Transcription
I think the future will be held by those who can steal attention. In this day and age, anybody that's going viral consistently on the internet is thinking about it. So, I think personal brand is an okay way to say it, but I would say instead I'm becoming my own walking ad platform.
I'll say, "Hey, just do this. Just post." And like, well, it's easy for you to say, Neil. I was nowhere before 4 years ago. Never had filmed a video, never had done a podcast. The key to success is really consistency plus duration and ideation. So if you do that for 6 months every single day, I'm pretty sure your life and your content will change.
When you were starting out as a content creator, did you feel like you face some adversity? Is that just in our head or is it a true barrier?
I actually don't really love doing videos all the time, but I started to realize something and that was that.
So Cody, um, thank you so much for being here today. It's been it's a it's a true honor to have you with us. And if you don't know the Forward family here, we are all working on building our personal brands. We are all content creators. And we just want to set ourselves apart from the competition. That's what everyone here is trying to do is to grow their business. And so I thought there'd be no one better than someone who is all in on personal brand and has built many, many businesses across all different industries. And so you have millions of followers now across multiple platforms. You're a best-selling author. By the way, the new book is amazing.
Thank you.
And so, as someone who's all in on personal brand now, um, like what what did how would you define personal brand is what I would like to say.
Well, you know, I think we're in the age of AI, right? We all know this. You guys are seeing more content being created than ever. You're seeing more jobs being outsourced to technology than ever. We invest in it every single day. And I think when I started doing content, let's what was that four years ago online and caring about a personal brand. I was nowhere before four years ago. Never had filmed a video. Never had done a podcast. I was a nerd in a spreadsheet in Excel. That's my happy place as an investor. I actually don't really love doing videos all the time. Um, but I started to realize something and that was that the ultimate differentiator that nobody sophisticated wants to acknowledge is not going to be capital. How much money that you have? And I know this because my friends at Sequoia who are big huge investors, they only allow nonprofits to invest now. They like will not take actively many people's money. And simultaneously, the people who are building businesses now who built these big huge SAS companies and these big tech companies, what are they starting to realize? It's not product that's king, it's distribution that's king. And so it used to be like, do you guys remember back in the day, like your first video, the first thing that you put out? Do you remember telling somebody that you were going to do it or showing somebody and you got kind of like a little cringe? Did that happen to anybody in here? Like, why are you doing that? You're too old for that. You look silly, you know? Why don't you just do do the normal thing? Well, I think you guys, we're becoming the normal. And what is actually not so normal is to have a great product that nobody [ __ ] talks about because you have no attention. Yes.
And that is the power of personal brand. It's not an ego thing. It's not about you being famous, me being famous. I'd rather be rich than famous. But what it is about is it's about, uh, you know, do you guys know, uh, four like so 40 cents of every dollar of venture capital funding goes to where? Does anybody know? It goes to the big four. That's ads, right? It goes to Google, it goes to Amazon. All of the venture dollars go to getting distribution. Well, what if you guys have the products and then you are the distribution? Aka, you are the big four. Well, then you don't have to spend as much on ad dollars and then you have an unfair advantage. And so I think personal brand is an okay way to say it, but I would say instead I'm becoming my own walking ad platform.
And so that's the difference.
Yeah. And I love that because I remember as I was growing this community and this event, I did it all organic and then only last in the last year I started dabbling in ads, but I noticed that even the ad cost is dramatically lower if you have a personal brand. So, while these venture-backed companies with, you know, they're they're backing a company or a founder that has no brand will pay $10 or $15 a lead, I can pay $2 to $3 a lead.
Oh, yeah.
If you have a brand. So, it's like the ultimate hack and it's I feel like it's David versus Goliath and David can win.
100%. I mean, we do something called a tornado strategy. Does everybody know what that is?
Okay. So, so basically the idea is most brands do an ad that's like, "Hi, if you're thirsty, you buy water, right? Here's my water bottle. Here's why my water bottle's better than everybody else." That's most ads. The tornado strategy means you don't even talk about your product. You give value instead. And you put ad dollar behind your uh value added content as opposed to just your ads selling your product because we know that there's anywhere from a 7 to 12 touch point that has to happen before somebody will buy anything on average. So, I need to have a tornado of trust. So, a tornado of my content going around to people um before I even talk to them once about buying something from me. And I think this is really important because we can actually do this in a way where people want to watch those value added pieces where they're probably not going to want to watch it from brands. So, I I think you're exactly right. You get your you get lower ad costs. You also get lower ad costs when you're just boosting posts and when you're boosting the things that are already going viral. It's much cheaper to do that than it is to force function an ad. Um, and so I think the future will be held by those who can steal attention.
Big time. Okay. So, I want to get into content strategy and we have a bunch of tactical things to share with all of you today. So, I hope you brought your notebook and all that stuff, but before I do that, I just want to acknowledge something. You know, our audience Cody is half over half women.
And, uh, as Yeah, popping up for the women.
And I noticed this. I noticed, um, you know, I noticed you're a woman. You know, I'm like, I not I noticed.
I identify as one. Yeah.
Yes. I notice, uh, so I know that was so dumb. I messed up. Sorry.
I'm I'm a little nervous this morning. I don't know why. You're killing it.
I got some nerves going. But, um, I noticed this like I feel like a lot of the women come up to me and they're like, "Easy for you guys to say."
I'll say, "Hey, just do this. Just post it." Like, "Well, it's easy for you to say, Neil, you're not a girl." And I'm like, "Okay, I'm trying to be empathetic and, um, and I get it, but there's honestly some of the guys are just as bad as the girls here, you know, but"
When you were starting out as a content creator, did you feel like you face some adversity as a woman? And, uh, is that just in our head or is it a true barrier?
Um, well, there's two sides of the coin. One, as a woman, there is some real truth. Like, I never, I mean, when I was growing up and and when I was first progressing in my career, I really never saw the difference between men and women. Like, we were both, we were all Excel junkies. We were just in spreadsheets. My best mentors ever were men. And I didn't really see what my vagina had to do with it. You know, I'm like, buying businesses. Seems unrelated. Um, but, uh, also it's a fun word to throw around because people just go, you know.
Yeah, you caught me on that one.
It really just spices up the conversation. So, um,
So, I really never saw that it had much to do with anything. And I do think that is the mindset that you have to have if you're going to be on the internet. Like, it doesn't matter. Who cares? We're all human. It doesn't matter. That said, um, you know, I did sort of have a chuckle, uh, once I got on the internet a little bit more because it's not people in this room. You know, it you just have a very high hater ratio that is, you know, hell hath no fury like a a middle-aged man that has not accomplished what he wants, still living in his mom's basement, you know? And so, so, and we all know this because, um, you know, men, you guys do have a harder burden in some ways, which is like, provide for us, become something, be an alpha, don't cry. Like, all those things are real. And so if you don't recognize that, then I think that it is very easy for the trolls to often be men. That is just like real. That's not me virtue signaling as a woman. There is just a like a 9 to 1 ratio of men that talk [ __ ] on the internet to women talking [ __ ] on the internet. And and that makes sense because like you guys hear how you talk to each other. Could you imagine women imagine your girlfriends were like, "You're so fat. You can't fit through that door." We'd be like, "Oh my god, like I don't know what like why are you?" And men are like, "That's a Tuesday." So, it's just different communication styles. So, I will say one, just get used to the fact that you're going to get more hate online as a woman. And we're not used to it. We didn't get rejected as many times as you guys did going up to women. We're not used to this negative feedback loop that you all have become accustomed to. Now, on the flip side, I always think, you know, you become the thing that you project out into the universe. So, if you're like, "It's hard being a woman. Nobody wants to give me respect as much as they do men." Blah blah blah blah blah. You make yourself a victim, then you get treated like one. If you act like prey, you get prayed upon. So, I don't really like that. And so, then I try to Thanks. So, I try to flip it the opposite direction and look at who the biggest creators in the world are. Who are they? Who are the most followed people on the internet?
Mel Robbins, Oprah, not even [ __ ] close. It's the Kardashians.
Dang.
I wish, you know, I'm like I sometimes I wish I actually respect the hustle of the Kardashians a lot. Uh, we have different like ethical and moral compass slightly. Um, but I respect their hustle. Uh, so, um, I think as a woman, you actually have the best opportunity ever. So, don't ever tell somebody that it is harder to be a woman online because you are projecting that out into the universe, even if it might be true. Accept the fact that people are going to tell you, "Yeah, what did you sleep with him? Yeah, was it your daddy's money? Yeah, must be not." Okay, what the [ __ ] ever. Bank account comparison [ __ ] right? So, like that's kind of where I go.
You let results speak.
Yeah. Scoreboard, you know. Scoreboard.
Love that. And I have now that you said it, it is always a guy who's a troll. The hater, the troll. It's weird. I don't think I can't remember a a nasty comment from a girl in the in the
Yeah. It doesn't. We do it privately, you know.
Yeah. Okay.
Behind closed doors, but Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
I got you.
I got you. Okay. So, yeah, now that we got that out of the way, it's like, hey, let's just hit the let's just hit the ground, you know, with with content. And so, I think about long form, short form. I follow you on Twitter. U I love the stuff you tweet. And, uh, and I've noticed a lot of founders in the tech space, that's their preferred platform or I guess X, not Twitter, but, uh, I noticed you're on all of them and you have a team and you're doing all these things. So, what are your preferred platforms? And then for someone in here who's like a little bit overwhelmed.
Yeah.
Like, do you have a favorite? Because somebody might be like, "Well, [ __ ] it's just me."
Um, my tornado is kind of like a breeze, you know? How can I How can I get this rolling?
Yeah. Um, I listen, um, I like diversification. I'm an investor that has a lot of portfolios in my company for a reason. That's my preferred preference. I know that at any given time, something will be up, something will be down, and I can have like the law of average. That makes me feel better. So, my content strategy is the exact same. Some people say go really deep on one thing, you know, focus on one thing until you make your millions. I'm math-based. So, I go, nobody does that in investing. If that was a real strategy, you would see that mathematically where people put their money. And so, I think anybody that's telling you that actually doesn't realize that they have survivorship bias. They went on on one thing and it worked, which is actually an anomaly, not normal. And simultaneously, they don't actually understand portfolio theory and the rule of diversification. So, the fancy response aside, I would say have a few platforms because one day you will get, I mean, there was a period, you guys, this is so ludicrous, but I'll say it in a room full of, uh, full of fellow creators like, there was a period where a guy on Twitter by the name of, like I can't make this up, by the name of Horny Adolf Hitler, that was his handle, um, who was was tagging me in things saying that I'm a man and that also, uh, I have a trust fund and that my husband made all, uh, my money. He's a Navy Seal. You guys know how much the government pays those guys. So, I'm like, I'm not really sure how to refute all of these things. And so, there was a period where I was like, kind of annoyed at Twitter. There's this like gnarly guy yelling at me all the time there that didn't really feel that good, honestly. And, uh, my Instagram was like, very happy and everybody was like, rainbows, go girl, yes queen. So, like, all right, I like Instagram this week. And so, I sort of think at some point, if you're on the internet often, whether you're getting trolled or you're just not performing, it's kind of nice to have a few, which is not what people usually say. They say, "Go ham on one, dominate one, and then progress." And I play to the law of, I I don't want to burn out, and I want to have an endurance sport, not a sprint. Um, and so that's my personal preference as opposed to like, here is what you do by content rules or something.
Yeah. And I feel like when you dabble in multiple things, you you find your voice maybe on one. I noticed a gentleman here told me that he started writing on Threads, you know, which is like X and blew up there.
Yeah.
And so he he never thought of himself that way. He was doing video and it just the writing hit more. So I think there's something to be said for that. I also think at the same time that people should narrow their focus. You know, like I know some people in the room who are dominating LinkedIn because LinkedIn is a kind of a different algorithm and a different different audience.
Well, I do think you have to actually look yourself in the face and say, "What am I going to be good at?" Like, I had a guy come to my office the other day. He he's a co-investor in one of our companies, and he like he never smiles. You got like I can never tell if he's pissed or not. Um, he's a really soft talker. He's very smart. Um, he has no emotion though. Is he going to be really good on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube? And that's where he's pouring a ton of money. And I was like, guy, I'm not a rocket scientist, but this doesn't seem like a great idea. Like, go to LinkedIn, go to Twitter. And so, I think a lot of the time with content creators, you need a buddy, and maybe it's somebody in this room to say, "You're not good at that, and that's not going to probably work for you unless you do it totally differently." And and that's perfectly okay. And so in the beginning, I did a newsletter because I like writing. I did Twitter because I liked writing now X. Uh, and I did Instagram, uh, because I'm just on it a lot. And those were the only three. And then I layered YouTube and I only recently layered a podcast. And so I think you can also go like three inputs. One, what are you uniquely skilled at? Two, what are you obsessed with? Three, what has the best opportunity for attention today? And so LinkedIn may be under, um, utilized by many creators today. Many of the live streaming platforms are underutilized by creators today. And so you can steal some attention even when you can't exactly earn it just because it's a new platform.
Yeah, I love that. And so on when you talk about video versus writing and all these different things like for when you look at videos that perform, which is or videos that don't perform, you guys have a team and you do this.
How are you optimizing content? I guess like in terms of are you really focusing on the ideation and the writing and all the prep, you know, because I I recently interviewed Alex Herozi and he said, you know, I don't remember what he said, but something like a pound of prep is worth this much in post or something and he was saying they do a lot of work before they even sit down to record versus just like, hey, let's go shoot content.
Yeah. Well, um, that is a saying in, um, starting in the movie business, which is that a pound of pre-production is worth 10 of post-production. Okay.
And so in the movie business, I think you can learn a lot. Like right now, I'm listening to it's a great book, probably worth you guys listening to George Lucas's biography. And, um, and I listened to it because he talks so much about the pain of production. And that production could be pre, like the bleeding on the page, writing the ideas. It could be post, like the sitting in the dark editing room trying to get it to all come together. There's like pain in the production, right? And, um, and so I really think it's actually what do you want? And so George Lucas, uh, was famous actually for just, uh, run and gun. So, he he has a documentary film style, uh, where he just runs with a camera, kind of sees what happens. He doesn't even really direct his actors. The actors just go and every time he says, "I will fix this in the editing bay." And guess what? He's pretty [ __ ] successful, I think, made a billion dollars from content. And so, I'm always really careful saying, "Here's the rule. Here's how you have to do it." Now, that goes more viral when I say that, but it's a lie. And so, there's no right or wrong way. Um, you can choose what is your unfair advantage, which is what I try to do everywhere in life. George Lucas, not a very charismatic guy, pretty quiet. He likes the editing room. They say that the editor is the last storyteller. Something to think about, I think in content where a lot of people go, well, I'm going to write the idea, I'm going to shoot it, and then I'll just ship it off to, I don't know, whatever some outsourced VA. The last storyteller is your editor, I believe. And so, um, that is his preference. And then you have a Casey Neistat who thinks about every single shot that he's going to shoot, not only what he's going to say, but what the angle looks like, but the camera, but the lighting, but the time of day. Both of them are very successful. So, you get to choose. Um, what I would say, the great, the great have a system that works for them continuously over time. And so, I want you guys to optimize for what makes this game something you can continue to play because the key to success is really consistency plus duration and, uh, and ideation. So, if you can do things for a long time, if you can do them the same way, uh, for a long time, and then if you can iterate on them or ideate on them to get a little bit better, you'll win. That's the same thing in investing as it is in business, as it is in content. So, optimize for you as opposed to for a rule.
Yes. I love that because I just see somebody doing high production and all into it and then there's this guy, I don't know if you know, Jefferson Fischer, he's like
Literally posting the videos on from the phone in the car and made an audience of millions of followers and like both win. You're like, well, which is right? Well, it's it's right for you.
100%. And Jefferson's a great guy. The other thing that's good about Jefferson is Jefferson is the person that he portrays on the internet.
100%.
Which is the fastest way to not win at this or to have things go really sideways is try to pretend to be somebody you're not.
Yeah. And I've just noticed that even, uh, we interviewed a content guy yesterday who's blow who's blowing up right now. And it it was he talked the same thing about consistency, but the one thing you just brought up, which is so important, is the friction. Like removing the friction to create content. So like, what's a system that you could have in the business where we could do something that leads to content, you know, like obviously
This interview is going to be a ton of content. Totally.
Uh, being on running starting a podcast. I I remember starting a podcast not because I wanted to be top 100 podcast because I just wanted a system to consistently create content.
And like sometimes I would not even publish the long form because the the interview didn't do well and I would just chop up the shorts. And I think there's just like something to be said for having some sort of schedule to this of like when I do this, this turns into this content.
Yeah. I mean, Hemingway famously talked about how, um, the muse seemed to show up more often when he started at 9 every day. And, uh, and I think that is true, um, in what we do. You know, I think people will tell you beautiful little lies about the fact that like, I just put up this video and I got a million views and then I just kept putting them up and I got millions more views and I barely work at this thing. And that's kind of like a little instant signal that they're not telling you the truth. The truth of the matter is in this day and age, anybody that's going viral consistently on the internet is thinking about it. They're thinking about it. Even a Jefferson Fischer, he's smart, you know, and and I've gotten to know Jefferson. And Jefferson will be the first one to tell you. If I ask him, "What are your most viral videos?" He'll know everyone. If I say, "Why do they go viral?" He'll tell you. If I say, "What do you want to talk about on your videos?" Uh, but you know, you can't because they won't go viral, he'll tell you. And so, every single content creator is a systems-oriented thinker. If they do this for a long time and they continue to go viral, it's just how much they want to present that to you. So, in my brand, I'm pretty comfortable being a little rough around the edges and saying like like I like I don't know, you guys will figure it out. Maybe somebody will figure it out, but like I think I'm relatively uncancellable because I'm like, "Yeah, [ __ ] said it. Don't care." Like, "Didn't care then, don't care now." Like, I'm It's all out there. You know, whatever you guys, I'm exactly the same person. I think that sometimes you got to be careful on the internet portraying a perfect image because none of us are perfect. We're all like messy behind the scenes somehow. And so I think the more you can say in your content, hey, like I'm actually trying to go viral and that's okay. And when did a bunch of people talk us into the fact that it wasn't okay for us to obsess on getting attention and eyeballs on the internet, which is our most precious commodity.
Yeah. Think about politics and your personal views. You share them freely. I mean, I think more now. Maybe earlier you didn't. And I don't know if it's something we have to get over. I think for me I was like dip my toe in and then you get a little more comfortable and you go a little bit more. But I feel like a lot of us in the room struggle with that. Like we we serve a lot of people in our business and we're honestly just scared like I don't want to offend half my audience today.
I don't want to offend.
This group of people. And so but then I know if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing. So where's that balance for you? How can you get comfortable sharing your opinion?
Well, you have to decide like I always think about what do I want written on my tombstone. And it's not going to be like number one TikTok creator. It's not going to be that I got hundreds of millions of views. It's not going to be anything like that. On my tombstone, I wanted to say that it mattered that I lived, that like it mattered that, um, I maybe helped a few people. I changed a few lives. Like once you've made a certain amount of money and you know if you're not a terribly bad human being, I think at some point you strive for relevancy and for impact and for legacy, and that's sort of human nature on the positive side. And so when I share things online, I don't share them to be offensive. Um, like maybe if I think something's funny, I'll share it even though I know it could could ruffle some feathers. I share it because I think that it is the right thing to do and I think that one, you can inoculate yourself against people, you know, coming at you or not finding your right tribe by saying the quiet part out loud. And in a world in which people are increasingly afraid to say the quiet part out loud with their face, um, I think that is a differentiator. And I but I think the differentiator is not saying it in an offensive way. So, like I don't think that you should strive for clickbait ragebait content because it actually doesn't last over time and I do kind of think you eventually get back what you put out there. Um, but simultaneously, the more that you put out a few things that you deeply believe, the more the people who deeply believe that will find you too. And so, I do not, my husband and I have a rule. We do not become close friends or do or become partners with people who have not stood up for something publicly, even when it was against their own self-interest. I just don't do it. I don't want to be friends. I want you to do well. I wish you nothing but happiness, but I know that life will be difficult at some point. The only people that are getting close to us are people who have stood for something because I think that matters in this game called life. And so that is why I do it. I don't really ever say, I think I voted for this political candidate. I'm that party or another party. Um, because I would never define myself by politics. I think they're all [ __ ] criminals at the end of the day. And so, you know, red, blue, purple, green, I kind of don't care. I care about you guys. Um, but I do think and and so, and I might change my opinion later. Um, and I think that's okay to do, too. So, I wouldn't stress too much about it. And then I also think just be careful about being around creators and and and thinking that those people are your friends when they've never stood up for something against their own self-interest. They've never stood outside of their pack of people and said something that would even make their own people mad. Um, because creators are charismatic, you know, so you might sit down with other people here and and charisma, charisma is good, but it can be bad, too. And so you might be like, we're buddies and then find out pretty quickly, we're not buddies. They're just very charismatic and I thought that we were. And so that is something to be careful of as you get bigger on the internet. I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to continue to put out the absolute best content that's going to help you move your business and brand forward. But I need your help. So many of you guys are watching this channel, but you're not subscribed and that's the number one thing that's going to help me grow. So if you haven't done so already, hit that subscribe button. Normally I'd have a fancy ad read and promote some product, but today all I want you to do is just subscribe to the channel. And now let's get back to the episode.
What you just said is so important and I think we you have to remember this everyone here. It's like the difference between someone who just gets a lot of views or the person who actually makes an impact. The person who actually has people that want to work with you. How do you go from the person that's like, "Hey, that was an information. That was good information. I like that video versus I need to work with that person. I want to like sign up to whatever they're doing. I want to be a part of that." And I think the only way you can do that is if you share your views. So like I have this idea where maybe everyone should take a list or take out a notebook and start writing down like what are the things you stand for? What are things that are important to you? What are your values? What are your principles? And then just start inserting them into different content. And one thing I've done which is easy for me is I'll just write a tweet every day.
Yeah.
And I'll screenshot and put on Instagram. I've been doing this every single day for years and it works. Like people get to know you through just one thought of the day.
You know? So I would encourage you guys to share more of what you think because I feel like
I know what you feel about business, but I don't know who you are as a person.
Yeah. I mean, we do business with people. It's true. And I'm a big proponent of like, tell me what you stand for, don't tell me what you rail against. And so I think it's kind of uninteresting for people to tell me all the things that they don't like, the things that they would burn down, whatever. It's much harder to build than it is to destroy. And so as you guys are thinking about sharing these spiky points of view, like do it for the positive just as much. Like, you know, I stand up for this little guy. I mean, one of the creators that I like the most right now, his name's Brett, and he's a he he's a gym owner, and he kind of highlights people who are crappy to each other in the gym. You guys know what I talk? Yeah. And, um, and I love it because he'll also highlight these videos of when some huge kind of mean looking guy helps this like sort of sad looking person figure out how to work gym equipment. And and it's this and he is a big force for like make it really safe, uh, for people to get fit and so I think that's cool.
Yeah. And I love the fact that it's contrast. I feel like that's a big thing with personal brand, like gym bros who are actually super smart, you know, like that's like Hormozi, you know, people like they wouldn't expect you to do this.
Yeah.
And that goes back to what you said, like if you said something against the grain, counterintuitive, um, or against even what everyone is saying in your industry, I think it can stand out. Now, obviously, don't do that for the sake of just trying to get views, but if you truly feel that, I think it's going to come through big time. So, getting back to like content strategy and, uh, I want to just kind of figure out where the puck is heading. I know I'm it's just some people get overwhelmed at this and I even get like I feel like it's hard to keep up with all the different things. The trends are moving here and then what you you just got up to speed on one strategy. Oh, that's not working anymore. What about this? And then you're like, it's like a squirrel here, there, everywhere. So, how do you feel about like the future of content right now as we sit, you know, halfway through 2025? Where is content heading? What trends do you see working? And what trends do you see like maybe we shouldn't be going that way anymore?
Yeah. Well, um, the attention in this economy where you find the most underpriced attention to me is where you have something that is old, stayed, and sort of traditional and you can take that and make it sexy. That's what I've seen continuously. So, for instance, we have an old window washing company that was never something sexy. We turned it into a brand called Pinks. We got these hot young guys wearing these nice uniforms out there cleaning people's windows. They're doing cool kickflip tricks on skateboards.
Yeah.
And the and the company's called Pinks and they're getting millions of views as a window cleaning company that now they have like a hundred locations across the US and we turned this old boring business into a sexy business. And why I like that is because it's much easier to stand out when you are in an area of people who don't even have Yelp pages, right? This is this is the difference. Whereas if you go and you try to become a beauty influencer right now, really tough, lots of competition there. You go and you try to talk about content online, lots of people talking about content online. Where can you find a niche where you can have expertise, but nobody is trying to make that area sexy yet? I do not believe the underpriced attention is on a platform. I believe the underpriced attention is in your niche. And choosing your niche intelligently will catapult you. And if you think about it, most of us who are big did that. So, I started talking about laundromats and I started talking about the roofing companies we own and our window cleaning companies. I had no idea people would find that interesting, but I made it sexy and we blew up. You see the same thing again and again with these underserved sectors. So that I think is where the future is headed. I also think in the future, uh, like more and more people who are players who like make a ton of money, who are really successful in what they do are coming into content. We're seeing it right now for instance with Silicon Valley. I used to get made a lot of fun of because why if I'm an investor and I'm so good at doing all of this stuff, would you make content online? That's a common thought, right? If you actually have all this money and you've made all these investments, why are you making TikTok videos? And I think they're missing the game entirely, but they're not missing it anymore. And you're starting to see the biggest companies in the world like Andreessen Horowitz has a media arm now. They have a podcast. They're acquiring multiple media arms. And that's because they're starting to see what you guys see. But the the last thing I I see as a trend here is, you know, we have something called the contrarian operating system in our business. That's how we teach all of our business owners how to run their businesses. Uh, with two two thoughts. I want an enduring business. I want a profitable business. I don't really play the burn money at all costs and burnout game. I want enduring businesses that last for a long time and I want profitable businesses. So, we teach people to to use what's called the contrarian operating system. And a segment of that is our contrarian content system. And I think no matter what happens with trends, as long as you have a feedback loop for how you learn and how you implement what is happening in the world, you will win. And the reason why I know this is because that's how private equity works. Private equity guys are the richest people in the world for a reason. Why? Because they take a a system and they use that system continuously, and that system is applied to whatever is happening externally out in the world. And so I would highly recommend if you guys don't already have an operating system your business runs on, you really should. Uh, if you don't already have a content system so that you do not become a job, uh, an employee in a job as opposed to an owner in a business. Um, if you feel like, hey, if I don't show up, the money doesn't show up. Hey, if I don't execute on this, nobody else can do it as good as I do. If any of those thoughts are coming around you right now, that probably means you have more of a job than you have a business. And and that is, um, also revenue agnostic. I've seen it with people who have $50 million businesses and I've seen it with people who have $100,000 business. And so the second that you get a system in place, your your business completely changes. And so does your content. And I think of content as a business.
Yeah. It's like the second division within your company. Um, I love the fact that you said taking something stale, turning it sexy. Like I think about we're this is kind of meta, but it's like boring conferences, Forward.
Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like
Totally.
Everybody hits me up. They're like, "Hey dude, yeah, clap it up for that."
Um, but what's crazy is people will say, "Well, how do you fill these events?" Like, and, uh, they're doing it the old way.
And like it's shifted, you know, and I think that's I think it's cool to see how you could take something stale and just make it your make it new and and do it in a new way. And that's that's the niche. The other thing I love is that when you talk about niche down, I think people feel like when they reduce the size of the audience or they reduce it that they're going to get less people, but you actually get more. And so in the beginning, like were you just speaking, did you decide as a creator or did this happen accidentally? Did you decide, hey, I'm just going to speak to people who want to buy small businesses?
I just want to speak to people who make money because I know now you have a broad audience.
So I look at what Cody's doing now and I might want to emulate that. But I feel like what we should do is look at what did Cody do three, four years ago. That's what I want to do.
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you want to look at the, I in in business, if you want to grow, you look at the compound annual growth rate of a business to see, is it beating benchmark? Is it beating the industry? And in content, you should do the same thing. What is the monthly, weekly, daily growth rate across platforms on the creators that you're following? If yours is 5% but you only have 100,000 people and mine is one and a half percent but I have four million people, you're still growing faster. And so you shouldn't try to change your strategy to what the big guys are doing unless you see that their growth rate is actually bigger than yours. And so a lot of people who are bigger online like myself, we don't have the same growth rate we did in the beginning. Why? Because we actually do serve too many masters in in many ways. In fact, we we experiment with this all the time in our content. Like right now on YouTube, we are experimenting with how do we go really wide by by showing people buying businesses or buying or growing businesses or building businesses live. We want to try to increase the size of the funnel. But as we do that, a bunch of stuff doesn't hit. You know, it doesn't work. We're experimenting all the time. And so I think I think in the very beginning, you should just look at the numbers. Are the numbers as fast growing as you want them to? And if they're not, obsess on that. Most people, I think, want to be cool or want to look rich, but don't really want to get rich. And so, I think on the internet, we can fall into that really easily. You can obsess so much on things that are top of funnel that don't convert for your business. You can obsess so much on looking cool on the internet, but it actually doesn't do anything for you. And so, in at contrarian thinking, we believe in something called two ORs. Have you guys heard of like north stars before? Like everybody will say, "What's the north star of your business?" I totally don't believe in that in your content or your business. I think that is a giant fallacy in business building. Could you imagine if all I cared about in my content business was revenue? So, if that's like a north star many people have, what's my annual revenue going to be for the year? Okay, let's play that all the way down. So, if all I care about is revenue, what are you going to see on my content? Buy, buy, buy, next, upsell, downsell, discount, etc. because I am going to try to extract as much revenue value as I can from my employee or from my followers. What's going to happen to my followers if I only have a north star of revenue? My followers are going to go down, right? So, what you actually want is what we call the two ORs. You have one OR that is a quantitative revenue-driven OR, something that is like profit, revenue, etc. Then you have a second OR, and that OR should be qualitative. That is like followers, for instance. So, if all you cared about was followers and you were just optimizing for followers and you followed that all the way down, what would you do? Porn. Because that's where the most people follow on the internet. That's OnlyFans. That's, you know, that's the biggest creators in the world. Show their butts. That's what happens. And so, you don't want to follow that because then you're really not going to make as much revenue and also you're going to have, you know, maybe some ethical issues. And so, you want to have two ORs. And I think about it like rowing a boat. You guys ever have your team go, "Ah, I have a little whiplash." Like, "Last week you said followers. This week we need revenue. Last week it was views. This week it's conversions." Does that happen to you guys?
Yeah.
Okay. And the team goes, "Can't we just pick like one direction?" And how I always explain it to them is I go, "Imagine we're in a boat right now and I give you one direction and I give you one ore. What happens? You go in a [ __ ]
circle. That doesn't work."
So, how does real progress happen? You go left, right, left, right, and that allows for forward movement. But it feels a little bit like this while you're on the journey. So if you explain that to your team and your employees and you say, "We care about two things here. It's not one, I know everybody wants one. We care about revenue and we care about followers. Those are our two ores." Then you have what's called a caller metric. So your revenue is the thing that gets unleashed and your followers are the caller to make sure that you don't only care about revenue to the sake of all of your followers.
"Yeah. I love that. It's like I care about the Neil today 2025. I also care about Neil 2030."
"Yeah."
"Because brand and having people in your tent or in your following is important. And uh like nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd."
"Yeah."
"It might be kind of weird if there was like six people here watching this interview, you know? Like more of you guys are here because all of us are here. And I think that's true with certain videos. A video pops up and it doesn't have to be viral, but it has a little bit of engagement. More people engage with it. Nobody wants to be the first comment. Well, when there's a few comments, they comment. It's so strange, but I feel like that is the part of like optimizing for something that would appeal to more people. Even taking something narrow and making it a little bit more appealing so that way you're doing the two or I love the way you put that because I feel like sometimes I'm going in a circle too when you just go one way. Um, okay. So thinking about that's you know the where the puck is heading it's it's different for each person but you just going back to the system because I think a lot of people are like hey how do you stay consistent what's your system so what does that look like for the newer creator what type of system would you recommend for someone who's like a solopreneur?"
"Wearing multiple hats we're trying to run our business not just two I think I got like six or sometimes you know um and I'm trying to hire people I'm trying to train them and then they mess it up. Yeah."
"And you get you you get a VA and they post the [ __ ] backwards, you know? And it's like, gosh, I should have just done it myself, you know? So, what's that system look like?"
"Yeah. Well, so in the SMB boardroom, which is where we teach people to build businesses and to build their content and operating systems, I talk about the stairstep model. So, here's how I did it and how I've seen it work best in our portfolio companies. And then you guys can lay layer your own preferences on top of it. Um at first when you hire you hire uh at first when you start a business content or otherwise uh you are everything right? You are the generalist. You're the janitor, you're the CEO, you're the poster, you're the editor, you're all of it. Then the second level you hire generalists. So the VA is responding to emails, posting stuff, editing things, etc. Then you hire specialists. Those specialists end up being like your Tik Tok expert, your YouTube expert, you know, your salesperson. And then eventually specialists take over everything and you no longer really have generalists in your company. You have hypertargeted snipers. So I call this the generalist to specialist cycle. And in your business, you probably feel where you are right now. You're either where you are everything. You are the all-encompassing generalist. or by listening to what you've explained to some of the audience, it sounds like most people are in a stage where you still have generalists. We're not yet at the specialist stage. What I will tell you is if you think that uh if you think that pros are expensive, try hiring an amateur. So, one of the best things you can do in your business is hire people who are better, smarter, faster, and more specialized than you. One of the most important things you're going to do early on in your career as a content creator, in my opinion, is one great strategist. One and that could be a consultant, that could be a third party. In fact, you can often get them for pretty reasonable because they can have multiple clients. And so in your business right now, if you're struggling, I actually think that we are in the age of ideas, ideas mattering, not just execution. Execution is getting easier. You could post a video every single day, no problem. Everybody here could do that. What's the difference between winning or losing? Posting a good [ __ ] video, right? Which means that ideas win. So if in your business right now you are the only idea man, I would go and replace that and then I would add a system on top of it. Now the system that I use is pretty straightforward. We have a a tech stack and I believe in like the rule of three. Everything that we do more than three times that has more than three steps gets documented into SOPs. I hate repeating myself. Big pet peeve. And so I believe that you want to put this all into a we use notion predominantly for our tech stack. You can see all this by the way if you want to at SMB boardroom you can kind of see how I how I organize it at contrarian thinking. Um, but I obsess on when I have a learning I want to document it then I want it to be easily searchable and I never want to have to talk about it again. And so that is where I would start with realizing where are you on the specialist to generalist curve. Then finding one great strategist to work alongside you and then adding a system to make sure every single lesson you learn gets documented and you get to proliferate that across all your people."
"Yeah, I love the fact that you said idea man because I feel like I spend a lot of time ideating and trying to come up with things and then uh I used to doom scroll but now my scrolling is all based on trying to come up with ideas. So, like you ever scroll at night and um you're using it to decompress before you go to sleep?"
"Yeah."
"That [ __ ] messes me up now because I'll just start getting ideas. I'll be like, 'Get my notebook, get this out,' and then my brain's going. I can't sleep. So, I might be weird, but um"
"No. Shocking. You have like the universe at your fingertips, hyper bright lights, and we think that'll help us go to sleep. Like, yeah, I should do this."
"I should probably grab a book, you know? But, uh anyways, like Yeah, I think like getting more getting someone I could just imagine that person bringing you. Hey, did you guys did you see this? I think this worked really well for creative. I think you could do your spin on this. I think this is working here. Why don't we try this? And I think it would just free up your brain to just create more. And then I love the fact that when I jump on a phone, and this is why I love community so much. When I jump on the phone with another fellow creator"
"and we go back and forth an idea, they see things that you didn't see. They give you the, you know what, dude, I don't think it would work that way, but what if you said it this way? And I'm like, oh my god, I didn't think of that. And so, I think collaboration is huge. Well, how do you feel about collabs?"
"Yeah. I mean, I think community is the big differentiator in tandem with attention in the new economy. So, if it's easier to execute than ever, if we have more options at our fingertips than ever, then what really matters? In-person experiences because we're human, we're tribal, we like to engage with people and the ability to get attention of the masses who do not want to have the in-person experiences. And so um our entire all of our businesses are built around community from the window washing painting companies having community all the way to our actual you know business buying or business building communities. Um I don't believe really in straight courses because I don't think that that is a great way to learn. I think you need to be around a group of other people all the time that are keeping you accountable one way or the other. And even better if it's not just accountability but accountability with collaboration. That's a higher level of execution. A VA can keep you accountable. An idea man can help you execute at a higher level. And so, um, so I'm I'm pretty big on that. I I also think like most I think there's a you know, if you guys haven't read, um, um, real artists don't starve. I don't know if you've read that book. It's a great book. It's a quick read. You could listen to it. But there's this belief that tortured artists or tortured creators or you have to be alone in a room and it has to be painful in order to create. I don't actually think that's true. I think that you can make a ton of money and you can have a lot of fun creating content. And I think the one place that I know for sure where dreams go to die is Zoom meetings. And so I just don't believe I don't believe in Zoom podcasts. I think that's a way of the past. Um, nobody want like also remember a podcast and an interview is a transfer of energy. So, we're going to give tactics. All of that's true, but imagine really trying to engage with somebody and getting your other person to engage with you and you're on a Zoom meeting. I know when I do that for podcasts, I actually don't do them anymore. I will not take a Zoom podcast. Maybe if Joe Rogan comes calling, I'll make an exception. But, um, I just don't do it because I think the energy level is low and I think energy transfers. And so, um, I don't believe in that. That's a moat. Um, but for you guys, think about where you're ideating. Are you trying to ideate on Zoom calls? Are you trying to ideate via Slack or via email? That's probably not a great place to do it. You need to do it more dynamically. How does SNL write jokes? They do it in person in the writer room. So, how can you create your version of your writer room, of your collaborative hall, so that you and other humans can go back and forth because all the magic happens in the overlap of the Venn diagram. Yeah. And it's different for everybody, but like I'll give you guys a few ideas. One is I'll put the, you know, the focus music on or like that low-fi music that's not it's just instrumental and just put it in the headphones or put it on and then start working and you'll get you'll start to get into a flow or you get into the flow state. Another thing that's worked for me really well is go for a walk."
"I actually learned this from Sahil. He's like, 'Dude, you get if you're stuck on something, just go for a walk and watch how like he says 99% of problems can be cured by walk.' I'm like, 'Bro, maybe like 80%, but like I'm still broke.' You know, like that guy in the room like, 'I went for a walk. I came back. I'm still poor.' Well, no. Um, you should go for a walk. And and I think like you'll come up with ideas and think and it just allows you to maybe solve a problem that you were just in your head because I feel like right now there's so many things just shooting at us. I like we've never been more overloaded. I don't think the human brain was ready for this and it's just adapting, but we have so many things coming at us at all times. And when you free that up, you get more creative. So someone in the room is like, 'Hey, how do I become more creative? How do I get more ideas?' You need the space to be creative, right? So I think that's a big thing right now because if you don't have the ideas, nothing else works. That's that's like top piece of this whole process."
"Yeah. Yeah, I mean 99% of pro 99% of problems get solved by you with two to three hours of focus work per day, phone off, no new tabs, a cup of coffee, a dark room, a do not disturb sign, and uh no bathroom breaks. And like that, if you do that for six months every single day, I'm pretty sure your life and your content will change. That is that is how rare it is just to focus on one thing at a time. Two to three hours a day. I think that's all you need in order to have a step function level of change in your life. And and then the second thing you need to win continuously over time and have more money than you could ever imagine, more views than you could ever want, is to work harder than you could ever imagine wanting to for longer than you want to, even when you don't want to, and maybe especially then. And I think most people don't share that opinion very often because it sounds like hustle porn, you know? It's like, yeah, but I want to hang out and I want to go on vacations all the time. The the people who make real money and change in the world work harder than you can imagine. They're not that much. They're not smarter than you. I mean, every single day you're getting lapped by people dumber than you that just work harder than you and take more shots than you do. And so once you real"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's true."
"Once you realize that, your life will totally change because intelligence really has no no correlation with how much money you can make."
"Yeah, I think so. Uh it's it's like the it's the most known person. It's the person that's actually posting more that gets more views. And I think we're sometimes get so caught up in the over an analysis of all these things. And you're like, I don't want to be the guy who's building my system in Notion, you know, all year versus the guy who's posting. So I think there's something to be said for start and build it as you go. Um, but just wrapping up with AI because you brought this up in the beginning and you've talked a lot about this and in your content recently about how AI is taking over, but how just on a simple level, what are one or two basic things that everyone here could use from an AI perspective to make this process easier?"
"Yeah, I mean if you guys obsess on AI right now, I think we are so early in the game that in two to three to five years from now, you will be two to three to 20 years ahead of people who don't start today. The speed at which AI is changing everything in business is like I've never seen anything like it in my entire career. to the point that I hired a person 100% full-time in my office who all he does is think about how do we integrate AI into my businesses. I'm now going to hire them across multiple businesses. All he does is send me ideas in order to use AI. I also mandate every single day I spend at least 20 minutes a day looking at what's happening in the world of AI and putting some sort of new AI into a flow that I use. We did a podcast on it. You can see it if you want on the Big Deal podcast on my like five favorite AI tools. But the ones that and they don't have you got like I think it could be intimidating maybe to think about AI in some way. They can be so simple. Like for instance, voice to text is somewhere between two and 7x more efficient and faster than typing. And yet we all know that when we go to voice to text on our phone, we're like, 'Hey man, what the duck?' And you're like, 'No, I mean fuck.' every time. I've never once meant duck, right? And so voice to text can be annoying for that reason and so we don't use it. Well, now there's something called WhisperFlow. And WhisperFlow gets the [ __ ] right along with everything else every single time. It's grammatical. It does bullets. It does question marks. It actually types better than the way that I speak. And so I just don't use my keyboard anymore. I have WhisperFlow on my phone. I have WhisperFlow on my computer. And I literally don't type. I just speak things out loud unless I'm really laboring on an edit of something maybe. So I imagine in the next five or 10 years like we won't use keyboards. I think that'll be obsolete just in the same way that cursive is is now obsolete. Uh I also think that going forward most of the tasks that we think of as as annoying such as managing your your uh payroll and expenses like RAMP's new AI tools are incredible. I use them across my business. Um, what else? I use Superhuman for email. This has been around for a long time. They have new AI tools that are rolling out. I literally I probably spend five minutes a day on email. Almost nothing. We integrate um and Perplexity Labs. If you guys haven't used the new pro version of Perplexity, it replaced I no longer I don't hire investment analysts anymore. I used to have a lot of them because they analyze businesses. Should we invest in them? Is this sector good or not? Gone. That was a $175,000 a year job that I would hire for. Gone with a $200 a month Perplexity Labs connection and they analyze the industries for me and I have maybe one-tenth of the number of analysts that then just spot check their research. And so if you guys are not using this, you will get left behind and that is the only thing I know for sure even though I don't want it to be true."
"Yes, it's so important and I think the I'm worried about the kids even like what's happening in school, you know? I mean, kids are in school and they're using it to every all the kids are using it and the school isn't even caught up yet, you know?"
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean, we I'm in Austin where I actually think the youth is going to be fine. I think it's we're in trouble."
"Yes."
"The youth is going to figure this out. It is going to be as normal to them as picking up a phone, as Facetiming, as texting. They'll be great. Uh we actually are the generation that sits in between sort of hey horses used to be everywhere and now all of a sudden you know there were there were 20 million horses you guys um in the 1800s in the US 20 million. How many are there today? Less than nine. So it was like no horse you'll be fine. You'll just run the technology for us. Like that's us. We're the horses. We become less necessary if we don't use AI intelligently. And so I think we're the ones that have to be really thoughtful here. And the youth like at Alpha School in Austin, Texas, where I live, that's um Joe Lamont and um and Elon Musk's school. It's incredible. Joe's an incredible guy. Um they use they have two hours of mandated schoolwork per day where you do your task. You can use AI and anything else for it, and for the rest of the day, you follow your curiosity. These kids are building companies. These kids are writing multiple books. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. And so, I also think there's a real there'll be a real period of adjustment for us where, you know, hiring if you guys haven't hired some of these like 16 to 20 year-old AI native sort of tech-native youngsters yet in your business. They are a complete and utter unlock. Now, they speak a totally different [ __ ] language and they're a little weird to manage, but um this generation I think is g I'm a millennial. I think it's going to put us to shame"
"Big time. I'm with you on that. I think people talk crap about them a lot, but they're actually the ones who we should be afraid of"
"or we we need to partner with them essentially."
"100%. I think the collaboration is is real there."
"Yeah. So, we're going to wrap up now, guys. What did you think of Cody here? You guys get some value from this? I want."