Transcription
In case no one told you, your personal brand is suffering because you're copying the same playbook as everyone else.
In the past 17 years, I have helped build some of the biggest personal brands within the business creator space. And in this podcast, I'm going to talk to you about how you can stand out and look different than everybody else in your space. How you can make content in a way that you actually enjoy that gets who you are as a human into it. And thirdly, how you can make content that actually attracts customers, not just viewers.
I actually have something that I want to hit that I think is a little interesting and not really talked about much, which is that I believe the potential of your personal brand is actually predicated on the success or lack of success you've had in your career or life. And so the point being, we need to do epic [ __ ] so that people want to follow and actually listen to what we have to say. I think so many people are trying to uh force a personal brand in, you know, Instagram, YouTube, whatever, and they're wondering why people aren't listening to them. And it's because maybe we haven't done the thing that the people who should be following us want to do. And so, I believe that there needs to be a a focus on doing epic [ __ ] right?
Like you mentioned some people that I've worked for in the past. I believe that is a big reason why we have had the success in building my personal brand the way that we have in the first year. Like the fact that we have almost 90,000 subscribers on YouTube within the first year or 53,000 people on our email list. This comes from the fact that I have the credibility in my background and then I continue to do epic [ __ ]. We released a six and a half hour free course. I don't know if any wild characters in here have seen that, but we put out a free six and a half hour course on YouTube in I think month three or four of making content. And the number one thing that I get asked on almost every podcast is about that course, that crazy thing that we did, right? The majority of the industry is selling that behind a paywall. We put it out for free completely for anybody to consume on YouTube.
>> And then that thing generated 53,000 leads.
>> Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's still cranking today. Like, right now, if we looked at it, I think Trevor and I noticed in the last 48 hours, it still has gotten 3,600 views. Like, it's almost a year old now and it's still just cranking for us.
>> Now, I know the skeptic in the room or watching or listening online is going to be like, "Well, Neil or Caleb, I haven't done epic things. I've only been um in real estate for 10 years or I've only been in finance for this many years." What I think a lot of people need to recognize is maybe you're trying to compete with the top dog in your space and you're trying to exist in a pond that is just a little too big for you right now. And so I think a lot of people need to recognize the level that they're at and understand that that is where your personal brand can go. And so I believe that a lot of people because the number one question people are asking with educational content is why would I listen to you, right? Like why would I trust what you have to say about this subject matter? And your credibility, the success, the wins that you've had in your career are the thing that is going to cause them to trust what you have to say. And so the point is that you need to one, we need to always be getting better results and doing more epic [ __ ], but two, you need to be sharing with your audience the things that you have done in your career that give you credibility to speak to that specific subject matter. We talk a lot about this. It's called contextual credibility. Right? If you make a video on marketing, right? I would love to hear your credibility statement be something more around the amount of money that you spent on advertising over the last 10 years on Meta or something of that nature. And so we just believe that credibility and really honing in on what your credibility is is incredibly important because this is the number one thing that is going to cause people who have no idea who the hell you are to actually listen to what you have to say.
>> This is one of the things you talk about is answering that question, why should I watch or why should I listen? And so this is big on YouTube. It's just one line just a tactical. Should I put that in the beginning of every video?
>> Yes. So we have a uh an intro framework that we utilize. It's called the four C's. You have your call out, your credibility, your compass, and your core learning. And Neil was hitting on this earlier, uh, which is really important. Actually, completely off script, but it's really important to hit. Your intro is insanely important. And more than ever before, you need to get to the learning. To your point, so many people are doing these [ __ ] montages in the beginning that nobody gives a [ __ ] about. If you make educational content, the one thing that people are looking to do is learn. And so if you give them a learning in the opening 30 seconds, you get right to the action that indicates to them that they are going to continue to learn and so they're more likely to consume it. Uh, but credibility, yeah, we typically like to put that. Sometimes you can even just get away if we're talking a YouTube video with it in the packaging, but ultimately you want to be providing the reason why the random person who clicked on your video is going to actually listen to what you have to say. And so you need to show them the background that you have, the chops that you have, the wins that you've had that give you the information, the knowledge, the experience to be able to speak on that subject matter.
Do you have a framework or something you could teach on how to fix a personal brand? Because I feel like a lot of people are u just stuck right there.
>> Well, I think one thing that we have a real uh problem with right now online is everyone looking the same and nobody really standing out. And I'm sure a lot of you probably feel like, man, my [ __ ] is not popping. It's not standing out. I look like the person to my right and my left. I I think of it kind of like um I I love uh Coca-Cola. I'm a big Coca-Cola fan. I've been this way since I was a kid. Now I've transitioned to Coke Zero, but I really like Coca-Cola. And if you go into your local grocery store, there's typically an off-brand or grocery brand version of it. Right. I grew up near an Albertson's and so their version was big cola with a K I believe and uh if you look at it right it's seemingly very similar to Coca-Cola uh it costs a little bit less and sales are dramatically though heavy on Coca-Cola everyone wants Coca-Cola no one wants big cola unfortunately I think the majority of you guys and everyone making content is acting like big cola not Coca-Cola
You're listening to the individuals online who are telling you to just go find the top 20 videos in your niche, rip the transcript, and then re-record it exactly for yourself. And I get why people preach this. This is a very good way to get started, right? It's kind of like learning how to ride a bicycle with training wheels. We got to start with the training wheels, right? I learned to ride a bike, I think, in like kindergarten or first grade. If I was still riding my bicycle with training wheels right now, it'd be a little weird.
>> That'd be super weird.
>> It'd be super very strange. Yeah. And I'm a little big, so me on a bicycle is a little hilarious. Anyways, but I really believe that so many of us, we make this very strange mistake when we start to make content and when we're building our personal brand, we start with our competitors in mind, not our customers. And it makes no sense to me. And when I say it out loud, you're like, "Yeah, duh, obvious." But we're all doing this. And what I want people to flip the script on is I want you instead of starting with your competitor in mind when you're making content, I want you to start with your customer. I'm going to give you actually an exercise that I'd love for you to do within, you know, an hour of this ending. Before you get on the plane, before you go home, I want you to write out five problems. Five painful problems that your ideal customer faces. Okay? And then with those five painful problems, I want you to pair each one with your unique solution. These are your content ideas. This is what you're going to make content about. I want to be very clear. I'm not the guy that's going to teach you how to get millions of views and go viral. This is not the recipe for going viral. This is the recipe for actually getting customers and getting people to trust you. I believe that trust is purely a measure that people believe that you are going to meet or exceed expectations based on what you've done in the past. So the way you build trust with your customer and your base is you set the expectation of a problem that they face and then you give them your unique solution and make it easier for them to solve that problem. And if you do that over and over again, guess what? They are going to believe that you are going to solve their problems in the future. So when you make them aware of an offer that you have, they have a higher belief that your offer is going to be worth it for them. They're going to get a better return on their investment. Okay? And so I really think it's a big thing right now. I understand. But for anyone who has been doing that for more than two months, you need a transition. You need to start thinking about the customer first, not your competitor.
>> And then okay, so now you're thinking about this. You got problems that they face, how you solve them. And you said the word in there unique. Okay. Now a lot of us do the same things but maybe we have a unique take on them.
>> Yes.
>> So how okay we have a lot of people who are offering similar solutions. We have similar products and services. How do we stand out from the guy or gal sitting two chairs down?
>> Yeah. I think uh this comes down to even just your silly little quirks and isms and how you operate. Right. So, I think there's the human element, but I think all of us, even if we're doing the exact same things, we go about it slightly differently, right? You're hilariously funny. This was something we were talking about like a while ago, like your approach and the way that you make content is you inject a lot of humor into it. Um, what I want you to do, another exercise for you is if you feel like, okay, there's no way for me to differentiate between me and Sally or me and Sarah. Well, there's a little simple exercise that I want you to do. You draw a line down a piece of paper and you're going to have two columns, okay? A left and a right side. On the left side, I want you to write out everything that your competitors, everyone else in the space that they do or say that you would like to do differently or you disagree with, right? Maybe it's not what they're saying, but it's the actions they take, right? Maybe uh you know if you're meeting with a client, for example, you know what kind of beverage they love and the snack they prefer. And so every time you meet with them, you show up with the beverage and snack. That's my favorite go-to, right? All of these tiny little details. On the left side, you're going to write out what they do that you disagree with or would do differently. And then on the right side, all you're going to do is write out the exact opposite. Your approach, what you're going to do with this. Something that I like to use as an example is like uh agencies, right? A lot of like video editing agencies, they are notoriously horrible uh with communication and they're wildly slow. And so on the left side, I would say slow with communication. And on the right side, I would put we respond within one hour every time or something of that nature. If you do this, this is the way that you can stand out. This is exactly what I did when I first started making content. I posted my first video February 28th, 2025. And the first thing that you'll notice if you look at my YouTube channel, it's the video that's like 16 years of building brands to 30 million plus followers. There's no crazy [ __ ] going on with the thumbnail. It's very simple. I don't have photos of people that I've worked with that I'm leveraging in the thumbnail. These were all very intentional decisions. Why? Because I looked at what the majority of the industry was doing and I wanted to do the opposite. And by doing that, you stand out so much more.
>> right? I think everybody on YouTube, even on Instagram, is like, "Okay, hey, I saw this. This concept did well for Caleb. Maybe I could make my version of that." And that's what you talked about in the beginning where people do get lost. So, what do you have to say about that? Because it is a tried and true principle. And I'm seeing this all the way up to the top personal brands. I'll see a video come out from Dan Martell and then I'll see that same packaging on like 17 other videos over the next month, which kind of sucks.
>> It's disgusting. I hate it. Yeah, it's gross. But like
>> it works.
>> Uh, for them maybe. I don't know.
>> I think it works to a certain degree. I think there's a difference between having attention and having a brand where people actually give a [ __ ]. So if you are no longer being served in the algorithm, the people that are just getting attention, they fade. They disappear. The people who build a strong brand. Once my content stops being served to you for whatever reason, hopefully I've built enough trust with you that you're searching my name out to consume more of my [ __ ]. And so I think it in the short term it works really well because you get all this attention, but I don't think you build a brand that is actually distinguishable from other individuals in your space. You just are at most second best. And I love validated content. I just want you to look outside your niche. That's all. Right. What what a lot of people don't talk about is these top personal brands, the top top ones, that's what they're doing. They're creating these new formats or new formats. They're formats from gardening YouTube or from tech review channels or from camping channels. That is the way that you want to do this. You want to look at what is working really well in other niches. And then you want to layer on top your opinion, your subject matter so that you're able to actually stand out and not look like every other person.
>> It's just something stale and you apply new life to something stale. So if some of the content ideas in this room are stale, we can apply new life from something else.
>> You know that trend of like 15 years of marketing and advice in 15 minutes, that didn't start in the business world. That started in the video game niche. Okay. What 30,123 hours of Call of Duty gameplay looks like in 13 minutes. I'm telling you, this is what you need to be doing. If you are going to just keep regurgitating what everybody else is doing, you are not going to stand out. You know that little save button on Instagram? I want you guys to create a new folder, call it your wrapping paper library or whatever you want to call it. And anytime you see a video that one caught your attention, you started consuming it. Anytime you see a carousel that you suddenly realize, holy [ __ ], I'm on the third slide and I've been reading this for the last, you know, 60 seconds. Anytime you have one of those, I want you to save it into that folder. Now, preferably, it's not from somebody else in your niche. It's from something else, which means a lot of you are going to need to reset your algorithm or set up another account entirely. I sometimes go as crazy as to get a new phone and set up an account on that phone.
>> Like now I want to teach something on what's happening in the market, the biggest opportunity in Las Vegas right now, and I can look at those wraps, see if my I could apply this wrapping paper to my content. Is that the strategy?
>> 100%. Same thing works for LinkedIn, literally any platform, anywhere. But what you want to be looking at is two things. So I'm going to share it with YouTube and then I'll translate it to Instagram. On YouTube, we believe that there are actually two different formats that you're looking at. There's packaging formats and then there's content formats. Packaging is your title and thumbnail and the content format is the structure that you share the information in. Okay. We believe that packaging formats fatigue faster than content formats. Now, let me translate it to Instagram. Uh, it's basically the same thing, but you have your hook structure or hook formats, and then you have your content formats, how you're going to go about the structure of the short. I want you guys to be saving things based on either one of those two things. Either you loved the hook and you want to save that so that you can utilize it later or you loved the structure, how they flowed through the information and you want to come back and recycle or redo that in your content. Those are the two things that you're looking for. Uh, the same thing real quick. I'll just hit on with LinkedIn. It's the same exact thing. You just screenshot a buddy of mine's son. He has probably an auto album of 800 to a thousand screenshots of top performing LinkedIn posts and I'm fortunate enough that he added me to the to the album and so whenever we go to write a LinkedIn post I know back to what we talked about earlier my concept what is my concept? It's a problem, a painful problem that my customer faces plus my unique solution. I call that a gift. That's why I use the wrapping term because it's a gift that I'm giving my audience. So, I want to wrap it correctly. Then I look at all the screenshots and I see what structure do I like the most to convey this information. And so it just all it is every single platform you need to be saving. Now, here's the key. Uh, what a lot of people might do is just start screenshotting or saving random things. The better version of this is you actually are only taking note of things that outperformed the average. Okay, there's tools out there that you can utilize to do this. Um, but usually I'm scrolling through and see a random creator on my phone. And so all I want to do is I'm just going to go onto their page, look at their last 15 posts, and if their average is a,000 likes and the one that caught my attention got 2500, cool. I'm going to screenshot it. That's a 2.5x outlier. I'm going to want to utilize that in the future.
>> And uh there's a tool you guys can use this. It's one of 10.
>> There's a lot of tools. There's view stats. That's Mr. Beast's tool. All they are is they're basically they're showing you very easily. Hey, this is how much this performed above or below the average for the channel. So you know there's something there because it did better than average which means if you do it it has a higher likelihood of doing better than average for you.
>> Just taking something from outside the niche.
>> Exactly.
>> And applying it to your niche. Same packaging, different content.
>> Start getting obsessed. And like what what Trevor and I do, Trevor the mysterious man who I'm mentioning, he's walking around over here. He's my content director. We spend probably it's usually a little bit more than this, but let's just be conservative here. An hour every single week scrolling through one of 10. Not when we need a video, not when we need packaging. We just scroll through to see what catches our attention. We screenshot it and we save it. We use like a notion board. It's very simple. Drag and drop. It's very, very basic. But we are just grabbing this when it catches our attention, not when we need it. So, we're developing, it's why I call it the wrapping paper library. We're developing this wrapping paper library so when we do have a video that we do know what the problem and solution are. We then look at what rapper is going to wrap this best to make it most appealing to my audience.
What do you say to the person who's maybe not gifted on camera when they're talking? You know, they they speak in a way where is there certain strategies or tactics you would advise that because I know you help entrepreneurs all the time with the content.
>> You know, I have an interesting take. One, I think the thing that causes people to be magnetic towards you and and want to listen to you the most is the [ __ ] you've done in the past. It's what I said at the top. It's the credibility that you have. All these characters that you're mentioning, I guarantee they did something [ __ ] big in their past, right? Or recently. Uh, so that's one big one. I just realized I didn't ask you. Can we can we say the f word?
>> Yeah, you're okay.
>> Ro asked if he could curse 17 curses in. Yes, you're you're allowed. The the other thing that I I do think about is I think so many people think that delivery is creating this caricature, right? It's it's putting on a performance. And again, I'm not the guy that's going to teach you how to go viral. I'm the guy that's teaching you how to build real trust with your customer base. I think if you try to put on all these uh tactics of how to communicate, you're less likely to stick with it. So, I actually encourage people to figure out who you are, who you truly are, and how you communicate. And proper delivery is just removing all the things that keep you from showing up that way. I truly believe more than ever before, who you are as a human is the number one reason why you're going to stand out more and more as we go further into all the AI generated content, right? Everyone's talking about building a personal brand. More and more people are going to be making content online. The information is the interchangeable commodity, but the thing that actually makes somebody stick with you is you, the human. And so, if you are monotone, maybe you're not going to have as big of an audience, but I would encourage you be that because it's the thing that you're going to actually stick with. The only way you win the game of personal branding is if you actually play the game for a long time. And so many people, I believe, aren't building a personal brand, they're building a prison. They're becoming a prisoner to this thing that they this character that they've made online talking about things they don't care about, trying to be charismatic in a way that they normally aren't in everyday life and they hate it. Like I'm sure some of you probably see a content day on your calendar and get a pit of anxiety or stress. You're like gh, right? I have met with thousands of people who are tired of what they have built. And so I I think there's little tactics that you can get to improve your delivery, but the number one thing that I encourage people to do is lean in fully to who you actually are. I am a nervous kind of anxious character. And I bring that out in my content. I call it out all the time, right? Like I will always address that and I make sure that I share that because what a lot of people would think is that's going to make people listen to me less. And sure, some people may be, but the people who relate to me, who are also like, "Yeah, I too am anxious about being in front of the camera. That sounds awful." They actually double down. They get closer with me. They're more attached to my brand, not less.
If you hate making content or you're anxious about doing it, would you actually say that in the in the video?
>> The way that I usually do it is I try to inject it organically. So maybe my first point is around, you know, there's actually a video on my YouTube channel. It's called if you struggle with making content, please watch this. I would recommend if you struggle with watching content, please watch it. Um, it is really, I think, very useful. Um, but in that video, one of my points is, you know, overcoming the fear of showing up on camera. And I immediately call out the fact that like I'm terrified. Trevor is filming me at a Chevron gas station right now. I filmed it out in the wild in the real world. And I'm literally like thanking the clerk as I'm buying a Red Bull and then turning to the line or to the camera and delivering a line. And my line is like talking about how scared I am doing this, right? And so I believe that like you could do it very on the nose. You can also have it be a little bit more integrated into your outline or whatever, but I like calling those things out. I like sharing. Uh, let's go here for a second. Uh, I believe that the best way to build proximity, to get closer with your audience, is to give them more at bats to connect with you. There's a a podcaster out there that people either love or hate, but he's huge. Joe Rogan, and he has done an incredible job about talking about so many different subject matters. So, he gives his audience so many different ways to connect with him, right? If you like MMA, if you like politics, if you like conspiracy theories, if you like human optimization, you're probably going to like what he has to say. If you like all of those, you're probably a super freak fan, right? You care about anything that he has to say. And so a big thing that I'm always trying to do is bring out the little personal details of myself, my interests, my fears, my values, my preferences, so that the audience can connect with those things. Anyone who is anxious making content, hearing me talk about that, they're going to relate to me more. If they then hear me talk about how obsessed I am with my three Harley-Davidsons or the fact that I love to go to hardcore shows and get punched in the face, if they're into those things, they really [ __ ] with me after that, right? And so it's just it's stacking values and interests so that your audience has more ability to get closer. It makes the content interesting also for the viewer. But here's what I would argue is the more important point. I believe branding is just simply a pairing of things. And good branding is an intentional pairing of relevant things consistently. So many of us are branding content creation in a negative way because we film it in an environment that we hate. We have a videographer behind the camera that we don't like, that makes us frustrated, that makes us feel self-conscious, that doesn't make us feel like what we're saying is actually good. And so by filming on the golf course, or for me, that video I just mentioned, I'm writing my Harley-Davidson during the video. I loved making that video. You're pairing content creation with something you love. And if you do that consistently, the byproduct is a brand. The association of content creation changes. You suddenly start to enjoy it.
>> So, we need to pair things with our interests.
>> Yeah. Like I I am really crazy with this one. Like this is what I optimize. Like everybody that I've worked for, every client that we work with, this is what I actually optimize almost more than uh brand positioning is number one. I'd say this and then content strategy is number three is the film environment. Like we make sure that this is an environment that you get energy from, not drained. We make sure that the person running the camera you actually really like. A great example of this is Wednesday. This last week, I had an insane day. I had back-to-backs all freaking day starting at 8 a.m. all the way until the end of the day. And then Trevor and I were gonna go film a video afterwards, which was insane. And I could tell he was nervous, like, "Yo, are you gonna have enough energy by the end of the day?" And I told him, I was like, "Dude, that's the thing that's pulling me through the day. I love filming with Trevor, with Trevor specifically. Not just filming videos, but I love filming with Trevor. I love just shooting the [ __ ] with him, just talking for fun. And because of that, when I see a film session on the calendar, I don't get anxious or stressed. I get stoked. I'm building the brand of filming. We bring my favorite beverages and snacks on set every time. It sounds silly, but it is wildly useful. I've done this for every single person that I have filmed with and it has changed the game in how they look at film sessions. They start to look forward to it.
>> Yeah, Sour Patch Kids.
>> Boom. There you go. I want to get into a few things with interests. I have found, and you can tell me your opinion on this, that most people have interests. Obviously, they're not just a onedimensional person and they're hiding the thing that would honestly connect them with the most people.
>> 100%. Or the music you like, the books that you like to read. You know, if you're reading those trendy smut books or whatever, and you want to bring those into your content.
>> What? Hold on a second. What's a smut book?
>> I'm not going to describe it. I'm going to let you guys look it up. You got to listen to Alex Cooper talk about it.
>> Oh, dang, bro. How many in the room have a question or something about your specific content strategy that you want Caleb to to answer? We can do it live right now. That'd be cool for um for Q&A. We can get into it. We'll go with Aaron first over here.
>> So, talking about filming in your environment that you like, how do you keep that from draining what you love?
>> Great question. Great question. Uh, not overdoing it. So, I am fortunate and I think a lot of people in here have multiple environments that they enjoy, right? Uh, I love being on my Harley. I love being out in nature. I also am one of those weird characters who gets wildly excited by cool Airbnbs. And so I'm constantly like if you go to my YouTube channel, you'll see that we're always in a different setting. It won't always be that way, but I'm in my first now entering my second year of making content. So I'm optimizing for actually sticking with this, not for anything other than that. Like my main goal is just to keep doing it. And so I'm constantly booking cool new Airbnbs in new locations because I know that that's something that I enjoy. And so I think there's that part.
>> You're booking uh an Airbnb for the purpose of batch creation
>> Uh, or like to work and to
>> for most people they would do batching. Uh, we're psychotic and we do a lot of three hour, four hour, five hour, six hour long videos on YouTube. So it's batching but for one video. But yes, to that point.
>> Essentially same concept. Yeah.
>> 100%. Yeah. Exactly. So that's something where I know myself and I know what I get out of that. Right? What I would say is to Neil's point earlier, you don't always have to be skateboarding. You can have the elements in the background. You can mention them, right? You can figure out, I don't know skateboarding very well, but I know there's wheels, trucks, and other things like that. Maybe you can use it as an analogy, right? I'm always trying to inject these things. The majority of my videos, you don't see a Harley in the background. I'm not wearing a Harley shirt, but I almost always somehow figure a way to mention it, right? And so that's the way that I'm trying to get my interest in. Great question. Thank you.
>> Who had another question over here?
>> So, you say to package uh your content with something that you love, but what about package it with something that you're uh maybe doing a journey of like a 75-day hard or uh training for a marathon or something like that? Do you think that would still work the same?
>> I love doing it. Here's the key. I think a lot of people, and actually, I'm so glad that you said this so I can clarify. A lot of people may hear what we're talking about here and think they need to make an entire piece of content on their interest. The big thing that we're talking about here is injecting the interest into the content. So, I have a ratio that I talk about that I think a lot of you should do. 75% of your content should be nichewide. 20% should be niche. And then 5% is going to be personal content. But it's not that 5% needs to be a solo piece about it. It's just that you're injecting it. So for example, whatever you're teaching or educating your audience on, I think that absolutely could happen vlog style, Casey Neistat style throughout your day as you do 75 hard. If you guys study Casey Neistat, if any of you do like vlog style content, I really recommend looking at Casey through this lens. What a lot of people don't realize is Casey is communicating one core message throughout his whole video, but it takes place when he's in his office, then he goes for a run, then he's at a meeting, then he's, you know, in the back of a cab or something like that, right? Traditional vlogging would just have all of those be their own moments. But the best version is taking the one core message or problem that you're helping people solve and carrying that throughout your day. And if 75 hard is something you're doing, then when you're going rucking or whatever, you could be having a a you know, an Osmo camera and do a selfie moment like that. That could be something very interesting. I love things like that. People had the question before, we brought this up in the intro, should you niche down and only talk about this or you know these other people like you are the niche, you should be whatever you want to be and then like it turns into a variety show sometimes. I think the majority of hardcore black and white advice is wrong because all of this has so much more nuance to it. So I believe that you want to be making really deep content. So 75 I said it wrong earlier. Sorry, rewrite it. 75% of your content should be deep content. 20% should be nichewide. 5% should be personal. Nichewide is it's going to service my ideal customer and customer adjacent individuals. Let me give you an example. The content that the video that I mentioned earlier. If you struggle with making content, please watch this. That is a nichewide video. All of my ideal customers struggle with this. I'm talking like the big dog CEOs that are making the big videos that are getting millions of views. They struggle with making content. And so, the video serves them, but it also serves a much wider person in my niche. It also serves the dad and mom who are posting photos for their friends of their family and they're afraid about that. And so it's it's clearly going to serve my ideal customer, but it also serves more people within that niche that maybe aren't going to be customers right now, but I want them in my world for when they will be. Does that make sense? It was a great question. Thank you.
Another question over here. If we're making like say my YouTube channel is for buyers and sellers in like Toronto then am I making like a vlog style of like coming to the forward event where maybe that would be more agent centric focused like does it need to be niche towards like
>> That is a great question. So many people make content that attracts more of the people doing what they do, not your customers. And so again, it comes back to always thinking through what are the problems that they are facing and how do I help them solve it. Like I I I will just keep repeating that until the day I die. That's all we do when we make content is literally thinking what are the problems that you guys are facing with your brand positioning, with your content strategy, with your media team, and then how do we make it as easy as possible to solve it. Uh, I'll give you guys a little golden nugget here, but this is very heady, so please walk with me here and then ask me follow-up questions on this. Um, I make educational content is a statement that a lot of people make, but the reality is education is a byproduct. Okay, education means behavior change. They took action. So, what we're actually saying is we make content with the goal of behavior change. I make a video that for Neil might be educational and for Sarah might be entertainment because Neil did something different afterwards and Sarah didn't. Does that make sense? And so, if you know this to be true, it tells you what to do in your content. All you need to do, literally the only thing that you need to optimize for is making it as easy as possible for your audience to understand the actions they need to take to solve the problem. Which means that half of the [ __ ] graphics that you guys are doing or seeing in YouTube videos makes it harder because it actually distracts the audience from knowing what they need to do. Okay? And so every decision you make in your outlining, in your filming and your editing, whether it's a short or a YouTube video, needs to be, does this make it easier for the audience to understand what they need to change afterwards in their thinking or their actions. If you do that, you will make content that is actually useful, that actually helps people, not just makes you sound smart, but actually gets people real results. It's like Phil Jackson's philosophy with the Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers. They did not optimize for winning. They optimized for brotherhood. And if you have true brotherhood on a team, winning takes care of itself. I don't optimize for going viral. I optimize for solving your problems. And by doing that, you're more likely to want to consume my content in the future.
>> So practically, you're working with the client. They have some ideas. They have knowledge to share. They don't understand packaging at all. They're a thought leader in their industry and they come to you Caleb and they say, "Help me, bro. What do I do?" What is like your process that you take that client through? Because uh I know it's a lot a big long question, but like how does that person start?
>> Yeah. Well, to be clear, that's never really the case with our clients because I'm I'm very self-aware and I know I'm not a fire starter. I'm gasoline on a fire. If even if you bring me a little lighter, I just need a little flame and then I can get it going. So, I rarely take people from zero to one. It's usually like the
>> maybe like they're posting content but they're not getting results essentially and that's why they came to you.
>> Well, if they're starting from zero and they're literally beginning, I'm actually not going to try to optimize anything other than them showing up. I'm going to do what I did with myself, right? What I did in the first year is we did not have any single number in mind for views or subscribers. Like in the back of my head when we put the course out, I was like, "God, if we get 10,000 views on this in two or three years, I will be like ecstatic." It has 850,000 plus views right now on YouTube. It's crazy. It's insane. I never could have imagined. And so I think so many people are they're they're like getting into it's like getting into lifting, right? I don't know if you guys know who Chris Bumstead is, but he was I think he's won the Mr. Olympia like six or seven times. It's like crazy. He's jacked out of his mind. And if I go into the gym tomorrow and I try to do Chris's routine, I'm going to break every limb imaginable, right? And I think so many people who get into content look at the top dogs, the people I've worked for, other amazing individuals, and they try to replicate what they have done. And that is a losing formula. And so I would encourage you, pick one primary platform that you're going to focus on. Okay, this is your main platform. For us, it was YouTube. I just wanted to build an insane amount of trust with y'all and I believe that trust is uh expedited by the amount of problems that I can help you solve in a short amount of time. And so I'm trying to do that. Instagram was going to be our second and LinkedIn was going to be our third very quickly. And this is coming from the guy who has, you know, been on the teams and led the teams that are the highest volume out there. And I told Trevor, I was like, "We're not going for volume at all. We're going to do one YouTube video a month and we're going to try to get an Instagram post and a LinkedIn post out a week and that's it." And I was like wanting to put all of my effort into the pieces of content. The point being I picked a number that felt realistic, stuck with it, and the moment that I had capacity to increase it, we're increasing it. We're going to double our output on YouTube this year. And guess what we'll do in the next year? We'll probably double it from there. The biggest thing that so many people get hung up on is they think that they need to start at the volume that they aspire to be at from day one. It doesn't matter where you start as long as you every month, every two months, every three months, whatever your cadence is are increasing the amount that you do. So, I think that's a big one. I also would say that in the beginning, you want to do a lot of volume. Contrary to what I just said, you should do volume. This is a moment where it's like, you know, uh, listen to what I say, not what I do. I've been making content for other people. It had been 16 years when I started making my own content. So, I understood this. I had met in just 2024 alone over a thousand business owners that were asking me questions and sharing their problems. I knew what I needed to make. But a lot of you don't know what you need to make. And so, you need to utilize what I call the accordion method. You need to use the expansion phase where you do way more volume. It's like an accordion. An accordion, right? And so, you're going to expand it. Do more volume, not to show up everywhere and bug all your friends on Instagram, but to get data. You need data on what your audience wants more of. So, if you post more, you're going to get that data quicker, right? And in the beginning, what this looks like is every video averages 103 views and then one video gets 417. And that's your data that your audience wants more of that one. And that's what you have to go off of in the beginning. And then over time you can start to add in all the optimization. But I like whenever I meet with somebody I am telling them like keep it as simple as possible. It's just like fitness. If you try and track every macro calorie and you do all the crazy workouts and you do the red light sauna and all this [ __ ].
It's just overwhelming. It's like, let's just get the habit of going into the gym first.
Yeah. We did uh once a month, then bi-weekly, and then now we're on weekly.
That's incredible. I'm I'm gonna try to catch, but it's
But it's hard. I would rather see someone continue to show up 52 weeks a year than come go hard for two months and then we never see him again, which is what happens normally.
That's the majority. Yeah. Yeah. Or or you build something and 18 months, 24 months later, you're like, "What the hell have we been doing? I like I don't even know if this is working or not."
We'll do another question. Who had a question? I think uh Jordan had one in the back. And then Kaplan and then we'll um we'll rewrap.
I appreciate everything that you're saying. This has been wonderful. Um, I've been creating content for about four and a half years now. So, I'm very I love my brand. I love what I've built and I do mortgages, so it's a lot of like first-time home buyers and knowledge and like pouring into this community and giving financial literacy. But where I'm at right now is I would say my business probably 80% of my business comes from social media, which I love. It's that's wonderful. But I'm at this place where I really want to start targeting agents and I and I post on Tik Tok and I post on Instagram. That's pretty much where most of my people come from. And I'm at this place where I want to start honing in on agent relationships and building that through social media and having them find me. And I don't know if I should add that into my current like Tik Tok and Instagram videos or if I should like completely pivot and like only do that on YouTube or how I should implement that.
So uh recently there was somebody who joined uh and started becoming part of our world and working with us and she was in a very kind of a similar scenario. She had built a very strong uh brand in the fitness space. She was like your your baddie coach kind of a vibe, right? And she was crushing it. Absolutely destroying. And in growing this personal brand around fitness, she quickly realized, oh man, I'm really passionate around helping people grow their personal brands. I actually wanted to do that more. But she had built all of her business revenue and social around uh fitness, right? So it's even a more extreme kind of difference here. And so what I walked her through is easy. We can make that transition. You just can't go cold turkey overnight. You just need to start injecting more. So if you're posting 14 posts a week right now, as a random example, uh what I want you to do is for the next two weeks or three weeks, two, three, whatever you want, just do one of those posts towards agents. Then the next two or three weeks, two, and then three, and then four. It's very simple, very basic. All you need to do is just slowly increase that over time. And what I want you to do is monitor the metrics that you care about the most, right? Topline, rev, like all of that. Is that being affected in any way? Uh these are the things that you're looking for. But if you're getting less overall views every week or likes or whatever, but you're seeing more or better outcomes because of these agent relationships, then I would say you're going in the right direction. And that's fine. So many people make a pivot or or a change in what they're talking about and they see a decline in viewership or engagement and they think that's a problem. I personally do not. I I do not in any way, shape, or form think that's a problem. On my Instagram, I don't know that we've ever done a single post around uh hiring or building a media team. It's just not what I know is going to go as wide. We're going to start doing more of that and I know it's not going to hit as well, but guess what? we're going to get a lot more of our ideal customers through Instagram from that content. Okay. So, I would just say you just need to make a slow transition. It's nothing complicated. Um, and and one thing that you can do sometimes, uh, in yours, I'm not exactly sure. I'm not a subject matter expert, so I I will never pretend to talk about stuff I don't know. But for her, the way that we had her do the transition is what Neil mentioned earlier. She was in the gym in all of her content. So, what were we going to have her do? You're going to film personal branding advice in the gym. And so it's how much can I make this look like the previous content you know me for while bringing in and injecting this new subject matter. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you.
In the weeds real quick. Make a really really valuable lead magnet that you would sell for a lot of money and then give it away for free via Instagram. That will be a gamecher here. Game changer. The reason why we have 53,000 people on our email list is because we've made three 45page plus workbooks that we give out for free. 45 pages. Like this is some [ __ ] Actually, it's so good. And I feel like an [ __ ] saying it's so good, but it's so good. People are literally DMing me being like, "Yo, bro, I love your workbook. I repackaged it with my branding and I'm selling it and I've made a ton of money."
Dang. And and like real talk, my genuine reaction was like, "Awesome. [ __ ] yeah. That's great. I love it." I think if you do that, if you create whatever you have done that has led to the most success with growing your channel, your platform, if you turn that into a really strong lead magnet, step by step for people that's like uncomfy for you to give out, woof,
that'd be huge.
Give it away. Give them the blueprint. Sell the implementation.
I'm a Harley nut. I am not mechanically inclined. I've made every modification you can imagine to my Road King. I went to the local Harley dealership who I saw upload videos on how to change my exhaust pipe on my bike because I was like, "Well, I don't want to mess that up. That's going to be too costly." And also, they're the expert. They just demonstrated to me that they know how to do this on every kind of Harley imaginable. And I think a big worry when you give out lead magnets and you give out content and you're giving too much is you might wonder well now there I've given away my expertise most these people are going to take it and never work with me. If you are scared of that there is an alternative path. You can actually identify what is the problem that precedes the problem that I solve. Right? When you solve a problem it reveals another one. So what is the problem that comes before the one you solve in your offer that you can help them solve to reveal that they need you?
So you solve one problem, reveal another.
Exactly. The example that I use is like uh if if I am not in any way, shape, or form tracking what I eat, I'm not walking every day. I'm not going to the gym. You better believe I'm not going to give a [ __ ] about testing my blood work to see like what vitamins I'm deficient on, right? Where my hormone levels are at. I need to like start caring about my body before I do that. And so if I'm a company that does that blood test, my content is going to be how to get you to start tracking your macros, how to start walking, how to go to the gym, all of the problems that precede the problem that my offer solves. We literally just did this. We started realizing what problem do we not want to solve? Getting people to start their personal brand. So what did we do in January? We released yet another course on how to start. Not how to build. The first one was how to build. This one was how to start your personal brand. We're solving a problem that precedes the problem that my offer solves.
Okay, so we'll do one question from Cap and then um guys, is this helping you contentwise? Awesome.
Dude. Thank you again for being here. This is awesome.
Thank you.
Hey, Caleb, thank you. Um, so I feel like my YouTube's like this mixed bag of tricks. I've tried a bunch of stuff and I was doing shorts and I got really good traffic with it and got a bunch of subs, but now it's like, what do I do with it? Should I go back and hide those, delete them? Should I like or just keep plowing through it?
It's like a dead audience basically. Yeah. What is your goal?
My goal is to go direct consumer is what I'm trying to do. Teach wealth tips, debt elimination, tax advantage. Um,
and are you wanting to do that via long form?
Yes.
Okay. So, a big trap that we see a lot of people fall into, and I'm going to give a a qualifier in a second. Please wait for the qualifier. But a lot of people make shorts on YouTube and I've seen channels who get, and I know you've seen this too, a million, two million, three million subscribers. It's crazy. And then they upload a long form video, 13 views. Um, I'm not, here's the qualifier. I'm not saying don't make shorts on YouTube. I am uh we do it. I think it's great. But I would highly encourage you to take a break for a second from shorts and focus on long form. The the thing that we have started to notice over the last couple of years is people just want more of what they consumed. Whatever brought them into your world, they just want more of. This is why I don't like chasing virality because when you chase virality, you talk about stupid [ __ ] that you don't care about. Like your Starbucks order, unless you're really into it, talk about it by all means if that's an interest of yours, right? But a lot of people will do their, you know, fast food order or whatever, not because they want to actually share it, but because they've been told by some agency that it's going to get views. But guess what? All those viewers want more of that. Exactly. And so it's the same not only in topic and subject matter, it's also in format, right? If they're consuming short form, like have you guys ever like actually scrolled through YouTube shorts before? Mo a lot of people actually haven't. uh it is a totally different psychology. I don't even like to think of it like it's YouTube. I literally like to think of it like it is a separate platform. I'm sure this will change. I remember back in the day everyone was saying don't make shorts blah blah blah blah blah. I do think shorts are important but for you with what you've articulated I would say you need to focus on long form for the next three months and then when you can cool upload shorts but that needs to be what you optimize around. That's what I've done. I optimize around long form all day and I believe it has led to a lot of really good results.
Awesome. Thank you. If this podcast has caused you to think differently about your personal brand, I would encourage you to watch my 6 and a half hour free course on how to build your personal