Transcription
I want everybody for the next hour to forget everything they've been told about social media. If you tell the right story with one of these or another type of camera, you can reach millions and millions of people.
This is Brendan Kaine, the Instagram expert whose strategies have led to 60 billion views for his clients and over a billion dollars in revenue for their businesses. Starting with zero views, zero followers, zero experience, she reached 200,000 followers in the first two weeks. She closed a book deal, a podcast deal, and now she's pitching a reality TV show.
And so, if you're someone that's been creating content and you still don't know whether it's actually going to lead anywhere, by the end of this conversation, you will.
And just to recap the five steps, number one, just start.
If someone is watching this video at home with the fundamental belief that it's simply too late for them to succeed on social media, like, it's too saturated. Now we have AI coming in which is probably going to lead to even more saturation. If someone is building something, they have something to say, something they want to sell, but their belief is that it's too late for them. What would you say to that human being?
It's definitely not too late. I mean, literally today, and this is the amazing thing, we we we we all have access to one of these in our pockets. Okay? If you're just starting out with zero followers, zero views, you're opening up a brand new account, if you tell the right story with one of these or another type of camera, you can reach millions and millions of people. It doesn't matter where you start out today. It's just whether you have something powerful to say that allows you to unlock that value of social media. So, the definitive answer is yes. And I can explain further why if you want.
Yeah. Yeah. We're we're we're going to get into it. And you know what's interesting, Brendan, because I see so many videos online about this is like the new way to succeed on social media or this is the latest hack or this tactic is working right now or the algorithms changed like here's the new thing. The first thing that you mentioned is storytelling like if you have the right story. Can you just share for people the context like why does it start there for you?
So, I'm glad you brought that up because because like I this is my 21st year in social media. So, I started back in 2005. So, I'm speaking from that much experience. So, I want everybody for the next hour to forget everything they've been told about social media. Forget about every hack, shadow banning, all of those things. Let's push it to the side. Okay. as you mentioned as as I you know as we talked about um a few weeks ago together when when we spoke success is all about storytelling. Now why is that? Well, what controls success of social media? What determines whether your content is seen by a thousand people or 10 million people? Well, that's the algorithms. Now, there's a lot of myths and demonizations about the algorithms. No, it's not suppressing your reach on purpose to get you to boost your post and pay for ads. They make billions and billions of dollars off of Fortune 500 companies. They don't need your $20 in order to thrive and survive. On top of that, if that were the case, how is Mr. Beast the most subscribed person on YouTube? If it was all about money, it would be Nike or Netflix or Coca-Cola, the the companies that spend tons on on advertising. So, okay, what are the algorithms there to do? Well, they're designed to keep people on the platforms as long as humanly possible because the longer they spend on these platforms, people spend, you and I and everybody watching this, longer we spend watching videos, the more ads they can serve us and thus that's the more profit they generate. That is their business model. So, what they are looking for is content that is designed for retention, meaning for keeping people to watch longer.
Yeah. You know, and and you said something so great when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. You said uh social media is history repeating itself and and for me the second that I heard that that was like a reframe because all the time we always hear about like the the new thing or social media is changing and it's like no social media is actually history repeating itself. And so my question to you because everything that we're hearing right now is about AI and even in terms of even in the context of social media it's now you have AI influencers or creators are using AI in their workflows and so I want to go back to that thing that you told me a couple of weeks ago about social media is history repeating itself. Does that fact fundamentally change because of AI?
No. AI is just another tool to tell stories. It's just a tool in its advancements to tell a story. And that's what AI is. Is let's just imagine that everybody on the planet woke up tomorrow using AI to create content. There's still going to be winners and losers based upon how good of a story you're telling. Just because you use AI does not mean millions of people are going to see it. you have to still understand how to grab and hold attention in order for that tool to become useful.
We're going to get deeper into storytelling. And so I think there's a lot of people listening and I speak to them who they see the value of building a brand, but in their mind it's like, I'm not a content creator. I'm not an influencer. I'm not like a marketer. Can you speak to because I know you've worked with so many different kinds of clients and you've got results with them. Can you share examples uh even just case studies of people that you've worked with that before you worked with them they really had no experience doing this and then some of the results and like the transformation that they saw through the work that you did with them.
Every single person is a storyteller. You literally cannot survive in this world. You cannot create a business. You can't even just operate in the world without telling stories. We tell stories every day whether we realize it or not. Like if you're starting a business, you have to pitch it whether it's on social media or not to potential customers. Whether it's over Zoom or something else or you're pitching it to investors or you're telling stories to family members or loved ones, you're telling stories every single day. So, we're just talking about applying storytelling to these platforms. So, to your direct question, um, one example, um, is perfect. Her name is Dr. Erin Ants. She goes by little misdiagnosed. Um, she predominantly focuses on TikTok. When she came to us, very successful hand surgeon. Um, but she had no clue about social media. She didn't even have an account, starting at zero followers, zero views, and she had many of the same concerns that you brought up. I don't want to be a Tik Tok influencer. I don't want to do dances. I don't want to do something that's not connected to who I am. I don't want to perform. I'm not an actor. So, we helped her design a format that's called Little Misdiagnosed. That's her Tik Tok handle. And basically, she shoots it on her iPhone. She does not have a camera crew sitting there. She shoots on her iPhone telling stories about what has happened in the operating room. So, starting with zero views, zero followers, zero experience, she's at over, I think, 830,000 followers in Tik Tok. She closed a book deal, a podcast deal, and now she's pitching a reality TV show. So, zero experience. And it's not like we spent years training her on social media. Um, I think she she reached 200,000 followers in the first two weeks of using this format. Uh, another great example of a business owner is Tanner Leatherstein. So he fell in love with the art of making leather goods at the age of 11. He created his first leather jacket when he was 11 years old. So by the time he grew up, he's like, I want to dedicate my life to this. So he created a leather goods company called Pagai where he creates like leather briefcases, wallets, handbags, belts, and things of that nature. But he sucked at social media. He struggled. He was at like 2,000 followers, and he couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong. And when we looked at it, he was just creating ads. He's just like, "Hey, here's my wallet. Buy my wallet." Things of that nature. Which from a business owner's perspective, it kind of seems logical. Well, why don't I just promote my products on these channel uh on these channels that I have? The problem is when was the last time you ever logged onto social media saying I want to see a great ad? Never. Like you go in to be entertained, to engage. Uh so we helped him design a format called is it worth it? where he takes very expensive handcrafted uh handcrafted leather goods like a a $5,000 Chanel handbag and deconstructs it on screen and tells you whether it's worth the money that you paid for it. So that single format took him to over 2.5 million followers across his social media channels. One of his products alone sold a million dollars on Etsy because he learned to leverage his zone of genius. Like previously he wasn't comfortable. He was saying Brendan like I don't feel comfortable being on camera like I don't want to be an actor or any of those things. But when we helped you know helped him craft the format this is it worth it format. So again those are two examples people starting out at the same position that probably a lot of people watching this are they didn't really have the foundation they didn't have the knowledge and they didn't have the audience. But when they found their format, their structure that they could authentically express themselves and the stories they wanted to tell, everything else took off from there.
Yeah. Okay. This is so good and I'm I'm getting excited. So, the we're going to get into uh the five-step like framework that you have around uh formats, designing formats. And that was the thing that you you kind of you kept mentioning even in those stories like we helped him craft a format. We helped them design a format. But before we get into it, because you've studied over you spent over 15,000 hours studying different social media formats and you mentioned to me even when we spoke a couple of weeks ago, social media is survival of the best storyteller. And so I feel like we'd be doing the the person sitting at home a disservice if you didn't explain when you say storytelling because we hear that term so much, right? Storytelling, great stories. And the thing that clicked for me is I think for a lot of us, we don't actually know what great stories are. And so when you when you talk about storytelling and the threeact structure of great storytelling, can you share for people what that is?
Yeah. So, let's let's just talk about what a story is. You know, typically a meaningful story has some type of a setup, a problem, an attempt to resolve that problem, and a resolution. There's different mediums of how you tell a story. So you mentioned the three-act structure. So that's for movies. Nearly every movie of the past 100 years uses the exact same format, which is the threeact structure. Now, the three-act structure doesn't really apply to social media in most cases. But the reason I kind of bring it up is a lot of people as they approach social media, they think that social media is being the most original person, coming up with ideas that have never been done before or that social media is all about the best idea. The reality is social media is all about structure, repeatable structure that has proven success and learning those structures and coming up with ideas within them. We've mentioned the word format many times. Let me just give a few quick examples so people can kind of visualize it. So one format that I guarantee everybody has seen is Man Street. So that format, what is it? Well, you approach a random stranger in the street and a story unfolds. So you have several of the top creators in the world right now using it. School of hard knocks. They go approach random strangers on the street and ask them how did you make your first million dollars? You know, how did you become so successful? So the story unfolds through learning this entrepreneurs journey. Then you have somebody like Simon Squib in the UK who's approaching people and asking them what is your dream? So he's using that format to tell stories about people and what their dreams are and what are the things that are holding them back and preventing them from achieving th those dreams. Then there is you know a friend in and we've done some work with him Alex Stemp who's a photographer who's built an audience of 20 million people using this. He approached random strangers on the street and offers them a professional photo shoot. So the story unfolds of this person, this cameraman approaching this person and seeing their kind of hesitation of not feeling really self-confident about who they are or maybe they feel overly self-confident about who they are and this story and journey about this photo session that's taking place and seeing the end result. Now the fascinating thing is you mentioned in our previous conversation I said history repeats itself. The first time that format was used in video form was 1956 for the first season of the Tonight Show. So this format that generates billions and billions of views every single month that's used by some of the top creators in the world was used close to 75 years ago and it still works today. So, the reason I bring up those examples is the best creators in the world are leveraging structures that have been proven to um have success time and time again.
I want to zoom out for just a second because I can even like hear it as you're speaking because you're you're so correct, right? Simon Squib has built a following of millions of people essentially asking the same question repeatedly in different context in different places around the world. He he found a format and it's taken him to millions of followers and probably millions of dollars and brand deals and all of the things. Here's my question though. for every Simon Squib or School of Hard Knocks or whatever the format is and the person that's uh successfully utilized it is thousands of tens of thousands of other creators who are using the same format and not getting that level of success. They're getting I don't know a few hundred views. And so given that you've studied 15,000 hours of social media just content for you, what is the defining like the the difference between the person that does the man on the street interview and it's incredibly successful versus, you know, I take my camera and a microphone out this afternoon and go into New York and start asking people a question, maybe even the same question that Simon asked them but it doesn't perform to the same extent like what is what is that difference between high performing and low performing within the same format.
So it's it's a great question and that's what we spend all of our time doing is people and I'm I'm I'm so glad you brought it up is people only get exposed to the tip of the iceberg. they get exposed to the top 1% to succeed versus the 99% that fail. And the the the macro level answer is it's all about the execution of that format and the way that you tell the stories through the through that. If you want, I can actually I I just literally went into our research library and we researched Simon Squib. I can literally pull up the findings and we can break down why it's successful if you want to kind of see see that.
Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's jump into it. Okay. So, I always tell my friends who are startup founders to remember one thing. Enterprise clients have to see your security documents before they'll work with you. The problem is is that security is so confusing and it's hard. You have to understand terms like sock 2 and access controls. You have to spend hours finding and organizing documents. Which is why I'm excited to tell you about the sponsor of today's episode, Vanta. VA automates the security and compliance process. So you'll never have to learn about all of the security terms or spend a whole day looking for documents. You can just use Vant. And they remove all of the manual work and uncertainty of security. It gives startup founders instant credible proof of security. That way you can build, you can close bigger deals and scale without compliance slowing you down. And so if you're serious about the business that you're building, compliance isn't where you want to take a risk. And that's why you see fast growing companies like Ramp and Writer using Vant as we speak because they don't want to worry about deals getting blocked by compliance. And so if you're a startup founder, go to the link in the description below to try out Vanta today or go to vanta.com/calum to get $1,000 off. That's vanta.com/calum to get $1,000 off. Thank you to Vanta. Let's get back to the show. Okay, so I'm going to share a story from my early days of building my company. So back when I started, I wanted a website for the show. But when I tell you building one was such a struggle. I would watch design tutorials. I tried copying other people's websites that I was inspired by. None of it worked. And the worst part is it took hours, sometimes weeks, for me to do this, and it didn't look any good. And that's why I'm excited to share with you the sponsor of today's episode, our friends at Hostinger. And Hostinger makes it so easy to build a beautiful looking website. All you have to do is you open their website builder. You describe how you want your website to look and within minutes you will have a beautiful looking website. And after you launch your site, let's just say you wanted to start sending emails. You can also use Hostinger for that. You don't have to subscribe to a new email software. So Hostinger has emails, automations, websites, and AI tools all built into one. And so you're probably thinking, "Okay, that sounds good, but there's no way that I can afford all of this." Well, that's actually the best part about using Hostinger. The price is designed for people who are just starting out. And so, if you have a business idea or let's just say that you're looking to build a beautiful personal website, go to the link in the description and start using Hostinger today. Thank you to Hostinger for partnering with us on this. Let's get back to it.
So, so this is a a process that we use um called um gold, silver, and bronze. So, so basically what we do with this is essentially we take like for Simon Squib we we focus on um we focus specifically on one channel. So we're looking at Simon Squib on YouTube shorts in specific and we have a process called gold silver bronze. So basically what we do is the gold if you look at the number of views here the gold is about 6 million to 43 million views. The bronze is about you know in the hundreds of thousands or the the silver's in the hundreds of thousands and the bronze is you know 100,000 below. So even like Simon Squib, one of the top people on the planet, he has one video that does 43 million views in the mana tree format, but he has another that only did 22,000, one that did 19,000, 17,000. So what's the difference? Because that's to your point is most people are stuck in that. So the best way to learn is to watch and understand, well, what's the difference between these gold versus what's between these these bronze? So we have a team of researchers that'll spend literally 15 to 20 hours going through this and cross-analyzing. And what we look for is performance drivers. So these are things that drive performance up and drive performance down. So we have a whole library of performance drivers and each format has its own unique DNA to it. So for this specific uh use case of man on the street for Simon Squib, we have the hook which is the first few seconds viewer connection. like how how well does that video connect with the viewer on the other side of the screen? The generalist principle, meaning how accessible is it to the average person? Can the average person understand what Simon is talking to the the individual person about? Like it's not super niche. It's more accessible to the general population. Perspective shift. How good is this video of shifting the viewers's perspective, giving them an aha moment as they're watching the video and then providing value? How much value does this provide? But then we get to the findings. So, in terms of like the hook, we break down that in, you know, high performing videos, Simon opens up with a high stakes situation. It's usually um by immediately offering the passer by something exciting or enticing like you've seen him like, "Hey, do you want my book or here's £10,000?" In low performing videos, he he doesn't create high st a high stakes scenario where he's he's not offering money or the idea or is not there. Like a lot of the high stakes is maybe it's not money, it's about, hey, will you quit your job? So there needs to be this level of high stakes in the hook that grabs and holds the viewers's attention. Then we go through like viewer connection. The higher performing videos don't feel obviously staged because the strangers reacts to Simon's offer in a genuine way. Like you can tell when Simon has pre-staged an interaction versus um not pre-staged. Like sometimes he'll work with celebrities and other people like that where he's pre-programming it. So you need to have like this natural genuine connection with the person that he's approaching because otherwise it will fall flat.
Does that make sense?
It does. And you know what I think the the insight that you gave is a really valuable one which is a lot of the times we look at like a a Simon Squib or a Gary Vee or Alex H or Mosie and we fixate on the video that does the millions of views not seeing that that same creator who has the same talent, the same media team, the whole thing, they actually have videos that do a fraction of that performance. And so you know what? cuz I actually have one of uh Simon's videos. It got 142 million. Uh it got a lot of views and I we can play it so that people can actually see cuz some of the things that you've just mentioned about stakes um about being unexpected, about viewer connection, you can actually see directly in this video. They executed it. But before we do, I just wanted to share the first two steps of your framework so the person sitting at home can follow along. Um, step one was to study what's working. Um, and you find kind of these outliers. And so one question that I had for you in when you say uh study what's working and you find these like high engagement pieces, these pieces of content, are you purely looking at views or are there other metrics that when you're looking at a video, you're like, "Okay, this is something that we should actually learn from. This is what we consider a high performer."
Great question. So, so again, like step one is is making this mindset shift is we're constantly using social media from a passive perspective. So, we just want to make this this mindset shift like we're going to be an expert in social media. So, what we do is as we're searching through social media, we look for videos that have a lot of views. Like that's the first aspect. Like one thing that we do look at is like what's the view to engagement ratio because we just want to make sure that we're not looking at video that has a lot of paid behind it. Not to say that that's bad like like that somebody's using paid advertising. It's more so can we learn from this video? Can we learn from this creator? So the first aspect is number of views. We look at the view to engagement ratio to make sure it's in line. But the most important thing is once we find that video, we click on the creator's profile and then we look are they using that same format, that same structure consistently because we don't want to look for trends. Trends are fleeting. We can't become masterful storytellers through trends. There's a lot of talk about trends. Why can't we become a masterful storyteller? Well, let's think about it in the analogy of like we want to um we want to become a we want to master musical instrument like we want to become a musical prodigy or maybe we just want to do it for our own kind of fun. So if we were to take the trend approach it would look like this. Week one, we play the saxophone and the saxophone. And then no, week two, we're going to move to the drums. And then week three, we're going to move to the guitar. Week four, we're going to move to the flute. Like, are you really ever going to get good at playing a musical instrument if you're constantly switching the music instrument? No. And that's the trap of trends is you're kind of switching from trend to trend to trend to trend without mastering the art of storytelling. So what we look at is when we find that video that has millions of views, we click on the creator's profile and see, have they used that format consistently. So for example, Simon Squib, oh this video has 100 million views on it. You click on his channel, oh yeah, he's using that format over and over and over again. This is somebody that we can learn from.
You know what's interesting because you mentioned um one of the people that you worked with uh earlier on, I think it was Dr. Nancy and you mentioned that once she started using that format, she got like a few hundred thousand followers in weeks. And the key thing is like you want the repeatable structure. Like you want the thing that you can do over and over again. It's not just a flash in the pan. And so you know what because I I want to play a few of these uh videos and but before we do one of the step two that I took from your framework was uh you once you found the format that works and you studied what's worked it's you analyze and you look at these qualitative elements and you listed a bunch of them right the generalist principle the viewer connection the unexpected the stakes and so I'm going to go ahead head and actually play one of uh the really high performing Simon Squib video and we can kind of just jam on it together.
Awesome.
Excuse me. Do you guys have a dream?
Nobody has a dream.
I do have a dream.
What is it?
I want to be a singer.
Okay, sing.
Oh no, I'm shy. That's why my dream hasn't become reality.
9.4 million people follow me online. Last video got 65 million views. This is your chance to get noticed, get followers, and your dream to begin. So see
I'm shy. Me, too.
I'm even more shy now that you're putting me on spot. But if you have just us million followers,
9.4
9.4.
I'm known on social media as well, Melissa Sandival. So, hopefully that works.
Yeah. Yeah. But everyone wants to hear it. That's how they're going to like now. Why not?
I'm not the best person for this. I'm so sorry.
You're so good at this. You're a singer.
I desperately want to hear you sing as well personally. You're really good at this.
I know that's your destiny, so why not just do it? Yeah, this is a great video. Uh, how many views did this get?
142 million.
Okay. Can we do something where um can we just start playing it again and I'll tell you to stop it because I want to kind of break down like certain parts of it. But this is an amazing video because like on the surface level it's like well how did it generate that many views? It looks pretty simple but there's so much going on. So let's let's just start watching and I'll tell you when to stop.
Excuse me. Do you guys have a dream?
Okay, stop it there.
I do have a dream.
What is it?
I want to be a singer.
Okay, sing.
Oh, no. I'm shy.
When you first off, this format, if done right, there is immediate tension built in that he is approaching this person on the street and you do not know what's going to unfold. So, and a lot of the the performance drivers that we talk about are happening at a subconscious level. So, number one, he's approaching a random stranger. We do not know what's going to happen and he's shoving a microphone in their face. The other amazing thing throughout this entire video is he is keep he keeps pushing her. He's creating tension throughout the video. Oh, I'm a singer. Okay, sing. Oh, I'm shy. Like that creates tension. On top of it, when we talked about uh remember we talked about the the viewer connection.
Well, we connect with that individual. How many of us have felt that like, oh, I'm too shy to do something. I have this dream. I'm really good at it. But if somebody's shoved the camera in my face in in a microphone, well, I'm too shy to do that. So with this girl, like people can identify with this. And that's also where the generalist principle comes in is is people can connect with a person that is afraid to perform. Like how many people have stage fright? not they don't have to be a singer but maybe they they don't feel comfortable uh you know speaking in class or speaking in a boardroom or speaking on stage. This is the general uh principle personified by this raw kind of experience of we know we're brilliant. We know we have the ability to really you know shine with our skill set but when it really comes down to it we get scared. So, I want to watch a little bit more of this, but the big thing that I want you to kind of watch is watch how he keeps pushing her and pushing her and building that tension, building that tension, building that tension because that ultimately keeps us around of like, is he actually going to get her to perform?
Because even like I think the next part is she just tries to like cop out and say, "Oh, just check on my account." Where most interviewers would stop there, but he's like, "No, we're doing this pushing." So, just I want people to kind of watch that part because it's really important to this performance.
Yeah. You know, I I I love that point and and one thing that I would add cuz I noted it down as as we were playing it. He keeps raising the stakes.
That's raising the stakes. There's 9.4 million people watching you. The last video got 65 million views. That, like you said, that's raising the stakes even more. It's creating more tension that wants us to to to further uh watch what happens. And there is this perspective shift that happens through him doing this of allowing the audience to picture themselves of what dream am I holding back from? And that's the beauty of this format. And and and Simon's a brilliant guy. He's an ad creative guy and he's doing this intentionally. But what he's he's allowing the audience to do as they watch this is to picture themselves and to think about what dream am I holding back on? Am I gonna end up like this girl where I have the ability to reach 9.4 million people and pass on it or would I be the person that would take advantage of it? Yeah. And you know, you know what I thought was so perfect to your point? Even that final line that he ends on, why not just do it? It's almost like it goes from him speaking to her to it feels like he's speaking to the audience almost
like the the person that's sitting at home that has Why not just do it? It's like the perfect ending
one 10,00%. And that's the perspective shift performance driver that we were talking about is is you have this shift in the viewer's mindset that allows them to take away value, you know, because again, like a lot of this stuff, if you see this, it's it's not like Simon finishing it and saying, "Well, this is the value this video provided, you know, this is why I did it." A lot of this stuff is nuanced. A lot of this stuff is is happening on a on a subconscious level. And that's why we have to pay so much attention in that step one to really kind of dive in. And then in step two is start analyzing these these things like I showed you with the gold, silver, bronze to really spot these elements.
You know, it's so good. I I I want to share uh a couple more videos because I actually think this process that you do is so valuable for someone to recreate at home of like play the video and freeze it like pause and analyze these different elements according to the criteria that you gave. And so the next video that I want to play is actually someone that you worked with. Um, she was like a hair stylist, like a hairdresser, and she starts doing this style of content and millions and millions of views follow.
Sorry.
Look at the
Stop.
Isn't that amazing?
What? My hair is so curly.
Which is also awesome.
My hair has never looked like this.
How? And that's without a scrunching. If you notice, we haven't scrunched.
Yeah,
please. Why is it scrunching?
Bro,
you want to kind of just give the context first even of like how this came about, the fi the format, just the whole thing?
Yeah. So, so Regina is a a fascinating story. So, she's she's an entrepreneur like most people and you know, she was a hair stylist for another salon, but she had this dream of opening her own salon. So she moved to a new city, um, opened up her own salon, but because she was in a brand new city, like she had to create clients from scratch. So she was struggling to get by. She was literally weeks from shutting the door. And she was trying everything from the perspective of like how do I make social media work for for me? And that's where this um this format came about. This is uh like a client transformation format where you like one of the most powerful things that you can do um in this format and we also saw it in in Simon's man on the street is the reaction of the other person. And the biggest thing that drives this format and the success with Regina Roth is to show these authentic reactions to the work that she does. And what does that do from a viewer's experience perspective? Well, like we love to see people this happy, this reactive to it. And in here, we want to kind of you you if you could just you don't have to play it, but move it to the first um title card where we have the um the captions on screen. First time client's reaction to her wet hair. Look at her facial expression. Like you're like, "Oh my god, this woman is so happy. I want to see why that is." And we can again experience this ourselves. Like we all go to get our haircut. I would love to have this reaction with with my barber cutting it. I'm probably not going to have that reaction, but I can still connect with the viewer of that transformational experience versus like uh in one of my talks, I'll compare it to like a Pantene video, like one of the biggest beauty products in the world. And what do they have there? They have a model like acting and dancing around and things of that nature. But we're seeing this transformation, this reaction of this transformation happen in real time and connecting with the person on the other side of the screen. And again, this is simple. This is just you could shoot this on your iPhone. This doesn't like you don't need like a big camera c or setup or anything like this.
I've been thinking about this with uh content, which is there's this quality with with great videos and high performing videos. There's this quality of of authenticity like you can actually feel it as a viewer and you saw it exactly with the the Simon Squib one, right? Like you can tell that was in the moment she was caught off guard. That was her real reaction. And it's the same here. And it's like this um it's actually what makes the structure great because you have the structure and the structure is consistent. The format is consistent and it allows this space for these like brilliant authentic human moments to take place and it feels like those are what is captivating. Those are what is sticky and gets people almost like addicted to the content like keep watching like on the edge of our seat.
Yeah. The the the interesting thing about that is um a lot of people kind of feel like well I need to have polished production. I it needs to look beautiful. I need to have the best camera. I need to have the best lighting. But the interesting thing is about where we're at today as human beings and society is we consume so much content that we are all professional content consumers because we consume more content than ever before. So literally as we're scrolling through subconsciously within a second or even less our subconscious mind is making the decision for us whether we're going to watch this video or not. So, what happens when we're exposed to high production value or polished or actors or things of that nature? Well, it triggers in our subconscious, this is going to be an ad. This is going to be somebody trying to sell me something. And again, as we talked about earlier, who want logs onto social media saying, I want to see a great ad. You don't. So, even if you don't know the content, you're making a split-second decision on the subconscious level that I am going to move to the next video versus this one. It feels authentic. This feels real. You want to see this this this is not an act. This is not an actor. This is and it's not like super high production value. So, it draws you into that authenticity, you know, before before we get to the the final video because this is the question that I would have, right? Which is I start with step one, which is I'm studying what's working. Then I'm doing what you and I have just been doing. I'm playing videos. I'm watching it back. I'm studying it frame by frame. I'm picking out those qualitative elements. And then step three is almost now I have to come up like what's the format that I'm going to do and then start brainstorming my own hooks. And so when you're working with clients or when you're, you know, you're talking with business owners or people that want to start building their brand online, what is the process you go through to help them decide like, okay, cool. I get why Simon Squib, like I get why it's working. I know that it's the man on the street interview format. How do they make the decision I'm going to do this format? or when you're working with Regina, it's like, "Okay, we're going to do client transformation." Like, how can someone find the format that they're meant to go all in on?
It's a great question. So, there's there's two highlevel questions that I, you know, because when we match clients with formats, we go through a deep matchmaking process. Um, you know, we spend hours kind of figuring that out with clients. For the individual out there doing this on their own, there are two questions that I would ask as I'm trying to pick a format. Number one, what resources do I have available to me? Like if you like Simon Scrib, Man of the Street, he has a cameraman with him. You know, it's not like that could be shot on an iPhone with a microphone and things of that nature, but the way that he does it, he has a cameraman with him. Now, there's other man on the street formats like Hunter Prosper where you can just shoot it yourself. But the reason I say that is I don't want people to extend themselves beyond the resources they have. You don't need to do that. If you just have an iPhone and you don't have the funds to invest in a cameraman or other camera equipment, then find a format that matches the resources. Literally, Dr. Aaron Nance, as we mentioned before, she's shooting on her iPhone herself. The second question that I ask or tell people to to ask for themselves is what excites them like what feels authentic to them. This is why we spent 15,000 hours. We've analyzed over 300 of these formats because I never want to to put a client in a position where I say you need to do this because it's successful and they don't want to do it because it will come off on screen if you don't enjoy it. either a you're going to quit and burn yourself out because you don't enjoy it or b it's going to show up on camera and the and your level of of execution with it. So, I know those are pretty simplistic questions, but that's about as is, you know, as much as you need to kind of start with to to to really select the format to to um to tackle and to start out with.
Yeah. that that second question of what excites you is such an important one. I'm curious if you can take us behind the scenes for a second because you obviously you worked with Regina on this uh on this format that she's successfully utilized. Was that actually so it was almost like a feeling like it was she saw these style of videos and she was like this is the one that speaks to me just on a personal level. I'd be excited to create this
because this is what she does. This is what drives her passion. She loves to transform clients. This is why she got into the business. So for her to stick a a camera in front of that experience, this is already naturally happening for her. She's just putting it on camera. So that's like why it it deeply connects or we mentioned earlier Tanner Leatherstein with the is it worth it format. He loves leather. He loves digging in to understand what's the quality of a Chanel or a Prada or these high-end uh companies charging astronomical prices. He would be doing that on his own if he wasn't sticking a camera in front of himself. So that's how a lot of times these things can come about.
Yeah. No, it's so good. It's so good. um you know for the final video uh I actually want to show one of my friends video and I'll give the quick context which is he's not a content creator not an influencer not a marketer he runs like an events uh company in New York and recently he sends me a text maybe a couple of weeks ago and he's telling me about uh the content that he's been doing on Tik Tok that's going crazy. He's getting like tens of thousands of followers in the span of a few weeks. And he's recording all of this from his apartment with just his phone. And so I'm going to play uh really the video that like started it all off for him. It's got 1.4 million views on Instagram. I think it's got even more on Tik Tok. Uh I'm just going to play it and we'll get your reaction in lifetime.
But as you're pulling that up, I think you said something really interesting. Your friend that we're about to watch content is not an influencer. He doesn't see himself as a content creator. And the big message that I want to share with everybody is you don't need to be. Don't you don't need to think that you have to transform yourself into a content creator. You have to transform yourself into an influencer. Like just focus on the stories that you want to tell. Like we just watched Regina and she just put a camera in front of what she already does. So I want to kind of like shift the mindset a little bit and thinking that you have to be those things because you don't have to.
Yeah, you're you're so right. And I think the other thing because you mentioned you mentioned two things. You said uh it's a question of resources and this is when you're deciding your format. It's a question of resources then it's a
question of what excites you. And again, with him, he's recording all of this from his apartment. Like, there are no resources. Like, he's got the microphone, he's got the camera from his iPhone, and his apartment, and that's it.
So, I'm not going to play the full thing because it's quite long, but I'll play like the first, uh, like 45 seconds or so.
"The hottest job in tech right now is not what you think. It's not coding anymore. And if you feel like you missed the boat because you're non-technical, then this is for you. Stick around till the end and I'll tell you the one skill that's becoming more valuable than ever in the AI era."
So, here's what's happening. Netflix just posted a communications job that pays up to $775,000 a year. OpenAI has a comm's job that's listed at over $400k a year, and Anthropic tripled the size of their comm's team, and each role is paying more than $200k a year. The average communications director job in America pays about $106k a year, but these tech companies are paying way more than that.
Why is that? The reason they are is because AI broke something. It made content so easy to create that everybody sounds the same. LinkedIn is full of slop that everyone's eyes glaze over. And Sam Altman even says there's an AI accent now. Everyone feels fake. And so now there's this premium on people who can break through the noise and sound human.
"Can you play the first 10 seconds again?"
And this is a process I do too, is I go back and sometimes watch at least like the the first 5 to 10 seconds to get a sense of the hook. But let's watch it, the first 10 seconds again.
>> "The hottest job in tech right now is not what you think. It's not coding anymore. And if you feel like you missed the boat because you're non-technical, then this is for you."
He's, he's setting a very clear, um, expectation of what he's delivering in this video and the value associated with it. Like, just the last part of like, if you felt like you missed the boat on on coding, well, then this can be for you. And then he's also saying, make sure to stick around because I'm actually going to provide this valuable nugget at the end of the video.
Now, he is using retention mechanisms right there by saying that last thing, but he's not doing it where he sounds like he's trying to trick the audience. He's actually setting it up to say, "Hey, I'm going to provide some real value here to what you can potentially look at from a career perspective."
In addition, from a generalist perspective, a generalist principle, this video could be interesting to somebody that actually wants to know what it's like to be in a career like this, or just people want to understand like, well, how are these people making this much money? Like, because people love to kind of understand how how much money people make and what are they having to do with that. So, I think he's doing a brilliant job in the hook and setting up a clear promise of value. And I assume if we watch the entire video, I mean, we watched like a minute of it, and he is delivering on that value. And I assume by the end, he's delivering the full value and the promise that he set in this initial expectation.
>> Yeah. Yeah. You actually pointed out a few things that I didn't even, uh, notice. Um, when you mentioned the generalist principle and the fact that it's like, people, we actually just have this curiosity in how much, uh, how much people earn from different roles. And so he gives like these specific numbers for specific roles. And so it like builds on this curiosity. You want to know like, okay, how much are they making and why are they making that amount?
>> I think there's also part of it, there's also part of it of people are probably watching this and thinking, is this something that I could potentially learn to do, you know? Um, so, yeah. So I, I think he's doing a lot of really smart things in terms of setting up the expectation, the promise of value here. Um, he's, he's having, he's, he's definitely has a perspective shift, um, integrated into this too, of of shifting the narrative. I forgot what he said in the beginning, but he says like, people think it's this, but it's actually this. It was something related to AI. I don't remember what it was, but that's he's delivering a perspective shift, which is also a performance driver as well.
>> I'm, I'm curious, when you, when you work with clients, do you typically recommend that they would script something like this? Because even when you talk about perspective shifts, and he's someone that is pretty intentional, it feels, with like different parts of the video, is that, but then also at the same time, as you're watching him, you can see him like looking around. It kind of does also feel very much like he's saying this in the moment. I'm curious your perspective on scripting versus, you know, maybe you just have like a general message in mind and then you're just riffing. What, what, where do you kind of fall on that side of things?
>> It depends on the person and the personality. Um, you should definitely at a bare minimum understand what drives performance. Like, we, we were looking at the the spreadsheet earlier. We, how we were breaking down, um, Simon's thing. Like, you, at least at a bare minimum, have to understand why the format works before you step in front of the camera. Some people really prefer scripted, and there's great teleprompter apps that you can throw a script in and script it out. Um, or you can just outline it. The big thing is, do you know the beats that you need to hit in order for it to work? Like, for the performance drivers, again, each format has its own DNA of performance drivers, but like, if the format requires a perspective shift, if it, you know, most, almost all formats require some form of generalist principle, tension building, do you understand those principles? If you do, then you can jump in front of the camera and just try and record it. Um, for others, they, they need a full script and they can read off the teleprompter. And you can get really good at reading off the teleprompter naturally if you just practice it, or maybe you just outline it. So, you know, I'm going to say this first, this second, this third, this fourth, this fifth. So, you make sure that you're hitting those beats. So, I mean, I would typically recommend in the beginning, at least scripting it. You don't, it doesn't mean you have to read it off the teleprompter, but at least get in the flow of understanding what the structure and the beats need to be in order to have success.
>> So, step three that I had in your framework was brainstorm your own hooks. And then step four, I actually want to do both of them together, was choose the single idea you're going to produce, one hook, one piece of content. Never muddle it with multiple big ideas. Can you just take us behind the scenes of, okay, so I've, I've found the format that I want to create around. I know the videos that have worked. I'm starting to now script it out, as you said, is typically best to do in the beginning. And that's what I've been doing recently with my Instagram content is I'll script it out. In terms of like, take us behind the scenes of brainstorming your own hooks and how, how much should someone almost digress away from like a hook that they know has worked for someone else? Like, how much should this hook process be creative? Like, I'm purely coming up with something based off my own instinct and what I think works versus almost one-to-one just copying someone else's hook of a high-performing video? Like, take us behind the scenes of that brainstorming hook process.
>> So, number one, you have to start with what the research tells you when you're doing that analysis of the high performers versus the low performers. You have to follow what you learn to dictate how you approach the hook and how you approach the idea. Now, the reason that coming up with the hook, coming up with the idea is step three instead of step one is because most people make that mistake. Most people are starting with the idea. And if they're starting with the idea, that means they don't have a format or they don't know what a format is. And if you start with the idea, you're just going to be in this world where you're throwing stuff against the world, against the wall time and time again and not figuring out the science of like how to consistently generate wins.
Now, in terms of hooks, it really depends on the format. Now, for example, man-on-the-street, would I recommend using Simon's "What is Your Dream?" No. I wouldn't use that same hook of that. But I would learn from Simon of all the things that we've thought about here, like I'm cont. So I, and this is a big lesson of like authenticity. I tried man-on-the-street three times in London and I hated it because I'm an introvert. Like, for me, it's difficult. Uh, but I'm, I'm testing it again. I'm going to be testing it again because I found a guy out here that will actually take the burden off of me having to approach random strangers and bring them for me to interview. So, right now, we've spent a few weeks like really dialing in what hook will work for that man-on-the-street, um, for, uh, you know, our test shoots. So, when we come up with ideation, typically we open up a spreadsheet and we'll come up with 10, 15, 20 different hooks and we'll rank them. So, we'll, we'll have a column that, um, has all the hooks and then we'll have a column that's a ranking from one to five. And number one is the best, meaning we're going to do it. Five is the worst, we're not going to do it. So, you want to kind of brainstorm as much as humanly possible within that. Um, however, there's other formats. Like once you dial them in, like Tanner's "Is It Worth It" format, it's pretty easy to come up with ideas because you, one week it's a Chanel handbag, the next it's a Prada, the next it's, you know, a Gucci belt. Like, there's some formats that kind of allow it to be a lot easier. Um, now, there's some formats that you can just take like the hook that somebody else has used and then just bolt on your kind of, um, your original take on it. It just kind of depends on the format and the structure. Um, but again, I let kind of the research kind of guide us in that process. So it starts with the research, but then you're also depending on the video sometimes experimenting even outside of just what the hook was on the high-performing video.
And there's, there's one thing that you mentioned, I thought it was, uh, which I, which I liked. Um, you come up with like this list of hooks and you'll actually kind of grade them one through five. Can you just talk people through what is your criteria for a great hook? Like, when you're giving it the grading, what is the points that's making you say, "Okay, this is an amazing hook. This hook, we're never going to do this. This is actually like a one out of five." Like, what is the criteria for that?
>> So, a lot of times it's going to be the performance drivers of the format that dictates it. Um, but we've covered, um, quite a few that we'll consider. Like, the generalist principle is like, is this video going to speak to my niche audience and provide value, but at the same time speak to the general audience and and generate value? Is it setting a very clear expectation of what the person is going to get from that video? And is allowing us to set it up the video for a strong perspective shift or that aha moment in there? Because again, you know, when we, when we're, when we're thinking about the other, and this is another big, big thing that I want people, um, to write down, is a performance driver we, we think about a lot is effect on viewer. Most people, as they're creating content or or thinking about hooks or ideas, they're thinking about themselves. They're thinking about, what do I want to achieve? Well, I want to get somebody to view this video. I want to get somebody to follow my account. I want them to click on the link. I want them to buy my products and services. The minute that you're in the "I, I, I" eye mode, you're disconnecting from the effect that you should be focused on with the viewer. So, think about the viewer on the other side of the screen. And you did a beautiful job in our, in our pre-in. You are laying out who is this interview going to be for and what is the the value that we're going to drive for the audience. You're thinking about the viewer on the other side of the screen, where 99% of people when they're designing content, they're thinking about themselves. So, when you're designing that hook, you're designing that idea, like actually imagine the other person. What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to think? What do you want them to take away? And design the idea and the hook with that in mind.
>> You know what? We, I think it's such a good point and we speak about, I remember someone telling me this pretty early on in my journey. They said, Callum, you know, there's content creators that get a lot of views but don't actually make much money. And then there's content creators that, you know, they get views, but maybe not even as much as the the most famous or viral people, but they actually make revenue off this. Like, they actually make significant sums of money and revenue from this. And I think one of the things that I've seen is the the profitable brand has a clear person in mind. Like, there's a clear viewer avatar customer in mind. And I think you just, you just hit on that point. One thing that I, because I think it was really important in step four where you say, choose the single idea you're going to produce, one hook, one piece of content. Never muddle it with multiple big ideas. Especially that last part of like, never muddle it with multiple big ideas. Can you share with people, 'cause I think that could go under the radar. Can you share with people why that's so important of like, just have one single idea for a video?
>> Yeah. So, number one, when we brainstorm, we come up with as many ideas as possible. But as we move to actually producing content, one of the big mistakes that people make early on is batch producing content. And and and why is that why is that a challenge? Why does that hold people back from success? Well, the biggest things is it, it stagnates learning. So, if we think about the analogy of like, let's say we are baking a recipe for a new cake and we create 10 cakes of the same recipe and we put all 10 in the oven and we pull the first one out and then we eat, we take a test bite of it and it's too dry. Well, what do we do? We can't fix the other nine that are in there. And it's the same thing with goes with content. If we sit down and produce 10 pieces of content, we post the first one and we see that it's not working and we diagnose, oh man, I, the perspective shift wasn't there, or I didn't push the tension enough, or the generalist principle was was missing. Well, you can't go back and fix those other nine posts because they're already done. So, what do most people do? Is they post them anyway. So it takes them away from the the the the opportunity to learn with each video. Now, I'm not saying for the rest of creating content on social media, you can never batch produce. But in the, in the beginning, when you are learning, I just want you to slow it down. Crawl before you run. Create one video at a time. And when you post that video, one of two things is going to happen. It's either going to perform or it's not going to perform. If it doesn't perform in the model, the five-step process that we're talking about, and this goes into, you know, step number five, is there's no opportunity loss. You know, what we do? We take the video that we produced and we put it side by side with the the high performer and the other video and we watch them side by side and we determine like, if we were to do man-on-the-street and you went out there and you did man-on-the-street and you followed everything that we talked about and it didn't perform, instead of just looking at Simon's video, we would put Simon's video on one side of the screen, your video on the other side of the screen, and we watch them side by side and determine what did we miss? What was off? And because we do that exercise, the next time around, we create the piece of content, the next video we create, we take those learnings with us. And if the video performs, now we know why it performed. 99% of people that have that one video go viral, you know, one video out of 50 or 100 or 200, they don't know why it went viral. Thus, they can't reproduce it. And that's why we have that five-step process. Is we want to take in step four, one video at a time, and with that one video at a time, we move to step five, is to analyze that video and improve and learn.
>> You know what you just, um, 'cause you just mentioned it, the step five of like test and learn, and it's this, this iterative process, like you're getting better over time. The one question that it was like, it was screaming out to me is, and, and it's a thing in business as well, right? Is like, we have to iterate, we have to try things, you have to improve and get better. There's also just a point in time where you should quit and try something else. What is the, even when you're working with clients, what is the marker? What is the point in time where you're like, "This might just not be the format and we're going to go to and try a new format"? Like, what is the signal for you to make that shift?
>> Yeah. The first thing I look at is, are you continuing to enjoy the process of making the content? If you've lost the joy of using that format, then it's time to move on. If you're like, "It's just not working." Then you've got to ask yourself, why isn't it working? Is it not working because I'm just haven't executed it properly yet? If that's the case, I would stick with it unless maybe it's too advanced for you. Sometimes we have clients that that will go try and choose like an advanced for an advanced format. There's certain formats that are easier to execute than others. There's kind of levels to the game. So, there may be a a client that we just feel they need to kind of start with a simpler format to get their footing under them. The other thing that I look at too is, and this is why we, we do such a deep matchmaking process, is have they chosen a format that matches their personality? Because, you know, content creators and business owners, they have different personalities. Like, I can't do what Gary Vee does. I don't have his energy and charisma, you know, so I'm not going to choose a format like that. I'm not going to do Mr. Beast's formats because I don't have the resources that he has. So, you got to kind of make sure that you're you're matching, as we talked about, um, earlier, is the, is the, the resources, but just as important is like your personality. Are you able to kind of like pull off the format based upon your communication strengths and weaknesses?
>> You know what? To that point, because I'm actually, I'm experiencing this right now as we're building out Instagram and there's so many different formats that are like inspiring to me. I'm like, that would be cool to create, whether it's like the day-in-the-life style video, or like those very authentic talking head ones, or man-on-the-street interviews like Simon Squib in the beginning for the builder. Do you almost recommend that they experiment? You try a few, you do a few man-on-the-street interviews, and then you do some talking head stuff, and then you do like some podcasts, and try the, is that one of the things you recommend, or would you say actually find the one thing that speaks to you the most and go all in on that to begin? I'm just, I'm just curious where, where would you lean?
>> Yeah, so I think experimentation is okay. I would, I would say two or three at most because I don't want you to run into the music, um, instrument analogy where you keep switching and switching and switching and then you just have, you get into this habit of constantly switching. Um, I typically recommend one or two. Um, but again, if you're, if it's not feeling authentic, you should move on. But we can do a little experiment. We can offline, you, me, and my team. Let's go through your formats. Let's find some formats. We'll give you the research. You go out and execute them, and the next time we talk, we can reveal the results.
>> I love that. And we can make it interactive for the audience. We can, we can they can follow.
>> I did that with, I don't know if you know Chris Doe. Yeah. Chris has been on your podcast.
>> Yeah, I know Chris.
>> We did it with him and I pushed him to do man-on-the-street. Um, and we defined the hook of, "What is your hourly rate?" And like, some of his most recent videos are the highest performers he's had in in some time. So, it's, it's, it's a little fun thing that we can do is we can actually show it in action where we'll put it to practice with with your short-form content.
>> I love that. I'm going to message you about that.
>> Yeah, we'll do it.
>> I would love to do that. You know what? Before we, we get out of here, because you mentioned three of the people that you've worked with, and I want to talk money for a second. Is, you mentioned Dr. Nancy, you mentioned Tanner, and you mentioned Regina. With Dr. Nancy, when you started working with her, she got book deals, you know, tons of followers, all of this stuff. Tanner, I think you mentioned that, um, he made over a million dollars, was it on Etsy through his product?
>> Yeah, through a single product.
>> With Regina, it was like her business was nearly on the point of having to, uh, shut down or make a shift, and it revitalized what she was doing.
>> Well, she was booked. She told me she got booked out an entire year in advance.
>> Wow. Can you, because I'm sure,
>> I think that there's an important thing that I really want to deliver this to the audience because I think it's really important. We talked about money, and you talked about some people with a lot of followers and views don't generate a lot of money versus others with smaller amounts generate a lot of money. So, there's two things that I think would be really valuable for the audience to take away in terms of making money off of social media. Number one, your job in creating content on social media is not to sell something. It's to get people to know, like, and trust you. If people know, like, and trust you, they will want to buy from you. So, most people think, and this is the example of when Tanner first came to us, is like, I'm just going to create ads. I'm just going to talk about my product, and that's going to translate into sales. But the minute we transformed it to the "Is It Worth It" format, that's when his business exploded. So, just know that yes, the idea is we want to make you a lot of money off of social media, but the way that it's done is to get people to know, like, and trust you. And believe me, if people know, like, and trust you, they will find ways to buy your products and services. They will chase you down.
Number two, people ask me this all the time. What is the return on investment of social media? And my answer is, it depends because it's the size of your vision. I know people that have built billion-dollar businesses off of social media, and like you, I know people that, you know, have millions of followers that barely make six figures. Like, I'll give you an example. A friend of mine, um, uh, was a, a one of the original, uh, beauty influencers. Her name is, uh, Michelle Phan. She was the first ever YouTuber, uh, female YouTuber to hit a million subscribers. But she was, um, not the only beauty influencer out there. There's plenty of other beauty influencers on YouTube with massive followings. But she made a strategic decision. She says, "I understand the value of the asset that I have. I have millions of people that I've earned the attention and trust of. So instead of taking, you know, brand deals or just ad revenue, I'm going to take that asset and turn it into something meaningful." So, she built a company with a few of her friends called Ipsy, which was a quarterly subscription box that allowed, um, you know, females to test, uh, beauty products. That company, um, at one point was valued at over half a billion dollars. In three years, it was doing $125 million in revenue, where there was other beauty influencers, same audience size, same number of views, that was doing like low to mid-six figures. Now, there's nothing wrong with doing low to mid-mid six figures, but the reason I point that out is how much money you make off of social media is dictated by the foundation and how big your vision is. On top of it, you need to have the other principles in place like how good is your website, how good is your email strategy, how good is your retargeting, how good is your product, like these all these things come into play. Like, social media is a massive tool, and you can reach millions and millions of people with your message, but you need to have the other factors in to be able to capitalize off that attention. And it's like, people rip on the Kardashians, for example. You know, I don't know how many of them, I, I think at least Kylie and Kim are both billionaires. Why? Not because they're like, you know, have huge audiences. They do have huge audiences, but they were smart business women. They created great products and great brands and great businesses to maximize the potential of that audience. So that's really an important thing to think about as we, as we're talking about virality, we're talking about success, but we need to also think about how do we maximize the potential of that audience, of that attention when it comes in.
>> It's so good. Brendan, you've been, you've been amazing. And you know what? One, one thing before we, uh, before we get out of here, because I just want to make this so real for people. Like, I, I think it's so important that when you learn something, to reduce that gap between the learning and then taking your first piece of action. You know, and so I know that there's someone listening who was like, just about to give up on this whole content thing, you know, they were like, this isn't for me. I spoke to it, I, I spoke to it right in the beginning of this conversation. It's like, it's, I'm too late. It's not for me. I'm not a content creator. And so for that person, let's say going into the weekend, they have a free, I don't know, a free Saturday afternoon. They've got their phone, camera, and they've got some time. What would you say? I almost want to give you that, give them that, that first thing that they should go and do. Like, what should their first piece of action? They have some time this weekend. Brendan Kane, this is what you should do first.
>> The first thing I would do is is go on social media and study content. And and honestly, like, I, you know, I'll give a, if they go to hookpoint.com/callum, they can get a copy of my book, my latest book that details all this for free. Like, my recommendation is either go read that book before you create a piece of content, or just study content because like before anything, you need to study and understand before you go out and create. If you take that Saturday afternoon and just go start creating, I think you're going to do yourself a disservice. Unless maybe you saw a man-on-the-street and you understood everything that we talked about, or maybe you're a hair stylist and you understood everything that we talked about, then by all means, go out there and create it. But I just, the big thing is, I, I think to just try and learn as much as possible about what you're doing and trying to do before you do it. Because if you just go out there and just start filming, if you just go out there and just put a camera in your face or somebody else's face, it's going to be, I think, a struggle to get it right. Unless you take that underperforming video when it underperforms and you put it side by side with the reference and study it. But the biggest thing is, you got to kind of know what format you're doing and kind of what are the elements of that format so that you can go off and do an educated, um, attempt at that, that first video.
>> Yeah. Amazing. And we'll put the, we'll put the link in the description for people.
>> Yeah. Again, like I, like if anybody has read my books in the past, like they all have the same dedication. And the reason I do what I do is I believe there's people all over the world that can transform it in a positive way through their message, their product, or service. They just need that helping hand to understand this stuff. That's why like when I write books, I don't really care about the money. I give them away for free. I mean, I've given away so many copies of the books for free because I just want to help people. I want to see people succeed on this journey. And it also pains me when they, when they follow kind of some of this other advice from gurus on social media and, you know, get them astray. And to your point, is they get frustrated, like I'm too late, or this just doesn't work for me, or they think they have to be somebody that they're not.
>> You know what it was like? I, I came into this conversation with such a clear intention that I wanted to create one video of like, if someone only watched this interview and then they use that to go out and create and start building their following from zero to the point where it could like change their life, like lead to life-changing outcomes. Like, I wanted to have that conversation, like not the tactics, not all the gurus, not all of this stuff, just you just listen to this conversation, and, uh, Brendan, I think that delivered that.
>> And we can do that. And again, just to recap the five steps. Number one, just start using social media from an active perspective. Start identifying videos that have generated a lot of views. Click on the profile of the icon of the person. Go to their profile and see, are they using that same structure time and time again? Keep doing that and into step two until you find the format that matches you, your resources, and what excites you. Then analyze that format. Determine what's the difference between high performers and low performers. The third step is then create the ideas within that format. And then step four is creating one video at a time. And step five is learn and analyze each video that you create. So, if you go and watch this and maybe you want to rewatch this and follow those five steps, if you stick with it, one of the biggest things of any success in any industry or anything, and it, it applies to social media, is mindset. If you stick with it, if you follow the process, the process will work for you.
>> You know, you know what's so awesome? I'm going to be doing it in lifetime as well.
>> Yeah, we'll do it.
>> So.
>> We'll do it.
>> Yeah, this was great. Thank you so much, Brendan.
>> No, thank you. It was a pleasure connecting with you and everybody that that tuned in for this.
>> Awesome. So, if you enjoyed this conversation and you want to hear even more stories like this, then just click here. And also, my team is going to put some more videos that you can watch here. Thank you.