How to Build an Irresistible Brand that Markets Itself ft. Sabri Suby

This is the biggest sin that I see all businesses commit. They think about what is convenient for me to sell. What would I like to buy? They don't start with >> Meet Sabri Subie, serial entrepreneur, Shark Tank investor, and founder of King Kong, one of Australia's fastest growing digital agencies, where he's generated over $7.8 billion in sales for clients. >> I know my prospect. I know them better than they know themselves. I know the questions that they're thinking about that's keeping them up at night tossing and turning at 3:00 a.m. that they don't even tell their partner about.

>> In this episode, Cyber reveals how to build a brand that people obsess over, why scarcity and friction make your brand more desirable, and how to generate customers on demand. In any given market, only 3% of a market is looking to buy right now. Yet, most people, their whole business is orchestrated around putting out offers, ads, and content that only serves the 3% of the market that's looking to buy. Right now, >> we dive into the psychology of cultlike brands, the mistakes most businesses make, and the blueprint for creating a brand that commands attention and premium pricing. If you sell a commodity, it's never going to increase your status. If you can go on to Amazon Prime and order something, that's never going to give you status. So, the first thing that you need to do is by the end of this episode, you're going to have your customers begging to pay you for what you're selling. Let's go.

Sabri, what are some of the biggest brands in the world like Apple, Rolex, what do they understand about buyer psychology that the smaller business owners don't?

>> I think they're just they study the how humans act when there's scarcity involved and they're not afraid of tapping into to human psychology. I think most brands and businesses, they are conducting business like they're in the dark ages. They lay out all of their wares. It's like they're in a market. They're like they say this is the price and the person heckles on price. There's a bit of back and forth and then there is a deal done. There is no seduction that is involved in most branding and businesses where luxury brands they understand that there is a dance, right? That that sales is seduction and they they fully weigh into all of the psychological triggers that they need to do to get people to buy and it's an orchestrated event. They don't look at it as just a one-time thing that happens. They really look at it as what is this starting of a relationship and h how is it going to look like when it pans out over years to come.

>> We love the videos that you put out about like how Rolex brainwashes you to buy their product or how Louis Vuitton does the same thing. What can a small business owner or a business owner that isn't a luxury uh brand, what can they take away from what these luxury brands do and how they in quotes brainwash you to buy your stuff? Like what can the regular person take away from what these big brands do?

>> Yeah, it's a great question and I think that the the first thing that you want to look at is okay, what are the things that they're doing to make people want to buy their stuff? Well, first of all, they don't make their stuff available, right? You can't. There is scarcity involved in it from the jump. And most people, they have some kind of scarcity in their business, but they just don't advertise it. So, they're a service-based business. There's only certain amount of clients that they can take on per month, right? However, they don't advertise that. So, just by saying that you only work with 10 new clients per month, that automatically increases the perceived value of whatever it is that it is that you're selling. And the same thing goes for like having inventory and products. It's about when something we value things that aren't in wide supply. So if there is no scarcity that is inbuilt in how you're selling things, then it's going to not be very very desirable. So there there's so many psychological triggers that you can pull. Scarcity is one of them, right? And that's a big one that is so easy that most people don't use at all that is so easily tactically installed in any business. If you're ecom, it's as simple as putting a, you know, a section on your product page that says x amount of products in stock or limited availability. Just inserting those little things increases conversion rates dramatically. But I think by and large the the thing that these luxury brands do better than anybody is manage the relationship over the long term, right? How how is it that they treat you? what what does it look like from the moment that you walk in the store to how they take down your name? I I is it your first time in here? Because they really understand that that first sale is made not to make a sale. It's made to start a relationship. They're not trying to just make money off that first purchase. They're trying to welcome you to their family, right? And bring you into their world. And they're worldbuilders. So, I think that a lot of people hate on them and a lot of people hate on the strategy that it is that they deploy, but like I always say, it's like, you know, you you don't play hate don't hate the player, hate the game. Like, this stuff works. And there's a reason why universally you can see them being applied. And there's a reason why companies like Apple, they steal all of these strategies from luxury brands, right? If you go in to get the new iPhone that just dropped and let's just say that you didn't pre- purchase it online and you walk in store or you call them up and you're like, "Do you have any of this burnt orange iPhone?" And they're like, "No." And you're like, "When are you getting it in?" And they're like, "We don't know." Right.

>> Dude, that is so funny that you say that cuz I just went I got the new I got the new iPhone. No, this really pissed me off. I go in there, I get the new iPhone. First they make us stand in a little line and I'm already a little butth about the line. I'm like, "No, I pre-ordered the thing." They're like, "Sir, just just stand in the line." I'm like, "Okay, yeah, it's fine." Same guy behind me. He's like, "Why am I staying in the line?" I I hear, you know, you could hear it like as you're in the line. Then we go up, I get the iPhone like, "Yo, I'd love the new pair of AirPods." He goes, "Oh, we don't have them here." And I'm like, "What do you mean you don't have them here?" And it was this thing. And I heard the guy next to me, same thing. He's like, "I'd love to add this to my order." He goes, "We don't have any here." He's like, "You just dropped them. Why is there none in the store?" And it's crazy cuz it's it's so true. What have you taken from what these luxury brands do and kind of built this world for King Kong for your clients when they do decide to build a relationship with you guys and like we want to work with you? What does that look like? How do you make them feel special?

>> Yeah, it's it it's everything and it's something that I have very much orchestrated within my business. Most people are very aware of a funnel, right? They see my ads, they see my funnel, they think that's where it all begins. That's the front end funnel. Then you have the whole customer journey funnel, right? So what happens the moment that somebody actually decides to sign up with you, sign a contract and send it back, right? So it's orchestrating those wow moments, having it so it's like they get a welcome letter from the founder that's handwritten. They get a welcome box that has all the swag in there. There's again letters from the team. There's postcards. There's handwritten things in there. Um and then we look at what that customer journey looks like over a 12 20 24 36 month period. And we've architected at certain points in that journey to really surprise and delight people. Whether it's something as simple as sending brownies to them or their account manager writing them like a postcard and sending it to them. It's it's a lot of the small things that it is that you do that make a huge difference. And you know, I was reading a study about that it's something like 70% of all the cancellations that have that happen within a SAS business or any business that has reoccurring revenue, that decision is made within the first 14 days of them signing up for it.

>> Wow.

>> So, you've got like 14 days to really surprise and delight them. And we've all seen it, right? We've all seen like people first they judge you from your sales team and how that interaction is with the sales team and then based off that then it's like they you're just people are just waiting for you to let them down, right? And most people are like they go through it with that mindset and then anything that you do that supports that they're like oh yeah. So in in turn what you need to do is you need to do so much showmanship and like juggling the fire batons and doing all this stuff just to be like create a world for them that feels special and you're surprising and delighting them. You know Disney knows this best. Disney have a saying that it takes 37 magical experience to overcome one tragic experience, right? So, you need to orchestrate what all those magic occurrences are going to be in your business. I've certainly done it in mine. Um, but it's about making the ordinary extraordinary instead of just having like, oh, like welcome to the team. Here's your scheduling link. How can you dress that up? How can you make that a bit more special? And a lot of these things don't cost a lot of money, but they go a long way.

Is that something that you learned from maybe a mentor or just by getting your reps in business, or was it something where you started making a little bit more money, started shopping at these fancier stores and you really started pulling from these luxury brands? Like, how did you realize that to stand out and to keep customers coming back, I needed to dress certain things up and really have that showmanship over the first 14 to 30 days?

Yeah, it comes down to the decision of are you going to be a premium provider to begin with, right? Once you make the decision of like yes, I want to command premium prices and in order to command premium prices, then I need to have a premium service. Then once you make that decision, yeah, like I learned a hell of a lot from staying at the finest resorts in the world, shopping at the biggest brands in the world. Um, like while I'm not like a big brand guy, like I'm not going out there, I'm not dripped out in Gucci and stuff like that, I like to go to the finest hotels that there are in the world and I feel like they are an incredible learning ground for how you treat people at a certain level. So yeah, I I go I'm a student of markets. I like to see what are some of the most weird obscure things that very very rich people are paying for and going experiencing them and saying what makes this experience different what are all these little small details so you know even if I was retired hundred billion dollars in the bank like I'm fascinated by business so anywhere that I go I'm always looking at those kind of things and paying attention to to the small details so I learned a lot from like four seasons from a lot of these big brands hands. Uh the Amman Group having phenomenal hotels all around the world. Any concurge services, I like to sign up to very expensive concurge services, gyms, all of those kind of things that okay, what is it that these guys are doing to retain their customers that can be the most finicky and like nitpicking clients of all time and let me adopt some of those into my business.

What have you noticed from selling a more premium product versus maybe when you were starting out and you were selling something that was more low ticket that most people maybe could afford? Like what have you noticed about that relationship with your customers?

>> Yeah, it's the old adage. It's like you can sell something for like $2.99 and the person like expects the absolute universe for you and they're like, "Oh, like they they're constantly questioning everything." And then, you know, I've got clients that pay a million dollars a year and it's just like I've wired the check. It's just like that that whole thing and it's you want to serve people that have money. You just do, right? I can tell you from experience is I have I sell a suite of services all the way down from $299 up to multiple millions of dollars per year. And dealing with the people that are spending a huge amount of money, there are a lot less headaches than the people that uh you you're giving stuff basically to them for free, right? And it just it it goes to the case in every single market. I saw like a thing from like Jack Mah, you know, the the founder of Alibaba, and he's like, if you sell things for too cheap, they say that it's a scam, right? And then if you sell things at like the the medium, the middle of the market and you're serving the middle of the market, they'll more or less say to you it it's too expensive, right? they'll they they'll kind of either not at the lowest end of the market immediately say you're too expensive. Um but all the money is made in in in the high-end services um and selling premium products to premium people. That's the things that I've observed more often than not is the clients that pay me the most amount of money scrutinize it the the least amount.

When you buy something more expensive, you feel like you get status from it. Like the classic example is someone goes to buy a Ferrari because they want to show it off. they get status. They have an expensive car. Is there a way to have status in your business when somebody buys your product or uses your service if it isn't a quote unquote luxury item? Like, is there a way to have someone feel like they got status through working with you if you're not selling maybe a premium good or a luxury item?

>> Yeah, it comes down to it being scarce, right? Human beings since the dawn of time has valued things that are scarce, right? We started with trading spices and then gold and like gems and rubies and all of those kind of things. So I think that there is a way to make things scarce regardless of what it is that you sell. If you sell a commodity, right, it's never going to increase your status. Like if you can go on to Amazon Prime and order something, that's never going to give you status because it's widely, you know, available to everybody. So the first thing that you need to do is constrain the supply of what it is that you've got. Um and that that can be you might be selling at a premium price point, you might not. But no matter what price point that you sell, you are limited by how much you can sell. So just advertise it, just talk about it. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is what is the unboxing experience? What's the showmanship in in it that when somebody gets it, they feel a certain way and they want to share that moment? Like there's a whole thing right now where restaurants are like fitting out their bathroom because they know like with really high-end because they know when people go to these restaurants they're taking selfies in the bathroom, right? And then that's sending a message about themselves that they're at this restaurant and elevating their status. So it really comes down to one making sure that it's not in wide supply and then two thinking about what is like the dopamine that I'm going to inject in someone's brain the moment that they receive this or they buy it and how can they share it because you know them feeling status is just an association with something that is going to increase their status so that that's the kind of the lines that you need to read between

>> flag on the play.

>> What's going on fig?

>> I have to tell them about an amazing offer. We got two months for free for the rocks for the best music, best sound effects on the planet.

>> And what would that be?

>> It's our list.io.

>> Of course it is.

>> You know what's crazy though is it's not just music and sounds. Got stock footage stuff that I'm actually using in an ad that I'm making right now for a client. And you have a commercial free license to use this stuff forever, which is kind of wild.

>> What I think is crazy is if you've been a fan of this podcast, you're listening week after week, we talk about Art List so much, but you still haven't gone and got the two months for free.

>> You're literally making a massive mistake. Whatever platform you're using right now, I just know that there's a way better option out there and they're our sponsor of our show. It directly helps the rocks. It directly helps you because you're going to have the best music and literally your clients are going to be like, "Where the heck are you getting this stuff?"

>> Everybody needs music.

>> You might as well use art.

>> You might as well use the best option in the business. Go check it out. Top link in the description. Let's keep it rolling.

It's so true with the bathroom selfies cuz every time the girls go out, dude, they're in the bathroom for 30 minutes. They love it. That photo is going on the gram with the location right under it. On the on the topic of of scarcity with your products, a lot of the time I notice people make a weight list and you've famously talked about this about building a weight list for like some of the products. Is that something that you notice still works now or do you feel like it has been overplayed and people are conscious like oh I don't want to join this weight list right now? I'm just curious to hear your take as someone who's had a lot of success with it.

>> Yeah, it it definitely works as effective as it did a thousand years ago. So the human brain is not going to change, right? If you're going to make things that are hard to get, you're always going to want them, right? That's just the way that it is. Um, even, you know, we were just discussing you went in to go and get like your iPhone and get the AirPods and then we're talking about it and then we're syndicating out to a whole bunch of people that the AirPods are actually hard to get. So then it's like if you get into a conversation with a guy at the coffee shop and he's like and you're like, "Oh, they're the new AirPods." And I was like, "Yeah." Like, and it's like automatically you know that it's harder to get it, so you want it even more. So even when you're conscious of these things, it does not matter. It's still you can't physically get it. So you want it more. Women know when they go in to buy a Birkin bag, they know the dance, right? That's what makes it even more desirable for them. And then they're in a restaurant, they're in a fine restaurant, they're in Dubai, they look over and the lady next to them has the Birkin bag and they're on the wait list. That automatically increases their perceived value of that. So when Hermes calls them up and being like, "Cindy, your bag has arrived." It's like they don't even ask the color. They're just they're getting out the AX immediately and they're running down the store to buy that thing cuz they've made them go through all the the whole song and dance, right? And I spoke about how like, you know, sales is seduction. All of this stuff. It's like it's it's very close parallels to the dating world. It's like if you're trying to date somebody and they're a little bit reserved or they're hard to get, then you're going to be more into them, right? If then they're just widely available. So, even if you're aware of the game, it's like it's got to be done.

>> Yeah. Even if there's the game, you're like, I still want to play and like I don't care. I'm I'm kind of Man, I'm a sucker for that, too. Like, if something's hard to get, I'm just like, man, it makes me want it even more.

>> Even if you know the games that they're playing or you know the weight list, um it just Yeah. I I I I've seen it time and time again. Um and it it never stops working.

>> You're like super conscious when you when you are going to uh you know shop at these expensive hotels or restaurants or or shops. Are you just are you always kind of paying attention to what they're doing?

>> Oh, I man I I got the notebook out. I'm taking notes. But also I have to be on my toes cuz these people know me now. So it's just like oh oh the detective's coming in kind of thing. Like I rolled up to the Rolex store and he's like, "I love your videos." And I'm like, "Okay, I'm done." Like,

>> "Here comes the internet daddy. Here we go."

>> Yeah. The internet daddy came in. Like so much so that I even signed up to like a high-end gym recently. And so I went in and did the tour and then like my assistant emailed me like with an email that they had sent her being like, "We're very familiar with the internet daddy's work. Was he filming today?" And I was like, "No, I wanted to sign up. Like this is legit. I'm not I'm not shooting a video on it." But yeah, I'm definitely I'm always researching places to go. And a part of it is obviously I like the enjoyment of going to these places when I work really hard. But it's also it's education, right? Seeing how people do things at certain levels. And then it's very interesting when you go and you you'll stay at a hotel chain or you'll go to a brand at all different corners of the world and you see how they maintain that quality. um and how it doesn't matter what country that you're in, it's still that they provide that same level of experience. And that just shows like back to the question of like does it work? It doesn't matter if you're in Hong Kong or you're in Beverly Hills or Australia or Madrid. It's like they're all using the same things and it's all working the same way on people that were raised in different cultures and it still works.

We were laughing because we saw your video about the gym. You're like, I signed up for $2,000 a month gym because I don't want to be around broke people.

>> Yeah,

>> I [ __ ] love it. It's like so true.

>> When you come out here, we have to take you to Monarch because Monarch is a very nice gym that we go to out here and it's similar price point. I think it's like 2,000 a month. But, you know, I mean, I used to work out at 24-hour fitness, man. And Monarch's a lot different than 24-hour Fitness. 24-Hour Fitness, you walk in the bathroom, it's a it's a war zone in there, man.

>> You're going to see like 20 20 naked dudes, you're like, "Holy [ __ ] what's going on, man? There's piss all over the floor. No one's been in there to clean it in like weeks. You're like, "Oh my god."

>> Yeah. Like the one dude in the sauna.

>> Yeah. Doing karate. There's a guy doing parkour in the corner. Like the one dude that has the advant. You all know what I'm talking about. Every person who works at a 24-hour like LA Fitness, you know that one character. You walk in, you're like, "Dave's here again. God damn it."

>> 100%. It's that it's those gym memes where you walk in, you look in one corner, and yeah, there's some dude like doing like a naked headstand, the other one's like some guy shadow boxing. It's a wild experience.

Could you explain to us what information asymmetry is? You talked about this in a YouTube video and we found there was, I believe, a ninestep process. You were talking about what brands do. I'm really curious if you could break down a few of them and maybe you don't know them right off the top of your head again, but if you could break down information asymmetry, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, it's just basically what these big brands do is they remove prices and they control all of the information in a sales cycle so that you need to engage with them and that they are in a place of power and you are not. Right? It's like you try on the jacket, you're like, I like this and it's like there's no price tag on it. It's like first of all, how much is this? Right? Or is this in available or do you have this in a medium? So, you're always having to go for them for information and then it's like, "We don't have any of those in stock or let me go check the back." And then they go check the back and then they're like, "You won't believe it. I've got one more medium left." Right? Or you go in to get the Birkin bag and it's like, "Okay, what else have you bought?" Right? Let me bring up your profile. Do you have the Kelly? And it's effectively them holding back information at every single step so that they are always in control of the buying cycle and you never have the authoritative frame regardless of what your social status is, how much money that you have in the bank, what's going on. When you walk into those stores, they use information asymmetry to completely and utterly control that buying cycle. Even if you're like, "Oh, I I'll spend 500 grand on this bag. I don't care." They're like, "It doesn't matter, sir."

Have you found that adding friction into like your sales process? If someone goes on King Kong, they can't access an email immediately. They have to go fill out a form. They have to sign up for a little 30-minute consultation. Have you found that that makes the buyer so much more qualified than maybe when you were starting out and you just had sabers@gmail.com? You can email me and we can chat.

>> Yeah. Well, there's a the typical rule is the lower the price point, the less the friction. Look at Amazon, right? They do everything that they possibly can to reduce as much friction. One-click ordering. All of these things are based on a way when you're buying commodity products, the experience is quick. McDonald's, fast food, I'm in, I'm out. The higher the ticket, the the more friction that's involved. It's like when you go to a fine restaurant, they're not bringing all the food out at once, right? They're bringing the starters and then they're going to partner the mains with a certain dishes. There's going to be a whole flow to that. And it's the same thing when you walk into a luxury store and they're like, first of all, they hold you at the front of the store and they say, "Just wait here, sir." Right? So you have to line up like a pleb at the front of the store and then they do that and then they bring you in and then they're like you can come in, you know, this person will be available to to help you in 5 minutes. So then you're browsing around the store, please take a seat. Would you like sparkling water? Then the person comes out. It's like you can't even speak to anybody about buying anything without the whole it it's 30 minutes. If you literally know what you want and you just go in there and I want to buy this immediately, it does not matter. It that takes time. So, it's the same thing. The higher the ticket, the more of a pull sale it needs to be and less of a push. So, most people get caught up in push where it's like they're kind of making hard offers to people. They're trying to incentivize people to buy right now where the opposite is true. the higher the price that it is that you want to send. There's all these hoops that you need to jump through in order to qualify yourself to even get into a position. And so that's just, you know, relative on the price scale of whatever you sell. The higher the price, the more of a pull sale and the more exclusive and the more friction that needs to be involved. Um, and the lower the sale, the less friction and the easier that you want to make it for people.

On the topic of friction, are there any practical things that somebody listening to this, whether they're selling a physical good or something digital that they can incorporate into their sales flow? Or let's just take somebody in the digital space, if they're selling a online course or they have digital products that they're selling, what are some ways that they can either create friction or other ways uh within the like sales flow that they can generate a more qualified buyer?

So, for instance, if somebody needs to fill out a form in order to speak with your sales team, there should be legitimate qualifying questions with that. For instance, in my business, we legitimately have qualifying questions in order to qualify for for specific products. And if you go through that and you don't have any money, we're going to save your time and just say, "Unfortunately, it's not a great fit right now. Please go and get a free copy of this book, this will help you get to the stage that you want to or you might want to work with our agency. Unfortunately, you're not a great fit based on the information that you've given us. However, we also have a course that you could go through and you could do it yourself and implement a lot of these tactics. So, that's the first thing is having actual qualification criteria that you're not afraid to tell people on the front end. Most people can't do that because they haven't generated enough demand for whatever it is that they're selling. So they're trying to restrict flow when they don't even have enough flow to begin with. So the first sign of a shitty marketer is that their prices are low because if their prices are low, that means they don't have the skill to generate enough demand that they can increase their prices in the price equilibrium. So you want to first do that on the front end and then also the things that you can do beyond that is that once you're on the actual call is even if they do seem like a great fit on paper is still qualifying them more and going through that whole process and that's not like a fake qualification. This is legit. If you want to run a good business with a good reputation and have customers stay with you for a long period of time you need to be doing this stuff anyway. If you don't do this, you're going to be onboarding a bunch of shitty clients and your life's going to be hell. So you then on the phone call, you want to further put friction in there of being like, "Okay, cool. Like, we only work with x amount of clients per month. If we were to extend an invitation for you to join our programs or work with our agency, would you have any problem in giving us a video testimonial that documents all the results we're getting you?" Oh, yeah. I don't want to do that. No problems. And it's probably not going to be a great fit.

>> Yeah. forcing them to take the extra step because like how serious are you about working with us?

>> Correct. Um and most people are just saying yes yes yes all the way through where you want to actually test the person, right? So the moment that you stop going from a cell frame and you're like I need to sell this person and you're like I need to serve this person. I need to qualify and see whether or not they're the right fit. And literally asking them simple questions like okay cool. I've read all of this right? What makes you a good candidate to work with us? You make them sell themselves.

>> 100%. Go back to your to your book really quick because I've been hit with the ads. I'm sure many of us have been hit with the ads for sell like crazy. What is the entire idea there? When did you start to write this book and then say, you know what, I'm going to give it away if people just pay for the shipping and handling. And was that to build brand? Was it after you had made a certain amount of money and you were thinking about your marketing for the year and you're like, "Okay, I could spend $25 or $50,000 to print a bunch of these books and have them ready to rock and roll." If it means that someone gets into our ecosystem, maybe they, you know, look at a program, maybe their business grows and they learn a bunch from my free content and then they eventually work with King Kong. Talk to me a little bit about your book.

>> Yeah, sure. So, I would love to say it was like some brilliant orchestrated thing with all the things that you just explained, but it wasn't. Okay,

>> it was a situation where, you know, I started my business from my bedroom making 150 cold calls per day. Very, very quickly, once I got enough money in my bank account, I started to deploy that capital to actually demand generation, writing ads and funnels that have people coming to me, I outgrew my first office, outgrew my second office, all within their lease terms. It sounds like a fun thing. It wasn't super fun. It was very stressful. Um, and so I had way more demand than I could probably service. And basically I was turning down clients left, right, and center. And they would basically say to me, "Do you know another agency that does good work that's not going to light my bank account on fire that you can refer to me?" And I did a bit of research. I sent people to a few. It always came back to bite me on the ass because they weren't good operators. And I was like, "Hey, like I am turning down thousands of people every single year that want to work with me and I have nowhere to send these people." So I I I took, you know, the time to write a book and basically I was like, "Cool. I'm going to launch with this book and I'm going to give people everything. It's not going to be a thinly veiled lead generation for them to come in and then work with my business. I'm going to open up the vault and literally give all these people everything. there's not even going to be a pitch in the book anywhere for them to work with me. I'm just going to give all the secrets away. Um, and that's what I did. I didn't think it would take off as as much as it did where we've sold over a million copies. Um, and yes, there's been a lot of goodwill and brand that's come as a result of that and a lot of great opportunities, but in the beginning it was like, how do I serve people, right? How do I send the elevator back down to people and help them? And I realized early on that it doesn't cost any more to make your marketing valuable in itself than it w than it is if you just go out there and you make hard offers to people. But you get the whole benefit of building brand and all the goodwill that you create in the marketplace from helping people. And most of the people that go and get that book for free are never ever going to work with me. They're never ever going to give me another scent. So, it's not like, you know, there there's a huge amount of people that read that book and then become clients. Of course, that does happen, but in the beginning, that wasn't the focus.

Hope you're enjoying this episode. Real quick, I want to let you know about an awesome free product that we got linked in the description. It's our personal brand kickstart. What's in it?

>> Okay, we got five prompts for you. It's going to help you define your personal brand, get clarity, and start posting content that really resonates with your audience.

>> It'll literally take you less than 10 minutes, and it's been super apparent with all the guests that we've had on our show. They have really strong personal brands and it's allowed them to scale their businesses. So, go check it out. Top link. Let's keep it rolling.

Do you recommend business owners who are selling um a a product or a service that is extremely expensive? Do you recommend them having a lower tiered thing or a free thing that they can give to them or offer them to like keep them in the ecosystem? Is that a strategy that you have seen worked for you and like other people?

>> 100%. I I think that the first product that you sell is free, right? It's free for you, but it does cost the prospect their time, which is the most valuable currency that they've got. And so, you know, any given market, only 3% of a market is looking to buy right now. Yet most people their whole business is orchestrated around putting out offers, ads, and content that only serves the 3% of the market that's looking to buy right now. Then you have like, you know, a further 17% that realistically are kind of in information gathering mode. They're open to buying, but they're not in the market to buy right now. And so when you put out free content, you have, you know, what I call a highvalue content offer, which is a free report or a PDF or it can be a video training that you give people for free. And then I like to think about it as all markets exist around one universal problem and you want to have different products and services to help people wherever they're at on that journey. So for me, my business is centered around the number one problem that all businesses face, which is how do I get more customers? And so I need to have free YouTube content. I need to have a book. I need to have low ticket offers. I need to have courses. I need to have agencies. I want to have something that is a product suite where I can meet my customer wherever it is that they are.

What were some of the things that you noticed about yourself that you maybe had to change as the business was rapidly growing? you mentioned like you're breaking through two different leases, you're trying to get into a bigger building, you're hiring a [ __ ] ton of people. What were things that you noticed you're like, "Man, I have to change this." Like, "This specific thing needs to change or we're going to be [ __ ] moving forward." And that you changed it and obviously continue to grow into this amazing business that it is today.

>> Fulfillment operations, it's very easy to when you're a skilled marketer is to make an offer and to get people to buy. It is a different beast to build an organization with a 100 plus people and management and leadership and fulfilling on that service delivery at scale. Like that's why most agencies never get to any significant scale because it's like playing business on nightmare mode, right? You've got all these human beings in there. You're executing on all these different things. Um and realistically it comes down to your your leadership ability. In the in in the beginning when it's a small team it's it's a lot easier than once you start growing and there's multiple tiers of management but in any single business the constraint of that business is the founder.

You talk about in a in a book I believe you said the founder needs to inject a fire onto the team in certain areas. How do you do that at scale when you have that many [ __ ] people and you're dealing with so many different like little groups >> in the Yeah. and personalities in the company and keep, you know, keep yourself fresh. Go into this group and be like, "Okay, today I need to work on ops or today we need to work on fulfillment." What does that look like as someone who's growing a business? I'd love to know.

>> Sure. Well, the the the first thing to understand is that the potency of that energy and fire is the most intense at the top. So, it starts with the founder. You can't project out something that you don't have within yourself. So, the first thing is like am I sold myself? What is the problem that we're solving? What is the mission? What is the vision? Because unless you wake up every day and you know exactly where it is that you're trying to go to and what that goal looks like and you believe it down into the marrow of your bones, you can't transfer it to your management team. So that's the first step. And then every rung of management in a company that potency gets diluted. So if you're starting at 50%, you're not at 100%. That bottom they're getting nothing. They're just getting water, right? they're not getting that high frequency potency. So, you need to first of all be very aware of yourself and you need to look after yourself, your energy, your body. You need to work out, right? Because it's whoever has the most energy makes the most money. And all of the people that I know, all my billionaire friends, it's no coincidence that they all spend a disproportionate amount of their time now focusing on health and energy. And then so you need to make sure that you as a vessel have enough energy to give out. And then you need to have a very clear vision and mission statement for your company because you're not going to be interacting with the people that are frontline employees a lot of the time. So when they come into the company, just as we spoke about what does the onboarding process look like for clients, what does it look like for your employees? What's your employee funnel like? From the ads that you run to recruit talent to then how you interview them to what their onboarding is going to be like. Are they very very clear on your mission and vision statements? For me, I've got LED signs all around my office with my vision and mission statement constantly going everywhere and burning into the retinas of people's eyes that work out of these offices. I've got them printed on the walls. I start all of our meetings with basically saying what our vision, mission statement is, what the goal is that we're all going after. So, no one wonders what are we trying to do here? Like, what is the goal here? And then making sure that you're spending the time and energy with your management team and you're injecting that fire and that heat into them so that then they can pass that on to their team members. And the the bigger the company gets, the clearer the vision needs to be.

I'm ready to go get big right now. I might p I might push I might do a PR tonight.

>> Yeah.

>> Going to go hit a bench.

>> Bren's co-founder Monday morning meeting.

>> I'm like, dude, 6 a.m.

>> Fire me up.

>> Let's go for chang.

>> I'm ready to go, bro.

>> Let's go. I love it.

I want to go back to something you said. You said that um the way you operate your business, your main focus is getting your clients more customers and that is what they want. They want more customers. But you I was watching a video last night and it like light bulb moment for me. You said do not sell what the person needs, sell what they want. Can you go into that theory? Because I think a lot of people when they're first starting out, they're like, I know you need this. I have something that can help you. But if they market it that way, people are like, "What the heck? I don't actually want this." Yeah. So, can you talk about marketing in a way for something that somebody wants versus you providing something that they need, but actually then giving them what they need?

>> This is the biggest sin that I see all businesses commit, right? They think about what is convenient for me to sell, what would I like to buy? They don't start with what is the market absolutely starving for, right? So say for

Instance with my programs, the thing that I know that all everybody wants is they want to know a repeatable, predictable way to generate high-quality leads on autopilot that come into their business and buy with the least amount of friction possible. That's what everybody wants, right? So that's exactly what it is that I sell because that's what the market is starving for.

But then once you get involved in the program, then you figure out all the other things that it is that you need, right? We talk about mindset, we talk about your health, we talk about systems, operations. We talk about all of these other things that need to be in place. But I spoke about that on the front end. No one is like going to come and buy it because you need to sell what is sexy, what is what people want. Everybody wants to be rich. Nobody wants to get rich. And so they want easy button solutions. They want, you know, six-pack abs with doing the least amount of work. So, you would be stupid if you tried to sell them, "Hey, you're going to be working out 5 hours a day." Like, it's like you need to sell what it is that they want and then give them what it is that they need.

And you can, you're going to have to be tough if you're going to be stupid. So, if you're going to go down the road of like, "Oh no, I want to sell everybody what it is that they need." Those people have a very hard life. We speak to business owners all day long that are on the verge of bankruptcy. They're really, really hurting. They don't have a system in place to get customers, and they've been trying to sell people vegetables, right? When people want the brownies. So, sell them the brownies, bro. And then just give them what they need. And it's not like it's kind of like a Trojan horse tactic, but it's in a positive way because if you have the best product in the marketplace, then it is your moral obligation to get that into as many hands of the people as possible.

And so you want to think about, if somebody buys a product or service of one of my competitors, then I am doing them a disservice because I know those other products aren't as good as mine because I bought them all. I've studied them all, and none of them are as good as mine. So if you know that yours is the best, then you need to make it the most enticing. And then once you've gotten them on board, then you provide them the education of like, "These are all the things that you need to do to get this outcome, right?" And you've studied it all and you know it all.

On the topic of that, I think back to when I was in high school. This guy named Mike Chang, Six Pack Shortcuts. Do you remember this [ __ ]? I don't know if you got hit with these ads in Melbourne. This [ __ ] guy was everywhere, dude. I remember sitting there. Mike Chang wasn't telling me to eat chicken rice, man. No, he was telling me about that [ __ ] six-pack that we all wanted, and I was like, "Dude, how do I get this six-pack? I want to be like this guy."

Can you talk to me about all of the different funnels that you've seen be really successful? Like, what are the core things that you notice when people come to you and you're like, "Oh my god, this is absolutely awful." Really quick fixes that you notice right off the bat, whether it's copy, whether it's content that's usually terrible. What are a few of those things that people can implement right away?

Sure. I think first of all, it's picking the right type of funnel for the price point that you're selling at. Most people are going to optimize for the, what is the easiest for them to have the money flow into their bank account. So, they're like, "Yeah, like I'll just create this course. It will be $400. I'll send them to a landing page and I'll get people to buy that and then every time they buy, it's just $400 in my bank account and I don't have to do anything." And it's like, bro, that's not how it works, right? That's not how the economics of online marketing work anymore. In order to run that, you're going to be at break-even or probably at a loss on the front end in order to get a customer into there, and then you're not going to have any money.

Where instead, what you could do is you could take that $499 course, you could repackage it, put more valuable in it, and you could sell it at five grand per month. You could put a sales call in there, um, and instead you'd be making a shitload more money. So, the first thing is like getting the economics right. If you don't get the economics right, it doesn't matter how good the marketing is, right? Because the economics is the expectation of how much is it going to cost me to acquire a customer? How much is a customer worth to me? And how much profit am I going to make over the entire lifetime of that relationship? Then, once you've got the economics in place, then it's like copy. Like, most people's copy is just horrendous. Um, and now you've got like ChatGPT and you got all these AI platforms. People have got just AI slop when it comes to copy. It's not what, it's not how you say things, it's what you say.

So the first thing is understanding of like, again, coming back to, what is it that I want to say? Well, in order to know what it is that you want to say, you need to do the research. You need to figure out what people are buying in your marketplace emotionally, irrationally, and in high, high quantities. And what is it that they are starving for? That's the first thing that you want to focus on is what is my market starving for? Not what do I have to sell? No, no, no, no, no. You put what you've got to sell aside and you go out and you do the research and you say, "What is it that they want? Forget what I've got. Forget the business, the different price points, the economics." No, no, no, no, no. I'll put that all over here and let me just figure out what it is that they want. And the way to figure out what it is they want is where is the money flowing right now? Then, once you know what it is that they've got, you better be selling that and not some other [ __ ].

So then you go, "Okay, I know what it is that they want." Because I've seen like the most ordinary funnels with the most basic copy, but they are selling something that people are starving for. And these guys are making money hand over fist. Where on the other end, I've seen people with all the bells and whistles in their funnels. They're saying everything in the perfect way, but they're not saying the right thing. And these guys are struggling to make ends meet. So they're, they're the kind of levers then you go from like the headline, the price points, the copy, all of the objection handling in it, the flows off the back end of it. But in terms of the 80/20, right, the 20% of inputs that's going to get you 80% of the results is first doing the research and finding out what people are buying in the marketplace. And two, sell that.

Keep it simple.

Yep.

Yeah. The people with the most complex funnels have the least amount of money in their bank account.

When I came across you for the first time and I went through your funnel and I bought your book, you had one of the most lit VSLs I've ever seen, but it was really long. And I want to know about your thought process when it comes to VSLs. Are you still in the belief of it should be like a, you know, 30 to 45 minute video? Like where are you at on VSL specifically in 2025?

Yeah, sure. So, your VSL should be as long as it needs to be in order to make the sale. And so, in terms of when people are like, "Oh my god, who's going to read all of this copy? Who's going to watch all of this video?" The person that's going to do that is the buyer, right? Because the buyer's got questions. If you're not a buyer, you're not going to watch a short VSL, right? You're not going to watch a long VSL. So, the whole thing is you want to make sure that questions are answered, right? Education is provided. And again, the higher the ticket, the more education that's involved. If you're going out and you know, you're spending an a lot of m huge amount of money, then you're going to do a proportionate amount of education around that. If you're going to go do a Pilates class and the first class is free, you're not, you're just going to see where is the location, what does the fit out looks like, this looks good to me, and you're going to go, right? So, the higher the ticket, the more education that's involved, but it, it can't just be long for the sake of being long. It, it has to be educating as well, and it has to be entertaining.

So, the way that I think about it is I know my prospect. I know them intimately. I know them better than they know themselves. I know the questions that they're thinking about that's keeping them up at night, tossing and turning at 3:00 a.m. that they don't even tell their partner about. So, I know from the feedback that I get from my clients is that they watch all of that thing. And I have like, I, you know, I'm running VSLs anywhere right now from 20 minutes from 4 minutes all the way up to 36 minutes. And then that's just what you see on the front end. And then there's still another multiple series of videos that go out on the back end to educate people.

That would be like in an email sequence, you're saying?

No, there's just like thinking about what is the whole series of steps that someone goes in in order to buy. Email is one of them. But often times once you book a phone call, then like what happens? What's the page that you land on? I booked a phone call. Now what? Right? So understanding like 70% of all B2B transactions like of of the research is done before they initiate your sales team. Think about you guys. Do you guys duck calls from your friends, from family members?

Yeah.

Right? I know I do.

Like I'm so busy. Oh no, I can't speak to this person right now. Then if you look at contact rates, contact rates to get a lead on the telephone across all industries are in the absolute toilet right now. And people do not want to speak to salespeople. So that's going to become more and more apparent with robocalling, AI, all of these things that are going to make it easier to call people. It's going to be harder and harder to get people on the telephone. So then the VSL becomes infinitely more important because you're not even getting to open up that conversation. So people are doing more research than ever. And that's why like producing organic content and having YouTube and all of that kind of stuff is more important, is because people want to see so much information that you prove that you are who you say you are before they reach out, before they do anything. So unless you have that stuff, you won't even get the opportunity to enter that conversation.

In this new era of all the AI content, dude, I saw the craziest [ __ ] today. I saw this dude who was looked like he was in his mom's basement and he's like moving his hands and it was a it was like a gorgeous girl and it was like he had like a video, it was like a video of a girl and it was like moving with him and he was like smiling and [ __ ] on Twitch. Craziest [ __ ] I've ever seen. But in this new era of AI, what do you think is going to be the route? Obviously, you just stated it. A VSL is going to be super important. If people aren't picking up the phone, will it be done via DM or do you feel like people are so on edge with DM being like, "Oh, is this not, is this you? Is this a sales rep? I want to know if it's actually Sabry that's hitting me up." Like, what do you think that process is going to look like?

Yeah. I I think that like there's going to need to be more and more content that people consume before they feel like that they're ready to do business with you. And then I think the things that we take for granted, the in-person events, um, you know, seminars, all of that, they're going to see a huge resurgence as we move into this AI slop world where you're going to have custom VSLs based on every single person. You're going to be able to literally say their name in the VSL, talk about their problems to them specifically, all using AI. U, I've already seen this stuff. So, that's where it's all going. And then once it goes fully in that direction, people are going to want to speak to humans even more. So I think that like as much as you can humanize things, that's what's going to make the the difference. Everything is going to be perfectly said at the perfectly time, completely customizable. And then the things that people are going to appreciate more is like the raw organic stuff.

I would I think I'd kind of freak out if like.

Yeah.

They're like, "Costas,"

Yo, what up?

"Your sales funnel is messed up." It's already happening, dude. The one of the biggest offers online is like numerology.com and if you put your name in, they do like a reading for you based on your birth date and stuff and they just keep saying your name. This was 3 years ago where basically they went through the effort of recording like the 4 and a half thousand most common names and then based on your name being in that they would intersect that into the VSL like that they were doing a palm reading for you, right? And now all of that stuff has changed because you've got 11 labs and AI. Like it's only the beginning of how wild it's about to get.

I thought we were safe with unique names. You know what I'm saying?

Braden, those are pretty pretty unique names.

Are we in that 4,000?

Yeah. I don't think we would be, man.

I will say going back to your VSL though, I was laughing cuz I remember watching it and I I remember watching it in bed and it was [ __ ] It wasn't quite 3:00 a.m. but it was like probably 10:30, 11. I was like, "This [ __ ] got me still watching. Like I'm tapped in. I'm minute 32 and we're like we're still here." I was just so impressed with it. I do want to talk about your content flywheel because you brought this up to us on the pre-show call and you're thinking about content differently than most people and I would love to hear your take on what is your content flywheel look like right now and how does it look organic and then to the paid side of things.

I obviously produce organic content for for my YouTube. I I do that for several reasons. Um, one of them is obviously just to provide value to my marketplace regardless of whether or not they choose to do business with me. And it also is a way to get more reps in to also make better ads and to make VSLs. It used to be once upon a time I'd shoot a new VSL, you know, every 6 to 12 months and then launch it. How good are you going to get at only doing something twice a year, right? So or now where things are at also organically it's you're getting to get organic reach based on your ability to tell a good story to retain people's attention and do all of those things and I solely believe that that is definitely the future but where most people do is they kind of stop at that.

So, the way that I approach it is I put out organic content to help my audience. Then I take the sawdust, right? I take the the scraps of those videos, the ones that are the outliers and that do very, very well. I'm like, "This is resonating organically." Then I take that, I clip that up, chop it up, syndicate it across all of short form, and then get, you know, typically 20 to 30 times the views on short form that I do on long form. Then I take the long form and I insert three to four call to actions in that video. Maybe it's a 12-minute video, maybe it's a 20-minute video. And then I run that and I use that as the paid engine on my ad side. So, not only am I getting to put out organic content and get all of the goodwill and all of the source from that, then I get it as the raw material for my short form, and then it also feeds the ads engine that I then run as well and bring in more customers that all funnels down to my core offer.

Could you talk to me a little bit about the metrics you're trying to pay the most attention to with paid ads? Like, is it click-through rate? Is it someone's watch time? And then you're like, "Okay, if they watch half of this video, maybe I'll send them to another video that I think they might enjoy." What does that look like? And has your philosophy evolved over the years?

Ultimately, it comes down to what is the end outcome that you're trying to drive? Like, so why am I putting out this this ad, right? Is it to drive a transaction? Is it to generate a lead? Is it to get somebody to book a call? And then whatever that metric is that we're optimizing for in the algorithm, that's the thing that we're going to be paying the most attention to. Right? So, first of all, it's like cost per result. We're going to look at that and then we're going to look at what's the hook rate of the video, right? I.e., how many people are actually watching that and then staying beyond 3 seconds, beyond 10 seconds to watch the rest of it. And looking at the CTR on it, but they're kind of like the big metrics that we wonder. It's like you you guys said yourself, oh, you know, you're running like a 26-minute VSL. Yeah, we run that as an ad as well. And you you better know that I've tried 5-minute VSLs, 6-minute VSLs, 8-minute VSLs, 12 minutes, 15, 16, 22, 24, 36, all of the different lengths, right? And it's crazy. Like I'm running an ad right now that's an hour and 9 minutes and it's crushing. And so it the whole thing of like, oh, you know, we're living in this thing where there's like short attention spans. Yeah, there are shorter attention spans, but if some if something is interesting to you, it is valuable to you. That's why people watch three-hour Joe Rogan episodes. That's why people binge watch an entire season of Netflix, right? And that's not because like they're they're short on time. It's like why is long form absolutely crushing it right now? Why is this three-minute, I mean, sorry, this three-hour podcast doing exceptionally well? If you find something that is interesting to people, they will pay attention.

Okay. So, you're running a one-hour and 9-minute VSL ad. What do you know about how to keep someone's attention like off of an ad, not even organic content? Like, what do you know about keeping people's attention that the average person doesn't? Because hour and hour and nine minutes is crazy. I wouldn't even I wouldn't have even thought to even think about running an ad that long, but it's clearly crushing for you.

Totally.

Yeah. I think that the the first thing that it comes down to again is understanding what to say. Think about you guys, right? Like whenever you've bought something and you're in the information gathering mode. If someone was to articulate very, very clearly to you the problem that you have that you're looking to solve and it's like everything that they say hits a hot button and it's like, "Oh my god, this is exa like this is what I need, man. This is what I've been researching." Like, you're not going to click away. You're like, almost like, "Let me not touch anything because I don't want this ad to disappear because this person is speaking directly to me." So that's the first thing that you need to understand is like the people that you're targeting, you need to be saying the right thing to them. And then it's obviously you need to have it in an engaging way. There needs to be strong hooks. There needs to be lots of cuts that go through changing of scenes to keep people engaged. But one is you can articulate the problem that they're experiencing better than they can themselves. And then two, in the actual ad itself, you can start to prove that you have the solution to this by actually helping them solve that problem right in the ad. So the ad in itself needs to be valuable. It can't be a 36-minute pitch video where you're just talking about selling them. It has to be like, "This is the problem that you've got." I and then explaining it very, very intimately, all the visceral details of it and then being like, "And this is how we fix it," and then just start helping them fix it on the call so that like on in the actual ad, sorry, so they can watch it and be like, "[ __ ] this person knows what the hell they're talking about. Like this is amazing. Like they're actually providing value to me right now in the actual ad. This is wild." So that's that's the thing that you need to really be focusing about and in terms of retaining people's attention, you know, I am still, I like I would say like I've been like I made the the decision at the start of the year to kind of get more serious about organic content. So I don't feel like I'm in a huge position to to speak about that professionally yet. I think that in the next 24 months I'll be in a completely and unrecogni unrecognizable place in terms of organic content and then I think I'll have more qualifications to be able to speak in it. But yeah, I I I'm learning from like people that are at the top of the game in organic and figuring out how to apply all of those into my market.

You mentioned that you have a group chat with some of the most popular YouTubers on the platform like Ara and some of these other guys. What have been a few of the key learnings that they've told you that you could share with our group today that could really help them crush the organic content? By the way, I I think that you can [ __ ] talk about it because your videos are elite. Like they really are so value-driven and you know you're generating so many organic views that people would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for. So kudos to you for jumping into it because it's it's really high quality stuff.

Thank you. Um, I think the the the first big thing is to speak at like a fifth-grade reading level and understand that like most people that are on social media and on these platforms are like mice on crack. They are like, they're so distracted. You've got a video there. There's all the sidebar videos are going there and you need to first speak it a way that's not going to alienate anybody in your audience in order to dumb it down. If you look at like the New York Times bestselling books over the last 20 to 30 years, 80% of them are written at a sixth-grade reading level or below. And so the first thing that people say is they're like, "Oh yeah, my audience isn't dumb though." Like they like I don't need to speak at a at a fifth-grade reading level because I'm going after smart people. And it's like, "Okay, cool. Well, do smart people read books?" Yeah, they do. All right, terrific. Well, 80% of them that are in the bestsellers are written at this reading grade level. So, is just like not using convoluted language and really, you know, intense vocabulary that somebody's like, "I don't understand that." The moment that somebody doesn't understand it, you've lost them. They're going to go click onto something else. Um, so the things that I look at is it's very difficult because I'm not in the entertainment/spectacle world that a lot of these YouTubers that I speak to are, right? Where they're sneaking into places, they're lighting Lamborghinis on fire, and they're doing this outrageous [ __ ]. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got like the talking head business community, which is like so boring. Just put me to sleep already. And so I'm trying to basically be in the crossroads of those two intersections where I'm making things that are entertaining to the masses that still provide a lot of value to them. So, it's a constant balancing act of retaining people's attention and then making it so once they've watched the video, it's not like I just consumed a bunch of empty calories fast food that I'm not better off and then providing them with enough value through that process where they're like, "I was entertained plus I learned something from that." And I think that like that's the chasm that I'm trying to master because I think that it's very difficult but the the rewards are there for doing so. But ultimately what you need to understand is that whatever it is that you're doing, you can hook somebody's attention in the first video, but if you don't provide them a good experience with watching that video, the next time your face shows up in the news feed, they're not going to click on the next video. So you got to clickbait them because that's what the platform is. It's a click and watch platform. It's not a watch platform. It's a click and watch. So what is again? It comes down to the same things in marketing. What do people want to click on? What is it that they want to watch? Right? Do they want to watch me just sitting at a desk talking about growing their business? Or do they want to watch me going in and trying to find the most mysterious luxury Rolex that I possibly can um and and taking you along for that journey? That's a lot more clickable than than the first option, right? And then how do I package up the veggies in that video where you still watch it, you still get the education, but you also get entertained throughout that process.

If someone wanted to start on the organic journey and and you know start posting long form and short form, but maybe they weren't as [ __ ] well spoken as you, maybe they don't have like the business acumen that you do. They don't have the team to be able to film, shoot, edit, repackage everything. Like what advice would you tell that person if it's just maybe a solo business owner and they know that, you know, creating content on the internet could generate more sales and more leads for their business, but they're a little bit newer to content creation and they don't have maybe a team that they can rely on. What would you tell that person?

Yeah, like my opinion on this is recently changed. I would previously have told that person not to do it, right? And I would say like, "Don't worry about putting out organic content until you know you're at multiple millions per year. Just focus on crafting ads, putting together an offer, and just run traffic to it and get that to convert profitably. Forget organic content. It's all noise." However, now with the way things have changed with the platform, I think TikTok completely changed the game with like it's not about the amount of followers that you have at all. It's purely how good is the content that it is that you're putting out. And then obviously everybody has moved to adopt those same principles. It's happening with YouTube right now. You see people on their first upload can crack 200,000 views, a million views, multiple million views if the video is good enough in itself. So now I think that it does make sense to produce organic content. And the way that you want to do it if you don't have a team is everyone has got a phone. Hopefully they've got an iPhone and they're not on an Android. And when they use that, that's the thing that they should be using. They shouldn't worry about like doing a high polish edit or anything like that. They should commit to just putting out one video per day. And it should be, it doesn't matter how [ __ ] it is. Like, "I'm going to do it, come hella high water, I'm going to post an new video every single day." And it's like anything. And after you get enough reps in, you are going to get good at that. You're going to think, "Okay, if I start the video like this, the video gets a lot more views than if I start it like this." Then once you do that and you do it for 3 months and you've got 90 uploads, you're going to be able to look at that 90 pieces of content and figure out what does well and what doesn't. And you're going to start to see patterns in the matrix of like, "Okay, now I'm starting to understand how this goes." Then after you've done that for a year and you put out 365 pieces of content, you are going to be good. And then then and only then do you start going up like the value ladder. Then you're like, "Maybe now I'll get a videographer, right?" Then you get a videographer and then you start, "Now I'll get a full-time editor and I'll start doing these things along the way." Because because the internet has basically made it so easy for people to start businesses. Most people's news feeds are littered with gurus that don't know what the [ __ ] that they're doing. And because they do not know what the [ __ ] they're doing, people think that they do, they sign up, they have a bad experience, and then they become extremely skeptical. And then when it comes time to buy your thing, they're not just going to go to your landing page and funnel and buy anymore. They're doing the Google sniff test. They're going to your socials. They're clicking on the footer. They're going to TikTok, Instagram. They're going to be sussing out what it is that you're doing. So unless you do have content, then all of your ad performance is also going to suffer because people are going to be highly dubious and highly skeptical about what it is that you're doing. So you want to start with anything. Have it down and dirty. Have it super ghetto to begin with. Shoot on your iPhone. Most of the content anyway is shot on the iPhone on these platforms. And that kind of raw uncut organic thing is the thing that's actually doing the best anyway. So don't look at it as a limitation. Look at it as an advantage and just get going.

When you think about it right now for yourself, is YouTube, when you go sit with your team, is that really where you're trying to put a lot of focus and then you have these clippers that are going, "Hey, we'll put on shorts, put on TikTok, put on Instagram."

100%. Like the the short form is the top of the funnel junk food that brings everybody people in, right? It's the $1 cheeseburger that's going to get people into your world kind of thing. But in terms of actually building influence, it's time on brand. And so the best time on brand platform right now is YouTube. That's where people are consuming. That's where most people consume the podcast. That's where most people consume content. You know, we're in a place where this, you know, this year is the first year that YouTube has getting more time on screen than Netflix on television devices.

Crazy. So that is the platform that you can build a lot of deep connections and goodwill with people. Um, and I'm extremely bullish on YouTube. I think that that is definitely the future. And I think that everything starts from there. And then you look at the the short form clipping and what are all you need to be present on all of those platforms 1,000%. Um, but if you just did short form and you didn't have any long form, it's kind of it's almost worthless. I've seen a lot of people that have millions of followers on short form and then they put out an offer and it's crickets. They don't make any money. And it's because they don't have any long-term relationship with those people.

We've noticed that as well for the pod. If someone is just on Instagram, it doesn't convert at all. It's kind It's really insane. It's like mind-blowing. Which is why we're super excited for this episode in particular because you've been crushing on long form and you also just have so much game to give out. So, I think like you got that recognizable faith. I'm I'm really excited for this one. When it comes to content strategy as far as coming up with ideas for long form, how do you go about that with your team? Because I've also noticed that, you know, you've seen a couple of the formats that you've done have success and you've repeated them in a different way. So can you talk about how you come up with ideas and how you think about content in the in the form of like formats and how that can be utilized like or how someone can think about having a format and being like this does well, let me do it again and and repeat it.

Yeah, I'm still like a student of the game and and and learning this process. But one of the things that has become extremely apparent from hanging out with a lot of these big YouTubers is that even still today that I need to be spending way more time on ideation and idea selection more so than the execution. I think that um my team is doing an exceptional job in terms of like the executional side of things and the editing and the pacing and all of those kind of stuff, but realistically like you need to be spending the most amount of your time, the 80/20 on ideation. Um, and the more people that I see that are crushing it on YouTube that I'm hanging out with, that is apparent in all of their teams. So, even for this quarter, that's a big emphasis for me and my team is just like, you know, locking ourselves in a room and coming up with ideas of that where we think are going to bang. Where it's like a lot of the time, the way that I was doing it and a lot of creators do it is they're just like they'll come up with five ideas and they're like, "Yeah, let's just run with these." and then they run with them and then it's like all this time and energy and resources to produce that video, but it's like inherently if that idea was way better, it would just do like a 100x the performance. So, the way that we're thinking about it is yeah, one, what is what is interesting? What is what would we click on, right? What what what would get us involved in the world? and then thinking about okay what are the business lessons and takeaways from this interesting idea to be able to execute on this um to to kind of make it fascinating. So that's the way that like there's no short easy answer. There's not like some chibi prompt that you can put in that's going to give you it all. Then once you you you ideulate in terms of buckets you think about okay what's the bucket of content that I'm going to produce like one like those brand videos that we produce on Rolex and Hermes and all of these that's like we call them IRL videos like out in the real world looking at you know these use cases that's a format that's a bucket of content and then we think about what's all of the different types of videos that we could produce in that bucket and you're testing formats but you'll notice that on YouTube. The videos that do the best are basically creators that take television shows and they basically put them on YouTube. Like Beast Games is just a game show. Like a lot of these videos, that's just what they are. These these creators have literally just lifted what has worked on television and then they're just bringing that to to to YouTube.

Okay. Going back to Braden bringing up how you have this, you know, text message thread with a bunch of top YouTubers. I feel like in the world of business, there's like different levels and almost like doors that you unlock. As soon as you reach a certain level or you meet a certain individual and your network grows, it's like, "Oh [ __ ] I have access to individuals that I can ask questions to or network with and I can get connected with somebody else." And the game almost becomes a little bit easier because the network grows and the people that you can go ask questions to it become like, you you level up and you open up the story like, "Oh [ __ ] like I didn't know about this beforehand." Can you take us back to as you were coming up, maybe one of those doors that you opened, somebody that you met and allowed you to go to the next level in business?

Yeah. I think that I don't buy into the idea that you need to get to a certain level where those those doors start to open. I've always been incredibly curious. I've always networked with people. Every city that I go to, I'm like, "Yo, I'm in Athens. If you want to connect, slide into the DMs." Or I might know certain people that I was never afraid to basically send them a DM and to start a conversation. And it's still something I do to this day and it's something that I've always done. Right? So it doesn't like it's not something that you need to defer to you get to some certain level and some door is going to open and it's going to like bring you all this opportunity. I can't say that there's been any really of those opportunities that have presented themselves to me. They've always been something that I have created.

I guess I was I guess maybe let me rephrase it. There's been times where like we've had guests on the podcast and we've had conversations and through that conversation, it created like an aha moment for us of like, "Oh [ __ ] okay, we should operate our business this way or we didn't think about this beforehand and it has completely changed the way we think about the show and our business." And I'm curious to know if you have had any of those like encounters early on in your career where you had maybe a specific conversation with an individual and he's like,

and it kind of changed the way you thought about how you operated your business.

Yeah, sure. So, let me talk about the networking side of things and then I'll transition into that. So the first thing is like if you're watching this right now and you want to network with people and you want to get these doors open to you, the first thing that you need to understand is that people only want to network with people that are going to provide value to themselves. And most people look at relationships with what is it that I can extract from this person. Instead, what you want to do is whatever the lane that you're driving in, whatever the world the niche is, is to become absolutely world-class at that, that people would want to network with you because you are a person of value. And then that's going to make those doors lubricated and they are going to swing open because people do want to associate with you. Where most people look at it through the other lens, they're like, "What is it that I can take? Like who is it that can help me get to the next level?" rather than thinking about, "Who can I help? Who can I help get to the next level?" right? So say for instance, like, you know, some of the doors that I would like definitely like conversations with Eric, you know, has changed the way that I operate from a content standpoint um and, you know, I remember he sent me through like a brief of their pre-production of what goes into making their videos and the thing was like 27 pages long and I'm like, "Oh, okay. Like, like, okay. There's a different level here, a different level of planning in order to execute videos that are pulling in 30 million views." Um, that goes into it. And a lot of these YouTubers make it look like there's not effort. But these guys are like, they're hard workers, man. They're at it. It's like this is a they're in the major leagues. They're professionally going after it. And it's like anything in life. Whenever I turn over a rock, whenever you see somebody getting some outcome that seems desirable and the human brain always comes up with excuses of why they are able to get that outcome and everyone of those people have gone through a season that you haven't seen and when you when you look under that rock, you can see all of the mountain of work that goes into getting that outcome. So I think that that's been the case in any systems, like, you know, the people that I hang out with that are doing a billion dollars in revenue, once you start hanging out with them and seeing like what it is that they've got going on and the stuff, it's just an enormous amount of work or reps or volume that's gone into or planning and work that get them to that stage. So that's that's been the same with organic content. Like it looks like all fun and games on YouTube and people just putting out videos that suck in 30 million views, but then you actually figure out, okay, like, wow, they're they're literally four weeks of pre-production planning out absolutely every single minute detail and then it's like a monster edit. and you go to their offices and there's 16 editors in the back room and they're maniacally focusing on every single thing and they make it look effortless on the front end, but there's an enormous amount of work that goes into absolutely everything to get the outcome that it is that they want. And that's that's true of everything in life. I think.

I think you're so right and it's something that we've realized too from the people that we've been blessed to like speak with on this show. like you see something that seems so easy and then when you chat with him and you lift open that rock, you're like, "Oh my god, there's like so many there's so many details that go into this process." Before you became like forward-facing and you started making this content, was this a conscious decision and you talked to someone or, you know, were you like, "Okay, I probably should be on social media and what was that first platform look like that you ended up hopping on to?"

Yeah. So I you can go on on my YouTube channel and you can look at my earlier videos that are just absolutely horrendous. Um, I I I I started like just documenting in the beginning and like documenting sales meetings and like the way that I was kind of running the company. And it started from a place of first like, "I wish that I had a camera crew when I was cold calling 150 people from my bedroom to get my first clients." I've got a few videos of it. my wife sitting beside me and me cold calling people. Um, but I wish I had filmed everything and I wish that I could just show it to my daughters when they get old so they can understand like what has gone into it. And so it started from a place of like, "Let me document the climb." Like and then it was about, you know, I was already doing $10 million in revenue at the time then I was okay, I'll start producing videos on YouTube. Um, and it was just documenting what I was doing. And then as that's evolved over the years, it's just become apparent that people don't want to do business with faceless corporations. They want to do business with individuals. And it's why Elon Musk has more followers than Tesla. It's Jeff Bezos on Amazon, Zuck on on Meta. Like people want to do business with people that they know, like, and trust. And that's just going to become more and more and more apparent. So

I think as the years have gone on, my opinions and my investment into these platforms have become more and more serious because I understand that, like, that is the main thing. I think the most underpriced asset right now in the world is attention, where in an opportunity where we can basically start a television network for free. It's like, it's like these companies, is like NBC or Fox comes to you and they're like, "Subrey, we're going to put all the infrastructure in. We're going to put the satellites up, the studio. We're going to pay for absolutely everything. And then you just produce content. We're going to pay you to produce the content. And then in addition to that, it's also going to grow your business as well." And you're like, "Okay, so what's the downside of this?" And they're like, "There isn't any." And you're like, "Okay, well, how much do I need to spend to get this all set up?" And they're like, "Nothing." And it's like there's just, there's so much opportunity in terms of attention.

If you think about, like, everyone getting connected to the internet, it does not matter where you go. I just got back from Greece, Italy, Dubai, India. I can go to the most remote village in India and there are people glued to their phone. And I can go to Beverly Hills and it's the same thing. So you have more and more people coming online spending more and more time on these platforms, and the amount of people that produce content, yeah, it's increased, but it hasn't gone up nowhere near as much as the actual demand for this content. So that's why I think that attention is the most underpriced currency and asset right now in the world. Um, so I'm just kind of retweaking and pivoting my business to make sure that I'm buying up as much of that asset as possible.

I thought you were going to go the route of, "I could go to the, the most remote village and they're still recognizing me. The internet daddy."

Yeah. Well, it does. It happens places. I was in Bali recently in the bathroom and a guy walked out and he's like, "Subrey." And I was like, I was walking out of the bathroom and he's like, put his hand out to shake me. I was like, "I haven't washed my hands yet, bro." And he's like, "Oh, no, no, it's, it's okay." And I'm like, "Man, it's just like, wild."

Hey, I'll give you a fist.

Oh, [ __ ]. Um, speaking of of of attention, I'd love to know about your experience on Shark Tank and how much attention that did bring to your personal brand. Did being on the show give your brand quite a lift or was it not as much as you maybe initially thought?

I think what it does, it drives credibility and validates you. Right now, it's so easy. You just need an iPhone. You can start recording content and uploading it to YouTube. Is there's lots of questions in people's minds of like, why, why, why should I listen to you? So if anything, like, I think it just validates, like, that attention. But I can still say that, like, YouTube and time on brand, right? It might be like, what you see in Shark Tank is some of these pitches go for two hours, then they take those two hours and they cut them down to a seven-minute pitch, and then from that seven-minute pitch, each shark might be on screen for 30 to 45 seconds of the time. Where it's like, there are YouTube videos that I've put out that have got millions of views, views that go for an hour. So, time on brand is obviously bigger on those. Um, I'm still more bullish, I would say, on on YouTube than I am on traditional television. And I think that if you look at most major networks and everything right now, they're cutting down on all of these things. They're cutting down on shows. People aren't wanting to advertise as much on these because they know where the attention is flowing. But there was definitely a big brand lift of validating who you are as an individual to be in a position to be on something like Shark Tank.

Could you see Shark Tank coming to YouTube?

I can.

Okay.

I feel, I feel like that's what's going to happen, man. It, it, it's beating Disney, beating Netflix.

Well, you because you bring up that a lot of the most successful YouTube formats are being pulled from TV. And I don't think I've seen Shark Tank on YouTube. It could be a really interesting YouTube series, I think.

Yeah. I mean, Hermoszi has taken that was a TV.

The Profit.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And he's taken a business owner. He's like, "Okay, we're going to actually fix everything in their business." That's a brilliant model and we've seen it work on TV before.

I think you should bring Shark Tank.

God, fire me up.

You might be working on that.

Okay. Okay. Okay. What were some of the things that you noticed with these business owners that were running a circus and the ones that were actually running a business? Is there a few things you're like, "Jesus Christ, this is very easy." And I, I see this time and time again. You guys just keep messing it up. When they would come on to Shark Tank or businesses, do it get pitched to you because I'm sure you get pitched all the time.

In terms of when, what's the difference between people that have a legitimate business versus circuit?

Even, yeah, even if they have profitability, what are the things that then, okay, great. They're profitable. I'm now interested.

Yeah. What causes you to want to invest?

Yeah. If they're, they're already profitable though, I don't want like someone that is unprofitable. Like they're profitable, then what? I pay very close attention to the words that come out of the mouth and the story that it is that they're telling to us Sharks. Um, and also to themselves. I, I, I'm a big believer on betting on the jockey, not the horse. I know how hard business is. I've seen businesses come and go. I've seen them fail. I've, I've seen businesses that are in an incredible season. Everything's working. Cool. I want to see what happens to you when [ __ ] starts to fall apart. When the fire gets so hot that you starts to melt. I want to see how you react in those situations, how quickly that you can pivot. Are you the type of person that comes up with excuses to outside resources to why you haven't been able to achieve all the things that it is that you want? Or are you the kind of person that just rolls up your sleeves and gets it done, no matter what? So that's the biggest thing that I look for is what are all the hurdles that they've already had to overcome to get into this position right now because I don't want to hear like, you know, we launched the product, everything went well, we're super profitable, there hasn't been any bottlenecks and you should invest. And I'm like, okay, that sounds a little bit suspicious. And first of all, if you haven't gone through any trials and tribulations, what are you going to do when [ __ ] does get hard? What are you going to do when the market gets flooded with competition that are all undercutting you on price? Then what's going to happen? So, I'm really looking at that founder and their ability to be able to react under pressure and solve problems beyond anything else. And then I'm looking at, what's the story? What do I believe the TAM is? Do, where could I add value to this investment? Are there things that I could do to help them realize that future quicker and just pull them into that reality? Um, or are they going to need a lot of help and handholding along the way? So, I, I, I want to make sure that if they've gotten some success, that it hasn't just been luck. Like they haven't just put out some TikTok videos, got some organic virality, made a bunch of sales, then got a bit of press. I want to know, can you spend money to get a customer? Because if you can't, then you just have a hobby, right? You need to be able to actually spend money to acquire a customer repeatably so that I can then put more money in and we can multiply that money. So, they're the kind of big things that I'm looking at in a lot of these investments.

What are some of the fires that you've had to overcome with your company or before you even started King Kong? What are some of those things that, you know, you had to overcome and that you can tell our listeners that they can really save them some years and some [ __ ]?

Yeah. Um, yeah. How, how long do we have? We read a long book. The first thing I would say is like, the, the biggest thing to that I got my teeth kicked in on in the beginning and why I deliver it with so much passion now is selling things that the market does not want. So the first business that I sold, um, where, where I was selling products for was a, an online water filter company. And I never forget, I like kind of fell down the rabbit hole like digital marketing and I learned SEO and I cut my teeth. I got this business page one, position one for every single water filter related keyword that there possibly was in Australia. Um, I got the, the product into 300 different retailers around the country and we still weren't selling a huge amount. We were selling, but it wasn't satisfactory to where I wanted to be and it was because I was selling something that the market was not starving for. There is a, you know, like a big belief in Australia that the, the tap water is completely healthy and fine to drink. Um, so it's like you're pushing this big boulder up the hill of something that people don't want and you got to be tough if you're going to be stupid. I think that was a stupid business to launch. I think the times have changed now. I know it's definitely different in America. Like most of y'all don't drink tap water. You either buy bottled water or you have water filters. But like Australians are like, "This is the highest quality tap water in the world," and most people just drink it, right? And so then you find yourself in a convincing argument rather than having a compelling offer. And that was when I learned the most important lesson I've ever learned in business, which is a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. You do not want to be trying to convince people to buy. You want to have an offer that they would be willing to crawl across crushed glass on their knees to get their hands on. And that's the biggest because that's the wind in the sales. That's the jet engine that propels you forward. Right? And like, if you have a bad business in a good market, you will do well. If you have a good business in a bad market, you will not do well. So learning that you must remove your emotion, you must look at what the market is starving for and just sell that. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. It's like, we all have that one friend or that person that we meet at a, at a party and they're like, "Oh, I've come up with like 15 business ideas, but all of them have been taken. People have been doing them. So now I've come up with the most brilliant business idea. I'm going to launch like, lefthanded basket weaving for dogs. This is a brilliant business. I've looked online. No one's doing it." And it's like, you're going to have a very hard life if you go that. It's very often that you don't want to go to markets that don't have any competition. You want to go to markets where the money is already flowing and you want to have a better offer that delivers the outcome quicker to the prospect, ideally at a higher price. And you want to have better marketing and you want to shave off a piece of that pie because it's already been validated that it is a good business. So that's the, the biggest overarching thing that if you want to have a business that's doing very well, that's the framework that I strongly encourage you to use.

What about when it comes to a creator-led business? This has obviously been something that's getting a lot more attention with, you know, Fastables and Prime and you worked with Ara on a video where you're like, "We're making Crocs." When I think of Crocs, right, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think of like the market being like, "I [ __ ] am starving for this." Or am I completely wrong? Because Crocs has a super loyal like fan base and if Arach was to come out with Crocs, they're like, "I [ __ ] need that." So, how do you think about from a creator-led business, if a creator is listening to this and they want to launch a business, physical product, how do they think about finding something that maybe makes sense to them, is authentic to their brand, but also is something that the market is starving for?

Sure. So this is a great question and it's very, very timely. I think that we're in like the first, you know, surge of creator-led brands and a lot of these things are going to crash and burn and die and then there's going to be like the second wave which I'll dive into. So the first wave is basically, I have the eyeballs, I've got the attention. Where in this attention, what are the products that most people are buying? Right? How do I just sell them that, right? Is it energy drinks? Is it chocolate bars? Like, what is something? Oh, maybe it's coffee. That's what I can sell. Like, everyone drinks coffee. I've got 5 million subscribers. Let me launch a coffee brand. And so, most of these businesses are going to zero. They are going to die a horrible death. And it's because these businesses, these creators are realizing that running a business is not easy. It's not like a one-time event. You just create a video on your YouTube channel and be like, "Hey, I'll launch this coffee. Everyone go buy it." No, no, no, no, no. It is a grind, right? You need to build a team. You need to constantly promote it. It needs to be in every video. And in order to do that, it has to first be something that you are passionate about. So, this first wave is more so of like, they're sitting down in a room with these business executives and they're doing all these Venn diagrams and looking at audiences and products that are doing well and they're like, "I've got it. We're gonna do chocolate because that's what all the children are buying, right?" And so then they launch, they launch those things, but there's not a huge amount of authenticity behind why it is that they're selling those things and people are getting more and more cluey to those things, right? And I think that like, it's already apparent with things like Prime where it's like, they've had like a banger launch, right? And so that destroys brand equity huge. So the first thing that I like to look at from a lens, like I look to like to look at it through the framework of something called Ikigai, right? Like, what is it that you love that you're irrationally passionate about? Is a part of your life that you just love, no matter what, right? Um, and once you've got that, then it's like, okay, what does the world need? Right? What is the market? What's the TAM? How big is this audience? And then what can you be paid for? And what are you good at? So say for instance, if we take the Crocs example, right? Like Eric loves [ __ ] Crocs. Like he just wears Crocs all the time. It's something that he's irrationally passionate about. So cool. You're already wearing Crocs in all your videos, you're wearing it and you love it. And you can't get a Crocs brand deal because they don't do brand deals. Cool. How much does Crocs do in revenue? Well, last year they did close to $6 billion in revenue. All righty. Cool. So that is something that you love that people are paying for, right? Does the world need shoes? Yeah, they do need to wear shoes. People are wearing shoes. People working from home, they're wearing more of these sandals and like relaxed, like, you know, shoes than ever before. Um, and then it's like, well, what are you good at? Well, you're good at making videos. You're good at telling stories. How do you thread this into that story arc? So, I think that like that's the second wave. We are going to basically be in a position where these creators, we're going to really want to know that this is something that has a lot of tie-in to the creator that we're listening to. It's like Joe Rogan's always talking about saunas and and hunting wild elk and the UFC. So, it's like if Homeboy launches a sauna company, you don't need to know whether or not he likes saunas. He [ __ ] loves saunas. Like that's all he talks about is saunas. So, it's like there is so much authenticity to him doing it. He can be like, "Hey, I've owned six different homes and in all of the homes, I've had a custom-built sauna." And all of these custom-built saunas, they always like they had this thing that was really good, but then this thing wasn't so good and it was always not hot enough or the seating wasn't good. So, I have gone out and I have consulted with the best sauna experts on planet Earth and I have made the best sauna in the world. Right? You're not going to question his integrity of why he's doing that because you know that he loves saunas, right? And he, and he's gone through all of those things. So, I think that that's the thing that people are going to start to question. And it's like with the Andrew Hubermans and all of these people, they're going to be like, "Hey, tried every single protein supplement that was on the market. They all have fillers. They all have all of this crap. I couldn't find the one that I wanted. So, I just created it. I created this product. This is what I take and it's really good." Is that going to sell? Of course, it's going to sell because there's a story that makes sense and they're passionate and they can keep talking about it and keep promoting it in a way that feels authentic and it doesn't feel like a brand read.

So interesting to think about all of the creator brands because I've watched, I love watching those videos on YouTube when someone breaks them down like why this specific one failed.

Why do you think that we've seen that with Prime? Like, why is it going down in sales? I, I've tried it. It, it didn't taste very good. I wasn't a fan of what it tasted like. But I'm just curious from a marketing perspective, like, you, you in theory have two of the biggest marketers in the world. Some, some of the people that have the most eyeballs on them. Why do you think it is that people bought it once and then didn't continue?

Yeah. I think that the product's got to be good, right? And and Prime tastes like trash. Like, like it feels like if you pour it on the ground or melt a hole in the ground. Like it's just like it does not taste good. I think that, yeah, they, they have a phenomenal rise. Like they had a very good quarter, very good story, kind of ties into like what you could imagine them launching, the biggest TAM meeting up with Congo Brands doing all of those kind of things. But then it's like, is it a product that those people would genuinely want to keep drinking themselves? Is it a great product? I don't think it is. And I think that that's, you can get attention, right? The first sale that you can make. You do not want to be in the order business. You want to be in the reorder business. So, you want to use that attention to introduce people to a superior product that people are like, "Man, this is insanely good." And then it goes out and you get the virality where, you know, they were in the order business. They were in the order of like promotion, running these big fights, big events, you like streaming stuff that they were doing to push an order and it worked. They got lots of orders, right? But then if the product isn't good, you're not going to be in in the reorder business. And that's the business that you got to be in. And I think that most people, while attention is the most underpriced commodity, so is trust. And you need to make sure that you deliver on that trust and deliver on that product. And I think that what we're going to see is people that use their platform and all of these free eyeballs that they've got this attention and then they go, "Okay, we can go direct to the end consumer, cut out the the middleman or we don't need to spend money on advertising." And what we're going to do is we're going to take our marketing budget and we're not going to just pocket it. We're gonna put that into the product to make an actual superior product that is legitimately 10 times better than anybody else. And then they're going to use their trust and their reach with their audience. And then they're going to have a superior product. And then that's the flywheel that will just take off. But most people are leaving out the thing of investing and making a superior product or putting the amount of money in R&D to actually create something that is going to be innovative. They're missing that piece so that they get the orders and then they crash and die. And you see that like, there's so many brands out there you're just like, "Bro, why are you launching this?" Like the Rock skincare company, it's horrible, horrendous. It doesn't make any sense, right? And you go look at that video on him, which is arguably the most identifiable male celebrity on planet Earth, and like the launch video has like 180,000 views or something. Bro, there's no tie-in. Like, you're a masculine full-on alpha man that talks about like crushing weights and stuff and then you're launching like under eye patches.

Protein powder would have for you.

Well, he had, he had success. I, I believe maybe I'm wrong with the Under Armour shoes. Like he, I believe he put out weightlifting shoes and I'm like, "Sense that makes sense." Good question.

And then they make money and then they're like, "Awesome." They have all these, all these business guys in their ear being like, "We're going to roll out a suite of brands." Right? But I think that that's where we're at right now. We're at that stage in the life cycle of creator brands. Um, and there are, it's already, you can already see it that a lot of them, the smoke is starting to form and there's going to be a lot of people that are very skeptical.

I think someone that comes to mind when you say that, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Nick Bear and BPN supplements, but that's like the perfect example. He, he was like, "I couldn't find products that didn't have all this extra [ __ ] in it, so I literally made it." And then, I mean, his content is also just like next level. Like the BPN YouTube channel plus his own personal YouTube channel is just phenomenal. But they literally made like some of the best supplements on the market. And it's, uh, it proves, I think, your exact point. Um, do you have any desire to make a physical product at all or are you kind of just in the digital landscape?

I've got, I've got physical books, um, and whatnot. So, but in terms of like, and I've got lots of businesses that I've invested in that that sell physical products and whatnot, but, yeah, in terms of me and like, again, it's not about what can I sell. It's where are my customers and how can I better serve them, um, to help them solve this problem. They don't care whether it's physical or it's digital. It's where are they and where do they want to go and how can I bridge that gap for them as much as possible. And that's the lens that I look at. Like, in a, in a, in a perfect world, what my clients want is that they want to press a button and they want money to show up in their bank account. And the further that I get away from being able to do that, the worse my product or service is.

This will be kind of fun.

Okay. If you look at us and we have a podcast and it's within, you know, creator, uh, the creator economy, business landscape, personal brand, where do you, where if you were to like consult with us via couple minutes, where like what would you say is like the best business for us to go into and like how could you see us leveraging the audience that we have with the podcast into some sort of, you know, digital product, maybe not maybe physical, but where, what, what advice do you have for us personally of like, where you could see us having success?

I think I always like to start with the end in mind, right? So like for you, it's like, what is that dream outcome look like? What is it that you would love to be doing every day that you would wake up and be like, "I can't believe that I get paid to do this." What would that look like for you guys? I think the thing that fires this up the most, or at least one of them, is like sitting down with amazing people like yourself and being able to have conversations. And we've been doing it for four years and, you know, we're still reinvesting every dime that we make back into the show. And so getting to a place of where we could make a great livable wage like sitting down and having conversations is one sector of our business would be amazing.

I'll tell you what fires me up though. You know, I, I drink a caffeinated beverage every day. I've told people this for years. We didn't do it because you're not here in person, but with every guest that's in person, we do this thing called the one-handed crack. And so, we start off the show where you got to crack open a can with one hand. I give a score. It's like a viral challenge. Everyone across the world sends me these scores and I score them on my Instagram story. I think that every caffeinated beverage in America is just pure [ __ ]. It's either got way too much sugar or it, it's like literally just going to give us cancer. So, I've been on the hunt trying to think of how much money I'm going to have to invest. We were just in Texas like interviewing with Christian Guzman. They have an energy drink. It's funny because he was like, "Dude, energy is so hard." I'm like, "Bro, you're in the [ __ ] energy game. That's really hard for me to like hear you say that because you're in the game, right? Like you're doing this thing. But I think that there is a market there for a healthier beverage. I know the weight [ __ ] is very difficult with shipping and all that stuff. I'm curious what your thoughts are on on like beverage CPG as a whole.

Do you think Braden could have success with the energy drink? I know. I know I could have I know I could have success with it, but I'm just curious.

The way that I look at it first is both of those things that you just said, they're both on the other side of you having enough reach to turn those both of those dreams into a reality, right? Like if you had enough reach, then the brand deals would pay you an enormous amount of money to be featured in your podcast and you'd be able to interview people, fly all over the world in a private jet and go interview the best people in the whole world because you have the most valuable thing that everybody wants, which is the eyeballs and ears, right? So the same thing goes with the drink, right? It's like if you build it up where it's like, you know, you're pulling multiple millions of listens per episode, you've got the eyeballs and ears and then you've got the platform to put it out. So that's the first thing to realize is that everything that you want is on the other side of like that reach that it is that you're going for. So then the question becomes down to, how do we get that reach? Okay. Well, who has that reach right now? All right. Well, Diary of a CEO just took the number one spot for podcast. We've got Rogan on there. Who are the platforms, the podcasters and producers that are absolutely murdering it right now? What is it that they're doing? Where, how do they get distribution? How do they test sub? How do they test, you know, thumbnails, titles? What are they doing short form? How many clips are they putting out per day? Is it on clipping accounts? Is it on the main account? What are the hooks look like? What's the pacing? Reverse engineering where success leaves clues. and then going doing an audit of those channels and going, "Okay, cool." They've got these two clips channels. They're putting out three clips per day on that. They're putting out the long form. I've seen on the long form that they test, you know, I'll go listen to all of the Steven Bartlett interviews to find out what it is that they're doing. Okay, cool. I know this chick that was head of his content just left. Let me go pay her $10,000 for a consulting call. Um, pay her the $10,000 for the consulting call. Then get the blueprint of what are the inputs that are going to get you to the outputs and then go, "Okay, what do we, this is exactly what we need to do to trend us in the right direction. We're not doing nowhere near enough. We're putting out like two to three clips per week. These guys are doing that per hour, right? They're doing that per day, whatever it might be. And then that then you start to look at it through, okay, well, how do we put out that many clips? Okay, if we need to put out that many clips, that means like we need to get great guests on. On average on each podcast, we're going to get 15 good clips from each podcast. Um, we don't have a lot of money, so we're going to have to use Opus AI or these other platforms to clip this [ __ ] up for us so we can get it out and hire some people in other countries to post this all day long. And then you start to get the roadmap of what are the inputs to get to the output, right? Most people are focused just on the outcome where it's like, be more obsessed on what the inputs are. Um, I think you guys have had, you know, you got a lot of good guests coming on the show. Um, that's the reason that I agreed to do the show. And so it's like thinking about like, if you can just keep doing that and then make sure that you put a disproportionate amount of effort also on distribution, once you do have that and clipping the [ __ ] out of everything and really pumping it out and doing the best edits and just figuring out what the best people are doing and doing that. Because if you do do that, you'll get to where it is that you want to get to. But you can't look at the people that are on the top of the hill and just being like, "It'd be awesome to be on the top of the hill," without doing what it is that they're doing. Just have all the focus on, let me replicate what it is that they're doing to get to that outcome and then back into that. And then I think that you guys will be able to do all of those things. Like, I wouldn't even worry about like, what's the business I can launch? How do I monetize it? That's all noise right now. Like, the, the land grab is the attention and getting the audience. And it's like, if you can get enough brand deals right now that can kind of keep you afloat and keep you doing the thing. That's the main thing because you guys are probably two or three episodes away from going, you know, to a different atmosphere. If you do all the clipping and you do all of that kind of stuff right and you do enough volume and you commit to doing that for for a year and you don't worry about how do I monetize this, I think that that will take care of itself.

I love it. I got one more question for you. That was awesome. Is if you could go back and chat with your 18-year-old self before you went on this journey, what advice would you tell yourself? Nothing that would change the journey, but if you could go in, talk to yourself, what would you say?

Yeah, this is a difficult one because I often say I would tell them nothing because I'm happy with where I am and if I did like a flap of the butterfly wing, I could end up in a different galaxy to where I am right now. But I would just like by all, I would just say that all the people that it is that you look up to, they are no different to you, right? And just to have absolute belief and conviction in yourself that you are the kind of person that can make all of your dreams a reality. And all of the people that you're looking at at their chapter 10 or you're looking at people on the on the summit of the mountain, they all had a climb. And look at where they went on that climb. And to take bigger risks and to put there's going to be multiple inflection points throughout your career and just put all the chips in. Just keep putting all the chips in all the way. Um, and constantly reinvest in yourself. Do never ever think that it's going to be some opportunity, some out, some like thing that is outside of your power that is going to give you a big unlock. That is a myth. I have not had a lucky break. I have had lots of intense work in private to be rewarded in public. Right. A lot of people look at the accolades. They look at the Shark Tank. They look at, you know, the fastest growing company in Australia. All of these different things, right? But they don't look at the training room. They just look at the trophies. And so I think that if anything, I'd just say that like, you got this. Just go all in on you. Forget everything else. Um, and just have 100% conviction that you are that special person that can get it done.

This has been one of my favorite episodes of the 505 podcast, ladies and gentlemen. Episode 176 with Sabre Subie. If you're still here, please drop us a comment, leave us a like, subscribe to the channel. We'll see you guys all next week.