Transcription
So, the content game has changed permanently, and I believe right now there's the biggest opportunity, but most creators have missed the memo. I've spent the last year adjusting to the new paradigm, and it's generating more business and even more connections than I ever thought was possible.
But how do you stand out? Like, how do you get out of the sea of sameness and all this AI stuff? And so, for today, I want to jump into a conversation with my friend Brier Cochran. Thank you for joining me, bro.
Absolutely. And Brier has worked behind the scenes with some of the biggest brands on social media, helped them strategize to reach even more people, and then also turn that attention into real business results.
"If you posted every day and you got 1% better, you would probably never have to worry about money ever again."
We're going to jump into the conversation, bro, about how anybody right now can get onto this new playbook because I think most people are using like a 2022 playbook, and it's just not working. You probably get these messages of people that aren't getting the same amount of views, and they think social media is dead, but what's the truth?
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely not dead. Okay. I started posting within the last 6 to 12 months, and my life is radically changed. So, there are lives being changed every day. From people starting just a few months ago, you know. Uh, it's definitely not dead, that's for sure. It's usually a lack of reinvention. And I would usually say a lack of reinvention comes from a fear of testing and exploration and growth periods. It's almost like, uh, they want to cling to this, this, um, form of comfort, almost like identity to what might have been working. Like, why isn't it working anymore? But yeah, it's definitely not dead. And, uh, I think that a lot of those creators are just afraid of reinventing the wheel. That's what I'm noticing for sure.
Yeah. And so, you, you were working behind the scenes with a lot of these people, and it was almost like on easy mode, would you say? Like a few years ago?
I felt like everything was easy. You didn't even have to put out a good piece of content, and it would reach a bunch of people.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was looking at some statistics. The amount of posts going up on TikTok and Instagram averaged about 70%. So if you think about it, that was a million posts a day to 1.7 million posts a day. So the supply and demand is getting insane. The supply is going high, high, high, high. But then views are going down, down, down, right? And so that's what's happening. You, you look at metricool.com, um, put out a great, a great study on this. I would heavily encourage you guys to all go check out. It's showing, it's telling you exactly what Neil just said. The views are going down. Why? Because supply is going up. So many more videos are coming into the ecosystem because it's just easier and easier. Yeah. People are getting more and more comfortable, and content is becoming more and more a part of who we are. People are joining the content game every single day. You're hearing people say, "Hey, it's going to be good for your business." So they hop in. They hop in. They hop in. But then nobody has the skill set to differentiate themselves from the new 70% rise in posts. That's the problem.
And like, and yeah. Well, before we get into like tactical content stuff, I just want to preface this conversation by saying, like, we were just talking about this, that there is a two-year window here that's starting to close.
And I think people don't understand this. You know, uh, the, the market has shifted in most industries, especially in my industry, and it's probably the same for almost any industry where, you know, it used to be like a bell curve where there's a lot of people in the middle doing okay, and then there's a lot, there's a few people doing really well, and there's a few people doing really bad. Now it's shifted to a power curve where most people are struggling.
Yeah. There's some people that are trying to get out of this middle muck, and then there's people as they move up the curve that are just getting enormous benefits. For sure. They're making more money than ever possible. They're getting more views and more attention and more relationships. And so somebody might be like, "Oh, how do I get, how do these guys get so lucky or these girls get so lucky?" Well, they're doing something different than everybody else.
Yeah.
And so while we're all struggling in this middle muck and wondering, "Hey, the algorithm is not showing my videos to people." Well, like you just said, it's the amount of supply versus demand, but there's tactical things you can do to move out of this muck and get into the top part. So whether you're watching or listening, and you're like someone who's just starting, or you're someone who's been doing it and you noticed, "Hey, I'm not getting the reach anymore," or, you know what, "I'm getting discouraged." For either one of those people, I think like now is the time to lock in because if you lock in in the next six months, next 12 months, you can really separate yourself and create a huge advantage. Yeah, our RPN is one of the best creators online. Um, he was on a podcast and he said, uh, building a personal brand in three years, uh, right or today is the equivalent of our parents' generation or our grandparents' generation getting real estate in the 1940s, 50s, 60s. It was easy. You could get in and then just kind of ride the wave a little bit. But there is a probably two to three years where AI is going to come in, and uh, the personal brand real estate is going to be equally as hard to get as real estate now. It's going to be so much harder to get a personal brand in 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years as it is to get an affordable home in LA right now, you know, which was not the case, you know, 3, 4, 5 years ago, right? But, you know, um, it's going to be the especially because of AI, if you think about it, uh, humans are going to be able to put out so much volume. The 70% from that study is going to go to 7,000%.
Yeah. And so, if you're thinking about this the way I am, and I've been up and down, like I've had moments where, you know, I'm adding a bunch of followers and getting a bunch of reach, and then I've had a part where like, "Hey, enough stuff's not working." It's this valley, peaks and valleys, you know? And you just have to keep keep pushing. But if you're thinking right now, "Hey, I've had a period in my life where I looked back and I'm like, man, if I would have just locked in during that time, I would have crushed it." And we all have these, man. It'd be like, "Dude, if I just bought all the crypto, I'd be rich. If I just bought all the real estate, like you said, 5 years ago, 4 years ago, I'd be freaking rich." And so, I just think you get these big fat pitches every once in a while.
And, uh, Buffett, you know, the most famous investor, talks about these all the time.
Yeah, he's talking about it all the time. He's like, "Man, you know, part of investing is just waiting for that fat pitch. You know, there's not always opportunities. You guys, you got to be in the game for sure. But when you see that big one, you got to take a big swing." And so, I think right now is 100%, you're 100% right, like now is the time with the personal brand.
But very few people understand it. And so, that's why it's a game that pays off because so many people will start and quit.
Y. Because they're going to try not get the result. And this is honestly one of the things I noticed about the people who you've, some of these people you've worked with, and, uh, some of the people I've had the benefit of connecting with at our events, and just thinking about how they view success. They view success in a long window. Like the average person views success like, "Hey, if I don't make money from this or if it doesn't go viral, I'm I'm quitting in 30 days or 60 days." These people think about it like, "Here's my strategy. I'm going lock in for the next three years."
Yeah. Five years, 10 years. If you think about it like this, okay, if you started today, 300 view jail, God forbid we have 300 view jail. If you got one, if you posted every day and you got 1% better in 12 months, your baseline would be 11,000 views. That is better than my baseline. It's better than the average person's baseline. You would probably never have to worry about money ever again. You would be able to build a community, sell a product or a service where you could sustain your life. Add a year to that. I don't know the math. We could pull it up with ChatGPT. 1% improvements from 11,000 for another 12 months. We're talking like 2 to 300,000 views as a baseline. Add another year to it. It's just compounding interest. People don't think that content has compounding interest because they're not taking 1% improvements. So, you have to see the Buffett example was so good because you get in the game, you get better 1%, and then your followers actually compound.
Your views compound.
You know, I tell people like, if you can, the most important metric is week over week follower growth. Week over week follower growth. And some people will push me on that, but whatever. If you can, and it's the percentage because the percentage compounds. It's not a thousand because what happens is the thousand turns into 1,100, and then 1,100 turns into 1,210.
Yeah. And then it just keeps going and it keeps going.
And so that's that, that is a, uh, simple thing of getting better. Yes.
So, I noticed the best people are looking at game film, just like an athlete would. What worked last week? What didn't work? What ideas can we double down on next week? Like, and looking at week over week, uh, year or month over month, follower growth, all that stuff. Um, so we're going to get into a couple things here. We're going to get into, you know, what are the content formats that are working, and some feedback there. I have some questions for you from even my stuff and from people in our group and our in our audience. And by the way, if you're watching or listening right now, and you're on, uh, if you're on YouTube, make sure you put in the comments anything that you think of like that you would want to go deeper on in a future episode, cuz Brier, he didn't, he probably doesn't remember, but he just committed to coming back.
I did say he said he'll be back.
I'll also, I'll also answer every single YouTube comment for the next 30 days. I'll commit to that for sure. Anything you guys leave a question, like, seriously, you know, squeaky wheel gets the grease. And if you're stuck on something or you want us to go deeper on something, please drop it in the comments, and we check every single one. I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to continue to put out the absolute best content that's going to help you move your business and brand forward, but I need your help. So many of you guys are watching this channel, but you're not subscribed. And that's the number one thing that's going to help me grow. So, if you haven't done so already, hit that subscribe button. Normally, I'd have a fancy ad read and promote some product, but today, all I want you to do is just subscribe to the channel. And now, let's get back to the episode. So, in the content strategy, we'll talk about. And then from there, we're going to talk about conversion strategy because I think that's a big thing that people don't understand.
Yeah. How to monetize. You just said if you can do this, you'll never have to worry about one again. And I, and I can attest to that. Like, I sleep just fine nowadays only because of my personal brand because I know if it all went to, like, I've lost all my money. My business went to, I lost this space. I could start all over because of my brand.
Yeah. Right. It just gives you this ultimate peace of mind, ultimate freedom. And I think that's the big thing. It doesn't necessarily, it equates to whatever amount of money you want it to be. Some people want big money. For me, money is about like freedom. It's a tool. And what is your number to get to where you no longer have to worry? You can tell your wife and kids, like, "We're good on money," you know? And, um, and so part of that is your ability to make money.
Y. It's not just the money you have liquid in your savings. It's like, or in your assets. It's like, "Oh, my ability to make money means that if I have zero money tomorrow because something crazy happened with the stock market or whatever, or the real estate market crashed, I'll be just fine because my ability to make money is strong."
Yes. And so, way more important than your actual investments. Put them, put money to the side.
Yeah. Yeah. So if you're, if you're like, "Man, I haven't stacked cash. I missed the windows over the last few years of all this money being made." That's fine. Like, focus on your skills. Yes. And this will be your number one asset. And then you'll get the windfall as well. So when you turn, when it comes to content, um, you talked about people stuck in 300 view jail, or for somebody it might be 3,000 view jail. It doesn't matter. Um, I've noticed that people's baselines are doing the opposite of what you said. They're falling. Mhm. They used to be getting an average, and then it's going down. They're not looking at game film. They're not seeing what worked. But why is the stuff that they were posting before not working?
Yeah. Well, I think you have to understand basically two concepts. Number one, you have to understand fatigue. That's a real thing. Okay. Your followers, we talked about how videos get dished to your followers first, especially on Instagram. You can't make the same video. It's like if, if I just played reruns of season one of The Office, you might watch it. I, I'll watch it a lot. I'll watch it. I'll watch it a good amount, but at some point, it's going to lose that pizzazz. And so a lot of people have been running the same playbook, like we said, since 2024. It's the same hooks, same topics, same formats, same everything. And you get follower fatigue. People move on to the next, the next person. You know what I mean? They've learned everything they can from you. They move on to the next person. So it's fatigue. That's one. And then two, a lack of being able to analyze data. That's what I really believe in. So can you actually go back into your last month, figure out what were the two to three things that worked, right? And then how, how do I pair them together to innovate and make something better the next week?
Got it.
And there's a huge fear of testing. I'm like, to me, it's like, if you're not flopping two to three times a week, you're not testing enough. Okay. Sam, we talked about Sam G on Dan Martell's team. They kind of do, and they, they changed this recently, but in the past, whenever they were truly growing, they were doing a 70/30. 70% feel like, "We know what we're doing. It's going to be a hitter." 30% "Let's do something crazy, something we've never done before." That's probably how they found some of their winning formats.
Exactly. You have to.
So like, that's, I remember some of his most viewed might have been these videos with kids.
Yes. They would have never found that had they not been in the 30%.
That was the 30% swing.
So that was like, if you guys aren't familiar, Dan Martell, he would stand out in front of the car or do these Q&As with people and encourage kids to come and ask him questions. Yep. And then his answers went viral. The kids' question and his answer. Something about kids, people like it. But again, they didn't know that till they tried it. And so even any Q&A could be the like, so that whole thing is a Q&A format.
Exactly.
So if you're creating content right now, and you've been doing talking head videos to teach your audience something, and here you're trying to put it out there on the internet.
Uh, a new format for you to try in this 30% would be Q&A.
You suggest that?
100%. I'll give you five formats that you should test right now to get away from talking head.
Okay, cool. I am very passionate that you, unless you have an established personal brand, you have to get away from talking head because everyone else is doing it, right? So the easiest thing you can do, I call this counter-positioning. Whenever we talk about differentiation, you have to counter-position against the format which in your space is usually the talking head. Number one, go green screen. These green screen videos, there's a lot of phenomenal creators that will do great green screen videos. Um, you can do it where there's B-roll behind you. You can also do it where there's things that you're able to reference. Maybe it's just a notes app, and you're just referencing down this listical. You know, you want to balance green screen. Number two, whiteboards, right? You do some whiteboard content. Get up there, draw some stuff down. That's so much better than just a traditional talking head. Q&A is a great one. Uh, number four, like this is getting definitely slept on. Um, the carousels are back. Okay, they weren't, they weren't, they died for a little bit, but right now, whenever you watch this video, carousels are back. They, uh, had a really low dip in supply. And so, um, carousels had the largest like, the largest gap in people posting, which was really low in the results they were getting, which was really high. And then the fifth is like, do like a clone video. If you're, if you're in the right niche and like you're more of a silly personal brand, these clone videos where it's you here, and then it's also you over here, and you're like talking to yourself, guaranteed to rip right now.
Yeah, I've seen those take off, and I always thought how cheesy they are, but like,
It depends on your brand. Depends on your brand. I would never do that because I try to have like, my world-building is more like scientific. It doesn't fit me, right? So, and it probably wouldn't fit your brand either, but depending on where you're at. But yeah, there's people in my group, for example, that want to teach real estate tips or finance tips. So they might say they would position themselves of the novice or the beginner, asking themselves a question. Now, when they ask themselves a question, like just practically, how to film that, you would be like, "You can use your phone, by the way. You don't need any fancy gear. Phone and a mic, probably." But you would film it. Would you like take your hat off in one? Be the other one? Like, how do you see the format?
One of our clients, we do three. It's a triple clone, and she has three different outfits, right? And she'll change them. And then you, you keep the camera in the same place, and what you do is you go into CapCut and you do a mask, a mask setting for the editing. And it's really simple. You just flip that thing vertical. You kind of just move it to where it covers where the person is and put a little bit of feather on it.
This is technical stuff, but if you're an editor, you'll understand this stuff. It's pretty simple to do. And then another one, just, I'll do a real quick, another format is a split screen where it's you at the top, and then a mirror board or, um, some software down below where you're kind of moving pictures, or maybe it's like a whiteboard software where you can kind of move stuff around.
Could be like screen recording of an iPad.
Exactly. Okay. Exactly.
Yeah, I've noticed my friend Steven Miller, I don't know if you know. Steen's awesome. He'll write stuff on. He loves the whiteboard or the iPad. Y. And you record the screen. So that would be him at the top, the screen at the bottom, and then you can get into it. Okay, cool.
To me, like, that's like the easiest lift. Like, if, if I was like, "You have 24 hours to get out of 300 view jail." I'm just adding five formats that are not talking head. It's that simple. Now, there's layers to it. But that's usually the very first mistake that I'm seeing a lot of creators make is you cannot be copying the people who already have an established personal brand. If you don't have one, you can't be copying, you know, you can't be copying Omar. Can't be copying Hormosi. You can't be copying Cody Sanchez. Like they have an established audience, okay?
Hormosi could freaking be taking a dump, and I'd listen to him. Like, his format doesn't matter. He has his, his format is his face.
All right. You need to counter-position against everyone else.
That could be a good hook, bro. Hormosi sitting on the toilet taking a dump. That probably go viral.
He might. It probably, I guarantee you if he's sitting on a toilet, and then a whiteboard he's drawing on the stall. He's teaching. He's like, "Bro, I don't waste any time. I'm locked in. This is brand too."
Yeah, I'm locked in while I'm taking a, um,
So, yeah, this is like, this is the next level strategy of just thinking outside the box. And I think it's become kind of lazy to just go selfie mode and just talk. And what's crazy about it is you'll, you'll scroll Instagram. If you're a creator, and if you ever get into these, anybody who you know who's ever been stuck in trying to get more views, they'll start getting a, they'll start watching content on how to make content. You know, it's the number one thing if you're on Instagram. There's so many creators who are teaching creators how to make videos and how to sell content, uh, improvement to other creators who are selling content improvement to other creators. It's this whole pyramid scheme. But, um, if you get into that rabbit hole, you'll notice them just giving you tip after tip on hooks and different things for you to do more talking head. But they, what, and there are standouts. There's anomalies. Like, I'll give you an example. There's a gal in my group, okay? She's never, she hasn't been posting at all. She's older. She says, "Instagram, I missed the boat, whatever." She's getting 200 views, 80 views. She makes one of these talking head videos based on a good hook and script, and she gets like 300,000 views.
Yeah. Just anomaly. But then everybody else in that cohort maybe didn't, you know, and we don't really know why. Maybe it was her look, the way she delivered it. There's nuance, you know, there's more than. And obviously having a good hook and a good visual hook, like these are just basics. If you're going to do talking head, there's a few things you can do to stack the deck in your favor. And I feel like whenever somebody's like, "Hey, I'll send you the hooks to start your videos." These are hooks from the people you're talking about who already have established authority. So that hook worked for that person, it doesn't work for you.
Well, then let's also go back to fatigue. Why are we going to copy something whenever, if I copy it, and someone else, let's just say 10%. Let's just say 10% of the people that this video gets sent to have already heard something like this, they're gonna scroll.
Yeah. Right. And you just probably lost out. Like, that doesn't mean, "Oh, my video is only going to get, you know, 900 views compared to 1,000." It's like, "No, no, no." That 10% signals to the algorithm, "This is a bad video."
Yeah. Right. And it's now going to be stuck in 300 view. Not like, "Oh, it's just a little bit less." You have to quit copying hooks. Like you have to understand principles, principles in copywriting, principles like just really great, like understanding marketing and psychology and and communication tactics, and then just don't even think about hooks. That's kind of like, like maybe for most of you, you need to just like, not, like take the word "hook" out of your vernacular. And maybe I don't, I don't. Okay, don't crucify me in the comments. All right. But some of you lose so much personality in your hook because you're reading, "Here's how I made $10,000 in 30 days, and you can do the same too. But what you have to do is stay for point number three."
Yeah. It's never going to work. It's never going to work.
Yeah. I got three points and make sure you stick around for number three.
It's the best one. Yeah. That stuff like auto-scrolls nowadays.
Yeah. So.
Okay, so this makes sense. So this is why I think these other formats are mix it up, pattern interrupt, and also, um, gives the audience something new to look at. And also it has a format, has this feeling of DIY, raw, rather than produced. So I just think, you know, on a production scale, I'm looking for like a six or seven out of 10. When it's too produced, I've noticed unless you are really creative and really good at that, it almost works against you. Are you seeing the same thing?
Yeah. Yeah. Special. I mean, 100% on TikTok. On TikTok, you should, that's dead.
Yeah, you should only Instagram.
Yeah, Instagram. I think it's a balance. It depends on where you're at in your niche. I think if you're, um, it depends on the niche, depends on where you're at in your journey. I would say that's a safe assumption, but sometimes it's like, "Okay, it's actually time for me to tap into the authority a little bit more, and actually views matter less." Okay, well, then let's go get a nice camera. It's okay if maybe I stay around my current view rate because I need to be seen as like this figure of authority. Um, which a nice camera is going to do that. Um, but yeah, I would agree 100%. It also depends on your niche. You want to match it, right? So, if I'm an attorney, maybe iPhone stuff might do well, but it might be something where I would do a little bit more of a, of a nicer camera. If I'm teaching people how to be a cheerleader, no, my audience doesn't even know what a nice camera is. I didn't mean that as like a women joke. Okay. I'm just saying like, young girls like his iPhone until they die. Yeah.
Right. So, yeah.
Okay. So, and then this is just a note for us for editing. Um, now I have the the framework for today. So, we're going to go through a three-step process, which would be number one is getting more, getting more views, like getting out of this, uh, rut that everybody's in. Or if you're starting, you can just skip the rut and go straight to the good stuff. Then number two is reaching the right people. And then the third step would be converting.
Yeah. Okay. So, it's like content, connection, conversion.
Okay.
And so, ask me a question about at some point my five tactics to to counter-position to stand out. Right.
Okay, cool. So, um, now we're going to get into how to reach the right people and convert. But before we do that, like, what are other things people can do to stand out because I've just noticed like you said, supply is almost double. It's not quite there, but it's, if you look at supply now versus a couple years ago, it's now double. And so with everybody doing the same thing, how do you stand out?
Yeah. Uh, um, Jeff Bezos has a quote that says, "Differentiation is survival, and the universe wants you to be typical." And that's about business, but it's also equally about content. It's the same exact thing. Businesses compete for money. We compete for views against our market, right? And it's so true. It's just, can you be different? So, I have a few techniques, few tactics, a few philosophies to stand out. I call this counter-positioning. What counter-positioning is is basically taking the people in your market, in your niche, okay? And, uh, holding them, uh, kind of against their own words. So, for example, if I'm in the content space, I'm a content guru teaching people about content. A lot of people in my space have the nice cars. They're in Miami. They're slinging courses and stuff like that. What I can do is I can counter-position against that to where they have to betray who they are as an individual to actually, uh, basically combat me. So I can say, "Hey, uh, the person, um, with the Lamborghini is spending money and driving that car around, uh, but they don't actually spend time in their business, right? Or they're in Miami. Why are they in Miami? They're in Miami for the beach and the partying and going out. Well, guess what? I'm in Omaha, Nebraska, dude. All I do is work. All I do is study the game. What, what am I gonna do? Go hang out with some cows." That's a counter-position. So, you got to be thinking about that with your niche. Right. But I'm going to break it down. You can, number one, you can counter.
So, you think about what are the things people typic, that are typically what they're doing, and then how you're different, how you do the opposite of that.
Exactly. And, and you want to like, you want to get it to where you almost like checkmate them into who they are, right? Because then it forces them to like, "What are they going to do? Sell their cars to like, match me?" No, they're just like, "All right, I guess like we just created a divide." Brier will get the people that care about being humble and trustworthy and more Midwesterns, and they'll get the the 19-year-olds that have, you know, earrings, and that's fine.
You know, care about money.
But, um, there's a couple ways to do this. It doesn't always have to be that example. You can go deeper into a skill set.
And this, what I mean by this is like, uh, you know, let's take a basketball player for an example. Steph Curry went deeper into the concept of shooting threes. There wasn't really this person who was like the best in the world at just shooting from half court. So you can specialize. You can find your uniqueness deeper into a skill. So maybe it's content. You know, hooks is overplayed. Editing is overplayed. But what else is there that you could go deeper into? Maybe you become the storytelling expert. We talked about Stephen. What's his thing? Is it, uh, it's Minihat, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, he's went deeper into Minihat. You know, Gan and Meer did the same thing. Deeper into Minihat. There are so many people, even like, uh, me, I go to data analytics. That's kind of my thing. Is I'm the data guy.
Take a skill set and you can go deeper, right?
I think about people in our industry who are like, if they're talking about real estate, for example, there's a category within, like a niche that they could just go deeper on. So you would find what is the typical things people talk about. Maybe there's something on the fringe, or it could be just one of those pillars, and how could you get just deep, deep expertise on just that one thing and talk about that?
Exactly. Let that become your thing. So easy exercises like, "What are the 10 skills to be great at my niche?" Pick one and be like, "This is me. My niche isn't me. I'm going one layer deeper. I'm this skill set."
What's crazy is like, I saw now that you bring this up, I've seen people do this. So there's a guy, I'll give you, in mortgage, which is kind of boring, but he went into a specific type of financing that helps you rehab properties.
Yes. So all that's all he does is talk about rehabbing, uh, homes that need a bunch of repairs.
Yes. Yes. He doesn't talk about regular finance, any other thing, and just that one thing, but he blew up because of it.
Yes. And he's known as that type of, like, that guy for the rehab loans. Now, I give you an example. There's somebody in on the real estate side who got deep expertise in tiny homes.
Mhm. Rich Rich is deep expertise in boutique hotels.
Yes. Real estate's a great example because there's so many different options. Yeah.
Pick one and just go down. And then if you're in marketing, if you're in whatever, like there's a guy, um, who sells like, barns. He calls them. I never even knew this existed. Maybe it's in your area. Barn dominiums.
Yeah, I want a barn-dominium so bad. That's on my, uh, 226 dream world.
Well, you could make a barn-dominium like what we're sitting in right now. This is the studio, but you could have the barn version.
Exactly. By the way, wouldn't that be a dope podcast set for you?
It would. It would. That's, that's funny that you said that. That's on my, me and my wife were looking at land on on Zillow recently. But yeah, it's a great example. And it's harder whenever you think about like the fitness niche. Okay, what am I going to niche into? Like bicep curls? Maybe. Like literally maybe. Like you could get to 100,000 followers. This, I know like a gal that helped, uh, postpartum women get back to their pre-reg weight. Boom. There is a guy with 30,000 followers, and his niche is, uh, rehabbing professional pickleball players.
Dang. That's it. Rehab professional pickleball players. Okay. There's a lot of different layers to there, right? It does, that's like more than just one. That's multiple.
But so skill sets, one.
Okay.
Um, the next thing you can do is association. And I'm really passionate about this. This was the more of the example of like the Miami guru versus the Omaha guy. Who do you, whenever I say Nike, like who do they associate with? What do you think about?
Michael Jordan?
Yeah. Killers, winners, right? People that win championships. Whenever I say on on, you know, that the new shoe on,
I'm wearing it right now.
Yeah. There you go. What do you think about? You don't think about Michael Jordan. What do you think about with them?
Uh, Roger Federer, or, um, just excellence, you know?
Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. It's, it's, well, it's even like, um, even with on, like, the, the new shoe, like the everyday, like, doctor is going to wear on into their, into their thing. They're not like,
Bro, there was a thing, there was an article published. It says the sneakers that billionaires wear, and On running sneakers were on there.
There you go. I was like, "Bro, I must be wearing the right shoes."
There you go. There you go. And the New Balance association.
That's the association with the brand. And they probably did that very intentionally.
It is. And so, you have to be thoughtful about the world-building that you're building around your personal brand. Like literally, this is how far this goes. I just bought a dream car. Okay? It's on its way to my house. It's going to get there while I'm out of town. My wife's going to be the first one to drive it. She's going to pull in the garage. I could have went the classic Miami guy, whatever. I was actually intentional about buying a car that's going to match my brand. I want a vintage 1999 rare vehicle that they never made in the United States, had to get shipped from Europe.
Dang.
And so that's like part of my world-building. Is I don't want to be the freaking McLaren driving in Omaha, Nebraska. I actually want to be able to show up to my church and people not know what car I'm driving and like be like, "Normal." You know? Like that's my brand. And if you look at my videos, I am in a basement with like drop tile ceilings and like curtains over my window.
The lighting isn't very good either.
No, exactly. That's my counter-position. You know, my association is things that are making me seem trustworthy. Things that are making me seem humble, even if it's not entirely true. You know, it is, I try to, maybe it's not. I don't know. It's maybe I'm not humble by saying. I don't know. But like, you, I can counter-position against the classics by associating with other things, right? So you can think about like, "Man, who do I want to be seen as in this world?" Now, what do people think about also when they think of that thing? Maybe they want to see me as the scientist. Okay, I'm leaning into that because of data analytics. So, I just had a YouTube thumbnail where I made my hair all crazy and like, kind of look scary, you know, like mad scientist.
Right? Or you can go into the flashy. That's fine. Those are just two examples, but you can go so many different directions.
So, basically, association meaning, what is the feeling or thing you want people to think of when they think of you? What friend group are you sitting at in at in the lunchroom?
Yeah. The emo kids, the nerds, the.
So, practical advice for someone that one's kind of harder to do because like, you had spent some time thinking about this. I've spent some time thinking about this, and some of it's by accident. I kind of, um, came across this thing where I was attracting the people in my industry who didn't fit in the box. So, I called these the professional misfits.
Love it. That's a great one.
So, these are the people I serve.
Yeah. Yeah. They're the people who just don't want to sit in the corporate thing. Less corporate, more connected.
Those are my people. But like, I didn't know that when I first started making content. I just kind of stumbled into it. So like, for someone who's, uh, doesn't know, what would be the workflow to find this out or like to think about it?
Yeah. Well, I even want to like, just touch on that one more. The way that turns practically is like, now you make a carousel, and you, you use like a, a photo of Steve Jobs not wearing shoes because he's like this professional misfit, and you start to, you start to kind of create this kaleidoscope, almost like this mood board of your personal brand. You reference the examples, you know, I reference Jeff Bezos because I want to be kind of associated around like billionaires and entrepreneurs, you know?
Yeah. Right. And so like, it even kind of comes on your analogies, what you put on your stories, you know?
Who do you reference in your content?
Who, what are you wearing on your shirt, even, you know? Like, I was intentional about wearing what I'm wearing. Like, this is a hat around a brand that signals to my ideal person. Okay? Like, that's like, the level of thought that goes into it. How you find it though, back to your point, is basically describe the top five people in your niche. What do you think about whenever you think about them? Okay. If it's Hermosi, if it's Cody Sanchez, if it's Dan Martell, it's going to be the classic like money, wife, uh,
I noticed that whatever it is. Okay. Well, I can't do that anymore. I don't want to follow that path. I'm not going to go make a video about like, "Why?" Yeah. I, I don't. That's overplayed.
I'm not even jacked, bro. So I can't really.
Exactly. Yeah. And some people would try. I don't like it. You know?
They try to force it. So you can lean into what you have going on and, uh, just say like, "Okay, what, like, who am I that I can, I can be honest about who I am online and then create kind of this kaleidoscope around me." Okay, well, I'm a nerd, you know, I like playing video games. I like, I like maybe like reading these like autobiographies, whatever it is. Okay, well, then now let's signal. Let's put glasses in your content. Like, let's, um, you know, let's maybe even, uh, put a library behind you, right? Let's let your, let your backdrop be books. It's subtle things like this that can associate because you'll attract the people that are in business but came from your background.
And you'll, you'll win over that. And this comes back to converting. They start to relate to you, right?
Um, and I got one more. Can we go one more?
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Then you can go price point. You can counter-position in the price point. So you can go, "Hey, I'm going to be the person." You know, Jeremy Haynes, if you know who he is, he only talks to people who are trying to go from $100,000 a month to a million dollars a month. It's only. He gets one to 2,000 views on YouTube. Nothing crazy. He doesn't care.
He has went to that demographic.
Yeah. I seen Taki Moore does something similar where he's talking to people who already have a business but they want to scale it.
Exactly. And then, or you can go the reverse, and this is totally fine. You kind of know the game you're playing. I'm going to go just for college students. I'm going to go for the beginner, the zero to one. Or you play the Mr. Beast game and you play like, "I'm trying to be for everyone."
Yeah. You know, the chocolate bar.
You just think about this like, um, if you're in the creator space, like, let's just look at the creator on YouTube. Now, if we're making a video, which is what we're doing right now, about how to stand out in the creator world and make money and build a personal brand, to be honest, it's very, uh, crowded. Like, there's people, there's the best of the best making these type of videos that we're making right now. But even with, um, just above average skill and intention, we can stand out. And it, but there's a lot of competition. Now, what if I started off by saying, "Hey, this is the blueprint for someone to go from zero to 100K, either followers or zero to 100K with their first offer or whatever that is." Now, I'm talking to that one group, and I could be known for that, and that could be my passion. Like, I want to help people. I don't know if you, if you watched, not to bring up Hormosi again, but you, if it was big news last week where he was on with Tony Robbins, and Tony Robbins helped him come up with his purpose and his mission, which was to make a, to help a hundred people or something make their first $100,000.
Yeah. Right. And so that's something that he's passionate about. So now he's already at the top level, so it doesn't matter. But what is your passion going to be? Like, "Oh, I'm really passionate about helping people get into their first income-producing property." So you just keep repeating that over and over in the content. Like, "If you guys don't know, this is my thing. It's in your bio. It's in some of the content. It's in the carousels." And it just keeps getting ingrained. And I think if anybody's worried about repeating it, you know, just remember that people need to be reminded more than they need to be taught. You don't have to keep teaching new things. It could be the same. I've been saying some of the same things for six years, bro. And just finally, now it's starting to stick with people.
Yeah. And so I think, um, there's something to be said for just saying the same thing. You get better at it. You get better at packaging the idea. It finally starts to stick. Uh, Jesse Ller told me it takes eight years.
To build a brand. Eight years, bro. That's a long time, but maybe faster now with content, but in his view, it took him like eight years to build the brand of like a beverage company. Yeah.
To where it was finally worth a lot of money. And it stuck with the audience. Well, even I mean, one of the greatest marketers of all time is a guy named David Oglevie and he was talking about uh newspaper or magazine ads. He would make magazine ads and he kept putting the same ad in the magazine every year for Christmas. And everyone's like, "Dude, they're going to get tired of it." He said this phenomenal quote. It changed my life. He said, "We don't market to a standing army. We market to a marching band. It's people coming in and out, in and out, in and out. And I think he said this, too. He said, uh, we get tired of our of our, we get tired of what we say far sooner than when our audience gets tired of what we say.
You know, so it's actually a self-discipline thing. Can you actually self-discipline yourself to not get bored and not feel like I've said this so many times? It's already self-control. You know what's crazy is the biggest risk to your business, to my business, to our brand, is not the market, it's not the algorithm, it's not the platform, it's not the stocks market or the president. It doesn't matter. None of those things. The biggest risk to anybody's brand is you no longer being interested in what you do.
If you would just stay excited about it, you'll crush. But it's like you said, the discipline of, man, I'm pumped to serve these people. Like I was pumped two years ago, I'm still pumped today. Or I was pumped five years ago, I'm still pumped today. And I noticed um the way you stay in that is for me the feedback you get. So in the beginning as you're doing this, you should get feedback from people. They they're like, "Man, dude, your videos, your content helped me do this." You're like, "Wow, that's really cool."
The more the better you get at this, you get more of that feedback. And that's what pumps me up to do the next thing cuz some I'll host an event. Like if anybody's ever thinking about doing live events, it's like I would tell you not to do it. You know, it is probably the hardest thing to do. It's the most capital intensive thing to do. It's the hardest thing to move people from their home to fly out and come to your thing. It's not easy. I thought you build it, they will come. Well, your friends will come, nobody else will come, right? You have to really, you know, make it impactful, especially today.
So, um, all that to say is when I do that, it makes the most impact because it's not online, it's not on Zoom, it's in person. So, people will come up to me and literally say, "Dude, you changed the course of my life." So, that pumps me up to do the next one. And I do the next one. So, I think you should be getting some um hints of success and that's what's going to fire you up to stay interested.
Another thing that I've noticed and this will be quick is is the concept of if you feel like this is your life's work and you feel like you are on a mission to become maybe not the best in the world depending on like your goals and stuff, but like this is who you are. It's hard to get tired. It's hard. Like I want to be the greatest content strategist in the world and I wake up every day and like the hard days where I am staring at a computer for nine hours and like I'm just clicking buttons still feel like I was like yeah that was what I was supposed to be doing today.
So there is something about this like no no that's my north star on my tombstone. I wanted to say this right that'll keep you in the game longer than everyone else too.
And by the way, I love the fact that you said this is how you differentiate because the average person in your industry is not thinking like this. They're out here to make a quick buck. They're out here to get some views. Like I can just tell people when they come to our workshops, they're like, "Hey, how do I do this? I don't really want to do it. I'm going to hire somebody to do it." Like one guy brought his assistant and his assistant's learning everything. I'm like, "Bro, you need to learn this stuff, too. Like, you need you you need to be in it." And he couldn't care less. And I was like, I don't know if your stuff's going to work cuz you think you could just outsource this. This is like more difficult than just hiring somebody and then you going to sleep. Like, you have to do something and be in it. Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't hire people. You should, but you have to have like be behind the mission, the purpose. And so, I think when you put that on your bio, when you start talking about it consistently in the content, it's going to stand out. So, those are great ways to stand out. But now, we get into like reaching the right people and then turning it into money.
So, uh, I've noticed this, and we were just talking about this beforehand. Not all followers are created equal. Not all audiences are created equal, subscribers, whatever. And the difference is people caring about the information or caring about you and connecting with you. And so, there's a shift where someone watches the video and they might be like, "Dude, that's great information. Let me take down that listicle. Let me get your lead magnet, comment XYZ, and I'll get the PDF. Cool." But I don't really care about the person and I honestly I don't remember the person's name who sent it to me versus the guy who you like, oh that's Brier, dude. I love his stuff. So what's the shift? Like how do you make that shift?
Yeah, I think there's two ways to do it. You got to be careful with this because lifestyle content is I personally believe lifestyle content is a terrible way to start your page because nobody cares about you. I think about who I want to watch a documentary about. They've already added value to the world. I would watch a Justin Bieber documentary or something like that, you know, because he's added value to the world. He's been through a lot. I don't really care about my neighbor's lifestyle right now, you know. Once you add value to the world, you earn the right to then, which I think is education. You earn the right then to do more lifestyle content. But this is how you can do education and still earn a following. So many people cannot let their personality come out through their education. I have fun with it, man. I get up there, I don't script sometimes. I just say some crazy stuff and I just let it fly. And then people are like, "Okay, he like just was like I could see myself like hanging out with him even though like I was just being taught something, right? And I think live streams are going to be huge." That's going to be the other layer, right?
So, um, it's a balance and it's kind of like a a when should you do what, right? Because you don't want to go lifestyle early because nobody cares about you, but you don't want to go too late because then strategically inserting it along the way. Like it's you're shooting a video, say car is one of your formats. I know a lot of people shoot videos in the car. Well, what if you're in a nice car? Like that's lifestyle, I guess. But it's in it's in the stuff. Like I know if you shoot at your house, I noticed I didn't realize this, bro, but people are so um like aware of surroundings. Like I would they'd be like, "Hey, what's that in the back?" I'm like, "You would have had to screenshot this, zoom in, and notice they would find like a fan in the back of my picture." I'm like in in the video. So I'm like, "Man, people are really aware of the surroundings." like you if you're wearing a watch, they're like, "Hey, that's that watch, right?" I'm like, "Oh, I barely knew that was in the video." You know, people look at all this.
Yeah. I think I think the trade-off is like you have to think about this. If I'm going to post a lifestyle content and I don't have a crazy lifestyle, I don't have the car, etc. Because that's Yeah, that's a different story. Go for it. Like people aspire to be like that. So, you you've earned the right. Maybe even if you have a crazy physique, like there are things where you earn the right to talk about yourself a little bit more. 80% 90% people don't. And that's totally fine. You have to maybe lead with value. But here's the problem is let's say you're like, "Okay, but I want to like I want to document it for myself or I want people to love me for me and not just my value." I agree. But the trade-off here is if we do that once a week, which is light, and you do that for a year, that's 52 videos that potentially could have been more growth focused.
But there's a balance here because if you do that too much, you don't have fans, right? And you want to play that game. I'm a huge fan of like go value valueheavy first with personality and then once you kind of crack 10k followers I think you drift back towards letting people inside of your life through posts on stories you should be going lifestyle every day on long form and live streams you should be talking about your life every day
and I think an easy uh an easy way to insert along the way is photo dumps you know you talk about carousels yes bro just throw like you were out here in Vegas and you're going to San Diego if you don't post a photo dump you're dumb exactly you should post a photo dump of the whole trip, maybe your thoughts doesn't have to go viral. And all your other content is content strategy. Exactly. But then there's, oh, I get to kind of see what Ryer's up to, where you went, and uh it's an easy way cuz you don't have to think about creating a video. You don't have to put text on it. So, it's just simple strategy for anybody would be look in your camera roll. And by the way, if you're watching or listening and you haven't done one of these, do it now after this episode. Don't stop watching. Finish the video first and then then go do it. But like go through your pictures. And by the way, this will encourage you to start taking more pictures.
Yeah, it's a habit. It's like a hard habit to like train yourself to take pictures as you do or selfies. And then it feels weird, you know? Hey, can you grab a selfie? You feel like a little girl or whatever, but like, dude, take a selfie. Y like we got to take a selfie before you go. We'll take a picture and then that'll be part of this thing. Um, but Dylan and I were, my content guy, were just talking about this at lunch today. We're talking about enrolling people in what you're doing, your vision. So, we were talking about like, hey, what if your goal is to do this big launch or to get to this thing? And dumb simple example is like I see a girl on Instagram and she goes, "Hey, my husband said if I can get to 100,000 followers, he'll let me quit my job." Anytime I see one of those posts, I look at the person's follow, they already exceeded 100,000. I don't know what the heck it is about that format, but like people want to support like you if you if you are genuine and like you're humble and you enroll them in your goals. So, I might be like, "Dude, I'm on a mission to help this many clients. I'm on a mission to grow this following to this so I can impact this many lives." Or, uh, for me, like, I've been doing this event live every year. And it's like my life's work. It It's the biggest thing I do impact-wise. And it's our biggest event of the year every July. And so, this summer, it's happening. And uh the way we're going to sell it out this year is instead of a typical event promo where you start posting and you do ads and you do all these releases um and then discounts and sales that are fake and all this other BS. I'm just going to do a launch on one day. So you if you want a ticket to our forward event this year, you can't get a ticket. You're going to on March 26th, you're going to come to a live event on the internet on the web and that's when you're going to get a ticket. And my goal is to do what no one's done in my industry before, which is the event will be sold out on the day. That's cool. So, literally that will be the day you can get a ticket. And if you don't, if you miss it, you miss it. But that for me would be a cool achievement. So, I'm going to tell people about that. I'm telling you guys right now on March 26, you should come to this thing and it's going to be amazing. We're going to have special guests. It's going to be right here in the studio with a cool production. Um, and that'll be your chance to learn about what we're doing and come to our and get a ticket to our event.
But I noticed if I talk about it more, people want to support me more. You have to talk about it more. Let people know. And it also like has to be very clear that it's not from selfish gain. Right. Like you're trying to like break a fun record like this is so cool. No one's ever done this before. Like that's fun. It's not like I mean some people like it's kind of be a part of history with me a little bit, you know?
Exactly. And I will also say like you have to be very unique in how you do this because I think there is a lot of like survivorship bias in this where like the people that we see were the people who said like 100k but how many people have tried that and I know a few people where it's like hey I get to quit my job if I get to this and they made like three or four posts and it didn't go anywhere. Right. So, it's like do you uh are you willing to really go all in on it and are you do you do you have a mission that's bigger that also bigger than you? Bigger than you and not rooted in selfish gain.
So, like our event is meant to serve people and we want to be a part we want people to be a part of that and and experience that. And so, I spend the whole year sourcing talent to be at this thing and just making a big impact. It's not just like uh throwing it together like we spend a full year on it. So, I'm going to let people know about that. And I think if you are working on something, let people know. And this is the concept of build in public. You've heard this before where people talk about what they're working on. Like you you just said on here, I didn't even know this about you, but you said you want to be the world's greatest content strategist or marketing person, right? And so that's a big goal. But paired with like big goal, but you have small plans. So big goal is like this is my vision. Small plans is you're flying to Vegas on the way to San Diego. you lined up like three or four meetings while you're here before you get there so you can stack as much value while you're here. That's the part that I think people miss is like you have to be intentional with the days, the weeks, and then all of a sudden the big stuff kind of falls into place.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I love that. That's I I made a post that that's going doing pretty well. I said the big thing that separated me in my 20s from my friends is I was willing to put in a lot of effort to get 1% better. And it was just I'm going to go spend $28,000 on mentorship to get 2% better. I'm going to drive to Texas three times with a newborn, leave my wife at home to get podcast, 3% better. I'm going to fly to Vegas and then San Diego to get 2% better. I'm going to read 20 books, maybe only get five decent books out of it, 2% better. It's like, are you willing to be extreme? And like people want the easy route on content, you're just not going to get it.
This is the greatest investment of all time. I asked someone that we both know that has a hundred million real estate portfolio assets under management and he has maybe 350,000 Instagram followers. I said, "If you had to pick, you could only keep one 350,000 Instagram followers or $100 million of your real estate portfolio, which would you pick?" And he said 350,000 Instagram followers because he can make the money back through that for the rest of his life. And he might have he must have the right audience.
Yeah. Exactly. He has a great audience. And uh obviously those are people who care. And so that's the difference. Like I know people like I talked about before have a million followers and they wouldn't care. It's all about the listicles and the information and the downloads and the free info. And you've built an audience that just wants freebies and they don't really care about you. So this is the part where uh when I talked about not all brands, not all followers are created equal. You need to be intentional. Otherwise, you'll end up running climbing this mountain and you'll get to the top of the mountain and you realize you climb you climbed the wrong one.
Well, and I I'll even add to this. I have a fun exercise to put you through. Uh, I even say not all niches are created equal, right? Okay. Someone in the fitness niche versus someone in the tech niche is going to be wildly different. So, I have four creators. I'm going to I'm going to tell you their follower count. I'm going to tell you their niche. And I want you to try to guess how much money they made in a month. Okay. Okay. Person number one, uh, 1.7 million followers. Uh, bodybuilder. Okay. Keep that one. Uh, and maybe not the exact number. Try to like tell me which one you think might be number one and number four. Okay. Person number two, 13,000 followers, but in the marketing niche, same niche as us. Uh, person number three, 600,000 followers, teaching people sales. Last person, 400,000 followers, is an influencer, so brand deals only, but in kind of like women's success entrepreneurship.
Okay. Okay. I'm just genuinely curious out of those four, do you like what are your thoughts? Do you have one that's like uh I think because of that person's niche. Let's assume they all have like an equal amount of like quality followers. Okay. Well, I mean it's hard to tell, but like you would think that brand deals alone wouldn't cut it. Nope. That was the worst. Yeah. So, that one is probably at the bottom. That's what I thought. So, that's the worst one. And then the best one between a bodybuilder, marketing person, and a what was it? Third teaching someone sales. Like a basically like a sales education. Yeah. Um, I would probably go with, well, bodybuilding could be two things. It could be teaching people how to get fit, or it could be teaching trainers how to teach people how to get fit, because I've seen it's not trainers. It was B to uh B to C. B to C. Okay. So, I would probably go with the marketing person. Yeah. Marketing and the salesperson. If you look at the dollar to follower ratio, $1.7 million or so 1.7 million followers from the bodybuilder. He made $125,000 a month on brand deals. Great. That's about a seven cent dollar to follower ratio. 13K follower marketing person made $45,000 a month providing a marketing service an agency. That's a that's like a $4 dollar that's a hundredx more per follower. The salesperson, she did $2.2 million in one day. Dang. She was teaching people how to get into a job. That's Shelby, right? Yeah. I don't think I'm supposed to say that, so we might have to cut that. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. seen some of her stuff, but that's wild. And then the the influencer makes like $30,000 a month, which is like a seven cent dollar to follower. But the niche is not created equal either. If you can help people make money, marketing, sales, you will inherently have a higher, more quality following. And then add the layer that we just talked about. Not every follower, every view is created equal.
Yeah. It's uh if you want to make if you want to get rich, help other people get rich. That's it. And you could do this in any niche or with your clients. you're helping them save time, money, whatever it is. Okay, so now we want to convert. Okay, this is the last step of the content connection conversion. So conversion is the part I think people misunderstand because some people want to skip straight to conversion. They haven't done any value. They haven't done any connection. So it works really well when you've done the other steps. U also running paid ads is a form of conversion. But I did a pod with um Cody Sanchez and she told me that ad costs keep rising and they're getting to a level where it's going to be unsustainable pretty soon because uh it was like 80% of all the money coming from venture capital that comes into all these startups and all these ecom companies flows into paid media, Google, Meta, and all the big platforms. And all that is pushing ad costs up because they're just marketing and and they can pay like it's a bidding war and they can out bid you because they got big budgets. You're it's like David versus Goliath. The only advantage you have is as a personal brand. You can market to people who have seen your content. They they know your face. There's some association there. And when you do this, your ad cost plummets.
Yes. It's not like you're paying similar game that these uh big brands are doing. you get to just skip and get like a $2 per lead versus they might pay $12. So you could have a 10x difference in your lead cost because you have a personal brand. So it's the ultimate advantage and it's honestly the only way David and can beat Goliath. So I would just consider this even if you're not trying to do all organic, you want to do paid ads, that's fine. But paid ads are going to get so expensive pretty quick here and they already are that it's going to be out of control. So you you need to be doing this thinking this way anyways.
Yeah, you are. I don't know. Let me think about the politically correct way to say this. You are an absolute idiot if you are going to try to build a business with paid ads first because you think like I need to make money now the fastest way for it can work on a one-off basis but it doesn't scale like somebody will be like hey I did paid ads I don't have any followers and I made my first 100k that works but it doesn't work again and again and again like you know the ads don't scale. Nope. And then you need to have the personal brand and then like you said it's an amplifier. And what I'll even say about your personal brand is it's a it's a bank deposit with interest. And you want to make sure that you're putting in you're not taking out revenue faster than the interest that it's growing. Okay? Right? It's just like a bank account. Like if I'm asking for money, if it's a stock portfolio, right, and it's going up 7%, I'm asking, I need 10. I need I need 10%. I need 10%. It's going to just You want to make sure that you're asking slower than you're growing. I think it's something that people really miss. And I've seen a lot of creators burn their following because they ask ask and they outpace the compounding interest.
So you're overdrawn. Exactly. Yeah. So you haven't even built any equity and then you're now you're just selling selling selling. People tune you out. They unfollow you or they just stop watching your stuff, you know, and you just become noise to them. And this is the if this if we like I said earlier, if this is the greatest investment in the world, the last thing you want to do is burn it to the ground. Yeah. Right. Like if you had Bitcoin in freaking 2013, why would you want to just be like selling it on the way up if you truly believed it was going to go to the moon? You know what I mean?
That's true. So, what are the ways that a creator can monetize their audience? Because I know brand deals are one thing, but most of my audience that watches and listens isn't trying to get brand deals. It might be cool if they get one, but they're trying to build their business. They want to get customers. Okay. So, what's a conversion event or conversion process that you've seen crushes?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I always say again, conversion comes down to the niche. It's going to be easier to convert the higher of the purchasing power of your following. I would rather have 3,000 people that are all CTOs of Fortune 500 companies. That's not even possible. There's 3,000 of them, but whatever. Than I would a million trying to learn push-up techniques from me. Yeah. I'm not even kidding. Like that I actually track with those numbers. And um so that's the first step is like, have you built an audience that actually has purchasing power? Like that should be priority number one. Monetization's root issue is usually follower quality. It's not even like you could run a web, you could run the perfect webinar you've ever seen and it's just because like you have a a poor follower quality. I close in my DMs in the average of three to four messages because my follower quality is so high and this is a high high ticket. Okay? Like I have never ran a webinar. I've never done a sales team. I don't have closers. I don't have anything. I don't have VSSL. I have a VSSL. I have a 10-minute Loom video that I made that I sent in the DMs. Close one a day. It took me three messages. three messages. He said, "Hey, do you have something?" I said, "Yeah, here's a video." He said, "I got one question." I answered it. He paid because of follower quality. Follower quality.
Okay. But eventually, you want to scale and that was al probably someone who trusted you through watching your videos. Boom. Exactly. Um, but yeah, I think like if I had to rattle off a few things, I'm I'm I'm a huge fan right now. I think this is going to come and I want to do this and so if you beat me to it, that's fine. I'll give you free game because you're never going to outwork me. I think consistent live streams are going to be huge. I think if you are someone who could go live for two hours every morning, you will make a million dollars a month if you have really high follower quality and you're continuing to grow live on Instagram or live on YouTube. All of it really. You can there's some softwares where you just go live on everything. You can go live on Tik Tok. Boom. Boom. And then you just put placements every 10 minutes. You plant people in your comments saying, "Hey, do you have coaching?" And then you just say, "Hey, real quick chat." Yeah. Hey, if you guys are interested in my service, my product, my information, my consulting, whatever it is, answer like every 10 minutes. just run that blueprint. I think that's a a unique one, not test. I think it's going to win. I think webinars are still really powerful, but I think a lot of people with webinars um that fail is they only do it once a month and you don't get a tight enough feedback loop. I think you should be doing a webinar two times a week at minimum really. Yeah. Um events are a phenomenal one to sell on the back end. And then uh you have to make sure you I I'm a huge fan of going uh of service-based businesses first. So an agency, a done for you service, higher ticket. That's going to be my fastest way to 10K than like a $50 school community. Yeah, that stuff's like that's garbage now. Yeah, don't don't do a $50 school community for the love of God, please. Go high ticket service-based up until your first maybe 20, 30, 40, 50k a month. Then you can add a consulting program, a a one-on-one consulting program, a group coaching program, and scale accordingly. Then get to 100,000. Then you can maybe pop the top off, throw some ad spend in. I don't even think you should spend ads before you're making $100,000 a month. Seriously, I really don't think so. We don't we don't let Well, most of our clients, we don't let them spend ads until we get to that number.
Um, and then I love webinars. If you want to do a webinar, I think that's been the biggest thing for us is webinars. Yeah. Um, and that works in this space you're talking about, which is selling services to business owners uh or entrepreneurs or creators. But it also works in um the BTOC businesses that I help. So the mortgage people, real estate people, they're getting people on webinars that are interested in learning about the opportunities in Las Vegas or whatever market you're in or the mistakes or this, you know, they just want to learn. And so you can package a results-based outcome. Y and that's the thing I think people make a mistake of calling it, you know, home buying webinar. Well, what's that? You know, don't call webinar. Nobody call Nobody wants to go to work after work. Yeah. Don't sell work. I have a I have a thing on my wall that says don't sell work. Yeah. It should be outcome based like sell the vacation. Dream outcome. So the dream outcome is buying a property under market value. Y the dream outcome is making 100,000 like whatever your thing is like. And so um what you want to do is sell that and that's the reason you're coming to the thing and then be more brief with it. So I noticed people aren't necess they're they're guarding their time more even though they have the time. They're more selective of who they're going to spend the time with. So when you say it's going to be an hour or two hour training or three-hour training, they're they're unlikely to sign up for that commitment if they don't know you or if they haven't got the So I would call it 27 minutes. I'll teach you this in 27 minutes. Now the call is actually going to go an hour anyways because of Q&A and and the pitch and all that stuff. But the 27 minutes can just be all killer, no filler. And you can tell people that in the beginning you can let people know like, hey, um I'm going to walk you through this blueprint. I would have a bold beginning. Start off good so you capture the attention, but then I get into like here's the framework I'm going to teach and by the way I have something special at the end or like let them know you have an offer for them so that way it's not from left field and then just get into it. And um during the Q&A I noticed like you'll have people that will take you up on your offer. But the longer I stick around for Q&A, the more sales come through.
Yeah. So, one of these calls I remember sticking around for like two hours after the thing ended because people just kept asking questions and every question was a reroute back to why you should book a call or take us up on the opportunity. Well, and a Q&A is phenomenal because it gives people a glimpse into what it looks like for personalized uh problem solving and people want to know like are you gonna be able to actually solve my problem? And so Q&A is that and one quick thing I'll say this on the on conversion. I truly think this is my hot take. This concept of setters and closers, these remote sales people that's going to burn your personal brand over the next two to three years. Yeah. Okay. I lived in um I lived in Germany for a couple months as a missionary and uh you were like not allowed I don't know if this is entirely true so bear with me here but it's it's a very like postmodern post propaganda society. You're not allowed to like smile at people because they think you're trying to get something from them if your storefront has colors feels manipulative. American social media is going to be so lacking trust in individuals that this little 19-year-old in their basement taking calls for you that you're hoping is going to close is going to burn your personal brand and then that person will never watch your content ever again. Yeah. And if you're sending 200, 300, 400 calls into your sales team and it's a bad sales team and they burn bridges because they're like, I need to get my money and if I don't get it, it doesn't matter. Screw them. that over a year will tank your following. And it's subtle because they don't come back and watch your content anymore. Why would they?
Well, I noticed this this um like so I have two business models and one is on in the traditional real estate mortgage business, but then the other is in the education events and coaching and all this. And um there's been many people who have told me if I would implement the thing you're talking about, the setters and closers, I would be way more I make way more money. And I think I would, but I've not done it at all. I have no sales team. Don't do it, bro. I literally we just have webinars and occasionally I have someone help me follow up, but for the most part there's no sales team at an event. I might have some adviserss that help me, but there's no like inside sales team or setters or closers and it's scaled to multi-se figures just off of personal brand. Yes. And so that I think is the new model. And I'm not even capturing the the the full opportunity because I'm so sporadic. Like I'll do a webinar when I feel like it. You just said I should do two a week. Two week. Exactly. If I did two a week, I'd be crushing. You would be. But you know, it's like um I told Daniel Priestley that I get bored of doing them. He's like, "Do you think he's like Neil, respectfully, do you think Coldplay gets bored of playing their concert?" And I'm like, "Well, bro, I'm not Coldplay, but I get the point. Like, when you're on tour, you just show up to serve. Like, you get excited. You go teach the person. You put yourself in the beginner who's on the call who's hearing it for the first time. Pump yourself up for that person and just teach." Again, what I'll even say is Shelby, we ran a webinar, but we made it recorded for the first and then Q&A, conversion only went down 7%. That's not bad. So, keep that in the back of your mind. If we went recorded and all I did was hop on for Q&A afterwards, conversions goes down 7%. And if you can do that now two times a week, conversion now goes up.
Yeah. But what's crazy is too, um, I could pull it off cuz we shoot in the same spot and I wear the same clothes every day. Not the same clothes, but like similar clothes. It's just a black short sleeve or long sleeve. Um, but yeah, bro, this is important. So, and then last thing here before we wrap is getting people onto the thing. So, for example, like one strategy we talked about today's webinar. And by the way, if you want to learn a strategy on webinar, I just recorded a video on webinars um in terms of getting traffic, converting the whole format. But what's your process on getting someone to sign up? Is it just literally like make a value post and then say, I'm going to be teaching these things. Comment XYZ and I'll send you the link. I'm not a great model because I prioritize my clients first. I just post the best damn content I can and people will ask me what I sell. I've I've made one I think I've made one external CTA ever. Really? Ever. So, you don't do like calls to action at the end of a post or a story? No, you make if you make phenomenal content, people come begging you for CTA. That's going to change for me. We're about to to ramp up the volume a little bit. But yeah, I think story sequences are phenomenal. Story sequences and carousels are the already the most purified part of your audience. Okay, it's your followers and the top 10% of your followers. They are being begged to be sold to. That's where you should be doing a lot of CTAs. I think you could CTA twice a week on stories as long as you're kind of giving some value in between. And then a a weekly um carousel CTA. I do I mix it up. You know, sometimes you got to reach the cold traffic, send them to an email course, fiveday email sequence, and then nurture them through the newsletter. Sometimes they're ready to go. Okay. So, maybe I'm sending them straight to a landing page, straight to something like that. But, you know, we I it's it's tough for me, I'm probably not a great example because I'm not optimizing this. I optimize for my agency. So, if that makes sense. But like that's a good model, I think, for people watching or listening is just a carousel where you're teaching the thing that you're going to be teaching. So, say you're teaching seven things on the webinar. It's one of those things and you would just make a value post about that thing and put the best carousel together that you can. And then the last slide is I'm going to be doing this on Thursday. If you want to join me, comment this.
Yeah. And bonus points, it should you should understand your your ideal customer profile so much. You should know the five things that are the strongest pain points in their life and you should make your carousel solving those five pain points. You should make your story solving those five pain points because conversions come through pain, right? And so I think uh Hormosi said this too and it might have came from somebody else from him. It said um that the marketer who can most accurately describe yes the customer's pain or the prospect's pain is the one who wins because yeah they feel like hey this guy gets it or this gal understands where I'm at and she can help me. That gets me fired. That's my favorite topic to talk about. Yeah. And we might have to revisit that. Yeah. So we'll have to do that on the next one. But u thanks for joining us, bro. If you guys want to connect with Brier, I'll put his IG in the description. Again, whatever you guys want us to do on the next episode, drop it in the comments cuz we'll we'll dive deeper on the next episode. And anything you want uh to hear me go deeper on, I'm here to help you guys crush it this year. So, let me know in the comments and I'll see you guys on the next one. Let's go.