Transcription
Believe it or not, behind every personal brand, there is a real life human being. But from my perspective, that person is often disguised by this overly curated, scripted, polished, branded version of themselves. And this just doesn't really feel real. And I think unless you're being real, it's going to be hard to really create connection. And without creating connection, it's going to be very difficult to create relationships. And if you're not building relationships through your personal brand, then you know what are you doing?
So what I've been working on here on this channel is a whole new way of doing things. And I'm calling it the really real. So in this episode, I want to unravel what the really real manifesto is. And I'm not saying this because I think you should do it. I'm saying this because I feel like we should all have some form of manifesto, which is a direct extension of ourselves. Because if you're building a personal brand, you want it to be true to you. So, all the things I've been doing on this channel is just true to me. It's true to my sensibility, true to my style, true to my vision, my mission, my values, and the people that I'm looking to speak to. So, if you're interested in that, then stick around because I'm going to unpack the whole thing.
Number one, platform with purpose. The platform you choose is very important. And when you think about the kind different kinds of platforms that we have, I'll just speak about two in this video. Think about Instagram, which is more of a short form platform. This gives you an opportunity to basically tell people who you are in these very short reels, like 60 seconds. And with Instagram, you don't really have the opportunity to pick what you want to watch anymore. You just get fed stuff. You know, you'll go on to it and you'll just be scrolling away and then people just be showing up in your face, you know, constantly. And because you've only got 60 seconds, you've got a very short period of time to try and grab someone. So, so much of that dopamine stuff is happening on those platforms, you know, where you're just being loud, you're being noisy, you're flexing results, all this sort of stuff, and it just doesn't feel good from my perspective. It just doesn't feel good, you know, and it makes me feel, it makes me think about, you know, if you're at somebody's house, if you're at like a a social gathering and someone walks in and they're flexing and just talking about themselves and how amazing they are, just doesn't feel good, you know. So, for me, a lot of the time, these social platforms, the short form platforms feel like that.
So on the other hand, you could be creating on YouTube. And this is the reason why I've actually chosen YouTube as my preferred platform. Because on YouTube, it's actually one of the only platforms where we still choose on demand. You scroll a feed, you see some thumbnails and titles, and you decide what you want to watch based on what it is that you're seeing. So you're giving your audience a choice. You're not just bombarding them with just like very loud, noisy, quick dopamine stuff straight off the bat. So, if you can build up an audience by giving people the opportunity to click on your stuff, to see what you're about, and then invite them in for tea, make them feel at home, then you'll build connection. And through that connection, you'll slowly begin to build up relationships, and this will build up the trust. And at the end of the day, when you think about what a brand is, when you think about a brand like Nike or whatever big brand you want to talk about, what makes a brand a brand is trust. It It's because you they're reliable. They have a story. They have a mission. They've built out this whole world, these products, they're good and people trust them. So when you do that as a personal brand by offering education or insight or wisdom, whatever it may be, the best thing you can do is do it in a way where you can build real trust. And for me, this happens in this long form space. So platform is really important.
Number two, mission over me. Personal branding. A lot of the time it just feels like it's all about me, me, me. From the really real manifesto, the thing that we're doing. It's more about mission. So your personal brand isn't about you. It's about the transformation you can offer to your audience. So which is a reflection of you because it's the life that you've lived has gotten you to the point where you now have this insight where you can take your your audience through a transformation. So all of the stuff that led you up to that point is is important, which is part of your personal brand, but it's not about you. It's not just all about you. It comes from you. It's a reflection of you, but it's about the transformation you offer. It's about the mission that you bring to your audience. So, you make it about them. I'll make it about you.
The third thing is ditch the script, you know, because everybody with a with a computer can go on to chatbt. They can research trending ideas or whatever it may be. Or they can just research a niche and come up with different titles and ideas, create a script and read from a teleprompt. What is that? From my perspective, that stuff is going to die out very quickly, especially over the next 36 months when we see this flooding of all that kind of stuff. So, if you want to get ahead, you got to be real.
So, how do we do it? What is the opposite? What's the really real method? So, the way in which we do it here is not by scripting. As you can see, I'm not scripting this video. I'm just chatting to you. And the reason I can do this is because I've thought it through. I've gotten it dialed into my mind over the past while that I've been thinking about it. So by the time that I actually sit down, I can just speak to you, you know, as if we were going for lunch or going for a coffee, whatever it may be, and I kind of sit down with my best mate and be like, "What do you think about this cool idea? What do you think about this manifesto? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Are you going to speak about it?" You know, obviously you don't have the dynamic of the back and forth, which you have to learn. You have to get better at, you know, you have to get used to just staring at a camera and forgetting that you're even looking at a camera. look through the camera and just know that you're speaking to an audience and just have a conversation. Keep it conversational. And this takes time. This takes practice, but I do believe that if you practice enough, you'll be able to do it. And again, this is how we move more into that real perspective.
The fourth thing is presence over performance. You know, most people, they think that you need to present. And I actually just had a YouTube comment today where somebody was saying, "I'm really liking the calm demeanor," something like that. But so many people say that you have to, you know, you know, put on that thing, you know, be like more hyped up or whatever. And, you know, I say that You know, like that if that just does not make sense. I feel like presenting is this TV thing that we've adopted on this YouTube space. And what we're all looking for right now is for people to be real. You know, from my perspective, what I want to do here, what I want to offer is myself as you see it. If we hung out together in a cafe, this is what I would be like. And this comes again from my experience of making documentaries. As a director, I've worked with hundreds of people, you know, directing them to try and get them to a point where they feel comfortable on camera so that they can be themselves because as a as a documentary filmmaker, you want it to be real. You want the real story to come through. And if they're going putting on the camera thing, it just doesn't feel right. And I've had to cut so many people from documentaries, people with big names, because they just didn't fit the tone of the film because it no longer felt real. So for me, I'm focused on real.
The fifth thing is transformation over production value, which is polished edits and all this sort of stuff, you know. It's um I feel like that is the old way, you know, and this is how we burn out where you spend so much time creating content, going out trying to script stuff and trying to think up all this clever stuff to be able to make your thing, you know, just be really impactful and full of retention and all this sort of stuff. But most people when they go down this path, they burn out because when you're building a business online, building a personal brand, there's so many things that you need to think about. And if you're spending that much time creating content, you're not going to be able to do any of the other stuff. and the other stuff is important. If you don't build the business, the business is the machine that offers the opportunity for you to even do this in the first place because if it's not sustainable, how are you supposed to sit down and create content in the first place? So creating that much time trying to make high production value stuff is going to burn you out. So what I'm suggesting is high transformational value. focusing on the transformation as opposed to the production, you know, and I'm not saying it doesn't mean having a nicel looking image and having good sound. Look at what I'm doing here. You know, I've got a single frame. I've got a killer mic. I've got a nice color grade. I've exposed it to my taste. So, that is all that matters from my perspective. And again, this comes from my style of film making, you know, from my style of film making. I'm not somebody who is getting tons of coverage, you know, like overdoing it, you know, being scared that if I don't get that shot, the story is not going to work. A lot of the time, I'll I'll let a whole scene play out in one frame, just pushing through a door or something like that because you don't need a lot. Less is more. Simplicity is is what we're looking for here. So when you get this right, when you set up a frame like this and sound and light it nicely, it just allows the value to come through with less distraction and you feel like this looks nice, it's pleasing on the eye, it's balanced.
The next thing is to lead with questions. And I feel where most people go is to try and lead with answers by by and I feel like if you lead with answers, then you're going to be the authority. But from my perspective, from the way in which I learned, I don't really learn so well with just getting answers. Some things are really good for answers. just be like, I need to just know how to do this very simple thing. You know, that's great, like a tutorial or whatever. But a lot of the time, leading with answers doesn't really give your audience an opportunity to really learn from themselves. So, from my perspective, I would say lead with questions because if you lead with a question, it allows for your audience to actually come up with insight as opposed to just, you know, digesting information. And I was I was recently listened to a podcast and this expert was talking about how it is that we actually h how we arrive at an understanding and it doesn't happen through information. So he gave this example if you read a book if you're reading like a book about engineering or something you've got no idea what engineering is and you read like three four pages and you can like you know come away from it going I have no idea what I just read because the information was there but the understanding didn't happen. So if you offer questions as opposed to just telling them answers, the mind will work to try and figure out the question for themselves. And if you have that that understanding, that insight comes through from your own direct experience, then that becomes insight, you know, it's not information. So you want to be helping your audience arrive at insight rather. And that is what I'm doing here. I would rather lead with questions rather than being a preacher and telling you exactly what it is that you should do. So you'll notice on this channel so much of it has been about the mission. How so much of it has been about the why and and then actually when I work with people when I work with clients onetoone with my programs we do get more into the sort of like this is what you need to do as well but still I really like to work from this place of guidance as opposed to prescription.
The next thing is building trust over followers. The other thing that many people are doing is chasing followers, chasing subscribers, chasing vanity metrics, but what for? Who cares? You know, they're numbers on a screen. That's all that's all it means. You know, you just have like these numbers that go up and it just gives you a little bit of dopamine. Makes you feel good about yourself. But it doesn't matter how many follows you get. Doesn't matter how many likes that you get, how many views get, you'll get used to that bracket and then you'll want more. You know, I remember like my first 100 subscribers on this channel, I was like, "Wicked." My first thousand, amazing. First 5,000, 10,000, 15,000. You know, it gets to the point where, you know, you start to recognize just that these things are only valuable when they actually translate into something which is driven by connection where you're actually, you know, turning those numbers into real people, you know. So they're not just numbers, vanity metrics where they're real people that want to connect with you on a deeper level to be able to work together and move through this transformation more directly. That's where these numbers really start to come in. So my perspective, the flip on this, the contrary that I'm that I'm offering with a really real manifesto is to focus on connection and community. And this is, I believe, the most important thing that we need to be focusing on right now because if we're just if we're just focusing on these silly vanity metrics, you know, we're missing out on the point. This is where social media becomes gross, you know, where it becomes all about followers, all about subscribers. But where does that go? Where does that lead you to? You know, there's so many creators that have gone down this route with millions of subscribers, burnt out and quit and said they're broke. you know, so it's meaningless unless it translates in some way. So where whatever we're focusing on, it's just kind of thinking like why why do I care about these numbers? Why do I care about these metrics? You know, what is the real value? What is the true value? And if you can recognize that the true value is in connection and community, that's how you start to build out your movement. That's how you can come up with your manifesto that makes what you're doing unique to you and you draw people in into your way of doing things.
And finally, embody the work. And what I mean by this is so often I see these perfectly cured highlight reels, you know, just like these short little things kind of just talking about, you know, how great they are, you know, whatever. What I'm saying is just embody it. You know, like what I've been doing on this channel, I'm building in public. I'm showing you what I'm doing. I'm just doing it. You know, it's like I'm not talking about, you know, how awesome my thumbnails are or how incredible my titles are or whatever, but they're getting lots of clicks. They're getting lots of views. My channel's growing fast. So, I'm just doing the thing that I'm doing. I'm helping people build their YouTube channels and build their personal brands and all that sort of stuff. But the authority is just happening by me doing it as opposed to, you know, just constantly sort of like, you know, trying to put together these overly sort of curated, you know, flexing videos where I'm just buffing up just how awesome I am because again, that doesn't work. I just think about that person again walking into that that social environment, coming in and just dropping heat about how epic they are. And that's just never going to be something that I'll be able to do. I will drop in little bits and pieces from time to time, you know, but I try and keep it natural, you know, as if it's coming into a conversation. I try and talk about my experience as a filmmaker, you know, by offering just stories that happen that's happened in my film making career, which is a huge part of this channel, which is how it is that I've actually built this channel. But I'm not telling you about every single film I've worked on or every single award that I got or any of that sort of stuff. Just feels weird. Just not going to do that. But if I can bring it into my my videos in some way that feels natural and organic, I'll feed it in, you know, just like I would in a story.
So what I'm saying, building two platforms, YouTube first, Instagram second. Do it quietly. Do it slowly. You don't have to shout. You don't have to be needy. You don't have to be like, you know, doing all that stuff. You can just invite people in by being you. And just go and look at my channel. You know, if you just look at my channel, go to the homepage, look at the thumbnails, look at the title, look at all that sort of stuff, look at my banner, look at my description. I'm just inviting my audience in. You know what I'm doing. You know what it is. I don't have to constantly bombard you with it. I'm just inviting you in, making you feel at home, having a little chat, treating like a human being, being respectful, treating like a friend. And hopefully over time we build up this trust, we build up this connection, we build up a relationship and the whole thing begins to to move.
So that's the really real manifesto. And again, I just want to be clear and say like I'm not telling you that this is the only way. I'm not being dogmatic and being like this is what you need to do and it's the only way that it works. This is what's working for me. This is what's worked for me and this is just my choices, my sensibility based off of my own life's experience and nothing else. this has come out of me as opposed to me seeing it out there and then deciding to do it. So I'm just saying to you just do a little bit introspection. Try and think about for you like what would your manifesto be? Again, this is all about being really real. This is being this style is really real to me. What is your really real? You know, what does it mean to be real? How do you express your true self? You know, what's the style going to be like? What's the vibe going to be like? What's the pace going to be like? The colors, the feeling, all that sort of stuff. Have a think about it. Use this as an example to build out your own manifesto because that will be the thing that separates you from the rest. And in this time, in this moment with this flooding of AI, you know, with these experts saying we've got 36 months left until the internet becomes wild, we have a very short period of time to make sure that we can carve out a little space and make sure that you can come through instead of having to fight against all the chaos that's just about to come.
So, let me know how you feel about this. Let me know about your manifesto. Let me know about the kind of approach that you're taking. Is there anything here that you like that you would like to be inspired by for yours? Let me know in the convers in in the comments. Let's start a conversation. Again, if you want to take this further, if you want to take this deeper, I've got the school community. I'll leave a link in the description below. And I've also got a couple other links down there which is letting you know a little bit more about what it is that I'm doing. So, anyway, I hope you enjoyed that and I will see you in the next one.