How To Scale a Brand so Fast It Feels illegal w/ Caleb Ralston

70% of the content you post should be you know is going to work. 20% should be iterations on that 70%. 10% should be you have no idea and have never done.

Meet Caleb Ralston, the brand strategist behind Gary Vee and Alex and Laya Hermosy's online empires. After years of working behind the scenes with three of the biggest names in business, Caleb has now stepped out on his own, launching a consulting firm to help the biggest brands in the world take their social strategy to the next level. With our clients, one of the number one things that we're doing is trying to teach them how to innovate, how to be able to create stuff that other people want to copy rather than being the person copying.

In today's episode, Caleb shares the brand story framework that he shares with clients to help them unlock major success. So, the first question is going to start at the end, and we're going to reverse engineer our way back to today. So, the first question is, what's the outcome that I desire? What do I want to have happen? Why am I doing this? and why most creators and brands fail before they even start. Everyone looks like one character. And if you do that and you just try to copy him, you will only ever at most be number two. If you're done with short-term hacks and want to build a brand that actually lasts, get your pen and paper out. It's time to lock in. Let's go.

So, you get the chance to work with Gary Vee. You then leave. We get work with Alex and Leila Hormosi. You get to soak up information from some of the brightest minds in the game. You then leave to start your own company. What has been one of the single most important things when you're helping these brands with social that you see that they're messing up?

I think the majority of people are looking at different creators online that they admire that are doing this well, and they're trying to replicate that system, and they're trying to copy what they see, and they don't realize that this is a game of ver reverse engineering your preferences, skills, and lack of skills and building the system and process or team around that. So instead of looking at the top five creators and being like, I'm going to do the same thing. It's like if you got into lifting and you're like, I'm going to do what Sebum does, you're [ __ ] You're gonna tear every leg.

Yeah. So I think a lot of people have very improper expectations when they enter this game. They release their first five videos, and they all get less than 213 views, and they're like, "Content doesn't work." It's like, no. Uh, you see the occasional person blow up on their first five videos, but for every one of those, there's thousands, I would argue hundreds of thousands that are creating content that never get above a,000 views. So, I think it's not having the right expectations and trying to model after a process and system that is not sustainable.

Yeah, you hear that so much with even the brands that we work with, and they're like, "Oh, we've tried it before, but I don't think it works." I'm like, "Oh my god." Well, you hear the there's the saying uh a novice tries something, sees that it doesn't work, and they claim that it doesn't work. But an expert like tries something, sees that it doesn't work, and doesn't say that that thing doesn't work. It's just that the way that they're doing it isn't the right way to go about it, which I thought was pretty interesting. I think that is like the difference maker, though. You keep you got to keep trying, especially with social. You see these brands, and you know, they're just really throwing [ __ ] at the wall, but nothing's sticking.

And something that you said that I think is interesting is like these brands will say I tried this and it didn't work. My first question would be how are we defining work? Like what does that even mean? Right? I think a lot of people enter this game, and they have no idea why they're doing it. They haven't defined what the outcome that they want is, and so they're just wandering aimlessly. They have no idea what they're going towards. And I would argue defining what that is allows you to have massive clarity on this journey rather than just kind of throwing noodles at the wall.

Yeah. You hear consistency is so important, but I think it's hard to have or it's it's hard to stay consistent without having the clarity of where you want to get to. Do you have a framework for how people can get clarity on how to use social and how to create a social strategy for themselves?

So the first place I want anybody to start always is the brand journey framework. And it's four simple questions. And it's going to sound ridiculously simple. And that's a good thing. That's good. Yeah. That's what we want here. Like we don't want complexity for complexity sake. So the first question is going to start at the end, and we're going to reverse engineer our way back to today. So the first question is what's the outcome that I desire? What do I want to have happen? Why am I doing this? The next question is in order for that outcome to happen, what would I need to be known for? The third question is in order to be known for that thing, what would I have to do? To be known for things, we got to do [ __ ] right? And then the final question takes us to today. In order to do the things, to be known for the thing, to get the outcome I want, what do I need to learn? If, for example, you are wanting to speak on stages to uh audiences of young women who are building their businesses, you probably need to be known as someone who has maybe potentially as a woman built a big business, probably even helped other people build big businesses. So then what would you have to do? You'd have to build the businesses and help other people. But then that chunks down to today, which is you're going to have to learn a fuckload of different things. You're going to have to learn product, marketing, sales, HR, finance, all these different elements that ladder up to it. And so I think it gives you a clear picture of where you start today. And some people, you know, they haven't started, so they should do this from the beginning. If you have started and you feel like you don't know where you're going, this is what I would I would literally stop everything and do this exercise right now because it gives you the path of what actions I should take to get me closer to that outcome.

Yeah. You're building a boat without the sail. We got a boat going across the ocean. They don't have a sail if they don't have that clarity. Yeah. Slash. It's almost like Phoenix and uh [ __ ] What's his name? The homie that was going from Oregon to Hawaii. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I know his cat's name. I'm blanking on his name for some reason right now. But uh it'd be like him just getting in his boat on the ocean and not having a destination. He's going to end up somewhere, but where the [ __ ] is he? He wants to go to Hawaii, man. He wants to be on that beach. So do I.

Can you break down your brand story framework?

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, great question. There's a lot of different things, but I'll give you kind of the top level. So, ultimately, my goal is to work with whoever I want, whenever I want, or whatever I want. That's the ultimate goal. Like, I I like the idea of partnering with really cool people doing really cool things. And so, in order for that to happen, I would have to be known as somebody who can make [ __ ] happen and cause serious growth. In order to be known for that, I have to have a reputation and a backstory and a history of doing that with different characters, right? Ideally in different industries. Right now to date, I've been kind of overindexed in one industry. So the next decade of my career, it looks like taking on the same challenge, but in different niches, industries with different characters, ultimately lading up to my desired outcome. And so for me now it's learning the nuances of like the UK market, for example. I've only worked with American brands. I've never worked with international brands before. So there's a lot of different things. But yeah, ultimately that's what I'm lading up to.

I love that. That's so interesting too because I'm sure that these UK brands have such different metrics or ways that their customers interact with their brand. What have you have you studied it at all?

I'm dabbling in it. I don't like to speak about anything that I'm not an expert in, but what I would say that I'm focusing on most is understanding the culture. There's massive differences between US and UK culture, uh, preferences, language they use, things that they aspire to, things that we aspire to here, they could give a [ __ ] about. So, I think it's that and and as we take on more brands in other markets, it's going to be learning what that market wants. It's it's not applying. It's actually, funny enough, it's literally what we said at the top here. It's not applying what I've known in the US market to these other markets. It's reverse engineering the needs of that local market, that demographic. You

So, we've we talked about this, right? You you're working with these big figures. Now, you're doing your own thing. When did YouTube come into play? I mean, you put out probably one of the longest valuedriven videos I think I've seen on the internet. It was six hours. It was for your 99.

Six hours long. I listened to it. took me like a week to listen to it in the sauna every day.

That's fast.

Yeah, I would have expected. I'll be honest, I think I listened to it in three because I listen at 2x speed. So, it took me about three great sauna sessions, and I got through it, and I really enjoyed it. It was super tactical. Had a document of notes. Why why YouTube now? Like why dive into YouTube?

I know. And I had seen you taken a stab at doing other things, and now it's like we're we're clearly in a different realm of your life, and we're posting different content. I'm curious about your strategy there.

I decided at a young age to have relentless focus on the brands I was working for rather than promoting myself at the time. So instead of putting any effort into making myself known, I just wanted to put all that effort into making the brands I was working for known. And I felt like if I build this, you know, resume of wins with some L's in there as well, of course, but if I build this, I will be able to go out and talk about this at a different level of authority than the majority of people that are currently talking about content strategy, brand strategy, etc. And when I started my own thing, Trevor and I were talking, and we were like, what is the best way to stand out? And if you look at it, like you guys know YouTube, we didn't follow any best practices there. That should have been 13 videos that were 30 minutes each. The packaging should be way more YouTube ccentric. It was a brand play over everything. It was a positioning tool to enter the market and say, "Okay, please show me somebody else who will talk for six and a half hours straight on this subject matter," knowing that like we actually recorded 14 hours of footage and cut it down, right? Like we trimmed it down. So, I think I wanted to do something that would, you know, in a tiny little way, nobody knows who I am, nobody gives a [ __ ] but in a tiny little way create a little ripple and and position myself in a different spot. I also believe that a lot of and I have no problem with what I'm about to say. So to be very clear, there's no issue with this. Just for me, there would be I think a lot of my counterparts, competitors, whatever you want to call it, I know a lot of them, I love them. Um, they have agencies that are not profitable, and so they sell an info product to make their company profitable because they they're not making any margins on their actual business. And half of those are really good courses, communities. The other half, I'm being a little generous here. I'd say it's less than half are good, but we'll call it half. The other half, I think, are just taking advantage of people. And I think that they're charging money for information that just ladders up to their next product. And so, I've been getting DMs for years now of people being like, "Hey, is there a resource where we can find your strategy, your beliefs on this?" And the answer was always no. And so we just figured why don't we put something out that maybe can help some people avoid spending all that money on a course that I would deem not useful for them. And so let's just make it put it out for free and see what happens. The craziest thing and I had no expectations other than like I told Trevor I was like if we can get to a,000 views in a month I'm going to be stoked. It's 6 hours you guys. Like it's so [ __ ] long, and it's at like 200,000 views now. We're like 2 and 1/2 months into it. The email signups have been [ __ ] absurd. We had zero subscribers to our newsletter when we uploaded it. We're at 12,000 this morning. Like insane.

Insane. And it it's like I think we were talking about it like 500 a week right now are signing up. Like it's insane. So holy. I you know I again I said earlier I don't like to talk about things I'm not you know really experienced in or would consider myself an expert in. So I want to wait. But like if my business doesn't burn to the ground by the end of the year, this is going to be something I'm going to talk about pretty heavily that I think a lot more people should do.

Yeah. I mean, you really just put you laid all the eggs out there for people. And then I think that it shows those people found so much immense value. They subscribed to your newsletter, and they're like banging at your door being like, "Hey, I want your to help, man. This was super freaking helpful."

How many leads did you generate for people that were like, "Yo, we really want to work with you now off of just this amazing free free video."

So, uh, we're we're talking about a little bit of a a sore subject for me right now. Okay. Um, we have about 200 to 250 leads that are sitting in my inbox unresponded to right now.

Wow.

Yeah, it's scary.

Um, is that just cuz it's overwhelming? It's like so many to go through.

Yeah, I just hired a chief of staff. Literally, she signed uh Wednesday night, I believe. Um, so I'm still buzzing from that. That one's really exciting. But yeah, brought her on. She's going to be helping us with a lot of the logistics and communication because real real guys, I did not expect any of this. I I didn't I didn't think the first year of business would look like this, and I I really uh didn't prepare myself for it, you know, and so it's kind of like it's going better than expected. And so, you know, I've been fortunate enough, you mentioned it earlier, to learn from some amazing individuals on how to operate a business. And so I think I have an upper hand compared to how I would have 10 years ago if I would have started this. So I'm trying to go about it in all the ways that I know that the people I've worked for would tell me to.

Yeah. Is that a principle that you learned from either Gary Vee or Alex Fromoszi about give away all your best stuff for free, and it's going to work out?

Yeah. Gary's been saying this since uh Crush It O2.

Huh.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's been saying it since he was talking about people making money talking about the Smurfs, you know, like this has been a thing for a long time. I witnessed it up close and personal with both of them. You know, I saw on the back end of like what that actually looked like and the opportunities that it brought. Um, and I honestly I wanted to take it a step further. You know, I I don't think I've seen anybody quite do it like this, you know, before. Um, and we we debated it. like we ran some numbers on like what we could charge for it. How many people I thought like it would have been a lot of [ __ ] money um right now, but what I think it'll end up doing is producing a lot more money for a lot longer. And that's kind of how I try to make decisions is uh and I'm sure we'll go into this further, but like a lot of people ask me, you know, what does it look like 5 years from now? I have no [ __ ] clue. Every week that we go further into this, crazier opportunities are popping up. So instead of having a 5-year plan, I'm trying to have a framework that allows me to make decisions that gives me the freedom to do what I want later rather than limiting myself based on reverse engineering the kind of clients I want to work with.

And what are those clients that you would want to work with? Like what is this framework you're trying to put into practice?

I think it's also interesting too I've read I've read a lot of business books. I remember there was one by like Ray Dallio, okay, and he had amazing book called Principles. never met a not met I've never seen a guy more dialed on his process and he's like obsessed with writing it down. Are you trying every day to make said thing better like this framework that you're working on or kind of like what does it look like right now when you zoom out?

H I I think I'll give you two answers. One that's going to suck and one that's more helpful. One I think I am intuitively or innately a little bit like this. probably a mix of chemicals and my upbringing. Um, but I also saw like working for Gary and filming with him, I got access to rooms with characters that I never should have been in. Like not like your average internet marketer that's doing well. I'm talking like CEOs of Fortune 100s, right? Like I'm like literally entertaining the CEO of AT&T Global while Gary's walking over for a meeting so that like I just keep it not being awkward. Like that's insane when I'm like 25 years old. And so I I just got to observe how people at that level view internet marketers and things like that. And I just took heavy note of it. And so it's my belief that there are certain things that I could have done day one in starting this business that would have been a big like payday. It would have been like injection of revenue very quickly. And there would be nothing wrong with those things. I think that those things are very good for most people. But knowing the kind of clients that I aspire to eventually work with, I think a lot of them, some of these choices, like they would laugh me out of the room if I did that. And so I'm trying to make the decisions for the long-term flexibility rather than short-term cash. And I've been doing that my whole career. I've always punted money. I've always chosen good opportunity, doing the right thing, and it continues to serve me really well. And so like until the day it doesn't, I'll just keep doing that.

You brought up positioning earlier, and I feel like you putting out a free 6 and a half hour course is part of your positioning to be like, I know what the [ __ ] I'm talking about. I'm gonna find the white space here because my counterparts aren't doing this. Can you talk about positioning a little bit and how important positioning is? Finding that white space to be successful in business and creating a successful brand.

I think the real players see something like that, and they know that I'm not trying to make my money off of the people that are going to learn from that. Who we work with is reserved for a very select few and type of brand or individual. And so I think it just speaks their language. I think ultimately I I'm a huge fan of uh like inside lingo and and terminology for your ideal customer, right? Like knowing how they speak and speaking their language. For example, uh if I'm listening to you guys and you start using like Harley terms, like you're wearing a Harley shirt, but like if you were like talking about the bike, no, I'm not one of those guys, by the way. I I I love Name five bike models. Every No, no. What's

Your favorite song? Please wear the Harley shirts. Please, even if you don't ride, that like, please. But um, I don't know where I was going with that, but yeah, if someone wants to position themselves strongly in a marketplace or find that white space, I know what I was saying—what advice would you have?

Well, so, speaking their lingo. So if I'm listening to you guys talk on a podcast and you're saying terminology that only Harley people know, like if you're making jokes about guys that ride Sportsters, right? Like that, I'm like instantly more connected with you, right? I think that in business you can speak a certain language that is going to attract a certain customer. And I think people overlook the importance of the words that you use and how you speak about things and the actions that you do. Like a really great example is if you look at the Honda website versus an Aston Martin website. Their call to action buttons are very different, right? It's like "Get it now" versus "Explore." And like those—like "Get it now" is very effective for a certain demographic, right? And so I think I'm trying my best and I'm always learning and always trying to improve, but I'm trying to speak more the Aston Martin language, so to speak, rather than the Honda language. Whereas I would say a lot of people in my space are more the Honda language, not the Aston Martin. Not that one's better than the other. I just think that the Aston Martin crowd is underserved right now.

What are some other ways that people can think about positioning in their business to see success and find that white space?

I mean, the biggest thing is look at what everyone is doing in your space and do the opposite. Yeah. Like right now in the business creator space, for example, everyone looks like one character. And if you do that and you just try to copy him, you will only ever at most be number two. And so like with our clients, one of the number one things that we're doing is trying to teach them how to innovate, how to be able to create stuff that other people want to copy rather than being the person copying. So I think like, for example, I looked at MySpace and I was like, "Cool, everyone charges for this course." Bang. Easy, right? Like, uh, definitely nobody's going to follow it up with a two-hour video on how to lead a media team. Bang. Right? Like, and so I think it's just looking at like what are the opportunities? What are the things that people are not doing? Or if you're if you're not able to see that, what is everyone doing and what does the opposite look like? And you will stand out.

God, it's so hard. I think in this copycat era, I I noticed that the brand videos that I keep seeing are very similar. So many of them it's like, oh, we're going to—they copy it bar for bar, and it's very crazy, and you can see it in the comments—some people like, "Oh, did you steal this from D?" or their framework for putting out like a launch—it's the same four pieces of content, they just copy one another, and you're so right. I think that those brands that don't do that have so much more of an impact, and it automatically puts them in like a lane of their own—100%.

They keep making that mistake. Yeah. And like to be clear, if you're just starting out, that's how you have to [ __ ] start. That's how we got into photography.

Yeah. A little copycatting.

Yeah. Like when I got into photography, Dylan—first at first on Instagram was my favorite. His like really moody, cool blue tones in the PNW. I loved that [ __ ]. So, I did my best to copy it. But then eventually, it was my job to figure out my own style, you know?

Yeah. I think people—people always try to say like, "Oh, I'm going to teach you how to find your style." Oh, it's like, man, it takes years to find your style, cuz you copy from—you copy from one person. I was the same exact way. Copy this one person, and then eventually I'm like, okay, I still suck, but I kind of get a few things that this person does, and then you go find six more people and you take one thing from them. My boss, my first ever boss at Oregon when I was working there, he told us when we were like we just started working, he's like, "Whatever you guys do, just try to pull one to two things from these people who inspire you and put it into your work." He goes, "And it'll never really be copying if you do that with all these different people." And he's like, "Nothing's original." And I—I've really stood by that, and it's—I think it's a very good thing to—to try to pull from these different creators if you in that space or brands. You know, if you take one little thing, it's when you take seven things that's an issue.

Yeah. Have you seen the series *Everything is a Remix* that came out like 10 years ago on Vimeo?

No.

Oh my god. You guys should watch it. I'm a big Vimeo guy though. I like Vimeo.

Oh man, the good old Vimeo staff pick. That was the goal for the longest time. But that is a great series to watch, and it breaks down how literally everything is a remix, right? I think the best version of it though is very quickly to figure out what your preferences are. And something that I actually in the last like 2 years discovered that's a cool exercise to help hone in your taste, cuz I think that's all that we're going to have over the next 10 years is—uh, it's a simple—again another simple thing. You're taking a shower and you look at the material in the shower, the tile or whatever, and you ask yourself, "Do I like it?" If the answer's no, why? If the answer's yes, why? And you just start doing this throughout your day, just things. And you start actually defining and putting words to what your preferences are. And what you're doing is you're calibrating your taste. And over time, you'll get more confident in your taste. And then you can start to not just say it to yourself or ask your homie if this is cool, but you can confidently say it in a boardroom, in a client meeting, whatever.

Gosh, that is so good, dude. I think especially as—as AI is flooding our feeds, have you been seeing every damn video on my feed is a panda talking to me?

Yeah.

Yeah. I got gorillas.

Yeah. The gorilla guy got Bigfoot. I got panda. I'm just like, "Holy shit." I mean, you saw the whole AI ad that ran on TV this week, right?

Yeah.

[ __ ] crazy. Full 30-second spot that was only AI generated. It looked pretty damn good, dude. I don't even remember what the brand was. Uh, they got lost in it. Everyone's just blown away.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's—it's going to be insane. I—and I think that—I think so much of it is going to look identical, right? Do you think that or do you think it's going to be—you think like people are going to be able to use it and it's going to make them kind of stand out? This is—this is an interesting take, cuz I saw—we talked to Gary about this a little bit about how Mark Zuckerberg's trying to make Meta everything come in-house, and then I saw somebody talk about it on—I want to say TikTok or Instagram, but they said if everybody's using the same AI to make the creative, it's all going to look and feel the same. It's like the little monkey guys—all feel the same. They all look—it's the same. It's like Bigfoot or Gorilla. It's like the exact same thing. They talk the same way. Invoice, right? It's so same scripting.

Yeah, that—I think—Okay, disclaimer. I am not an AI expert, and I—I don't feel comfortable putting out real thoughts on it until probably next year. Okay, we're going in really deep on it right now, but I—I just—I like to—I like to have backings for my—my sayings or whatever. But what I will say, and I'm very confident in this, is right now, uh, we're in a period of time where I think we're getting to the peak of posturing online and presenting this fake version of ourselves. Anyone who is doing that is doomed. Anyone who is afraid to share who they actually are as a human, doomed. Meaning—meaning that the only thing that will set you apart is your humanity. I believe that there is a very strong possibility that it won't be long before there is an AI agent or something that is just as good at what I do as me, if not better. But I do believe that there are humans that are going to want to work with humans. And so the more in my content right now that I put out who I am, my quirks, my isms, all of it, I think that is my competitive advantage. And I think that's what a lot of people's competitive advantage is. So as we're going through this time where I think people are starting to realize like, "God damn, I've been fake as [ __ ] online," it's time to really lean into the real you because that's not something that is going to be replicated.

Yeah. And that's a way that you can build trust. You talk about that brands and people with personal brands should think about scaling trust. So can you go a little bit deeper into that and talk to us about how can someone scale trust and why is that so important?

Trust is the—the currency that precedes the transaction. You need trust before a purchase is made. Now trust, you know, looks different, right? Like you bought this Liquid Death because you trusted at some level that it'd be good, right? Like that it just works that way across the board. Um, if we're talking within the—the space of like educational creators, that's—that's what I'll speak to in—in scaling trust here. What I like to do is a lot of people will say like, "What do I make my content on?" And what you want to do is you want to share W's that you've had with clients, customers, whatever. Okay? And what you do is you just share case studies, but in a modern way. The majority of the content that I've worked on for other people for the last five years, 99% of it is just case studies. That's all it actually is. It's breaking down—we did this and got this result, whether it's for us or for a client or a company that we own, right? And so by doing that, what you do is you start to pair yourself with those success outcomes, thus creating the brand. Okay? And when that happens, your audience starts to trust you more. When your audience starts to trust you more, they stop just hearing you and they start taking action on what you say. When they take action, if you're good, they're going to get the good results. And then they go from associating you with success outcomes to associating you with their success outcomes. And their trust in what you have to say goes through the roof. They've seen time and time again that they get more back than what they invested with you. And so when you make them aware of an offer that you have, it's a no [ __ ] brainer for them, right? Like I would argue if you guys put out a really long-form piece that everything that you guys teach behind a paywall, you put it out for free, you would have more people sign up, not less.

No, I think you're 100% right because we've seen it time and time again that giving away awesome free value, people still won't implement. You could have every—you could have everything out there. You can ask one of the smartest people of our generation every question, but you still want the implementation. And I—I—I've paid for stuff just like that. I've known what I need to do, but I'm like, I really want to know how this guy would do it. Well, the—you know what I mean? The cohort that we've ran a few times, I would say 99% of the people, they—they sign up when there's other people teaching similar stuff to us, they sign up because we've done 160 episodes of a podcast where we've given damn near everything we know away for free and talked about it. So like we've—you've spent maybe three—three and a half years listening to us. We've built up that trust, and so it's like, of course, you can go learn the stuff maybe on ChatGPT or from somebody else—the information's out there—but you trust us to teach it to you because you've spent so much time with us and we've like given it pretty much all away for free, and in those early days—I mean, the main—the very first inception of the show was people weren't like receptive to answering questions, so we're like, okay, we're going to be a space where if you have a question, we'll answer it on the show, and so those original—like first few episodes were DM based. People were sending us in questions like—and you're just answering every single thing that comes through the door.

I still answer every [ __ ] DM. Like every single one, every comment. I have to go back and get a few. I'm missing a few right now.

Making some bold claims.

No, I do, bro. I literally answer every single DM. It's like I think I have three requests right now, but I zero those things out while I still can cuz I know even—we're talking to Gary's like I'm about to blow the [ __ ] up.

Dude, there's time to get to a place where you can't do it.

No.

Oh, Gary's like, "I get 10,000 DMs." Like, it's just not even possible. And he still responds to DMs, and it's him. That's the craziest part about it cuz I remember Coast and I were like, "There's no way that Gary does it." Gary does all of his [ __ ] DMs. That is insane. And it's also, I think, just another level of—of realness that's behind—that's behind that guy.

Yeah. And he knows what that means. He's grateful for it on like a real level.

Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And I think it's like—it's crazy because you see—I mean, he's had such an impact on my life. He's had an impact on this table's life. It's crazy that you know he still takes the time to—you know, sit back and think about, wow, like I'm really impacting real people's lives from all around the world and from just a video or a book or whatever.

If someone wants to build a great brand story but they don't have those case studies yet and they're kind of starting from scratch, what advice do you have for them?

Don't posture as an authority. Yeah. Like there's nothing more disgusting than someone who has no reason to be speaking like they know what they're talking about when they don't. And you're—you're entering a terrible competitive landscape if you do that, by the way, because you will get beat out by the people that actually know what they're talking about. Your competitive advantage when you are coming up is being a vessel for the learning to your audience. You're trial and erring and sharing those things. I'm the proxy for you guys. Come on my journey. I'm gonna spend the money and the time. I'm gonna make the mistakes. I'm gonna burn the bridges. I'm gonna figure this [ __ ] out. And you're going to learn from me and avoid all of those things. That should be the frame if you're on your way up. Like, don't be the [ __ ] 23-year-old in the basement on TikTok.

Not a good move.

You see, dude, Miami breathes those guys. Yeah, they got—they got a lot. Dude, if I had a dollar for every McLaren 19-year-old in a mansion that's rented—

That's rented.

Yeah. God, I've been—I've been—

You've been tempted?

I've been tempted. Dude, rip a course. Yeah, dude. You're telling me I could make a million dollars tomorrow?

Oh, wait. I got to tell you guys, this is a funny one. Yesterday, I got a DM, and the guy, it started off with, "Dude, are you ready to make $200 million?" And I was like, "I got to [ __ ] with this guy." And I sent him back. I go, "Brother, I've never been more ready. Where do I sign?" And he's like, and know it gets better because you can tell it's copy and pasted from chat because the font's very bold. It's like a bold font and just so many dashes—a lot of dashes. And I'm like, "Brother, I am—like, where do I send the card information to?" And then I sent him—missing a few numbers of the card just to [ __ ] with this guy. And he goes, "Hey, uh, Mr. Beef Fig, I think you're missing a few of the card numbers." I'm like, "No, I think they're—they're really all there." I go, "Wait, where's the Google Meet, man? I've been waiting for days on this. You're really wasting my time. You said 200 million—like I—I'm ready to make the 200 million." That's what you got to do with those guys, dude. [ __ ] let them have it.

If the biggest source of revenue is an info product, I would question it. I would genuinely like—if—if you're going to teach me how to make a bunch of money and you made a bunch of money off of doing that, sketchy. It's the classic guru.

Yeah. And what's so funny is I actually didn't know about this world until about three or four years ago. I had, you know, I came up through Gary, and so like he really beats the [ __ ] out of that, right? Like he really talks about avoiding all of that. So I went the majority of my career having no idea that there was this section of the internet that even existed.

They all sell to each other. It's wild, dude. And when you go talk to like normal people, they're like, "What the fuck?" Like why would I—you believe that [ __ ]?

Like—yeah. It's crazy. God, he made it very evident that he's on our episode with him. He's like, "We did $365 million in revenue last night." He's like, "I run a real [ __ ] business."

You wanted to make that very evident to us.

Yeah. Yeah. Cuz there's a lot of people that are—are posturing and—and putting out numbers that are—don't have any backing to it.

Mhm. You—you said that you've put out over 5,000 videos, which is pretty insane. It's a lot of data to be able to gather. It's probably way more than that, but I—I always will do my best to round down.

Oh, okay. Okay. So, 70,000 videos.

Yeah, that's definitely what it was. So, you put out 200 million—200 million videos. What if—and I'm going to teach you guys how to make 200 million videos. What—what have you noticed from the stuff that you've put out personally and for these other brands that really does move the needle forward to them? Because obviously not everything is to sell these brands. I think they maybe have mixing that up a bit where they're like—which is sales—sales—sales—sales. It's not all about sales. Like there's stuff that's just building brand. There's stuff that's for awareness. What have you noticed moves the needle on this stuff? Is it a combination of all these different things?

Whoever provides the most value wins. It's just that—talk to me—talk to me about a brand though that's like—let's use just a random drink brand. Like what is that—like what is the value for someone like that?

Uh, you have to reverse engineer your ideal customer. So Liquid Death, they have a very clear uh move here. They're providing—I would say entertainment. There's no education there, right? And like they are riffing on traditional best practices, right? I think—um, what's his name? Andy, I think is his name.

Yeah, Andy Pearson.

Yeah, he just put out uh a speech recently where he basically talks about uh completely ignoring all the best practices, and that's their whole strategy. So I—I think value—to come back to that—comes at different levels, but I think value just means usefulness, and so if you're in—I'm far more overindexed on education than entertainment, but on an entertainment level, I think the value is escapism. It's, you know, helping me uh zone out from my stressful life. It's making me laugh when I watch a comedian, right? It's making me cry when I watch like a really, really good film or something like that. So, yeah, I—I think it's just figuring that out.

Someone like Alex Hormozi or Gary, they have massive teams. They're putting out a shitload of content. You brought it up earlier how you're like—you can't compare yourself to them, but you can create systems and processes to create more content and make it sustainable. So, if someone wants to stay consistent and make it sustainable, what advice and tools do you have for them to do that?

Once you start making content consistently, look at what your biggest bottleneck is in the process. Okay. So, and and I right now I'm going to refer to anybody who has the budget to even hire one person. Even even like a contractor or something, not full-time. Yeah. Maybe like a hybrid person. Totally. Absolutely.

What you want to do is instead of doing what everyone does and goes, “I’m going to hire a videographer,” you want to look at what is your limiting factor. What is your constraint in the process? For example, if you’re making solo videos and you have no problem coming up with ideas, no problem filming them, but then the bottleneck is the editing—I got like 15 videos that are ready for post, but I have not ripped through them—cool. You’re going to hire an editor.

It’s not looking like a lot of people when we talk to them in the discovery process of potentially becoming a client or a partner with us, a lot of them are like, “What’s your playbook on how you build a team?” I’m like, “I have to get to know you first.” I don’t have a playbook that I run for everybody. The framework is I look at what your skills, preferences, and deficits are and then I build the team around that. Same with process. And so what you want to look at is where is the process falling apart, and then that’s where you want to attack. Okay? So like in the editing example, cool, you’re going to hire an editor.

Um, another example is like instead of hiring the videographer, some people are just putting out written content. Like Substack has made it like there’s a lot of people that are going ham right now with just written content, and they will blow their brand up just via that. No video. You don’t need a videographer then. So the classic kind of frame for how you build a team completely is thrown out the window. Yeah, that’s that’s so interesting. I think uh I like what you said though, like not everything you don’t have a cookie-cutter way that you work with every single brand.

No. And another thing too is like if you want to be consistent with it, and I’m going to sound, you know, maybe some people would say soft here, but like make it [ __ ] enjoyable. Like quit trying to be a hardo that’s just going to put your head down and grind through it. Like for every one of those, there’s hundreds of people that give up very quickly. So like, make the process enjoyable. Meaning I I we made a video and talked about this. Like what we’re doing is for some videos we’re booking a really cool Airbnb in a dope location. I look forward to that. Then my girlfriend and my dog get to come out, right? I make it a whole experience that’s additive, right? Even simple things like Trevor does a really good job of on a film day, my favorite beverages, snacks are there, right? Like we order a nice lunch. Like all these little things.

What’s your writer looking like? What? What’s your writer looking like? That’s what I texted him. He’s like sugar-free Red Bull. Like dude, you told me I would have got it for you. Only like only red M&M’s. Like what do we got? I would have had like a six-pack ready for him in the fridge. Do you guys know Gorilla Mind? Gorilla. I’ve seen that. Oh, you guys got to get on Gorilla Mind. That’s the best energy drink out there in my opinion. Really on TikTok. Where do I get it at around here? There. Uh I don’t know. Probably like a GNC or something like that. He hasn’t stuff within 100 feet of one of those. So, we will we’ll have to I’ll have to go I’ll probably I’ll be able to figure that out. That was good. I’ll guarantee that was good. They are awesome. I [ __ ] love them. They’re delicious. They’re amazing.

Uh, snacks wise, I like beef sticks. Chomps. Yeah, Chomps. Chomps. Chomps is like my [ __ ] I would love to someday have them be like a I got another one for you. Okay. You got to try solely. It’s a fruit stick. Okay. Listen. No other [ __ ] in it. It’s literally just It It says it on it. It’s literally just fruit. It’s like a dried piece of mango with like They have one that’s like mango chili salt. You know that like Mexican candy? Yes. Yes. Yes. Without without a lot of the other stuff in it. It’s just literally chili salt and the mango. Or they just have oh mango and guava. I tried that one yesterday. Unbelievable. And it’s in like a little jerky stick kind of thing like chomps. So do you what do you drink with that though? Cuz I feel like that’s like one of those things that it’s like you have to drink some water with it. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like you can’t be like down to that with an energy drink. I don’t like mixing flavors. I like Okay. I just can’t. You You might have to just sit out about 10 minutes. Understood. Refresh. That’s one. And then we’re cleanse the palette and everything. We’ll get you a saltine cracker on the side. I’m not going to give you advice on what to pair your snacks and drinks. I’m not an expert on the on the pairing. I don’t like to talk about things. Where’s your course on how to pair? I It’s coming soon. Good. 99.97 in the description.

Okay, wait. Pairing. You say that’s like the key to branding. What a transition. We’ve done the show twice. Let’s talk about pairing and how it applies to branding and how a brand can pair themselves with something to be associated with how they want their brand to be. So I believe that pairing is the action you do. Association is what the audience does, and brand is the byproduct. So branding the action is you pairing yourself with things, people, ideas, concepts. And then if you do that repetitively, that’s when the audience starts to inherently associate the two things together, and that’s when you have the outcome which is brand. Um, you know, the classic example is Nike with Michael Jordan, right? In the very, very beginning when that happened, it wasn’t like game one, all of a sudden, cool, Nike is a basketball brand now. No, it took a long time and it took that deliberate pairing over and over and over.

Um, so I think what you want to do is if you’ve done your brand journey framework, you know what your outcome is, you know what you would need to be known for. Okay, cool. How do I pair myself with those things? Right? And so like for me, if I want to work with big-name entrepreneurs, the smart move is to pair myself with big-name entrepreneurs, right? I’ll probably have a podcast talking to big-name entrepreneurs, helping them with their content. Yeah. All the above. Absolutely. And so I think what we just described is what to do. And that’s what the I would say a select few think about that. The very very important part that nobody thinks about is what not to pair yourself with. And this is where I think a lot of people especially in the internet marketing world get um stuck is they think that all press is good press. They think that uh you know views for views sake is the right move. We’re talking about people that you know are making business content and then decide suddenly to start talking politics purely because it gets views and engagement, not because they’re passionate around it. And I think these are poor choices that are short-term-minded.

For example, there are some podcasters out there that have asked me to be on their show and I don’t know them as a human. So, I am not making any judgments on that. How dare I? But what I can see publicly online from their brand, I don’t want to associate or what I should say is I don’t want to pair and I don’t want the audience to associate me with that crowd. You guys are cool. I’m down to be paired with y’all. But there’s some that it’s like there we go. There’s some that I wouldn’t want to because then what happens there’s nuance, and we all wish that humans apply nuance, but that’s not how it works. They just see things that are similar and they say you’re that. So if I go on all of these scam kind of centric podcasts I’m a scam. Don’t clip that moment anyone. No, but like I’m a I’m a scam. Just repeat repeat repeat. But no, seriously, like that is something that I mean it I believe and of course this is my world so I I look at this at a very granular level but like using that scam example. Uh there was someone I was working with a couple years ago and I remember when I started with them there was a couple of thumbnails they had on their YouTube channel and across their head on one of the thumbnails it said scam question mark and I was like why on earth? And they’re like well you know I quickly dispel like I share in the video that I’m not a scam. I’m like you realize that 99% of people don’t actually click on your video and watch. They just see that they see scam and your face done. And so I think that people need to be far more intentional with what they don’t pair themselves with, not just what they do.

Like a a strategic way to go about it, like for example, if someone wanted to pair themselves with high-level entrepreneurs, but they’re not there yet where they don’t have, you know, access to those people, like is there a strategic way they can go about that? The next best version of it is to speak about in this case entrepreneurs that you admire and why you admire them. Gotcha. It’s not going to have the same effect though. Yeah. It’s they’re probably going to have to build a business and then be able to be on the same level of said entrepreneurs or work for them. Yes. Mhm. You know, get access to them that way, right? Yeah. I think there’s a million different ways. And by the way, I want to make sure it’s super clear. What I’m articulating is my views and values and my my frame or lens that I see this through based on those views and values. It’s not right. It’s not right or wrong. It just is right. And so I think everybody needs to define what their values are in order to know what they should and should not pair themselves with. I think I mean probably one of the easier ways too is to just write down what are the things you don’t want to be associated with, and then you can start to figure out okay great we got now this con list of what we don’t want to do. Let’s go really far away from all that stuff and start figuring out what this content’s going to look like, who we want to associate with, what we want to align ourselves with, and what our values are. And then it probably becomes a hell of a lot easier to make content around that stuff. Yes.

And I think the people it like it’s kind of interesting the further up you go and people that are really intelligent when it comes to brand you notice that they don’t pair themselves with many people. They’re very very selective and very careful because the other thing is is like you don’t know people. You never know, right? Uh you know off camera I can tell you some crazy stories. [ __ ] yeah. And so like or on camera we can really Yeah. Let’s just name names. Uh just one. Oh man, there’s so many references there. But no, but yeah, like I just I really think that people should be very intentional about this because what I can tell you is there are people that I’ve worked for that have done what I’m saying in the opposite direction and they they don’t like it now. They look back and they’re like, I would have done that differently. Yeah. And so like for me, there are a couple of people in my inbox right now and I hope they don’t see this, but if they do, I value you as a human. I don’t know you, but the brand is not one that I would want to have people associate me with. And so I will not go on those shows. And they’re huge. Yeah. Massive. Way bigger audiences than anything I’ve done so far. I think that that just shows though your moral compass. It’s like you’re not you’re not there to get as many views as you can because it doesn’t matter. And like Kosa said this a minute ago. He was like he got a brand deal wasn’t for a brand he wanted to work with. And he’s like not all money is good money. And I think it’s the same thing with like your intention on the internet. Like dude, this stuff it lives forever. If you whatever you whatever shows you go on, if those characters go on and do ridiculously crazy things, you’re so right. You’re associated with them. And so you have to be very picky about the people whose shows you go on, the stuff that you decide to comment on or not to comment on. And I think, you know, it’s very apparent people just say they I think it’s a very common thing people talk about [ __ ] they just don’t know a lot about. Oh, and that’s probably a huge root of the problem, dude.

Also, for the not accepting sponsors that like don’t feel right or or a partnership or whatever, that’s super smart because if you go and cosign this brand and it’s dog [ __ ] and your whole audience or percentage goes out and buys the thing and they think it’s dog [ __ ] guess what? By proxy, they think you’re dog [ __ ] Dude, I was so tempted. The bag was fat, dude. I was like, Braden, are you sure? Like, I asked him. I was like, should I do this? Yes, it was the right call. Yeah, it was 100% the right call. Like, I’m going to Europe in a few months. Like, I could use the I could use the bag. You text in the Discord, by the way, just so you guys know, I really am. But that’s a long-term decision. I was like, should I maybe just do like UGC? Like, I don’t post it. Just some AI generated videos like it’s not even me. But I also think what’s interesting is you could spend a decade building your brand and you’re great and then one bad decision, one bad pairing, everything kind of goes down the drain. I believe it was Gary that said you’re only as good as your last bat. 100%. And I I believe that.

Can we talk about how long it takes to build a brand though? Because people might see that you put out this 6 and 1/2 hour course and say it got 200,000 views in a few months. It happened so quickly for you, but the only way you were able to put out that video is if you spend 16 years working with other people and learning brand. So, can you talk about the process and how long it actually takes to build a successful brand? I can’t give you a timeline because it’s going to be very dependent on so many different factors. But what I do tell people, and this will probably sound kind of shocking, is I say enter this game not expecting any economic outcomes that you desire for the first 36 months. That’s three years. If you Dude, you guys are awesome. He’s got a calculator right there. I don’t know. If you do that, you will have the proper expectations to stomach the ups and downs because what will happen for the majority of people here is they will get nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. One thing will pop and then it’ll again be nothing, nothing, nothing. And that’s where people get [ __ ] Yeah. And so, like, if you go into it saying, “I’m going to do this for 3 years and I don’t need anything from it.” That’s when you win. That’s how we entered this. I I could never have imagined that we would have I think it’s like 21 22,000 subscribers on YouTube off of three videos and we released our last one a week ago. So four videos. The fourth one has only been up for a week. Like 22,000. Like that’s [ __ ] absurd. And I didn’t go in with those expectations at all because I knew if I did I’d give up immediately. I actually I’ll give you my uh move and you can borrow it if you like. I did this back when I competed in powerlifting. I do it in everything. I set my expectations ridiculously low. So, like when we were doing the course, like I spent probably 16 17 grand on putting that together. Um, I was literally stoked if we would have gotten a,000 views in the first month. And I told Trevor, I told my girlfriend Cat, I told everybody in my life, I just want a,000 views. That’s it. And I think that if you do that, now the caveat is is I’m a highly ambitious person. So I think that’s the tension that you need. If you’re lazy as [ __ ] that is a terrible way to approach it for sure. But if you are the ambitious person, I would argue sometimes potentially sandbagging your expectations can be very helpful. It sets you up to win because it it blows your expectations out of the water if you’re like, “Yo, we’re just going to do this. We’re going to do this awesome thing. we’re going to let the market decide and like not let it hurt your feelings cuz I think specifically when we’re starting out in like a creative journeys when you put so much time and effort into something and the market decides that it it just didn’t go off or for whatever reason you post at the wrong time your thumbnail sucked your hook wasn’t there you’re like you get so down on yourself and it’s so easy to let those thoughts creep in like man am I am I not good at this you know what’s the reason this thing isn’t performing well and when you lower those expectations something I I need to practice more of because I get I get like very excited and it’s easy because you’re very fired up about the things that you do and you put your time into and you’re like this time is so valuable now especially now that you run your own thing. It becomes exponentially easier to flip that and say you know I put so much time and effort into this. I’ve quit my job. I’m doing this damn thing. I know this information is solid. Why the [ __ ] did this not get more than X? And I think that’s a really good way that you’re looking at it. It’s not having the audacity to assume that people should listen to my [ __ ] I don’t care how much effort I put into it. Effort means nothing to them. That’s the reality. Like it sounds impressive for a second, but it’s like who gives a [ __ ] what my effort was, right? And so I always if like if that course would have gotten 200 views, I would have been like, “Okay, cool. I did not do a good job.” Plain and simple. Now, I wouldn’t beat myself up for it. The the other thing that I would say to to add a little bit of a depth to it is do this strategically. Meaning we just released a video last Friday, two hours on how to lead a media team. The TAM is tiny. The audience that is that is relevant to is like yeah zero, right? So I don’t expect it to perform like the first three videos. I wasn’t going to say zero. I was saying smaller, but I didn’t think it was zero. But smaller group for sure. You’re like CMOs at companies, right? Yeah. Which is basically zero if you look at the population on YouTube, right? Like it’s like it’s so small. And the likelihood that that’s going to catch on is low. So again, what I like to do, we’re going really deep on this, but I would set up other metrics or ways to define winning. So, for us, when Trevor and I were releasing this video, I was like, I’m going to measure the success of this video based on the DMs that I get and the caliber of people that reach out to me. If I get a bunch of creative directors that are leading the teams for all these personal brands being like, “Dude, this was [ __ ] fire, win. I don’t care how many views.” So, I believe that typically, again, in the educational space, you’re either playing a width or depth game with every piece you put out. I would argue the reason why most people are not successful is because they try to do both. Define which one you’re trying to accomplish and then measure against that. If it’s a depth play, don’t look at the ranking. Don’t look at the views. That’s not the game you were playing on that. The amount of times Brand has come out, we don’t live together anymore, but when we did, he’d be like, “Do you want your ticket to the moon now or later? Did you want to buy it?” And then I’d check in on him next

Day and be like, "How'd you do?" He's like, "Ah, dude. We'll get next time. We're We The rocket ship kind of blew up on the way up. It was like It was an altitude. Open the balcony, dude. I'm sorry. It's okay. You put out so many awesome pieces of content. You've also helped a lot of these brands figure out the frameworks for posting consistently.

Is there a tool that you use? Is it like a Google doc or a notion to keep all this stuff organized and so you can see all these different ideas that people are working on at once? Is there something that you could recommend to our group, our rocks?

Uh, for the teams, you should have a project manager. Okay. And their output is the organization of the team. Too many of these media teams that I meet with don't prioritize structure, organization, and timelines. And that is how you scale. So for the teams, boom, that's the answer. For the individual, whatever system you find best I would say. So like if you like just we use Google Docs; we use Notion. That was a good save, by the way. Um, we use Google docs; we use Notion. So like, uh, right now we're in our first six months of business, so we are getting systems dialed up and in play. We've been in the [ __ ] sprint mode because this has gone way different than I expected. So, right now our process is I send a voice note to Trevor of like, "Hey, I had this idea." Or Trevor sends me a link or sends me a concept that he thinks that we could do, and we go back and forth in Slack, and then he adds it to a list of running ideas that we have. Um, and those running ideas, by the way, are typically there are backups. I believe the best version of content is whatever I'm most excited about in the moment. Whatever is top of mind is what is probably going to come through the best in the content. But if we have nothing and we want to put out a video every month, that's the cadence we're trying to hit right now. Then cool, we have a running list of ideas that are back there.

Where do you come up with your ideas? Is it shower, you know, or is it running 9:00 a.m. runs on rides? Motorcycle rides. Really motorcycle. Yeah, if I'm out on a ride. Um, that's so that's so sick. But I'll show you how to drive one. You ride? He's got training wheels on his When I when I I I lived in Indonesia for a little bit, so I did have a little a little motorcycle. I learned how to drive the manual. It was fun.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I drive manual. I almost [ __ ] this up, dude. Okay. We were this like they gave me a dirt bike the first time. Okay. First, cuz you know, they got the mopeds. That's automatic, right? So, I was like, I want to be cool and get the we're get training wheels first, get the dirt bike, and then get the the sick motorcycle. Cuz I found this guy. He goes, "I'll trade you. You go filming stuff with this bike. You can have it for the month." I go, "Okay, done deal." So he gave me the practice motorcycle or practice dirt bike. We're kind of on a little bit of a hill. I used to drive a manual car. So like I I understand the concept how this works, but I it's like stop traffic stop and go. And then I had to go and I was like and I'm like wheeling for not trying to do this. Wheelie for like 3 seconds, and the guys were like, "Yeah," and I'm like, "Didn't mean to do that." Almost died. Terrifying. But I figured it out. I got it down though.

Unintentional wheelies are are sketch.

Oh my god. Yeah. I was like, "Thank god I was wearing a helmet." It's terrifying. Well, I now have it down. Seriously, should we get some in LA? I don't We don't We don't got to be in Bali, dude. We can He's in Vegas. He's got wider streets around there. Oh, no. Vegas is way worse for riding than LA. LA people are actually like, you're taught here as a kid to look out for motorcycles. The majority of the country, like in there's no other place I've been to in the country where you're ripping down the road and people are moving out of your way. In Vegas, they're like, "How dare you get by me? I want you to be just as slow as me." They'll cut in. Oh, weird. [ __ ] See, I keep, you know what I get a lot when I'm driving? I get a lot of these from the motorcycle guys. You know, you know what I'm talking about? I don't think you've ever gotten one of those. I got a lot of these. They go by and they go, I think it was more good. It feels great cuz I know I'm like helping you, brother. Wasn't one of some a motorcycle did kick my mirror off. Not sure why.

Dude, yeah. Story for another day. Never caught the guy. So frustrating. Just Dude, he could have died. He was I was driving, right? And I have the video footage. I'm in the fast lane for like 3 minutes and out of nowhere I just get speared with his foot and he kicked off my mirror and I'm like I think I think he was trying to get another guy. Yeah. Then he flipped me off and stayed there. I was like, "Dude, you could have died. Like what are you doing?" Damn. It was crazy.

Do you make your own merch? We'll get back to the like content stuff. But that's [ __ ] sick. What's the back of it look like? It's the same logo and it just says brand over everything. Just just little like just little limited things that that I get to wear. That's that's how you're making the money.

Yes. Yeah. You're not selling You're not selling the info product. You're selling the merch.

Yeah. Uh actually, here's a little little thing for anybody who is exploring this. Make your content and wear any merch in it for like a year, two years, and never release it. And then and then what? That's it. And then release it. Or if you make content that people like, they will want it. [ __ ] yeah. And the more you pent up that demand, Yeah. the better that it will go over. A lot of people, I think, try to release merch before anyone cares about them. Yeah. And that's just like an uphill battle. We did that. It was fun, dude. No, the best thing that you should do is don't weigh the hoodies and then pay for the shipping on the hoodies being list the hoodies as two pounds and then make sure they're four and a half. That's the thing to do. If you wanted to run a clothing business, give me a call.

So much great advice. You you got the chance to obviously work with some massive media teams, but then when you leave, you obviously we don't have we don't have hundreds of millions of dollars just yet, but we're going to never No. What? You got to just DM Braden's guy. I'll teach you how to make 200 million. 200 million. That guy, I'll put you in contact with him. Please.

What was the first person that you brought onto the team? And now what? I know you just said you brought on a chief of staff. Like what is what's this team look like now?

Yeah, there is now three of us. First one was Trevor Odum, content director. Um, I realized that I should eat my own dog food. I don't want to be the hairdresser with bad hair or the dentist with shitty teeth. I want to practice what I preach. And if I believe that content is as effective as I've been saying for years for all the people that I work for, well, then I should do the same thing. And uh, Trevor was a wild character and decided to make a bet on me. I actually tried to convince him why I'm not the right person to do this for. Uh I have no idea. I didn't know if I was going to stick with it. I didn't know what it was going to be like putting out a video. Like we put out our first video and it was kind of like a crapshoot. How is this going to go? Do I like it? Do I feel comfortable with it? I've always been the guy behind the scenes. Sure, I've done a podcast or two here and there, but other than that, I had never made like a video where I'm sitting down and talking around my career or my beliefs on content, brand, and stuff. But I believe that that is one of the most important hires you can make. And so I wanted to put my money where my mouth was.

Is there a mindset shift that had to happen? You going from making content and working with these individuals who are obviously super comfortable on camera, you're you're producing it for them, but now you're the one in front of the camera.

What's cool is actually other than Gary, even back to my bodybuilding days where I was filming with bodybuilders and stuff, everyone I've ever worked with has gone through the process of becoming comfortable. So, I've gotten to see that. Whereas a lot of people have seen these people I've worked with and they assume that they're just like naturally like super into it from day one. But very few people are that way. It takes a while to get comfortable, especially if you're doing like any sort of vlogging style [ __ ] where it's just like you're actually existing as a human and there's this like [ __ ] weird thing over here. Like that's weird. So, I've I've gotten to see that. So, I I felt like I had permission to go through a process where I became more comfortable. Um, yeah. I think the biggest shift I mean honestly I turned to Trevor day one and I was like, "All right, I know exactly what I would do with any client we work with, but when it comes to me, what the [ __ ] do we do, dude? Are we shooting photos? Do we need to start writing like a buy like what are we doing?" And so I just leaned on him, especially that first month. I was like so overthinking everything, um, and so yeah, he was and still is and will be a very critical hire. And I think that it's what a lot of people should do. Like, you know, I'm in my first year of business. I'm eating into profit that I could be taking to go on another trip or buy another motorcycle or whatever. But I think this is far more valuable and will produce greater results long term for our business than anything that I could do myself. Content is the number one most important thing by far.

I think you're so right. Content. Yeah. 100%. Like having having no like practicing yourself like you're practicing every time you put out a video. Having an amazing person like Trevor in your corner that's helping you. It's like by far the the reason why I even think about the very beginning of the show we had nice c like we invested in our gear. We had $15,000 of gear, $20,000 of [ __ ] So even even when we're not great at the show, we don't really know how to podcast yet. At least you came on and you were like, "Okay, there's three nice cameras pointing at me. There's two nice lights. I understand that these guys are like trying to do this damn thing. It's not like, oh yeah, we have the little camera and we're you're going to come to our place. Like, you know what I mean? And you just really invest hard in it and try to put out the best possible thing. I think great results happen. We also started this show. You talk about bad practices. We had no like knowing what we know now. Oh my god. We did everything incorrectly.

Yeah. I mean, we would we would have the uh we wouldn't introduce the guest. We would just like get right into it and we'd BS for like 20 minutes about random stuff. So you click on this video being like, "Oh, this guy's the the concert photographer." Be like, "Dude, so tell me about your night out last night, too. How did that go, man? How you feeling this morning?" Yeah. What What was it like today? You're just random [ __ ] But I think that is important because you're going to get more comfortable creating the content, but then you're also going to become more comfortable like understanding and navigating the game. I feel like uh just a lot of people it can feel very overwhelming and there's a lot of advice on the internet and everybody knows that content is important but you're like, "Where do I start? How do I do it? And how do I become comfortable like putting myself out there getting in front of the camera?" And I think the key is just starting and understanding that you're probably going to suck at the beginning and allowing yourself to just try to get better 1% each time you put out a new piece of content.

Yes. And manufacture the environment to make it easier. Stop making your goals harder, right? Like I'm not David Gogggins. I need [ __ ] to be easier, not harder. Like, that's not me. They don't know me, son. Who's going to carry the boat? Yeah. I actually see him run by my house all the time.

No way. Yeah, it's crazy. Really? Um Yeah, he that dude runs all over Vegas. Literally all over Vegas. At least the the west side. But um yeah, I I don't know, man. I I think that people make it too complicated. Like when I got to my all-time fattest, I wanted to get back into walking, for example. I promise this is going somewhere. And I had built up the habit of going to Starbucks in the morning and getting a yummy little uh latte and a little pastry. And I loved listening to a podcast on that drive. So what did I do? I started walking with a latte and a pastry and a podcast. And then that latte turned into an Americano. And that pastry turned into a piece of fruit. And then it was just the Americano. And then it was just the walking. You brand these things by deliberately and intentionally pairing yourself with things that you like while doing the activity that maybe you don't. And you create a positive association, aka you brand it. And then you're more likely to do it.

Yeah. We're we uh because we're moving, we're getting home offices now, dude. We're going to be home office guys. And so Oh my god. Yeah, we're huge. Huge for the team. You know, I don't want to call my shot. If you want to buy your ticket to the moon now, you can. Don't know if it's going there. Atmosphere here we come. But I'm saying as great as this apartment was for like this podcast, it felt really difficult at times to create content for ourselves, I just don't think the the space really allowed for it. And I'm really excited to have now an environment that's like decorated really well, have a home office where I'm like, "I can go in here and I know that this is specifically for work. Tripod, lights are set up. I can just go turn the camera on, hit record, and I'm good to go." There's way less friction. I think that's important with the with the media teams that like let's talk real quick. Real quick, take that a step further for a second. If you like hiking, film your shorts not in a studio while you're hiking. [ __ ] yeah. Right? Like pair making content with things that you like, make it fun. And and I I was talking to a guy about this and gave that example and he was like, "Well, it wasn't very practical. We brought like, you know, all the gear and everything and I was out of" and I'm like, "Okay, sure. You don't have to be doing like the [ __ ] Everest hike while you're doing that, right? Like go on a little jaunt through the woods, but pairing like we filmed a video a while ago over the course of a motorcycle trip. Am I riding like my normal thousand mile plus? No, we're just going around Vegas. But I love ripping around on my bike. So, it was fun.

You help build out these teams for these brands, right? I know you said like, "We need a project manager. We need organization." And there are a few other hires. Let's say they have nobody, but they have budget, right? They have budget. What are you trying to help them facilitate? So, this oiled machine actually works well. Yeah. So once we establish what like the main bottlenecks are, let's say it's editing and then it's filming. Well, then the next thing is most likely when we're working with a brand where they're going to build out a team, it's usually like a founder that wants to be as far removed from the content process as possible. They don't even want to be in it usually.

Yeah. I mean, they're, you know, the best ones want their thumbrint on it. They want it to be their words, all of that. But they are busy running a business, not being a content creator. And so I believe that 90% of the success of a video, written post, anything online, I would argue it's more, but let's say 90 just to be conservative here, is the idea, not how it was shot, not how it was edited, not how it was distributed. It's the concept. Concept wins overall. And so I think having an ideas person is a really good idea. And uh what you want though, this is the big kicker. If you're interviewing and your ideas person when you ask them, "How do you come up with your ideas? How do you come up with these concepts?" And they say, "Oh, I I go into a a conference room with a hundred sticky notes and I write out all these ideas and then I pick the ones run the other way." You want somebody who is giving you ideas based on data, right? We all know oneof10.com. I think it's becoming very, very popular these days. This is a great tool to use. You want to look at content that has performed really well and then use that to inform what you make. And so you want the ideas person that's going to be thinking that way. I was about to go deep on that. We can touch that later. But that's a role that I think a lot of people don't realize is super necessary. A huge bottleneck, especially a year into making content, is what the [ __ ] do I talk about?

Yeah. Now, the reality is is that your ideas person, what they need to be good at is coming up with packaging of the same concepts. Because if you're making educational content, you're going to get to a point, and this is a good thing, where you're saying the same [ __ ] over and over and over. You need to come up with new scenarios and new creative ways to share that same [ __ ] I also think we often we oftenimes feel like because we said it once, we can't say it again because everybody's already heard us talking about it. The fact of the matter is no one was probably [ __ ] listening the first time you said it. And there's always a new set of eyes and a new set of ears that hasn't seen you before. They haven't discovered you. And so each piece of content that you put out is a new opportunity for somebody new to find you and to further your actual brand. Yeah. Again, it is intentionally pairing things consistently. That is what creates the association and the byproduct is brand. And so if you say it one time, people won't associate that with you, right? Like I am going to continue hammering the brand journey framework over and over and over and over in a million different ways because I think it is the best way to find clarity for your brand and I want people to associate me with that 100%.

Yeah, and this is why another little thing to be able to filter is the people that have retired and are just teaching the game that aren't in the game. They're the ones that are screwed because they're not constantly being presented new scenarios that they can share those principles through. Right? Some of the best advice that I got when I left and started building my own thing from some very wise individuals was never ever remove the tip of the spear. You need to always, you know, if you do end up going into the world of doing a one to many offer, you need at least one client you're going deep with so that you can stay dangerous in the weeds. And in my content, then I'm always able to share the same principles through different tactics, different scenarios. And so for those of you that are listening, watching, if you feel like I'm saying the same [ __ ] over and over, good. Just figure out creative ways to say it differently.

You also have talked about mining when it comes to content. Can we go into that? Can we go into mining as

It is associated with content? Yeah. Um, it is not the most effective way to make short form anymore, but okay. Uh, I mean that that's a that's a blanket statement that requires a lot of unpacking.

Uh, for the most part, up until the last I would say 2 or 3 years, you could get away with having a long-form piece of content and then just mining or clipping that. I call it mining, like mining for gold and finding these little moments. I believe that that still works for some for sure, but I don't think that it is necessarily the blueprint to blow up. It's the blueprint to get started and to have a sustainable process, but if you want to go to the next level, what you want to do is you want to make content contextual to each platform specifically, right? So like you guys, tonight go hang out with the boys and get beers. Tomorrow you two with your partners go and get brunch with your parents. And then tomorrow you go to some business networking event. You guys are you at all of those, but you're going to present differently. You're going to use different vocabulary, different examples, talk about different stories, say different things. Still you, but you're presenting yourself contextual to the environment you're in. Social is the same way. So the the model of having that pillar piece of content and then mining from there, that's getting you to first base, but we want to round home. And so that's where you're going to see that baseball analogy there for you.

Yeah, I got you. You play softball, not I do play baseball on Saturdays now. Okay. I play actually a double header tomorrow. [ __ ] yourself. I've hit a whiffle ball before, so we're on the same I'll show you a video after. We'll talk about it. You ride Harley's way cooler. I I don't know about that. Uh yeah, there's Yeah, Harley's are not not cool yet yet. Um that's a total another subject I have to talk about. But but yeah, I I just I I would try to approach it that way. I would make sure that you don't take this approach and try to do it for nine different platforms though because you're not going to be able to stick with it. Again, a common theme that you're probably picking up on is sustainability, right? Like I'm not the kind of guy that's going to be like go post 12 times a day on all of the different [ __ ] platforms. I would argue that you should do the long form and then mining as phase one on three platforms and then pick one of those three to start making intentional content for. That's how I would approach it. So I think mining's great. I think it's important. I think it's a strong skill set to have. And I think if you have a podcast, that's definitely the right move for sure, obviously. But for you guys, the higher likelihood of success for a short-form clip is going to be you guys creating something specifically for TikTok, specifically for LinkedIn, specifically for Instagram reels.

Yeah. You advocate for kind of splitting the day up into like maker and manager. I've heard Alex say this a ton of different times. Can you talk about that concept and like what you did to bring that kind of into what you're doing now?

Yeah, Paul Graham a while ago released an amazing maker manager article where he broke down how basically in the workplace individuals fall into one of two categories, maker or manager. And the unfortunate reality of most corporate structures is they prioritize and build calendars and schedules around manager time. But we've all been an editor. We [ __ ] hate meetings. It's the worst. Worst. Especially that random if you start your day, let's say at 9:00 a.m. The 12:30 p.m. meeting is the [ __ ] worst. Right in the middle of the day, you're editing for like 3 and 1/2 hours, but you're anticipating that that's coming. You're checking. It's kind of like you don't sleep very well before an early flight cuz you're always like, "Oh [ __ ] did I oversleep it?" Like, you don't want to be late to the meeting or whatever. And that's distracting you from getting into that, you know, almighty flow state that we all desire to be in. So, I like to the best version of this in my opinion is actually to be a psychopath and stack all your meetings on one or two days of the week and then you have three or four days that are all for deep work. So, you know, now that I'm in a position where I don't have like a bunch of different departments that I'm having to meet with, I'm able and fortunate to be in a position where I can kind of build this a little bit more like I want. So, it's more like Tuesday and Wednesday are my meeting days. Monday, Thursday, Friday, deep work completely. I think that's the best because then I'm able to be in that zone. I'm not distracted about what's coming next. Um, but on the flip side, if you are a producer or a manager of a team, you move the needle forward by having meetings. And so, those are important. I just prefer that they are carved out in a specific uh repeatable time frame that the team can predict and know. And so, for example, when I've been inhouse, typically I lean towards just making my Mondays awful. 8 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. just backtobacks oftentimes with no piss break, like just straight backtobacks. But then the rest of my week is way better because I got those meetings out of the way all in one day. And I tend and I think, you know, know thyself. I like batching. When I'm in a certain headsp space, I just want to [ __ ] rip on that. Like after we film a video, for example, I'm shocked. I'm not going to go do meetings or get into deep work, you know? Even after a podcast, cuz I'm still getting used to this. I'm new to this, right? Like I'm having to like come up with answers on the spot. Like people don't realize like that's tiring when you're new to it. And so like I try to plan my days accordingly.

You're doing pretty good though.

Yeah, I will say thanks man. um trying how how has it been going from working for other people for 16 plus years to now running your business and like what systems have you implemented into how you're running your business that um has has helped because I feel like it's kind of similar to uh you're in school for 12 to 15 years, right? Or maybe even longer. And then you have that structure of, okay, we start and then I have a break for winter break. I have like first semester, winter break or Thanksgiving, whatever, winter break, second semester, spring break, summer. And like you're in that structure. And then I remember for me it was like kind of weird getting out of school and being like all right I kind of have I can do kind of whatever but like if I don't plan stuff time just kind of goes. So that's a long way or long-winded way of me asking like have there been things that you've been able to implement into running your own business that has helped you with the structure planning vacation ahead of time.

I've never done that before. This is the first year that I really actually did that. Um, and that was a wild concept. And I went to a lot of friends and I was like, "Guys, there's this like crazy thing that you can do at the beginning of the year, which is like plan trips and like pay for the ticket ahead of time." And they're like, "Yeah, dude. That's that's normal." It's like, "Holy [ __ ] I've never done that. I always had my life revolve around my work." And that has gotten to me gotten me where I am now. But what I'm realizing is now I'm in a different season. And now I'm solving big problems for multiple clients and I need more headsp space. So my calendar and my way of operating needs to look differently. Like Fridays are the flex day for me. Sometimes I go in on a client, sometimes I go in on our content, sometimes I go in on new business, sometimes I go for a motorcycle ride. And that's one thing that has been very weird to retrain myself on because I have always equated my value as a human to my hours worked and the grind that I put in. And again, nothing wrong with that. That was great for a season, long season. Um, but that won't take me where I want to go. So I think it's it's reooking at how I define my value, where I get my worth from. It's looking at how am I spending my time. U but from a systems and processes thing, we've we're in Q2 right now. We got no systems or process. Chief of staff being hired to help build that out. Uh we've been running so fast. Like I mentioned, like I'm not proud of the fact that there's 250 people that I haven't responded to. I hate that. Sucks. So, we're working on getting that in place. And I never want to pretend. I'll always be honest. You know, we're not dialed on that. That is getting dialed right now.

I love that about you. Tell tell me what what is a hackathon? What does that mean? I want to know all about hackenthons and stuff.

You would. Yeah. [ __ ] get your head out of the [ __ ] gutter, dude. My dude.

Um, well, it means many things to many different people. I like to run content hackathons and this is a day typically the teams that I've been on or ran are performance-oriented. It's not like we're making creative for art's sake. We're trying to make [ __ ] that converts. What that means is there becomes a bias towards doing things that are data-backed and that is good. I have what there's this it's not mine. There's the 702010 framework. 70% of the content you post should be [ __ ] you know is going to work. 20% should be iterations on that 70%. 10% should be [ __ ] you have no idea and have never done. The content hackathon is at 10%. Sorry, we're good. Bottle just dropped in the background for anyone who's wondering. If you do that, you will be successful at innovating and being a creator that others copy and emulate. Most people get stuck on the 70%. A select few will do the 20. Very few do the 10 because the 10 is ambiguous. There is no data to back it. But I believe that's where true innovation occurs. And so I like to carve out you know again high-performance team you can't do this like monthly probably. So I would run it quarterly. And this is a day typically a Friday where I carve the entire day out for everybody on the team to make something. Even the project manager, by the way, who never makes any creative, they are making on this day. That's fun. I'm making on this day. I don't edit videos like ever. I don't I made [ __ ] on that day. And the key is is you make something that you do not do in your everyday. So, if you're a short-form editor, you're not clipping a [ __ ] podcast. Maybe you're making a short, but you're doing it fundamentally different. That thing that you've had in the back of your head, you're like, I wonder if this would work. I don't want to take my time to do that. and have it flop. This is your day for that. We And then the real interesting thing is when I first started doing these, the way cuz I like competition. I would incentivize a winner. We would post all of the posts and we would track the first 72 hours of performance and whoever got the most impressions won. But what was I incentivizing? Safety. Doing something that's going to win. Data backed. So what did the team do? They [ __ ] ripped on [ __ ] they were confident on. Right. What I changed because I started to realize I'm I'm misaligning them is now I like to have the team at the end of the day. There's like usually I'll just have like a Google um slide deck and everybody will have a slide with their name on it and they put their content, whatever they made in there and we spend an hour, hour and a half having everybody present what they did, play it, read it, whatever so that everyone can consume it and then at the very end we do an anonymous live vote where I send out a link for everyone to vote who did the most innovative thing. This is the team that's with you every single day putting this content out. No one's going to know what is more innovative for that team more than them. And so by doing that, you're actually aligning what the outcome is you desire with what people are going to want to do because they're incentivized to do it that way. I incentivized it completely incorrect for the first like year and a half of running these. And then I learned it was like, oh man, this is there's a way better way to do this. And by doing that, that's how we came up. you know, the majority of them flopped when we would post it, but from every content hackathon, we would come away with one thing that we ended up running with long term. I remember uh on one of them, I I think this is when I did the tweet reels and like years ago and then we just started doing those and then everybody started doing those. I believe that you have to create space where you inform the team it's okay to do something that's going to suck, that's not going to do well. That's the key.

Let's go deeper on that cuz you say you love a flop. Yeah. How do you instill that mindset into your team?

First, you have to instill it in the creator you're working for. whoever is in the content or making the decisions about whether or not you want to keep doing it or whatever, they need to be on board with that first because if you let's say it's a traditional setup and we have like CEO founder and you're the creative director and you're telling the team we love a good flop but they're coming at the team when it does flop that doesn't work. M so you first have to build that relationship there and both agree with that and so like if they don't well then you can't use that frame you really can't it it'll it'll actually backfire even more um because that's like the opposite of psychological safety that it creates right and so what I'm always trying to do is create an environment that allows people to experiment and test so once we have alignment with the person who's in the content cool now it's not that we love a week of flops. That would be a problem. But what I believe is again, and you have to know thyself. That's why I love and hate doing content online because there's so much nuance to this. If your team is not a high-performing team and absolutely [ __ ] murdering it and getting lots of impressions and killing it there, this does not apply to you. But if you are one of those, then what you need to do is you need to create an environment where it's okay to fail because that's not what is consistently being done. You're not empowering bad behaviors. You're empowering good behaviors. And so by saying we love a good flop, it takes all the fear away from an editor of like I'm trying this thing. We're posting it and oh my god, we average 150,000 views and this got 7,000. Amazing. We love a good flop. We just got closer to knowing what the next thing that we're going to do is.

Is that something you learned from Gary or Alex? Cuz I feel like Gary, in my mind, he's like, "Let's just [ __ ] rip a bunch of content. I don't really care how well it does. Some might do better than others." And I also feel like Alex probably has a similar mindset as well.

I would say I did it as a protection mechanism for me to not feel the pain of something not working. So, back to what we were talking about earlier, how I sandbag my expectations. It's that it's that I I'm I'm constantly trying to and I'm realizing this more and more cuz I like I'm in a season where I'm able to like reflect a little bit more. I'm constantly trying to balance and and adjust my expectations or my view of the world or whatever to serve me in that moment however I need. And so when you know uh I tend to be somebody who gets bored of [ __ ] very quickly. And so like on team Gary for example uh I was always trying to move on to the next thing probably too early. it was still working and we could have milked it, right? But I had to have that frame of we love a good flop in order to be willing to try crazy [ __ ] that Gary had never done before. I remember the first time that uh cuz he had told me he's like I want to go hard on TikTok. Like if you see any trends that make sense for me, [ __ ] run into my office and tell me what to do. I'll I'll I'll do it. And I I had to go into that being like, "This might not work and I might be an idiot because up until that point, we had been doing a bunch of trash talk clips and I was going around the office celebrating, you know, 10 million views here, 20 million views here." Like, it was crazy. And so when I went into a season of trying new [ __ ] I just had to recalibrate my mindset so that I wouldn't end up, I guess, getting too in my head or give up because of it.

Yeah. You also bring up like obviously how important ideas is and you harp on how important it is to like base them off of data. Is there ever a time where you can just have like a gut feeling about an idea and being and have the mindset of like this is going to I just know this is going to [ __ ] eat just cuz I feel it without having it based off of data. And is there a way to kind of balance the two?

What is a gut feeling? I would say a gut feeling is data. Okay, I've been here before. This feels familiar, right? When you meet somebody who just within seconds you're like, "Something's off here." A gut feeling. All that is is your body recalling a previous moment where you felt that same feeling around somebody who wasn't good. So, I would argue it's less data. It's more anecdotal, more subjective, but still a form of data. The answer is yes, 100%. Uh again, that's why I like the 702010. The 10% gives you the space to be able to act on that and be able to operationalize that. So yes, I absolutely believe that. Um there are times where we're debating something and it'll come down to Trevor's like, "Ah, I just have a feeling this is going to work." I'm like, "Cool. I trust you." And and here's the key for any of you doing that. Measure it. Calibrate your gut feelings. Have that gut feeling. Put it on record. Put it out. And then measure. Was I right? Did it do well? Cool. I'm going to be more confident in my gut feelings. Did it not do well? Where did I go wrong? How how could I have predicted this correctly? Or how could I predict this correctly next time?

You had the opportunity to be around some of the brightest minds. You got Ila, you got Alex, you got Gary. Is there something from the way that they led their teams and the organization that you want to take into what you're doing?

Yes. Tell me.

Uh the best one of the best things I got from Leila was uh being prepared for an employee when they start. So I remember uh there's never been an organization where I had this. I had a 30, 60, 90-day document sent to me days before my first day from from Leila. Okay. Knowing what was expected of me for the first 3 months. How [ __ ] incredible. Every other role I had been in, it's like first two weeks you don't know what's expected. You laptop, you're anxious as [ __ ] because you don't you're like I don't know what's expected of me. I know I'm not doing much. Like where do I stand, bro? First day of the Lakers. I'm on YouTube. I'm just sitting there. And I'm like, when is someone going to tell me? That's wild. I swear to God, that's [ __ ] wild. I literally I'm sitting there, I'm like, is someone going to say? And I remember I remember like the project manager who I loved was like, uh, do you have like Reich? I'm like, [ __ ] is Reich? What is Reich? What is Reich? It's a It's a where you manage all the projects. And I go I go, no, I have no idea. And she goes, oh, let's get you set

Up on there. I'm like, oh my god. Then I'm thinking, same thing. I'm thinking like I'm not doing, I'm not doing stuff right. And then I'm afraid. I'm like, did I ask some person, like I don't know. I'm like, okay. I have no idea who to ask. It's just, it's stressful. It's super stressful on an employee, and it's momentum.

Yes. Momentum in the wrong direction.

Get you some W's right when you get in the door.

Yeah. Or if you don't have clarity, it's still momentum in the wrong direction. Wrong direction.

Yeah. And like another thing that I got from her was like, if you hire players, really, not to [ __ ] say, but like actual gangsters that want to move the needle, you don't need to motivate them, you need to clear the way for them, cuz when they come in, they're going to [ __ ] steamroll. And your key is to not demotivate them, not slow them down. Clear the way. Don't bog them down. So that's one, uh, I'd say on how to lead a company.

Gary, uh, you guys met him, you saw, right? You know, some people that have worked for him and stuff. The thing that he doesn't talk about as much is like, and I think this is so unique, is how willing he is to put people on knowing that they're going to leave and do something else. He's going to invest all of this brand equity, knowledge, time, money into people, and they're going to go off, and some of them are going to leverage it correctly, some of them will over-leverage it. And he just knows that, and he still does it. Uh, the fact that he is like unbelievably supportive of people after their time. Like the man has been so supportive of me during this season. It's crazy. And I, I think that's something that I got to witness. He didn't say, "Caleb, this is how I lead." I just had the fortunate position of being a videographer and watching him in the toughest scenarios and how he responded to that. And so I've tried to lead teams that way.

And now I want to build my, I've tried to reference Trevor for example in this podcast and every piece of content that we make as much as [ __ ] possible in a world where the majority of people that are making content want to keep their team hidden behind the scenes, you know, do not disclose, keep them under wraps. I want to do the exact opposite. My goal is for Trevor's brand to get way bigger this year than it ever did leading up to this point. And I want more people to be, and I know that like he's a [ __ ] savage. There's a lot of people, I'm sure even now there are people in his DMs trying to poach him right now. That's a risk. He's shaking his head over there. Like, definitely he's a [ __ ] savage, and I want more of those opportunities to come his way, not less. And then it's on me to be better every single week so that he wants to stay here, not go somewhere else.

Rather like, oh man, I could go on about that for a long time, but I think what it comes down to, the principle that I got from Gary is not leading from a place of insecurity. Okay, we got Lea, we got Gary from Alex. Dude, uh, a lot of things, but the biggest one that stands out the most is the level of effort into a single piece of work to make it great without having to market the hell out of it. I saw 19 versions of leads. He wrote the book Leads 19 different times.

Wow. That's what I saw. There may be more. I don't know. That's insane. That's a different level of effort than 99.9% of people that write books put into their work. And so I think for me it was recalibrating like, oh wow, I remember even as an editor it'd be like, I never liked version one, never liked version two. Version one I was always trying to get to right away so I could scrap it and start over. I never liked, but I would usually be pretty good around version five or six, and and the level of effort that it takes to make something that stands the test of time. I just saw a new bar, a new level. You don't know what you don't know.

And I feel like that also applies in the sense of like being around these high-level individuals. It kind of just forces you to see a different level of things that you didn't know before, even being around that. Like you're, you know, the classic example is like you're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And the more you can get around a certain caliber of people, the more your bar is going to be raised. I think that's [ __ ] awesome that you've been able to have that experience and not only with just one, but like with multiple.

Yeah. Very blessed. And and it's cool too because everybody does things differently, and you get to, you know, I'm glad you didn't ask this question, but I get asked, you know, who is better, blah, blah, blah. And for me, I never look at it from that frame. I look at like what are they uniquely gifted at and how can I extract that and make that a part of me? They're also doing two different things. There's, they're similar but different. And so I don't, I don't think it'd be fair to say, oh, who was better?

I agree. I feel like that question every time I'm asked is very unfair.

What, what's something that you're trying to really focus on in these next six months in the business?

Clients. Getting pipeline.

No. No. Serving our clients. Serving them.

Yeah. Okay. Um, I, I would have answered this differently probably 3 months ago before we had a crazy amount of inbound, but I, I don't need to focus on that. I am really carving out more and more time to deliver and over-deliver for our clients. So we have scopes and everything. And right now I'm trying to step outside of scope. I, I'm trying to over-deliver and get as best results as I can knowing that I'm not in the weeds on it. And um, yeah, trying to another big one is meeting and finding new talent. We recruit a lot. Half of our clients were building their team out with them. And so I need to know a lot of creative directors, videographers, video editors. And so a lot of my time right now is going towards either interviewing for active roles or connecting with individuals that I know will hire for somebody 6 to 18 months down the road.

But that's to build out in-house teams.

Correct. Correct. So our whole model flies at the face at the majority of our industry. The majority of the industry builds agencies that make the client dependent on the agency, and it becomes very difficult to offload. But I've spent the last 16 years in-house. I know what is best for these teams. It's not to be dependent on an agency. So what I try to do is come in and help recruit the right individuals, train them up, and then let them do their thing. If I do my job correctly, they know what to do. I've given them the principles, not the tactics. A lot of people in our space are giving tactics, but you guys know better than anyone, those tactics change all the [ __ ] time. If you teach tactics, you're making them need you forever. If you teach principles, then you're actually empowering them and helping them, serving them more than serving myself. But then, you know, you want to be smart about it. So, you build a business model around that. Gary always says, "Put yourself out of business before anyone else does." And agencies do not think that way. And so what happens is one day their client says, "We're done." When instead, I believe that they could be far more intentional and build a system, an offer, a plan that serves their clients and doesn't have them all of a sudden find out one day, "Oh, well, the relationship's over." They planned for it.

What is your advice to your 18-year-old self? You could go back, wouldn't change the journey. What would you say as you set out on the wild ride on the Harley?

I think I would tell myself to keep rolling the way I am and make the decisions around what I want, not what I want people to think of me as. I spent many years being very insecure and getting any sort of value or worth out of my work ethic, which was awesome and it led to a lot of good things. But I think if I look back, I wish I would have tempered it a little bit more and started learning other areas of life that I can get value out of and and and worth from. Again, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change it. I think I would just tell myself like, hey, getting worth out of like relationship with family and friends is also good and important, and there will come a time where you're going to need it and you'll have wished that you had deposited more into that than just your career. And again, I'm here because of what I did. Um, but I'm also here because of what I did. And so there's certain relationships that I'm working on establishing better now because I didn't invest in those in the years where it was probably most critical.

I love it. Caleb, thank you so much for coming on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a phenomenal episode. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button, drop us a comment, leave us a like, and we'll see you guys all next week. Pence.