The Master Storyteller EXPLAINS How To Build A $1M Brand, Not Just A Business! (5 Step Framework!)

Anyone who wants to be successful in business has to go through the period of building something that no one wants. I did that four or five times. And at some point, you're like, "I got to stop doing the building and focus more on the creation of attention." All I did was make a video a day and posted it. I grew from like 0 to 300,000 followers.

People want you to be their favorite, and people's favorite is the person that speaks directly to them. So, you need to customize your messaging, customize the topics to cover the pain points that they specifically have. One of your most popular videos was how to master storytelling. Over a million people have watched that, which is insane. Talk to me about the importance of storytelling.

Storytelling is probably the most powerful skill anyone could have. The key to storytelling is... Today's guest is Kane Callaway. And interestingly enough, we actually filmed an episode 12 months ago. At the time, he had just left his consulting job to do content creation full-time. He had a couple hundred thousand followers across Tik Tok and Instagram, all organic, only doing short-form. And I remember sitting in that studio, and thinking to myself, "This guy's really figured out short-form content." Little did I know he was just getting started. And so, speaking to you today, he has over a million followers. He's just passed 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and did it in 5 months.

And so to give you guys the context, Callaway is the person that I go to for anything related to storytelling, building an audience, and getting attention. And so if you're sitting at home listening to this, and whenever you post on the internet about your business, your idea, whatever you're building, it feels like you are yelling into the void. It feels like you're invisible, even though you have something valuable to offer. We created this episode for you. Basically, what Callaway goes through and breaks down is his five-step framework to getting a mass amount of people to care about what you're building. And it's so damn good. And so, you know what? I'm not going to say anything more. We're just going to get into it. You're listening to the Callum Johnson show.

If someone's listening to this conversation, let's just say they stumbled on this video on their feed. They have no idea who you and I are. But what they do know is that whenever they post something on the internet, whether it's their idea, their story, their business, whatever the thing is, it gets no attention. Yeah. Like they feel invisible, like they're just not hitting people. And honestly, like it's a frustrating experience. And so with that in mind, where I wanted to begin is for that human being, what is going to be the value to them of listening to this conversation that we're about to have?

Yeah, that's a big one. I think at the end of the day, attention is one of the most important things in business. I think it's the most important thing. And so my approach, at least like mental model frameworks, are going to break down—it depends on where we go with the questions—but it's going to break down systematically, high-level what's broken and then tactically what is broken, each piece, right? So like the way I think of things is break them down into atomic units and then analyze each building block like a Lego brick, fix it, and then stack it back up so that it works. So I have like pretty deep views on every component of the content, content, attention, workflow. And so we can pick apart and like really fundamentally break down those blocks all the way into the problems. And then I think if you're watching this and you watch all the way through, hopefully this will be like a master class for the tactics, but also like the storytelling, high-level. And if you know both those things, it's just a matter of reps after that, the consistency.

You know what? And um, it's funny cuz I was watching—I was watching some of your videos this morning, and you always have this line in your videos of like, uh, "I'm Callaway. I've got a billion views and a million followers." Exactly. And the thing is cuz I—I've known you for a little bit. It wasn't always like that. And so I heard you say this on a podcast. I think you shot this podcast maybe like a year ago. You said, "When I think about business, it comes down to product and distribution. Can you sell it? And what are you selling?" And so I was doing a lot of "what are you selling," but I was doing it to no one. And 18 months ago, I was like, "Fuck it. I'm just going to go full audience." I knew nothing. And that's when I was working in consulting and posting a video every single day. Yeah. Can you—can you just talk to me—like take us back to that point in time?

Yeah. Yeah. We've come a long way since—we have come a long way. I feel like I'm like a caterpillar that's blossomed many times—like the metamorphosis, many, many levels. Um, yeah, so like the way business is very simple at the base building blocks, right? So it's attention, funnels, and then offers or products. So it's like, "Can I get someone to care? How do I get that person to care about the thing I'm selling? And then what am I selling?" It's just those three things. A lot of people when they want to build a business, they start with the "what am I selling," which is natural, right? Because you're like, "I need a product. What do people want?" Whatever. You don't really spend a lot of time on the buyer at all. You spend time on the product. So, when you do that, like I did for many years, you end up building things that people don't want, or you—you build something someone does want, but you can't get them to care, right? Because you—you haven't mastered the skill or the muscle of the attention side.

And so, what I figured out, I mean, really, after failing so many times with the offer-first method, I kind of zoomed out and just tried to look at it holistically, right? Like I can articulate this stuff much better now cuz I've lived in the trenches as an entrepreneur for a while, but back then I didn't have these frameworks, but I—I did kind of zoom out and say, "Why don't I just focus on the skill of getting people to care, period, and just learn that? And if I can learn that, I can then ask them what they want and build what they want, but I have to know the skill of getting them to care because even if I knew what they wanted and I built it, I have to get them to it," right? So I kind of just stopped doing the offer—offers, products, whatever—I stopped doing the building and focused more on the creation of attention. How do you harness attention? How do you tell stories? How do you get people to really care about anything you want? And that's what started me down this journey of like, "Okay, you go into formats and platforms." So, I picked short-form video to start, but that was just because I could iterate my learning the fastest, which we—we talked about a lot in the last pod, but I—but kind of at—at a blank slate level, you have all these social platforms, you have all these different formats. You can pick any of them to start, but you have to figure out how to win the game. The content game is what I call it on that platform. When you figure that out, then you can harness attention. You start to build that muscle. Then as that attention accrues, which is a following or an audience, you can then start to ask them through interactive—whatever—comments or live calls or stories or whatever. Ask them what they want, and then you can start to identify where is there a gap? What can I build and kind of build the bridge, right?

As a beginner, if you're watching this, the fundamental mistake I made for a long time is I started at the end with the product, when what I should have done is started with the buyer, analyzed what the buyer wants, and then both figure out what to build for them and also how to get them to care.

Yeah. You know what? When—if you're in that position where—and I know it firsthand cuz I remember like the first business that I tried to start was a t-shirt business, and I spent like six or seven months just trying to get the design perfect, and then once you're ready to launch, there's no market for it. Yeah. It's crickets, and it's actually like this deeply frustrating, kind of lonely experience because you're like, "I've created this thing that, in your mind, it's almost like a masterpiece. You're like, 'I put so much work into it. I think it's valuable to people. I think they should like it,' but they just don't—they just don't care." Yeah. Because really—cuz you're making that for you. You're not really making it for them, right? It's like if you make a product like a clothing brand, you're making it cuz you think it's dope and you want money. So you're like, "I want to make something people will pay me money for." But the reality is like they didn't have a problem to be solved. It's very—a clothing brand specifically is like very tough to grow and scale because it's hard to start with the buyer, right, for clothing because like it has to come from the designer's taste. So that—that's a tough one to model. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, anyone who wants to be successful in business has to go through the period of building something that no one wants at least once to kind of feel the sting of that. I'm just saying I did that four or five times, and real—and like at—at some point you're like, "I got to stop wasting money and time building something that nobody wants. Like what's wrong?" I'm telling you the thing that's wrong is that you have to start with the person in mind. Now if you don't want to start with the attention skill, you at least have to go find a group of buyers and ask them what they want. Like if—if you still want to violate what I'm saying, you have to kind of know what people want to then build something. But ultimately, you're going to have to be able to drive attention. You're going to have to be able to get them to care. The first time I learned this lesson was like pretty brutal. I started a business my last year of college. We raised uh angel money from friends and family, like 300k or whatever. Spent a bunch of money building out this app that we thought was sick and burned through all the money, and nobody cared. Nobody wanted it. And huge flop, right? So that was a great example of like we thought we had a good idea. There was a market need we thought for us, but we hadn't validated that need with real buyers. And so you go—we went through all the process, a year to build out the app, iterate the app, this feature, that feature, what's the design, all the stuff that like doesn't actually matter until you have validation, and then you go to test it, and the buyers are like, "Nah, I'd rather just like do what I'm doing." That's a tough—that's a tough lesson to learn. But yeah, that's—that's a key first principle to—to understanding business.

Yeah. You know what's—you know what's interesting? It's like um, and I think we have this in both of our stories. It is very nice to like reminisce on like the failed stories once you have the thing that works. Yeah. But sucks in the—Yeah. When you're—when you're in it, and you even mentioned like everyone has to feel the sting of building—someone building something that no one cares about. And it's nice that when you're feeling that sting, it's just the sting. It sucks. Well, and what I—So, when I was feeling the sting, what I wish I had was a conversation like this where the person could say, "Look, the reason you're feeling the sting is cuz you've built something no one wants. The way to get the sting away and to fix it, go talk to the people you're trying to sell to and figure out what they need." That—like that's the step one tactical step. But when you're—yeah, when you're in the trenches and your blinders are on, you don't really know to take that step. Like I didn't really know, you know, intuitively we can talk about this now. Go talk to the buyer. I didn't really realize that. Right. So yeah, you know what? Let's—let's just get into it cuz I want to—I want to give people that blueprint and that five-step framework of how they can get people to care about what they're building. Let's do that.

Okay. And so, you know what? I want to start with—I want to start right in the beginning with step one, which is identify exactly who you're trying to reach. It's the "who." So before you create content or build a product, you have to start with a deep clarity. Who is this for? And so really where I wanted to start is like I think that when you're starting out building something that might actually be one of the toughest questions, the "who," because the—where your mind naturally goes, and it's where my mind went, and it was my mistake. It's like, "Well, I want everyone to wear my t-shirt. I want everyone to watch my content. I want like—" Yeah. We—we instantly go "everyone." Yeah. So, so to—to build in that sense—to build on the warehouse analogy, imagine you had somebody go up on the lift that could only see green, which represents like a niche buyer. Then building a—a shirt that's white, they won't see. So, you—you want your shirt to be green if you're sitting in the warehouse. And so, that—what that means is like there's a—it's really just a silly metaphor, but a proxy for specific buyers buy more often when you're targeting a specific pain point that they have or a set of pain points that they have. If you build something for everyone, there's a good chance that the pain point you're addressing is general. It's too generalized. So, like, are there companies that make blank white t-shirts instead of one? Yes. But that's a way harder market to—to beat them at because they have network effects and like escape velocity advantages versus you identifying a person or a group of people, mapping the workflow or like whatever they do, picking where they struggle, and then making a product to solve that struggle. That's really like the essence of the "who." And in terms of like, you know, there's so many types of people that are watching this in terms of the businesses they have, right? Some people are just creators that are trying to grow media brands. So, who is the—who is the buyer? The buyer is the viewer in that—in that case. And the viewer, you don't want to make content that everybody is for everybody because it's not going to cut through in a deep way. People want to be you. People want you to be their favorite, right? And people's favorite is the person that speaks directly to them. So you need to customize your messaging, customize the topics to cover the pain points that they specifically have. So if you're a creator, the buyer is the viewer, and the viewer needs to be a specific profile that you can speak to. Typically creators are best when they can resonate with themselves, other—like a—the viewer is a proxy for themselves because they know their own problems really deeply, and so they can talk about those in content. For business owners, the buyer has—I mean, you don't, like I said at the very beginning, you don't want to start with the product before you have the buyer because you don't know what pain points the buyer has. But step one, if you want to cut through with anything, is you have to get intimately familiar with who that buyer is. Demographics, background, psychographics, where they hang out socially, like digitally, which platform are they on, what are the memes they like? Like you really need to create this like 360 profile of the buyer so that you can understand—and this is the important part—the workflows that they're spending their time doing and the struggles and pain points that they have within those workflows. When you can identify those, that helps with the content because you can storytell around it, and it helps with the product because you can build to solve it, right?

Yeah, it's such a—it's such a good point. And I think the—I remember—I remember actually reading—the way that I got introduced to this, especially on like the psychology level, was a lot through looking at—um, Alex Hormozi's content. Yeah. And the fact that like we just like—people—or we like things that it feels like it was made just for us. Yeah. Exactly. It's like the—It's like why does—why do people want to go on like first class or like why do people want to fly private? Like that's a dream for a lot of people. Like, "One day I can fly private cuz it's just you." Yeah. It's like personalized. It's personalized just for you. And you will pay thousands of times more for the same journey. Yeah. The exact same trip, the same destination, you will pay thousands of times more. Yeah. Just because it's specific to you. And so if we were going to get deeper on the content side—No, I want to get deeper into like the—the detail because I think sometimes you have like—someone might listen to this and they might be like, "Okay, I'm going to go—I'm going to go one level more specific with who this is for." Yeah. Yeah. But then there's like—I almost feel in business and when you're just building anything, it's not really about one level. You kind of need to go several levels deeper than where you started in the beginning. All the way down. Yeah. I'm trying to reach entrepreneurs, which is still really vague. Yeah. Can you talk about that process of how you actually get to like the right "who" at the right level of specificity for—from a content perspective?

Yeah. Okay. Give me 60 seconds of your time. If you're a creator or an entrepreneur, you already know that storytelling is everything—your product, your brand, your content. It's all about how well can you connect with people emotionally? But here's the question I have for you. What if you could actually create a soundtrack for that story? And that's where the sponsor of today's episode, Refusion, comes in. It's an AI music platform that lets you generate original, studio-quality songs just by describing what you want. You don't need to know how to produce. You don't need gear. You don't even need to touch an instrument. You just need an idea. And the thing that I like about Refusion is they give you complete creative control. They're the only music generation platform that has a built-in personalization feature that helps you find your unique sound. And so the part that I found really cool over time, Refusion learns your style. It starts to pick up on your taste, what you like, and build songs that actually feel like you. It's like having this personalized, always-on music collaborator right in your pocket. And so whether you're a builder, a brand, a storyteller, or just someone who wants to add another layer of creativity to what you do, go to refusion.com and start making music today. That's R I F F U S I O N. To start creating the soundtrack to your story.

I recently had a guest come on the show and say that we are currently living in the best time to make money on the internet. A lot of that is because of the selling opportunities that are on social media. And so a few months ago, we had an entrepreneur called Rob Oliver come on and break down how you can make tens of thousands of dollars selling product on Tik Tok shop. That conversation we had with Rob was so popular that he created a community that teaches people how to market products on Tik Tok and make thousands of dollars per month as a Tik Tok shop affiliate. Introducing our friends at Your First Dollar. Right now, they have hundreds of members that have gone from complete e-commerce newbies to earning $10,000 a month on Tik Tok shop. And when you join Your First Dollar, it's not just that you're getting lessons. You also get access to top coaches, daily live calls, a supportive community, and you can complete everything right from your phone. And so, if you're ready to get started on Tik Tok shop and learn how to become a top-earning affiliate, go to the link in the description and join Your First Dollar today. Your future self will be so grateful. Now, let's get back to the show.

Yeah. So, like we can take my channels as an example, right? So, Callaway Marketing is—I'm sure like we'll link it or whatever. That's—that's my YouTube. And my—the breadth and depth that I go in is I'm making content for business owners who are trying to grow their businesses using content. They have products and services, but they have not cracked content. Like, that's the level I'm going for. Now, if I went a level even deeper, it would be like a specific type of business. It's like I'm only helping ecom business owners with content that are trying to grow their business. If I went a level below that, it'd be like I'm only helping health and wellness ecom business owners that are trying to grow with content. If I went a level beyond that, it's like I'm only helping supplement ecom business owners. And you can go all the way down. I only help like gummy vitamin, daily vitamin, health and wellness ecom business—you can go all the way down. The thing is there is some trade-off with like breadth and depth, right? So you—you—you want to come at a level where—the way I would think about it is you want to go as broad as you can where the lessons—the tactical solves that you have apply for everyone in the circle. If you go beyond that, then you lose the—the effectiveness—like the—the uh—the efficacy of the message, right, essentially. So for example, like for me in a lot of this—we'll get to the framework—but it—you have to reverse engineer from like, "What do you know that other people don't know in terms of the solution for the thing?" And so then, "Who would benefit from that solution?" It's the people with that pain. So it's like, "Who has that pain?" So for me, it's like, "What do I know that most people don't know?" It's the nuts and bolts of how to create content that gets people addicted and that you can funnel for traffic. Like that—that is the thing I know. So if I know that, it's like, "Who would benefit from that?" Well, any business owner that has a business would benefit from it. If I go down to the ecom business owner, does that—is that make it better? Well, maybe, but I've never built an ecom brand, so I don't have like even more specialized knowledge. So, let's go back up. Business owner, what's one level broader than business owner? Like any—any maker, I guess. But then it starts to get where like, well, a painter might not really get a lot of value from the solution I have. So, like, okay, that's too broad. So, now I got to come back down to a business owner. You have to pressure test like, "Is the solution that I know relevant to any business owner?" It is because I've tested it with many different types of business—accountants, marketing agency owners. I was a creator, business owner. Like I've tested it with 10 different ones, and it worked for everyone. So that's how I—you kind of find your level, right, of like who is—who does it apply for. The reason you don't want to go down—down—down—you could, but like you—you miss out on the algorithmic push and the ability of the platforms to reach millions of people. So, it's like it is a trade-off to some extent. I'm trying to be—I'm trying to be clear because I want to be extremely tactical for the people that are deciding at what level do I go. You need to decide what type of buyer you want to get intimately familiar with their pain points, at what level, and then really gut check like, "What do I know that can solve those pain points that other people don't know?" Because if you don't have any edge, then what you're doing is just regurgitating everything else that exists, and you will not cut through. Right? So to take like another example, I'm just like building this off the fly. Let's say I'm a business owner. I'm watching, and I made like a gummy vitamin product for growing your nails, let's say. And if that product is not differentiated in any way,

You're going to lose. You just will, unless you outspend them with paid ads. But let's just say you've discovered a formulation that actually is more effective. You're going to then storytell about that effectiveness compared to the pain point of not being able to grow your nails. Like that's your edge. So who would be who would resonate with that most? Well, it's anyone that has the problem of not growing their nails. And so you you then have to go do the work of identifying who are those buyer groups and at what grouping level can we message all of them where they all resonate with our solution. Right? Hopefully that's being clear. I'm trying to be like precise with it.

You know, you said you said something so good, which is like you basically have to, when you're deciding the who, you have to make a decision of like which buyer do I want to become intimately familiar with their pain points? And so then the next question is like, okay, how do you figure that out? And this is what I found really helpful and also just kind of observing and reflecting on what I've seen work for other creators. Typically that person that you decide will end up almost being like an earlier version of who you are right now.

Yeah. Because so so what that means so like in your example right it's like you're helping business owners that are struggling to get attention on their product. At one point, as we kind of spoke about earlier, you were struggling to get attention on your product.

Exactly. And so, you already intimately understand what they're experiencing. And it's actually like it's a really helpful framework of like just reflect on the person that you used to be and then create with them in mind.

Okay, quick pause. I want to take you guys behind the scenes for a second and share a tool that has dramatically improved my productivity. They are also sponsoring this episode, and that is Notion. And so I've spoken about Notion before in other videos. My team and my business is all run through Notion, and Notion is my digital HQ. It organizes all of my tasks. It tracks my habits, and it keeps my team in sync. And so I now understand all of the hype and why so many people swear by Notion. And so if you're someone that is sitting at home and you're listening to this and you feel disorganized, you feel stressed with your work and managing timelines and tasks, Notion is going to be for you. And it's not just me saying this. Over 50% of Fortune 500 companies use Notion. And so if you want to join us and try Notion for free, go to the link in my description. That's notion.com/calumjohnson. And when you use that link, not only are you helping yourself and your productivity, you're actually directly supporting the show. So, thank you so much. And let's get back to the video.

And the reason why that works so well is because you know the pain points so well because you lived the struggle of having that pain, right? It's like there's a reason why when a lawyer starts a a legal AI startup that it's going to beat a rando who wasn't a lawyer. There's a reason why that happens. The reason why is cuz the lawyer lived the arc of the buyer, which is the lawyer like lawyers they know the pain points much that's why you want subject matter expertise. So if you're watching this and you're 22 and you feel like you haven't really lived any painoint whatever arcs you got to go build a skill first before you build a business build a skill and learn the intricacies of what is tough about learning or applying that skill. Then now you have this user journey that you've lived very easy to build a business solving one of the points pain points when you know what they are right so that's that's a a critical thing people miss they immediately they say I want to make money well what skill do you have none well what pain points are you aware of none so it's like what are you going to sell to solve a painoint that you're not aware of right like you have to start with the journey of developing the skill to map the pain to come up with the solution to build the product that's like the logical flow a good example is so we're building uh sand castles AI is shameless plug is our software, right? And so the whole goal with that was like I went through the process of trying to make content. Scripting takes a long time, 60 to 90 minutes per video to get really good. I became a master at scripting. I tried to help people with it, but it takes so long to explain on a onetoone level. So I was like, let me just build a software that automatically takes everything I know about articulation, psychology, persuasion, script writing, put it all in, and just does it for people. That's an example of like the only way I would know how to build that is if I was in the trenches writing scripts for a year every day knowing where things were breaking. That's the only way I could do that, right? And so it was only then after doing that solving it, pressure testing the methods and putting it in product that I realized like yeah, you really can't build a thing unless you're intimately familiar with the problem set. And the best way to get intimately familiar with the problem set is to live the problem yourself.

Right. You know what's funny? Literally as you you said it perfectly and I was I was just about to add to it is um and we're kind of almost like we're like freestyling like we're coming up with you like right in this moment. It's like you have to have lived like live the pain.

Yeah. And it's like and and it's back to what you were saying about edge you know and I think what you say is true is like and I felt this is um I remember there's a quote by Nipy Hustle when he talks about this. He's like, um, a lot of the reason that people don't like go after their dreams or they don't build the thing that they want is because, uh, their ribs are touching. And basically what he means is it's like you're kind of in this survival mode or you're like you have such a certain outcome in your mind that you're pursuing that you're almost like trying to rush the result.

Yeah. Yeah. Like that's an edge. Like it's very difficult for someone else to be able to speak to that version of you in the way that you could like you've lived the pain. It's so much easier to win in business when you know the pain. For example, like if if somebody else tried to build uh software that helps people write scripts, unless they're better than me at writing scripts, which they aren't, nobody's going to beat me at that right now. If you clone my methods and exe and out execute, then you could beat us. But I know the pain. I'm so like the rabbit hole. I'm at I'm the guy at the bottom. Like I'm all the way down the rabbit hole. And so if you want to win in your category, that's how deep you have to be understanding the buyer's pain. And I think if you if you if you haven't lived the pain yourself, you have to do like hundreds of interviews with actual buyers that have lived the pain and try to stitch together like the insights from them. It's just really tough to do that though because you're always one degree away from one of them, right? And so they always know like the things they're not telling you, the things that the invisible pains they can't even articulate in the moment. So, it's just really it's I can't recommend enough to like pick a skill that you want to obsess over. Go through the arc. And the arc could be 6 to 12 months. Like it doesn't have to be your whole lifetime. Go through the arc of trying to develop that skill and really document the lens of the pain as you're doing it. Like what was not clear? Were the on-ramps of learning the skill clear? Was the application of it clear? Who is is like buying your services for that skill? Are they clear on it? Like there's so many ways you can identify the pain once you live it. You have to do that. So that's step one.

Yeah. Step one, you have to find that you have to find that uh the avatar. Step two, and I remember you mentioned it on our call, you spoke about surfaces. Find out it's the where it's find out where they already hang out. Where does this customer where do they hang out? You need to know where they are. Are they watching YouTube tutorials at midnight? Are they scrolling Tik Tok after work? Are they subscribed to niche newsletters? Your job is to show up where they already are and hit the medium they trust with consistency.

Yeah. Like it's hard to know where they are if you don't know them, right? So step one is you got to know them. And then step two is like immediately the beauty of social media is there's only a few options, right? You only have six or seven platform options. You only have a couple different formats. Short form video, long form video, text, audio, image. Those are your only formats. So like you you can you can pretty much profile where these people are in a couple ways. One, if you're them, chances are what where you like to hang out, they like to hang out. And you probably already know that. If you're if you're not them, you ask a small sample set of your early customers or the people that you're trying to interview where they hang out. And like wherever they are, you then have to immerse yourself in that community. So let's say it's like it's LinkedIn. You the people you want are on LinkedIn. Immediately you need to go follow a bunch of people that are in your exact avatar group. Start commenting on their post to start kind of triggering the algorithm to angle your yourself your profile at them. Then you need to start making video native content on that platform. So either short form or long form video is going to outkick everything else. It just will. That's where all the platforms are going. LinkedIn doesn't have native long form video. So you you do short form video because they have their native short form feed. And you just start making short form videos and we'll get to that. Like these are later steps, but you pick the surface LinkedIn. You pick the format, short form video, and you just immerse in that sub community. You can build, anyone can build an eight figureure business using that method. Who the buyer is, find the one format they're on, or find the one platform they're on, find the format they're on, and then I'm sure we're going to get into three, four, and five, which is actually how you do it. But this is like the this is the strategy setup for like how to actually make sure your effort is useful and not wasted.

Yeah. You know what? There there's different and and if we just take it right down to the base, there's different forms of communications as humans, right? Like obviously we have video which is like a mixture I guess of like uh verbal and then like visual. You have just audio which is just you're listening. You have written. You said something very interesting there. You said native video. That's the way it's going.

Yeah. Can can you elaborate on that for people? Yeah. I have this like fairly lame phrase that like people people say like a picture is worth a thousand words and then I say like a video is worth a thousand pictures, right? And so essentially video is just way richer of a medium. You just take in so much more data when you're watching a video. Trust accrues when you take in more data faster. So if if people watch this for 5 minutes, you've probably gotten a thousandx more trust acred than they would if they read that same amount of people read like a blurb that you wrote in text. Cuz it's just not as real when you're looking at the words as it is compared to video. So video like first you have to agree or buy into the fact that video is a richer medium than image than text. Right? That's step one. Then step two is what I say native video. The platforms are built to keep people on. Right? The whole business of social media is they make money when people stay using it so they can run ads against them. That's like their whole job. So the algorithm's job is to prioritize whatever format are is going to keep the people on the longest. That turns out to be video. And so that's that's the second piece like we've bought into video. Now we've bought into the fact that all algorithms are prioritizing video. The next thing is the native. So platforms want you to stay on their thing. They don't want you to leave and go somewhere else. So LinkedIn has a short form video feed built into it. So that's like native on LinkedIn. But if you were to post a long form video from YouTube on LinkedIn, I I think you can maybe upload a long form on LinkedIn, but most people want to link to YouTube. If someone were to click that link, they leave LinkedIn and go to YouTube. That means LinkedIn doesn't get the ad revenue anymore from that person. They don't want that. They're losing. So they don't want you to link out. So the easiest way to get them to push you because you'll help keep people there, which is what they want, is to use their native video products. Instagram reels is native. Tik Tok, the Tik Tok video is native. YouTube long form and shorts are native. I think long form is way more powerful on YouTube. LinkedIn shorts. Twitter doesn't really have native video either way. Like you can post both. I think Elon's trying to get long form to become native and so they're kind of boosting long form. Twitter is kind of a little bit of a weird one. Facebook reels, but you can also upload native kind of long form in there as well. Uh and then I think I may have missed one, but I think that I think that's all of them. So there is a native video except for Twitter on every single one of them. And if you want the best bang for buck 8020, like do 20% of the work, get 80% of the results, it's native video on the platform where your buyers live. That's like step one and two.

Yeah. In terms of the the surfaces themselves, cuz I I know I had it when I was starting out is you have that question of like which platform do I choose? You mentioned I know there's all the ones that we always hear, right? Tik Tok, Instagram, whatever. YouTube. You mentioned LinkedIn.

Yeah. Yeah. Like is there one that you almost feel is underrated? Like people aren't paying enough attention to and actually like the reach on that surface is easier especially if you're getting started. I think so there's always under under arbitrage and over like underutilized underleveraged whatever the whatever the framing is there's always opportunities where you're getting more bang for buck. Right now LinkedIn is one of those where there's so the supply and demand mismatch is very out of whack. Ton of demand. People want like if you think about it, every person on LinkedIn, which is like we think of like a guy in a suit chilling at work, they're spending time on LinkedIn, if they're in the office, they're not really allowed to go on other social media, but LinkedIn is like work, so they're all going on it. Everybody likes video, so they're just they're churning through those videos. So, LinkedIn right now is the best underpriced attention relative to the others. However, what trumps underpriced is where the buyer is. So, if your buyer is not on LinkedIn and just and you're just posting on LinkedIn because it's underpriced, that doesn't make sense. But the the way to think that through the difference is like typically CPG type brands are going to do best on Instagram and Tik Tok. Typically B2B services are going to do best on LinkedIn. Like that's where the buyer is. SAS can do well on all of them. Usually consumer SAS I would say Tik Tok and B2B SAS LinkedIn or you or YouTube. And I'm YouTube's kind of a the universal like O bloods like the universal donor. Like you can post on YouTube for anything. It's just way harder. Long form is way harder. But yeah, like start with where the buyer is and then be like, "Okay, all my buyers are here. I'm going to jump in the conversation. I'm going to be in the comments." But like the thing you can do to get the most buyers magnetic to you and your personal brand, which drives to the brand, is postnative video.

Yeah. You know, okay, let's let's go to let's go to step three. And this is like for me personally, this is what I really like is step three, which is I I have it written as speak the language of that platform, the how and the what. But really, if I really wanted to just make it simple, it's like, okay, step one, you've identified who the viewer avatar is. Step two, you've chosen your surface and you've gone like very narrow in how you're delivering to that viewer avatar. Step three is actually how are you actually getting people to care?

Yeah. Like give a [ __ ] about what you're doing.

Yeah. And so, you know, I where I That's a big can of worms right here. It's very big. And you know where where I want to begin is in the last 6 months, you have gone from zero to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. And one of your most popular videos was how to master storytelling. Um, one over a million people have watched that which is which is insane. At that time even, how many subscribers did you even When I posted it, I had less than a thousand.

That's crazy. Yeah. To be fair, that video had been made actually the video had been made 6 months before and I posted on a different channel. It didn't do well. So, all I did was take the same video, rethnail it. But yeah, the algo was different. Obviously, I like audience matched my new channel, which we could get into, but yeah, we we will get into that. But, you know what? just to just to begin and to level set storytelling.

Yeah, storytelling is one of those things that like I know especially before I really got into content, you just hear everyone talk about storytelling and it's not even just marketers, it's like entrepreneurs, it's like oh Steve Jobs was an amazing storyteller and then you'll hear like a film director like it's all about storytelling and then a musician and then like everyone talks about storytelling and I'd always be like what is this thing? It's like one of those like overused terms that we just hear. The invisible ghost.

Literally, that's a good way to put it. Talk to me about the importance of storytelling. Like, why is that so important when it comes to getting people to care about what you're doing? Yeah, I mean, storytelling is universally like probably the most powerful skill anyone could have. So, we're going to dive, you know, like I I was thinking before I came here, like how am I going to tee up the intro? I was like, do you want me to tell you the secret about storytelling? I'll give it to you right now. That was the hook edit. So storytelling essentially is a bucket of things, but it's persuasion. It's psychology. It's really getting someone to care and keep caring about the thing you're saying, right? Through anything story. You can storyt tell through music. It's like, do you want to keep listening to the song? Story tell through books. Do you want to keep reading? Storytell through video. Do you want to keep watching? It's just what is the it's storytelling. Storytelling is like the magnetism that keeps people holding on to to hear more, see more, view more. And so the problem with something like storytelling is it's this kind of like opaque term. It's like how do you actually break it down? And I I actually think what I'm best at my my sauce is I'm pretty good at breaking things down into like the atomic unit.

Very good. And explaining what how to piece them apart. So my philosophy on storytell I mean there's several we we there's several pieces that I think we should break down but the nuts and bolts for content specifically is there's really a few things. The first thing is depending on the surface depending on the format you have to compress the speed to value quicker. So that's like a universal tenant of storytelling. Uh Christopher Nolan when he makes a movie doesn't have to compress the speed of value speed to value because he knows you're in the theater for two two and a half hours. So he can afford to like meander through the first 20 minutes. He's got you captured. But in real content world, there is no movie theater constraint where you have somebody captured. They didn't pay to come. So you have to compress that value, the payoff, like what they're actually there for as early as possible. Give them a hit of that so that they and and then you use a lot of like specific techniques to rehook them. You hook them, give them value as soon as possible, rehook them throughout, trickle in more value. That's kind of how you that's roughly the structure for how you hold people with content. So, one thing is speed to value. The second thing though, and this is really the universal tenant of storytelling, and I I've never I've never seen this anywhere. So, I'm sure most of these ideas that I have, like I think they're original cuz I haven't seen anyone say them, but I'm sure somebody has come up with this before, but like hand to God, I've never heard anyone say this. The key to storytelling is contrast. This I'll die on this hill. Contrast is the difference between A and B, right? So, a common example is like, is Prince Charming fighting a dragon interesting? It's kind of interesting, but what would make it more interesting is Prince Charming walking through the forest chilling and then out of nowhere the dragon comes and they start fighting. The difference between walking with no dragon and dragon, that distance is contrast. Creating the contrast is what creates intrigue because it changes the state from A to B. So if you actually like watch and listen to good storytellers and you you have this frame, the way they do it often is they'll say this thing is really interesting, but actually this thing is where all the attention really is. That but actually is a word to create contrast. It's a then b. It it switches your attention. The way to do this in content and and I'm like jumping all over the place, but we can we can get into this. The way to do this in content is kind of understanding the baseline expectation that someone has about the topic you're talking about, getting them to lean into what they already believe, and then contrasting to something else that you believe. That's that solution painpoint thing I talked about.

Mhm. So, a tactical example and then and then I'll stop is basically like let's say I was trying to teach an entrepreneur how to make videos or grow on YouTube and the baseline expectation is like it's really hard, it takes forever, you know, like that that's what most people believe. So, if I was trying to hook them with a better story, I would say I would start by reiterating what they believe to like give them that confirmation. So I would say, you know, the truth is everybody says growing on YouTube takes forever and is like really hard to do. And they're like, yeah, yeah, that is what everyone says. Like they start agreeing and they're like, but actually if you do these five things, it's way easier and saves half the time. What I've done is I've teased the fact that I have a contrarian or contrasting solution against the baseline expectation. Everybody watching that right now wants to know what those five things are. Just me saying that. And that's because I've leaned you I've created distance between what you believe and then what you what I what I know to be true.

Right. Yeah. You know you know what's interesting and I want to make it so real for people that distance like what exists in that distance is curiosity and that's like when you're talking about how do you hook people like how do you keep someone watching something? It's like you're maintaining the curiosity. And you know what I like um even as you were you were talking about the contrast and here we're really like because yeah like one way to apply this is content but storytelling is actually everywhere. Like if you go on a date this evening if you were a better storyteller that date would probably go better. If you were at a job and you're trying to get you're pitching a project that you want

Your boss to take if you were a better storyteller, that will go better. If you're like in marketing and you want your campaign to like, if you were a better storyteller, that campaign would be more effective. Yeah.

And so, in my mind, one of the most vivid examples when it just actually comes to understanding what you just mentioned, which is the importance of contrast, is I remember for the first time watching Game of Thrones. I've actually watched through it twice now. But like I remember for the first time watching it, and it was like at the time I don't even know what it would have been like, maybe 2015, 2016. Yeah. The way they kept you so off-center. They kept you like as an audience, like as a viewer. Yeah. You had no idea what was going to happen next. And the way that they did it was purely through the contrast. Right. It was, "Oh, I think that the the heroes that they've established are going to win," and then all of a sudden they all die.

Exactly. And it's like you, as soon as a viewer, you're like leaning one way and you think you know what's going to happen. Yeah. The the opposite. That's the thing is you, as a storyteller, your job is to create that lean and then snap against it. And so if you never create the lean, the person starts baseline. So even if you snap, the distance is shorter. The way to get the distance bigger is to create a lean over here and come over here. So the best like artists and movie like directors and like you said, Game of Thrones, they like your baseline expectation when you see a hero walking through the forest is like they're going to be safe, right? So then they'll show things that would insinuate safety like to build that even further. So they'll be like, "Oh, nobody's around," or like they'll pan out the distance to the next town is super far, right? To give you that security that it's safe, and then something comes out of nowhere. It creates that shock, right?

That Yeah. Like that distance is I don't know what's going to happen. When you know what's going to happen, it's boring, right? And then you you're off. You click off. And you can you can use that principle. Like that really is the principle at the base level. Not necessarily persuasion, but of like hooking someone in with intrigue, right? That's the key piece of creating intrigue. That curiosity loop, curiosity gap, right? Whatever you want to call it. That's that's critical for any type. I mean, when you when someone sits around the fire and they tell a story, it's not like, "I did A then B, then C, then D, then E," and you're like, "Okay, get this guy off the mic." It's it's like they they say like, "Oh, yeah. I was like I was in Egypt and I was like walking through and then out of nowhere like this scorpion." Like that's that's how people tell stories is because the surprise of that new entrant, new character that creates contrast against what you what you thought. And then and then it's like even if you just go back to that picture and that like that visual of being around the fireplace, as soon as they start to get you into that lean and then they snap you back, it's like what do you do as the viewer? You just start leaning in cuz you you want to know. It's like it's all curiosity driven.

And you know what? I wanted to make it tactical for people because in that video that you had, how to become a master storyteller, you um you show this clip from the makers of South Park. Yeah. Um, banger banger clip. Yeah. And can can you can you break that down because they have like a very specific way that when it comes to like the scripting like actually creating, they make sure that they have those beats where it's kind of it's keeping the audience off balance.

Exactly. And so their lesson in this uh which is they were teaching it like at NYU in some lecture. Their lesson is you want to use the words "but" therefore instead of "and then." Right? So the whole their whole thing is like if you tell in an episode of South Park or any show, if you tell the episode you know this the character did this and then they did this and then they did that and then they did this, and you're basically it's like a list that just gets boring because even if the things they're doing are kind of interesting, the presentation is like a straight line down. The story arc or direction is a straight line down, but "therefore" is embedded contrast in words. Right? So it's like the character did this, but then something happened, therefore they changed their trajectory. The character was going, but then something else happened. So it's more zigzag, right? It's like straight line versus zigzag. And that you don't have to force the word "but." Like there's other ways to create contra other words to create contrast, but "but" is a really good one because it's a little anamanopia in a sense where it sounds sharp and it stops you with just the sound, but then the meaning of course also means like contrasting items. So you get like a double double bonus. So if you watch my videos, a lot of the times I'm like, "Here's the thing that happens." But that's not even the interesting part. The interesting part is over here, right? I'm always like shifting where I want you to like pay attention because that shift is what holds attention.

Yeah. On a matter of P. I ain't heard that in years. Yeah. You know what? In one of your um in one of your videos, you did it really well. Uh, maybe you can actually speak to it. You um you're talking about Stanley Cups, like this explosion in the demand, which I think we've all seen, like my sisters have Stanley Cups, they [ __ ] love it. But you did this video like breaking down like Stanley Cups and the explosion in their popularity. And it was like very much you could see that framework. There were like three or four moments where I said like this happened, but then this happened. The best one was at the end where it was kind of like I was able So when you're when you're trying to make content, the best thing to do is coast off of other contrasting B-roll moments that you have and like just story tell around them. So there's one with Stanley that's like super famous that got like billions of views where this lady's car was burning and she had a Stanley cup in the cup holder and so she was like, "Oh my car," like the you can see the flames like the metal was melting and then she she re like the video cuts hard cuts and she's like reaching into like the charred car and she pulls out the Stanley and shakes it and there was ice still in it like it's just like the best marketing and so basically the contrast is like you would think the cup would melt, but actually the cup didn't melt and the so that's such a huge distance right cuz out of a 100 people a hundred would have thought the cup would have melted, zero would have been right that it didn't melt and that's a massive contrast distance so in videos you're You know, with content, your job is to like embed these little moments two or three for shorts, two or three times. For YouTube, you could rehook once every three minutes for like the entire video. Embed these little headfake moments. Like I was actually thinking even the way I described around the fire when I said it, I was like most of the time when you're around the fire, if someone's like this, this this get the guy off the stage. How you should actually do it. I even did it there. Like when I was That's But I've trained my brain to kind of talk in these ways. The best people that are natural storytellers that are engaging, they do this. They just don't know it, right? And so you can now look for it when you hear them talk.

Yeah. See, I I get that as well of like just because we we do this all the time, you naturally start to communicate in that way. Exactly. You're constantly doing the head fake. But like there's there's definitely like a ramp up process and you almost have to become cognizant of like when am I falling into like the "and then" form of well it's not even storytelling. It's just like describing events talking. Yeah. Can you can you speak to like to the person that's just starting out on this? What was even your process in the beginning of actually like you might have a an initial draft of a script that you've created, but actually making it an interesting story? Like are you literally going in and putting in "but" and and "therefore," like what was what did it look like in the beginning before you got to the point where now you're probably pretty unconscious, right? like it's you're naturally doing it.

Well, the good the good thing is like and not not to not to plug this so hard, but if if you are struggling with this, that's why I built sand castles cuz you don't have to learn how to do it yourself. Uh, we'll just do it for you. Like we this is an example of like this principle of "but then" or "but therefore," and then we I coded that into the software so that it automatically does it for people so that their stuff is just better, right? So that's one way to automatically do it. But when I was starting out, like when you're doing anything, you you try a bunch of times, fail a bunch of times, and then you try to look at who's winning and analyze the pattern. Not necessarily like the sauce, but the underlying framework cuz the sauce is hard to replicate, but the base units are able you're able to extract the pattern. So I think like I just tried a bunch of times, it was failing. I was kind of watching people storytell and then naturally like I had a couple winners happen luckily. So then I tried to analyze the pattern of the winners. is like, oh, whenever I have a whenever I go A then B, like A but B or like I whatever then but it doesn't matter what word you use but like this way then this way. It seems to work well to hold them. So then I started doing that more. Those also worked and it trained me that that pattern was there. The thing I was going to say for a beginner is there's really two things with this you have to master. Knowing the contrast using "but" or some other word is part one. That's actually the easy part because we just said that. I've just told you you have the answer. Now the hard part is knowing what thing to contrast against with what other thing, right? That's the hard part. So like if we were trying to describe your show, we would have to have a list of like what are the few things that make it interesting, right? So we we'd have to come up with those things. Then we'd have to think what are the baseline expectations that most people would think about it without knowing anything about it and try to pick the best the biggest distance, right? Right? So you're like matching each of them and you're like, "Okay, which is the biggest distance?" That's how you decide A than B. But it's easy to contrast once you like it's easy to create the contrast with the word "but," picking the things is actually the sauce, right? That's the hard part. And that's I would assume and it'd be interesting to see what you think, but like I would assume that's just reps. It just reps. That's just like you've done it enough times where you've seen and also even back to what we were saying in the beginning. That's when like I call it the viewer avatar cuz we do a podcast, but like whoever the customer avatar is, That understanding of them becomes so key because it's like okay what is their baseline cuz what you want to do is you almost want to go in their baseline expectation and then go snap. So it's baseline expectation contrarian reality. Those are the two two elements the way I talk about it. And so the the way to do it if if you could do it mathematically the way I would do it is like take the list of baselines and ask yourself out of a hundred people if surveyed how many believe that baseline. You want the highest number possible cuz that's like the highest lean this way of the new version of like the the what we know that they don't know. How many out of 100 would believe that or not? You want the closest to zero, right? Cuz that that's so 100 to zero. The biggest gap, the one with the biggest number, do that set. That's what you want. Now, obviously, like every time you make a video, you're not going to spend two hours trying to come up, but but you got to train your brain to quickly do it. Again, this is insane castle. It's like that that that's why I built this software because I did this all day. Like all day, every day make a video. Every time I think about it, I'm like, "Okay, what's interesting? What do people know about this? What do I know about this? Or I think about this, it's different. How do I set up that contrast?"

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's uh it's pretty crazy when you when you when you actually think about because the craziest part is when you start watching other people have conversations. Like I bet you can watch other podcasts back and you will hear the guest or the host do this. weave [ __ ] and like it they do it the best people do it all the time but like you you would never know unless your brain is tuned to look for it and then once you see it you're like ah you can't it's like one of those things but yeah when you see it you can't unsee it and you'll start seeing it everywhere you'll start seeing it in anything that's great exactly any movie that people love any you'll see it in all of your favorite artists that are doing worldwide sold out tour like you'll start seeing these principles in everything and you know why this contrasting thing works the last thing I wanted to say on this is The brain works in in terms of comparison and common ground, right? So like if I know of a thing and you share a new thing I don't know of, I can relate the new thing to the old thing cuz my brain can like pick a baseline and relate. If I share two things that the person doesn't know, they're struggling to like anchor like where is where are they in their brain, right? So contrast is easy in in content. It's easy to build comparison by picking a thing people know, leaning them on it, and then contrasting a new thing away, right? That that's like the easiest way to make sure it works.

Yeah. You know, as I started to watch more of your uh the video uh how to become a master storyteller, I was like I got a bit afraid cuz I was like, damn, he's like I feel like he's given my secrets away now. He's giving he's giving away the stuff that I use. And I felt it specifically on this moment which is you talk about rhythm and tone. I'm actually very intentional with my like the cadence of how I speak and the tone of it. And so you know I'm going to I'm going to set you up with these two things. I think on the rhythm part it's monotony kills attention. Yeah. Right. That's the simple principle. And then on the tone it's making viewers feel like they're in the room with you being like deeply conversational. And you mentioned um you mentioned the point of Emma Chamberlain of how she does these vlogs and the reason that they caught wasn't necessarily because she's like so entertaining or interesting. It's like she has this incredible conversational tone. Can you because when we think about storytelling, we don't think about rhythm and tone. Not at all. Not at all. Can you can you why was that part of the That's the thing is there's so many invisible elements that make up good storytelling that people don't clock unless you break it down into those units. So rhythm the the good thing is rhythm is something you can easily fix. Tone is very tough. Tone is like a it's like a skill, a gift. You can work on it but like it's it's harder to come up with. So rhythm is and I guess to some extent rhythm is that that way a little bit but rhythm is essentially like when you speed up and slow down. It would be like if you know basketball like Luca's got amazing breaks. So he's his rhythm of play is offbalance related to everyone else which is why he's so good because he can speed up slow down way fat way way way more smooth like smoothly uh smoother than other people. So the way in content to adjust for rhythm is you want to just vary the length of your sentences if possible. So instead of using just like short short short, you want to do like short, medium, short, short, long, short, medium. You want to vary the rhythm. I I'm using the word to define it, but you want to vary the length of the sentences because what that does is when you deliver and read a sentence, people tend to speed up in the middle of the sentence and slow down at the end, right? Because like the period's coming and so when you when you read a sentence, you're kind of like da da da. That's kind of how people read it. So, if you force the length of the sentences different, you'll have different cadence from one sentence to the next. The thing I talked about in the video, which I think is a pretty good tip, I got this from uh Gary Gary Provost. Actually, I don't think he talked about the jagged edges thing, but I got the rhythm thing from Gary Provo, some writer. But the what I do is when you write your script, each line is a separate kind of sentence in the dock. When you look down the end of the sentences, it should look like a jagged line. Like if you drew a line from period to period, it should be jagged. Because if it's jagged, that means you have like long to short to medium to long, kind of jagged. If you draw a line down all the periods and it's straight, that means all the sentences are kind of the same length. The rhythm of you talking with the same length sentences will feel monotonous. It'll feel like it's just like it it's like it's like a drum beat. It's like it's too monotonous. You need to keep it off balance. So that's the thing with rhythm. I will say like I like I said I was a rapper. I made rap music so my voice works in a in a different way like I'm able to really do quick like like that but then really elongate as well. You're good at that as well. That comes with time and I think the best way to practice that is the best way to the best way to learn writing is something called copy work, right? So you like take the book, take a passage and literally write handwrite word for word to learn how authors or writers pick word order. The best way to do this with speech and rhythm is it sounds weird, but like take a video that you that you like the person's rhythm, get the transcript and like read it aloud as they do it. Like read it along and you can kind of hear you'll start to like your brain will start to learn the patterns of how they do it. I made a video about like speaking that I had a couple of these in there, but it's just so it takes a lot of reps to learn.

Yeah. So that's rhythm. It's just like it's it's crazy to me how deep it goes because it's like you would never think about that. Like this person you just you're like, "Oh, they're just talented." And they are talented. Yeah. But it's like all of these things that they're doing. And a lot of the times with talented people, they're doing it unconsciously. Exactly. But that's the reason it works. Yeah. That's to me that's the difference between talent and skill. Talent is you're doing the thing you should be doing but without knowing it. Skill is you've developed that that ability. So what what I'm trying to do at least with content, like it's a very narrow slice of a very narrow piece, but like I'm trying to be so obsessed with it that I can break every piece of talent into a skill into building blocks, address a way, like come up with a way to get better at those building blocks, stack them back up so that skill then looks like talent, right?

Yeah. See that? That's what I was saying. Like you're like illuminating the thing like you're like putting a light on it like, "Oh, this is actually what they're doing that makes it work." Yeah. which and I' I've even thought I'm like ah should I be giving away all this sauce? But but that goes back to the that goes back to the point at the very beginning is like the pie for winning is so big that I couldn't possibly like this the selfish take mindset would be let me just keep this all for myself and like I'm going to use it I'm going to use it as my secret weapon and I'm going to just acrue all this like whatever wealth and but it's like the pie is so big there I could have all that and everyone can have it. So, it's like why not just give it up and like let people I think applying these principles is the hardest part. And so, if you want help applying it, I'll help you. But if the principles are all you're lacking, there's an 18-year-old somewhere who has everything but doesn't know why they're doing the thing they're doing and my free video can unlock something and they can get whatever they want. I I think that's dope. Like that that's giving back to the world in a way. So, I think that's dope.

Yeah. See, I'm I'm exactly aligned. And it's why it's why I love doing this show is that we can bring people on such as yourself and we can have conversations like this and we can even frame it in a way where we hit them exactly where they are and then we give them like these are the things that do the thing. And so if you're that way minded where like you just really want this result, you can go and do it like here it is. You know what? Here's where I wanted to here's where I wanted to go next. And this was another part of the video that I really liked is the last dab. Yeah. And you do something really interesting in your content. Uh, shout out to the Migos. Yeah. The last dab. You start with the end. Can you explain what that means? Start with the end.

Yeah. Well, I try to and and some of this has evolved over time, but I try to figure out what what I want to leave the viewer with. I will say like 95% of the work should be focused on the hook, the first 5 seconds. And the and I'll get I'll get back to the last dab, but the reason why that's important is because the second someone bounces off the video, nothing else after that point matters. Like Mr. Beast is famous for saying this with thumbnails. The thumbnails are shitty and no one clicks, all that work you put in the video doesn't matter cuz 95% of the people don't even see it. So increasing the thumbnail clickthrough by 1% on YouTube makes a huge difference. So to focus too much on the end, I do think is like a little bit of a wasted effort. It's the it's the 80% effort for the 20% result. You want to spend most of the time at the beginning. However, when it comes to holistic storytelling, what I try to do is figure out first what the contrast thing I'm going to build on in the hook. Then where I want to leave the person. So like if they do watch the full thing, where what are they leaving with? Are they leaving with the call to action I want? Are they leaving with the emotion I want? Is the payoff where it is? Are they going to drive to a comment if I ask them a question? I try to think of those like the the bread of the sandwich first and then build out the middle. That's roughly a good way to think about stories. But I will say I want to like I'll correct if if I ever said focus on the end more I want to correct now which is like the the out the distribution of outcomes. You get a huge huge return if you spend

Most of your time on the first 5 to 10 seconds for shorts, or the first minute for YouTube. That's really when and where you want to spend a lot of time. However, I'll talk about the last dab piece. There's really three ways you can end a video that work really well. One is like a soft CTA. Obviously, we can skip that one. That's just like, take an action, follow me, whatever. The two ways are open loop or closed loop.

So, an open loop is asking a question, either rhetorical or you actually want answers that create a final curiosity loop. You're like opening it back up as they leave. So, I did this in that Messy video a long time ago where I was kind of like, Messi broke the business of sports. I explained all of it, and at the end I was like, "But Messi's won, but could you imagine LeBron or Patrick Mahomes doing the same thing in their sport?" Like I left that open. That created a huge dialogue in the comments, which created more virality. So it's like an open loop. A closed loop is the last dab where it's like a defiant take. It could be a joke. It could be a wrap-up, but it's like you're like putting an exclamation mark on the closing, right? And so either way they work, but you kind of want to think of like, what is the opinion I'm going to give on this? Because usually for videos it's what happened, the breakdown of it, and then my opinion on why it matters. The outro comes right after the opinion.

So when I say like, think of the end, it's kind of like, how are we hooking them? And then what opinion am I going to kind of massage at the end? And which of those open or closers do I want to do? Do I want to open a loop or close loop? I want to go.

Can you think of an example of you doing that? I'm just thinking for the person that's listening at home and they're like, "Okay, that conclusion or like that opinion of like this is going to close the show." Like sometimes that can be so difficult to even come up with that. Like, can you think of an example of you doing that?

Yeah. Or even seeing it in someone else's content.

Yeah. Like on for a YouTube video or for a short.

Yeah. Uh, either one.

Yeah. Well, at a principal level, the reason why this matters too, before I get into that, is you did so much. If someone doesn't watch the full thing, you've lost them anyway. But if they do, for the 30% of viewers that do watch the full thing, you put in so much work to like build that attention and hold it that you want to leave them with something that's actually compelling so that the last thought is like, "Oh, that that was pretty sick. I should share this, like this, comment, follow this person." Right? So, I guess the point of doing it is so that you can increase the value right up until the last second. And that value could be curiosity, entertainment, or something of actual value.

Um, I'm trying to think of an example of me doing this. I mean, a lot of times the best videos I do, it is that open loop with a question because it's creating more dialogue. It's basically, for my tech and AI stuff, it's people coming to me to hear a crystal breakdown, a crystallized breakdown of what's going on and then me explain from like a business strategy perspective how this might shift the world. And so I usually end with a question that's kind of like, "Do you think this will change X for Y group or do you think this will impact the way you do X thing?" Right? Like kind of a few, there's like a few templates that I I go with.

Yeah.

No, it's so good. And I think the open-ended thing, it makes sense why it works because you're building virality into the video. Exactly. Which is virality is just it's share. It's going, it's like viral. It's sharing, like it's replicating elsewhere.

You know, you mentioned hooks and let's let's talk about that because you said like you said 95%.

Yeah. I I would spend so much time on the like I can do it very fast now, and the software can do it for you, so I kind of sprint through this. But if you're a beginner and you're like, "I have 2 hours to apply to this. How do I allocate my time?" You should be spending an hour at least. So that's 50%. An hour at least on the hook and getting that first 5 to 10 seconds dialed and then diminishing after that. You know, I want to get I want to get into the nuts and bolts of like, okay, someone's spending an hour. They're like, "Okay, I've listened to this video. I'm going to spend an hour from now on on the hooks," that first line in my video. I want to get into like what they're actually doing in that hour. And this is something that you said in your video. You said most creators open with vibe or mystery, like a cryptic hook or like a vague tease or an emotional reaction without making the stakes or the story clear. Great storytellers let you immediately understand what's happening and why it matters.

Yeah. So, the good thing is a lot of the building blocks for this we we talked about in the storytelling piece, right? Right. So it's like my my hook formula for both shorts and YouTube vary a little bit. So like I'll start with shorts. It's the context lean, creating that contrast moment with but or therefore, creating that contrarian take. That's that's all you have to do to hook. So context lean, immediately say what the video is about. So like if I'm if I'm breaking down an AI tool, "This tool just changed this thing for this person" is like one way you could do it versus saying like, "I just saw something really cool and I got to tell you guys about it." That's like a waste, right? That doesn't do anything. So immediately, first word should be talking about the context. Set the context rapidly. Then you want to lean them into what they already believe, right? So if I say, "This AI tool will make uh is going to change everything for designers," and I'm showing a thing on the screen of like making a graphic. Maybe the way I get them, maybe that's enough just that sentence to get them to lean. Maybe I also add a second sentence that says like, "You used to have to take 2 hours to make a poster like this." Right. So that's me leaning in. It's like, "Hey, yeah, two hours. This is what you're used to." Exactly. And then I'm saying, "But this AI tool did this in 60 seconds." Contrarian. You're hooked. If you're a designer or you wanted that outcome, which was creating that poster, you're watching 100%. So, it's it's really that it is really that simple. It's you have to lay those bricks. And yeah, like I'll say this a million times. We we do this automatically in the software. Like the software gives you four different hooks and four different outros to the last ad point automatically. And so it just does this for you. But that's the way you would do it for short form. Long form, there's a few more components. It's context. Stakes are really important. So like why this specific pain point, stakes, why this actually matters for this person, and then with long form you actually want to layer on proof and plan. So I think pro and plan, proof is obviously proof, but plan, that five five Ps I think comes from Hormosi. I had like different words for it, but we got to the same place. Basically, proof is why they should trust you. Plan is the plan you're going to have in the video for explaining the thing. So it's like, "What are we going to talk about storytelling? What is the pain point? Everybody thinks storytelling is hard, but I actually have a formula that makes it easy." Contrarian. That's the context, lean, contrarian take. "You can trust me because I have a million followers and a billion views." Proof, plan. "Over the next eight steps, I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it." That's the intro. Just do that. Like that's that's that's the order, right? If you just do that, it basically just gets somebody out of their own way. Gets them to anchors on what they believe, tells them you have something else, credentials why they should trust you, and then organizes the thoughts coming next.

Yeah. Just do that.

I love that because it's like you can just apply this blueprint, and and the thing is as well like if someone goes and watches your videos, they'll be able to see you applying the thing, like they can see that flow.

Yeah. And meta to be really meta. I've also made a video on that flow. So it's like I've literally made a video where I'm like, "I hooked them, then the video is like, now let's go back and watch how I just hooked you," and then I explain, I break it down. So, I'm giving the answers. Like, the answers are out there, but I know that applying the thing is always harder than hearing the thing. And so, that's why we're building the tools. That's why the software, that's why I'm building like the curriculum because I wish it was as easy as me just being like, "Do this," and then everyone did it. But only 5% of people actually take what I say and do it. Even though it's the right answer, you kind of have to like make it even easier. So, that's the implementation's always the the execution is always the difficult piece.

You know, there was something that you said and you made like it was it was subtle, but I I heard it. I detected it and I was like, "Okay, we need to bring it up," which is uh you were talking about short-form content and the hook and you gave this example of like um this AI video for designers.

Yeah. And you did this thing which I think if people can do it, it's really going to be like a powerful litmus test of if you've done the hook correctly, which is you asked yourself, you're like, "If I was a designer that was watching this or listening to this, like you could even do this as you're reading out the script, like if I said this to a designer, would they be hooked?"

Yeah. And you can, it's almost like a you can test what you've just written and like see if it's going to

Yeah, that comes back to the buyer. The first step that's the who, it's like I can't make content that hooks for a designer unless I know what a designer would be hooked by. And the only way to know that is to know their pain point so I can speak directly to them, right? So it's like it all comes back to the who and building on from there.

Yeah. No, we're giving people the complete the complete formula. This really is a master. I think this will be like a master class. Like we said, applying it is that's where all the sauce is made because it's not just applying it. It's applying it daily, consistently for a long time. It's tough, but it's easier to apply this than to not have the blueprint at all.

You know what I like though, because so often and it can be frustrating especially when things aren't working is you hear the advice of like um you know, I heard uh and shout out to them because they're incredible at what they do but like you'll hear like Kaisen or like streamers be like, "It's just the consistency. I was just consistent." It's like, "Yes, you were consistent, but you also had like a skill set and like things that you were doing that made it so that the consistency was eventually going to work." Exactly. And so like they had all these hidden skills that but but that's the thing is their constraint is that they cannot articulate down the skills they do have. But they're amazing at applying them. So just because they're talented. They're so talented to be A-list. If you're the best at applying them in the world, you'll be A-list. For me, I could just apply these for myself, but I don't really want to be famous. Like I don't I don't want anyone to know who I am. Like I want to be rich and anonymous. So, I'd rather just help business owners behind the scenes. Like, I'm trying to be the guy behind the scenes who just has the answers and just tells people what to do, like gives them the playbook. That's that's the archetype I want to play. But the Kaisenats of the world, they're so good at applying it, but they don't. Maybe he maybe he could articulate. I've never heard him though articulate at the base level how he does what he does, right? But that's the whole thing. He's doing this. He just maybe isn't conscious of

But that's always that's always the case with the best. I'm like, "Could could Steph Curry like maybe he could, I don't know, but like could he tell you the exact way that like he's like revolving the basketball and like that maybe he could, but it's it's almost a separate skill, right? Like the the doing and then the distillation of the doing are two different things.

Yeah, you have to be good enough at the doing to know what to distill, but the distillation is a completely different that's a completely different skill set.

You know, before we complete with with step four and five, I'm curious because that video, "How to become a master storyteller," 1.1 million people have watched it. Was that like at the time that you put it out, you had under 1,000 subscribers?

Yeah. Was that like shocking to you?

So, the thing with building businesses or content or really anything is you have the result and then you have the skill. Typically, if results lead skills, like your skills lag, you're you have imposter syndrome because you're like, "I didn't I don't deserve my skills don't deserve the result." Everything tends to revert to the mean eventually. So, like things will level out. Your stuff will stop ripping and until your skills catch. The other way is when your skills lead the result, you're kind of like, "What is going on? Like, my I know this is good." And I think you probably had an arc similar to this where like you knew the episodes were bangers. You had high quality. You had high questions, like high-quality questions. The results just weren't there. Things revert to the mean. So for me, I had made 30 videos on a different channel that weren't working, but they were they were class. Like they were good quality. I didn't really know what I I didn't know the exact framework of the packaging on YouTube yet, but I knew the videos were kind of good. Once I fixed the packaging thing, I just kept posting those that same quality. So it was shocking that it went from 1K to like 30K in a week or two. That was shocking the speed, but I knew those were good. So it was almost validating in a way, you know, once you know like you can't lie to yourself. You know if your skills are there or not. If your skills are there, it's just a matter of time, right? You can feel it building.

You know what? We we did an episode a few weeks ago with Seth Godin and right at the end of the episode and it was so timely. He starts talking about um he calls it surviving the dip.

Yeah. Which is like if you're trying to be great at anything or you want something to work, especially when it's something like it's a result that not many people get. Like it's a rare result. You must be able to survive the dip, which is like that point where you're like, "I know that it's at this point, but it's not you're not getting the plaudits yet." Like the people in the crowd aren't clapping for you yet. And it's like this distance which is like so difficult and it's it's very difficult when you're going through it not to like get disillusioned or like bitter on it. Like you'll see that's when you'll see people get like mad, right? Like they'll be like, "Uh, the reason that this person is winning is because they have a following." Or like they you get bitter because you're like, "I know that I'm here, but I'm not getting the results." You need to you need to continue the delusion, right? Like because you if your skills are if you believe your skills are at an 8 out of 10, and they are, and the results at a five, you seem delusional, but you have to continue the delusion until the five raises to an eight. Now, if you're actually at a two and you think you're at an eight, that's delusional in the wrong way. So like then you have a problem. But I think using like logic and base common sense like you can tell if your stuff is getting there. I think there's two frames that I have for there's really like two tough moments, right? One is I call the artist gap which I didn't this was another thing that I came up with on my own but then I was like, "Oh, Malcolm Gladwell has like something kind of similar to this," where the artist gap is when you start out your taste is at a certain level but your ability is at a level much lower. Like your taste is at a nine. You're like, "Oh, that's I know what's good. That's good," but my ability is at like a two. That gap is never wider than at day one. And that sucks. Like that feeling sucks. And so trying to close that gap is is the tough part number one. Now the beauty is most people realize quickly the only way to close that gap is to do the thing more. So you can kind of like get over the whininess in your own head of that. The second gap is what you describe, which is once you do close the gap, but then results are still lagging. That dip as Seth Goden describes it that sucks because there's nothing else you can do but ship more at that level and wait and that just that's you're waiting for a lucky bounce, one random share when it comes to content like one random share uh the algorithm to favor you like there are some a lot of things out of your control but if your skills are at the level at or above where your contemporaries are it will even out, you just have to keep going.

How how long have you how long has it been since you left consulting?

Uh, like a year and six months, seven months, and it's been it's been crazy the result that you've got. I I'm I'm curious to know like you speak about those difficult moments. Is there like for you personally because what we do it's like it's cool when a video pops off and everything feels super fast, right? Like feels like things are happening 100 miles an hour and brand deals are coming in and new viewers and subscribers and it's like it's like you're living in the fast lane.

Yeah, but this is really an endurance game.

Yeah. I don't even care about that stuff anymore to be honest.

Yeah. And and I'm I'm curious though for you like what is the the most difficult moment? Like what's the even when I say that like what's the first thing that comes to mind vividly when you were like, "This was the period where like my mind was really being tested doing this [ __ ]"

Yeah. Well, I think the the period when you know your skills have beat a level and the results aren't there, that does suck. So, I' I've had pockets of that. Like with YouTube specifically, I paid I was paying like 5K a month for a YouTube team for like 8 months before the results popped, but it was because we were hurting ourselves with dumb targeting of the channel and like bad packaging. The videos were solid. So, yeah, that sucked. Like that I knew the videos were good. It wasn't working. I think the thing is like I I hated how my days went when I had a job. Like I just it was it was like oil and water. Like I I was not meant to work that job. And so there is nothing worse for me than that. I mean I'm sure I mean there's there's worse like you could be homeless but like from a from a a vacuum perspective just that and this it's like that is a negative out of 10 for me. So, like having agency and being in control, like there really aren't I don't really have difficulties, right? Like my biggest difficulty is when I have a conflicting uh time commitment that doesn't allow me to go further like which which sounds weird, but like I'm a I love this [ __ ] Like I I I I was like born to build businesses. And so anything other than that, unless it's like fun like social stuff, commitments, like weird stupid stuff that I don't want to do, that's where the difficulties come because I know everything is just math, right? It's just a compounding curve. Every day that you can take a step on that curve, the sooner you'll get to the inflection. And the inflection is already happening. We just don't really you just don't feel it until everything gets crazy. But every day when you don't take a step forward because you you lose focus or you have conflicting uh whatever time commitments, I hate that. Like that is that is to me that is like poison to me. So those are the difficult moments. I realize people watching this might be like, "This dude's a psycho." But like but the thing is you really want to pick a vector where you can apply yourself that you actually love it. Mine just happened to be business. Like I I actually just love business and like thinking about the strategy and [ __ ] I just love it.

Yeah. You know what comes to mind for me is um and it made me kind of reflect even just hearing you speak about it. I think that there's like and it's kind of been a theme of this episode. There's a such a value in in pain and like painful experiences and even part of it like you kind of had to go through what you did with your job and it creates this perspective and it creates like a longevity to what you do now.

Yeah. Because now like when you're going through the 8 months when you're putting money into YouTube and getting no result, it's like if you didn't have that almost like that anchoring experience of "I've also been the person at the office who knew that they weren't meant to be doing this thing and I was in like [ __ ] meetings and I hated it." And so it's like in relation to that, this is way better than that. So I can keep doing this. Like it's almost it's creating the longevity for you to survive the dip.

Yeah. And so I say that to the person that's listening that's like what we're talking about seems kind of like out of their reality right now to be doing something like what we do full time.

Yeah. But it's like even what you're experiencing in this moment is creating like a longevity so that when you are doing the thing, you're going to have the the mental fortitude to keep doing it.

Yeah. The way I think of it is so I I never think of like I have to do the thing. It's like I get to do the thing. And so yeah, there there is no that's the thing is if you work a job you don't like and then you spend the evenings trying to do something but you don't like it. It's like if you don't like it because you don't have the result yet, but you actually like the craft, that's fine. But if you don't like it because you actually don't like it, then you're doing the wrong thing. Like you shouldn't be playing a game that other people are playing just because you think you should if you don't like it. To your point before, there's nothing more powerful than having a villain, right? So, like the the beauty of growing up in hardship or like an ex or like a job you hated like I'm very good at manufacturing chips on my shoulders. Like when I when I will play like Wex sports like I'll pick somebody across and I'll just create a villain.

Yeah. Which like I think is that like what Kobe or MJ used to do?

That's what Yeah. Jordan used to do. A lot of them were made up.

Yeah. Exactly. The guy didn't do anything to him. That's the thing. So like I have I have so many ch I have more chips on my shoulder than I'll ever be able to fix. And so that gives me this like infinite go right. The way to get that, like you said, is an anchor, a negative anchoring experience is a really good way to get that. So I'm not trying to like

Prove the people at my old job wrong. Like, I don't really care about that. But it is fuel.

And so I think, cuz really this what this comes down to is like: when you want to do the thing you're doing, you'll do it. And then when you don't want to do the thing, how do you get yourself to do it if it's the thing that you need to be doing? You need fuel. The best way to get fuel is villains. Create villains and then run from the villains, right? And so I don't have that problem too much because I like it so much that I'm kind of just always going. I get mad when it's opportunity cost. Like, there's just too much that I want to do and I just don't have the time. The time. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? Let's let's round it out.

And I wanted to go, I wanted to go to step five, which was build a feedback loop and layer in offers. Essentially what you're getting at is like attention is just the beginning. You know, you get the attention, you have the organic content and you know, someone will listen to this and they'll apply it and it will start working. But then it's like you now need to capture some of that value.

Exactly. Can you can you talk about that?

Yeah. So the, I mean this is a big realization I think I was talking about at the beginning is like value does not really accrue at the media layer. So, and I was just I was just writing about this or making a video about this. You basically have three layers in the content or in the business stack. Content stack. You have the platform layer. So, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. You have the creator layer, which is like us making the videos. The content layer. And then you have the offers layer, product, services. The whole game is can the creator rent space for free on the platform to get people through to the offers.

Mhm.

The most value is accrued at the offer layer. The second most value is accrued at the platform. Like Instagram, LinkedIn, they get their rip. Very little value is accrued at the media layer. So in a way, the platforms are getting creators to make stuff for free or pay them little with AdSense that they then take a ripoff of when advertisers pay. So those are the three levels. What you really want to do is create a net, which is a product or service that you can then capture some of the value you're generating with attention, not maliciously, but like offering a product or service people need to solve a pain point they have. And so if you don't do that and all you focus on is getting views, you will have lots of followers and lots of views with zero dollars. And like I think a crime of business content is people just don't say the truth. Like everybody's out here doing this to make money. Everybody wants to make money. Businesses are for-profit entities, right? So, it's like I can want to help people of course and I want everyone to grow, but I want to make money just like everyone else. And so, when you think of when you're approaching content, if you don't think of the back half, which is the nets and the value capture, you're just doing yourself a dis. You're just doing work. You're like going down to the well, filling a bucket with water, pouring the water on the ground. You have like a little thimble. You're like, "Did I catch any?" It's like, "No, it's empty." It's like, "Oh, back to the well." It's like, "Yo, put a bucket on the ground when you pour some in so you get some, right?" And and the bucket are offers and the funnels to those offers. This is where like of the attention funnels offer stack. Horoszi is the best in the world, good at offers and and funnels. Honestly, where I am trying to play most is the attention and then just be good on my own at the offers, but like I'm not trying to teach people about the offers and stuff. He's he's he's the best. Like if you really want to learn like how do I sell the right product in the right way with the right business model, he's he's the guy. Like just watch all of his free stuff. He's giving everything away for free.

Yeah. But you need the net or else you're not going to capture any value.

Yeah. And you know you know what it's like um it's why there's there's a lot of examples of creators with millions of followers and like very little revenue like that. There are a lot of us, there are a lot of creators in this world like that. It's cuz they built they didn't build nets and they didn't think about the who at the beginning. They their who is everybody.

Yeah. And so, you know, I'm I'm curious to get your perspective on this and you mentioned the thing about Huoszi and he has like a couple of great books of like how to do offers, but for the person that they've started following this advice and they started building a following and they're even got that momentum of like step four of like the thing's working and they're doing it again and again again. Yeah. but they're kind of worried of like okay I don't have like an offer associated from your experience what have you have what have you seen is like the simplest easiest way to get like an initial offer out there that at least like you're start maybe you're not capturing the full value of like the of what you're creating with your content but at least you're capturing like a little bit of it and you can action it pretty fast like where do you typically Where did you begin?

Well, the the way to begin is you think about who the buyer is. You map their journey doing the thing that you're talking to them about. Every step in that journey has friction. How much friction depends on how painful the thing is. Pick the most painful thing and then build a product or service to solve that thing for them. The product could be software, it could be information, it could be a service where you actually do it for them. There's like a variety of business models. We can talk about like the benefit of certain models, but that's essentially the process. So like for me, I didn't build an offer for my tech and AI audience because I couldn't come up with the thing they wanted that I wanted to build. So I left that alone. I built a new audience for business owners. That's where YouTube started, email started, right? And I'm going to have a short form channel coming soon with marketing. But like let's just take the YouTube channel. I have a huge audience of business owners that are trying to use content to grow. So what's their process? their processes. How do they make content today? How do they come like it's the whole stack, right? It's like how do how do and it's a little bit meta, right? Because I'm talking about how to make content. My buyer is trying to learn content. So, it's like the same kind of thing. But for me specifically, it's what is the process that a business owner goes through to make content today. How do they come up with ideas? How do they research those ideas? How do they frame what to say about those ideas? That contrarian contrast piece. How do they script right? How do they record? How do they edit? How do they post? How do they grow it? How do they ramp the traffic off? All of those are like pieces in the business owner content map. So then for each of those, what could I build to solve the pain? I could have built an ideas product, which we may or may not be working on. I started with the script writing because I felt like that was the highest pain that I could solve. Couldn't couldn't build an automated service for editing. So, but if I wanted to solve editing, I would create an editing agency where I had a bunch of editors overseas. You see what I'm saying? Like each one of those is a problem. And so it's like how what's the best way to solve that problem? certain ways certain ways to solve it would be software certain ways are information so like I have a full academy where an entrepreneur can come in and learn the whole thing that's helpful that whole housing just speeds up the process but each piece is like difficult in its own way and so for me you have to think about how much would people pay to solve each piece of the process I'm willing to pay three grand per editor to solve that so that's like pretty high payment threshold script writing maybe less but like could I build something more scalable with software so that's like that's how I think about it is who am I building an audience for? Business owners. What are they trying to do? Make content. What is the process they're using to make content? A to B, A to Z of A to Z, ABC, BC, every letter, where are they getting stuck? What can I build to get them unstuck? What are they willing to pay to get unstuck? And then how do I tell them about that thing? The beauty of telling them is I already have the audience. So, I can just tell them, hey, build this thing.

You know, you know what comes to mind? It's like, so you have the you have the ideal uh avatar. You then can create or write out brainstorm a list of like their friction points of like where they are now to where they want to be. And then within that friction point and this is what I heard in what you were saying is like you're really trying to figure out once you have those that list of friction points you're trying to figure out two things. One is like what's the highest on like the pain ladder? Like what's number one? And then also for you personally, what would you like to build?

Yeah. And like there needs to be an alignment cuz I can see people going like you could go for the highest pain point, but if you don't want to build the solution, then it doesn't work.

Exactly. So it's like both need to be.

Yeah. And I think that's like business model lifestyle fit is the what do I want to build? Right. So it's like if you're desperate and you want money at any you have zero dollars the best thing to do is just do a service where you do the work for them. You do the thing they they can't do for them. So that's classic services agency. You can go from zero to 150 200k a year easy maybe even seven figures a year with a one person agency just do depending on what how valuable the skill is. And so that's the easiest place to start. If you have zero dollars, start there. But for me, I business model lifestyle fit. I don't want a job. So, I'm not going to do I'm not going to do a service. I'm not doing that. So, you would then climb the business model ladder. So, the best business models are high margin, recurring, right? So, you get paid every month, you keep a lot of the dollars. Next best would be recurring, but medium to low margin. So, it's like you get paid every month, but you don't actually keep that much. Next would be high ticket, but not recurring. You got to do something, but you can only do you do it one time. You get paid one you got to go get new customers. Next would be medium or low ticket, not recurring. So, it's like they pay me 20 bucks, but I never get 20 bucks again. That's the stack. You want to go as high as possible on that. High margin, recurring could be low. I mean, high margin, high ticket, recurring is the best. So, like they pay me $5,000 a month, I keep 4,500 of it, and they pay me every single month. That's the best. So the key is you can either start with a business model which is business model lifestyle fit or you can start with which what would be the right solution for the thing they're struggling with and what's the best way to solve it. Try to match those up. So for me it was like I don't want to manage people. I want to grow something big with leverage and I don't want to and I want to keep a lot of the money we make with no employees. The only way you're going to do that is with software or with some sort of recurring based education model. Those are the two models I picked. That's because business model lifestyle fit is what I wanted. Now I do brand deals on my content stuff, but that's not recurring. That's one time. So it's high ticket, but only one time. So I got to go get new brands every single time. So I've played with every type of business model. And the best ones are obviously the ones at the top because you get paid the most, keep the most, and it comes in every single month. But to do that, the the your ability to go up that ladder corresponds directly with the amount of value or amount of solution you give to the pain. and/or how harsh that pain is today for the buyer. So if the buyer is business owners and they don't know how to do their taxes and they're wasting 20 grand a year, they're willing to pay you $19,990 to solve it. That's a very like high pain. But if their pain is like, I don't have my to-do list organized and I'm willing to pay $5 a month for my to-do list, that's a low pain. So it's like you want to go for the highest pain and then try to create an offer that allows them or that that allows you to get paid on a recurring basis. Usually you need to give them recurring value, right?

You know, one of the things you said early and I think it's so easy for it to go over people's heads is like you mentioned that point of you need to immerse yourself in the community. Like whatever this avatar that you're looking to build for, who you're looking to reach, that you want to care about what you're doing, you need to immerse yourself in the community. And it like it makes sense once you provide the full perspective cuz it's like how would you know all of this information? The only way you would know is cuz either you're one of them or you're so deeply connected with one of them that you can understand all of this. And the best way to to so if you literally build a community like for free that's a great way cuz then they'll tell you even in videos though like I'll ask in videos like tell me what you guys want and then in the comments you get a hundred comments and 50 of them are about the same thing. It's like that's what people want because that's what they're struggling with. So there you can that's at scale. You could also do one-on-one interviews, but like you really can't build a sustainable business unless you know what people need. Period.

Yeah. You know, here's what here's where I want to end cuz I just think about everything that we've like discussed in this conversation. Yeah. Um and who's it for and and and who is it going to listen to it? And it's funny cuz you even made this point during the episode. You're like you might be listening to this and thinking I'm a maniac.

Yeah. I hope so.

I feel like there's there's probably a lot of people that are like, "Yeah, he he does this thing. He's on one." And so, but like, and I said this to you in the beginning, I think the thing that I've always appreciated about you and like we've even had conversations with this where I'm facing some sort of problem or like something's coming up in my business or with content or whatever and I'll call you and you will give me like this breakdown of like the level I'm thinking.

Yeah. How you would do it, the levels of thinking, what the problem is, what you need to solve. And so I think though where I wanted to go, we spoke about the importance to you of like sharing all of this freely.

Yeah. And you do that with your friends. You do that with people you know. You also do it on mass on the internet for everyone to see. If we fast forward, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years, what do you think or what do you hope is the impact of everything that you've shared, everything that you've learned and then also taken the effort to share it with the world? Like what do you think or hope is the impact of all of that?

Yeah, that's a funny qu that's an interesting question. like a legacy like legacy question kind of or just like in the medium term. Legacy I have a I have kind of a weird take on legacy. I like I don't really think in those terms cuz I I I can't control how people perceive I can only control the inputs, right? So like how hard can I go? Can I rev the engine harder? Can I spend more time spinning the wheel? That's all I can focus on. So at a macro level, like I'm just trying to be helpful. Like I'm trying to be useful. I hope thousands, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, whether they work directly with me or not, can create a change from zero to one based on what I'm saying. But I think everybody's going to die. And when they do, that's it. Like you're people might care for a day or two, no matter how big you are, but things pass. For me like my whole my whole philosophy on this. This is another thing that I thought I I think I thought I came up with this but I heard and I've never heard anyone say it but then I heard David Senra say it on a podcast like a year ago. So I wrote about this like multiple years ago. So I don't know if this came from me or not but the my whole legacy play is I'm trying to create a generational inflection point for my for my family. So the way I think of it is like if you if you ever study the the the great families, right? like the Kennedys or like the Carnegies or the Rockefellers.

Yeah. Rockefellers, the Medici. If you actually go back and look at those family trees, if you go all the way back, like there was one savage that completely changed the trajectory of that family. Like I'm him for my family. So that hopefully that's not like a 15-year thing. Hopefully like like a 50-year thing, but or like like I can play for a while. But that's like if at a local level if I could do that for my family and like change the trajectory of the arc of the people in my immediate circle then I think it's a life well-lived. Anything beyond that is gravy, right? And all you can do is like try to be positive and helpful to as many people as possible. Like high value density and then let the chips fall.

Yeah, that's awesome. It reminds me of um it's funny because actually on the way on the way over here I was having a conversation with a Uber driver and we made that exact point of like you have no idea when this [ __ ] is going to end.

Yeah. And he was given like some examples of like things that have happened around the world whether it's like crashes or like buildings just suddenly collapsing and people dying and like you have no idea when the lights are going to go out on this. And so that like central principle of being in service to people.

Yeah. And then also of like um the generational the generational inflection point. Like it's funny cuz I I have the exact same thing. It's like you'll be able to look at my family line and be like that's when it changed.

Yeah. Like you see the slope of the line change and you're like something happened there. That crazy [ __ ]

Exactly. That's what I'm trying to do. So that's that's what it is. But hopefully, I mean, I'm trying to be as tactical as possible. Like, I know a lot of people talk about the business stuff. Your your show, you do this, you do the tactics super well. Most content though is not tactical enough to be applicable for the beginner, right? So, like hopefully this episode was some good nuggets. I think we did it.

Nice, man. It is I'm grateful that you're here. I'm grateful to have you as a friend. Thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. That was awesome. Okay. So, if you enjoyed this episode, you're going to absolutely love what we did with this one right here. Click here.