46which doesn't necessarily mean that people
02:18:48from a different platform don't watch you on shorts
02:18:52on TikTok, and then they're a long form YouTube watcher,
02:18:55and then watch your stuff on YouTube that long.
02:18:57But usually, people who watch long form stuff on YouTube
02:19:00watch long form stuff on YouTube.
02:19:01People who watch shorts form on YouTube watch short form.
02:19:04Some people watch both, but most of the time,
02:19:05people kind of have consumption preferences,
02:19:07and they're not gonna change their preferences for you.
02:19:09They just might watch you in a different place
02:19:10where that consumption preference is what you make.
02:19:13And so we found that, and we found that the longs
02:19:15are the things that actually drove the most applications
02:19:17for acquisition.com, and the most book sales,
02:19:19and the most opt-ins.
02:19:20So that's what we're making more of.
02:19:22And number six was assuming more versus assuming nothing.
02:19:25Meaning, I made videos like the Alex Hermosi diet.
02:19:28I made the Alex Hermosi vlog, the Hermosis, things like that.
02:19:33Those assume that somebody who doesn't know me
02:19:36will wanna care about whoever the hell Alex Hermosi is,
02:19:39which I don't think is that reasonable.
02:19:41I don't think they would want that,
02:19:43'cause who cares about this random dude?
02:19:45And so it's assuming nothing.
02:19:47Now, that has changes in terms of what we're making,
02:19:50so there's no assumptions.
02:19:51For example, like, we own acquisition.com,
02:19:54we have portfolio businesses.
02:19:55I introduced myself because if you don't know who I am,
02:19:57this might be the first video you see of me.
02:19:59And so if I stop doing that for a while,
02:20:02'cause I kind of went into this mindset that everyone knew.
02:20:05Now, obviously, that's dumb.
02:20:06Way more people don't know me than know me.
02:20:08But you kind of fall into this trap
02:20:09of assuming you're talking to your warm audience
02:20:11rather than what you're making the content for,
02:20:12which is people who've never met you before.
02:20:14And so keeping that top of mind, which is that
02:20:16we wanna make sure that we welcome everyone
02:20:18and that we don't have inside jokes
02:20:19that only people who are on the inside feel it,
02:20:21because then all it does is it excludes people that are new.
02:20:24And what you wanna do is bring more people
02:20:26into your world anyways,
02:20:27especially if they're business owners for me.
02:20:28And so there's six changes that we made in our content,
02:20:33and so we've gone all in on that concept.
02:20:35And so we've done a lot of rapid iteration.
02:20:37But let me tell you the data that's happened since.
02:20:40So right off the bat, our PMs,
02:20:42meaning the revenue per thousand viewers,
02:20:44went up by 68%.
02:20:46So when you think, man, I don't feel like I can,
02:20:49like what my content is about, it doesn't change anything.
02:20:52Well, it sure as hell did for us.
02:20:54When I talk about deep business stuff,
02:20:55when I talk about reducing churn,
02:20:57when I talk about increasing number of,
02:20:58like ways to get someone to buy more times,
02:21:00when I talk about how we scaled a 40 person sales team,
02:21:03and all the steps that we did in order to do that
02:21:05in a real case study in a real business,
02:21:06when I talk about how you can deconstruct
02:21:07and reconstruct a brand,
02:21:09these are deeper business concepts.
02:21:11And guess what?
02:21:12Business owners watch them.
02:21:13And guess what?
02:21:14Those eyeballs are more valuable.
02:21:1668% and we're only gonna get better at it.
02:21:18And so for us, boom, that meant that us changing our topics
02:21:22got the right people to watch the videos, check box one.
02:21:25And so you can see by the video title,
02:21:27when we had educational versus kind of wide
02:21:29or business education versus wider topics,
02:21:32the wider topics in general had way lower RPMs.
02:21:35You can see that with the light blue.
02:21:36Whereas the purple is more money-making,
02:21:40more business, more sales, more, you know, retention,
02:21:43real business tactics that grow companies.
02:21:45And those, unsurprisingly, were way higher in average RPM.
02:21:49Some of them even higher than that.
02:21:50So the next big change, and I see this as anecdotal,
02:21:52is that 25% more comments per view.
02:21:55And so I see that as an engagement metric
02:21:57that we had way more people saying,
02:21:59wow, this is good, or this is great,
02:22:00or I missed this style of content.
02:22:01And that's actually a really common thing.
02:22:03And I will say this, this is to my, this is my decrement.
02:22:06I should have seen that more business owners
02:22:09were telling us in the comments what they wanted.
02:22:11And honestly, I just wasn't listening.
02:22:14And that's on me.
02:22:16I was like, well, you're gonna lose some people
02:22:18as you make more high production stuff, that's okay.
02:22:21But with the return to hardcore business education
02:22:25in terms of the content that we're making,
02:22:26the response has been overwhelming
02:22:29that so many people were like,
02:22:30I'm coming back to all your content, this has been great,
02:22:32this is what I came here for.
02:22:33And so I'm stoked about that.
02:22:35And so we got 25% more people who are doing that.
02:22:37We have more shares, negligible,
02:22:39and slightly fewer likes, which again, whatever.
02:22:43But for me, I would rate comments and shares as higher.
02:22:46And so overall, we had higher engagement from these videos,
02:22:49even though they were narrower topics.
02:22:51Which to me is more good for fewer people
02:22:54than a little bit of good for a lot of people,
02:22:55which is where I want to be in terms of what I want to serve,
02:22:57or who I want to serve.
02:22:58So the next big change is that despite,
02:23:01and this is a key point,
02:23:02despite having fewer absolute views per long-form video,
02:23:06we're actually getting more long-form views
02:23:09overall across the channel.
02:23:10So we're up 30, almost 30%, 29.56%,
02:23:14than our six weeks average before that,
02:23:17from these deeper educational videos.
02:23:19Now, realistically, that's a function of one main thing,
02:23:22in my opinion.
02:23:23That's because the education stuff
02:23:26actually requires far less post-editing.
02:23:28And I can make more educational stuff,
02:23:30'cause this is what I do every day.
02:23:31And so we can actually create more content,
02:23:34which I'm stoked about.
02:23:35And I think, I mean, hopefully business owners are too.
02:23:38And so we actually get more overall views
02:23:41with the right people,
02:23:41because we don't have nearly as much high-fi,
02:23:45post-production whiz-bangs,
02:23:46which is what most of my audience who's trying to learn stuff
02:23:49rather than be entertained was happy about.
02:23:51All right, this next one is very surprising,
02:23:54to me at least.
02:23:55So our subscriber conversion increased by 24.6%.
02:24:00And so that means that we've actually,
02:24:03like even though, again, we had slightly lower absolute views,
02:24:07more long-form views,
02:24:08that we actually increased the absolute number
02:24:11of subscribers per week since doing this.
02:24:14So I was very comfortable with all of these metrics tanking.
02:24:18I honestly expected that,
02:24:19because I was like, all right,
02:24:20well, we're gonna have way fewer views,
02:24:22but it's gonna be the right people.
02:24:23But because 25% more people who watch, subscribe,
02:24:28even though we get fewer views,
02:24:30our actual subscriber growth has grown,
02:24:33which is crazy, in an absolute metric way.
02:24:35So this was an unexpected outcome for me.
02:24:38And has just reinforced that this was the right decision
02:24:41for the audience that I want, which is business owners.
02:24:43The next thing is like, okay,
02:24:43well, if you're getting fewer views,
02:24:45how is that gonna translate to opt-ins?
02:24:48'Cause I'm a business owner, like that's what I care about.
02:24:49I care about people who are trying
02:24:51to become portfolio companies, come to a workshop, whatever.
02:24:54And so it turns out that we have 26% more opt-ins per week
02:24:59since making this change.
02:25:04And so this is like both incredibly surprising
02:25:06and also incredibly duh.
02:25:07And I say this because like saying,
02:25:10hey, I'm gonna make business owner stuff
02:25:11to get more business owners, duh.
02:25:13But at the same time, I would say this,
02:25:15just me kinda commenting on a lot of the educators
02:25:18that are in the space, they tend to start moving
02:25:20more and more broad, more and more wide,
02:25:22more and more entertainment-y, more and more topics
02:25:24that they don't necessarily have expertise on,
02:25:26because they seek the views.
02:25:27Whether they say it or not, they don't wanna say it,
02:25:29they're like like saying cash,
02:25:30but they still kinda count their likes.
02:25:31And so I think if you can just absolutely
02:25:34get your logic head on, which is tough,
02:25:35because sometimes it's tough to go away
02:25:37from those vanity metrics.
02:25:39But I care about the bottom line,
02:25:41and so the right people were seeing it,
02:25:43and the right people were taking action.
02:25:45And so we, in the business sense,
02:25:47saw growth from this in a big way.
02:25:49And this is just like three weeks in, four weeks in
02:25:52to this kind of execution, all in on the strategy.
02:25:54And this will compound.
02:25:56And so for those who don't know,
02:25:56I have two best-selling books on Amazon.
02:25:58They're still like number one and number two
02:25:59on marketing and sales, and they've been there
02:26:01for like number one and number two for two years
02:26:03or three years or whatever, how they've been out.
02:26:04So they're pretty strong.
02:26:06And so we sell books every month no matter what.
02:26:08But what was crazy to me was to see this jump in book sales
02:26:13that happened as, like, think about this.
02:26:15We're getting fewer views.
02:26:16But more sales by a lot, like 2x the sales.
02:26:23Twice, not like 20%.
02:26:25Twice the sales of books that I have.
02:26:28And mind you, by the way, if you're like,
02:26:29hey, I'm poor, I get it, my books are free, too.
02:26:32They're by, like, you can go to activist.com
02:26:34and you can get the video course.
02:26:35All my stuff for free, you don't have to opt in.
02:26:36And you can go on my podcast and you can listen
02:26:40to the audiobook for free, all right?
02:26:41Like, the stuff's free, this isn't how I make my money.
02:26:43But it's a really good leading indicator for me
02:26:46of the quality of traffic.
02:26:47Now, if you want to get a physical copy, yes,
02:26:49there's printing costs and there's shipping costs,
02:26:50so yeah, you pay some bucks.
02:26:51But if you're dead broke poor, you can use the free stuff.
02:26:54The point is is that this attracted the right people,
02:26:57people who want, 'cause if I make a fitness meals video,
02:27:01guess what those people don't care about?
02:27:02Getting leads and making offers.
02:27:04Kind of sounds obvious when you think about it.
02:27:05When I make a, hey, this is how I work with Layla, my wife,
02:27:08maybe you get somebody who's like,
02:27:10what about the married entrepreneurs?
02:27:11It's like, well, only 9% of people are business owners.
02:27:14And then of that 9%, how many of them are married
02:27:16to their partner?
02:27:17Percentage or percentage?
02:27:18Versus just talking about business stuff,
02:27:22business people want to get more leads,
02:27:24make more offers, make more money.
02:27:25And so that's what my books are about.
02:27:27And so lo and behold, more of those people bought.
02:27:30Now, I want to be super clear.
02:27:31I want to show these two keynotes here.
02:27:33So there are some keynotes that will be both deep and wide.
02:27:37And as a content creator/business owner/investor/husband/human
02:27:42being, boy, big, sometimes you hit it out of the park
02:27:49and you actually get both.
02:27:50So my highest revenue per view video also happens to be
02:27:55my most viewed video.
02:27:58And so it doesn't necessarily mean that if you have
02:28:01a lot of views, the RPMs are low.
02:28:03No, not at all.
02:28:04You can get a video that applies to all business owners
02:28:08and it will get a lot of views.
02:28:10And the CPMs or the RPMs will be high.
02:28:13The branding video is the same thing.
02:28:14Now it's very recent.
02:28:15It's new and it continues to climb up.
02:28:17And both of these are very conceptual business concepts
02:28:21that all business owners can benefit from.
02:28:23And so if I talk about leverage,
02:28:26almost all businesses need to understand strategy and leverage
02:28:28it applies, it's a huge amount of value to business owners.
02:28:31Understanding brand, tremendous value to any business.
02:28:35Now on the other hand, you can also make,
02:28:37and we call these keynotes,
02:28:38but like longer form, either whiteboard presentations
02:28:41or like a presentation that I put a lot of time into,
02:28:43some of them are gonna be deeper and less wide.
02:28:45And that's okay.
02:28:46If I talk about scaling a 40 person sales team,
02:28:48if you have an e-commerce store, doesn't affect you.
02:28:51But leverage and brand would affect you
02:28:52whether you had the 40 person sales team
02:28:54or the e-commerce company or a software company
02:28:57or an app or whatever.
02:28:59And so again, the scaling 40 person sales team,
02:29:02still super valuable,
02:29:03but it's just gonna be only valuable
02:29:05to one third of the business owner audience
02:29:07that I might be able to, who might wanna watch this.
02:29:10Same thing with the video I've made
02:29:13about 10x-ing your business overnight
02:29:15by using mega influencers.
02:29:17Basically showing how to get a MrBeast, a Logan Paul, a Rock
02:29:21to partner with a Conor McGregor, a Huda Beauty,
02:29:24a Taylor Swift to partner with to 10x your business.
02:29:27Now, if you're a business like a local business,
02:29:30the likely that they're gonna partner with you is really low.
02:29:32Right, and so it doesn't really make sense
02:29:33for that particular business.
02:29:34Now you could use that on a micro scale,
02:29:36but it might just not have as much transference.
02:29:38If you have an e-commerce brand that's national,
02:29:41might make a ton of sense.
02:29:42But again, it's gonna have a sub-segment
02:29:44of already a 9% slice of the population
02:29:47that it would be deeply valuable to though.
02:29:49And so that's the thing is, is that I have to think about,
02:29:51like I'm okay with a video that gets 10,000 views
02:29:55instead of 400,000 views.
02:29:57If 10,000 of those people are $10 million
02:30:00plus business owners, it's like here,
02:30:02here's how I packed my company in order to sell it.
02:30:03I have a video on my channel that walks through 46 minutes
02:30:06of the decision-making process I use
02:30:07to determine to sell my business.
02:30:09Guess who that applies to?
02:30:10Basically no one, unless you actually have a lot of money
02:30:13and you already have a business asset
02:30:15that is $5 million in profit or more.
02:30:17And so, let's see, 9% of businesses,
02:30:20it's like .1% do $10 million a year of businesses.
02:30:25So there's like no one who that actually applies to,
02:30:28except for those people who are like,
02:30:30this thing was amazing, this changed my life.
02:30:32And I had a bunch of people after I posted that
02:30:34that I know that were big 20, 30, $40 million
02:30:36a year business owners who watched and be like,
02:30:37this is insane, I can't believe you gave this out.
02:30:39I'm like, believe it, because guess what?
02:30:41No one else is gonna watch it.
02:30:43And so I will say this, this is me giving you
02:30:45like a little hat tip for consuming.
02:30:48If you're a business owner, I would not gauge views
02:30:51as whether the video is good or not.
02:30:54It just shows how relevant it is to how many people.
02:30:57And so if you're an e-commerce person,
02:31:00I have some videos in here about how to use offers
02:31:02for e-commerce.
02:31:04That's just already gonna be a slice of a slice,
02:31:05but it'd be super applicable for you.
02:31:08And so I'm okay with very small views
02:31:11as long as the quality gives value and provides a result
02:31:16in a clear way for the viewer.
02:31:19And so I define education as change of behavior.
02:31:21So if I can help them change the behavior in a way
02:31:22that makes them more money, ideally they'll associate
02:31:24that money they made, that value they made with us
02:31:27at acquisition.com.
02:31:29And so that's the whole goal of this stuff.
02:31:31And for the creators out there, or those of you guys
02:31:34who are making content in order to promote your business,
02:31:37I'll give you this frame that I started out with
02:31:38that helped me a lot, which is when I pushed on my first,
02:31:42I started at zero on every platform, to be very clear here.
02:31:44It wasn't like I was Taylor Swift and I came on TikTok.
02:31:47Yay, right?
02:31:48It wasn't like that.
02:31:49When I started on YouTube, I had no subscribers.
02:31:51And the first videos I posted got like a hundred views.
02:31:55But I thought to myself, I was like, man,
02:31:57I would probably go across town to speak to a hundred person
02:31:59audience for lunch and I'd have no problem with that.
02:32:02And so the idea that I had a hundred people,
02:32:04I was like, that's not bad.
02:32:06Or even if there's 10 people, I'm like, well,
02:32:07I would talk to a 10 person.
02:32:08I mean, I used to do this for years.
02:32:09I would do a lunch and learn and see if I could sell
02:32:11some weight loss.
02:32:12And I was willing to do that anyways.
02:32:14And so it's literally just because of comparison
02:32:18that people feel bad about their social media content,
02:32:20not because inherently the numbers don't make sense.
02:32:23And the crazy thing about this,
02:32:24and I just want to reemphasize, is it's free.
02:32:27It's free.
02:32:29The platforms distribute your content for free.
02:32:31These are people that would never find out about you
02:32:33and they find out about you for free.
02:32:35Like, take that in for a second.
02:32:37So the leverage on free distribution is infinite.
02:32:40And so if you get a thousand people over a month
02:32:42and you see your thing, it's a thousand people.
02:32:44It's not nothing.
02:32:45And so I try to make sure that I focus on that concept
02:32:48of like, oh man, my average for the channel is 400,000
02:32:51and we got a 50,000 view video.
02:32:5450,000?
02:32:55My god, I speak at conferences with a thousand people.
02:32:57It's 50 times that.
02:32:59Not bad.
02:33:01And those people I got to have a really, really curated
02:33:03experience, increase the value per second,
02:33:05absolutely crush as much value as I possibly could
02:33:08in that time period.
02:33:09And so, I'll make one last note on the deep versus wide
02:33:13content, is that I get so many DMs and like,
02:33:18Slack messages, even from our portfolio company founders
02:33:21who are like, dude, that last video was so sick.
02:33:23And I hadn't had that in a minute.
02:33:25For probably the six months we went a little bit wider
02:33:28with our content.
02:33:29And it became so reinforcing for me.
02:33:32Even though like, what's the number of people?
02:33:34I don't know.
02:33:3550 people maybe messaged me being like, dude,
02:33:37that new, like your new content style or going back,
02:33:39like the new old content of more whiteboard,
02:33:42more deep business tactics, like it's so great,
02:33:44my team's watching it again.
02:33:45That like, fills me up.
02:33:46'Cause that's why I made this stuff to begin with,
02:33:48was the stuff that I didn't have when I was coming up
02:33:49that I wish someone had taught me.
02:33:51And then I had to just find out through trial and error.
02:33:53And so, that's why we make this stuff.
02:33:55But the views weren't high.
02:33:58But for me, like, I'm here for business owners.
02:34:01And I already know there's only 9% of people
02:34:03are business owners.
02:34:05And that's okay.
02:34:06I'm here for you guys.
02:34:08All right, so here's what we're doing next with this data.
02:34:10All right, so we had our hypothesis.
02:34:12We looked at the 35,000 posts.
02:34:13We made these six big shifts.
02:34:14And by and large, we have crushed the hypothesis.
02:34:18So I'm actually like, I was telling my team yesterday,
02:34:20I was like, we're kind of lucky
02:34:22that this worked out the first time.
02:34:23'Cause like, I'm not really used to things
02:34:25working out the first time.
02:34:26More like, realistically, like, hey, we made this change.
02:34:28And then like, four of the six stats are bad.
02:34:30And two of them are good.
02:34:31And so we're like, all right, well, these ones are good.
02:34:33So let's try and keep this stuff the same.
02:34:34And then we gotta tweak all these other things.
02:34:37Our view to subscriber ratio is higher.
02:34:38Our absolute subscribers are higher.
02:34:39Our opt-ins are higher.
02:34:40Our book sales are higher.
02:34:41Our applications are higher.
02:34:43And it's about stuff I like making.
02:34:44So I'm like, I'm thrilled to tears.
02:34:46I'm stoked.
02:34:46And I get to make this stuff about,
02:34:48like, we can do more content
02:34:49because I don't have to put as much post into it for you guys.
02:34:51So like, you guys said, it's more distracting
02:34:53to have the whiz-bangs and the effects.
02:34:54And we're like, cool.
02:34:56I'm happy to just talk business.
02:34:58So this is what we're doing now.
02:34:59So one big belief we have is volume negates luck.
02:35:02That's in the sales team locker room.
02:35:04Same thing in the media team.
02:35:05It's that we will create more.
02:35:08And we will just basically have constraints
02:35:11on where, like, the direction of what we're creating.
02:35:14But we will keep making as much as we can in different ways
02:35:17to find out what works even better than our first whack at it.
02:35:21The second thing is don't get the same scar twice.
02:35:23We're super happy to make mistakes.
02:35:24I mean, it's funny, I almost mean that.
02:35:29Like, it's totally fine making mistakes
02:35:31'cause, like, they're not mistakes.
02:35:33They're just lessons.
02:35:34What we don't want is to get the same scar twice.
02:35:37And so if we find out or we know
02:35:39that I have to introduce myself,
02:35:41then I better keep introducing myself.
02:35:43If we know that high-fi production
02:35:47doesn't do as well with business owners,
02:35:49then I better not do that, right?
02:35:52Unless there's a conclusion
02:35:53that we find that's wrong about that.
02:35:54But for now, like, that's what,
02:35:56we're not gonna make the same mistake twice.
02:35:57And so I'm happy to make all the mistakes there are
02:35:59in a very narrow field.
02:36:00That's what makes an expert.
02:36:02But I just don't wanna make it twice.
02:36:03A third one, this is super tactical,
02:36:05is that slides versus just me
02:36:08heavily prepping for a presentation
02:36:09hasn't made as much of a difference.
02:36:11So I tried to approximate this by, like,
02:36:13my best videos that were most views
02:36:15and most business-centric in terms of CPMs
02:36:18was me presenting at a conference.
02:36:20So I have a stage in my headquarters.
02:36:22And so I was like, all right,
02:36:23I'm gonna present on my stage.
02:36:24But it was not to an empty room.
02:36:25It was to my team.
02:36:27But, like, a lot of comments were like,
02:36:28is this guy pretending to be on stage?
02:36:30And so if you did see that,
02:36:32that's why it was, that's why the room was kind of empty.
02:36:35But I was trying to approximate
02:36:37as much of that style of video.
02:36:39So that gives you maybe a little bit of insight.
02:36:40I was like, okay, well, what can I control?
02:36:42I can do a stage.
02:36:43We can do the lighting.
02:36:44We can have the seats.
02:36:44I can have slides.
02:36:45These are all things that I'm used to doing.
02:36:46Now it worked to a degree,
02:36:47but we got the same performance from me
02:36:49just talking to a camera like this
02:36:50and going over the slides without the stage
02:36:53or me just doing whiteboard of walking through
02:36:55the concepts or the tactics to grow or solve a problem.
02:36:58Number four, show what only you can show
02:37:02and say what only you can say.
02:37:04And so I have a few marketing isms
02:37:07that I have never heard anywhere else
02:37:08that are very real for me.
02:37:11One is state the facts and tell the truth.
02:37:12It's always that way.
02:37:13'Cause then you never get in trouble.
02:37:14You don't have to worry about anything.
02:37:15You don't have to worry about claims.
02:37:16You just state the facts and tell the truth.
02:37:17Which also means that you have to go collect data
02:37:18so you can state the truth.
02:37:20And so a second one underneath of that
02:37:23is say what only we can say
02:37:24and show it only we can show.
02:37:25It's demonstration, right?
02:37:26And so if, obviously, I have accomplishments
02:37:30that I can say, hey, I know what I'm talking about
02:37:33but there's also labor.
02:37:34And so I can say, hey, I built a 8 million person audience.
02:37:39Listen to this stuff for content.
02:37:41Which, by the way, you don't have to listen to any of it.
02:37:42This just worked for me.
02:37:44Or I can say I made 35,000 posts independent of the outcome.
02:37:47And so what I wanna do is do more work
02:37:50than anyone else will do so that I can show
02:37:53what no one else can show and say what no one else can say.
02:37:55And so if you're starting out
02:37:56or you're a different part in your journey,
02:37:59considering like, okay, well, I can't out outcome anyone yet
02:38:02'cause I'm early, but you can outwork people.
02:38:04And so I can just say like I made 35,000 posts.
02:38:07That's what I learned.
02:38:08I'm gonna compress a lot of time for you.
02:38:09That's valuable no matter who you are.
02:38:11And number five is still doing wide shorts.
02:38:14So this is interesting.
02:38:15So we thought about this and we decided that, for shorts,
02:38:20we're willing to go a little bit wider.
02:38:23And I'll tell you why.
02:38:24So I run ads and Layla runs ads using our face.
02:38:29And I actually see the main ROI from shorts
02:38:33as top of funnel brand awareness.
02:38:35And when I say brand awareness,
02:38:35I really just mean like facial recognition.
02:38:37People will see my face and remember
02:38:39that they got some sort of value from it.
02:38:41And in a short, it's more difficult
02:38:45to get into really deep business concepts,
02:38:46which is what I'm, not to say it's impossible.
02:38:49And maybe I just need to up my skills,
02:38:50which is totally, totally fine.
02:38:53But we're still maintaining a certain percentage of shorts
02:38:56that I would consider to be more like a little bit wider.
02:38:59Because I tend to like business philosophy, too,
02:39:00and I don't wanna stop.
02:39:01One of the things I like talking about, I like philosophy.
02:39:04I like wide business concepts.
02:39:06I like personal development shit in terms of productivity,
02:39:09which is kind of a wider topic.
02:39:12But I'm not gonna stop doing that,
02:39:13'cause I do like making that stuff.
02:39:14And so I'll probably keep having shorts around that,
02:39:17because the ROI is actually not from shorts
02:39:19turning into book sales or shorts turning into opt-ins.
02:39:22It's actually the shorts getting re-targeted later
02:39:26with an ad that does go to something,
02:39:28but they're gonna be more likely to recognize me
02:39:31and then take the next step in whatever the funnel is.
02:39:34Whether we're saying, hey, if you're starting a business,
02:39:36go check out school, which by the way, again, wide.
02:39:38If someone's trying to start a business,
02:39:40then it makes sense for it to be a little bit wider
02:39:42for people who are trying to get into it.
02:39:43And so then the school ads can hit those people,
02:39:45and it makes sense for them to use school, right?
02:39:48If it's a business owner, I still think
02:39:52that from a business perspective,
02:39:53we have a lot of business content in terms of our shorts,
02:39:55but I wanna just address this in case you see it
02:39:57so you're not confused about it.
02:39:59I still have some wide content in short form
02:40:01because of the reason I just said.
02:40:04And so those are the next steps.
02:40:07And if you guys find these updates valuable
02:40:09with the metrics behind it,
02:40:11the TLDR of this whole video is that what we said worked.
02:40:16And if you're an educator, toss out the views,
02:40:22focus on your customer, make stuff for them
02:40:25because likes ain't cash, views ain't cash, cash is cash.
02:40:29And so if you're trying to grow your business,
02:40:30make sure you're making the stuff
02:40:31for the people you actually wanna make.
02:40:33Now here you go.