# If I Wanted To Grow An Audience In 2026, I'd Do This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmkq5RLjm0U

[00:00] In the last 12 months, my social media had a grand total of 3 billion impressions and brought in 4 and 1/2 million new subscribers.
[00:04] And with that, I managed to break the world record for the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time, generating just over 105 million dollars in sales in a weekend.
[00:13] And here are my top lessons that I've learned when it comes to building a personal brand.
[00:15] Enjoy.
[00:17] You guys want to hear something absolutely insane?
[00:18] I was able to take home more in a year than the CEOs of McDonald's, IKEA, Ford, Motorola, and Yahoo combined as a kid in his 20s.
[00:33] And I have continued to for over half a decade.
[00:36] Which resulted in a 200 million-dollar per year portfolio and a 100 million-dollar net worth by age 32.
[00:41] And no one is more surprised than me.
[00:44] Me expressing that fact will create envy in some, anger in others, skepticism in most, confusion in old people, and inspire a select few.
[00:55] You are who I made this presentation for.
[00:58] But before I dive in,
[01:00] Raise your hand if you'd like any of the following things to happen.
[01:03] To be able to charge two times, five times, 10 times more than your competition for the exact same thing, like Yeti.
[01:10] We have basically identical cups, and somehow they're able to charge $40 versus $10 simply because of what's on the cup.
[01:18] If you'd like to be able to have customers buy from you over and over and over again without considering competition, like Harley.
[01:23] Once you're a Harley guy, you stay a Harley guy for life.
[01:30] And if you'd like to virtually guarantee sales in any new business or product that you launch, like Apple.
[01:36] A lot of people just wait in line.
[01:38] "Just leave my credit card. Just bill me and send whatever you're going to come out with."
[01:41] And that's more or less how a lot of Apple buyers are.
[01:42] Once they become an Apple person, they become an Apple person for life.
[01:49] So, if you like that stuff, great, cuz that's what this talk is about.
[01:53] And so, I couldn't figure out how these brands, these companies were able to do this, demand these prices, get people to stay loyal for a really long time.
[02:03] And I felt like for me, I always had to like beg, borrow, and steal, and I just squeeze and push so hard just to get people to buy.
[02:10] Whereas these companies made it look effortless.
[02:15] And it's because I didn't understand this one thing, and that's the subject of the talk today.
[02:18] Brand.
[02:20] And the thing is, even people who claim to understand it often don't.
[02:25] And the few who do understand it do a terrible job teaching it.
[02:29] So, this definitely isn't going to be marketing 101 class on branding presentation colors and logos.
[02:34] And this definitely isn't going to be about feelings, presence, intuition, or whatever.
[02:40] This is about making money.
[02:43] And this concept that I'm going to explain to you is how I built a 7.8 million person audience across all these platforms in the past 40 months or so.
[02:51] I sold over a million copies of my last two books.
[02:53] And your deals worth hundreds of million dollars in our holding company acquisition.com.
[02:57] That is why you build a brand.
[03:00] At least, that's why I built mine.
[03:02] And so today I'm going to cover three things.
[03:04] Number one, what branding is.
[03:06] You don't know what it is, you certainly can't build one.
[03:08] Number two, why it makes money.
[03:10] Cuz once you have it built, you're like, okay, well, how do I trade this thing for doll hairs, which is what we want.
[03:16] And then third, how to start and grow yours.
[03:19] So, let's start with the first one.
[03:20] What branding is.
[03:22] So, when I decided to build a brand, I looked at what many popular marketers said about it.
[03:28] Here are some popular definitions that I have removed the marketers from them.
[03:32] This is not throwing shade.
[03:34] So, I'm just saying them.
[03:35] A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.
[03:38] A brand is not what you say it is, it's what they say it is.
[03:39] A brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories, and relations to that taken together account for a customer's decision to choose one product or service over another.
[03:48] A brand is emotional shorthand for accumulated and assumed information.
[03:52] A brand is present when the value of what the product, service, or personality means to its audience is greater than what it does for the audience.
[03:58] A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services, or concepts so they can be easily communicated and usually marketed.
[04:05] Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name, its qualities, and personality.
[04:10] The promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.
[04:14] If these sound vague and confusing, it's because they are.
[04:21] And I was just as confused as you when I was trying to figure this out.
[04:24] Because none of them told me what to do.
[04:27] And so after looking at all these marketers' words, I think I pieced it together.
[04:32] At least enough that once I started thinking about this way, in a different way that I'm going to share with you, my brand grew and it grew fast.
[04:40] And the reason this is so important is that if you don't know what to do, nothing's going to change.
[04:43] Fundamentally, if you don't change your behavior, obviously nothing's going to change as a result.
[04:46] And so I wanted to define this one term before we get going.
[04:50] Learn it.
[04:51] Who here came to learn?
[04:53] Raise your hands.
[04:54] Fantastic.
[04:54] All right, the other ones just be talking to the wall.
[04:56] So, learning means same condition, new behavior.
[05:01] And so if I wanted to teach someone a phone script, then after teaching you, the phone rings
[05:06] again,
[05:08] and you say the new script,
[05:10] you learned.
[05:10] Learning occurred.
[05:12] On the other hand,
[05:13] if I tried to teach you the script, and
[05:16] then the phone rings again,
[05:17] and then you change nothing,
[05:20] no learning occurred.
[05:20] You learned nothing.
[05:23] And that's why none of this stuff that these guys said helped me, because I didn't know what I could do.
[05:28] I didn't know what behavior I had to change as a result of this.
[05:33] So I didn't know how to do that.
[05:34] And so here's how branding happens.
[05:37] Branding is a deliberate pairing of things through an outcome.
[05:41] So I'll say that again.
[05:48] So, let's use Coca-Cola, drinking it, and liking it as our example.
[05:53] The yum, aka the outcome, that's what people get.
[05:57] They pair that with drinking, the action that they do to get it, with Coca-Cola, the product.
[06:05] So, the next time you want some yum,
[06:07] you're probably going to reach for a Coca-Cola, if that was paired for you successfully.
[06:14] And so, branding is delivering pairing of things through an outcome.
[06:15] That's it.
[06:18] But, sometimes businesses pair stuff, pair their stuff with things that people don't like.
[06:24] That's bad branding.
[06:27] This leads to losses for the business.
[06:30] Now, some of you guys may have seen this.
[06:32] This is Dylan Mulvaney doing a collaboration with Bud Light.
[06:36] There's a lot of press around this advertisement.
[06:39] This advertisement was actually a great advertisement.
[06:41] And you might might think I'm crazy, but it was.
[06:43] Let me explain.
[06:46] It's just not the way you might think it was.
[06:48] This is a great advertisement because it let a lot of people know about their stuff.
[06:52] It let a lot of people know about the product, about Bud Light.
[06:55] By the way, if you're curious, that is the definition of advertising, not branding.
[06:59] Advertising is letting people know about your stuff.
[07:01] Branding is the pairing that occurs as a result.
[07:06] So, it was good advertising, but bad
[07:08] Branding.
[07:09] Many customers hated this pairing.
[07:12] Lots of people found out, but a lot of people hated it.
[07:13] Good advertising, bad branding.
[07:17] And so, as a result of this bad branding, people not liking the pairing, fewer people bought the product, which netted a loss for the business.
[07:25] And so, to fix this, Bud Light paired their product with stuff the audience liked, like Shane Gillis, who is a man's man comedian, and the UFC, a man's man of sports, if you will.
[07:39] And sales began to recover.
[07:42] So, that's the 101 explanation of branding.
[07:46] Let's go into 201.
[07:48] So, we're going a little deeper because the better you get at this, the more money you will make.
[07:51] Like the more nuance you can understand how to brand and build a brand for yourself, the more money you will make.
[07:55] I promise you that.
[07:57] And so, to some people, the Dylan Mulvaney pairing was actually good.
[08:02] In general, both good advertising and good branding.
[08:05] Hear me out.
[08:07] For others, it was bad, obviously.
[08:10] All pairings have positive and negative results, and that's because everyone's different.
[08:16] Everyone has different preferences.
[08:18] But for a business, you can objectively see if a pairing was good or bad whether it netted you more money.
[08:25] So, more people disliked the Dylan Mulvaney Mulch tough day Dylan Mulvaney pairing, so the sales suffered, making it a bad pairing.
[08:34] So, this isn't opinion.
[08:37] They objectively made less money, and so this pairing was a bad one for their ideal audience.
[08:40] Now, the 301 version of this is is there a company or a product where the Dylan Mulvaney pairing could have been both good advertising and good branding so that the majority of people would have bought it.
[08:52] I think the answer is yes.
[08:54] It just doesn't necessarily mean it's Bud Light for conservative males as the primary audience.
[08:59] And on the other hand, some people love the new Gillis and UFC pairings, and some hated it.
[09:06] But more of the audience that is their ideal customer liked it, saw it as good,
[09:11] and so the business netted sales a result, and they made more money.
[09:15] Good branding.
[09:18] And so, for Budweiser, and I just want to call this out, this is specifically for Budweiser and their customer base.
[09:22] It's not that Shin Gillis and the UFC is magic in some way, or Dylan Mulvaney is unmagic in some way, but for that specific audience, yes, the pairing mattered and how much of the base liked it or disliked it.
[09:35] So, if you're anything like me, making money is the point.
[09:39] So, let's drive this home.
[09:41] If you made a pairing of your thing and your customer, and you got to choose which outcome you had happen, so you have your product and they drink it.
[09:51] There's an outcome that happens afterwards, right?
[09:52] That pairs with it.
[09:55] On one hand, 75% like it and 25 hate it.
[09:59] Or on the other hand, 25% like it and 75% hate it, which would be the bottom example.
[10:04] Which would you choose?
[10:07] More money good, the big the big green one.
[10:08] Yes, of course.
[10:10] The top one.
[10:12] Because it would make you the most money.
[10:15] And so, to be clear for the 201 level of understanding, branding always happens.
[10:21] Branding always occurs.
[10:24] But our goal is good branding.
[10:27] And good branding is a deliberate pairing of our business with good outcomes for our ideal customers.
[10:35] And so, what you pair your business with determines two key things.
[10:37] One, who pays attention to your business, and two, whether they go towards your business, like the UFC example, or away from your business, like the Dylan Mulvaney example.
[10:50] And so, at the beginning of this I said I was going to cover three things.
[10:53] The first thing I said is what is branding.
[10:56] But now that we have gone through that, I want to re-say what I walked us through, which is what good branding is.
[11:03] Ideally, what we're shooting for.
[11:06] So, now that we covered that, let's talk about why it makes you money.
[11:09] Why good branding makes you money.
[11:11] Branding as I define it happens everywhere all the time.
[11:13] But businesses use it for profit.
[11:16] So, let's look at some of the earliest uses of branding to figure out how we can use it.
[11:19] So, these are the first entrepreneurs who used branding to make money.
[11:23] Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish I've now done multiple times, and so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages, as head count increases, that you need to get through.
[11:36] And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate.
[11:46] And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works.
[11:53] And it's my gift to you, it's absolutely free.
[11:55] And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap, just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you, all free.
[12:04] The earliest version of branding that we can think of, or at least that I can think of, happened on livestock.
[12:08] It was literally a brand.
[12:10] They'd heat up metal, they'd sear it into the side of a cattle, and
[12:14] they would get a lovely little logo.
[12:15] Maybe we'll have a Nike swoosh cow someday.
[12:18] And so they literally burned these symbols into animals.
[12:21] And those symbols had a magical effect.
[12:24] So let's say you're walking around and you see a cow with no brand.
[12:25] You say, "Hello cow."
[12:27] The cow says moo back, and it has nothing on it.
[12:29] This is just a cow.
[12:33] You might leave it alone, and that might be it.
[12:38] On the other hand, let's say the cow has a brand you recognize.
[12:39] Say it's your neighbor's.
[12:40] You might be like, "Hey, that's Bill's cow."
[12:44] Now, if you like Bill, you might grab the cow and pull him by the whatever you pull cows by, and probably return it to Bill.
[12:54] If you hate Bill, then the cow may stay lost in the wilderness forever and become lunch for your family for the next month or two in the form of delicious burgers.
[13:04] Moo.
[13:05] But either way, for better or for worse, the brand affected what you did.
[13:09] It affected your behavior.
[13:14] And so to take this to the 201 level, what if you see a branded cow, but you don't recognize the brand?
[13:19] You might be like, "Who this? I see a logo, but I don't know anything about it."
[13:26] Well, then you would treat it how you treat branded animals in general in that you just know that it belongs to someone.
[13:31] And so you would treat it the way that you would treat it as though it belonged to anybody else.
[13:38] And even if only a tiny bit, you would treat a wild cow different from a branded cow in general.
[13:43] So if you had one that was wild and you had one that you didn't recognize but was branded, you would still probably treat them differently.
[13:49] So that just shows you the power of brand as a concept because it dictates a tie between that cow and a human being.
[13:56] Or some complex animal that can brand cows.
[13:59] And so these are all effects of brand in general.
[14:03] So that's how it affects what people do.
[14:05] And so now I want to get tactical on how to get how we translate that concept into getting them to buy.
[14:10] So let's say we pair our brand.
[14:11] So this is where we get really tactical and this is like, okay, if you don't have a brand, this is the step-by-step right
[14:16] Now.
[14:17] So you have a weak brand and we say it's a weak brand cuz it's starting out.
[14:20] You don't have really a lot of associations.
[14:21] Fantastic.
[14:23] So now you want to pair it with people, experiences, other other stuff that your ideal customer likes.
[14:29] So in this instance, I'm using little Nike pairing with LeBron and Tiger who are champions, world-class, goats, etc.
[14:36] And so people who like sports and competition would see that probably as a positive pairing.
[14:40] AKA good stuff.
[14:42] And so if we do that pairing or we make that pairing for the majority of people, branding will occur and so the brand grows.
[14:50] And so the question then follows, what's the benefit of a strong brand versus a weak brand?
[14:56] And so the the the weak brand is before the pairing, the stronger brand is after the pairing.
[15:01] So a strong brand turns commoditized products like a $5 white t-shirt plus the strong brand into a premium product, a higher value brand name product.
[15:12] And premium products with a strong brand
[15:16] then get customers to want to pair themselves with the product
[15:20] so that they can associate the outcome themselves with the outcome the brand delivers.
[15:27] Which they do with their money.
[15:27] So, how do they make that association?
[15:31] They give money, they get the shirt, the association happens based on what they've seen where that logo has been elsewhere.
[15:37] And so then they go from I want to be a winner to exchanging money and saying now I am a winner or I feel like a winner.
[15:44] That's how this works.
[15:46] And so this means that if the ideal customer likes sports, winning, and competition, etc. then they're more likely to buy stuff from a brand paired with those things.
[15:54] So, let's lay it all out.
[15:56] Weak brand paired with stuff customers like creates a strong brand.
[16:04] Strong brand gets put onto a winning product, transforms a generic to winning product.
[16:08] Then the customers want to associate with that winning product, so they buy the product, and they put money into your bank account in order to do it.
[16:15] And so as long as you net a
[16:18] positive between what it cost you to associate with Tiger and LeBron and how many t-shirts you can sell as a result, you make money.
[16:28] And so here are some steps in words for those of you who are more word people.
[16:32] You start with a brand that means nothing.
[16:33] You have a logo, just like the cow that the other person didn't recognize.
[16:37] People know that it is a brand, they just don't know what that brand means yet.
[16:39] So, it means nothing right now.
[16:43] Then you pair that brand with something or someone that your customer is ideally like.
[16:48] Third, your brand starts to mean the thing customer likes to them.
[16:53] Then they want to associate themselves with that thing they like or get more of it.
[16:59] But they can't buy that thing.
[17:01] But they can buy a tiny sliver of that association.
[17:04] So, they buy the shirt with the logo that means that thing to them.
[17:08] And so they get the shirt, you get the money, and it all happened because you deliberately paired it with something they like.
[17:15] And this happens everywhere.
[17:15] So, Dolce & Gabbana, classic example.
[17:17] They paired
[17:19] with Kim Kardashian.
[17:21] They made a line specifically for her.
[17:22] And so, for a lady who wants to associate with fame, beauty, wealth, that would be a pairing that makes sense.
[17:31] And so, that lady who wants other people to associate her with fame, high class, money, luxury, wealth, will then buy Dolce & Gabbana and be like, "I'm just like Kim."
[17:41] Now, she might not say that directly because she might just associate with the values, but the transference still happens.
[17:49] And so, when someone looks at two products that on the surface are generically the same.
[17:52] You've got two t-shirts.
[17:54] One that has a weak brand or no brand, and the other that has the strong brand, the person that has the strong brand, they're going to be more likely to buy and pay more for.
[18:08] And this happens because they actually buy the elements that we've deliberately paired with the brand which they identify with.
[18:15] And at this point of building a brand, you do this to change customer behavior.
[18:20] And that excuse me, that is the point of building a brand, to change customer behavior in your favor when they see it with a product.
[18:28] And so, this is a quote from Warren Buffett that I like a lot, kind of signifying some of the elements of the benefits of brand.
[18:32] He said, "The single most important decision in evaluating business is pricing power.
[18:38] If you've got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you've got a very good business.
[18:42] And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10%, then you've got a terrible business.
[18:48] And so, if we have an unbranded t-shirt for $5, and we say, "You know what?
[18:52] We think we have a strong enough brand that we can raise the price.
[18:53] And then, boom, we can raise the price and still not lose that many sales, but we in this case, 12x the price, good branding drives that premium pricing.
[19:06] Good branding also improves advertising.
[19:08] So, with the generic brand, if you're marketing this white t-shirt, you might get half a percent of people.
[19:13] There are many white t-shirts.
[19:15] There are many like it.
[19:17] This one is mine.
[19:19] Just kidding.
[19:19] So, the point of those of you got the reference.
[19:21] if you have a 0.5% click-through rate on something that's generic, there's nothing special about it.
[19:26] On the flip side, if you have a Nike brand t-shirt, same identical t-shirt, and it has the swoosh, then you might get six times as many people click and buy at a higher price.
[19:36] See how these things stack together?
[19:38] That is why these brands exist for such a long period of time and make so much money.
[19:44] So, they get cheaper customers, they get higher returns, and they have better response rates in advertising.
[19:50] And on top of that, if if as if that weren't enough, good branding also drives customer loyalty.
[19:53] AKA, they buy more stuff more times.
[19:59] And so, like the Apple example I gave earlier, once you buy one Apple product, you tend to buy more, and you tend to keep buying them.
[20:04] And so, this also, a good brand, also protects your business from competitors stealing that customer for in the future.
[20:11] And so, as I promised at the beginning, we're seeing how this all this stuff allows you to one, be able to charge 10 times or more than your competition, two, get higher returns in advertising,
[20:22] so you can scale that much more, that
[20:23] much faster, and then three, get people
[20:25] to keep buying for life, compounding
[20:26] your money-making skills for good.
[20:30] Okay.
[20:32] Which is why I'm building a brand will
[20:33] make you lots of money.
[20:35] It's also why brands outperform
[20:36] commodities in every single industry.
[20:40] And give a lasting competitive edge
[20:42] that to be fair is theirs to lose. So,
[20:45] here's another quote from Uncle Warren.
[20:47] It takes 20 years to build a reputation
[20:48] and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think
[20:50] about that, you'll do things
[20:51] differently.
[20:53] And so, I said that I was going to cover
[20:54] three things. One, what branding is,
[20:56] which we read into what good branding
[20:58] is. Second, why it makes you money, and
[21:00] we got that. So, now, let's go to how to
[21:03] start or grow your own brand.
[21:05] So, if is the deliberate pairing of
[21:07] things, your thing plus what your ideal
[21:09] customer has, through an outcome,
[21:11] and good branding is the deliberate
[21:12] pairing of your thing with something
[21:13] good,
[21:15] to start a brand,
[21:17] we have to know what we want to pair it
[21:19] with to attract ideal customers.
[21:23] So, here we've got Bud Light, UFC, good
[21:25] outcome for the majority of the
[21:26] audience.
[21:27] And we want to understand that just as
[21:29] much as we should also understand what
[21:32] to avoid pairing our brand with to lose
[21:34] customers, like the Del Monte example.
[21:37] And so, here's how I like to think about
[21:39] assembling the pairings for a brand. So,
[21:41] if you're at ground zero, you have you
[21:43] have no brand. You've got these elements
[21:45] that haven't been put together yet.
[21:47] So, I think about it like
[21:50] a tableful of flowers.
[21:52] So, if you want to put a bouquet
[21:53] together, you start by having lots of
[21:55] different flowers all over the place.
[21:57] On their own, those flowers are not a
[22:00] bouquet.
[22:01] Just as products, values, experiences,
[22:03] people, etc. on their own are not a
[22:05] brand.
[22:06] The flowers are like the brand elements
[22:08] that we pair with stuff our audiences
[22:09] like.
[22:12] With enough pairing, over and over and
[22:14] over again, they form a bouquet.
[22:18] Now, replace the word bouquet with
[22:20] brand.
[22:21] And so, that assembly is the connection,
[22:23] it's the association between those
[22:25] things. Cuz a brand, fundamentally,
[22:27] doesn't actually exist. If I take the
[22:29] flowers out of the vase and scatter them
[22:31] across, was there ever a brand to begin
[22:33] with? It's simply the association we
[22:35] make between those things that creates
[22:38] the one-of-one brand.
[22:42] And if we unravel it, the brand
[22:43] disappears.
[22:45] And so, the deliberate pairing of those
[22:46] things makes the brand.
[22:48] And if we want to get narrower on our
[22:50] brand, so let's say I talk about tacos,
[22:53] lifting, and philosophy,
[22:55] if I want to narrow my brand, I'll just
[22:57] talk a bunch about tacos, and then all
[23:00] of my flowers are just taco-related.
[23:03] If I'm only talking about tacos, but I
[23:04] want to expand the stuff I'm talking
[23:07] about to my audience and maybe capture a
[23:08] wider audience, then I might talk about
[23:11] tacos, quesadillas, burritos, things
[23:13] that are tangential. And then if I
[23:14] wanted to expand even broader, I might
[23:16] just talk about food in general. And
[23:17] then I might talk in alcohol, then I
[23:19] might talk in restaurants, and then
[23:21] things that go
[23:23] wider and wider from there. And so we
[23:25] get narrower as we niche down and we go
[23:27] double down on one type of topic and we
[23:30] go broader when we branch out.
[23:33] But
[23:34] distant and random pairings hurt a brand
[23:37] because they're so hard to make the
[23:38] associations with.
[23:41] And this is what most brands are and do.
[23:45] Most people's brands happen by accident.
[23:48] It's just whatever they appear next to,
[23:50] whatever the people associate their
[23:52] stuff with.
[23:53] Good branding happens on purpose.
[23:56] Cuz like what are we looking at with a a
[23:57] bike, a single flower, some socks, and a
[23:59] burger?
[24:00] Not a lot. Not a lot to hold together
[24:02] there.
[24:03] And so think about it like curating a
[24:05] garden. You want some flowers to grow
[24:07] and you want to pull out the weeds. You
[24:09] have to do both. You have to add the
[24:10] good and take away the bad in order to
[24:13] assemble the ideal brand for you.
[24:16] And in the beginning, our brand won't be
[24:17] strong, just like yours won't. If you're
[24:19] building it, then you might only have a
[24:21] couple flowers there. It's because you
[24:23] haven't had that many instances to pair
[24:26] your brand for that customer.
[24:30] But the more good stuff we pair with our
[24:33] brand for the customer, the stronger it
[24:35] gets. You go from one flower to many red
[24:37] flowers or many red roses that become a
[24:39] bouquet of red roses. That's what you're
[24:41] about, and the more you're about it, the
[24:43] more the brand strengthens.
[24:46] Now, what if we make a branding mistake
[24:49] and pair with the wrong thing? Cuz it's
[24:50] going to happen.
[24:52] One bad pairing can absolutely hurt a
[24:54] brand. So if I now give my this lovely
[24:57] red rose a bouquet to my wife and I say,
[24:59] "Hey,
[25:00] don't you love this bouquet?" And she
[25:02] sees this rotten flower sitting out in
[25:03] the front. She might be like, "Ew, this
[25:06] bouquet sucks." Or, "This brand sucks."
[25:08] Or, "Hey, that guy got a DUI and I
[25:11] thought he was this paragon of good
[25:12] ethics."
[25:14] Well, that would hurt the brand.
[25:16] And so, just like one ugly flower messes
[25:18] up the whole bouquet,
[25:19] it changes how everyone sees the brand.
[25:22] This bouquet sucks.
[25:24] Now, to recover from something like
[25:25] that,
[25:26] you just have to overwhelm customers
[25:28] with the stuff they like until
[25:29] eventually the bad pairing shrinks into
[25:30] irrelevance. So, we don't try to
[25:32] eliminate the DUI, we don't try to
[25:34] eliminate the dead rose. It happened,
[25:35] there's nothing we can do about it.
[25:37] But, what we try to do is just overwhelm
[25:39] it with way more of the stuff that the
[25:41] majority of our people actually like.
[25:43] And so, Kanye, for example, has said
[25:45] some things that people don't like.
[25:48] But, he also comes out with products
[25:49] that people love. He made a Super Bowl
[25:51] ad.
[25:52] He sold shoes. He just came out with an
[25:54] album that came out after having some
[25:56] cancel culture stuff around him, things
[25:58] he had said.
[25:59] And so, over time, people forgot the bad
[26:01] stuff and associated the good stuff back
[26:03] with him and purchased.
[26:05] They still bought.
[26:08] And so, you need to decide what values
[26:10] people experience, etc., that you want
[26:11] to use to connect the audience to your
[26:14] product.
[26:17] And equally importantly, what things you
[26:19] want to avoid, remove, or ignore from
[26:22] the stuff they hate.
[26:24] And so, it goes without saying that even
[26:26] if you say you're premium, but people
[26:28] think your thing sucks, that suck will
[26:30] stick. And so, up to this point,
[26:32] everything I've talked about has been
[26:34] the things external to the product.
[26:35] They've been the people you associate
[26:37] the product with. You know, almost all
[26:38] of that occurs prior to purchase. So,
[26:41] you can absolutely get someone to buy
[26:43] the thing.
[26:45] But, how many experiences are people
[26:47] going to have with the thing once
[26:49] they've purchased it? Probably far more
[26:51] than they have with your advertisement.
[26:53] And so the advertisement can let people
[26:55] know about it. The branding makes a good
[26:57] association with the person. They make
[26:58] the purchase. And then afterwards, the
[27:00] product does a lot of the branding after
[27:02] that. Cuz if I buy that amazing Nike
[27:05] t-shirt, and there's a hole in the
[27:07] armpit when it comes in, I might say, if
[27:09] this is the first time I've ever bought
[27:10] a Nike product, this product sucks.
[27:13] Therefore, Nike sucks. And then I think
[27:15] the whole thing is a sham. And then I
[27:17] also start to hate LeBron for even
[27:18] recommending it. Right? So it starts to
[27:20] transfer backwards.
[27:22] Now, on the flip side,
[27:24] brand can influence how people see the
[27:26] product. So if the product is what I
[27:28] would call good enough, so it's it
[27:30] doesn't have any holes in it. Now, is it
[27:32] the highest quality it possibly could
[27:33] be? Maybe not, but it's good enough that
[27:36] no one's going to find an immediate
[27:37] problem with the product.
[27:39] That's where brand can carry you the
[27:40] extra distance to still make it a
[27:42] positive experience for the person. And
[27:44] so brand, in a very real way, can affect
[27:46] how people perceive value through
[27:49] products.
[27:51] Now, me personally, it's a pro tip here.
[27:54] If I'm going to charge a premium price,
[27:56] I absolutely want to make sure that the
[27:57] product is dialed, so that I only
[27:59] further reinforce how much they like my
[28:00] brand, rather than
[28:03] let my brand carry me, or at worst, have
[28:06] it conflict with the impression that I
[28:07] gave them of the thing they were going
[28:09] to buy prior to them buying it. This is
[28:11] a quote from Warren. Your premium brand
[28:12] had better be delivering something
[28:14] special, or it's not going to get the
[28:15] business. And the only tweak I'd have on
[28:17] this is that it's not going to keep the
[28:19] business.
[28:20] You'll get the first purchase, you just
[28:21] won't get the ones after that.
[28:25] And so all these things you're like,
[28:26] okay, got it. So brand is pairing. I get
[28:29] how the pairing makes me money. I have
[28:30] these big margins. I got more CTRs. More
[28:33] people buy. And as long as my thing
[28:35] doesn't suck, you know, ideally that
[28:36] it's good, people will keep buying.
[28:37] Awesome.
[28:38] But how do I measure that?
[28:41] So brand has three main metrics.
[28:43] One, which is influence, which is how
[28:45] likely it is to change someone's
[28:46] behavior.
[28:48] So, if I show someone a brand and they
[28:49] react in any way, they recognize it and
[28:52] they they they do something about it,
[28:54] then we have influence.
[28:56] Second is direction.
[28:58] Are they changing the way we want it?
[29:00] Were they running away?
[29:02] And third, how many people it changes
[29:04] for.
[29:06] That's it. So, if I show it to 100
[29:07] people and 100 people react versus two
[29:10] people react, the 100 person reacting at
[29:12] least recognition, that is the reach.
[29:14] How many people it changes it for.
[29:16] So, taking to the hypothetical extreme,
[29:19] a small, weak, and neutral brand, very
[29:21] few people recognize, and the people
[29:23] that do don't care that much about it
[29:25] either way.
[29:27] And on the other polar extreme, you have
[29:28] a large, large, strong, positive brand.
[29:31] So, that would be lots of people
[29:33] recognize the brand, it changes the
[29:34] behavior when they see the brand, and
[29:35] the behavior is generally towards. So,
[29:38] they try to do in accordance with what
[29:39] that brand is asking someone to do.
[29:43] And I want to make this point.
[29:45] A lot of people have this misnomer that
[29:47] any strong brand is polar. That because
[29:50] lots of people love it, lots of people
[29:52] also have to hate it. Now, I say this by
[29:54] percentage, not necessarily by absolute.
[29:56] If you have If the whole United States
[29:57] knows who you are, you're going to have
[29:59] a percentage of people that hate you
[30:00] just cuz there's crazy people. And
[30:02] that's not what we're talking about. I'm
[30:03] saying, is there a brand that can't have
[30:05] that kind of status that isn't polar?
[30:07] So, I'll give a polar example first. So,
[30:10] I have the silhouette of Donald Trump
[30:11] here, and he has a very strong brand.
[30:15] He has a big reach, lots of people
[30:16] recognize him, even just a silhouette
[30:18] alone people recognize.
[30:20] He has strong influence as in
[30:22] the percentage of people that when they
[30:23] see this have a reaction in either
[30:25] direction, positive or negative, but
[30:27] just that they react shows that he has
[30:29] strong influence.
[30:31] And the third is the direction. Now, for
[30:32] him, he is polar, meaning many people
[30:35] move towards him very strongly, and many
[30:37] people move away from him very strongly.
[30:41] And so, many assume that all brands are
[30:42] that way. And that's just because there
[30:44] are many examples of that, but it
[30:46] doesn't mean it has to be that way.
[30:48] And so, I'll give you a different
[30:49] example.
[30:51] So, some brands manage to change many
[30:53] people's behavior towards them all at
[30:56] once. And so, like Taylor Swift, sure,
[30:58] I'm sure she's got some crazies, don't
[31:00] get me wrong. But the vast majority of
[31:02] people who see Taylor Swift recognize
[31:04] her,
[31:05] she changed their behavior and most of
[31:07] the time it's towards her. So, she is a
[31:09] large, positive, strong brand.
[31:12] This is also personally why I think the
[31:13] idea of like seeking out controversy
[31:15] absolutely gets you recognized,
[31:17] but you don't have to make that trade.
[31:20] You can absolutely just build a strong
[31:22] positive brand. Mother Teresa has a
[31:23] strong positive brand. A lot of people
[31:25] know her, influence a lot of behavior,
[31:27] did a lot of good stuff. Most people
[31:28] aren't like, "I hate Mother Teresa."
[31:30] Some people do,
[31:31] but most people don't. And the same
[31:33] thing goes with Apple.
[31:35] A lot of people like their products. I'm
[31:36] sure there are some tech geeks that are
[31:38] like, "Android's way better." Or they're
[31:40] like, "PCs are awesome." And that's
[31:41] great, that's good for them. But the
[31:43] vast majority of people who encounter
[31:44] the product like it, which is why
[31:45] they're one of the largest companies in
[31:46] the world.
[31:50] So, all those examples that I gave to
[31:51] you up to this point have assumed a
[31:53] large audience. And I do that because
[31:54] this is a presentation and it makes more
[31:55] sense for me to work with you on stuff
[31:57] that you already know.
[31:58] But this concept carries independent of
[32:01] whether you have large reach, and this
[32:02] is why it applies to you.
[32:03] So, if you had a small audience with
[32:05] high influence, what would you have?
[32:09] Your mom and dad.
[32:10] They are high influence, as in most
[32:14] people when they see their parents,
[32:15] their behavior changes.
[32:17] They have low reach
[32:19] cuz for you, they're only your parents.
[32:21] They might not be any other people's
[32:23] They might be some other people's
[32:24] parents, but not many very many people's
[32:25] parents.
[32:26] Also, you have low reach.
[32:28] Um and it will be your behavior will
[32:30] towards for some and away for others.
[32:33] Meaning, some people hate their parents
[32:34] and don't want to do anything they say,
[32:36] and some people like their parents to do
[32:37] whatever they say. And there's a lot of
[32:38] people in between.
[32:40] And so that's how we measure if what
[32:42] we're doing to grow our brand is
[32:43] actually working. Are more people
[32:45] finding out about it?
[32:47] Are more people changing their behavior
[32:48] when they do it? And ideally, are they
[32:50] doing that towards the direction that we
[32:51] want them to go? So if I say, "Hey
[32:53] everybody, go click here, go download
[32:55] this thing, go attend this event, go buy
[32:57] this product, whatever it is."
[32:59] If a lot of people do that,
[33:01] then we know that the brand is growing.
[33:04] And so we want when we want to build our
[33:06] brand, we want to pair ourselves with
[33:07] the things the highest percentage of our
[33:09] ideal audience like.
[33:11] And so whenever we pair anything with a
[33:12] brand,
[33:13] because especially if you're starting
[33:15] out, everything is new.
[33:16] And so every new pairing has risk.
[33:19] And so you risk losing a certain
[33:21] percentage of your audience who has a
[33:22] bad experience with the thing you pair.
[33:24] There's always that risk. There's always
[33:25] going to be some people who don't like
[33:27] something you do.
[33:28] If anyone's seen a small town band go
[33:30] hit it big,
[33:31] some of the old towners are like, "Oh,
[33:32] they sold out. They did whatever." But
[33:34] what they did was they gambled the
[33:36] short-term loss of that local audience,
[33:38] potentially, for a much broader, bigger
[33:40] audience. So they made a bet. They did
[33:42] lose people. They did gain people. They
[33:43] just gained more than they lost.
[33:45] And so to the same degree, when you make
[33:47] that bet as the local band, you risk
[33:49] gaining other people who have had a
[33:51] positive experience with this new thing.
[33:52] And ideally, we have more green than
[33:54] red.
[33:55] And so those new pairings, the new
[33:57] pairings you make with a brand, always
[33:58] lose audience, right? He sold out. I
[34:00] like the old stuff better. This also
[34:02] happens with content, by the way.
[34:03] And so this person is the red bucket.
[34:06] Fantastic.
[34:07] And the new stuff might also cause
[34:09] people to say, "No, this new stuff
[34:10] rocks." And that person is in the green
[34:12] bucket.
[34:14] And so whenever you try to grow and you
[34:17] make any new pairing, meaning you make
[34:18] new content, you make a new genre, you
[34:20] don't make a new song, you make a new
[34:23] anything,
[34:24] you make a bet
[34:26] that more people from your ideal
[34:27] audience will like the pairing than
[34:28] people who don't.
[34:29] TLDR,
[34:31] that you'll net an increase in reach,
[34:33] influence, and positive direction.
[34:36] And so, my ask for everyone here is
[34:38] don't let the five mean comments stop
[34:40] you from gaining the 500 new people who
[34:42] like the new thing.
[34:45] So, let me finish the real-life example
[34:46] to make this whole thing real for you.
[34:48] I want to associate myself with business
[34:50] value.
[34:51] So, I associate myself with making
[34:53] people money and growing their
[34:55] businesses. So, there's me, there's me
[34:57] making content, and then ideally money.
[35:00] And so, the best way I can do this is
[35:01] make content for the small business
[35:03] owner kids to consume and books for them
[35:06] to read and use, so that they then
[35:08] profit.
[35:11] The good thing.
[35:12] And then they associate that growth
[35:15] and profit with me.
[35:18] And so, then they consume more of my
[35:19] stuff.
[35:20] They drink the next soda.
[35:22] They buy the next shirt.
[35:25] And so, the next time they wanted to
[35:26] happen again, they take the action or
[35:28] they have a higher likelihood of taking
[35:29] the desired action.
[35:31] And equally important, people who don't
[35:33] like business stuff won't like my stuff
[35:35] or they'll just prefer to watch other
[35:37] things. So, you've got this married
[35:38] couple, they say, "We hate people who
[35:39] talk about money." They're probably not
[35:41] going to like my stuff.
[35:42] And that's okay.
[35:45] But,
[35:47] people who
[35:49] like business,
[35:50] have a business, or are trying to start
[35:52] one, might want more.
[35:54] And this grows the bread because people
[35:56] consume the stuff and they say, "Hey,
[35:57] you got to check out Herazi's stuff."
[35:58] And then that person they tell to who
[36:00] says, "Right on." They check it out.
[36:01] They get that positive outcome. They
[36:03] make the pairing as well and the brand
[36:05] grows. And ideally, with my ideal
[36:06] audience.
[36:08] And so, to see this in action, if you
[36:10] use this information from today to make
[36:12] money,
[36:14] good branding has occurred.
[36:17] And so, I said I was going to cover
[36:18] three things: what branding is, ideally
[36:20] what good branding is, why it makes you
[36:21] money, and how to start and grow yours.
[36:24] So, hopefully you feel like I've
[36:24] fulfilled those three things.
[36:26] And so, now we can test if the pairing,
[36:28] good breeding, actually occurred.
[36:31] So, if you are my ideal customer, so
[36:33] here's a business owner.
[36:35] Okay, awesome. Lottie, pay attention.
[36:38] We can see objectively if this provided
[36:40] value. Did we get a good positive
[36:42] outcome, a neutral outcome, or a
[36:44] negative one? You might be like, I hate
[36:45] this guy talking about money, or you
[36:46] know what, I think this could make me a
[36:47] ton of money. Well, we'll see.
[36:50] So, I want you further to associate
[36:52] myself with value in making you money
[36:54] and growing your business. So, I'm going
[36:56] to give you guys two gifts for free.
[36:58] The first is for existing business
[37:00] owners who want to scale. So, most of
[37:01] you guys have raised your hands.
[37:02] I have two books, $100 Million Offers,
[37:04] $100 Million Leads.
[37:06] People say they made them money. There's
[37:07] a lot of five-star reviews on them.
[37:10] Fantastic.
[37:11] And I mean video versions of these books
[37:13] that you can get absolutely free on my
[37:15] site at acquisition.com/training.
[37:17] This is me further associating. If you
[37:19] If you like this, you're going to love
[37:20] that.
[37:22] And they'll make you more money for
[37:23] free.
[37:24] That's what it looks like on the inside.
[37:25] These are legit courses.
[37:28] And you can get those video versions on
[37:29] my site, again, absolutely free,
[37:30] acquisition.com/training.
[37:32] Now,
[37:33] if you're like, man, I don't like
[37:34] watching stuff, I like listening to
[37:36] stuff.
[37:37] I want to provide value for a different
[37:39] type of ideal audience, which is still
[37:41] business owners, but business owners who
[37:42] listen rather than business owners who
[37:43] watch, which is also fine. And so if you
[37:45] are somebody who's not a reader or not a
[37:47] watcher, I've got the books on my
[37:49] podcast
[37:50] absolutely free.
[37:51] It's called The Game. They started
[37:52] episode
[37:54] 570 something. And so that's what I have
[37:56] for business owners.
[37:57] Who here is earlier on and they're like,
[37:58] I want to start a brand?
[38:00] Okay, cool.
[38:02] So, this is for you.
[38:03] So, I did become an owner school.com,
[38:05] really awesome platform, helps people
[38:06] get started in the business.
[38:08] Um and so anybody here who watches this
[38:10] or listening to this and wants the
[38:11] tools,
[38:13] the training, and a community of other
[38:15] people starting brands with a little
[38:17] friendly competition and some prizes,
[38:19] we made a step-by-step process on school
[38:21] to help you get started. And you can
[38:23] start for free.
[38:25] So hopefully I succeeded in providing
[38:26] value and a good pairing occurred,
[38:29] ideally good branding happened,
[38:30] otherwise I'm sorry. For everybody else,
[38:33] I hope good branding occurred. Um and
[38:35] for those of you who either start the
[38:36] school games for free or use my stuff to
[38:38] grow your business, I will see you guys
[38:40] soon. So go to school games,
[38:42] school.com/games,
[38:43] acquisitions.com/training and I'll see
[38:45] you guys all there. Thank you guys so
[38:46] much for your time. So next I want to
[38:48] talk about how I got 7.8 million
[38:49] followers in just 3 months and the six
[38:51] key lessons you can use today. Let's
[38:53] rock. So you guys want to hear something
[38:54] absolutely insane? Well, in the last 40
[38:57] months
[38:58] my YouTube grew from zero to 2.23
[39:02] million subscribers. My Instagram grew
[39:04] from 7,000 to 2 and 1/2 million sub-
[39:07] subscribers, followers, you get the
[39:09] idea. My LinkedIn went from zero to
[39:11] 324,000 followers. My TikTok went from
[39:14] zero to 856,000
[39:16] followers. My Twitter/X
[39:19] the artist formerly known as Twitter, uh
[39:21] went from zero to 617,000.
[39:25] My Facebook, which we just started, went
[39:26] from zero to 25,000. There we go. Going
[39:28] in big, Facebook. Um my podcast went
[39:31] from 3,000 downloads to 25 million
[39:33] downloads. And my email subscribers went
[39:36] from zero to 700,000
[39:38] for a grand total of
[39:40] 2 billion impressions over that time
[39:42] period and 7.8 million new subscribers.
[39:48] And for a grand total of 8 million
[39:50] copies sold of my book. For those of you
[39:53] who are like, well, what does that mean?
[39:54] And I'll get to that in a second.
[39:56] So in 40-ish months, all of that
[39:58] happened.
[39:59] And I show all of this as proof to start
[40:02] this
[40:03] to show one thing is that this
[40:07] actually works.
[40:10] And you can build a brand
[40:12] without babes, without stunts, or
[40:15] kittens.
[40:17] And I start this proof because lots of
[40:19] people talk about stuff that they
[40:20] haven't done
[40:22] and teach a lot of sucky fluff as a
[40:24] result. You can see the man there. He's
[40:26] saying the truth. This This fluff sucks.
[40:29] And I refuse to do that.
[40:31] And so, before we got the 2 billion
[40:33] impressions and the 7.8 million
[40:34] subscribers, it wasn't like this.
[40:38] Because 40 months ago, I started with
[40:40] zero subscribers and a big quote fancy
[40:43] plan.
[40:44] And my fancy plan had three steps.
[40:47] Step one, make as much good stuff as I
[40:49] could. Step two, post it everywhere I
[40:52] could. And step three, learn as much as
[40:55] I could.
[40:57] And after
[40:58] 40-ish months,
[41:00] $4 million in team, equipment, vendors,
[41:04] studios, and software,
[41:07] a thousand hours of me on camera
[41:09] recording,
[41:10] and 35,000 pieces of content. Let me say
[41:13] that again. 35,000,
[41:16] as in count to a thousand and then do
[41:18] that 35 times in a row.
[41:21] I learned a lot of what not to do.
[41:24] But I did learn six things that made
[41:26] money and grew my brand that you can use
[41:29] today.
[41:31] Now, what I'd like to do is for the
[41:34] remainder of the presentation, save you
[41:36] the three and a half years and $4
[41:38] million,
[41:39] so you can just get the lessons without
[41:41] the scars. So, that little box is our
[41:43] box of six lessons. Cool?
[41:47] All right. Let's rock.
[41:49] So, here are the six changes that we
[41:51] observed over the last four 40-ish
[41:53] months that actually worked.
[41:56] Number one,
[41:57] going from edutainment to education.
[42:00] Number two, for us to for you.
[42:03] Number three, wide to narrow. Number
[42:06] four, views to revenue. Number five,
[42:09] shorts to longs. Number six, assume more
[42:13] to assume nothing. Now, most of those I
[42:15] promise you
[42:17] I will explain. And if it looks like I
[42:19] think I know what that means, believe
[42:21] me, there's a lot more underneath of it.
[42:23] So, let's start with the first one.
[42:24] Edutainment to education.
[42:27] So, I see content in three buckets.
[42:30] On one extreme, you've got
[42:31] entertainment,
[42:33] which is
[42:34] the entire point of entertainment, just
[42:36] to define the term, is to get people to
[42:38] watch. The only point of the
[42:40] entertainment is to just get people to
[42:42] consume it. That's it. If it
[42:43] accomplishes that, it has succeeded.
[42:46] On the other side, you have education.
[42:49] Where the point of education is to get
[42:51] someone to change what they do. Right?
[42:52] If you try and teach someone how to
[42:54] answer a phone, and then in the same
[42:56] situation, the phone rings and they
[42:57] don't do something, and then after they
[42:59] watch you do something, they then change
[43:01] what they do in the phone rings the
[43:02] second time, they have learned. So, the
[43:04] point is to change their behavior. If If
[43:06] the video or the content does that, then
[43:08] you've succeeded at educating them.
[43:11] And lastly, you have edutainment, which
[43:14] has the point of both trying to teach
[43:16] and entertaining at the same time.
[43:19] And to be clear, it's less that you make
[43:21] entertaining content, or that you make
[43:23] educational content. It's more that you
[43:25] make content and people are either
[43:28] entertained
[43:29] or educated as a result.
[43:32] And so, you can make one thing that
[43:35] entertains some people,
[43:38] and then that same thing educates other
[43:40] people.
[43:41] And so, I just want to make this very
[43:43] clear that you don't control the
[43:44] audience. You make something and then
[43:46] education or entertainment occurs.
[43:49] But for our purposes, I'll define the
[43:51] content category as the most common
[43:53] outcome of your content. And so, if a
[43:55] lot of people are entertained, then
[43:57] you've made entertaining content for the
[43:59] purpose of this presentation, even if
[44:01] one or two people learn something.
[44:02] So, for example, some creators might
[44:04] learn stuff from Mr. Beast's videos.
[44:06] Wow, I learned how to make videos. But,
[44:08] the vast majority of people are
[44:09] entertained. They watch just to watch.
[44:12] On the other hand, Walla, who's one of
[44:13] the number one educators on YouTube, you
[44:15] can even see the different look and
[44:16] feels, and don't worry, I'm going to get
[44:17] into that.
[44:19] He may entertain some enthusiasts around
[44:21] that subject.
[44:23] But, mostly, he educates students.
[44:27] And until recently, I've been trying to
[44:28] figure this out. I've spent a lot of
[44:30] time really working through this.
[44:32] And so, I actually have videos in all
[44:34] three buckets. I have entertainment
[44:36] videos where the point is to get people
[44:37] to watch. I have edutainment videos
[44:39] where we try and teach and entertain at
[44:41] the same time. And then we have
[44:42] education videos where we just want to
[44:44] change people's behavior. We just want
[44:45] to teach them something.
[44:47] And so, the first change, number one,
[44:49] that we see, or lots of the data I'll
[44:50] support in a second, is that I'm going
[44:52] all in on education.
[44:54] For three reasons.
[44:56] Number one is that when we looked at all
[44:58] of our data, all views are not created
[44:59] equal. I'll dive into that in a second.
[45:01] Number two is I like educational videos.
[45:04] And number three is I like people who
[45:06] like educational videos, too. And or
[45:09] people who educate themselves, people
[45:10] who want to learn.
[45:12] And so, let me explain these.
[45:14] So, all views are not created equal. So,
[45:16] there's this theory, and this is going
[45:17] to This will be one that's going to
[45:19] rattle some cages.
[45:21] There's a theory that media works like a
[45:23] funnel. In fact, the vast majority of
[45:25] marketing
[45:26] infographics and things like that,
[45:27] almost all are funnels.
[45:30] And the theory goes like this.
[45:32] You make entertaining content,
[45:35] and then
[45:37] the theory states that people who watch
[45:38] that content then will go to more
[45:40] educational content. Okay? Sounds simple
[45:43] enough. We've got something wide, we've
[45:44] got something narrow. Fantastic.
[45:46] But, in our experience, in my
[45:48] experience,
[45:49] and based on our book sales, based on
[45:52] our email opt-ins, and based on the
[45:54] applications we receive at
[45:55] acquisition.com to become portfolio
[45:56] companies, it works much more like this.
[46:00] Which is that entertainment people
[46:02] want more entertainment content.
[46:05] And education people want more, say it
[46:07] with me, education content.
[46:11] And so in other words, these people
[46:14] do not become these people.
[46:16] Not in any appreciable rate that we
[46:18] would build a business around.
[46:20] And they certainly don't read the books,
[46:22] join the email list, or apply to become
[46:24] portfolio businesses.
[46:27] So if I want more of these people
[46:30] then they deserve the stuff that they
[46:32] value.
[46:34] And so that's the first reason that I'm
[46:36] doubling down on education. All views
[46:38] are not created equal. Number two.
[46:40] The next is that I simply like doing it.
[46:42] All right, so you know, I do believe
[46:44] that you should try and do stuff that
[46:45] you like doing and if it happens to also
[46:47] be in line with your goals, awesome.
[46:49] It's much tougher when the thing you
[46:50] like doing isn't in line with your
[46:51] goals, but in this instance, when I got
[46:52] that first piece of data, I was like,
[46:53] thank god cuz this is stuff I like
[46:55] making most. All right? And so when I
[46:57] talk to ideal customers in my mind,
[47:00] they're business owners and business
[47:01] interested people. Because if you know
[47:03] me and anybody who is who's close to me
[47:05] would probably attest to this is that
[47:06] like
[47:07] if you hang out with me for any amount
[47:09] of time, we will probably talk about
[47:10] business because it's what I love
[47:12] talking about. I I eat it, I sleep it, I
[47:13] drink it, I work 7 days on it and like I
[47:16] skip holidays for it because for me it
[47:18] is the holiday.
[47:19] So, this is what I like doing and this
[47:21] is what the people that I like serving
[47:23] also like.
[47:26] And so they like it better, too.
[47:29] And this is where it got confusing for
[47:31] me leading up to this and why this is so
[47:33] important is that it got very confusing
[47:36] when you have so many people saying,
[47:37] "Man, I really like the entertaining
[47:39] content." And this is where it gets
[47:40] difficult. This is where you have to
[47:42] read between the lines of the comments
[47:44] rather than just reading the comments
[47:45] themselves. All right? Because the thing
[47:48] is is for us, or at least for me,
[47:50] they weren't necessarily who I was
[47:52] trying to attract. Again, there's
[47:53] nothing wrong with that. I I hey, if I
[47:55] could serve the whole world, I will.
[47:56] But, I know that I tend to do better
[47:59] serving people who want to educate
[48:01] themselves than people who just want to
[48:02] watch or consume just for the sake of
[48:04] it.
[48:06] And so, that's why I'm doubling down on
[48:07] going from edutainment some enter-
[48:10] edutainment some entertainment to
[48:12] education.
[48:13] So, that's number one.
[48:15] So, let's talk about change number two
[48:16] that we saw.
[48:18] Going from for us to for you. You're
[48:20] like, "Well, what does that mean?" Let
[48:21] me explain.
[48:22] So, recently a mutual friend came to the
[48:24] headquarters, and he said, "Hey, I've
[48:26] been consuming your stuff for years.
[48:27] But, recently I just haven't been
[48:28] watching as much." And he said it
[48:29] offhandedly. He wasn't like trying to
[48:32] smash my ego into bits. Um and he failed
[48:35] at that. Uh
[48:36] >> [laughter]
[48:37] >> But, when he said it, I really took it
[48:39] to heart, right? It was very
[48:40] gut-wrenching. He said, "It just doesn't
[48:41] resonate as much." I was like, "Okay,
[48:43] got it." It felt like a gut punch since
[48:45] he's literally the person I could help
[48:47] most. He's a business owner doing 10
[48:48] million plus a year. I was like, "Man,
[48:50] well, that sucks."
[48:52] And that's when I realized that reading
[48:54] the comments actually led me a little
[48:55] bit astray.
[48:56] And for you, it might be leading you
[48:58] astray. And I'll give you some data to
[48:59] support that.
[49:01] And so, some people loved our different
[49:02] styles, but not the people that I
[49:04] ultimately wanted to help or am best
[49:06] suited to serve.
[49:07] And so, we realized that we were serving
[49:09] the wrong who.
[49:10] And that had some very significant
[49:12] downstream impacts on what we made and
[49:15] how we made it.
[49:16] So, what is making for them or for
[49:20] business owners content really mean? Let
[49:22] me break this down into tactics. All
[49:24] right, so tactically I made five things.
[49:27] Number one, different packaging.
[49:30] Number two, different introductions.
[49:33] Number three, different meat.
[49:35] Number four, different visuals. And
[49:38] number five, different what I'll call
[49:39] pre-work.
[49:41] All right, so let's start with number
[49:41] one.
[49:43] So, the difference between these two
[49:45] thumbnails is going from vague to clear.
[49:48] All right, so if I looked at all the
[49:48] stuff that we did in the past, if I
[49:50] said, "What is the video on the left
[49:51] about?" you probably be like, "I a rule
[49:55] of some sort that might have to do with
[49:56] money. Not sure."
[49:58] If I said, "What's the What's the video
[50:00] on the right, the yellow background
[50:01] video?" If I were to describe it, I'd
[50:03] probably say a map or a blueprint or
[50:07] schematics of some sort that go from
[50:09] zero to a million. Okay.
[50:11] Well, guess what?
[50:13] The one on the right is is exactly that.
[50:16] The one on the left actually has nothing
[50:18] to do with what that thumbnail looks
[50:19] like. And what do you know? When people
[50:21] click on something that they don't know
[50:22] what it's about, they have a smaller
[50:24] percentage of getting something they
[50:25] actually want than if you say, "This is
[50:27] what this is about." and then they get
[50:28] exactly what they think it's about.
[50:31] So, we're going from vague to clear in
[50:33] both what it looks like, the thumbnails,
[50:36] and what we say about it, the headlines.
[50:39] And so, that's number one from a
[50:41] packaging perspective that we'll be
[50:42] changing and/or going more all in on.
[50:45] And I want to take a pause here for a
[50:47] second about this.
[50:48] There was also kind of a pervasive
[50:50] narrative in in the kind of marketing
[50:52] world is like, "You got to have
[50:52] curiosity. You got to like You don't
[50:54] want to tell them everything. You want
[50:55] them to to be able to get No. Like
[50:58] if they want that thing, they will click
[51:00] on that thing, and then you just give
[51:01] them that thing.
[51:02] And that has been a very hard lesson for
[51:04] me to learn. And so, I share it with you
[51:05] now.
[51:07] So, the second is different
[51:08] introductions. You guys feel on this?
[51:10] Okay. Good.
[51:12] Okay. Different introductions. Now, this
[51:14] one is really big.
[51:16] So, going from confirming the thumbnail
[51:19] or confirming the headline to proof. And
[51:22] this is super important. I'll explain
[51:23] the difference. So, a lot of the things
[51:25] that I learned, like many of you, if you
[51:27] are trying to get into content creation
[51:29] of any sort or media, is that you look
[51:31] at the people who are who are the
[51:32] biggest, right? And so, often times the
[51:35] biggest people in media are
[51:36] entertainers. Now, why is that? Because
[51:39] everyone gets value from entertainment.
[51:42] But there is no one thing from an
[51:44] education perspective that can provide
[51:45] value to everyone. Why? Because everyone
[51:48] already knows different stuff. So, if I
[51:50] educate a wide slice of people, there's
[51:52] still already people who know that thing
[51:54] and then do not get value. So,
[51:56] entertainment by definition will always
[51:57] be greater or larger the followings for
[52:00] those people than people who educate.
[52:02] There is no no bones about it. Like it
[52:04] is that way.
[52:05] And so, a lot of the lessons that
[52:07] entertainment teaches,
[52:09] everyone listens to because they have
[52:11] the biggest followings. But, I don't
[52:13] think the actual tactics they subscribe
[52:15] or espouse
[52:17] are correct at a tactical level. At a
[52:19] principle level, yes. And so, let me
[52:22] just say a second about what that
[52:23] principle is.
[52:25] Is that
[52:26] the person who's going to consume the
[52:27] content,
[52:28] we want to increase their perceived
[52:30] likelihood that they will get what they
[52:32] clicked. So, just like the headline and
[52:34] just like the thumbnails, now when they
[52:36] said in entertainment, you want to
[52:37] confirm it. Well, that's because most of
[52:39] the sensational entertainment is
[52:42] something crazy. And so, the likelihood
[52:44] that someone just got the click so that
[52:46] they could not do that crazy thing is
[52:48] pretty high. And so, if you want people
[52:49] to watch, you smash a Lamborghini, then
[52:52] you better have the Lamborghini next to
[52:53] you or people aren't going to believe
[52:54] that you're actually going to smash it.
[52:57] Now,
[52:58] let's flip to entertainment for a
[53:00] second. Sorry, let's slip let's switch
[53:02] to education for a second.
[53:04] If I say I'm going to teach you a
[53:06] physics thing, I'm going to teach you
[53:08] about the law of I don't even know what
[53:10] the first law of physics is, but if you
[53:12] push it, it will move. Something like
[53:13] that. Anyways,
[53:17] if I want to have proof or increase the
[53:20] perceived likelihood that they're going
[53:23] to be well taught, then what I actually
[53:25] have to do is edify the person. Why
[53:28] should I listen to you? If I'm the
[53:29] viewer, there's a zillion people that
[53:31] could write something on a board. But,
[53:33] if you're a PhD physicist, then the
[53:35] likelihood that I will listen to you and
[53:37] that I will get what I want is much
[53:38] higher. And so, in both of these
[53:40] examples, we are actually doing the same
[53:42] thing, but we do it differently if you
[53:45] want to educate. And for me, when I
[53:46] looked at my videos, and I'll explain
[53:47] the data in a second, it became really
[53:49] clear.
[53:51] And so,
[53:52] in entertainment, it's say the title
[53:54] again, and then literally show them what
[53:56] was on the thumbnail.
[53:57] In education, it's show them that you
[53:59] can do what you promised them in the
[54:01] thumbnail, and that's the difference.
[54:04] And to figure out what made intros for
[54:06] our videos work, I actually rewatched my
[54:09] top 35 educational videos. This actually
[54:12] took some time, and so let me just save
[54:14] you like a lot of hours and just give
[54:16] you the nugget.
[54:18] And so, I actually developed a new
[54:19] moniker around how to think about
[54:21] introductions for ourselves that I'm
[54:23] spreading throughout my whole team, and
[54:24] you can just steal it.
[54:27] Proof, promise, plan.
[54:30] So, I'll break down all three of these.
[54:32] So,
[54:33] all of the introductions of the best
[54:35] education videos that we had had these
[54:38] three characteristics. And I want to
[54:39] make one point about the order of these
[54:42] is that
[54:43] you can have these three mixed in any
[54:45] order you want. I would emphasize the
[54:47] one that is the most important for that
[54:49] particular piece of content. So, if you
[54:51] have something that you're making that
[54:52] you think the proof is going to be
[54:54] really important, then lead with that.
[54:56] If you have a promise that's incredibly
[54:57] important for the audience, then lead
[54:58] with that. If you have a plan that for
[55:00] some reason is going to be more
[55:02] emphasized, then lead with that. But, I
[55:04] would say that for our content for the
[55:05] most, because I'm a business educator
[55:07] about making money in general,
[55:09] most people have this big glaring sign
[55:11] above their head before they can even
[55:13] turn on the volume of their brain, which
[55:14] is why should I listen to you? And so, I
[55:16] tend to lead with proof.
[55:19] And so, proof is that you prove that you
[55:21] know what you're talking about. You give
[55:23] people a reason to believe you.
[55:25] The promise is to tell them what they're
[55:27] going to get or learn from the video.
[55:29] And the plan sets the expectations of
[55:31] what will happen next.
[55:33] So, let me give you a real-world example
[55:34] of this.
[55:35] I started this presentation with data
[55:37] that shows that I've done what I'm
[55:38] talking about. If I went up here and
[55:40] just skipped this part,
[55:42] you might be like, "Okay, all of this up
[55:43] to this point, why should I listen to
[55:45] you?" And you'd be right in thinking
[55:46] that because you have no idea who I am.
[55:48] I could just be some random dude that
[55:49] looks like a Birkenstock, slightly
[55:52] lumberjacky-ish, weirdly dressed man.
[55:54] Like, why would you listen? And you'd be
[55:56] reasonable to believe that, right? But
[55:58] if you start with that, then you're
[55:59] like, "Okay, well, he knows something."
[56:02] The promise was what I said you would
[56:04] get at the beginning. I said I learned
[56:05] six things that made money and grew my
[56:07] brand that you can use today. And I'm
[56:09] going to save you $4 million in 3 and
[56:10] 1/2 years, and you'll just get all the
[56:11] lessons that I learned. That was the
[56:13] promise. Making sense? Okay.
[56:16] And then finally, we had the plan. I
[56:18] said, "How are we going to get there?
[56:19] How am I going to complete that
[56:19] promise?" I said, "Well, there are six
[56:21] changes, and I'm going to walk through
[56:22] them." That's the plan. And so, leading
[56:24] with those things, we found got business
[56:27] owners, or the people that I'm
[56:28] interested in, to actually
[56:30] better frame and perceive and get
[56:32] educated on the content that we're
[56:33] talking about.
[56:35] And so, that's what we're changing in
[56:36] our introductions.
[56:38] Third, now let's talk about how this
[56:40] strategy changes the meat of the
[56:42] content, what we're actually like the
[56:43] the real bones, the potatoes.
[56:46] All right? Is that going from be real
[56:48] {slash} vlog stuff, cuz we have made
[56:50] that,
[56:51] to list steps and stories.
[56:53] When we looked at the educational
[56:54] content that did the best, they had more
[56:56] of the right and less of the left.
[56:59] From razzle, I would I would love to say
[57:01] to dazzle, but it really is it's just
[57:02] razzle on the left. And so, I actually
[57:04] wanted to show you different type of
[57:05] content. So, I don't want to make this
[57:06] seem like this is all YouTube-y. I just
[57:07] have like long-form video there has all
[57:10] of the elements, and some platforms
[57:11] don't have all of them. So, this You
[57:13] YouTube is a very easy platform to to
[57:14] base this off of, but this is from
[57:17] Instagram. And TikTok would function the
[57:18] same way, etc. So,
[57:21] if you look at the squares here, I just
[57:23] pulled the last 30 days of content that
[57:24] we made.
[57:25] And I looked at our bottom performing
[57:27] over the last 30 days that we posted
[57:28] that were reals,
[57:30] and then I looked at the top.
[57:32] Now, interestingly,
[57:33] it was a almost a a perfect reversal.
[57:36] So, the bottom
[57:38] 12 videos that we made, eight out of 12,
[57:42] I would say had more razzle emphasized.
[57:44] It was more about effects, a little bit
[57:46] higher production.
[57:47] And on the flip side,
[57:50] and this is what was crazy, and this is
[57:51] why I'm sharing this stuff with you
[57:52] because like I would I would literally
[57:53] never have guessed it, and that's why we
[57:55] look.
[57:56] Nine out of 12, 75% of the best videos
[58:00] we had emphasized language.
[58:02] Emphasized the actual message more than
[58:05] the production.
[58:06] And so, it was about emphasizing the
[58:07] language rather than the razzle.
[58:10] I find this very fascinating. Now, to be
[58:11] really clear, you can have really bad
[58:13] language. You have like poor, vague,
[58:15] unclear language, and it won't do well.
[58:17] And you might have razzle that just
[58:19] absolutely crushes. I just look at the
[58:21] trends of 75% on this side were this
[58:24] style or this type, and 75% that weren't
[58:27] as good were this style. Well, then
[58:29] let's do more of this and less of that.
[58:32] And so, those are the main meat changes
[58:34] that we're doing in the videos. We're
[58:35] emphasizing language. This also was true
[58:37] with longs as well. So, if I go and show
[58:39] you this real quick, language, that's on
[58:42] the screen, and that's one of our best
[58:43] videos ever, and that takes up 70 80% of
[58:46] the video is actually just words.
[58:48] Interesting, for me at least. I mean, I
[58:50] was a little offended cuz I thought I
[58:52] had a, you know, good face, but
[58:53] apparently no one cares. Uh
[58:56] So, that's what we're changing about the
[58:57] meat.
[58:59] So, let's talk about visuals. This one's
[59:00] a big one. All right. So, going from
[59:03] overproduction, and I want to be clear,
[59:05] not overproduction
[59:07] overproduction for the objective. So,
[59:09] it's not like we did like my team did
[59:11] anything wrong or anything like that.
[59:13] It's just that if we want to educate,
[59:15] sometimes production distracts from the
[59:17] objective of education.
[59:19] If the point for entertainment is to get
[59:21] someone to watch, then adding lots of
[59:22] things can be a good thing. But if
[59:25] you're trying to learn physics, and
[59:27] there's wiz bangs and pop-ups and
[59:29] changing backgrounds, it's really hard
[59:31] to learn. And if that's the throughput
[59:34] or that's the point of the video, then
[59:35] it actually detracts rather than adds.
[59:38] And so, the difference that I put in
[59:40] this example here is we have a
[59:41] background that changes colors while I'm
[59:43] teaching something. It does not help
[59:44] someone understand the subject matter
[59:46] better.
[59:46] Fundamentally, changing background color
[59:48] will not help anyone learn more. On the
[59:50] flip side, clarifying what words on a
[59:53] screen are cuz maybe my handwriting's
[59:54] not that good, would help people
[59:56] understand.
[59:57] That's the difference. So,
[59:59] overproduction to effective production.
[01:00:02] From distracting to enhancing.
[01:00:06] From visual effects to visualizing data.
[01:00:09] So, instead of having flames behind me,
[01:00:12] it's What does this look like on a
[01:00:13] chart? So, we can give relative scale.
[01:00:15] So, we have scope, so we can show
[01:00:16] changes over time.
[01:00:20] And so, that's how the visuals
[01:00:22] that did the best looked like.
[01:00:26] And then number five,
[01:00:27] let's talk about pre-work for a second.
[01:00:29] So, going from post-production to
[01:00:32] pre-search. So, instead of saying, "Hey,
[01:00:34] let's just record something and then fix
[01:00:36] it in post." Anybody's in the media side
[01:00:38] knows what I'm talking about.
[01:00:40] Four weeks of editing after, you know,
[01:00:42] almost no prep to get a video out. Well,
[01:00:45] what if we did four weeks of research
[01:00:47] and then we have almost no editing
[01:00:48] because we thought of everything ahead
[01:00:49] of time.
[01:00:50] Well, guess what?
[01:00:52] The videos where we spent, I mean, we're
[01:00:54] like the the the hour-to-hour ratio is
[01:00:56] stupid and I'll get to that in a second.
[01:00:58] But, if we spent a quarter of the time
[01:01:01] that we used to spend on post in pre, we
[01:01:04] eliminate 90%
[01:01:07] 90, maybe 95% of our post edit work and
[01:01:12] man hours. And for the business owners
[01:01:13] in the room, that's real cost.
[01:01:16] That's real savings. And for the also
[01:01:18] business owners in the room, that also
[01:01:20] means increased production. So, if I can
[01:01:22] take a in the quarter of the time and I
[01:01:23] can get almost zero time on the back
[01:01:26] end, that's four times the videos. But,
[01:01:28] not only is it four times the output,
[01:01:30] it's also higher quality for your goal
[01:01:33] and your audience. So, this is a big
[01:01:35] thing that we noticed. The videos that
[01:01:37] we spent the most time on the front end,
[01:01:38] we spent less time on the back and they
[01:01:40] did better.
[01:01:42] And so, we want to spend more time
[01:01:43] before than after.
[01:01:44] And so, this is my little quote on if
[01:01:46] you want to write something down. Uh an
[01:01:48] ounce of pre-work is worth a pound of
[01:01:50] post.
[01:01:51] So, that was my little my little take on
[01:01:53] this.
[01:01:54] And so, by focusing more on what
[01:01:55] educates and what it means, we do great
[01:01:58] and everything else distracts from that
[01:02:00] goal.
[01:02:02] And so, the those are the five things
[01:02:04] that we're changing tactically and that
[01:02:05] we're doubling down on to cater to
[01:02:07] business owners. This, at least for my
[01:02:09] audience, is what they cared about.
[01:02:12] And I happen to be in that audience and
[01:02:14] I feel that way, too. So, I'm happy
[01:02:15] about it.
[01:02:16] So, that's how we went from for us
[01:02:19] as media people to a degree cuz I've
[01:02:21] gotten into this now. Uh to for you or
[01:02:23] for your audience. And for me, that
[01:02:25] means for business owners.
[01:02:27] So, now let's talk about why dinero. All
[01:02:29] right, and this will also ruffle some
[01:02:31] feathers and rattle some cages.
[01:02:33] So, instead of talking about
[01:02:35] relationships and college and food and
[01:02:39] lifestyle
[01:02:41] I'm going to be narrowing down or
[01:02:43] doubling down on, if you will business
[01:02:46] business models
[01:02:48] business leverage
[01:02:50] and selling in a business. Notice
[01:02:52] business being in all of these videos.
[01:02:55] In all these topics.
[01:02:57] And so, that's how I'm going narrower.
[01:02:58] Very simple.
[01:03:00] Now
[01:03:01] that I'm going to go back a slide cuz I
[01:03:03] want to I went ahead on this for a
[01:03:04] second.
[01:03:07] Just like I said earlier that people who
[01:03:09] like entertainment also just want more
[01:03:11] entertainment, what we also found is
[01:03:13] that people who I'll go back real quick.
[01:03:16] People who watch relationship stuff want
[01:03:18] more relationship stuff. And
[01:03:21] as they should, that's what they clicked
[01:03:22] on. That's what they want. That makes
[01:03:24] sense. And people who want to learn
[01:03:25] about college are people trying to make
[01:03:27] a decision about college. Guess what
[01:03:28] those people probably aren't? Business
[01:03:30] owners.
[01:03:32] And people who want to learn about food,
[01:03:34] they watch other food videos. And people
[01:03:36] want about lifestyle probably watch
[01:03:37] other lifestyle videos.
[01:03:38] But for me, those are not necessarily
[01:03:40] the people that
[01:03:42] vibe the most with my stuff.
[01:03:45] And that makes sense because to be fair,
[01:03:46] this is a little bit more foreign to me.
[01:03:48] When I talk about business, I feel very
[01:03:49] comfortable. When I talk about these
[01:03:50] things,
[01:03:51] I just give what I would consider hot
[01:03:52] takes. This is my perspective.
[01:03:55] So, that is what we're doubling down on
[01:03:57] in terms of the topics that we're
[01:03:59] choosing
[01:04:00] for the content we make.
[01:04:03] So, that's number three.
[01:04:04] Let's go to number four in terms of the
[01:04:06] the things we're doubling down on.
[01:04:08] So, before this, we used to track views.
[01:04:10] This is another big one. Man, all six of
[01:04:12] these are big. Man, I'm glad I made a
[01:04:13] presentation about it.
[01:04:15] So, before this, we used to track views
[01:04:17] as our primary metric. So, I'll take a
[01:04:19] second here.
[01:04:20] Who uses Be honest. Be honest.
[01:04:22] Everybody's like likes don't You can't
[01:04:24] trade likes for for paying rent. You
[01:04:26] can't pay payroll with views. Sure.
[01:04:27] Okay, got it.
[01:04:29] Who here actually tracks something
[01:04:30] besides views?
[01:04:32] Let me say it again.
[01:04:34] Who makes views the most important
[01:04:35] metric you track?
[01:04:37] All right.
[01:04:38] Right. A lot of you. That's okay. Me,
[01:04:41] too. But I'm going to give you a good
[01:04:42] metric that you can track. And this is
[01:04:44] after pouring through Believe me, I'm
[01:04:45] I'm a big data guy. Um
[01:04:47] a metric that you might not expect.
[01:04:50] So, the main reason is that I had a
[01:04:53] 6-to-12-month deal cycle. So, I started
[01:04:55] by using views because I really had no
[01:04:57] other metric. Because for those of you
[01:04:58] don't know what I do, well, I'll explain
[01:05:00] in a second. But we had no idea what
[01:05:02] what it would do besides driving
[01:05:03] awareness. And I didn't really have any
[01:05:04] other objective. Right? But in that time
[01:05:06] period of doing a deal in every 6 to 12
[01:05:08] months, because we buy companies, that's
[01:05:09] more or less what we do, um we began
[01:05:11] seeing a much closer correlation with
[01:05:13] faster feedback metrics. And ideally in
[01:05:15] any business, you want as little latency
[01:05:17] between the metrics you track and the
[01:05:19] behavior you want to change. And so, if
[01:05:21] you want to get people to change
[01:05:23] something and you want to look at
[01:05:24] something that takes a year to get
[01:05:25] feedback, really tough to change
[01:05:26] behavior. But if you can have a metric
[01:05:29] that you can see daily changes or hourly
[01:05:31] changes, then those are things that are
[01:05:33] going to much more quickly change
[01:05:34] behavior so that you can have 100
[01:05:35] feedback loops in terms of changing and
[01:05:37] getting better than one
[01:05:39] every year.
[01:05:41] And so, besides book sales, opt-ins, and
[01:05:44] applications, there was a metric that
[01:05:46] stood out as fastest and most
[01:05:47] measurable.
[01:05:49] It was ad revenue.
[01:05:50] And this is really surprising to me.
[01:05:53] So, and I this is the point I want to
[01:05:54] make real quick is that to be clear for
[01:05:55] those of you don't know who I am, ad
[01:05:57] revenue is not how I make my money. All
[01:05:58] right, just very clearly. Um, for those
[01:06:00] of you don't know, my wife and I exited
[01:06:02] our first big company uh for $46.2
[01:06:04] million in December of 2021. You can
[01:06:06] Google it. American Pacific Group was
[01:06:08] the private equity firm. Jim Launch
[01:06:09] proceeds option to through those
[01:06:10] companies. Um, and since then we
[01:06:12] invested and bought a number of
[01:06:13] companies that have grown a lot and do
[01:06:14] over $200 million a year. So, I do media
[01:06:16] to feed a lot of different things, but I
[01:06:19] don't directly monetize the media and at
[01:06:21] like ad revenue is
[01:06:23] I'll explain why in a second is an
[01:06:25] important metric that we can use for
[01:06:26] everything else. Okay? So, these are
[01:06:29] companies that we own. Great. So, for
[01:06:31] me, I pretty much always ignored ad
[01:06:32] revenue and just saw it as something
[01:06:34] that could offset some of the cost of
[01:06:35] the immediate team. There was really
[01:06:36] nothing else.
[01:06:37] But I was wrong. It's actually so much
[01:06:39] more.
[01:06:40] So, let's let's dive into a little bit
[01:06:41] for a second like, how does ad revenue
[01:06:43] come to be? So, it comes from two
[01:06:45] things. It's number of views times
[01:06:47] revenue per views. Now, the actual term
[01:06:48] is RPMs, which is revenue per mill,
[01:06:50] which is French for 1,000, but it's
[01:06:53] number of views times the revenue that
[01:06:54] you get. Okay, per view. Fantastic. So,
[01:06:57] it takes into account, and this is why
[01:06:58] this is important because we thought
[01:06:59] views, and that was the only metric we
[01:07:01] had, but we had to have something to
[01:07:02] counter it cuz otherwise then you get
[01:07:04] views for views' sake, but we needed a
[01:07:06] quality metric with a quantity metric.
[01:07:09] Which by the way, paired metrics, if
[01:07:10] you're ever tracking something for a
[01:07:11] department, having like number of
[01:07:13] tickets resolved with rating against the
[01:07:16] the the resolution of how well those
[01:07:18] customer service reps resolved, paired
[01:07:19] metrics allow you to get to the best or
[01:07:22] most effective throughput for any
[01:07:23] department. And I just didn't know
[01:07:25] enough about media to find out what our
[01:07:27] paired metric was. And this happens to
[01:07:30] be a single metric that pairs both. And
[01:07:32] so it takes account the quality of the
[01:07:34] audience, which for me was business
[01:07:35] owners who have amongst the highest
[01:07:37] spending power. And so RPMs are the
[01:07:39] highest. Now for So for me, the RPMs go
[01:07:41] up, it means I'm getting more of the
[01:07:42] quality people that I want.
[01:07:45] And so this gave me and my team
[01:07:46] something that we could shoot for that
[01:07:47] balanced making videos for the right
[01:07:49] people who wanted to watch. So I mean,
[01:07:50] ideally, we absolutely want to crank
[01:07:52] views with the right people.
[01:07:54] And that's what that was able to track
[01:07:56] for us.
[01:07:58] And looking backwards, the month with
[01:08:00] the highest RPMs and ad revenue also
[01:08:02] created the most book sales, the most
[01:08:05] opt-ins, and the most business
[01:08:06] applications.
[01:08:08] And this had nothing to do with how many
[01:08:09] views we got.
[01:08:11] In fact, we did it kind of an experiment
[01:08:12] lately where we did 90 days of almost no
[01:08:15] business stuff. We just did more more
[01:08:17] edutainment and entertainment-style
[01:08:20] content, and our views went through the
[01:08:22] roof, like way up. Two, three X what
[01:08:24] we're accustomed to.
[01:08:26] But even with the increase in views, our
[01:08:29] ad revenue dropped by half.
[01:08:32] So we're actually getting the wrong
[01:08:33] people.
[01:08:34] And I share this with you so you don't
[01:08:35] have to. Real quick, I'm going to show
[01:08:36] you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero
[01:08:39] to 100 million plus that less than 1% of
[01:08:42] companies finish I've now done multiple
[01:08:44] times. And so I can say with a lot of
[01:08:45] confidence that these are the stages as
[01:08:47] headcount increases that you need to get
[01:08:49] through. And I broke each of these down
[01:08:51] by eight different functions of the
[01:08:52] business, what the constraint feels
[01:08:54] like, like what are the symptoms of it
[01:08:56] when you're going through it, and then
[01:08:57] what steps we actually took to graduate.
[01:08:59] And we've done this across software,
[01:09:01] physical products, service businesses,
[01:09:03] brick and mortar, all of this and it
[01:09:05] works. And it's my gift to you. It's
[01:09:07] absolutely free. And so the link's in
[01:09:08] the description, but you just go
[01:09:10] acquisition.com/roadmap.
[01:09:11] Just enter your info and it'll spit it
[01:09:13] right back to you all free.
[01:09:15] And so
[01:09:16] the nice thing about this from a team
[01:09:17] perspective for those of you do have
[01:09:18] larger teams and want to translate this
[01:09:20] over is that my team now has real-time
[01:09:22] access to this. So they can see every
[01:09:24] single piece of content and the ad
[01:09:26] revenue that it generates and they can
[01:09:27] quickly generate baselines in their mind
[01:09:29] of what's good and what's bad on an
[01:09:30] objective metric that really is good and
[01:09:32] bad rather than just like, "Hey, this
[01:09:34] video cranked." Yeah, but it didn't it
[01:09:35] didn't bring any of the right people. We
[01:09:37] got this thing that had 10 million
[01:09:38] views. Okay, but it drove nothing.
[01:09:41] Versus we had this video that had
[01:09:43] whatever, 100,000 views and it made more
[01:09:45] ad revenue than the one that had 10
[01:09:46] million.
[01:09:48] And we saw the corresponding increase in
[01:09:50] the metrics that matter to us.
[01:09:53] And so that's why we switched from views
[01:09:55] being the metric that we're optimizing
[01:09:56] for to ad revenue because it's a leading
[01:09:59] performance indicator. It happens almost
[01:10:01] in real time rather than something that
[01:10:03] happens in a big in arrears to give you
[01:10:05] a fancy word, later.
[01:10:07] So that's number four in terms of the
[01:10:08] things that we're doubling down on.
[01:10:11] So let's talk about the fifth one.
[01:10:13] Shorts to longs. All right, this is yet
[01:10:15] and then another big one that's going to
[01:10:17] ruffle some feathers.
[01:10:18] So for a long time the prevailing idea
[01:10:20] in content marketing was again a funnel.
[01:10:23] It's like everything's a funnel. All
[01:10:24] right.
[01:10:25] And it was believed that shorts viewers
[01:10:27] got more people to
[01:10:29] then watch longs and then those long
[01:10:32] viewers would then translate into
[01:10:34] becoming customers, right? So
[01:10:35] people watch shorts and then they watch
[01:10:37] longs and they give you money, right?
[01:10:39] That was kind of the prevailing thought.
[01:10:41] But again, when we looked at the data,
[01:10:43] it looked more like this.
[01:10:45] Shorts viewers
[01:10:47] watch more shorts.
[01:10:49] And long viewers watch more longs. And
[01:10:52] customers buy more customers.
[01:10:54] >> [laughter]
[01:10:55] >> And so the point is that that these are
[01:10:57] different audiences, and I will make a
[01:10:58] note here that
[01:11:01] this can change my platform.
[01:11:03] So,
[01:11:04] I might be a long viewer on one platform
[01:11:06] and a shorts viewer on another.
[01:11:09] And where I do think the magic happens
[01:11:10] is where you can have shorts in one
[01:11:12] thing, and so someone finds you on
[01:11:15] TikTok,
[01:11:16] but then they are a longs viewer on
[01:11:18] YouTube, and then they watch your longs
[01:11:20] there.
[01:11:21] So, I do think there's an element there,
[01:11:23] but not the way the narrative goes.
[01:11:25] And so for us, longs drive a lot more
[01:11:27] conversions than shorts. Conversions
[01:11:29] being book sales, opt-ins, and
[01:11:31] applications, all right? And
[01:11:32] business-related content,
[01:11:33] unsurprisingly, brings more business
[01:11:35] owners than not business-related
[01:11:37] content. And so we are going to double
[01:11:39] down on more longs about that stuff.
[01:11:44] And change our short strategy to keep
[01:11:45] the volume the same, but focus more on
[01:11:47] business overall.
[01:11:49] And again,
[01:11:50] people watch differently on different
[01:11:51] platforms.
[01:11:53] So, making shorts in order for people to
[01:11:56] on a different platform watch longs
[01:11:57] still carries as far as we know.
[01:11:59] So, despite the mega obsession with
[01:12:01] shorts that has kind of prevailed for
[01:12:02] the last few years because it was a new,
[01:12:04] you know, format of content, we're
[01:12:06] putting now more emphasis on longs
[01:12:07] overall. For now,
[01:12:10] as far as we have data.
[01:12:12] So, that's number five.
[01:12:15] Now, let's talk about the sixth one that
[01:12:17] I'm going all in on.
[01:12:18] Assume more to assume nothing.
[01:12:21] All right, so what does this mean?
[01:12:23] So, let's start with assume more and
[01:12:24] what what that what that really means
[01:12:26] broken down. So, assume more means I
[01:12:28] made content assuming people already
[01:12:30] knew me.
[01:12:32] Okay?
[01:12:34] So, here's an example.
[01:12:36] The Alex Hormozi guide to haters. I
[01:12:38] might be like, if I don't know who Alex
[01:12:39] Hormozi is or I've never seen that face
[01:12:41] before,
[01:12:42] why do I care?
[01:12:44] If I see the day in the life of Alex
[01:12:45] Hormozi, yet again, I assume everyone
[01:12:48] knows me in this. I'm I'm sharing these
[01:12:50] mistakes with you as far as I'm
[01:12:51] concerned for getting new people into my
[01:12:53] world. It wasn't made, I assumed, like
[01:12:56] everybody's going to know me.
[01:12:57] The Alex Hormozi diet.
[01:13:00] Everyone knows me. No, they're like, who
[01:13:01] is this guy?
[01:13:02] Right? And here's why this matters. If
[01:13:04] you want your content to bring people
[01:13:04] who don't know you, which is why many of
[01:13:06] you guys make content,
[01:13:07] then you can't assume they do.
[01:13:10] And so this is what this looks like
[01:13:11] tactically. From a headlines
[01:13:13] perspective, if I were to remake these
[01:13:14] today, I might try a first crack at
[01:13:17] business influencer crushes haters and
[01:13:19] shows how you can, too.
[01:13:20] Okay. So now, if I'm clicking, I would
[01:13:22] understand at least that this guy is a
[01:13:25] business influencer of some sort, and he
[01:13:26] crushes haters. Okay, why I might want
[01:13:27] to see haters get crushed.
[01:13:29] Uh day in the life of $200 million per
[01:13:31] year CEO. Okay. Now, the jet tells this
[01:13:33] me that this Alex Hormozi from the the
[01:13:35] first one before Alex Hormozi's maybe
[01:13:36] rich, or maybe he can afford a private
[01:13:37] jet, but now I know he's a CEO, cuz I
[01:13:40] could be a rapper. I could be, more
[01:13:41] realistically, when I walk around in the
[01:13:43] place that I live, all the people that
[01:13:45] in my community assume that I'm a
[01:13:46] football player.
[01:13:48] It's the number one thing they're like,
[01:13:49] "So you uh play football or you on the
[01:13:50] hockey team?" And uh I
[01:13:52] I say no. I can No, nothing wrong with
[01:13:54] that, but no, that's not what I do. Um
[01:13:56] and then, the third one there, Alex
[01:13:58] Hormozi diet, 16-hour work day, six-pack
[01:13:59] diet for business owners, whatever. The
[01:14:01] point is is that we actually make it
[01:14:03] welcoming to everyone.
[01:14:07] And so here's how we do this tactically
[01:14:08] within the content itself.
[01:14:10] So, we go from they know me to
[01:14:13] introducing yourself every time. So
[01:14:15] earlier, I was like, "I'm Alex Hormozi,
[01:14:16] this is what I do, this is the the the
[01:14:18] the subscribers I've gotten, whatever."
[01:14:20] We introduce ourselves.
[01:14:22] Two,
[01:14:23] they know why they should listen to me.
[01:14:25] Tell people why they should listen to
[01:14:27] you every time.
[01:14:29] Three, the inside jokes. You know how I
[01:14:31] get. No, I don't know how you get.
[01:14:32] Please fully explain the reference,
[01:14:33] because that references another piece of
[01:14:35] content that I haven't seen, cuz this is
[01:14:36] the first video I've seen from you. And
[01:14:38] if you tell an inside joke, and someone
[01:14:41] doesn't understand the inside joke,
[01:14:42] guess where they are? On the outside.
[01:14:45] And guess where people don't want to be?
[01:14:46] On the outside. And guess where people
[01:14:48] spend money? On the inside.
[01:14:52] And number four, going from acting like
[01:14:54] you're already friends to pretending
[01:14:56] everything goes to people who have no
[01:14:58] idea who you are.
[01:15:00] And when you make content so people who
[01:15:02] don't know you can enjoy it,
[01:15:04] more do.
[01:15:07] And for those of you who are worried,
[01:15:08] cuz I can already hear the thoughts that
[01:15:09] are coming up. So, let me just address
[01:15:10] those right now. I see you.
[01:15:14] I'm going to lose retention if I
[01:15:15] introduce myself. Okay, well, let's play
[01:15:17] the equal opposite. Would you rather
[01:15:19] fewer people know who you are or more
[01:15:21] people who have no clue?
[01:15:24] Because on one hand, we have some people
[01:15:26] who know you. And on the other hand, we
[01:15:27] have lots of people who also don't know
[01:15:29] you.
[01:15:29] So, you're in the exact same position
[01:15:31] you were before.
[01:15:33] Two.
[01:15:34] Well, aren't people going to get sick of
[01:15:36] this? You're going to keep saying your
[01:15:37] name every time or keep introducing
[01:15:39] yourself? Well, from what I can tell,
[01:15:42] warm people like the reminders and cold
[01:15:44] people need the introduction.
[01:15:47] And as a total side note,
[01:15:49] this is a fun little experiment for
[01:15:51] everyone here. You can run this when you
[01:15:52] leave here.
[01:15:54] If Who here actually Who here actually
[01:15:56] has posted content in the last year?
[01:15:58] Okay, good. Okay. Good. For a second, I
[01:16:00] was like, this would have been really
[01:16:01] bad if no one had raised their hand.
[01:16:02] Fantastic. Okay.
[01:16:04] I want you to look at last year,
[01:16:06] and I want you to look at your number
[01:16:07] one piece of content. And this is what I
[01:16:09] want you to do.
[01:16:10] Just post it again.
[01:16:14] And then let me know how it does. And I
[01:16:16] will bet you that it does
[01:16:18] just as well or better than the stuff
[01:16:21] that you're posting right now. And let
[01:16:23] me tell you one reason why I believe
[01:16:24] that to be true. Because if you have
[01:16:26] been posting consistently, guess what's
[01:16:27] also happened?
[01:16:29] More people have entered your audience.
[01:16:31] And guess what they haven't seen? That
[01:16:33] amazing piece of content that everyone
[01:16:35] from last year said was the number one
[01:16:37] best thing you ever made. And you know
[01:16:38] what you said? New people, you don't get
[01:16:40] that. That was only for my old folks. My
[01:16:42] OG's, they only get that. No, you got to
[01:16:44] reintroduce some of the stuff, your
[01:16:45] greatest hits. Got to bring that stuff
[01:16:47] in so that the new people also know what
[01:16:49] your greatest hits are. So that the lore
[01:16:51] continues to compound and grow.
[01:16:53] So,
[01:16:54] number three.
[01:16:56] And this one are sub point. And this is
[01:16:58] one for me personally. I follow a bunch
[01:17:00] of quote accounts. I you know, I I like
[01:17:02] comedy and philosophy and like fighting.
[01:17:04] Those are like kind of categories that I
[01:17:05] follow and gym equipment.
[01:17:08] And so I get quotes a lot on my
[01:17:09] newsfeed. But you know what happens when
[01:17:12] I see a quote from
[01:17:14] Sophocles or Epictetus yet again that
[01:17:17] reminds me that I should just toughen up
[01:17:19] and keep going?
[01:17:20] I like the reminder. I'm not like
[01:17:22] Epictetus God, you lived 4,000 years ago
[01:17:25] like get over yourself. No, he's not
[01:17:27] making new content but guess what people
[01:17:28] still post it and people still read it
[01:17:31] because we need to be reminded more than
[01:17:33] we need to be taught.
[01:17:34] At least I do.
[01:17:38] To give a little tactical one on this
[01:17:39] for mainstream cuz this is what might
[01:17:40] resonate for some of the older people in
[01:17:41] the crowd.
[01:17:42] There was this thing called television a
[01:17:43] while back used to be big. Anyways,
[01:17:45] instead of having it on your phone, it
[01:17:46] was like this big screen on a wall. You
[01:17:48] had a it's a whole thing. Anyways, I
[01:17:49] won't get into it.
[01:17:51] It's like floppy disk. Regardless,
[01:17:52] floppy disk was okay. Anyway, so
[01:17:55] so there used to be this thing where at
[01:17:56] the beginning of every show there was a
[01:17:58] theme song, right? So they'd be like
[01:18:00] Cheers where everybody knows your name
[01:18:01] and there's always a little
[01:18:02] introduction. It says produced by and
[01:18:03] all that stuff. And if those shows
[01:18:06] that's been gazillions of dollars on
[01:18:08] testing chose to think that despite
[01:18:11] selling more advertising space, it was
[01:18:13] worth having the same exact theme song
[01:18:17] and introduction for the show, don't you
[01:18:19] think it might be worth that for us too?
[01:18:22] And here's an interesting thing, the
[01:18:23] last thing. Positive associations and
[01:18:24] six. If you actually get sing-songy
[01:18:27] about how you introduce yourself or the
[01:18:28] things that you relate to you, it starts
[01:18:30] to become something that people expect
[01:18:32] and then they start associating it with
[01:18:33] all the positive other experiences they
[01:18:35] had with you. So if I always introduce
[01:18:37] something a certain way and then I
[01:18:38] deliver value afterwards, they associate
[01:18:40] the introduction with the value. And
[01:18:42] guess who else do they associate that
[01:18:43] with? You.
[01:18:48] And so,
[01:18:50] for those of you who are concerned, you
[01:18:52] can add variety to this. And I want to
[01:18:53] show you a cool little real-world
[01:18:55] example of this.
[01:18:57] So, The Simpsons has the
[01:18:58] longest-standing show to my knowledge
[01:19:00] that has existed on television.
[01:19:03] And the introduction is the same now.
[01:19:05] Bart would be like 70 by now or whatever
[01:19:07] his his actual age would be if it was
[01:19:08] actually humans. But it isn't, right?
[01:19:11] And every introduction has Bart at some
[01:19:13] point in detention writing something on
[01:19:15] the board.
[01:19:16] For those of you don't know The
[01:19:17] Simpsons, every one of the introductions
[01:19:20] actually changes.
[01:19:23] >> [snorts]
[01:19:25] >> Every one of them.
[01:19:27] And so, they still have the introduction
[01:19:29] that has all the positive associations
[01:19:31] with the funny times and the humor and
[01:19:33] the laughs that you've had with the
[01:19:34] show.
[01:19:36] But,
[01:19:37] they introduce a tiny bit of variety
[01:19:39] into them to keep it interesting. And
[01:19:40] then what happens is people look forward
[01:19:43] to these introductions cuz they want to
[01:19:44] find the Easter egg. The real fans now
[01:19:47] get catered to and the new fans don't
[01:19:50] know about it yet, but they will. And
[01:19:52] so, now you actually serve both sides of
[01:19:54] the audience, the people who know you
[01:19:55] and the people who first who are just
[01:19:57] coming cold.
[01:20:00] And so, that's it. Small variation, same
[01:20:02] introduction, you let the new people in,
[01:20:05] and you give something to the the people
[01:20:06] who already know you.
[01:20:08] So,
[01:20:10] title it like they don't know you,
[01:20:11] introduce yourself, say why they should
[01:20:13] listen, prioritize the content that
[01:20:15] makes sense for strangers,
[01:20:16] deprioritizing the vlogs, the hot takes,
[01:20:18] the opinions because
[01:20:21] if you can serve both audiences, serve
[01:20:22] both.
[01:20:23] Let the new people in rather than have a
[01:20:25] wall they have to jump over. Let them in
[01:20:27] on the joke. Fully explain the
[01:20:29] references that that make, make all
[01:20:31] jokes inside jokes for everyone.
[01:20:35] And then finally, mentally act as though
[01:20:37] you're always talking to a stranger
[01:20:38] because if the content does well,
[01:20:41] you are.
[01:20:44] At least, that's what I'm going to be
[01:20:46] doing.
[01:20:47] And so that's the six big changes that
[01:20:48] we're doubling down on.
[01:20:50] And so now that we covered those changes
[01:20:51] in my strategy, I just want to get real
[01:20:52] for a second.
[01:20:54] Everything has a cost.
[01:20:56] And it's not that other types of media
[01:20:58] or other topics or other formats don't
[01:21:00] work. Obviously, we had a smorgasbord.
[01:21:02] We had a huge variety, a cornucopia,
[01:21:04] myriad
[01:21:05] content types
[01:21:07] that we did over the last 40-ish months.
[01:21:09] And obviously, we had 7.8 million
[01:21:11] subscribers and 2 billion views during
[01:21:13] that time period in a niche audience of
[01:21:15] business owners. Pretty good.
[01:21:17] And so it's not to say that other things
[01:21:18] don't work.
[01:21:21] I'd even say that my mess-ups also
[01:21:23] worked to a certain a small degree. It's
[01:21:25] just that they didn't work as well as
[01:21:26] something else might have.
[01:21:28] And so the game, at least as I see it in
[01:21:30] entrepreneur entrepreneurship, is
[01:21:32] figuring out what's my biggest bang for
[01:21:33] buck.
[01:21:34] Right? What's the content that gets me
[01:21:35] the most of everything? Because you only
[01:21:37] have limited resources. You have time,
[01:21:39] money, energy, you put it into your
[01:21:40] team, and that goes onto the social
[01:21:42] media or the media that you that you
[01:21:43] market on, and then that has output. And
[01:21:45] so if you can become more efficient with
[01:21:47] the inputs you get, you get more output
[01:21:49] on the other side.
[01:21:50] And so the question becomes, with the
[01:21:52] resources I have, how can I maximize the
[01:21:54] number of the right people who find out
[01:21:56] about my stuff?
[01:21:58] And so this is something that I live by.
[01:22:01] Anything works better than nothing. So
[01:22:02] raise your hand right now if you haven't
[01:22:04] made a piece of content in 90 days.
[01:22:06] Okay. Just do something. Because if you
[01:22:09] do something, you will do better than
[01:22:11] what you're currently doing.
[01:22:14] Two.
[01:22:15] Some things work better than others.
[01:22:18] And three,
[01:22:20] nothing works forever.
[01:22:24] And so the requirement of the
[01:22:25] entrepreneur is to start doing
[01:22:26] something, see what works better, and
[01:22:29] then do as much of that as they possibly
[01:22:31] can for as long as they can until it
[01:22:34] slows down, and then figure out what the
[01:22:36] next thing to do is.
[01:22:38] And then do as much as they can of that.
[01:22:41] So, is that helpful in terms of
[01:22:42] understanding content and media? Yes.
[01:22:45] Awesome.
[01:22:46] Do you feel like you got at least one
[01:22:47] lesson without the scars saved at least
[01:22:48] a tiny percentage of the $4 million that
[01:22:50] I spent learning what didn't work so I
[01:22:51] could show you these six things that do?
[01:22:53] Okay, good.
[01:22:55] Would you like more stuff like this?
[01:22:58] Okay.
[01:23:00] Well, then I've got a bunch of free
[01:23:01] stuff that I can give you to help you
[01:23:02] grow your brand and make some money.
[01:23:03] That'd be all right?
[01:23:04] Okay.
[01:23:06] So, if you're just starting a business
[01:23:07] right now, raise your hand.
[01:23:09] Okay, this is for you.
[01:23:11] I'm the co-founder of the school games.
[01:23:13] Inside you'll find courses, full-day
[01:23:14] trainings, the easiest business model
[01:23:15] they know how to use this this media
[01:23:17] stuff cuz it's one thing to just say
[01:23:19] like, "Oh, great. I just watched this
[01:23:21] whole thing on media. Now do I do?"
[01:23:23] Well, this gives you somewhere to
[01:23:24] actually practice it like a sandbox. You
[01:23:26] can learn it, and you learn by doing.
[01:23:28] This is one of the lowest stakes way to
[01:23:30] make money, get your first dollar across
[01:23:31] the finish line. And so, fun fact,
[01:23:33] something I'm very proud of is that
[01:23:34] right now 30.44% of people who finish
[01:23:36] their first month make their first
[01:23:37] dollar online by starting an online
[01:23:39] community.
[01:23:40] I think that's pretty cool.
[01:23:43] And so, you can start that for free by
[01:23:44] going to school.com/games. All right?
[01:23:47] Tell them I sent you.
[01:23:49] So, that's for everybody. Raise your
[01:23:50] hand if you're
[01:23:51] starting a business right now. Okay,
[01:23:53] that's for you.
[01:23:54] Now, if you're a little further along in
[01:23:56] your business journey, I've got free
[01:23:57] stuff for you, too. All right? Trying to
[01:23:58] feel like Santa Claus today.
[01:24:00] I wrote these two books right now which
[01:24:02] have 25,000 five-star reviews and they
[01:24:03] sold a million plus copies.
[01:24:05] And I made courses for each of those
[01:24:07] books that are free.
[01:24:09] On my site, you go to
[01:24:10] acquisition.com/training. So, if you
[01:24:12] like this stuff, you want to learn about
[01:24:13] offers, learn more about advertising,
[01:24:14] learn about getting leads, paid ads,
[01:24:16] content, all of that stuff so that you
[01:24:17] can start making money within your
[01:24:19] business or scale it from wherever you
[01:24:20] are to where you want to go, I've made
[01:24:21] this stuff for you. These are real
[01:24:23] courses. It's not barred anywhere. You
[01:24:24] can click there, watch them all. All
[01:24:26] right?
[01:24:29] See, I put that for myself because this
[01:24:30] is how I roll. I get in the Get in the
[01:24:31] zone. So, otherwise, you guys are all
[01:24:34] amazing. You can go there for stuff that
[01:24:37] will help you practice the stuff,
[01:24:39] actually do it in the real world.
[01:24:40] Because if you just walk away from here
[01:24:42] today
[01:24:43] and you do not execute anything, you
[01:24:45] learned nothing.
[01:24:47] And so, for the love of God, just do one
[01:24:49] of the things so that you can get a tiny
[01:24:50] percent of that $4 million and the
[01:24:52] 35,000 pieces of content and the 1,000
[01:24:54] hours that I spent recording, just do
[01:24:55] one of them so that you can take that
[01:24:56] lesson for you. Thank you, guys.
[01:24:59] >> [applause]
[01:25:02] >> Now, building your personal brand can
[01:25:03] sometimes be overwhelming. So, I want to
[01:25:05] help you cut through the noise and give
[01:25:06] you one more quick tactic that's helped
[01:25:08] me grow my audience. I'm about to teach
[01:25:09] you a rarely used method that I used to
[01:25:12] grow my audience by 5 million people
[01:25:15] [music] in under 24 months. And the
[01:25:17] crazy thing is is 24 months ago, I had
[01:25:19] less than 10,000 followers and I knew
[01:25:20] nothing about YouTube, TikTok,
[01:25:22] Instagram, Twitter, any of these other
[01:25:24] platforms. And the reason that I was
[01:25:27] able to catapult to, you know, a top 1%
[01:25:29] creator in that 24-month period is using
[01:25:32] this method that for some reason, no one
[01:25:34] really talks about. Whenever I enter a
[01:25:36] new space, whether it's trying to learn
[01:25:38] a new skill, a new platform, a new
[01:25:40] anything, I realize there's a massive
[01:25:42] amount of skill deficiency that I have
[01:25:43] to overcome as fast as humanly possible.
[01:25:45] And so, I can either deploy time or I
[01:25:48] can deploy money to save myself time.
[01:25:51] So, within the world of organic content,
[01:25:52] I was like, who can I pay to shortcut my
[01:25:55] path to getting to where they are? So,
[01:25:57] on one hand, I could go to like
[01:25:58] celebrities and I did go to some of them
[01:25:59] and they would give me their strategies,
[01:26:01] but it was like very personalized and
[01:26:02] tailored to them and I didn't think it
[01:26:04] would apply to like how I run
[01:26:05] acquisition.com in my daily life. On the
[01:26:08] other hand, there was like the coaches,
[01:26:09] gurus, etc. that I could go to and I
[01:26:11] didn't want to do that because they
[01:26:12] might be using something that worked
[01:26:13] like 5 years ago, which honestly, I I
[01:26:15] all the time. They're like, "Guys,
[01:26:17] you've got to do hashtags on YouTube
[01:26:18] videos." I'm like, "What are you talking
[01:26:19] about? Like this that's that's not
[01:26:21] true." And the third option, which I
[01:26:22] ultimately went with, are advertising
[01:26:24] agencies. [music] And what an agency is
[01:26:26] is just a business that sells services
[01:26:29] of advertising on your behalf. I can pay
[01:26:32] someone to run ads for me. I can pay
[01:26:34] someone to cut, edit, and distribute
[01:26:36] content on my behalf. So, what I want to
[01:26:37] do is help you decide whether or not you
[01:26:39] should use an agency and avoid what I
[01:26:41] call the agency trap. There's different
[01:26:43] tiers of agencies. There's the guys who
[01:26:45] just make [music] stuff, and then
[01:26:46] there's the people who are real pros.
[01:26:47] Contextually here, for one brand on one
[01:26:50] platform, a small one might cost
[01:26:52] three-ish, maybe 5,000 a month. The more
[01:26:54] advanced ones are usually in the 15 to
[01:26:56] 30,000 or so a month. So, it's
[01:26:58] significantly more money. So, here's how
[01:27:00] I use agencies now and how you can, too.
[01:27:02] Phase one is I get what I would consider
[01:27:05] a basic agency. So, long before getting
[01:27:07] into YouTube, the first step I did was I
[01:27:09] hired a 3 to 5,000 or so a month agency,
[01:27:10] and they just got me to commit to doing
[01:27:12] three videos a week. They just trimmed
[01:27:14] it, which means you take out the oohs
[01:27:15] and ahs, put an intro, and a thumbnail.
[01:27:17] The main objective of that first phase
[01:27:19] was just to get the basics down, forcing
[01:27:21] me to create content on a regular
[01:27:22] cadence. Once I have more context,
[01:27:24] because I've spent 3 6 months working
[01:27:26] with them, seeing what the audience
[01:27:27] likes, then I'm like, [music] "Okay, now
[01:27:29] I want to learn everything." So, I go
[01:27:31] from beginner of learning the basics and
[01:27:33] doing the fundamentals to how do the top
[01:27:35] creators create on this platform? No
[01:27:37] business owner should change their
[01:27:38] business for one client. And so, it
[01:27:40] makes sense for both me and the small
[01:27:43] agency, or for you and a small agency,
[01:27:45] to part ways at some point when your
[01:27:47] demands for what you want exceed their
[01:27:49] capacity. So, then I work with the much
[01:27:51] better, more advanced agency who works
[01:27:53] with the top creators to learn all of
[01:27:55] the more nuanced pieces of the platform.
[01:27:58] So, rather than agree to their initial
[01:27:59] terms, which is basically pay us as long
[01:28:01] as humanly possible, and we hope you pay
[01:28:03] until you die. This is exactly what I
[01:28:05] say. Gather around.
[01:28:07] I want to do what you do in my business,
[01:28:09] but I don't know how. I'd like to work
[01:28:11] with you for 6 months so I can learn how
[01:28:13] you do it. Plus, I'll pay extra for you
[01:28:15] to break down why you make the decisions
[01:28:17] you do and the steps you take to make
[01:28:18] them. Then, after I get a good idea of
[01:28:20] how it all works, I'll start training my
[01:28:22] team on it. And once they can do it well
[01:28:23] enough, I'd like to change to a lower
[01:28:25] cost consulting agreement. This way, you
[01:28:27] can still help us if we run into
[01:28:28] problems. Are you opposed to this? When
[01:28:30] you start that way, I like it because
[01:28:31] you're starting with very clear
[01:28:32] intentions. And you're saying, "Hey, I'm
[01:28:34] going to commit to 6 months. This is
[01:28:35] what I want from you. And I'm also
[01:28:36] saying I'm going to continue to pay you
[01:28:38] after the engagement's over for a much
[01:28:39] higher leverage, much more profitable
[01:28:41] consulting engagement." So, that's what
[01:28:43] a lot of agencies would ultimately want.
[01:28:45] And if I need to pay a little bit more
[01:28:46] than the agency fee upfront, then I'm
[01:28:48] willing to do that. I also understand
[01:28:50] that as I start to train my team on it
[01:28:51] internally, there will be a period of
[01:28:52] time where I'm paying both them and my
[01:28:55] team. So, you're paying twice. The thing
[01:28:56] is is that when you do that, you're
[01:28:58] actually building the enterprise value
[01:28:59] of your business and you're building the
[01:29:01] asset that you own rather than being
[01:29:03] reliant on somebody else who eventually
[01:29:05] could, if you wanted to,
[01:29:07] cut you off and then you'd be dead in
[01:29:09] the water. Or, what more realistically
[01:29:11] happens is they gouge you and they
[01:29:13] continue to raise their price cuz they
[01:29:14] can see how much money you're making
[01:29:15] from the thing. With that new agency, we
[01:29:16] ran the same play. "Hey, we want to
[01:29:18] learn from you. We want to understand
[01:29:20] why you're picking these things. We want
[01:29:21] to understand the decision-making
[01:29:22] process, etc." I start documenting what
[01:29:25] they're doing into our processes
[01:29:27] internally. We want to start
[01:29:28] co-creating. So, they're making stuff
[01:29:30] for us and we're making stuff for us.
[01:29:32] And eventually, our stuff for us starts
[01:29:34] to be as good and eventually better than
[01:29:36] the stuff that they make for us. And it
[01:29:37] should be because I'm only one client of
[01:29:40] many to them and I'm basically renting
[01:29:42] them as fractional labor with expertise
[01:29:45] at a premium. Once your team has the
[01:29:47] same amount of expertise or more, they
[01:29:49] should be better because one, they have
[01:29:50] more time because they're going to fully
[01:29:52] allocate their time to you. And
[01:29:53] secondly, because they will always have
[01:29:55] more context on your brand than an agent
[01:29:57] will. By having more time and more
[01:29:59] context, all we have to fill is the gap
[01:30:01] of expertise. And so, once we have the
[01:30:03] expertise gap, then the in-house team
[01:30:05] should be better than the advanced team.
[01:30:08] And then at that point, you decouple and
[01:30:10] you let them go. You want to make sure
[01:30:12] that you have a clear deadline for when
[01:30:14] you want to make that transition. And
[01:30:15] this is good for a couple reasons. One
[01:30:16] is cuz it sets expectations with them.
[01:30:18] They can also see the LTV and you can
[01:30:19] talk in terms of that. Let's say it's
[01:30:21] $6,000 a month. I'm committing to
[01:30:22] $36,000. All right, so like you're going
[01:30:24] to get that from me as long as you're
[01:30:25] not an idiot. But the real real is that
[01:30:27] your team also knows that you're like,
[01:30:28] "Hey, we're one month down. We got to
[01:30:30] understand this stuff in five months.
[01:30:31] Hey, we're two months down. We got to
[01:30:33] understand this stuff in four months."
[01:30:34] And so it drives you towards the outcome
[01:30:36] of getting your team up to speed faster.
[01:30:38] Now, you have that deadline, but what if
[01:30:39] your team's not as good as theirs by the
[01:30:41] time the deadline comes? Well, in my
[01:30:43] opinion, you either need to change the
[01:30:44] people or they're not teaching
[01:30:45] everything that needs to happen. Because
[01:30:46] if their low-skilled people are doing
[01:30:48] better than your team, someone who is a
[01:30:50] problem. Either them or you. Let's
[01:30:52] assume that the people are right and
[01:30:53] maybe it's just a more complex platform,
[01:30:54] whatever. I keep going until our team
[01:30:56] matches theirs. Once our team matches
[01:30:58] theirs, then I drop it off. We downgrade
[01:30:59] it to a consulting agreement just for
[01:31:01] insurance. One or two months later, if
[01:31:02] we feel like we're not learning anything
[01:31:03] on the calls that we have from a
[01:31:05] consulting perspective, we cut it. And
[01:31:06] we do so amicably because we set that as
[01:31:08] the expectation. That's how I grew my
[01:31:10] YouTube. So now let's approach the same
[01:31:12] concept but on different platform. I
[01:31:13] didn't understand Tik Tok at all. I
[01:31:15] didn't use it. I wasn't on it. I
[01:31:17] actually had an agency reach out to me.
[01:31:19] How about which is not common for me to
[01:31:20] accept that, but they said, "Listen, you
[01:31:22] do no work." So from a value
[01:31:24] perspective, the offer was we You
[01:31:25] already have enough content out there. I
[01:31:27] can repurpose it and make shorts out of
[01:31:28] it. And I was like, "Okay, sure. If you
[01:31:29] want to do all the work and involve me
[01:31:31] at nothing and just make content for me,
[01:31:33] sounds good." And so that's what they
[01:31:34] did. And they started getting traction
[01:31:36] with the short videos and we're like,
[01:31:38] "Okay, this stuff works." And then for
[01:31:40] me, my director of brand actually had a
[01:31:42] super deep history on short form
[01:31:45] content. And so normally I would have
[01:31:47] had that second phase where I would go
[01:31:48] for that premium agency, but that
[01:31:51] individual worked at a premium agency.
[01:31:54] And so I actually bought the SOPs
[01:31:55] automatically and we were able to
[01:31:57] massively scale our output on short
[01:31:59] content within six or so months of
[01:32:02] working with that original agency. And
[01:32:04] again, we're on good terms with the
[01:32:05] person in the agency. If you set the
[01:32:06] expectation up front, which is I want to
[01:32:08] learn from you, and I want to be
[01:32:09] transparent about my intentions, and I
[01:32:11] want to eventually bring this in house
[01:32:12] because it's my belief that my team will
[01:32:14] be able to allocate more time to my
[01:32:15] thing and understand my brand better.
[01:32:16] And if they had your skills, they will
[01:32:18] be able to do more output at higher
[01:32:20] quality than you could ever do. You have
[01:32:21] to make a margin, I don't. I'm going to
[01:32:23] cover costs and get five times more
[01:32:24] output. This is what I believe has
[01:32:26] married the best parts of agency and the
[01:32:29] best part of building an enterprise and
[01:32:30] making a valuable business and avoided
[01:32:33] the agency trap that so many people fall
[01:32:35] into, myself included. So, the first
[01:32:37] agency experience I ever had was
[01:32:38] actually really good. I then worked with
[01:32:40] like 10 more agencies, and all of them
[01:32:43] were terrible. And this is the exact
[01:32:44] process of what happened. So, reading
[01:32:46] directly from 100 million dollar leads,
[01:32:48] step one, they got me excited about all
[01:32:49] the new leads they would bring. Step
[01:32:51] two, I'd go through an onboarding
[01:32:53] process that felt valuable and sometimes
[01:32:54] was. Step three, they assigned their
[01:32:57] best senior rep to my account. Step
[01:32:59] four, I saw some results. Step five,
[01:33:01] they moved my senior rep to the newest
[01:33:02] customer. Step six, a junior rep starts
[01:33:05] managing my account. My results suffer.
[01:33:07] Step seven, I complain. Step eight, the
[01:33:09] senior rep would come back once in a
[01:33:10] while to make me feel better. Step nine,
[01:33:12] the results still never got back to
[01:33:14] where they were before, and I'd
[01:33:15] eventually cancel. Step 10, I'd search
[01:33:17] for another agency and repeat the cycle
[01:33:18] of insanity. Step 11, for the zillionth
[01:33:20] time, start wondering why I wasn't
[01:33:22] getting results like the first time.
[01:33:24] So, how do you decide if using an agency
[01:33:26] is right for you? First off, do you have
[01:33:27] more money or more time? If you don't
[01:33:29] have any money, then you got to learn
[01:33:30] it, and it's going to take time. And you
[01:33:31] know what? That's part of life. Usually,
[01:33:33] you master one platform, you get some
[01:33:35] success, you get a little bit cash flow,
[01:33:36] and then you can more quickly pay to
[01:33:38] learn the other ones. You pay down your
[01:33:39] ignorance assets faster. If you have the
[01:33:41] money, then for me, it's always worth
[01:33:42] paying down that debt. And that process
[01:33:45] is how we approached LinkedIn, how we
[01:33:47] approached podcasts, how we approached
[01:33:48] paid ads, all of them. I run the same
[01:33:51] playbook. But when it comes to building
[01:33:52] a strong personal brand, you need to
[01:33:53] build influence, not just have views.
[01:33:56] So, here's how to do that. We got 32.7
[01:33:58] million views on YouTube this month.
[01:34:00] Here's how. So, I posted 35,000 pieces
[01:34:03] of content this year. We did a $100
[01:34:04] million book launch for $100 million
[01:34:06] money models in 72 hours or 3 days. We
[01:34:08] did over $100 million in sales. The
[01:34:09] issue that most people struggle with is
[01:34:11] that you're making not enough content,
[01:34:12] number one, and the types of content
[01:34:13] that you're making are not attracting
[01:34:15] the types of customers you want. The
[01:34:16] promise that I have for you today is
[01:34:17] that I will show you a framework that I
[01:34:19] have called SPCL, like special if you
[01:34:21] want, but it's how to build influence
[01:34:23] rather than how to get as many views as
[01:34:25] possible or anything like that. All
[01:34:26] right? But it's a four-part framework,
[01:34:28] and I want to break down each of the
[01:34:29] four components for you so that you can
[01:34:30] think about how you want to approach
[01:34:32] making content, all right, and building
[01:34:34] a brand in general. SPCL, these are
[01:34:36] letters, and hopefully overhead cam
[01:34:37] works all right. So, S P C L. So, what
[01:34:42] do these actually stand for? All right?
[01:34:44] So, number one is status.
[01:34:46] And this is why you hear me talk about
[01:34:48] proof so much. But how do you define
[01:34:49] status from an operational perspective?
[01:34:51] For those of you who are new to the
[01:34:52] channel, I like to operationalize
[01:34:53] things, meaning that like I like to look
[01:34:54] at objective reality and describe how
[01:34:56] you would see with your eyes rather than
[01:34:58] try and put a whole bunch of like
[01:34:59] emotional words around stuff because
[01:35:01] these are the like that type of language
[01:35:03] is what confused me for a very long time
[01:35:04] when I was coming up, and it was only
[01:35:06] after I started defining things by what
[01:35:07] I could see, what I could observe, did
[01:35:10] reality feel like sharper, more crisp to
[01:35:12] me, and my ability to predict what was
[01:35:13] going to happen next increase by a lot.
[01:35:15] And so, this is why I I talk in this
[01:35:17] way. So, how do I find status? So,
[01:35:19] status is someone who controls
[01:35:21] reinforcers in a given environment. So,
[01:35:23] that's a little bit fancy word, but
[01:35:24] fundamentally, if you control the good
[01:35:26] stuff that people want, then you will
[01:35:28] have status no matter what it is, right?
[01:35:30] And so, the simplest example I have is
[01:35:31] like if you go to a bar, and it's a busy
[01:35:34] bar, and there's a bartender, and you
[01:35:36] have to get the bartender's attention in
[01:35:37] order to get a drink or booze, that guy
[01:35:39] in that moment has status. He controls a
[01:35:41] scarce resource, right? But if that guy
[01:35:44] walks out of the bar, no longer
[01:35:45] controlling that scarce resource, he
[01:35:46] does not have the same status or even
[01:35:48] close to it, right? Like outside of the
[01:35:50] bar, he's not getting tips every every
[01:35:51] single 5 seconds when he like moves his
[01:35:53] hands a little bit and like says
[01:35:54] something nice. People aren't waving
[01:35:55] money at him as he walks in the street.
[01:35:56] Of course not. It's because he has
[01:35:58] status in one condition and he doesn't
[01:35:59] have another. Now, what's interesting
[01:36:00] about all four of these elements I'm
[01:36:02] going to break down, they all can work
[01:36:04] independently, but the idea is that you
[01:36:06] want all four to be stacked together.
[01:36:07] And this is what gives you the most
[01:36:09] influence, right? So, like any of these
[01:36:10] four on their own would give you
[01:36:11] influence. Like that bartender, if he
[01:36:12] just has that, he would have some level
[01:36:14] of influence. And I'll give you a
[01:36:15] different example of this. If a kid
[01:36:16] inherits money, right? They're going to
[01:36:19] have uh status, right? Like if you just
[01:36:21] if you have money, even if you didn't
[01:36:22] earn it, even if you didn't anything, if
[01:36:24] you have money, you will have some
[01:36:26] degree of status because you control
[01:36:27] something other people want, period.
[01:36:29] That's how it works, all right? But,
[01:36:31] would that kid who has money have the
[01:36:33] same status as a kid who has money who
[01:36:37] also gave you, you know, 10 different
[01:36:40] crypto coin picks that all popped off,
[01:36:43] right? Well, if he gave you 10 different
[01:36:44] picks and you followed them and they all
[01:36:46] popped off, how much more influence
[01:36:48] would that person have over them saying,
[01:36:50] "Hey, you should put money in this." or
[01:36:51] "Hey, you should, you know, give me
[01:36:52] money for XYZ." or whatever it is.
[01:36:53] Obviously, I'm talking money cuz I'm I'm
[01:36:54] a business person first, but like think
[01:36:56] about how much more influence version
[01:36:58] two would have with just two of those
[01:36:59] things versus version one. That's the
[01:37:01] difference. But, if you have all four,
[01:37:02] that's when you get you become super
[01:37:03] sad. So, status is number one, so you
[01:37:05] control scarce resources. Power is
[01:37:07] number two. I would say if I had to only
[01:37:09] pick one, I would pick power and I'll
[01:37:11] explain why.
[01:37:13] Power comes from something in the
[01:37:15] behavioral dynamics world called say-do
[01:37:17] correspondence. What that means is if I
[01:37:20] say something and then you do it and
[01:37:22] then a good thing occurs, a reinforcing
[01:37:24] event happens afterwards, you are more
[01:37:26] likely to comply with a following
[01:37:28] request, right? So, said differently,
[01:37:31] I give you the example of the guy who
[01:37:33] says, "Hey, here's 10 stock picks, you
[01:37:34] buy them." and then a good thing
[01:37:35] happens. The thing goes up. Great. So,
[01:37:37] that person has status and power, which
[01:37:39] is why they are more influential than
[01:37:40] the trust fund kid who just has money.
[01:37:42] And so, to the same degree, for many of
[01:37:44] you who are trying to make content, one
[01:37:46] is like, okay, status, I want to
[01:37:48] demonstrate that I control a scarce
[01:37:50] resource that some people might want,
[01:37:51] right?
[01:37:52] And so, what makes this a little bit
[01:37:54] more muddy is that sometimes one event
[01:37:57] can check multiple boxes. And so, I'll
[01:37:59] give you a simple example. When we
[01:38:01] launched the book, we did 100 million
[01:38:02] plus in sales. That in and of itself, me
[01:38:04] having money from the event gives me
[01:38:06] status. Me saying, "Hey, you can launch
[01:38:10] stuff in this way." gives me
[01:38:11] credibility, right? Because I show that
[01:38:13] I have an event I've something that has
[01:38:15] happened as a result of me doing it that
[01:38:17] gives me third-party credibility.
[01:38:18] There's something that you can observe
[01:38:19] with your eyes, right? The reason that
[01:38:20] my ads do well when I have my, you know,
[01:38:22] $10 million building behind me is like,
[01:38:24] "Oh, well, that's hard to fake, right?"
[01:38:26] And so, you have credibility there. And
[01:38:27] so, one event like selling a company can
[01:38:30] give you money, it can give you
[01:38:31] credibility, and then if I give people
[01:38:33] directions on how they can do things
[01:38:34] that are similar, and then good things
[01:38:36] happen, then all of a sudden you get
[01:38:37] power. And then the last is likeness. I
[01:38:39] know I'm skipping around, but hey, we're
[01:38:41] live. We're having a good time. All
[01:38:42] right? And so, credibility is number
[01:38:44] three.
[01:38:46] And I'm going to go into more detail on
[01:38:47] all of these. All right? And then
[01:38:48] likeness.
[01:38:50] So, what's likeness? So, likeness is
[01:38:52] that you see some This is some people
[01:38:55] say relatability. This can be both
[01:38:57] psychological in terms of you share
[01:38:58] similar values with this person. You
[01:39:00] like you like their vibe, whatever you
[01:39:01] want to say, right? You like their
[01:39:02] behavior set and it and that behavior
[01:39:04] set matches to people who have been
[01:39:05] positive in your life in the past or
[01:39:06] they literally just look like you,
[01:39:08] right? So, like Leila and I could talk
[01:39:09] about the exact same stuff, but she's a
[01:39:12] girl and so, she's going to have more
[01:39:13] chicks who follow her than me. And for
[01:39:15] the few ladies who do follow me, I
[01:39:16] appreciate you. I really do.
[01:39:18] But I have like an 89% male audience.
[01:39:21] And so, maybe it's it's because of the
[01:39:22] topic, but I would think, you know, at
[01:39:24] my onset I think, "Oh, it's because I
[01:39:25] talk about money and I talk about
[01:39:26] business, that's why I have a more male
[01:39:27] audience." But Leila I think is like 54%
[01:39:29] female. And she talks about almost
[01:39:30] exclusively money and business.
[01:39:32] Obviously, she talks about some mindset
[01:39:32] stuff, too. But I I say this to say,
[01:39:35] "Okay, if we have these four things and
[01:39:37] these are the things that create
[01:39:39] influence." And I I define influence as
[01:39:41] high likelihood of compliance with
[01:39:43] requests. So, what does that mean? So,
[01:39:45] if I say, "Hey, you know, grab my new
[01:39:47] book." Or I say, "Hey, come to this
[01:39:49] webinar." Or "Hey, I'm going live. Like,
[01:39:50] come check it out." Or "Hey, you should
[01:39:51] come to workshop." Whatever it is,
[01:39:53] right? You make some sort of
[01:39:54] solicitation. It could be like or
[01:39:55] subscribe. It doesn't matter. Like,
[01:39:56] there's levels of how cool big of an ask
[01:39:58] something is. If anybody's played like a
[01:39:59] video game, it's like you have like a
[01:40:01] roll for like Dungeons and Dragons. And
[01:40:03] it like depends on how how charismatic,
[01:40:05] how much influence you have, how high of
[01:40:07] a roll or how low of a roll, rather,
[01:40:08] you'd need in order to be successful
[01:40:10] with the request, right? And so, if you
[01:40:13] want to stack that stat for you, then if
[01:40:15] you want to min-max your influence, if
[01:40:17] you will, then you want to stack all
[01:40:18] four of these things. Okay, you're like,
[01:40:20] "Okay, I think I'm I'm following with
[01:40:21] this." So, how does this relate to
[01:40:22] content? So, first off, starting from
[01:40:24] the back, likeness,
[01:40:25] I think so much more of it is just like
[01:40:27] just be you. There's zero ROI in trying
[01:40:31] to be or act in a way that is different
[01:40:34] than who you are. It's It's a relatively
[01:40:35] trite message, but like most people are
[01:40:38] NPCs. Most people say pre-recorded
[01:40:40] scripts. They look at like the four
[01:40:42] different outfit, you know, combinations
[01:40:43] that exist for different kind of mental
[01:40:46] stereotypes. It's like, "Oh, yeah, guy
[01:40:48] who loves barbecue and craft beers. Oh,
[01:40:51] yeah, that's that That's that archetype.
[01:40:53] I'm just going to be that archetype." Or
[01:40:54] you've got like hipster bro who likes
[01:40:56] hipster [ __ ] right? Or you've got
[01:40:59] you know, like just bro, right? You've
[01:41:01] got who just like stir bro. And people
[01:41:03] Some will put me in that status, but I
[01:41:04] also like for a few years was wearing
[01:41:06] like sandals that looked like really
[01:41:08] weird. And I wore those, and that was
[01:41:10] not bro-y at all, but I like I wore them
[01:41:12] because they were super comfortable, and
[01:41:13] I didn't have to like wear socks, which
[01:41:14] is a big thing for me. Anyways. But
[01:41:15] point is just like I think what makes
[01:41:17] you unique if is if you actually lean
[01:41:19] into the the nuances that make you you
[01:41:21] and actually have a way to defend why
[01:41:23] you do what you do. Because most people
[01:41:24] don't even think about why they do what
[01:41:25] they do. And if you do things and you
[01:41:27] don't know why, it's not It's because
[01:41:29] you're following someone else's
[01:41:30] directions for your life, rather than
[01:41:31] your own.
[01:41:32] Real. Like, real. And so, so much of us
[01:41:35] have been programmed by people earlier
[01:41:37] in our lives. And I say programmed as
[01:41:38] though we were like machines, but what
[01:41:40] person do you think in your life has
[01:41:42] super high max status, power,
[01:41:44] credibility, and likeness? Maxed out
[01:41:46] earlier on in your life. It's your
[01:41:48] parents.
[01:41:49] Right? It's your parents. So, think
[01:41:50] about all four of these elements.
[01:41:51] Status. Do your parents control scarce
[01:41:54] resources, things you want? They've got
[01:41:55] money, and they've got toys that they
[01:41:57] can buy you, they've got food, they act
[01:42:00] like they control your shelter. Like
[01:42:02] they have huge amounts of status in your
[01:42:04] life cuz they control all the scarcest
[01:42:06] resources, all the things you want.
[01:42:07] These are not binaries. So, don't think
[01:42:09] like, oh, I have status, I don't have
[01:42:10] status. It's to what degree do you have
[01:42:12] status? Right? Like if somebody's got
[01:42:14] more money than you, they might have
[01:42:15] some status. If you've got $1, and
[01:42:17] someone's got 10 grand, they got more
[01:42:18] status than you, right? But if someone's
[01:42:19] a billionaire, they have way more status
[01:42:21] than the guy who's 10,000, right? So,
[01:42:23] again, think not in binaries, yes or no,
[01:42:25] but think in continuums. So, the next
[01:42:27] one is, think about your parents. Power.
[01:42:29] How many reinforcement cycles do you
[01:42:31] assume that your parents had from the
[01:42:34] time you were born? When I say
[01:42:35] reinforcement cycles, it means like they
[01:42:36] said, do this, you did that thing, and
[01:42:39] then a good thing happened. Now, you
[01:42:40] might be like, ah, I hate my dad, I hate
[01:42:41] my mom, or whatever your thing is. I
[01:42:43] don't really care. That doesn't matter
[01:42:44] for this purpose. The idea is that they
[01:42:46] probably said, don't go in the street,
[01:42:47] or don't do that, and you avoided a bad
[01:42:49] thing, or do this, and then a good thing
[01:42:51] happened, right? You tied your shoes the
[01:42:53] first time, you put the two bunny ears
[01:42:54] together, you tied your shoes, a good
[01:42:55] thing happened, they you followed their
[01:42:56] directions. Think about how many times a
[01:42:58] parent has given you directions, you
[01:43:00] followed them, and a bad thing was
[01:43:01] avoided, or a good thing happened. Many.
[01:43:03] And so, it makes sense that not only do
[01:43:04] they have a lot of status, they have a
[01:43:06] lot of power. What else do they have?
[01:43:07] Credibility. Now, this is one where I
[01:43:09] think parents sometimes might lack
[01:43:11] compared to the other things. If you
[01:43:13] have a parent who also has credibility
[01:43:14] in that specific, you know, realm of
[01:43:16] whatever it is that they're talking
[01:43:17] about, then you would have even more
[01:43:18] influence on you. And then finally, for
[01:43:20] parent,
[01:43:21] are they like you?
[01:43:23] Yeah, they literally look like you,
[01:43:25] right? And oftentimes, they share
[01:43:27] similar values to you, to a degree.
[01:43:29] Obviously, some people just go polar
[01:43:30] opposite from their parents. That's
[01:43:32] fine, but I'm talking in sweeping
[01:43:33] generalities for most people. This
[01:43:35] should at least explain or break down
[01:43:37] like why do parents have so much power
[01:43:41] over us? How much How do they have so
[01:43:43] much influence over our behaviors? You
[01:43:45] might not even want to listen to your
[01:43:46] parents. You might not even like your
[01:43:47] parents, but you can still feel that
[01:43:50] they you have to like resist their
[01:43:53] requests because you are so programmed
[01:43:56] based on these elements of behavior to
[01:43:58] comply with their requests, right? And
[01:44:00] so then the idea is how do we take these
[01:44:03] four elements, and then how do we
[01:44:05] reverse engineer these into the content
[01:44:07] that we have so that we can build up
[01:44:09] true influence? Like and again, we're
[01:44:11] defining influence as the likelihood of
[01:44:13] a compliance with the request, right?
[01:44:15] And that likelihood will depend on the
[01:44:17] nature of the request and how much your
[01:44:19] SPCL is in relation to that thing,
[01:44:22] right? If I was giving out fashion tips,
[01:44:24] I probably don't have a lot of
[01:44:25] credibility
[01:44:26] >> [laughter]
[01:44:26] >> for fashion tips, right? I don't know if
[01:44:28] I control any scarce resources around
[01:44:30] fashion. I have no I have no fashion
[01:44:31] hookups. Um I probably haven't given
[01:44:34] anyone specific fashion tips. I have no
[01:44:36] third-party anything for credibility for
[01:44:38] it, and you probably don't look like me.
[01:44:41] >> [laughter]
[01:44:42] >> And so like I probably would have very
[01:44:43] low influence. To some degree they can
[01:44:45] generalize as you go up and up and up,
[01:44:46] but um you have more influence in domain
[01:44:50] specificity. If we know these are the
[01:44:52] four things, status, power, credibility,
[01:44:53] likeness,
[01:44:54] then for each of these things in our
[01:44:56] videos, right? We want to demonstrate
[01:44:58] that we control scarce resources. And so
[01:45:00] for me, like at the very beginning, if
[01:45:01] you think about what the intro was,
[01:45:03] right? So I said, "We did, you know,
[01:45:05] 32.7 million views,
[01:45:08] and we did over 100, you know,
[01:45:10] 5.something million dollars in sales for
[01:45:12] the book launch in 72 hours." And so
[01:45:14] that's me demonstrating status. I have
[01:45:17] these things, right? Then
[01:45:19] power. So what I'm going to do in this
[01:45:21] video is I'm going to break down four
[01:45:22] things you can follow, and if you follow
[01:45:24] these things, you're going to be more
[01:45:26] likely to get people who are going to
[01:45:27] comply with your future requests. And so
[01:45:28] that means that they're not just going
[01:45:30] to watch your video, but they're going
[01:45:31] to be more likely to one, watch your
[01:45:33] next video, and if you have any kind of
[01:45:35] call to action in the video, whatever
[01:45:37] level of call to action that is for you,
[01:45:39] whether it's subscribe or like or share
[01:45:40] or or, you know, buy something that's
[01:45:42] small or, you know, set up a call or
[01:45:44] whatever it is that you sell, then this
[01:45:46] is going to be second, right? Like
[01:45:49] that you'll have included that in your
[01:45:50] content. So then, credibility is going
[01:45:52] to be the third-party stuff. So the
[01:45:54] reason that I had at my launch, for
[01:45:55] example, I had Guinness, I had to pay
[01:45:57] those judges to be on site was because I
[01:46:00] wanted to validate that the the the
[01:46:03] books that we did and the revenue that
[01:46:04] we generated was legit, right? So I had
[01:46:05] a a third party that most people
[01:46:08] respect as like a legitimate corporation
[01:46:10] that their entire business is based on
[01:46:12] trust that they validate and verify
[01:46:15] proof that these records were broken.
[01:46:17] And so that gives credibility. The
[01:46:19] likeness piece, like I said earlier, is
[01:46:20] just you being you, right? And so that's
[01:46:22] why I'm actually super pumped to do
[01:46:23] these live streams cuz this is like I
[01:46:24] honestly hate making YouTube videos.
[01:46:26] What I mean that is like staring at a
[01:46:28] camera and having like, you know,
[01:46:30] prompts to, you know, solicit me to say
[01:46:32] stuff. Like I will do it because I have
[01:46:34] a relatively high pain tolerance and
[01:46:35] I'll do what is required to get what I
[01:46:37] want, but like I'm I'm going all in on
[01:46:39] this. So if you guys are like, "What's
[01:46:40] Alex's kind of like media strategy for
[01:46:42] the future?"
[01:46:43] I'm I'm I'm focusing on two words. You
[01:46:45] can write this down. Live
[01:46:47] interactive. [music]
[01:46:48] Those are the two things that's that is
[01:46:50] describing the ACQ 3.0 or Mosey Media
[01:46:54] 3.0 vision for what's going forward.
[01:46:55] Like that is what I'm focusing on. And
[01:46:57] I'll tell you a story of why why I think
[01:46:59] this is so interesting. So I had a
[01:47:01] conversation with a a mega influencer. I
[01:47:02] don't think he would mind
[01:47:04] with Mr. Beast a few weeks ago, and we
[01:47:07] were talking about kind of like the
[01:47:08] future of media and content. One of the
[01:47:09] things that he was talking about was
[01:47:11] the soccer game that came up that they
[01:47:14] do like UK versus US. What ends up
[01:47:16] happening is that they have all these
[01:47:18] different celebrities or influencers
[01:47:19] from different platforms, right? And so
[01:47:22] starting from the lowest, the lowest
[01:47:24] people on this little totem pole, they
[01:47:25] would walk out in the stadium and this
[01:47:27] became the kind of the de de facto like
[01:47:29] measuring stick for who had who had the
[01:47:30] most cool points, right? These are the
[01:47:32] A-listers. And so, this is your typical
[01:47:34] kind of celebs from like movies and like
[01:47:36] '90s and the 2000s or whatever, right?
[01:47:37] People like they recognize cuz they're
[01:47:39] celebs, but like they don't have like
[01:47:40] huge I guess they have some media
[01:47:42] presence, but it's more like traditional
[01:47:43] media. The level of applause for these
[01:47:44] guys was almost nothing. Barely anyone
[01:47:47] cared.
[01:47:48] >> [music]
[01:47:48] >> So, then the next level that came up was
[01:47:51] the shorts, the shorts creators. So,
[01:47:54] this is your like only TikTokers or
[01:47:56] people who only make Reels, but like
[01:47:57] only short videos. And so, they had a
[01:47:59] little bit more applause on the
[01:48:01] applause-o-meter
[01:48:02] compared to the A-listers.
[01:48:05] >> [music]
[01:48:05] >> Then the long-form guys came out. And
[01:48:07] this is when the audience got way
[01:48:09] rowdier. All right, so this is your
[01:48:11] podcasters, your YouTubers, the people
[01:48:14] who make long-form pieces of content.
[01:48:16] And I'm going to pause here for a second
[01:48:17] to kind of like highlight why I think
[01:48:18] this is. I don't think there's anything
[01:48:19] wrong with shorts. We make tons of
[01:48:20] shorts. But, I see the purpose of shorts
[01:48:23] as many times a way to get someone to
[01:48:25] watch a long, right? They watch a couple
[01:48:28] a couple shorts and then think, "Okay,
[01:48:29] this guy seems legit or this gal seems
[01:48:31] legit. I'm going to risk my time." cuz
[01:48:33] that's the risk, they're making an
[01:48:33] investment, right? You're making an
[01:48:34] investment today. "I will risk that we
[01:48:35] get a good return on this, right?" And
[01:48:37] so, shorts then lead to longs. But, let
[01:48:40] me show you the difference from an
[01:48:41] influence perspective. How many
[01:48:42] reinforcing cycles do you think you can
[01:48:44] have in 30 seconds compared to 2 hours?
[01:48:48] It's like not even close. And so, if
[01:48:49] someone watched two 1-hour pieces of
[01:48:51] content for me, period, okay? Two 1-hour
[01:48:53] pieces, that's 120 minutes. For me to
[01:48:54] get that same level of exposure and kind
[01:48:57] of cycles of reinforcement with a
[01:48:58] prospect, and they were only consuming
[01:49:00] shorts, right? Let's say my average
[01:49:01] short, let's say it's 15 seconds. So,
[01:49:04] that means it's four shorts per minute.
[01:49:06] So, if I have 120 minutes for longs, I
[01:49:08] have to do Someone would have to watch
[01:49:10] 480
[01:49:12] shorts to have the same level of
[01:49:13] exposure as watching 2 hours with me.
[01:49:16] And think about how how important this
[01:49:18] is. What were the things that people
[01:49:19] said, like this was the quote podcast
[01:49:21] election. Trump went on and I don't care
[01:49:23] about the politics behind it, but I do
[01:49:24] care about influence and persuasion. And
[01:49:26] so like why is it that the two podcasts
[01:49:29] that I think really nudged this
[01:49:31] election, my opinion, is the Trump
[01:49:33] three-hour plus podcast that he did with
[01:49:35] Rogan like a week or whatever it was. I
[01:49:37] think that was a huge influential event.
[01:49:39] I think Elon getting on uh Tucker Tucker
[01:49:42] Carlson and doing that interview. I
[01:49:44] think those two interviews were some of
[01:49:45] the interviews that really nudged the
[01:49:47] election. And again, I don't care who
[01:49:48] you voted for, it doesn't matter to me.
[01:49:49] I think about this from marketing
[01:49:50] persuasion, okay? And so because of that
[01:49:53] audiences who were not sure got to spend
[01:49:55] three hours with a presidential
[01:49:56] candidate and as a result, it just
[01:49:58] nudged some of them in the direction to
[01:49:59] ultimately vote, okay? Now, back to our
[01:50:01] little story. A-listers have almost no
[01:50:04] applause, shorts have slight applause,
[01:50:06] longs have legit applause. Then
[01:50:16] >> [music]
[01:50:16] >> the live streamers.
[01:50:18] When the live streamers came out, it was
[01:50:20] like the entire auditorium or stadium or
[01:50:22] arena erupted.
[01:50:24] And when I heard that, it was such a
[01:50:27] visual example of I mean we have this
[01:50:30] saying which is like butts and seats. If
[01:50:32] you just make a bunch of like meme
[01:50:33] content, right? You demonstrate almost
[01:50:35] none of these things. Some of you guys
[01:50:36] are chasing views when what I think you
[01:50:38] want is you want to have prospects who
[01:50:42] are more likely to comply with a future
[01:50:43] request. And so we need to change our
[01:50:45] behavior to maximize the likelihood that
[01:50:47] occurs. And so in in looking at this
[01:50:49] thing, this is why I'm I'm telling you
[01:50:51] like showing my cards, I'm going to be
[01:50:53] doing more live streams. And I think
[01:50:54] it's also and this is me like outside of
[01:50:56] SPCL, but I think like meta themes
[01:50:58] overall, I think that the internet will
[01:51:00] always move towards truth. And so I
[01:51:02] think the A-listers everything's super
[01:51:04] curated, everything's super polished,
[01:51:06] it's photoshopped, it's scripted. And as
[01:51:08] you move closer this way, it's raw-er.
[01:51:11] Like you have a three-hour podcast, like
[01:51:13] if they're not scripted, right? Or most
[01:51:14] of them aren't, right?
[01:51:16] Um streaming it's like, yeah, we're
[01:51:17] live, right? I can't do anything, like
[01:51:18] we're live. This idea of of how can we
[01:51:22] approximate the rawest reality of you us
[01:51:26] hanging out, right? And actually going
[01:51:28] through this stuff, I think that is what
[01:51:30] will unlock the most influence as long
[01:51:31] as you are still including these SPCL
[01:51:34] elements into it. And I think that's the
[01:51:36] marriage. Do SPCL and do it as many
[01:51:39] times as I possibly can. That's the
[01:51:41] idea. And so live streaming provides
[01:51:43] that that opportunity. Let's also think
[01:51:45] about this from a context of volume.
[01:51:46] Whether you like him or not, Rogan,
[01:51:47] tremendous influence, right? To the same
[01:51:49] degree, PBD, tremendous influence. Uh
[01:51:51] Dave Ramsey, tremendous influence. What
[01:51:54] is it that these guys have in common?
[01:51:55] They're putting out hours of content
[01:51:58] every single day. So, I said it earlier
[01:52:01] that we 35,000 pieces of content, right?
[01:52:03] I hear plenty of times there's tons of,
[01:52:05] you know, $1 million businesses, $2
[01:52:06] million businesses, things like that.
[01:52:08] They put out one piece of content a day,
[01:52:10] right? And there's nothing wrong with
[01:52:11] that. That's 360 uh 65 pieces of content
[01:52:13] a year.
[01:52:14] And if you think about the size of
[01:52:15] acquisition.com in terms of our revenue,
[01:52:17] right? Compared to somebody who's doing
[01:52:18] one or two million dollars a year and
[01:52:20] they're doing 365 pieces of content,
[01:52:22] we're just quite literally doing a
[01:52:24] hundred times more. And as a result of
[01:52:26] that hundred times the volume, what do
[01:52:27] you think's happening?
[01:52:28] We get a hundred times the prospects.
[01:52:30] And so people want to try and like
[01:52:32] outsmart themselves in thinking that
[01:52:33] they can like not do the work that's
[01:52:36] required, but it's actually far more
[01:52:38] linear than you would expect. So, like
[01:52:40] we just know that like one out of ten,
[01:52:41] you know, shorts is going to go, you
[01:52:42] know, is going to be a two or three X
[01:52:44] outlier. We just know what that math
[01:52:45] looks like. Same thing for longs. How do
[01:52:47] I just jam as much into that
[01:52:49] input-output machine as I possibly can?
[01:52:51] And as long as I'm checking these boxes,
[01:52:53] like I'm making the right kind of
[01:52:54] content, then you're going to get the
[01:52:57] right kind of prospects. So, I'll give
[01:52:58] you one more nugget, like I said,
[01:53:00] which is that some of you guys may have
[01:53:01] heard this, and it's a concept of
[01:53:05] social media
[01:53:08] is now turning into interest media.
[01:53:09] [music] Okay? So, what does this mean?
[01:53:11] Let's unpack this for a second. If you
[01:53:12] make content and you judge it by views,
[01:53:16] I think that's dumb and I'll explain
[01:53:17] why. If I have a grandma public come and
[01:53:19] just do a running slap and just slaps me
[01:53:22] across the face, that video will
[01:53:24] probably get views. But, does it get the
[01:53:26] grandma views? No. Does it get me any
[01:53:29] any more people who now believe more in
[01:53:30] my stuff? No.
[01:53:32] But, what it will do is it will show it
[01:53:34] to people who are interested in humor,
[01:53:35] which is a lot of people, right? But,
[01:53:37] those might not be your customers and
[01:53:39] they probably aren't. So, assuming
[01:53:41] you're not an entertainer and you are
[01:53:43] somebody who's a business person. If you
[01:53:44] sell services to anyone, you're likely
[01:53:47] going to be an educator, not an
[01:53:48] entertainer. Meaning you're you're
[01:53:49] you're trying to provide value to people
[01:53:51] to change their behavior in some way and
[01:53:52] ideally change their behavior that gets
[01:53:53] them to walk closer to you and buy
[01:53:55] stuff. Okay? So, what do I mean by
[01:53:57] social versus interest? If you want to
[01:53:59] attract the right avatar, make content
[01:54:02] for that avatar. That sounds so obvious
[01:54:04] and simple and the thing is that no one
[01:54:06] does it because here's the writer
[01:54:07] downer. The content is the targeting.
[01:54:10] The algorithm is so good now, it knows
[01:54:12] what you're talking about it. It knows
[01:54:13] it can it can literally judge your your
[01:54:15] background. It judges what you're
[01:54:16] wearing. It judges who you are and will
[01:54:18] display it to the people that they know
[01:54:19] have a history of watching content that
[01:54:22] is similar to that, that people find
[01:54:23] valuable. And so, if you are making
[01:54:25] stuff about how to fix pianos because
[01:54:27] you're a piano repair guy, then you will
[01:54:28] find people who are trying to fix their
[01:54:30] pianos. But, if you're making that type
[01:54:32] of content, you might be like, "Man, I'm
[01:54:33] only getting, you know, a thousand views
[01:54:34] a video." It's like, "Yeah, but the
[01:54:36] market of people who are buying pianos
[01:54:37] might be significantly smaller than the
[01:54:39] market of people who just want to be
[01:54:40] entertained or distracted." So, you it's
[01:54:41] not fair to to compare your views
[01:54:44] against Mr. Beast. It doesn't make any
[01:54:45] sense. If I were to think to myself
[01:54:47] like, "I have a room of a thousand
[01:54:48] people that are going to watch this and
[01:54:50] all of them are only interested in
[01:54:51] fixing pianos, that's a hell of an
[01:54:53] opportunity." I care so much more about
[01:54:55] IRL responses. So, what I mean by that?
[01:54:57] If I make a video and then I get texts
[01:55:00] from business owners that I like and
[01:55:02] that I respect being like, "Yo, that was
[01:55:03] fire." Then, I'm like, "Okay, I'm on the
[01:55:06] right track." And so, some of you guys,
[01:55:07] let me know in the comments you guys
[01:55:08] have seen
[01:55:10] um a format that we talked about. We
[01:55:11] call it cash cows. But basically, it's
[01:55:13] me, there's a business owner that
[01:55:14] presents a little bit about their
[01:55:15] business, and they come to this side,
[01:55:16] and we talk about how to like how to
[01:55:17] improve their business, right? So, let
[01:55:19] me know in the comments if you like that
[01:55:20] style. And if you do, let me know if
[01:55:23] you're a business owner or not. Okay?
[01:55:25] So, uh like I like that style, and I'm
[01:55:27] not a business owner. I like that style,
[01:55:28] and I am a business owner. Or I don't
[01:55:30] like that style and I'm a business
[01:55:31] owner. Or I don't like that style and
[01:55:33] I'm not a business owner. If you are a
[01:55:34] business owner, when I have people who
[01:55:35] are here in person, IRL, in real life,
[01:55:37] in Vegas, right? Business owners who fly
[01:55:39] out. I ask, I say, "What is your
[01:55:41] favorite type of content?" Dollars to
[01:55:43] donuts, that's their favorite type of
[01:55:45] content. And so, I make more of that.
[01:55:46] Even though, and it would make sense.
[01:55:48] Like, it would make sense that there's
[01:55:49] fewer of those people. Right? Just think
[01:55:52] about math. If you've got uh
[01:55:54] if you've got the whole population here,
[01:55:56] let me I'll I'll I'll I'll show you a
[01:55:56] little graph on this. So, let's say that
[01:55:58] 100% of people, like this represents
[01:56:00] 100% uh let's just use USA cuz I already
[01:56:03] know all the numbers for USA. Okay? So,
[01:56:05] let's say this is 100%. All right? You
[01:56:07] get 100% of people who are interested.
[01:56:08] Okay. Well, right now, only 9% of people
[01:56:11] even own a business.
[01:56:13] Like, 9%. So, right off the bat, I'm
[01:56:16] going to have a huge percentage of
[01:56:17] people that aren't my ideal audience.
[01:56:19] Now, of course, I do have people who are
[01:56:20] business interested, and that's why I'm
[01:56:22] a co-founder of School, and we give
[01:56:24] people, you know, a way to go uh start a
[01:56:26] business online in a in in a low-cost
[01:56:28] way, right? Which you can do. It's nine
[01:56:30] bucks a month after a 14-day trial. You
[01:56:31] guys can check it out. And there's a
[01:56:32] bunch of like training and community and
[01:56:34] all that good stuff. All right? But, you
[01:56:35] can go school.com, I think {forward
[01:56:37] slash} Hormozi. I think it's below this
[01:56:38] video. Doesn't matter. Point being, 9%
[01:56:40] is what I'm competing for. Okay? Now,
[01:56:43] that means there's there's about 32 to
[01:56:45] 33 million uh business owners in the US.
[01:56:47] Okay? 32 million. That's that's 100% of
[01:56:50] all business owners. Now, within that,
[01:56:53] 95% of that 9%
[01:56:56] is below $1 million
[01:56:58] in revenue.
[01:56:59] 95%.
[01:57:01] Then I've got 5% of that 9%
[01:57:04] that are over a million.
[01:57:07] Now, if you want to get If you want to
[01:57:08] get weird with it, what percent do you
[01:57:10] think is over 10 million?
[01:57:12] .4%
[01:57:14] 1 in 250. And then a hundred million,
[01:57:17] nine figures, is I think one in roughly
[01:57:20] 3,000, depending on like your data
[01:57:22] source. One in 3,000 businesses gets to
[01:57:24] 100 million a year.
[01:57:27] This big.
[01:57:28] And so it would make sense then that
[01:57:30] we're given these numbers, right? 9% is
[01:57:33] is 32 million. So I know 5% of that is
[01:57:35] going to be a million and a half people.
[01:57:37] There's only a million and a half people
[01:57:38] who are business owners doing over a
[01:57:39] million, based on the math that they
[01:57:40] that that This is Census Bureau data.
[01:57:42] Maybe theirs isn't correct, but that's
[01:57:43] the math, right? And so if we're looking
[01:57:46] at that's the market, then it would make
[01:57:48] sense that I'm not going to get all 100%
[01:57:50] of them to watch my video, right? If I
[01:57:52] got 1 and 1/2 million views and 100% of
[01:57:54] them were business owners, I'd be
[01:57:55] insane, right? And so it would make
[01:57:56] sense that like if I get 100,000 views
[01:57:58] on a video that has that's really made
[01:58:01] for that level business owner, then I'm
[01:58:03] crushing it, right? And it doesn't make
[01:58:04] sense to look at, you know, Mr. Beast's
[01:58:06] video with 100 million views and be
[01:58:08] like, "Oh man, I suck." It's like,
[01:58:09] "Dude, we're we're going after We have
[01:58:11] different We have different games,
[01:58:12] right?" And so I'd encourage you to
[01:58:14] create accurate expectations of the size
[01:58:17] of the market that you're going after
[01:58:18] and also think about the translation of
[01:58:20] these numbers into IRL. I have two
[01:58:22] businesses that I looked at in the last
[01:58:23] year that were doing over a million
[01:58:24] dollars a year with less than 5,000
[01:58:26] followers. You absolutely can make
[01:58:28] plenty of money with a very small
[01:58:29] following as long as you make content
[01:58:31] that's directly valuable for that
[01:58:33] following. All right. With that being
[01:58:34] said, uh we just went over
[01:58:38] SPCAL, status, power, credibility, and
[01:58:40] likeness, what you want to include in
[01:58:40] videos, why I'm going all in on live
[01:58:43] streaming, and why the whole point is
[01:58:44] you want to get as much time with your
[01:58:46] uh prospects as humanly possible. You
[01:58:47] want to make the topics of your content
[01:58:50] based on the things that those people
[01:58:51] find interesting, not uh based on like
[01:58:53] being social, but being interesting. If
[01:58:55] you get If you make it interesting for
[01:58:56] them, they will keep watching it. And
[01:58:58] then, being realistic about your
[01:58:59] expectations on how many views you can
[01:59:03] get based on your size of market. So,
[01:59:05] let's say you've built a personal brand,
[01:59:06] here's how I would monetize an audience
[01:59:08] to make more money. In my second
[01:59:09] company, Prestige Labs, I built up to
[01:59:12] over 5,000 affiliates that generated 20
[01:59:14] plus million dollars a year in revenue,
[01:59:15] and that business continues to this day.
[01:59:18] In Allen, my software company, which is
[01:59:19] my third big company, we built up to
[01:59:22] over 1,000 affiliates that were agencies
[01:59:24] white labeling that software. For my
[01:59:26] book launch for 100 million dollar
[01:59:28] leads, we got 30,000 affiliates who
[01:59:30] promoted the actual book launch. I've
[01:59:33] also invested in companies that I've
[01:59:34] personally endorsed, and so I bring all
[01:59:36] these things up because most people
[01:59:38] don't know how to quote monetize an
[01:59:39] audience.
[01:59:40] And after talking to a lot of creators
[01:59:44] or celebrities and influencers, and also
[01:59:46] business owners who want to do deals
[01:59:48] with those people,
[01:59:50] a lot of people don't share a construct
[01:59:51] in terms of thinking through how to make
[01:59:53] those deals happen. And so, I wanted to
[01:59:55] make this video to outline the four ways
[01:59:57] that I see those deals happening and the
[01:59:59] combinations between them and what
[02:00:01] considerations you might have, whether
[02:00:02] you're on the doing the deal side of
[02:00:04] having an audience or
[02:00:06] being the person who wants to quote buy,
[02:00:08] license, rent the audience from an
[02:00:10] influencer or somebody who has those
[02:00:12] eyeballs. All right? So,
[02:00:14] four ways to monetize an audience.
[02:00:16] Let's use a good marker
[02:00:18] that doesn't suck.
[02:00:21] Step one,
[02:00:22] have good markers. Four ways
[02:00:26] to
[02:00:27] monetize
[02:00:32] an
[02:00:33] audience.
[02:00:35] All right?
[02:00:36] Now,
[02:00:37] right off the bat,
[02:00:39] number one, we've got affiliates, which
[02:00:42] is what I was saying earlier.
[02:00:44] The second way that you can monetize an
[02:00:46] audience is through sponsorships. Some
[02:00:48] people call these endorsements.
[02:00:53] The third way that you can do this is
[02:00:55] through partnerships,
[02:00:59] which usually involve equity.
[02:01:03] And the fourth way that we can do this
[02:01:05] is through starting your own, if you're
[02:01:07] the influencer in this instance.
[02:01:10] All right. So,
[02:01:12] we have affiliates, which is where you
[02:01:17] are getting paid after you make sales
[02:01:19] for a business, sponsorships where they
[02:01:21] pay you first to advertise on behalf of
[02:01:23] the business, and typically endorse it
[02:01:25] via your brand,
[02:01:26] partnerships where you go into a
[02:01:29] business that already has a product,
[02:01:30] already has an infrastructure, and you
[02:01:33] do one of these two things or a
[02:01:34] combination of these two things
[02:01:37] for equity. And so, the behaviors
[02:01:39] between affiliates, sponsorships, and
[02:01:40] partnerships are more or less the same.
[02:01:42] The difference is simply how you get
[02:01:44] compensated. And then the fourth is
[02:01:46] where you just start your entirely own
[02:01:47] brand to then promote to your audience.
[02:01:50] All right? So, let's break down which of
[02:01:52] these and kind of where they sit on the
[02:01:53] continuum. And the reason I want to
[02:01:54] bring this up is because I'm having so
[02:01:56] many conversations with people who are
[02:01:58] like, "I have this audience. I've built
[02:01:59] it for 4 years. I just don't know what
[02:02:01] to do." And so, I think of these four on
[02:02:04] a continuum.
[02:02:05] All right?
[02:02:06] And I can think of this continuum in
[02:02:08] terms of difficulty and risk and value.
[02:02:11] All right? And so, on this side,
[02:02:14] you've got the affiliates. This is the
[02:02:16] fastest way that you could immediately
[02:02:18] make money. Most businesses that have
[02:02:21] affiliate programs, you can sign up
[02:02:23] automatically. They have predetermined
[02:02:25] terms that are associated with this
[02:02:27] agreement. And as unless you do
[02:02:30] something that's really, you know,
[02:02:31] nefarious or weird, they're happy to
[02:02:32] have you sell their stuff.
[02:02:35] So, one is this one's fastest. This is
[02:02:37] low risk for kind of both parties
[02:02:42] because
[02:02:43] if you're an affiliate and you're
[02:02:44] promoting it like they don't have to pay
[02:02:46] you until after you make a sale. Now for
[02:02:48] you, you also don't get capped. And so
[02:02:51] if you can make a ton of sales and you
[02:02:52] feel like you're being under valued,
[02:02:53] then you just get to prove that you are
[02:02:55] actually good at promoting and that your
[02:02:56] audience is actually a good fit for
[02:02:58] whatever that product is.
[02:03:00] But from a value perspective, so I'll
[02:03:02] call it exit value
[02:03:05] affiliate revenue streams are not
[02:03:07] typically that valuable. So they will
[02:03:09] contribute to the sellability of a
[02:03:11] company, but the majority of that value
[02:03:14] would come in the terms of a multiple of
[02:03:17] the cash flow that you're receiving as
[02:03:18] an affiliate
[02:03:19] multiplied or discounted by how reliable
[02:03:22] the business that you're doing business
[02:03:23] with is. And so if I'm an affiliate of
[02:03:25] the US government you know what I mean?
[02:03:27] And I recruit people for the military,
[02:03:29] then I probably can say that my business
[02:03:31] model is sound and the US government's
[02:03:32] not going to go away.
[02:03:34] I'm not getting not not withstanding,
[02:03:36] you know, theories and whatnot. All
[02:03:37] right, but by and large it's going to be
[02:03:38] a trustworthy third party.
[02:03:40] On the flip side, if I have some you
[02:03:42] know, info thing that is going to
[02:03:44] disappear tomorrow because of some
[02:03:46] arbitrage opportunity that's your
[02:03:47] business opportunity, then this is going
[02:03:50] to be
[02:03:51] basically have no value because that
[02:03:52] business that underlines that cash flow
[02:03:54] has no value. All right, and so we're
[02:03:56] moving along here. So this is the lowest
[02:03:58] value, probably middle work, lowish risk
[02:04:02] for you. All right, the next is you've
[02:04:05] got sponsorships.
[02:04:10] So sponsorships is where someone pays
[02:04:12] you first. All right, so you receive
[02:04:14] cash and then you make the endorsement.
[02:04:16] And so usually this is in two forms. You
[02:04:19] advertise to your audience
[02:04:21] and the reason I say advertise rather
[02:04:23] than here it sell, here you only get
[02:04:25] paid after people buy. With
[02:04:26] sponsorships, you get paid first. And so
[02:04:29] that means that you are advertising. You
[02:04:30] are a traffic source for the business.
[02:04:33] And so you will get paid as a traffic
[02:04:35] source, typically based on CPMs, meaning
[02:04:37] cost per thousand impressions that you
[02:04:39] can have in terms of views to an
[02:04:41] audience. Now, these sponsorships come
[02:04:44] in the form of you posting stuff to your
[02:04:46] audience, which for them they see this
[02:04:48] as free traffic. They're technically
[02:04:50] paying for it, but you're monetizing the
[02:04:52] traffic that you have. The other way,
[02:04:54] which is the more scalable way, is
[02:04:56] something called white-listing.
[02:04:58] Which is basically them taking whatever
[02:05:01] your posts are and then running them as
[02:05:03] ads. And so, let's say I have a million
[02:05:05] person audience, I make a post and only,
[02:05:07] you know, 200,000 people see it. And as
[02:05:10] most content creators would do, you
[02:05:12] wouldn't want to post over and over
[02:05:14] again about that thing cuz it would kind
[02:05:15] of be like, "Oh, this guy's just
[02:05:16] promoting this thing over and over
[02:05:17] again." It wouldn't feel good, right?
[02:05:18] And so, you might make a post or two
[02:05:21] every so often to not interrupt the
[02:05:23] value that you're providing to your
[02:05:24] audience too much. And so, the way to
[02:05:27] solve this really for both parties is
[02:05:29] you make an advertisement saying, "Hey,
[02:05:31] I just partnered with so-and-so. Their
[02:05:33] thing is awesome. I've actually been
[02:05:35] using it for years. Finally came to an
[02:05:36] agreement. I think you guys might like
[02:05:38] it. Check it out, right?" And so, that
[02:05:40] white-listing then allows them to blast
[02:05:42] it to people way outside of your
[02:05:44] audience. I like this a lot as a win-win
[02:05:47] because the business
[02:05:49] pays money to advertise your brand. So,
[02:05:51] they make you bigger and they're
[02:05:52] spending money to advertise you. But at
[02:05:54] the same time, they get higher
[02:05:55] conversion rate because you're probably
[02:05:57] better on camera, you're better spoken,
[02:05:58] and you already have a certain amount of
[02:05:59] warm audience that recognize you, at
[02:06:01] least your face or your mannerisms. So,
[02:06:03] you convert at a higher percentage. So,
[02:06:05] the business makes money, you grow your
[02:06:06] brand. This is a really nice
[02:06:08] partnership. Now, these deals,
[02:06:10] sponsorships, are harder to come by than
[02:06:12] affiliate deals because most affiliate
[02:06:14] companies just have a program, an
[02:06:16] influencer program, an affiliate
[02:06:17] program, and you just sign up on the
[02:06:19] standard terms. Sponsorships tend to be
[02:06:21] more a la carte depending on the size of
[02:06:23] the influencer relative to the size of
[02:06:25] the company. And so, for extreme
[02:06:27] examples, if you're a huge influencer
[02:06:29] and there's a tiny company, you'll be
[02:06:30] able to get an amazing sponsorship deal.
[02:06:32] If it's a huge company like Nike and
[02:06:35] you're a small influencer, you might not
[02:06:36] get any deal and you still wear their
[02:06:37] stuff. And so, it's really the balance
[02:06:39] between who has
[02:06:40] how much leverage in the negotiation.
[02:06:43] Which brings us to the fourth one. Or
[02:06:45] sorry, the third one, which is
[02:06:46] partnerships. All right? Now, as we move
[02:06:49] along here,
[02:06:51] sponsorships
[02:06:53] also don't have kind of like affiliates
[02:06:56] huge exit value. The only place that
[02:06:58] sponsorships really become exitable
[02:07:01] valuable exitable value for a business
[02:07:03] is if you have a true media company.
[02:07:05] Now, if you're a personal brand, it's
[02:07:06] really tough to exit your personal
[02:07:08] brand. But if I have an army of
[02:07:11] influencers and I negotiate deals
[02:07:13] through my network and say, "Hey, uh you
[02:07:15] know, Pabst Blue Ribbon or, you know,
[02:07:18] Budweiser, whatever, I have a thousand
[02:07:20] influencers that fit your ideal profile
[02:07:22] for customers and I'll negotiate an
[02:07:24] umbrella deal and then all of them are
[02:07:26] forced because they have with them to
[02:07:28] promote your stuff. Now, you have a
[02:07:29] media company, which is very similar to
[02:07:31] a talent agency, slightly different, but
[02:07:34] has a lot of similarities. And so, then
[02:07:36] then that sponsorship revenue is really
[02:07:37] the main revenue of your business, which
[02:07:39] is that you sell traffic at a discount,
[02:07:40] right?
[02:07:43] But for the
[02:07:44] uh for the influencer individually,
[02:07:46] these two things very hard to sell.
[02:07:50] Not really sellable. Not much.
[02:07:52] Now, once we get into this side, these
[02:07:54] deals get harder and harder to do and
[02:07:56] you do fewer and fewer of them as you go
[02:07:58] down this line.
[02:07:59] So, a partnership can either be a
[02:08:01] minority deal
[02:08:02] or a majority deal. Again, if you're
[02:08:05] going to go partner with a company and
[02:08:06] you're huge and they're tiny, then it
[02:08:08] might be a majority deal. If they're
[02:08:09] huge and you're tiny relative to them,
[02:08:11] then it might be a minority deal,
[02:08:13] meaning you're not going to get all of
[02:08:14] the company. And that
[02:08:16] can range from, you know, 0.01%
[02:08:19] of the business all the way to you
[02:08:21] getting, you know, 99% of the business
[02:08:24] in terms of the range. And so, anything
[02:08:25] that you can imagine in terms of
[02:08:26] economics here is going to be
[02:08:27] negotiable. But, one of the thing or
[02:08:29] some of the things that I would consider
[02:08:30] here is performance, which is
[02:08:34] This is again for both parties.
[02:08:37] You can have equity as the form of
[02:08:38] compensation rather than necessarily
[02:08:40] cash. And you say, "Hey, if I bring you
[02:08:42] an extra thousand customers, I get, you
[02:08:44] know, 1% per thousand customers that I
[02:08:48] bring you to the platform or whatever."
[02:08:50] And then you put a cap on that at some
[02:08:53] point where you say up to
[02:08:55] to, you know, 10%.
[02:08:57] Great. And so that way it's a little bit
[02:08:59] balanced for you and for the business.
[02:09:01] Now, one of the considerations that you
[02:09:03] have to have if you were the uh content
[02:09:04] creator or the influencer is that the
[02:09:07] the
[02:09:08] the association that you make with their
[02:09:10] brand is permanent. As soon as you make
[02:09:12] that public declaration, you transfer
[02:09:13] all of that goodwill, you transfer that
[02:09:15] association to them. And so if you are
[02:09:17] going to do a deal like this, my
[02:09:18] recommendation is that you want to have
[02:09:20] at least something up front.
[02:09:23] So no matter what for doing this deal,
[02:09:26] you get some amount of this equity up
[02:09:27] front and then some percentage that's
[02:09:29] based on performance. Now, the
[02:09:32] one of the last components that I'll
[02:09:33] say, and there's obviously a lot of ways
[02:09:35] that you can do deals, but these are
[02:09:36] just the things that I think through,
[02:09:38] is time. And so somebody who's on the
[02:09:40] business owner side is like, "Well, I
[02:09:41] don't want you to just make one
[02:09:42] association. I want you to keep doing
[02:09:43] this for a long period of time." And so
[02:09:45] they can take some of this equity that
[02:09:46] they want to give you and say, "All
[02:09:47] right, I'm going to give you, you know,
[02:09:49] 25% of your equity up front. I'm going
[02:09:52] to give you
[02:09:54] uh 25% based on performance and I'm
[02:09:56] going to give you 50% over time. And so
[02:09:58] I want you to promote for the next four
[02:10:00] years. And if for some reason something
[02:10:01] happens, then you're not going to get
[02:10:02] that vesting
[02:10:04] because we had some sort of breakup,
[02:10:06] right? And so whenever I think through
[02:10:08] these terms, I just like to think of
[02:10:09] through all the W's, which is who, what,
[02:10:11] where, when, why, how, right? Which is,
[02:10:13] "Okay, I want you to post." And if
[02:10:15] you're the content creator, you should
[02:10:16] be asking that same thing, which is
[02:10:18] "How much do you want me to post?"
[02:10:19] Right? And about what? And you have to
[02:10:20] take into consideration that you have to
[02:10:22] keep building your brand, right? And so,
[02:10:23] you don't want to just be like all of a
[02:10:24] sudden some shill. Like, that's not
[02:10:26] good. You want to tastefully be able to
[02:10:28] integrate that promotion into the
[02:10:31] content that you have. And so, you'd
[02:10:32] have to say, "Okay, well, I think the
[02:10:34] best way for us to do this is for me to,
[02:10:36] you know, put uh your links in my bio,
[02:10:39] and I'll put it up for 1 week of the
[02:10:40] month, and I will make one long-form
[02:10:43] thing that it mentions it, and you know,
[02:10:46] five short-form things via posts or
[02:10:48] stories." And then when you define that
[02:10:50] reason this is so important is that you
[02:10:51] define that stuff up front so that it's
[02:10:53] just very clear. Don't just say like, "I
[02:10:55] will promote the business and whatnot."
[02:10:57] cuz it just doesn't work as well. And
[02:10:58] you might say, "I will also, you know,
[02:11:00] record ads once a month that you can
[02:11:02] then use for whitelisting." And so, all
[02:11:04] of these things, and this is where this
[02:11:06] gets more nuanced in deal making,
[02:11:08] is you can be a partner and still have
[02:11:10] affiliate revenue. You can be a partner
[02:11:12] and still get paid from a sponsorship
[02:11:13] perspective. And so, these things are
[02:11:14] not mutually exclusive. But, like, you
[02:11:17] might have a primarily sponsorship deal
[02:11:19] with some element of equity. But, I will
[02:11:21] say on a personal level, the more money
[02:11:23] you have right now, the more you want to
[02:11:26] lean this way because
[02:11:28] the equity
[02:11:30] the sponsorship cash that you choose to
[02:11:32] take, you do it at the expense of
[02:11:33] equity. And if you believe in the
[02:11:35] product and you believe that the company
[02:11:36] is exitable in the future, then it in my
[02:11:38] opinion, it makes sense to delay it for
[02:11:40] the little bit longer run. But, this
[02:11:42] takes on more risk because here you get
[02:11:43] paid today no matter what. Here, you
[02:11:45] might not ever get paid if the company
[02:11:47] doesn't sell. And so, by taking on more
[02:11:49] risk, you want to make sure that you're
[02:11:50] getting a disproportionate reward in the
[02:11:52] in the form of stock shares, options,
[02:11:54] equity, and things like that. All right?
[02:11:56] And so, as we're walking through this
[02:11:57] and you're thinking, "Okay, how can I
[02:11:58] monetize my brand?" It's like, "Okay,
[02:12:00] the first level, I can do affiliates and
[02:12:01] just promote other people's stuff and
[02:12:03] get paid for it."
[02:12:04] The next level, I can be a media source
[02:12:06] for them. I can be traffic for them via
[02:12:07] sponsorship, right? These are a little
[02:12:09] bit more nuanced deals.
[02:12:11] Taking another step, I can actually
[02:12:12] partner with the brand and say, "Hey, I
[02:12:14] want to own 1%, 5%, 10%, 50% depending
[02:12:17] on how big you are and how big your
[02:12:19] audience is. And then finally,
[02:12:23] you can start your
[02:12:25] own
[02:12:27] brand.
[02:12:29] And when I say brand, I say that
[02:12:30] all-inclusive in terms of products and
[02:12:32] brand. And when you do this, you can
[02:12:35] either
[02:12:36] white label,
[02:12:38] which means you go to somebody who
[02:12:39] manufactures stuff already and say, "Can
[02:12:40] you slap my logo on it?" which is an
[02:12:42] option. And the other option is that you
[02:12:44] do custom formulations.
[02:12:46] Custom I'll just say custom stuff. All
[02:12:48] right. And so, if I were selling
[02:12:50] supplements, for example, I might go to
[02:12:52] a a company that already has a product
[02:12:53] that's done and I just say, "Hey, I want
[02:12:55] to slap my label on it." On the custom
[02:12:57] version of this, it's like, "Hey, I want
[02:12:58] this gram of this. We're going to test
[02:12:59] out flavors together and then we're
[02:13:00] going to put it together and make a
[02:13:01] custom product that no one else has."
[02:13:03] Same things works with merchandise. So,
[02:13:05] if you said, "Hey, I want to get a white
[02:13:07] t-shirt." and you just try six different
[02:13:09] white t-shirts that people have off the
[02:13:10] shelf that are manufacturers, they say,
[02:13:12] "Okay, just slap my logo on it and let's
[02:13:14] go." or you say, "Hey, what are the
[02:13:16] different fabrics? What are the
[02:13:17] different materials that I can put
[02:13:18] together? These are the cuts that I want
[02:13:19] to look at. This is how I want it to
[02:13:20] fit." right? That becomes more custom.
[02:13:23] And so, white label is faster and
[02:13:27] easier from a speed perspective, but
[02:13:29] usually, me personally, I prefer to do
[02:13:31] custom stuff because I don't like anyone
[02:13:33] else being able to sell something that's
[02:13:34] identical to me and be able to have any
[02:13:36] kind of pricing power over what I have
[02:13:38] cuz it the moment that people find out
[02:13:40] that you just have a generic product
[02:13:42] that you slapped a label on, it just
[02:13:44] does It's not a good look. Right? And
[02:13:45] so, again, I don't think there's
[02:13:47] anything to Like, I want to be clear. I
[02:13:48] don't think there's anything wrong with
[02:13:49] doing white label. I just think that if
[02:13:51] we were to put this on this sphere, like
[02:13:52] white label would be here and custom
[02:13:53] would be here. But, if you're going to
[02:13:55] take the risk on of starting your own
[02:13:57] brand, I might as well get all the
[02:13:58] benefits of doing it. But,
[02:14:01] this costs more money. White label tends
[02:14:03] to cost less because you don't have to
[02:14:05] get custom templates, custom forms, and
[02:14:07] pay and incur all those costs cuz
[02:14:08] someone else their whole business is
[02:14:10] based around doing this for other
[02:14:12] people. All right? Now, the difference
[02:14:14] here is that for all of these
[02:14:15] situations, you're going to promote
[02:14:17] stuff that already exists. Here, you're
[02:14:20] starting the thing from ground zero,
[02:14:22] which means that you're on the other
[02:14:24] side of the table now. You start with
[02:14:26] 100% equity,
[02:14:27] and then you start paying people this
[02:14:29] way down the line. And so, if you are an
[02:14:34] influencer, you have an audience, or
[02:14:35] you're a business owner and you're
[02:14:36] trying to make deals with influencers,
[02:14:39] this is how I think through this, and I
[02:14:41] try and see there are elements that you
[02:14:43] can borrow from each of these kind of
[02:14:45] verticals to
[02:14:47] tweak the deal to make it right for
[02:14:49] everyone. And so, I think about it in
[02:14:51] terms of what's the exit value,
[02:14:53] what cash is going to be going in or out
[02:14:56] of the business, how much work is the
[02:14:58] person going to do, and then how much
[02:14:59] risk am I or are they exposed to. And by
[02:15:02] balancing those four things, you can
[02:15:04] usually navigate along this continuum to
[02:15:06] find the right part the right deal
[02:15:09] that's right for you and the product. As
[02:15:11] a bonus, I want to take you behind
[02:15:13] scenes to what I just learned with my
[02:15:14] personal brand so you can make more
[02:15:15] money and grow your business. I made
[02:15:17] 35,000 posts over 40 months and grew a
[02:15:19] 7.8 million person audience, and 3 weeks
[02:15:22] ago, I made six big shifts in my
[02:15:24] content, and I want to show you behind
[02:15:27] the scenes what we found from those six
[02:15:29] big shifts with screenshots of the data
[02:15:33] so that you can use this to make more
[02:15:34] money in your business and whatever you
[02:15:35] promote. And so, the first was we went
[02:15:37] from edutainment to education. So,
[02:15:40] instead of being kind of halfway through
[02:15:42] to all the way all in on education. Now,
[02:15:44] that had downstream impacts in terms of
[02:15:45] how we package, how we title things,
[02:15:47] even the number of special effects we
[02:15:48] have, and the purpose of education as I
[02:15:50] see it is to change behavior. And so, my
[02:15:51] point is with this video, once I show
[02:15:53] you the data of what's happened since
[02:15:54] that change, since the we made these six
[02:15:56] shifts, that hopefully or hopefully not,
[02:15:59] we'll see what you decide to do, but it
[02:16:00] will change how you make content to make
[02:16:02] more money. So, number one is we educate
[02:16:04] edutainment to education. Number two is
[02:16:06] we went from for us to for you. Now,
[02:16:08] when I say for us, what ended up
[02:16:10] happening with the mistakes I made was
[02:16:11] that I mean, unknowingly, was that I'd
[02:16:13] be like, "Team, what do you guys think
[02:16:14] about content?" And so, they'd be like,
[02:16:15] "Hey, we should make a video on this.
[02:16:17] Hey, we should make a video on this."
[02:16:18] And so, what ended up happening is I
[02:16:19] started making videos for my team, not
[02:16:21] my ideal customer, a business owner. And
[02:16:23] so, I actually had a friend come into
[02:16:24] town and say, "Hey, you know, it's
[02:16:26] weird. I actually haven't been paying
[02:16:27] attention to your content." He does
[02:16:28] about 10 million bucks a year. And uh I
[02:16:30] was like, he's like, "Well, I guess I'm
[02:16:31] not really your avatar." And I was like,
[02:16:32] "Whoa, whoa, whoa." I was like, "You are
[02:16:33] 100% my avatar. What's going on?" And
[02:16:37] so, as soon as I realized that, I was
[02:16:38] like, "Oh, man." He's like, "It just
[02:16:39] didn't feel as relevant to me." And so,
[02:16:41] I was making stuff for my team rather
[02:16:42] than my avatar. And so, if you are
[02:16:44] somebody who makes content, something to
[02:16:45] be mindful of is
[02:16:47] your team might not be the type of
[02:16:48] people you're trying to make content
[02:16:49] for. So, just something interesting for
[02:16:50] me. So, we went from for us, our team,
[02:16:53] to for you, viewer, for business owners.
[02:16:55] Number three was went from wide to
[02:16:56] narrow. So, fitness, relationships, etc.
[02:16:59] These are wider topics. More people are
[02:17:00] in relationships, more people eat food,
[02:17:01] more people trying to lose weight,
[02:17:02] compared to only 9% of people are
[02:17:04] business owners. And so, we went much
[02:17:06] narrower on the topic of like, "I'm just
[02:17:07] talking about business cuz that's what I
[02:17:08] love talking about too." As a side note.
[02:17:10] And so, it turns out business owners
[02:17:11] like it more when I talk about business,
[02:17:13] and I like it more as a business owner.
[02:17:14] So, everybody wins, at least for me.
[02:17:16] Number four is we went from views to
[02:17:17] revenue. Now, this is key. So, when you
[02:17:20] just have views as a metric, then you
[02:17:21] kind of do chase wider because it was
[02:17:23] the only real metric we were tracking.
[02:17:24] And we didn't really have anything
[02:17:26] better at the time and since we focused
[02:17:27] on. Since then, we transitioned to ad
[02:17:29] revenue, and here's why. Ad revenue
[02:17:31] takes into account views, but it has a
[02:17:33] second metric that's paired with it,
[02:17:34] which is RPMs, which is revenue per uh
[02:17:37] thousand eyeballs. So,
[02:17:39] if you if YouTube pays lots of money for
[02:17:41] the eyeball, then it means they're more
[02:17:42] valuable. And if they're more valuable
[02:17:43] to advertiser, they're more valuable to
[02:17:44] me. And so, my idea here is that I want
[02:17:48] to make sure that we're showing our
[02:17:49] videos to the right people, or rather
[02:17:50] that the right people are watching. Now,
[02:17:52] once we can control for that and we stay
[02:17:54] or keep our RPMs, or the amount that
[02:17:56] advertisers are willing to pay for these
[02:17:56] eyeballs, high, then we get as many
[02:17:59] views as we can. And as a total pro tip
[02:18:01] for business stuff in general, paired
[02:18:03] KPIs works exceptionally well. So, if
[02:18:05] you're in customer success, you want the
[02:18:06] speed of resolution, but you also want a
[02:18:08] quality metric. If you had a a company
[02:18:10] that did cleaning, it'd be the same
[02:18:11] thing is you'd pair reviews from
[02:18:13] customers with the number of cleans per
[02:18:14] day. And so, you like to have both edges
[02:18:17] so that you can control for both sides.
[02:18:18] And you should do that with any
[02:18:19] department you can. Now, so I said
[02:18:21] number four was views to ad revenue as
[02:18:23] our primary metric that we were
[02:18:25] optimizing for. So, we no longer care to
[02:18:26] oh, this one had a lot of views. We
[02:18:27] don't care about that. It's just do we
[02:18:29] have as many views with the right
[02:18:30] people?
[02:18:31] Number five is we went from emphasizing
[02:18:33] shorts to emphasizing longs. We saw that
[02:18:35] longs got the best people, and short the
[02:18:39] whole thesis around shorts creates longs
[02:18:41] viewers, we actually haven't seen any
[02:18:42] evidence that supports that. People
[02:18:44] watch shorts want more shorts, people
[02:18:45] want longs want to watch longs, which
[02:18:47] doesn't necessarily mean that people
[02:18:48] from a different platform
[02:18:50] don't watch you on shorts on TikTok, and
[02:18:53] then they're a long-form YouTube
[02:18:55] watcher, and then watch your stuff on
[02:18:56] YouTube that long. But usually, people
[02:18:58] who watch long-form stuff on YouTube
[02:19:00] watch long-form stuff on YouTube. People
[02:19:01] who watch them on YouTube watch
[02:19:03] short-form. Some people watch both, but
[02:19:05] most of the time people are kind of have
[02:19:06] consumption preferences, and they're not
[02:19:08] going to change the preferences for you.
[02:19:09] They just might watch you in a different
[02:19:10] place where that consumption preference
[02:19:11] is what you make. And so, we found that,
[02:19:14] and we found that the longs are the
[02:19:15] things that actually drove the most
[02:19:16] applications for acquisition.com, and
[02:19:18] the most book sales, and the most
[02:19:20] opt-ins. So, that's what we're making
[02:19:21] more of. And number six was assuming
[02:19:23] more versus assuming nothing. Meaning, I
[02:19:26] made videos like the Alex Hormozi diet,
[02:19:28] I made
[02:19:30] uh the the Alex Hormozi vlog, the
[02:19:31] Hormozis, things like that. Those assume
[02:19:34] that somebody who doesn't know me
[02:19:36] will want to care what whoever the hell
[02:19:38] Alex Hormozi is, which I don't think is
[02:19:40] that reasonable. Like, I don't think
[02:19:42] they would want that, cuz who cares
[02:19:43] about this random dude? And so, it's
[02:19:46] assuming nothing. Now, that has
[02:19:48] um changes in terms of what we're
[02:19:49] making, so there's no assumptions. So,
[02:19:51] for example, like we're on
[02:19:53] acquisition.com, we have portfolio
[02:19:54] businesses, I introduce myself because
[02:19:57] if you don't know who I am, this might
[02:19:58] be the first video you see of me. And
[02:19:59] so,
[02:20:00] if I stopped doing that for a while cuz
[02:20:02] I kind of wondered this mindset that
[02:20:04] every everyone knew. Now, obviously
[02:20:05] that's dumb. Way more people don't know
[02:20:07] me than know me. But, you kind of fall
[02:20:08] into this trap of assuming you're
[02:20:09] talking to your warm audience rather
[02:20:11] than what you're making the content for,
[02:20:12] which is people who've never met you
[02:20:13] before. And so, keeping that top of
[02:20:15] mind, which is that we want to make sure
[02:20:16] that we welcome everyone and that we
[02:20:18] don't have inside jokes that only people
[02:20:20] who are on the inside feel it because
[02:20:21] then all it does is it excludes people
[02:20:23] that are new. And like what you want to
[02:20:25] do is bring more people into your world
[02:20:26] anyways, especially if they're business
[02:20:27] owners for me. And so, there are these
[02:20:29] six changes that we made in our content.
[02:20:33] And so, we've gone all in on that
[02:20:34] concept. And so, we've done a lot of
[02:20:36] rapid iteration. But, let me tell you
[02:20:37] the data that's happened since. So,
[02:20:40] right off the bat, RPMs, meaning the
[02:20:43] revenue per thousand viewers, went up by
[02:20:45] 68%.
[02:20:46] So, like when you think, man, I don't
[02:20:48] feel like I can like what my content is
[02:20:50] about, like it doesn't change anything.
[02:20:51] Well, it sure as hell did for us. When I
[02:20:54] talk about deep business stuff, when I
[02:20:55] talk about reducing churn, when I talk
[02:20:57] about increasing number of time like
[02:20:58] ways to get someone to buy more times,
[02:21:00] when I talk about how we scale a
[02:21:01] 40-person sales team and the all the
[02:21:03] steps that we did in order to do that in
[02:21:05] a real case study in a real business,
[02:21:06] when I talk about how you can
[02:21:06] deconstruct and reconstruct a brand,
[02:21:09] these are deeper business concepts. And
[02:21:11] guess what? Business owners watch them.
[02:21:13] And guess what? Those eyeballs are more
[02:21:15] valuable. 68% and we're only going to
[02:21:18] get better at it. And so, for us, boom,
[02:21:20] that meant that us changing our topics
[02:21:22] got the right people to watch the
[02:21:24] videos. Check box one. And so, you can
[02:21:26] see by the video title when we had
[02:21:28] educational versus kind of wide or
[02:21:29] business education versus wider topics,
[02:21:32] the wider topics in general had way
[02:21:34] lower RPMs. You can see that with the
[02:21:36] the light blue. Whereas, the purple
[02:21:38] is more money making, more business,
[02:21:40] more sales, more more, you know,
[02:21:42] retention, real business tactics that
[02:21:44] grow companies. And those,
[02:21:46] unsurprisingly,
[02:21:47] were way higher in average RPM. Some of
[02:21:49] them even higher than that. So, the next
[02:21:51] big change, and I see this as anecdotal,
[02:21:52] is that 25% more comments per view. And
[02:21:56] so, I see that as an engagement metric
[02:21:57] that we had way more people saying,
[02:21:59] "Wow, this is good." or "This is great."
[02:22:00] or "I miss this style of content." And
[02:22:01] that's actually a really common thing.
[02:22:03] And I will say this, this is to my this
[02:22:05] is to my detriment. I should have seen
[02:22:07] that more business owners were telling
[02:22:09] us in the comments what they wanted. And
[02:22:11] honestly, I just wasn't listening. Um
[02:22:15] and that's on me. I I was like, "Well,
[02:22:17] you're going to lose some people as you
[02:22:18] make more, you know, high-production
[02:22:20] stuff. That's okay." But with the return
[02:22:22] to hardcore business education in terms
[02:22:25] of the content that we're making, the
[02:22:27] response has been overwhelming. That so
[02:22:29] many people were like, "I'm coming back
[02:22:31] to all your content. This has been
[02:22:32] great. This is what I came here for."
[02:22:33] And so, I'm stoked about that. And so,
[02:22:35] we got 25% more people who are uh doing
[02:22:37] that. We have more shares, negligible,
[02:22:39] and slightly fewer likes, which again
[02:22:42] whatever. But for me, I would say
[02:22:44] comment I would rate comments and shares
[02:22:45] as higher. And so, overall, we had
[02:22:47] higher engagement from these videos,
[02:22:49] even though they were narrower topics.
[02:22:51] Which to me is
[02:22:52] more good for fewer people than a little
[02:22:54] bit of good for a lot of people, which
[02:22:55] is where I want to be in terms of what I
[02:22:57] want to serve or who I want to serve.
[02:22:58] So, the next big change is that despite,
[02:23:01] and this is a key point, despite having
[02:23:03] fewer absolute views per long-form
[02:23:05] video, we're actually getting more
[02:23:07] long-form views overall across the
[02:23:10] channel. So, we're up 30 almost 30%
[02:23:12] 29.56%
[02:23:13] um than our our 6-weeks average before
[02:23:15] that
[02:23:17] from these deeper educational videos.
[02:23:19] Now, realistically, that's a function of
[02:23:21] one main thing in my opinion.
[02:23:23] That's because
[02:23:25] the education stuff actually requires
[02:23:26] far less post-editing. And I can make
[02:23:29] more education stuff cuz this is what I
[02:23:30] do every day. And so, we can actually
[02:23:33] create more content, which I'm stoked
[02:23:34] about, and I think I think I mean,
[02:23:36] hopefully business owners are too. Um
[02:23:38] and so, we actually get more overall
[02:23:40] views with the right people because we
[02:23:42] don't have nearly as much high-fi
[02:23:45] post-production wiz-bangs, which is what
[02:23:47] most of my audience who is trying to
[02:23:48] learn stuff rather than be entertained
[02:23:50] was happy about. All right, this next
[02:23:52] one is very surprising to me at least.
[02:23:55] So, our subscriber conversion increased
[02:23:58] by 24.6%.
[02:24:01] And so, that means that we've actually
[02:24:03] like even though again we had slightly
[02:24:05] lower lower absolute views, more
[02:24:07] long-form views, that we actually
[02:24:09] increased the absolute number of
[02:24:11] subscribers per week since doing this.
[02:24:14] So, like I mean, I was very comfortable
[02:24:16] with all of these metrics tanking. Like
[02:24:18] that was I honestly expected that
[02:24:19] because I was like, all right, we're
[02:24:20] going to have way fewer views, but it's
[02:24:22] going to be the right people. But,
[02:24:24] because 25% more people who watch
[02:24:27] subscribe even though we get fewer
[02:24:29] views, our actual subscriber growth has
[02:24:31] grown.
[02:24:33] Which is crazy in an absolute metric
[02:24:34] way. So, this was this was an unexpected
[02:24:37] outcome for me and has just reinforced
[02:24:39] that this was the right decision for the
[02:24:41] audience that I want, which is business
[02:24:42] owners. The next thing is like, okay,
[02:24:43] well, if you're getting fewer views,
[02:24:45] how's that going to translate to opt-ins
[02:24:48] cuz I'm a business owner. Like that's
[02:24:49] what I care about. I care about people
[02:24:50] who are trying to
[02:24:51] to become portfolio companies, come to a
[02:24:53] workshop, whatever. And so, it turns out
[02:24:57] that we have 26%
[02:24:59] more opt-ins per week since making this
[02:25:03] change. And so, this is like both
[02:25:05] incredibly surprising and also
[02:25:06] incredibly duh. And I say this because
[02:25:08] like saying, "Hey, I'm going to make
[02:25:10] business owner stuff to get more
[02:25:11] business owners." Duh. But at the same
[02:25:14] time, I'll say this, just me kind of
[02:25:16] commenting on a lot of the educators
[02:25:18] that are in the space, they tend to
[02:25:19] start moving more and more broad, more
[02:25:21] and more wide, more and more
[02:25:22] entertainment-y, more and more topics
[02:25:24] that they don't necessarily have
[02:25:25] expertise on because they seek the
[02:25:27] views. Whether they say it or not, they
[02:25:28] don't want to sit there like like saying
[02:25:29] cash, cuz they still kind of count their
[02:25:30] likes. And so,
[02:25:32] I think if you can just absolutely get
[02:25:34] your logic head on, which is tough
[02:25:35] because sometimes you it's it's tough to
[02:25:37] to go away from those vanity metrics.
[02:25:39] But, I care about the bottom line and
[02:25:41] so, the right people were seeing it and
[02:25:43] the right people were taking action. And
[02:25:45] so we, in the in the business sense, saw
[02:25:48] growth from this in a big way, and this
[02:25:49] is just like 3 weeks in, 4 weeks into
[02:25:52] this kind of execution all in on the
[02:25:54] strategy, and this will compound. And so
[02:25:56] for those who don't know, I have two
[02:25:57] best-selling books on Amazon. They're
[02:25:58] still like number one and number two on
[02:25:59] marketing and sales, and they've been
[02:26:00] there for like number one and number two
[02:26:02] for 2 years or 3 years or whatever how
[02:26:03] they've been out, so they're pretty
[02:26:05] strong. And so we sell books every month
[02:26:07] no matter what. But what was crazy to me
[02:26:10] was to see this jump in book sales that
[02:26:13] happened as like think about this, we're
[02:26:15] getting fewer views,
[02:26:18] but
[02:26:19] more sales by a lot, like 2x the sales,
[02:26:23] twice, not like 20%, twice the sales of
[02:26:26] books that I have. And mind you, by the
[02:26:29] way, if you're like, "Hey, I'm poor." I
[02:26:31] get it. My books are free, too. They're
[02:26:32] by like you can go to akuz.com and you
[02:26:34] get the video course, all my stuff for
[02:26:35] free. You don't have to opt in. And you
[02:26:37] can go on my podcast, and you can listen
[02:26:40] to the audiobook for free, all right?
[02:26:41] Like the stuff's free. This isn't how I
[02:26:42] make my money. But it's a really good
[02:26:44] leading indicator for me of the quality
[02:26:46] of traffic. Now, if you want to get a
[02:26:48] physical copy, yes, there's printing
[02:26:49] costs and there's shipping costs, so
[02:26:50] yeah, you pay some bucks. But if you're
[02:26:52] dead broke poor, you can use the free
[02:26:53] stuff. The point is is that this
[02:26:55] attracted the right people, people who
[02:26:58] want cuz if I make a fitness meals
[02:27:00] video, guess what those people don't
[02:27:02] care about? Getting leads and making
[02:27:03] offers. Kind of sounds obvious when you
[02:27:05] think about it. When I make a, "Hey,
[02:27:06] this is how I work with Layla, my wife,"
[02:27:08] maybe you get somebody who's like, "What
[02:27:10] about the married entrepreneurs?" It's
[02:27:11] like, "Well, only 9% of people are
[02:27:13] business owners, and then of that 9%,
[02:27:15] how many of them are married to their
[02:27:16] partner?" Percentage of percentage.
[02:27:18] Versus just talking about business
[02:27:20] stuff,
[02:27:22] business people want to get more leads,
[02:27:24] make more offers, make more money. And
[02:27:25] so that's what my books are about. And
[02:27:27] so lo and behold, more of those people
[02:27:29] bought.
[02:27:30] Now, I want to be super clear. I want to
[02:27:31] show these two these two keynotes here.
[02:27:33] So
[02:27:34] there There some keynotes that will be
[02:27:36] both deep and wide. And as a content
[02:27:39] creator / business owner
[02:27:41] / investor /
[02:27:43] husband / human being
[02:27:46] boy big um sometimes you hit it out of
[02:27:48] the park and you actually get both. So,
[02:27:50] my highest revenue revenue per view
[02:27:53] video also happens to be
[02:27:55] my most viewed video.
[02:27:58] And so, it doesn't necessarily mean that
[02:28:00] if you have a lot of views, the RPMs are
[02:28:02] low. No, not at all.
[02:28:04] You can get a video that applies to all
[02:28:07] business owners and it will get a lot of
[02:28:09] views.
[02:28:10] And the CPMs or the RPMs will be high.
[02:28:13] The branding video is the same thing.
[02:28:14] That one's that's very recent. It's new
[02:28:15] and it continues to climb up. Um and
[02:28:17] they're both of these are very
[02:28:19] conceptual business concepts that all
[02:28:22] business owners can benefit from. And
[02:28:24] so, if I talk about leverage, almost all
[02:28:26] businesses need to understand strategy
[02:28:28] and leverage. It applies It's a huge
[02:28:29] amount of value to business owners.
[02:28:31] Understanding brand, tremendous value to
[02:28:33] any business.
[02:28:35] Now, on the other hand, you can also
[02:28:37] make and we have we call these keynotes,
[02:28:38] but like longer form either whiteboard
[02:28:40] presentations or like a presentation
[02:28:41] that I put a lot of time into. Um some
[02:28:44] of them are going to be deeper and less
[02:28:45] wide and that's okay. Like, if I talk
[02:28:46] about scaling a 40-person sales team, if
[02:28:48] you have an e-commerce store, doesn't
[02:28:50] affect you. But, leverage and brand
[02:28:52] would affect you whether you had the
[02:28:53] 40-person sales team or the e-commerce
[02:28:55] company or a software company or an app
[02:28:58] or whatever. And so, again, the scaling
[02:29:01] 40-person sales team still super
[02:29:03] valuable, but it's just going to be only
[02:29:05] you know, valuable to 1/3 of the
[02:29:06] business owner audience that I might be
[02:29:08] able to you know, who might want to
[02:29:09] watch this. Same thing with um
[02:29:12] same thing with the video I made about
[02:29:13] 10Xing your business overnight by using
[02:29:16] mega influencers. Basically, showing how
[02:29:18] to get a Mr. Beast, a Logan Paul, a Rock
[02:29:20] to partner with a Conor McGregor, a Huda
[02:29:23] Beauty, a Taylor Swift to partner with
[02:29:26] to 10X your business. Now, if your
[02:29:28] business like a local business, the
[02:29:30] likelihood that they're going to partner
[02:29:31] with you is really low, right? And so,
[02:29:32] it doesn't really make sense for that
[02:29:33] particular business. Now, you could use
[02:29:35] that on a micro scale, but it might just
[02:29:37] not have as much transference. If you
[02:29:39] have an e-commerce brand that's
[02:29:40] national, might make a ton of sense. But
[02:29:42] again, it's going to have a sub-segment
[02:29:44] of already a 9% slice of the population
[02:29:47] that it would be deeply valuable to
[02:29:48] though. And so, that's the thing is is
[02:29:50] that I have to think about like I'm okay
[02:29:53] with a video that gets 10,000 views
[02:29:55] instead of 400,000 views. If 10,000 of
[02:29:58] those people are $10 million plus
[02:30:00] business owners, it's like here, here's
[02:30:02] how I packaged my company in order to
[02:30:03] sell it. I have a video on my channel
[02:30:04] that walks through 46 minutes of the
[02:30:06] decision-making process I used to
[02:30:08] determine to sell my business. Guess who
[02:30:09] that applies to? Basically no one,
[02:30:11] unless you're actually have a lot of
[02:30:13] money and you already have a business
[02:30:15] asset that is $5 million profit or more.
[02:30:17] And so, let's see, 9% of businesses it's
[02:30:20] like
[02:30:21] 0.1% do $10 million a year
[02:30:24] of businesses. So, there's like no one
[02:30:27] who that actually applies to except for
[02:30:29] those people or like this thing was
[02:30:31] amazing and this changed my life. And I
[02:30:32] had a bunch of people after I posted
[02:30:34] that that I know that were big 20, 30,
[02:30:36] 40 million dollar a year business owners
[02:30:37] who watched it be like this is insane. I
[02:30:38] can't believe you gave this out. I'm
[02:30:39] like, believe it because guess what? No
[02:30:41] one else is going to watch it. And so, I
[02:30:43] will say this, this is me giving you
[02:30:45] like a little hat tip for consuming. If
[02:30:48] you're a business owner
[02:30:49] I would not gauge views as whether the
[02:30:52] whether the video is good or not. It
[02:30:54] just shows how relevant it is to how
[02:30:55] many people.
[02:30:57] And so, if you're an e-commerce person,
[02:31:00] I have some videos in here about how to
[02:31:01] use offers for e-commerce.
[02:31:03] That's just already going to be a slice
[02:31:05] of a slice, but it'd be super applicable
[02:31:07] for you. And so, I'm okay with very
[02:31:10] small views as long as the quality gives
[02:31:14] value and provides a result in a clear
[02:31:16] way for the viewer.
[02:31:19] And so, I define education as change of
[02:31:20] behavior. So, if I can help them change
[02:31:22] the behavior in a way that makes them
[02:31:22] more money, ideally they'll associate
[02:31:24] that money they made, that value they
[02:31:26] made with us at acquisition.com.
[02:31:29] And so, that's the whole goal of this
[02:31:30] stuff. And for the creators out there,
[02:31:34] or those of you guys who are making
[02:31:35] content in order to promote your
[02:31:36] business, I'll give you this frame that
[02:31:38] I started out with that helped me a lot,
[02:31:39] which is
[02:31:40] you know, when I first posted my first
[02:31:42] like I started at zero on every
[02:31:43] platform, to be very clear here. Like it
[02:31:44] wasn't like I was Taylor Swift and I
[02:31:46] came on TikTok. Yay, right? It wasn't
[02:31:48] like that.
[02:31:49] When I started on YouTube, I had no
[02:31:50] subscribers. And the first videos I
[02:31:52] posted got like 100 views, right? But I
[02:31:55] thought to myself, I was like, man, if I
[02:31:57] like I would probably go across town to
[02:31:58] speak to a 100-person audience for
[02:32:00] lunch, and I'd have no problem with
[02:32:01] that. And so, the idea that I had 100
[02:32:03] people, I was like, that's not bad. Or
[02:32:06] even if there's 10 people, I'm like,
[02:32:07] well, I would talk to a 10-person I
[02:32:08] mean, I used to do this for years. I
[02:32:09] would do a lunch and learn and uh see if
[02:32:11] I could sell some weight loss. You know
[02:32:12] what I mean? Like I was willing to do
[02:32:13] that anyways. And so, there's this it's
[02:32:16] it's literally just because of
[02:32:17] comparison that people feel bad about
[02:32:19] their social media content, not because
[02:32:21] inherently the numbers don't make sense.
[02:32:23] And the crazy thing about this, and I'm
[02:32:24] going to re-emphasize, is it's free.
[02:32:27] It's free. The platforms distribute your
[02:32:30] content for free. These are people that
[02:32:32] would never found out about you and they
[02:32:33] find out about you for free.
[02:32:35] Like take that in for a second. So, the
[02:32:37] leverage on free distribution is
[02:32:39] infinite. And so, if you get 1,000
[02:32:41] people over a month who see your thing,
[02:32:43] it's 1,000 people. It's not nothing.
[02:32:46] And so, I try to make sure that I focus
[02:32:48] on that concept of like, oh man, my
[02:32:50] average for the channel is 400,000 and
[02:32:51] we got a 50,000 view video. 50,000? My
[02:32:55] god, I speak at conferences with 1,000
[02:32:57] people. It's 50 times that.
[02:32:59] Not bad. And those people I got to have
[02:33:02] a really, really curated experience,
[02:33:04] increase the value per second,
[02:33:05] absolutely crush as much value as I
[02:33:07] possibly could in that in time period.
[02:33:09] And so, I'll make one last note on uh on
[02:33:11] the deep versus wide content, is that I
[02:33:15] get so many DMs and like Slack messages
[02:33:19] even from our portfolio company founders
[02:33:21] who are like, dude, that last video was
[02:33:23] so sick." And I hadn't had that in a
[02:33:25] minute for probably the the 6 months we
[02:33:27] went a little bit wider with our
[02:33:28] content.
[02:33:29] And it became so reinforcing for me.
[02:33:32] Even though like what's the what's the
[02:33:33] number of people? I don't know. 50
[02:33:35] people maybe messaged me being like,
[02:33:36] "Dude, that new like your new content
[02:33:38] style or going back like the new old
[02:33:40] content of more whiteboard, more deep
[02:33:42] business tactics, like it's so great. My
[02:33:44] team's watching again." That like fills
[02:33:46] me up cuz that's why I made the stuff to
[02:33:47] begin with was the stuff that I didn't
[02:33:48] have when I was coming up that I wish
[02:33:49] someone would have taught me. And then I
[02:33:51] had to just find out through trial and
[02:33:52] error. And so that's why we make this
[02:33:54] stuff.
[02:33:55] But
[02:33:57] the views weren't high. But for me like
[02:34:00] I'm here for business owners. And I
[02:34:02] already know there's only 9% of people
[02:34:03] are business owners.
[02:34:05] And that's okay.
[02:34:06] I'm for you I'm here for you guys. All
[02:34:08] right. So here's what we're doing next
[02:34:09] with this data. All right. So we had our
[02:34:11] hypothesis. We looked at the 35,000
[02:34:13] posts. We made the six big shifts. And
[02:34:15] by and large we have crushed the
[02:34:17] hypothesis. So I'm actually like I was
[02:34:19] telling my team yesterday I was like
[02:34:21] we're kind of lucky that this worked out
[02:34:23] the first time cuz like I'm not really
[02:34:24] used to things working out the first
[02:34:25] time. I'm more more like realistically
[02:34:27] be like, "Hey, we made this change and
[02:34:28] then like four of the six stats are bad
[02:34:30] and two of them are good." And so we're
[02:34:31] like, "All right. Well, these ones are
[02:34:32] good. So let's try and keep this stuff
[02:34:34] the same and then we got to tweak all
[02:34:35] these other things."
[02:34:37] Our view to subscriber ratio is higher.
[02:34:38] Our absolute subscribers are higher. Our
[02:34:39] options are higher. Book sales are
[02:34:40] higher. Applications are higher.
[02:34:43] And it's about stuff I like making. So
[02:34:44] I'm like I'm thrilled to tears. I'm
[02:34:46] stoked. And I get to make this stuff
[02:34:47] about like we can do more content
[02:34:49] because I don't have to put as much post
[02:34:50] into it for you guys. So like you guys
[02:34:52] said it's more distracting to have the
[02:34:53] whiz bangs and the effects. And we're
[02:34:54] like, "Cool.
[02:34:56] I'm happy to just talk business." So
[02:34:58] this is what we're doing now.
[02:34:59] So one big belief we have is volume
[02:35:02] negates luck. That's in the sales team
[02:35:03] locker room. Same thing in the media
[02:35:05] team. They said, "We will we will create
[02:35:08] more. And we will just basically have
[02:35:10] constraints on where like the direction
[02:35:12] of what we're creating, but we will keep
[02:35:14] we will keep making as much as we can in
[02:35:16] different ways to find out what works
[02:35:18] even better than our first whack at it.
[02:35:21] The second thing is don't get the same
[02:35:22] scar twice. We're super happy to make
[02:35:24] mistakes. I mean
[02:35:26] I I It's funny. I even I I I almost mean
[02:35:28] that. Like it's totally fine making
[02:35:31] mistakes cuz like they're not mistakes.
[02:35:33] They're just lessons. What we don't want
[02:35:34] is get the same scar twice.
[02:35:37] And so if we find out or we know that I
[02:35:40] have to introduce myself
[02:35:41] then I better keep introducing myself.
[02:35:43] If we know that high high five
[02:35:46] production doesn't do as well with
[02:35:47] business owners
[02:35:49] then I better not do that. Right? Unless
[02:35:52] there's a conclusion that we find that's
[02:35:53] wrong about that. But for now
[02:35:55] like that's what we're not going to make
[02:35:56] the same mistake twice. And so I'm happy
[02:35:58] to make all the mistakes there are in a
[02:35:59] very narrow field. That's what makes an
[02:36:00] expert.
[02:36:01] Um but I just don't want to make it
[02:36:03] twice. A third one, this is super
[02:36:04] tactical, is that uh
[02:36:06] slides versus just me heavily prepping
[02:36:08] for a presentation hasn't made as much
[02:36:10] of a difference. So I tried to
[02:36:11] approximate this by like my best videos
[02:36:14] that were most views and most business
[02:36:16] centric in terms of CPMs was me
[02:36:18] presenting at a conference. So I have a
[02:36:20] stage in my headquarters. And so I was
[02:36:22] like, "All right, I'm going to present
[02:36:23] on my stage." But it was to it was not
[02:36:25] to an empty room. It was to my to my
[02:36:26] team. But like a lot of comments were
[02:36:28] like, "Is this guy pretending to be on
[02:36:30] stage?" And so if you did see that,
[02:36:32] that's why it was uh that's why the the
[02:36:34] the room was kind of empty. Um but I was
[02:36:36] like I was trying to approximate as much
[02:36:37] of that style of video. So that gives
[02:36:40] you maybe a little bit insight. I was
[02:36:40] like, "Okay, well what can I control? I
[02:36:42] can do a stage. We can do the lighting.
[02:36:43] We can have the seats. I can have
[02:36:44] slides." These are all things that I'm
[02:36:45] used to doing. Now it worked to a
[02:36:46] degree, but we got the same performance
[02:36:48] from me just talking to a camera like
[02:36:49] this and going over the slides without
[02:36:52] the stage or me just doing whiteboard of
[02:36:54] walking through the concepts or the
[02:36:56] tactics to grow or solve a problem.
[02:36:58] Number four.
[02:37:00] Show what only you can show and say what
[02:37:02] only you can say. And so I have I have a
[02:37:06] few marketingisms that I have never
[02:37:08] heard anywhere else that are like very
[02:37:09] real for me. One is state the facts and
[02:37:11] tell the truth. It's always that way cuz
[02:37:13] then you never get in trouble, you don't
[02:37:14] have to worry about anything, you don't
[02:37:15] have to worry about claims, you just
[02:37:16] state the facts and tell the truth.
[02:37:17] Which also means that you have to go
[02:37:18] collect data so you can state the truth.
[02:37:20] Um and so a second one underneath of
[02:37:22] that is say what only we can say and
[02:37:24] show what only we can show. It's
[02:37:25] demonstration, right? And so
[02:37:28] if obviously I have accomplishments that
[02:37:30] I can say, "Hey, I know what I'm talking
[02:37:32] about." But there's also labor. And so I
[02:37:35] can say, "Hey, I built uh 8 million
[02:37:38] person audience."
[02:37:39] Listen to this stuff for content, which
[02:37:41] by the way, you don't have to listen to
[02:37:42] any of it. This just worked for me.
[02:37:43] Um or I can say I made 35,000 posts
[02:37:46] independent of the outcome. And so what
[02:37:49] I want to do is do more work than anyone
[02:37:51] else will do so that I can show what no
[02:37:54] one else can show and say what no one
[02:37:55] else can say. And so if you're starting
[02:37:56] out or you're you're you're a different
[02:37:58] part in your journey, considering like,
[02:37:59] "Okay, well, I can't out-outcome anyone
[02:38:01] yet cuz I'm early, but you can outwork
[02:38:03] people."
[02:38:04] And so I can't just say like, "I made
[02:38:06] 35,000 posts. What I learned."
[02:38:08] I'm going to compress a lot of time for
[02:38:09] you. That's valuable, no matter who you
[02:38:11] are. And number five is still doing wide
[02:38:14] shorts. So this is interesting. So
[02:38:17] we thought about this and we decided
[02:38:20] that for shorts we're willing to go a
[02:38:22] little bit wider. And I'll tell you why.
[02:38:24] So I run ads
[02:38:27] and Leila runs ads using our face. And I
[02:38:30] actually see the main ROI from shorts as
[02:38:33] top of funnel brand awareness. And when
[02:38:35] I say brand awareness, I really just
[02:38:36] mean like facial recognition. People
[02:38:37] will see my face and remember that they
[02:38:39] got some sort of value from it.
[02:38:41] And in a short it's more difficult to
[02:38:45] get into really deep business concepts,
[02:38:46] which is what I'm
[02:38:47] um not saying it's impossible and maybe
[02:38:49] I just need to up my skills, which is
[02:38:50] totally totally fine. Um but we're still
[02:38:53] maintaining a certain percentage of
[02:38:55] shorts that I would consider to be more
[02:38:56] like um a little bit wider. Because I
[02:38:59] tend to like business philosophy, too,
[02:39:00] and I don't want to stop. Like, what are
[02:39:01] the things I like talking about? Like
[02:39:03] philosophy. I like wide business
[02:39:05] concepts. I like personal development
[02:39:07] [ __ ] and sort of in terms of like
[02:39:09] productivity, which is kind of kind of a
[02:39:10] wider topic. But I'm not going to stop
[02:39:13] doing that cuz I do like making that
[02:39:14] stuff. And so,
[02:39:16] I'll probably keep having shorts around
[02:39:17] that because the ROI is actually not
[02:39:19] from shorts turning into book sales or
[02:39:21] shorts turning into opt-ins. It's
[02:39:23] actually the shorts
[02:39:24] getting retargeted later with an ad that
[02:39:27] does go to something, but they're going
[02:39:28] to be more likely to recognize me and
[02:39:31] then take the next step in whatever it
[02:39:33] whatever the funnel is. Whether we're
[02:39:34] saying, "Hey, if you're starting a
[02:39:35] business, go check out School." Which by
[02:39:36] the way, again, wide.
[02:39:38] If someone's trying to start a business,
[02:39:40] then it makes sense for it to be a
[02:39:41] little bit wider for people who are
[02:39:42] trying to get into it. And so then the
[02:39:44] School ads can hit those people and it
[02:39:46] makes sense for them to use School,
[02:39:47] right?
[02:39:48] Uh if it's
[02:39:50] a business owner, I still think that
[02:39:52] from a business perspective, we have a
[02:39:53] lot of business content in terms of our
[02:39:55] shorts. But I want to just address this
[02:39:57] in case you see it, so you're not
[02:39:58] confused about it. I still will have
[02:39:59] some wide content in short form
[02:40:02] um
[02:40:02] because of the reason I just said. And
[02:40:04] so, those are the kind of like the next
[02:40:06] steps. And if you guys find these kind
[02:40:08] of updates valuable with the metrics
[02:40:10] behind it, um the TLDR of this whole
[02:40:13] video is that
[02:40:15] what we said worked.
[02:40:19] And if you're an educator,
[02:40:21] toss out the views, focus on your
[02:40:23] customer, make stuff for them because
[02:40:25] likes ain't cash, views ain't cash, cash
[02:40:28] is cash. And so if you're trying to grow
[02:40:29] your business, make sure you're making
[02:40:31] the stuff for the people you actually
[02:40:32] want to make, not your ego.