Social Media Expert REVEALS The Blueprint to Going VIRAL

Social media is a one-to-one communication method, not a one-to-many. Most people communicate on social media as if they're standing on a stage speaking to hundreds of thousands or millions of people, but that really drives performance because you're not creating that personal connection. It does not matter what subject matter you cover; it can go viral. You don't feel like you need to change who you are or what you represent, like taxes, real estate, finance, or nutrition. I can create content based on my knowledge and experience, but what I need to do is contextualize it so that it's more accessible.

So, if your audience is big enough, the percentage of those people who are going to be your customers will be bigger than 100% of your niche audience.

What is up, everybody? We're here at the Intercontinental Hotel. I guess it's the tallest hotel on the West Coast. I’m joined today by Brendan Kane, author of several books, but he’s got a new book: "The Guide to Going Viral." The reason why we’re having him on the show today is because the last video just blew up—it has over 657,000 views. If you haven’t seen that video yet, go watch that first.

I’m eager to catch up with him because I believe he’s kind of figured out the viral code. The premise is that it’s not magic; it’s not emotion; it’s actually quite scientific, and he’s got a very analytical mind. If you've ever watched any of his Instagram content, he breaks down the virality of slightly different videos and why some get a couple hundred thousand views while others get hundreds of millions of views.

So, Brendan, for people who are not sure what they're getting into today, what are a couple of things that you think we can tease them with that will be the way we open the show?

Well, like you said, the first thing is people think going viral is luck, but there is a science and a model to it. We spent the past six years building one, and we’ll break down that model today. Really, we’re going to show people how to consistently break through. So that’s another big thing—we’re not talking about how to get one video to go viral, but how do you consistently break through, build a brand?

But also, this is not about tricking people or doing silly cat videos or pranks. We’re actually going to break down how to turn that into scalable commerce so that you can drive your business and brand growth.

That sounds pretty amazing. Let’s get into that because there are lots of things there. So you're saying we can create a hit, we can do it consistently, and we can do it in a way that helps our business to grow. That sounds like a pretty compelling reason to watch this episode, I think.

Okay, so let's get into it. I’ve been watching your Instagram, and you break down videos from different people—also from the same person, and you’re really pulling the reins as to why it’s working. So explain some of the observations that you’ve built up in the last six years so that someone—and it should be almost everybody who’s listening or watching this video—wants to do this themselves.

Because that’s the thing. I mean, a lot of times what they'll say is, "Oh, I've been shadowbanned," or "The algorithm is broken, it’s not working anymore," and they just want to give up. So how do we address that emotional kind of reaction to it, and then let’s get into some of your strategies?

Yeah, first off, I feel your pain, and I’m sure you do too. We’ve both been in a position where you’ve been creating content for a while, and you put your heart and soul and time and energy and effort into it, and then it just falls flat. You’re left like, "Man, should I just keep doing this?" The biggest thing to know is you’re not alone. That’s 99% of people producing content on social media are experiencing that same pain, and hopefully today we can alleviate it.

But one of the first things that we have to kind of understand is the world that we live in today. When I started in social media, I started back in 2005 when Friendster and MySpace were the predominant platforms. Think back then; there were only a few million people on these platforms creating content. Today, we’re about to surpass 5 billion people on social media. So that’s how many people are producing content on these platforms.

The reality of how we get views, how we get followers, how we get an audience is all controlled by algorithms. Most people, like you said, demonize the algorithms, saying, "Oh, they’re shadowbanning me, they’re suppressing my reach on purpose to get me to pay for it," but that’s not the reality. These algorithms have a fundamental goal, and it’s a business goal. How do all these platforms make money? They make money by serving ads.

So these algorithms are designed solely to find the content that can grab and hold attention as long as possible at scale to keep people on the platforms longer. Because if people don’t spend time on their platforms, they go elsewhere, and thus their profit dwindles.

So, first, understanding the purpose of the algorithm is important; they want to partner with us; they want to be our best friend. It’s not about trying to beat the algorithm or hack the algorithm because this isn’t like Netflix, where Netflix invests billions of dollars in original content to keep people on their platform. They rely on us as content creators to be the fuel that runs them.

That’s the first thing to understand: what controls the reach and distribution. The next thing to understand is: how do we actually generate views? Because views generate followers, they generate leads, and they generate commerce. Well, each platform is a little bit different, but on Instagram and TikTok, typically a view is counted at three seconds. That happened a while back when advertisers were up in arms when they were getting charged for views on the ad platform at one second—because one second doesn’t show intent.

But then you look at YouTube; you have to get the thumbnail and headline clicked on and then watch 30 seconds to generate that specific view. So that’s where kind of the views start. But this isn’t about just grabbing attention; it’s about holding that attention and making sure that we’re retaining that audience that we’re getting.

So we’re not talking about clickbait or tricking people or any of those things. So you're saying that they’re incentivized and their whole business model is built on the premise that they want to serve the best content to the most number of people at scale. So, if your content is not being seen—and this might be heartbreaking to some folks—it’s just because it’s just not that good. Can I say that?

Or you’re not doing the right things.

So, it’s a great question. Most people have great content, and it’s not the content; it’s the context of how you’re representing that content. One of the biggest—and we use this word—performance drivers is something that drives up the performance and increases the chance of virality. A downward performance driver decreases that ability, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that.

One of the kind of U performance drivers are things that hold people back, especially when we’re talking about organic social media. They’re operating off of the old paradigm of creating a niche piece of content for a niche audience. The social media algorithms are not really looking for that. They’re not going to do the heavy lifting for you; they’re just looking at the retention metrics.

Are you able to stop the scroll, and how long can you hold their attention for? One of the biggest principles that we talk about in terms of that contextual element to drive success around your content is called the generalist principle. So how do we make your content interesting to the average person while not losing the subtext of our core audience?

I’ll give you an example. I’m sure you know the YouTuber Graham Stephan, who teaches finance to millennials. He’s built a massive audience on YouTube. His most viewed video is "How I Bought a Tesla for $78 a Month." Right there, that hook—anybody would be interested to see, "Well, how did he actually get a Tesla for $78 per month?"

But if you watch the video, he’s actually breaking down finance principles, like understanding what it means to finance a car. Versus if you were to say, "I’m going to teach you the top five principles I’ve learned in leasing a Tesla," it would have gotten 10,000 views instead of 9 million views.

So it’s understanding how you can take your content and contextualize it in such a way that still plays to your core business objectives and goals in your audience, but also plays to the general principle.

There’s another amazing woman on TikTok, Dr. Julie Smith. She is a clinical psychologist, and she breaks down very difficult subjects like PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks—things of that nature. She uses a format called a visual metaphor, where one of her most viewed videos, that’s got 12 million views, is she has a wastepaper basket overflowing with papers, talking about what it means to be overwhelmed with emotion.

Then she takes those papers out one at a time, folds them neatly, and then puts them back in there to show what trauma processing and going through therapy looks like. Now, therapy, especially on TikTok, most people think TikTok is silly kids dancing and stuff, but clinical psychology is not really a sexy or viral subject matter on the surface.

But the contextual nature of how she’s representing that information allows her to scale her message and brand without losing the subtext of what she’s actually trying to get across as a business and a personal brand.

I’m familiar with both those people. Dr. Julie Smith, I’m a fan. So she does a great job, and I point to her as an example of how you can take abstract ideas that are hard to understand and create an easy-to-understand model that’s physical.

So those are good things. And then how she creates tension in like what is happening right now—there’s one where she’s filling a jug with water and holding a drill. I’m like, "What’s happening?" So she captures my attention, but she’s maintaining it, and then it all makes sense because she starts to drill holes, and it’s like, "That’s exercise; that’s meditation."

So it’s not overflowing on the kitchen table anymore. So that’s an excellent example. Graham Stephan might have some issues with the ethics behind him, but good strategy—thanks for pointing that out.

I just want to say this is not an endorsement of Graham Stephan, okay? Put that out there.

So how do we apply this principle that you’re talking about, this generous principle, by giving people context? Are people watching this video because they want to make YouTube videos or Instagram reels pop? Is that generalist enough? Do we have to make it even more relatable than that?

The reality of the situation is, even if you want to go after a specific niche audience, you need to kind of break through to that generalist principle.

I’ll give you another prime example. Most people think of, "I have a very specific niche audience that I want to reach with my message that can only buy my products or services." There’s Ryan Serhant, who now has a show on Netflix. His success is really driven by understanding social. It’s not by external factors or anything of that nature.

But if you think about Ryan Serhant, what does he do? He sells luxury properties in Manhattan that start at like $15 million going up to $250 million. So using this generalist principle, he does videos like, "I’m going to take you in a $250 million closet," or "I’m going to take you in a $250 million ranch."

In that context, he’s playing again to the generalist principle of anybody would be interested to see that. But even if less than 1% of the millions and millions of people that watch those videos see it, he’s tapping into that core audience that he’s going after. And he’s even said he sold a $30 million property off of a YouTube video.

So if we look at that, a lot of our clients initially resist that—so much of like, "Well, I need to talk to this specific person that has this specific problem that views the world in this specific way." It’s just like, yes, you can do that if you want to go just strict paid acquisition.

And even paid acquisition, people misinterpret because even if you’re running a paid ad, it’s not guaranteeing somebody’s going to watch it. It’s only guaranteeing that you’re going to get it in front of somebody.

So that paid ad has to compete with organic. So we just have to kind of understand that that principle applies no matter the specific goal or objective that you have in terms of how you’re tackling social media.

I want to stay on this one because I think it’s going to address a lot of fears and concerns that people have. And this is a very common thing with entrepreneurs who are somewhat creative who want to create content. Of course, I’m not really interested in becoming an influencer; I don’t care about a lot of views and followers; I want to get clients.

So they’re doing the opposite of what you’re saying. They’re creating very niche content for a niche audience because they want sales. What are they missing here? And really, I just want to pull on this so that they understand and they have a breakthrough moment.

It’s a great question, and I completely understand where people’s mindset is coming from. I have a very specific business objective and goal, and I want to leverage social media to achieve that specific business objective and goal.

So let's just do an exercise here. Let’s just imagine whoever’s watching this, they can just think in their head: what is the average number of views or people that see your content? So let's take that number, and let’s just imagine it’s 10,000 views.

Out of those 10,000 views, let’s just say 50% of those people are my core target audience. Because it’s never going to be 100%. It’s just not going to happen. But 50% of those 10,000 people are my core target audience. So that’s 5,000 people.

Now, if we take—and I want people to do this exercise and write it down on a piece of paper—imagine if we multiplied the number of views that, on average, you get by 10, then by 100, then by 1,000. So let’s just say we take it from an average of 10,000 views to just 100,000 views on average.

And let’s just say our core target drops from 50% to 20%. So we just went from 5,000 to 20,000 potential customers viewing our content.

Now let’s put it up to a million people on average, and let’s just decrease that down to 10%. So 10% of a million people could buy our products or services—that’s going from 5,000 to 100,000 people potentially buying your products and services.

And that’s the core aspect of this, and a big difference of like what we’re talking about right now versus what other people may talk about in virality is we’re not talking about content that’s not aligned with your product or service—that’s not aligned to your brand. We’re not talking about doing silly cat videos if you're not a pet brand or jumping off a roof and doing prank videos.

I can give you a prime example of how this works. We had a client that came to us with very little to no social media experience at all. His name is Tanner Leatherstein, and he’s a leather craftsman. It’s a very niche subject matter. So he sells leather goods, like purses, handbags, wallets—things of that nature. And he was stuck at like 2,000 followers on social media.

The reason he was stuck is he was creating commercials. It was just a commercial featuring his leather wallet. It looked good and beautiful, but nobody really cared because nobody logs onto social media saying, "I want to see a great branded piece of content. I want to see an ad." They want to be engaged in some way.

So we worked with him to design a format called "Is it Worth It?" where he buys a $500 Chanel handbag, deconstructs it on screen, and tells you whether it's worth the money that you've paid for it.

That simple concept is not creating an ad; it’s providing insight and building trust and credibility. You know, we say that the goal of social media is not to sell your product; it’s to get people to know, like, and trust you. And if people know, like, and trust you, they’re ultimately going to want to take that next step.

So with this concept of "Is it Worth It?" he’s gone from 2,000 followers to 2.5 million across his social media channels and over 200 million organic views. The interesting thing is, if he watches content, there are no calls to action for any of his products or services. He just has a link in his bio. The traffic is so large that people automatically build that trust and want to take that next step.

Before, he was spending money on Google Ads and generating 10,000 visitors off of organic; it jumped to 100,000 visitors, and his most expensive products—the products he sells for thousands of dollars—he can't even keep them on the shelf.

So I’m not saying you can include calls to actions in your content—you can—but I just wanted to demonstrate that example because it’s really about getting people to know, like, and trust you.

I think you’ve done an amazing job with your brand and your channel. It’s really about providing that value, that insight, and then people automatically want to take that next step and work with you, do a workshop with you, or book you to speak or those elements.

I think people kind of get that wrong with social media. They treat their social media profile as if it was a website, or their organic content as if it was an advertisement.

There’s a lot to go into here, but I’ve seen you feature Tanner, and I didn’t know you guys were behind this. So are you the ones who helped him to go from 2,000 to 2-plus million followers? You looked at him and took him on as a client, consulted, coached him, and said, "Hey, here’s the format that you need to try." Is that you guys?

Yeah, so we worked with him. He did all the work. We’re kind of the strategy engine behind clients like that. But yes!

Wow, okay, well kudos to you!

I have lots of questions now, and if we don’t mind, we can stay here for a little bit. Number one, he would buy probably some vintage luxury bags and do the most horrific things. He would rip them apart, he would scrape them, he would burn them, and he would do all kinds of things and say, "Well, here are the material costs; here are the labor costs, and you get to decide if it’s worth it or not."

He would kind of rank it a little bit. I understood the play because he’s a leather maker of similar bags or high-quality bags, so I get the play. He didn't need to tell me; I could figure it out pretty quickly.

There are a lot of different questions. Number one, is if I’m a business owner, that seems like a lot of work and a lot of money to do something that you're not quite sure is going to work. Did he need convincing, or was he like, "I’m all in, guys. You tell me to do something. I’m going to go out there and do that?"

It took him some time. So when we initially worked with him, we developed the strategy, trained him in our model, he went off, and we didn’t hear from him for 6 months because he went in there and kind of really digested it and understood it. But he was super motivated in that, and I would say that’s the biggest challenge I think with anybody on social media, especially our clients.

We have clients that have no social media experience, like Tanner, or we worked with a hand doctor that exploded on TikTok. She generated like 700,000 followers on TikTok and got a TV deal and a book deal. So it’s not about the experience; it’s almost about the mindset because sometimes we work with people or teams that have a lot of social media experience and we have to kind of untrain them.

So I would say social media is a lot of work. But I think the biggest barrier is really the mindset going into it. One of the questions that I ask clients is, "Why do you actually want to do social media? What is your ultimate outcome, and how important is that outcome to you?"

If it's a really important outcome, then you should invest the time, energy, and resources into it. But like any skill set that you have, it’s going to take time and energy and resources to master.

I think people misinterpret social media because anybody can pull out a phone, press record, and post something. They think that automatically—just because they do that action—that a million people should see their content. Or they look at, like, a MrBeast or some young kid that’s generating millions of followers and they think, "Oh, they're just locking into it."

So if I’m a business owner of a business that’s doing about $5 million a year, I’m listening to this like, "Wow, this sounds freaking wonderful!" You guys are the masterminds behind some of the most viral videos out there on the Internet—people who have defined their own category.

Because I will say to people, "You know this guy, he does leather breakdowns." And they’re like, "Yeah, I know who you’re talking about." I don’t even remember the dude’s name, but I know I follow him and I look at his content, so I’m curious. If they’re like, "We want to do that," first of all, like, what is the process? Like, what does it cost? How does one do this?

Because we can all look at say Tanner—and see like he’s got a lot of success—but there was a moment in time when that outcome was not certain. It was not an inevitable outcome, right?

So now he’s going to go out; he’s going to buy things; he’s going to rip it apart. And really, you don’t have so many times to deconstruct a bag. So if you screw it up, you’re out a couple grand because of the bag.

Yeah, you know, and I think I know why it works, but let’s talk a little bit about that. What kind of commitment do I need to make? You said the mindset—and what else do I need to do to prepare myself so that if I receive these kinds of strategies or I’m watching this video that I can commit to doing that?

Yeah. So, as you mentioned, the mindset and just making the commitment to do it. Like we’ve done—I mean, I’ve been in the space for 20 years, and I believe so much in our process that if you follow it, it is inevitable for success. That’s why I guarantee that in the first 120 days after working with us, if you don’t at least see a million views, we’ll keep working with you until you do.

That’s how much I kind of believe in that process.

And a really important question is like, "Where does it start? Where do you have to start on this success path?" I go back to where I started my career, which is in the film industry. I started going to film school.

What do you do in film school? You sit down, and you watch movies; you read scripts; you break down and understand what it means to tell a successful story versus an unsuccessful story. The way that we look at social media is very different than what most kind of social media agencies or gurus will tell you to do, which is follow the trends.

And what is a trend? A trend is something that’s very fleeting, so it typically lasts for a few weeks, maybe a few months. It lasts like the biggest trend that I can think of is like the ice bucket challenge. It’s like people don’t do the ice bucket challenge today.

And the other problem is looking at a trend; 99% of people that do that don’t break through with viral success. We only see the people at the top.

So the way that we look at it is we don’t want people to go and do trends. Because you’re not mastering a skill set, we tell people to look at a format.

So when we think about movies, the past 50 years, every movie follows the three-act structure in terms of how stories are told. When Steven Spielberg makes a movie, he’s not reinventing that structure; he’s using that structure every time to become one of the best storytellers on the planet.

So we look at social media in terms of what we call a format. Our team has done about 10,000 hours of research, and we’ve cataloged 220 different formats, so there are many to choose from.

I’m not by any means saying it has to be like these three formats are the only ones that work, so you have to do them if you don’t love them.

So what’s an example? We broke down Tanner Leatherstein’s "Is it Worth It?" format where he deconstructs a $500 Chanel handbag and tells you whether it’s worth it. Another one that you’ve probably seen a lot on TikTok or Instagram is what we call "Two Characters, One Light Bulb," where it’s the same person that plays two different characters.

They play the expert and the novice, and they break down a misconception about something. For example, Erica Colberg is a master of this format in the legal industry, where she breaks down the fine print of what happens when your flight is canceled, or what happens when your AirPods break.

There are other people, like Mark T. Berry, that break it down about finance. So that core format can be used for any industry. People use it for legal, like Erica, finance, real estate, nutrition—any kind of subject matter can be put into that format.

So the first place to understand is the formula starts with understanding what a format is versus a trend. Because I can guarantee you, you will not master the art of storytelling and really break through without that fundamental understanding.

So once we understand what a format is, now we can start looking at what format do I want to tackle—what format am I passionate about?

That’s why we do so much research, because we never want to push a client or anybody to do a format that they’re not passionate about, that they don’t enjoy. Because you and I both know creator burnout and fatigue is real. If you don’t enjoy it, or you don’t see the business results with it, you’re just going to stop doing it.

So once we have the format, then we need to do the analysis of that format. Because most people will look at Tanner and see he did 15 million views on that video or Erica Colberg with "Two Characters, One Light Bulb"—oh, she did 10 million views on that video.

I know what they’re doing; I’m just going to go out and do that without any analysis. And 99% of people that try that fail because they don’t really understand what drives the performance of that format.

So what we do next with the client is we have a process called Gold, Silver, Bronze, where we’ll take an account like Erica’s, or any creator that’s using that format successfully, and we’ll choose 10 of their highest-performing videos for the format.

So like "Two Characters, One Light Bulb," the high performers are probably 5 to 10 million views. Then we’ll take 10 to 20 of the average performers, the silver, which is the few hundred views, and then we’ll take the underperformers, the bronze, which is like 10 to 100,000 views.

What we’re doing is, as I mentioned earlier, we’re looking for performance drivers—not the content, but the context. Like, what is happening in those high performers that’s not showing up in those low performers, and vice versa?

So we’re doing what we call qualitative analysis. Where most people are spending their time on social media is quantitative analysis, meaning they’re looking at how many views did I get, how many shares, how many likes, comments, conversions—which is a great indicator of something working or not working, but it doesn’t uncover the why.

So this is where we do the qualitative analysis of comparing the high performers in that same format against the low performers to really determine what are the variables that cause this success or the underperformance in that format.

We mentioned Dr. Julie Smith earlier. One of the examples I do is I break down that wastepaper basket video she has versus one where she just has cars in front of her for a visual metaphor. Now, the wastepaper basket video generated 12 million views versus the cars one generates, I think, two or 300,000 views.

So we’re talking about the same format—the visual metaphor format—same creator, 12 million views versus 200,000 views. There’s a huge discrepancy in that performance, and that’s where the real learning comes in. It’s not to point out, "Oh, Dr. Julie Smith didn’t master that video." It’s more about what drives that success so that if you’re going to tackle that format, like the visual metaphor format, you can understand the contextual elements that allow that successful storytelling mechanism.

A couple things that you mentioned prior to me asking that question were people make this mistake. They think social media is an extension of the website; their content is very advertising-heavy, and no one shows up on social to say, "I’m looking forward to seeing all your ads today." In fact, we pay money not to see ads on many platforms.

So the mistake that people keep making—I’m imagining a couple of my friends, and I’m trying to help them grow their social—but almost 99% of the content is so heavily based on trying to have a call to action. It’s very clear what’s happening here.

How do we help them break that pattern outside of what you’ve already said? Is there a way to help them? Because no matter— they’ll hear this video, and they go right back to making more sales content that is thinly veiled as educational but is just really, "Here’s how you can hire me. Here’s what I do." How do we break them out of that?

Well, the first question is: Do you want to continue to have the same performance?

Oh, okay, you just punched them in the gut.

I mean, that’s the reality of the situation. If you’re happy with the performance that you’re getting, then keep doing what you’re doing. Why change anything? But if it’s not working, then why would you keep doing the same thing over and over again? I mean, that’s the reality of the first place to start.

And then, you know, you look at the most successful people on social media—not just from an audience perspective but even people that are building massive brands and businesses off the back of social media. What are they doing?

I can guarantee you none of them are creating organic content that is ad-driven. You look at one of the most successful influencers in the world, Mr. Beast, at this point. Now he has Feables and Beast Burger and these elements, but he didn’t start that way.

If you watch the calls to action, it’s not the content; it’s not about how do I insert a call to action to sell a product. It’s how do I drive as much value and entertainment and engage my clients so that they ultimately want to support me and take that next step?

So the first place that I always start with somebody that says that is just like, "Listen, I can only help you if you want to be helped. If you’re happy with what you’re doing already, then just keep doing that."

Or some businesses just may not be cut out for social media—there are other ways to grow businesses. Social media is not the only way, right?

It is a huge benefit if you can master it, but social media is not required to be successful to build a successful business.

Fine, fair enough.

So you’re saying if you come to me—and if it’s already working, why fix what ain’t broke? So stay with that or if social media is not for you, invest your money, time, and energy doing what you feel most connected to. There are lots of ways to skin a cat, as they say.

Now, getting back to this person, okay, let’s apply some of the lessons here. Number one is: Don’t advertise to me all the time. If you have a call to action, you can have it, but it needs to be a little softer.

And you can grow your audience beyond who you think your core audience is and attract a much wider following, which has its own benefits: authority, more likely for someone to watch your video versus another person. It’s good morale for the team, but it’ll actually lead to more business, given your 50% to 10% example of going from 10,000 views to say a million views.

So, okay, you have to contextualize your content for a general audience to understand, and then you can still make it about your core expertise and talk about the things that are aligned with you and your personnel and your brand.

You also talked about there being multiple formats, and formats trump trends. Trends are fleeting; they’re not highly replicable, and they only serve a few people, especially early adopters.

Yet, there are a lot of folks out there who are like, "Follow the trend, follow the trend." So for you, in your church, that’s heresy—right? Don’t follow the trends; understand formats because formats last. They pass the test of time.

So your company looks at the creator, looks at their business, and finds the appropriate format that might be most suitable for what they do and how they present. And then you’re also analyzing the folks in that format: what are the key repeatable triggers that can be applied to just about anybody?

If you follow that, you have a pretty good shot of getting a million views in 120 days.

Do I get that right so far?

At least, yeah.

Okay, so I have a really selfish question to ask you right now. Man, I cannot get grow on TikTok. I’m not really trying that much.

I’m not saying that I know what my content is, but based on the generic kind of feeling of how I make content, what would you advise me to do so that our content gets viewed more?

Now, here’s a weird thing, Brendan: People who reshare our exact content get more views than I do, which is really weird. Or sometimes they apply some crazy art filters on it, and those get a lot of views.

Is it because it’s their account? What are they doing differently? Because it’s almost literally the same content.

Yeah, so there are a few things to that. One, it can be their account. What happens with these algorithms is—so, for example, if you watch when Mr. Beast launches a video, he’ll get like 10 million views in like the first 30 minutes, right?

Why? Because YouTube’s giving him that reach automatically because he’s proven he is a trustworthy kind of content provider from a retention standpoint.

So that can happen, where accounts have built up enough favor with the algorithms that it’ll automatically get reach and distribution. But you mentioned adding some type of filter—there are such small nuances that can mean the difference between 10,000 views or 10 million views.

So in terms of kind of advice for you, specific to TikTok, is people often think that just because TikTok is short-form, Instagram Reels are short-form, and YouTube Shorts are short-form that it should perform the same across each of those platforms.

But it’s completely different. And it’s completely different typically because of the consumption behavior in terms of the user interface of how these user interfaces are constructed to keep people on the platform longer.

So the first place that I would really start is focusing in on what happens in those first 3 to 5 seconds, and start there. Because that’s the easiest lift; you can take some of your content and modify those first 3 to 5 seconds to kind of get people into it.

And again, where I would really want to start is look at specific content creators that are in a similar kind of format. It doesn’t have to be the same content, and look at how they’re constructing that kind of first 3 to 5 seconds.

Then how do we identify the difference of what they’re doing versus what you’re doing? Because oftentimes, you may not have to create new content; it’s just the way that you contextualize it within that user interface and that format to drive performance.

Does that make sense?

It does. That’s why you said before your content doesn’t suck, but the context might be off.

Yes, because your content’s amazing. You’re one of the top content creators out there, and that you said that same content goes viral on other platforms, but it’s just not going viral on TikTok.

Yeah, but I think one of the other massive mistakes that creators or brands make is they’re just so focused on their own content. They only analyze their own channel, and like how do you expect to break through if you just keep looking at your own content over and over again?

And that’s where, like one of the exercises that we do with our clients—it's very simple but it’s a huge learning curve—we’ll do the search on the format. We’ll have our client create content in that format, and if it doesn’t perform, or if it underperforms, we put the reference to the high performer on one side of the screen and your video on the other side of the screen.

We play them side by side, and if you’re really honest with yourself, you will see the differences.

So one of the things that you can do is with the videos that have been taken on other accounts, put it up on one side of the screen; put your video on the other side of the screen and just see if there’s any subtle differences.

Maybe they cut off one or two seconds in the beginning; maybe they kind of reformatted it in a certain way. That can give you some clues there.

So that’s just kind of like an easy win that most people just don’t even think about doing: comparing yourself to the reference of the high performer to identify, again, not the content, but the contextual elements that you’re missing that could lead that clue to the next level.

That was super strategic. Highly tactical things that you can do—highly actionable advice, everybody! So if you just make content and you only look at your own content, your ability to grow is pretty finite.

So look at a high performer and put them side by side, and really be honest with yourself and see any differences. And this is like a big moment for me—the smallest difference could actually be the thing that drives them 10x or 100x of what you’re doing.

So they’re very little things, and I know what it is that they did, by the way, but I couldn’t do it; that’s the problem. The video has a description of me like—it says, "Coach Owns Somebody" or "Something Like Sales Expert Owns Fool or Bad Client."

I could never do that because I don’t want to describe myself as ever owning somebody. And so that was highly charged emotionally, and it was like one of those moments, like, I get that part. We just called it something much simpler, and that was like burned into the title.

So it had that kind of hook to it, like how you said Graham Stephan said, "How I Bought a Tesla for $36 or $67 a month." It had that hook to it.

So the big learning lesson there is when you put them side by side, you know that’s the driver. It doesn’t mean you have to do the exact thing, but what can you take away and learn from that to apply to your content?

Because I bet one of the big drivers was that there was a clear visual hierarchy of where they had the viewer pay attention in those first few seconds.

So even though you don’t resonate with kind of that meme card or the caption that’s up there, that’s what drove the performance because it got a majority of people to stop, understand the context of what the video is, and be like, "Oh, I want to watch the rest of it."

So I agree with you. You don’t want to do things that go against kind of what you want to represent yourself as, but you can still learn a tremendous amount about that, and how do you take that learning and apply it to the next video?

So for you, you could take that learning and put another type of caption or title card with a context that you feel comfortable with that’s achieving the same thing. Re-upload it and see what happens.

Good! I’m glad you addressed that.

And the other thing that you said was it could just be their channel account has that algo love already built into it. And it’s true; I think that account has a million followers; mine has 100,000, and they feature a lot of business-related content that’s super spicy.

So people who show up for that want that, and maybe even if I post the exact same video on my channel, it’s not going to do the same because that’s not the kind of audience or community I’m trying to foster.

So I just want to put out there there’s a small chance that your content just posted by someone else is going to do better, but let’s just take that off the table, because that’s—it’s not going to be often that that’s the case.

We want to focus on the things that we can change and things that we can work on, right?

And can control—the little things that you’re talking about are spectacular.

I’ve got another question for you. You said you and your team have spent over 10,000 hours in the last 6 to 20 years either in social or actually building this business understanding this—that the formats, where it’s at.

How many different formats are there that you guys have cataloged?

Our library is about 220. We’re adding probably like 3 to 5 a week. So there’s probably hundreds more that we haven’t uncovered, but there are so many different options out there.

And that’s what I want people to hear: the word format, and they kind of think, "Oh, it’s going to constrict my creativity," but if you think about any movie that you sit down and watch, it follows the same format in terms of a three-act structure.

Another term that we use that may also help people—like a series. We can also call it a series. Like there’s Hot Ones show where they eat spicy hot wings.

Or another way to think about it is think about your favorite TV show—like if you think about Friends, one of the most successful TV shows of all time, or Seinfeld. Every episode is following the same format and structure.

That’s one of the reasons it’s so successful. Now, if Friends completely changed up that dynamic each time they did an episode, it wouldn’t have been successful. They would have lost your interest along the way.

But it’s very formulaic, but within that formula, the stories can be completely different in terms of how you engage audiences.

I think the old term they would use to describe that is like it’s a situational comedy. The characters, you know, they behave in a very specific way; it’s fairly predictable. They just change some variables so that the world resets every single time.

Like no character ever moves away; no one ever gets divorced, and they just keep going through it. We really enjoy that because it’s very familiar to us.

And once they master that, it’s like printing money.

Yeah, okay. And I want to say that it’s like printing money. The same thing happens with social media. Most people get it wrong: it’s not about chasing trends; it’s not about reinventing the wheel or reinventing the wheel with each piece of content; it’s mastery of a single format.

The minute you master a single format, you can print money. And it happens all the time.

To give you an example, I have a personal friend that we’ve worked with that uses a format called "Man on the Street," where you approach a random stranger on the street, and you interact with them. He is a professional photographer, his name is Alex STM. He has amassed an audience of 20 million people with that same format where he approaches a random stranger on the street and offers them a professional photo shoot, interacts with them, and then does a reveal at the end.

That’s all he did—is that single format—and built an audience of 20 million people.

And I ask people watching this: if you have a business or brand, what would be the impact if you had 20 million people following your business or brand?

Getting back to Tanner for half a second, but then I have another selfish question to ask you. I noticed on your social, you posted this thing of him holding some kind of plaque or an award, saying he’s achieved a certain thing. Is that something that you guys are doing, sending your clients some kind of recognition that they’ve hit a certain milestone?

Tell me about the award and how many people have you given that to?

So we have different awards. We have one million, five million, ten million, fifty million, a hundred million, 200 million, and I think we have like one or two billion view awards as well.

We’ve probably given it to over 100 clients at this point. We’re probably adding like three to five every week in terms of new clients. But I like to make sure people can recognize their successes because what we talked about earlier is creator burnout and fatigue is a real thing.

I even saw this in the early stages of the first wave of influencers back in like 2006, 2007, getting involved in the first content creators on YouTube.

There was a stage where the YouTube algorithm shifted because there were more people coming onto the platform, and there was a significant dip in performance. The creators that had the right mindset and motivation to keep going—meaning they had some kind of underlying business goal and objective that could fuel the engine of the reason they were creating the content—they all stuck with it and succeeded to that next level.

The other people that didn’t just dropped off, and you never heard from them again.

I’m just a big believer in making sure that you give the psychological recognition that is needed to the people that are creating the content so they can constantly remember how and why they’re doing it.

Because if you lose your way in terms of how and why you’re producing the content and not realizing—like one of the things that— I didn’t come up with it, and I don’t know who I heard it from, but sometimes if I have an underperforming video with like 60,000 views, I’m like, "That’s underperforming!"

If you think about a football stadium, if you’re standing in the middle of a football stadium and there’s 60,000 people there—think about it from an impact, like that side.

I think sometimes, like you and I, we’re operating at a whole different level that it’s like sometimes you don’t think about the power of just like 60,000 people seeing your content.

So that’s why we like to have that type of recognition—so kind of make sure that they have the right motivation and realize what they’ve actually accomplished.

And 60,000 people in a stadium would be a really big stadium. I think it’s like, isn’t it like 30,000 people that can fit in a normal stadium or something like that?

Yeah, I don’t know; it’s a massive amount.

Right? And I don’t take it for granted at all. We always tell our team if we can get past 30 or 40,000 views, it’s broken through.

Over time, because our content is less viral and more evergreen, it eventually gets to the big numbers. Like even our own content with you, it started off pretty strong, and it just keeps producing because it’s very evergreen, as I hope that this video will be as well.

We got to take a quick break for something really exciting.

This video is brought to you by us! The future, Future Accelerator, is all the best parts of coursework, community, and coaching—all brought together for a single purpose: to help you make a living doing what you love.

The Accelerator membership includes a curriculum roadmap with over 100 video lessons and resources, a supportive community, and weekly coaching calls to give you support when you need it most.

You’ll also get access to personalized feedback on your assignments. The Accelerator is specifically designed for creatives by creatives. So, if you’re ready to build a magnetic portfolio, learn how to bring in leads consistently and reliably, and run a profitable, healthy, happy creative business, we can help.

Learn more about the coursework, community, and coaching you’ll get as an Accelerator member. Head to thefuture.com/accelerator to take a behind-the-scenes tour or try it out risk-free for 30 days with our money-back guarantee. We’ll see you inside!

All right, back to the video. I think I found my jam!

What makes me unique, and I want to tell you a little bit about it, and then I’d love to see what you think the format should be.

I feel that our best content is almost always with me live—with some level of studio audience. It happens because they bring a little bit more spice out of me, and I like that.

I’m more alive. I feel I have to be on point. Number two is, if I have a piece of paper and a marker with the live audience, those videos tend to do really well—not millions of views, but hundreds of thousands of views.

So if I want to make that in a shorter form, more viral piece of content, of the 220 formats that you’ve uncovered, what format should I be doing?

So it’s a great question, and I kind of want to point something out before I answer the format. Because I have watched your content, and I’ve looked at the most viral content versus the content that doesn’t reach that level.

I think one of the biggest drivers of your virality is perspective shift. When there is a massive perspective shift based upon the audience member's question, that’s when there’s virality.

And I don’t know the exact language, and maybe you can lend the context to it, but I think one of your most viral videos is somebody talking to you about logos and pricing, right?

And you’re going back and forth about them saying, "Well, I don’t want to pay that much money," and breaking down the value of what your services are. That is a massive perspective shift from most—even if you’re not a designer—you can take something away in terms of how you value yourself and how you value what you do in the world.

One of the big performance drivers that I would focus on in that kind of short form, and when you’re kind of working with audiences, is how do you master that perspective shift as much as possible with the kinds of questions that are being answered?

The other kind of format that I would look at that’s not a direct correlation, but it’s pretty close, is "Man on the Street." In "Man on the Street," the number one performance driver is the reaction of the other person.

And I think the combination of doing what you’re doing with the perspective shift and capturing that action of that person, which you know you have to kind of cast a little bit of understanding—and you do a good job of it! I’ve been to your workshops; you can understand even talking to people—their facial expressions and things of that nature.

If you can engage with those people that have like, "Oh my God, I didn’t realize that!" in an authentic way, that can really drive the overall performance.

So I think looking at the "Man on the Street" format from that perspective, and maybe even studying some of the storytelling elements of the "Two Characters, One Light Bulb," not for you to use, but you kind of acting as the expert and the audience member acting as kind of the novice, breaking down that specific misconception.

Now most people try and do that format of like responding to people; either they try and cut down podcast clips or they try and do that, but it just falls flat because they’re not understanding what they’re trying to kind of get out of the person.

I can give you an example of kind of how I came to those conclusions. I worked with a journalist in the US, Katie Couric, and I was brought in when she went to Yahoo.

She went from being on The Today Show and TV for 20 years to being in social media. It’s a completely different dynamic because television has the ingrained behavioral element of, "I wake up every morning; I’m making breakfast for the kids, and I turn on The Today Show and I’ll watch it no matter what it is," versus—as we know with social media and digital, it’s completely different.

So I did 220 interviews with her, ranging from Joe Biden to DJ Khaled to Jessica Chastain to Chance the Rapper, all across the board. A lot of people think that it’s celebrity that drives performance, but it’s not. Because when I interview Kim Kardashian, Kim Kardashian has been interviewed two or three hundred times—like a lot of these things have been covered.

So one of the things that I started, and that you could use in this process, is I said, "Katie, we’re no longer going to craft questions; we’re going to start with what is the hook?"

I want to look at what is the outcome that I’m looking for, and then reverse back to how I want to guide that, because if you start with a question, oftentimes you’re not going to get the response that you want.

And it makes it more difficult to guide the person to the place because it just comes off like you’re asking them questions versus if I know what the end hook is—like you said that meme card that went viral on another account.

If I know what that hook is and I have like three to five of those that I think are going to go viral, then I can kind of, as I’m getting those reactions, think about that in the back of my head. As somebody asks me a question, I can guide it and shape it into that specific area.

Because most people are just mindlessly answering questions, and then you’ll stumble on something that works. But if you can kind of start just thinking about that process as you’re answering questions from the crowd, it can kind of have that jumping-off point.

Another example of this is Matt R, the comedian where he did the crowd work. He’s super intelligent; he understands kind of what the end output is going to be on social media.

So he can kind of craft the joke and craft the interaction based upon that kind of bite-sized clip.

Does that make sense?

It does!

Okay, so give me an example of this conversation and how if we started at the end—the outcome that we wanted—how would we craft the hook?

How—if we were to go back in time, we had the time zone or whatever that is—we can go back and start this over again, how might the hook begin?

I mean, I think there are several areas. You know, how social media can actually print money for your business is one.

The number one reason that your content fails, or that your content sucks; why you should fire your social media manager today; or "Why you should fire your social media agency," but I think leaning into more of the pain and the misinformation about it: "Why the algorithms aren’t against you," or "Why the algorithms want to be your best friend or partner," or "What Netflix can teach you about social media algorithms."

Those types of concepts I think would bring people in.

Wonderful! So editing team, just cut all those together and put them at the head of the show, and we’ll see how this episode performs, right?

That’s the idea!

Speaking of which, we were talking about this, and I had mentioned Steven Bartlett. He begins a lot of his with really quick sound bites—the reasons why someone should watch the show or listen to the podcast—and you said your team has gone through and done a deep dive and broken it down. What can we learn from that deep dive?

Well, I think the first place to start is to understand their process for creating podcasts. They do extensive research on their guests, to the point where they’re even thinking about is there a song that has caused somebody to cry?

Is there a question or subject matter that’s caused an emotional side? So they’ll kind of dissect like 500 interviews to find those emotional triggers or emotional points.

You’ll see in a lot of Steven Bartlett’s trailers, there’s people crying.

And like famous people crying—or famous people revealing information they didn’t just lock on that; it was the underlying preparation of that.

The other element, and we talked to Steven’s team about this—and we kind of just talked about it a little bit earlier—is oftentimes if you’re focused on the question, the person can skirt around the answer. Maybe not on purpose, but they don’t necessarily know what you’re going for.

So that’s where, again, crafting the hooks and understanding the outcome of what you’re trying to do, and again, if you look at Steven’s trailers, a lot of it is emotional-based, bringing things in, asking questions that have never been asked before to those individuals—that’s an underlying driving that performance.

Another element that they do that drives a lot of their success is their thumbnail and headline. The approach that Steven talks about—and we detail a very similar approach in my first book, "1 Million Followers"—is they’ll use the Facebook ad platform to A/B test like 100 variations of thumbnails and headlines and measure which one has the highest click-through percentage.

Even when the interview is not out, they’ll just send it to a coming soon page so they can really get an understanding of what’s going to drive that click-through percentage.

Because, as you know, with YouTube, there are two really key variables that cause virality: it’s that click-through percentage on the thumbnail and headline, and the second one is that retention-based.

So, again, they’re methodically testing and understanding what is actually driving that audience, and that can be played into the trailer as well.

Yeah, I’ve heard that there’s like a sense of amount of testing, and that testing is not really that difficult. Like it can take a few hours, but it’s not as rocket science-y as it may seem.

Okay, and in case you’re listening to this because you don’t want to dedicate your entire business to creating social media content, there are some very simple tools that are available to you right now.

You can literally A/B test thumbnails built into the YouTube platform. I think they rolled that out for everybody—at least in America they have.

And so you can test up to, I believe, three thumbnails, and you’ll start to see a performance. Over time, if you’re paying attention to it, there is a certain predictability to which ones will do well.

I can almost, without running the test, tell you this one will do better than the other ones. Every once in a while, I’m surprised, but you can run those kinds of tests.

But if you want to take it to the next level, it doesn’t even cost a lot of money to run these A/B tests, and you can just keep testing different headlines, different designs, different colors, different positions—the story that’s captured inside that frame.

Which I think that’s kind of the state we’re in right now, that your frame shouldn’t be a replication or repeat what you say in the title. But it’s like a little mini-story there; there’s a little tension and storytelling that’s happening within that.

Like Mr. Beast is like, "What will happen?" and he’s got a giant blender with a Lamborghini in it. So you kind of like—literally, that’s not what’s happening, but it tells you about what’s going to happen.

And I think another important thing for people watching to understand is sometimes we interact with people that don’t have a lot of social media experience or they’re professionals that didn’t grow, you know, really use social media a lot.

And they’re like, "Well, I just don’t have the experience. I don’t think I can make this work." That’s where kind of also choosing the right format comes in!

There are formats that are advanced formats, and there are formats that are for beginners. Like I mentioned in the beginning, we have a client that was a hand doctor—like, you know, top of the world in terms of understanding hands and hand surgery and stuff—no social media experience.

We just started out with a simple format where she can create it on her iPhone, and she exploded to over 700,000 followers on TikTok and got a book deal and a TV deal.

There’s another guy, Robert Croak, who has a million followers. He does walking listicles, where he’s walking around the block talking to his camera.

So understanding if you have that concern or hesitation is like, "I don’t have a big team. I don’t have a camera crew. I don’t know what to do on social media," is picking a format that you can just get started with and really just kind of get into that process of creating it.

Now again, you don’t just walk in—look at Robert and his walking listicles and just say, "Oh, I’m just going to walk around the block."

Try and do some analysis of like what’s the difference between a high performer and a low performer. But that’s an important point because I think a lot of people just don’t get started or don’t want to make that leap because they don’t believe they can actually do it.

There’s something kind of holding them back—either consciously or subconsciously—that's just like, "I don’t know that I can be in front of a million people. I don’t know that a million people will actually want to watch what I have to say, or I don’t have the team or the resources to make that happen."

You’ve been studying formats for a long time, and you’ve helped people—you create content, so you’re not only a coach, consultant, or adviser; you’re actually kind of eating the dog food yourself because you produce content on the regular, especially on Instagram where I see a lot of your content.

What are the top five things that you can give to someone who’s a professional service provider that’s doing between $2 to $5 million annually, that has been stuck and is ready to get some help? Is there anything off the top where you’re going like, "Do this, this, this, and that," and it’s going to start to perform better outside of what we already talked about?

Well, I think the first part is just the mindset perspective. Do you actually see that social media is going to help your business? Are you willing to invest the time and energy into it?

Because I think there are a lot of people out there that just want to pay $500 to a social media manager and then expect remarkable results. I’m not saying you can’t make that, but if you’re looking for breakthrough results and for, you know, a business in the $2 to $5 million range to really take it to the next level—to add another $5, $10, $15, $20 million, or even beyond—it’s going to take some dedication and understanding of it.

So that is just a pure mindset thing, and if you pass that test, the first thing is after listening to this conversation, start actually consuming social media, or if you have a team, from an active perspective instead of passive.

So start looking for the formats that would be right for your business. A lot of people want to jump to their competition, but nine times out of 10, your competition is not following anything that we’ve talked about today, so they’re not the best benchmark.

And you don’t always have to look for a format that follows the same content that you have. So oftentimes we’ll work with an insurance agent, and we’ll look at a nutritionist, or we’ll work with a real estate agent and we’ll look at like a personal trainer and we’ll see how that format applies to them.

So that second part is: What is the format that you’re excited about that you feel can best represent your product or service?

Or I should step back—not your product or service, but your expertise.

Which moves to the third thing: Don’t try to create ads; try to create content that gets people to know, like, and trust you.

So make that shift off of, "I’m going to create an ad for my organic social strategy," versus "I’m going to create content that gets people to know, like, and trust me."

Now, that doesn’t prohibit you from running ads. And ads are a completely different ball game—you can be more direct to sell your product or services but in terms of organic. So that’s the third thing.

The fourth thing: As you look at the format that you find, make sure it’s repeatable. So if you see a format, and it’s got 10 million views, go to that person’s profile and make sure that they’ve at least used that format five times to go viral.

Because if they just done it once, then it might not be repeatable. And then again, you may not go to the level of detail that we do, but start at least putting side by side the high performer of that format with the same creator and a low performer of that format and start jotting down notes.

As you press play, what are the differences in there? So as you execute, you have a clear blueprint.

And then the fifth thing is, as you start producing that content, don’t just look at your own performance. So if something underperforms, that is not necessarily a bad thing; that is an opportunity to learn something.

As we started earlier, one of the learning exercises that you can do is pull up that high performer that you started with, which is typically a reference. Now as you get more success, it can start being your content—in your case you can pull up your own high performers compared to your low performers—but pull up the high performer and pull up your low performer, watch them side by side, and determine what was the difference.

What did I miss? What did I not execute properly? So that for the next video that you produce, you can take those learnings and apply them and repeat that process over and over again.

So those are, I would say, the top five things for those individuals in the $2 to $5 million range that can take it to the next level.

I noticed on your reels you will say something like, "Comment this, and I’ll send you my guide." Is there a resource you want to share with our community?

Yeah, I’ll actually give you a link below this video where anybody can get my new book, "The Guide to Going Viral," a PDF or Kindle version for absolutely free. Not charging anything for it.

I think that would be the best place to start; if they want to dive deeper into the methodology, they can get the book absolutely free. If they want to just learn more about my business, they can go to hooko.com, schedule a call with our team, see more of those success case studies, and dive a little bit deeper.

Somebody out there is listening to this as a thoroughbred entrepreneur, values their time, and has more money than time and wants to dump money to solve a problem to get more time.

What does an engagement look like with you, and can you ballpark it so that somebody’s like, "I want to be the Tanner Leatherstein of my industry. I need that help. I want to go from 2,000 to 2 million." What do I have to do? How does an engagement work with your agency?

So there are two core elements that we focus on: it’s strategy and training. So as we talk about kind of our research methodology, we develop a strategy.

So we have a kickoff call with a client; we basically understand their goals and objectives. We’ll typically bring a few formats to the call because we have them fill out an intake form before that call.

We’ll bring like three or four formats to the call to gauge what’s interesting to them. We’ll determine the direction, and then our team will do that deep qualitative analysis for them.

It typically takes us like 8 to 15 hours to do a deep dive into a specific format, so we do all that work for them.

So we have a clear blueprint: this is the format we’re going after, these are the things we have to pay attention to in terms of the performance drivers—both upward and then downward.

Then what we also do is we train them in our model so that they understand whether they want to do it or not. They understand how we do our research, how we do our ideation, how we review analytics and data.

So we do the strategy and the training in our model, and then for some clients, we’ll actually do the analytics. We’ll measure it; we’ll do creative reviews; we’ll basically act as their external creative director.

For some clients that don’t have a team and want to hire a team, we have an HR partner that we will help build their team and train their team in that model.

Okay, so different levels of service and engagement, but strategy and training seem pretty core to this.

Yes. What does it cost, so can you say or no?

Yeah, I mean base levels, it starts up to 10,000; it starts at 10,000. It can go all the way up to $200,000; it just kind of depends on the level of scope and detail that we’re going into.

I mean we have some clients where we’re executing everything for them, and they pay us, you know, six figures a month. But you can get the strategy and training starting at 10,000, and some of our best case studies—success people have gone through that.

I would say that with social media specifically—not just with us but in general—it’s not about how much you spend that dictates your level of success. It’s just your knowledge, your commitment to executing on it, and your ability to learn that’s really the determining factor.

Awesome! Since we have a couple of folks in the room, Richie. Is there a question you wanted to ask about making your content go viral before we wrap up the show?

Sure, maybe I don’t know if you can hear me, but it’s more of a—I’ll ask for you, so just say it to me.

It’s more of a personal question where I struggle between—I have an agency, a video production agency, is what we do. And I struggle with: do I speak on the brand, or do I speak about myself and make my own content?

Like, do I build Ricardo’s brand, or do I build this brand?

That’s a very common question. That’s where I that all the time.

All right, so let me channel what some of the brands are probably thinking, which is—and this comes up a lot—they have a business brand and they have a personal brand.

So they might have two accounts, and they’re always like, "What do I post content as? As the business or as a person?"

Do you have a strategy for that?

So either can work. I would say more times than not, a personal brand will drive the business. A personal brand is a little bit easier to build because the minute you have a brand account, that's where the mindset typically always comes in.

I’m creating a commercial; my account is a website. But there are examples! Like, you look at Duolingo and look at their TikTok account—the massive success. I mean, they’re a billion-dollar company, and they drove their success off of social media.

So it can be done, but there’s just a very interesting mindset shift when somebody is creating content through a personal account and a personal brand versus a company brand.

So it can be done, but I often see personal brands and accounts drive more success.

If you want to look at the—you probably soon-to-be the richest person in the world, Elon Musk. I mean, he doesn’t spend any money on advertising, and it’s just his personal brand that drives everything that he does.

Yeah, sometimes up, sometimes down, sadly.

Okay, well, there are a couple follow-up questions to that. What is your best guess at the psychological trigger that somebody creates something for their company versus for themselves?

Because it should be the same, but I agree with you. When you do stuff for your company, it’s always like very sanitized; it’s very like—we did this, isn’t this cool?

Don’t you want to hire us?

Then when it comes to expressing themselves, we give ourselves different permission to speak in a whole different way and to talk about things that are of interest to us versus like, "Here’s client work."

There’s an interesting correlation to that.

Also working with influencers—so we’ve worked with a lot of companies that are using influencers. I did the first influencer campaign on YouTube in 2007, so I’ve seen this massive evolution.

But there’s an interesting shift in mindset. Even when you’re working with an influencer, the minute a brand engages them, their mindset shifts again; everything that they typically do in their content now is to try to sell somebody else’s product or service.

But I think that the shift in terms of what you’re talking about is: when you’re posting something through a company account, you’re automatically thinking that this needs to sell a product or service.

I can’t tell you how many brands we work with, and their idea of content is a product shot—like of a bottle, like a vitamin supplement bottle or something—talking about their business or brand.

But I think it’s automatically if you’re posting something through a brand account or company account, you think that that social media account is just served to sell your product or service.

Versus if it’s a personal brand, it’s more like, "I want to connect with an audience and convey an expertise or some type of information."

I want to layer in one other thing that can be another hook for your editors. I worked with Taylor Swift, I think like 2010 or 2011—so the early before she was a global superstar—but there’s one thing that I learned from her and one of the things that drove her to massive success that almost everybody gets wrong with social media is she understood that social media is a one-to-one communication method.

Not a one-to-many.

Meaning when we’re watching social media, we’re typically sitting by ourselves on our phone, laying on the couch or the bed, or on the train, whatever it may be. But most people are communicating on social media as if they’re standing on a stage speaking to hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

So you see people say, “Hey you!”—you know, like “Hey everybody!” But that really drives performance because you’re not creating that personal connection.

And that was also an interesting part of the first wave of YouTube influencers, if you remember, is you had these teenagers sitting in their bedroom building massive audiences of millions of subscribers, and nobody could really figure it out.

And it was because you felt like that person was talking to you—that they were your friend. They were letting you into their world.

There was a time early on when the first wave of YouTube influencers took off; there was a poll with teenagers about who their favorite celebrity was, and they were like, the top six or seven

For a niche audience, that's not going to really help him reach a lot of people. But if you took the same principles and used an iPhone or something like that, then all of a sudden everyone's like, "Oh, here are three ways that you can frame your next selfie video." Super relatable; everybody can see that.

If he showed us something new or did it in an entertaining way, he has a much bigger chance of growing his audience. According to the new thing that we learned today, if your audience is big enough, the percentage of those people who are going to be your customer will be bigger than 100% of your niche audience. Right? Because some people would be thrilled to have 10,000 views.

So in that first example, like 10,000 views, they're getting 450 views. Yeah, absolutely. But I would say, even when we're doing our analysis of looking at creators with tens of millions of views, even if your goal is not tens of millions of views, you still need to learn what drives their performance to get to 10,000 views for most people.

If you don't study that art form, then you know, it can fall apart. Going back to kind of that example of Richie shooting on an Alexa, one element that could be done is like a YouTube thumbnail: "I'm a professional cinematographer. I've done X, Y, and Z. I typically shoot on this $10,000 camera, but what I'm going to do today is show you how to get the same visual effects on your iPhone."

So you're kind of leveraging your expertise, what you've done, what you typically do, so that if people want to hire you to do those things, they can. But then going to the general audience of how you can get those similar effects for an iPhone, and things of that nature.

The super clickbaity version of the thumbnail is him holding two products: the iPhone and Alexa, with one going into the garbage. Right? 'Cause you don't really need that anymore. So I think we got that part. Richie, you go with that.

I have a follow-up, maybe you kind of answered this. We work with very high-profile clients, global brands sign NDAs. He works with celebrity wedding clients where we can't really share a lot of what we do. So maybe is there a strategy or mindset when we make our content? Are we just generalizing it, or what are some series that we could do to share the wins and successes of our clients?

But there's like this gray space where we can't really talk.

Okay, all right. Last final follow-up question to this theme of a cinematographer: let's say you work with global brands or celebrities, and you have to sign non-disclosure agreements, so you can't really share that work. It feels like, "Well, what am I going to talk about now?"

I'm sure you have some strategies on how we can not talk about something.

Yeah, so, you know, I experienced that as well. I mean, you can generalize it to say, "I work with mainstream celebrities, A-list celebrities, Fortune 500 companies." But I also think that, with the mindset, as you get more and more work, just ask the client: "Hey, I understand, you know, listen, if it's a wedding or private event, I can understand people are not going to want to disclose or reveal the photos or the videos of things. But my experience of working with high-profile celebrities or brands is: if you just ask, be like, 'Hey, I'm totally cool with signing this NDA, but it would be really helpful if we could get some type of testimonial or just talk about the fact that we've worked with you.' We don't have to reveal any details about that work, but oftentimes they'll understand and then they'll allow you to at least talk about it, especially if they like your work and appreciate it and work with you over and over again."

That's the way that I would approach it. Don't kind of resist, but at least just take the time to ask the question because oftentimes the client doesn't even know the NDA is in there. It's by a standard thing from their attorney or their lawyer, or things of that nature.

There's this weird space that some people exist in. When your audience is so small, they'll not let you do the work, but when your audience is so big, they'll pay you because they want you to share that stuff on socials. So we're in that weird gap in between.

So even more reason for you to figure out your viral formula so you can do this, so that you're sought after because of your audience. That's a wonderful place to be in, right? 'Cause it's amazing.

I know I have a lot of clients in high-end fashion, and so many of them are scared of Tanner Lein because of his success. He even had to put up some pretty strong boundaries with brands reaching out to him. I don't know if you've seen some of his new series, but he has a form that brands can fill out for him to dissect.

Yeah, I think I saw that, but he says he will use a secret shopper to buy the product. He won't take any free product. In filling out the form, they have to be okay with him saying whatever with it 'cause the minute he breaks that code with the audience, you're done.

You're done.

Yeah. Okay, that was really cool. I thought what you were going to say was: "I'm at this four-time Grammy award-winning person's wedding. I can't tell you who it is, but they spent over a million and a half on this wedding alone, and here are three things that we do to prepare for a shoot like this."

You could just be in an abstract background, right? So you're keeping certain specifics, but you're not revealing anybody, and so you're not violating your non-disclosure agreement.

It's like, "I can't tell you this celebrity." That can work towards your advantage too. But what I would just suggest again, I think that's a great hook and that can work, but don't be afraid to ask.

Yes, of course. Especially if it's a repeat client or the client seems nice, don't hesitate to ask.

You should ask first, but coming from the world of commercial production, clients are freaked. They're like, "We don't want to give any of our competitors, any other marketing people, any glimpse of insight into anything that we do." Since we paid you, we kind of own all the content.

Like, Apple doesn't even allow you to mention that you worked with them, period. There was a period in time when they let you, and then all of a sudden, they just clamp down on that. They stop folks from saying anything at all.

So it's so funny because we just had an experience. We were working with a law firm on a mass tort campaign, and we were saving them a million dollars a month in claim acquisition costs, and they would not reveal our name to their litigation fund because they want them to know what their competitive advantage is. So that does definitely happen from time to time.

That's sad, but that's often the case. So if you have a personal relationship, if they've hired you and you're relatable, you can just ask and see what happens.

Then there are strategies to work around that if that doesn't happen.

Did you want to say something, like a follow-up question on the follow-up?

Besides, I already promised a lot.

Follow up! Go ahead.

This is the last, last follow-up question. Go ahead!

Applicable to anybody besides cinematographers: consistency. Once you know the same page, you've got the strategy done, you've got the format, is there anything you do to help that person, your client, to be consistent in producing that content? Because I think that's another big problem that everybody has: like, I have everything down, but I'm not consistent.

Okay, let's address that. So sorry, the last, last, last question to ask you, Brendan, is: So we got the format, we got the strategy, we know what we're doing, and we do one or two things, and then we start to fall off. What do we do about that? How do you help those kinds of people?

So I think it’s bringing them back to the center of, well first off, understanding why did they fall off? Is it a motivation thing? Is it a resource thing? Is it the performance dipping off? Because each one of those is completely different.

But in terms of consistency, we say consistency within a format. So again, it's mastery of that single format and becoming consistent. If that drops off, if performance drops off, as we kind of talked about, take your highest performer, go back to the low performer, and dissect the differences between the two.

There are some instances—it's rare—but sometimes formats can fall off in terms of their effectiveness. I will say that typically if that does happen, it takes years; it doesn't happen in a week. It doesn't happen in months.

Oftentimes people want to switch a format right away because one video didn't work, and they think the format's broken when it's the execution of the format. But I think always bringing it back to that. If you're at a stage where you're burned out from a format and you want to move on, you just repeat the process again.

If you're kind of demotivated for some reason where you're not seeing the business results, then again, center on what aspect of it is falling apart. Because oftentimes, if your content's performing, it's not the content that's driving the dip in performance. It's something broken in your business, whether it's your landing page, your remarketing sequence, your email cadence, or something's broken in your cart that's decreasing the lifetime value of those things.

So I think first diagnosing why the falloff happened, and then you can tackle a specific solution to that falloff.

Okay, that makes sense.

And I think that question comes up mostly because there's a lack of commitment. And that was your number one tip: Are you committed to this social media strategy? Is this critical to your business? Because there are a lot of other things you can do.

I think a lot of people enter into this kind of like dipping their toes in the water versus going for a swim, because they heard everybody's doing this and feel like they're missing out on something, but they're not 100% committed.

But the reality is that if you're committed and you have a strategy and a plan, you follow the format, do your best to learn and analyze, and you do that over and over again, not only do you get the results that you want, but you're even guaranteed that in 120 days, if that doesn't happen, something else is wrong. We'll fix that part for you.

But it's like, if something works for you, why the hell are you not doing more of it? Like if somebody runs an advertising campaign or a promotion and they're getting more sales, and then they ask you, "Why aren't I consistent in it?" There's something off. Some part of the story doesn't line up.

I think a lot of people are half-heartedly engaging in social content, organic content, and they'll say to me, "I tried for 90 days; it ain't working. I'm out." I'm like, "How about you try it for like six months? That doesn't seem like a very big commitment."

Like, "I tried my marriage job for 30 days, Brendan. It didn't work. I'm out."

Right? You have to be committed; otherwise, do something else with your time.

Yeah. If I look at, you know, all the variables of all the clients that I've worked with over the past 20 years, what is the biggest recurring thing with two people to have the most amount of success in its purely mindset?

Like it's just mindset. And I can give you an analogy to pro football. Like, I don't know if you follow pro football, but the San Francisco 49ers' quarterback was the last pick in the draft. He made it to the Super Bowl last year, where you look at Tom Brady, who's considered one of the greatest football players of all time. He was one of the last picks in the draft.

And it was just their pure mindset to say, "I am not going to let this drive me down. I have the core skill sets here, and I'm just going to be dedicated."

There are so many other players that get drafted higher in the process that just fall off after a year and don't make it, and it's the same thing with creating content and creating business.

Yes, there are skill sets and things to master, but I can definitively tell you, especially with the clients that we work with, I am never scared of working with somebody that has no social media experience. Oftentimes, I get more excited about working with somebody who has no social media experience than somebody that has 10 years of social media experience.

But I always am looking at the mindset: Is this person really going to put in the work? Is this person really motivated? Do they have a big vision for this?

Because I think this is something that we didn't touch upon that's really important: There's so much opportunity with social media, and that opportunity is capped at how big you can dream.

I'll give you an example: think about beauty influencers. A lot of beauty influencers that have millions of followers make six figures a year doing brand deals and things of that nature.

But I have a friend that I worked with a little bit named Michelle Phan. She was one of the original beauty influencers, built millions of followers, but what she did is she got together with a few friends, used her expertise, and her audience to create a company called Ipsy. Ipsy is a multi-billion dollar corporation.

So two fashion or beauty influencers, same size. One can be making six figures; one can build a billion-dollar company. That is the beauty of social media! That is the massive upside that you can create.

Some people say Mr. Beast is valued at 10 or 5 billion. Even if he's valued at 1 billion, he started YouTube in his bedroom when he was like 14 years old, thinking about the opportunity of what social media can really do for you.

Don't minimize what that impact can be, because if you minimize that impact, I think oftentimes that minimizes the effort and energy that you're going to put into it.

So those of you watching this episode, thanks for staying to the very end. We're going to include a link to Brendan's book, and the book is called "The Guide to Going Viral." That's totally free! You can get the PDF or the eBook version of that to help you get it going.

If you want to reach out to Brendan to get his help, his expertise, and his team on it, we'll also include the link to his website in the link below.

Brendan, it's been a pleasure. My hope is that this one beats the previous video ‘cause we got all the hooks in this one.

All right, thanks, Chris. I appreciate you having me. It's a pleasure to connect with everybody that was tuning in for this wonderful [Music].