Transcription
If you want millions of followers on social media, you have to be boring. I built a personal brand with over 3 million followers and a business doing over $700,000 a month using a content system most people overlook because it's not flashy, but it's repeatable. In this video, I'm going to walk you through the structure of that system. Not the trends, not tactics, the underlying framework that makes boring content compound.
But first, you need to understand this. The best-selling books from a hundred years ago are still the best sellers today. And there's a reason for that. The reality is people chase the newest trend, the latest vlog format, sexy lifestyle content, but there's proven stuff that works and always works. Think and Grow Rich, how to win friends and influence people. These books are still bestsellers decades later. They're not creative or original. They're fundamental. And there's a pattern to what actually works with humans. So yeah, there's this pull to be the newest thing, but if you're actually trying to build something that lasts, certain stuff, the boring stuff, it just works. And that's what I'm about to show you.
So, let's start with the biggest myth you need to kill, the entertainment myth. When I first started building my business, I could have made lifestyle content, you know, me just traveling, working from beaches, you know, that whole digital nomad aesthetic. But here's what I noticed. That content gets likes, it gets views, but it doesn't get customers. The content that consistently drove revenue, systems breakdowns, operations workflows, and delegation frameworks, the boring stuff. This content, it's not necessarily sexy, and it wasn't going to win any creative awards. But people kept telling me I shared this with my whole team in Slack. That's when I realized views don't equal cash. Value equals cash.
Here's what most people miss. Virality is just noise, right? It's dopamine. You're not building a business. You're building an addiction to notifications. The affluence paradox is real. Chasing millions of views attracts beginners with no money. Targeting a specific affluent audience with high value content results in fewer views but significantly more cash. The content that makes money is about solving real problems, not getting applause. Before I post anything, I ask myself one question. Would someone pay $10,000 for this information? If the answer is no, it's entertainment, not growth. So before you post anything, I want you to ask yourself the same thing. Focus on high value content, systems, operations, frameworks, the stuff that actually helps people build and scale.
Part two, proofled content. When I looked at the content that made me the most money, it wasn't the polished stuff. It was things like my whiteboard sessions, ones that I've done here with Blake Roa or this one with Ali Abdal. These are me live, unscripted, helping actual people solve real problems in real time. I'm not reading from some script, right? I'm riffing off the top, pulling from 15 years of experience helping real founders. People watch me help Ali Abdal build a $5 million funnel or sit down with other business owners and actually coach them through their challenges, mapping out their business, the math behind it, their offer stack, and going deep into the what and how to actually solve their real problems. Real systems, no fluff, no BS, just helping these founders go and scale up their business. It's these real, authentic, raw moments, right, that show people what it's actually like to just jam with me. And I think you, the viewer, get kind of pulled into that room. And these are the videos that we've actually gotten some of the best, you know, feedback from. And so for you in your own space, right, it's really thinking about what's that proof content that you can make. That's proof. That's legitimacy. That's, holy this guy actually does this stuff. You know, content without proof is kind of just a joke. I always say to people, details create cash. And if you can show people the detailed ways that you help folks, it's going to become undeniable for them to go and trust you and actually go and buy your thing, right? General advice like build your personal brand, it's weak and it's forgettable. Instead. Here's how I grew my Twitter from 0 to 214,000 followers in 12 months using three specific content formats. Well, that's proof. So, when you show proof, right, you collapse skepticism. People go from, "Is this real?" to, "I need to work with this person." So, stop teaching theory and start showing receipts. Every piece of content should include specific numbers, time frames, and before and after case studies. If you're making a claim, back it up with evidence. Screenshots, testimonials, live demos. Show people you've actually done the thing you're teaching.
The strategy I use, be generous to a fault. Give away so much value that people think, you know, is this actually free? I can't imagine what's inside is paid stuff if this is the free stuff. If you go and you hold stuff back and become some gatekeeper, you're just like 99% of other people going and creating online, right? That's like the default state. And so many of you, right, are watching this channel because you want to stand out. You want to win, right? You want to be the dominant brand in your category. And so when everyone else in your space is just giving people little nuggets of trust, you can flood them with trust by just being insanely generous. So this one principle and this one rule with all of my content is what's allowed me to go and scale an audience to 3 and 1/2 million people over just the last few years.
But even if your content isn't polished, you need to have a structure to your content. And that's where the third part comes in. Mastering repeatable formats. The reason I was able to grow to 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, 900,000 followers on Instagram, and 800,000 followers on LinkedIn is that I don't wake up every day wondering what should I make. I know exactly which format fits the idea that I want to communicate. So, let me show you how we approach formats on YouTube. So here we kind of have three main formats and then one bonus one, okay, that we use just from time to time. So the first one are systems breakdowns, okay, this is where we go really deep into the how, the what, and the specific steps that go in to a specific repeatable process in a founder business. Okay? And so here you can see an example of this system turns my content into profit in just seven steps. And so we're breaking down the exact system to go and build profitable content. Now, the next format are real systems demos. Okay, this is when I'm showing behind the scenes, sharing my screen, very similar to what I'm doing right now, and showing exactly what goes into a specific system within my companies. And then the next format are founder mentor sessions. Okay, these are whiteboard breakdowns where I'm helping folks either inside of Founder OS or other large creators like Blake Roa or folks like Olly Abdal and helping them go and actually build their business live by breaking down a specific challenge they're having and then basically using the systems I've built over the last couple decades to go and help them overcome that challenge. Now, here and there we also do vlogs. These are few and far between because honestly vlogs first off take a lot of work and second off are kind of entertaining. So we just do them here and there and I see as just an awesome opportunity to flex some of our editing chops, some of the creativity and give people a little bit of behind the scenes as to what I'm all about and the kind of businesses I'm building. And so in your space, you want to figure out what are your repeatable formats, right? Constraints breed creativity and your formats will make you well known in your space. When you master a format, you can control every variable. The lighting, the sound, the pacing, the delivery, and your energy that goes into it, right, is able to be sustainable, right? So, you're not reinventing the wheel every time. So, pick three content formats max and rotate them forever. If one gets boring, substitute one other one in, right? But don't constantly change everything. Change the input, not the structure. Same format, different topic. This is how you build a sustainable content operation that doesn't burn you out.
The last piece here that I don't think people talk about enough as well is that 50% of marketing is going to be word of mouth. And if you have a format that you become known for, it's really easy for people to go and tell their friends what you do. But if you're changing your format too much, it's kind of hard for people to pingpoint exactly what you do. And thereby, it's really hard for them to tell their friends. And so you miss out on so much marketing leverage.
Next up is the consistency cadence. The reality is posting when you're inspired is a mistake. You want to treat your content like an index fund, not day trading. Day trading is exciting. You get spikes, you get hits, you feel alive in the moment. But index funds, they compound slowly. They're reliable, and they actually make you rich. The same is true with content. Boring content that posts consistently compounds. Whereas viral spikes, they don't compound. They just spike and then they die. But when you show up every day with valuable systematic content, the algorithms will reward you and your audience trusts you and you become known as that person online. So if you want to make creating consistent content a lot easier, you can follow a simple formula here. The content that sells follows the sell formula which stands for stories, educate and list. So on the story side of things, right, storytelling is the number one vehicle for going and conveying a certain lesson to people, right? People don't recognize stuff if you're just hammering them with facts, right? But on the other side, if you tell a compelling personal story where you learned a given lesson or a lesson in history that is relatable to what it is you're trying to get across, this is what's going to make your ideas so much more sticky. Now, E stands for educate, right? And on this piece, where I see a lot of people screw up is that they're just trying to make entertaining right? But entertaining content doesn't sell. And so, we're trying to educate people. And I think the number one format there are how to or how I videos. Okay? Every rule is meant to be broken. But, you know, these are a common format that I've used across every different platform that I'm on that consistently are not just the best performers, but when we look at the profit per content, which is the number one metric that I use when I'm building any media company, those formats are consistently the most profitable. Now, L stands for list. Okay? And the truth is that anything is a list. Now, I don't just simply mean listicles like Buzzfeed, right? Cuz that does not sell. What I mean is that any piece of content that you're going and putting out there should follow some clear value structure. And what happens is is when you have some sort of structure, maybe it's a bunch of systems or lists or hacks or tools or whatever it may be, right? When you structure it in a list, it's easy for people to follow, right? It may be step by step or here's five systems or here is a, you know, flow and a process from start to finish, right? You just want it to be a logical flow so it's not all over the place and it's more sequential so it's easy for people to understand and then go and implement.
Part five, favor distribution over creativity. I see people create one amazing piece of content and then just move on. They made it, they posted it, they got some engagement and on to the next thing. But that's leaving so much on the table. For every core idea or long form post, you should ask how many places can this one idea live? If the answer is fewer than five, you're not distributing. You're just creating endlessly. I take stuff that crushes it on LinkedIn and then I adapt that for YouTube X and my newsletter. The same insight gets packaged differently for each platform. So, it's native to that platform, but that core idea now is multiplied. Now, this isn't laziness, right? This is how you actually scale reach without creating 10x more content. So, look at your content and use the rule of five. For every piece of content, it should exist in at least five places. YouTube X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok, your newsletter. If it doesn't, you're leaving reach and money on the table.
This is usually where founders realize something uncomfortable. Their content looks like it's working, but the business isn't moving. That's exactly why I built a short content ROI reality check. It helps you score how your content system actually behaves by default and then pinpoint the one place where ROI is leaking. If this is hitting close to home, do that right after this video.
Now, when it comes to going and ideulating content, all right, we've established the fact that views don't equal cash and that we're looking to make stuff that has strong signal. But you're likely also wondering, Matt, what's the way to do that? That's where the buyer survey comes in. You likely have a ton of amazing customers that you serve with your business. Okay. So, what do you think is the best way to go and come up with highly profitable content ideas? Well, you guessed it, those actual customers. So, what you're going to go and do is use Type Form or Google Forms to go and send a three question survey to them. What's your biggest goal this year? What's keeping you up at night? And if you were to wave a magic wand, what would you most want my help with? You then can go take the answers to those questions and go and create content that goes and solves those problems and gets them towards their goals. And if you want further ideation around this, you can go and upload the whole CSV file that you download from Typeform, upload that to chat GBT and ask it to go and come up with a 100 banger content ideas based on that survey information you just got from those dream customers. This is going to help you go and increase what I believe is the most important metric in any personal media company, cash flow per piece of content or profit per content, right? Because when you're going and stacking up every piece of content and increasing the profit from each piece of content, well, you're building a hell of an anti-fragile business. A business that doesn't matter whether you're in a recession or something crazy happens in your space, that content just keeps printing cash.
Part six, build the infrastructure. Content can attract millions of people, but without infrastructure, you're just collecting vanity metrics. When someone discovers you, what happens next? So, let's get into the details here, right? Cuz it's the details that will help you create cash. So, over here, what's going to happen, right, is from a given piece of content on social media, you're going to drive people to some sort of email landing page. It could be to your newsletter or to a more specific email course. I have a bunch of email courses as an example, a personal brand email course and an AI clone yourself course. Okay. So, people would come to that landing page and from there they get put into a 5-day educational email course and then a 4-day FOMO series. So the 5day email course is educating them and giving them the value on the thing that they signed up for. The FOMO series though is part of the magic here. Let me just show you a sneak peek. Where essentially FOMO email number one is probably going to start describing the transformation that takes part when people go and join your thing. Okay. From there, email two is going to probably get into things like some financial outcomes or it may get into what they can expect or how it all works. Okay. Email three then is going to talk about the price of it, right? And give people more sense on, you know, how they should think about it, the ROI of it, all that good stuff. Okay? And then email four is likely going to get into more challenges that you see a lot of people come to you for and that you help people with and then the different benefits of what you deliver. Now these are just some examples, right? But what you're doing in those four emails now is driving people more directly to the sale. So you just have this running on autopilot and what happens is your infrastructure is essentially a salesperson that never sleeps. So we have them then going through the FOMO series and at any point in time clicking a dynamic CTA that exists in those emails and driving them to a book a call or directly to purchase and monetizing those people. So it's this infrastructure that makes all the difference as you're building your founder brand. No infrastructure, shitty business, robust infrastructure and you've got an anti-fragile empire. And so on the kind of detailed aspect here too, the things I want you to think about are number one, set up an email landing page. Two, get your educational email course, five emails going. Three, get a 4day FOMO series written up. And then just launch that. Right? Like anything in life, it's all about iterating. But those three things get you about 80% of the way there. Audit your infrastructure right now. What happens when someone follows you? What's the next step? If the answer is nothing, well, you're leaving a ton of money on the table.
All right, so here's the path forward. Step one, use the content ROI reality check linked in the description below to go and score your content system and identify this single constraint stopping it from compounding to that next level. Step two, if you want help going and fixing that constraint, you can go and bring that completed exercise into a short call with my team, which is also gone in link below. That's where we map the systems that turn attention into revenue without any guesswork. And if you want hands-on help building this infrastructure, not some theory, but inside your actual business, that's exactly what we do inside of Founder OS. This is where serious founders design content systems that compound alongside other operators who are done guessing. If you want to see how this actually gets built behind the scenes, well, there's a link below. We'll look at your situation and decide together what makes sense. So, thanks so much for watching. If you're interested in going and building a business that runs without you, go and check out this next video and I'll see you over there and let's win.