Creators Are Brands

welcome back to creators our brands on your host tom boyd in this episode we talked to gan and meyer he's an instagram creator that went from three k to forty five k in one year he talked about how he did that how he went about making reels how he scripts reels how he edits how he found his former and what i love talking about money how he makes money from digital products and brand deals now this is part one of the episode this is the foundation this is how he went from having a job to being a full time creator and the following up episode there's gonna be a part two after this episode was recorded we just kept jamming about specific strategies for myself making digital products and strategies for him to make more money with brand deals so we're gonna have a strategy session in part two look out for that one in the following episode i thought it would be really cool to like front load the podcast with these like quicker hit questions yeah and kinda answer that them in like a punchy way if you can then we will expand on a couple after that it's all i'll i'll i'll edit it like a short form version from that and then we'll take two to three and we'll jam for like fifteen more minutes on those cool i sound good i got my cobra saw down i'm ready cheers cheers i got my i got my too let's cook it's boo alright gan how are we feeling me i like that name never gonna meet another one i've i've never met another guy and then my i know that's actually big branding i like six i couldn't get my handle tom boyd so i had to make say bonus footage yeah i i somebody has the the head gan and i know they're probably not active there's a gan in university yeah gan m already taken some like so what is your handle is is it gan it's it's gan dot myers so i had the old handle was my name with no spaces which is like not i grew play xbox anything og g with no spaces or like periods or characters it's like that's what you want yeah but that old profile i i don't have access to and i've contacted facebook and i'm like can you guys help me get this back and they're just like no and i'm like it's meat what do you mean that's wild but it's gotten in dot meyer yet but there's a a period between you stole your own handle from yourself that's crazy yeah that's that's what's well i'm excited to sharing with you welcome to the podcast you make some i really like your style of content it's clean it's straightforward i got your course the what's the hundred dollar course i guy the many chat like the hundred leads yeah yeah that's really good i'm not i'm plugging right out the gate here i don't buy a lot of products and i was like hesitant to buy a product because like pretty busy right now but like i looked at the outline i was like this seems like you are really good at crafting a digital product and you're not gonna waste my time i like i don't know why but i got that sense and that's exactly i like i started it then i we had our second baby so i need to finish it but i'm excited to implement the strategies but i figured i'll just get you on the the podcast and i'll get a free console station right now and anyone else can go and get the course that they want i'm down for that that's causes me so you went you went to from three thousand to forty five thousand in a year correct yeah that's not the full story is like i went from zero to three thousand and three years and then three thousand forty five thousand of one year got and that's like that's the part that people leave out when they go our an instagram account that it's it's like all exponential right it's not like you don't you lose weight constantly it's you one day wake up it's not it's it's different like what it's lifting weights and go into the gym you lose weight over a period of time instagram and growing your social media like brand is like one day you just worked out from the past three years one day you went from three fifty to one fifty and it's just like one day you woke up or you're like oh shit like yeah yeah yeah feel different yeah okay so so what was the what were your major jumps was it like three k to ten k to forty k or was it like pretty much couple thousand here and there over an extended a period of time yeah i i had two videos around this time last year actually then i was like november of twenty three two videos back to back got three million views and i was testing a new format and it was just me drawing on my ipad or like a piece of paper like what i was explaining in the video twenty and those videos did super well and i was like this is what people want that's strange so i just kept doing that and at the time i posted those videos i was at like three thousand thirty three hundred followers the first big jump was like from three thousand to like fifteen k and that was within a week and then from fifteen k to like twenty five k that was a few months and then twenty five k to forty six k was like a month got it so it's really weird like the videos that do take off like you're you're probably gonna have like three out of every one hundred videos be the source of your growth you kinda want your other contents relate to that that's gonna crazy that's crazy yeah you know what it's sort of like i'm reading this book from james alt right now called skip the line and he talks about the eighty twenty principal like you know that's the the obvious thing like twenty percent of what you do produces eighty percent of the results but he said if you do the math even further it goes down to like one percent of the things you do get you fifty percent of the results and that's kind of similar to like what you're saying here like one percent of the actual like deliverables on your con content this is produced like the most yeah and the that you then then like i guess tell me about this like in short form once you get those people in it's the other videos even though they're not going mega viral bringing in they're still making your your followers and the people that are there you happy on a day to day basis yeah i mean right now i'm at a point where i'm getting like three hundred to four hundred new followers a day which crazy yeah yeah and it's it's really just like because i think i have established the style and the editing style that i use and like you ask anybody that that follows me like they know exactly what they're gonna get when they watch my video but in terms of the format right in terms of like the content itself like what i'm saying is gonna be different every time but it's like watching its episode of any of your favorite tv like you know the format that you're gonna get you just don't know exactly what's gonna have and i think you have to find the format that people enjoy and that you can sustain over a long period of time without burning yourself back and i think i've found that which is great yeah yeah okay but i love that so like the format in itself is almost your hook like people or at least to your existing followers so when they're scrolling they hear your voice they see the aesthetic they know immediately they have to look at the handle they know what they're gonna get out of this type of video yeah same thing like i think the best examples are i mean if i had to so the i look at my content is i'm i'm looked the the combination of like four three or four people on the platform like that's it like i just pulled bits and pieces from different people so like tom natsuki just his style of like storytelling i guess you could say no and and i guess somewhat the editing adam that you had on the podcast we'll talk to a lot he's one of the people that's like inspires my videos and nana f but also out in the podcast or capsules i'm just like friday yeah this is like the best style of like storytelling like those three people i'm a combination of but like you would never know and it's it's weird like i think i i mentioned this in my one of my product themselves i'm like it feels weird when people praise the work that i do because it kind of feels like in a sense they're praising the other people that i have gotten this razor from but it's still my own style right yeah yeah you know it it's funny i now that you say that i can like see elements of their style in your work but like i wouldn't be able to see like that's what makes it you're so you said there's three people there's really fourth people you're the fourth person that then makes it all all unique you know to you in your voice and what you're trying to to deliver and the truth is those four follow four other people and then those four other people follow you know so it's like it's kind of blending styles and and then finding the format that works best for you now i have a question what is like i feel like you're very intentional about your content too i feel like you're not like i'm just because this is sort of how i am sometimes i'm like i i'm gonna i'm gonna throw up some stuff that i'm thinking this week you know but i feel like you are very intentional about like approaching your content like a like a business yeah is this accurate i i would like to say i have content pillars everybody's is like oh like when you plan out your videos like you have to have and follow these content pillars i don't follow that at all it's kind of just like so i'm i'm kinda crazy when it comes to my videos i don't batch record i don't batch write my videos i write one video every day and i record that video and edit that video the same day basically and i can get a video done in like an hour and a half from start to finish which i think and that's like this sustainable part of the video because i have a format that i follow in terms of like talk a well say that say your next thing and then you were gonna talk through your production process yeah so the way that i like kind of format like what i'm going to post on a certain day if you go back in my videos it's probably like sixty forty sixty percent i have some sort of like a lead magnet that i'm promoting or an actual product and i just threw do through many chat and it's not like oh download this or you know join the waitlist list or buy this it's like oh here's here's why i made this thing it's this value that i'm gonna show you like i had this problem this is the story of me going through this problem here's how i solved it by the way if you have this same problem this is what i created to help you solve that problem and if you want it just comment this word and that's it and i think if you tell the story of like so an example of that that i use all the time is like you know if if chat gp can write the video for you there's really no reason why somebody would connect with you on a level that makes them wanna buy your stuff so the example that i use is like an nd filter for a felt like a lens that you can just shoot outside at like really low aperture and if you're not into cameras and you're probably like what am i able the saying right now but anybody can make a video explaining what that thing is yes but if you have like a gear list which i just need today what i what i can make a video about is like i spent two hours outside recording this video i came back to my computer uploaded the footage only to see that literally all the footage was overexposed and i realized that i needed this thing this is an nd filter here's what it does by the way if you want all the other gear that i'm using to make videos like this and not with any problems comment the word gear i'll send you more list that's that's it you gotta tell a story and convince people that you are the one to solve a problem because you have gone through that sand experiences though and that's something chat can't do is like describe a personal relatable experience no can chat write adams nana or tom's video if you just watch any of those videos maybe some of mine they stay sticking lately get get again again not you're right you're right actually no no you're you're you're right on and honestly that's a a good thing just across the board any creators just saying what can i only get away with saying yeah and like like nana like all of her content is like it's like she's sharing like a perspective of her world that she can really only get away with sit like saying and sharing because it's her personal experience tied tied in with actual business and content lessons yeah that's that's literally all you have to like if there's a litmus test for creating a video it's if chat gp can write this i am not posting it and making it there's no reason for me to do it it's not a it's not a personal brand that's just information that anybody can find that google you know you're good at talking i can already tell that we're gonna get some good clip we're gonna get some good clips from this yeah you're good at talking off the cuff it's probably because you've been doing your solo podcast too you you i kinda trains you to get good at that but that's just one thing i want to i want to commend you on real world real quick okay i have a question so once you say okay two questions about like saying the whole comment gear to get my gear list one do you ever find because i think that like some creators have a hesitant he seat to actually have a cta and like ask people to do stuff do you ever feel friction with an audience when you do that one and number yeah so yeah yeah good email that do that and then i'll ask number two once you answer the answer is yes well i'll go into it when you ask your second question and then number two is like once they say gear then what happens to that email like what's your where do you put that email in the future yeah so i i think they'll if there's anything i learned over the past year so i quit my job in january to do this full and if there's anything that i have learned like and i i also just met with the stan team so we run online store on stan so do and i just joined their ambassador program shout john shout john logan i'm trying to get that i'm trying to get that ambassador hook up john alright said be he'll answer yeah my dms on my no yeah we we connected a year ago when i was or like two years ago when i didn't really have products and then now that i'm doing it ash know it they did give me a store i think i have it under a different email i have to look it up i i might have i might have a free ambassador store come on man i think he did send my bad my bad day shot go ahead yeah i just so their their team is great like i just met with him and their ambassador team basically on a one on one call they went through my entire store and they were basically like you know you don't promote enough like you just you just don't your videos and i'm like so like i i make a good living with the digital products and the brand deals and like everything like that to like it's crazy because so when when i have my my like cycle for the past year was like okay release of product if nobody buys it it's probably because of the cost make it free give it away and then somewhat you know whenever it is down the line have a high ticket thing because i've given so much free things away that people will pull the trigger on the more expensive thing it's not that's not actually the case it's you it's often never price and that's something that i have to get like still drilled into my head where it's just a function of like how much you promote and a good metric for this is like you know the average e commerce website converts a visitor into a paying customer or at a rate of like two point eight percent it's like the industry average right so when you have fifty people click on your link and nobody buys like or even twenty five people click on your link which just a lot of people for most people to click on that product to to express some interest in it and nobody buys it set a function of price it's a it's a function of numbers right and yeah you can just do some back of the napkin math where it's like alright well if my average conversion rate is like two point five percent that basically means for every one hundred people i clicked on this if i sell it for twenty five dollars i'll make fifty bucks so it's not how many people can i get to buy this it's how many people can i drive to this website to increase the top of the funnel and that's literally it and you can measure your conversion rates so if your conversion rates lower i'm gonna answer the question based off of like what you asked me so just bear with me but so if your conversion rate is lower just look at the sales page and be like alright well if if i were to buy this product we're what are some of the questions that i would have and what does this page not answer for me right so for me it just becomes like how how many people can i drive to this website and that's just a function of how much can i promote this thing and then it becomes the question of like well how do i balance my free stuff with the promotion stuff and one of the things that i struggle with is like because i don't promote enough and i feel like whenever i do promote i'm pissing people off in a way yeah but i've run polls on my instagram where it's like hey i just launched this thing last week you know a handful of you bought it but thousands of you said you had interest in it like why didn't you buy it and why you're like we didn't even know it was released i'm like i posted it every day for a week what do you so it does like when you are promoting something that you create you have to get over the fact that yes you might see it every day but people think about how many ads and how many points you see every single day it's just yeah no you're right you think because you're thinking about all the time other people are but they're they're they have their whole world like you're a very small sliver of their day on their feet they might just forget like they might say they want it and they'll click the link and then something pops up where they just don't you know they'll yeah purchase it so okay it's not it's not a function of your product yeah yeah yeah yeah they're fucking busy like yeah they lives yeah so so what so what you're saying is you gotta it's all about putting it in people's face that the being repetitive with it and that's alright it's necessary too because like so when when you do that do do people say like like help someone get over like the someone's like wants to sell a product they don't wanna feel the friction of people saying you're promoting things like do you just understand mindset yeah just the mindset of like peep like i mean i think what you're gonna say is it's like it's not for them like like like like i if people have an issue with you doing cta in your videos it's not for them yeah it's it's i'm if if it's a mindset thing then honestly like if you were afraid to promote something then it's probably not good enough and you don't think it's up to the standard that you wanted to be so like the quality of the the the the product you should feel so confident and you're like i have to tell people about this consumer yeah like my course so i mean my course was originally in my paid group and i was like i got feedback from people where it's like alright well what do you wanna see in this in this play mini course that's not here and they give me feedback and i'm like you guys like love this shit so much why don't i just make it available to everybody and they did and like i promoted it for quite some time and i posted it in my like my reels and and my story and it's so good like i i feel fine promoting it because i know know what it is right like you shouldn't have any hesitation like you know apple and tim cook they're not like are inter promoting the actual like they no they spent the year of making that thing they're like alright you should buy this like these rates so much do we how do we put this everywhere can possibly be yeah that's a really why are we afraid to advertise are we afraid we're gonna lose them that's gonna like almost the follow us because we make too much they're not gonna buy from you anyway and get this shit okay no that's a that's a good point i got a question so you got my ten rules for dms right yes i i i i i don't see i had that i that was supposed to be a solo podcast and i just had had it like written out and then i was like i wanted to get like my digital products going and i was like i could throw this up and see if anyone like gets used from it like it's like some of it's like some of you you know i i sort of it was it's more of like again outline for a solo show where i was gonna provide more context into each point i was like god maybe it can stand alone and i put it up that day you shared it which was a huge help but it got fifty downloads in like three yeah three three hours and all it this is a google doc pdf and so it did get me excited about like the digital product route what is in your opinion like the next step up of like something i could sell like should i go like the forty seven dollar like digital products from there or should i try to make like a two hundred dollar course i've actually found that it's easier to sell things and more expensive than they are to sell things are less expensive so like i have one hundred percent found it easier to sell something that's fifteen hundred dollars than to sell one hundred fifteen dollar things if that makes sense the reason that's the case i think is because you can package so many different things into that fifteen hundred dollar thing instead of making it a fifteen dollar stand thing yeah and people just see more value so like this is like yeah i i think the term is called like value stacking or something like that where you're like oh you get this which is normally seven hundred dollars this which is eight hundred this which is a thousand we're gonna put it all together where it's normally fit twenty five hundred bucks but now you're get it for fifteen hundred thousand dollars off and when you like package it like that i think you're gonna have a better result in terms of like income and then the people who you are helping because they have the money to put up like that and it kinda hurts in a way when they put out that money they are more invested in the result yeah so i think for you it would be like alright one step in the process does this three things solve and what is the next the logical step that that person needs and then if it's if you sell that one step it could be like forty seven bucks or twenty nine bucks right but if you sell the all of the steps together you could then charge like fifteen hundred bucks and that could be like a life cohort or something or you know a course or yeah just like all of the steps individually where it's like you get the whole starter kit or whatever for brand deals and so thought that way i i know for sure i don't wanna do a lot a live cohorts my i just it's just i do enough live stuff with like the podcast and like i i i i just we're having kids having a day job it's just like too much like right now i'm trying to yeah i think of the angle like what's that perfect price point and what is the product so you're saying maybe like start by making a couple things that kinda help out with each next step in the process maybe sell them separately or bundle them together and sell them as like one thing yeah so i i think i think for me like for for what you have right now for the digital products it's here's how to connect with brands yeah but i think the next step would be like here's how to price your service right and here's what agencies do like you're you're different like like a pricing guide like a pricing guide yeah pricing guide how to find how to find brands like you can literally do like a i don't know a lesson on how to see which brands are running to facebook ads and running dc ads on on instagram and facebook how how to find the buyers like i got because yeah that is a a lesson that i have like outlined already yeah so i would just like the the lead nine admit that you have it solves step one which is like here's what you say two brands if you wanna work with them but then the next step is like what do i charge yeah how do i connect with those people who are charging me man who's got money yeah yeah yeah right and it's also like maybe showing your value i think one of the things that i struggle with and a lot of other creators struggle with is like how what's the easiest way to show my analytics to somebody like how could how should i structure that can i send out a one pager what do companies really look for is it like the demographics is it reach is it views it's followers it's it story views is it email list like what is like what what is the number do you guys want yeah that's a good that's great question and and i to be honest yeah i i i could definitely pro provide some insight on that and the truth is it's it it like it definitely varies it varies but there's probably like three consistent things that like they look for the most but there there's like certain ones that i've worked on where it's like this person has zero followers like this person has two owner followers but we like that style of content and it's gonna fit the campaign that we have in mind really well so like depending on the campaign like we didn't even care about this guy's engagement rate we just like like we just knew this would be a good compliment to all the other people that we had but yeah we i i i i could break that down to like like a ten step thing like how to show your value and what brands are looking for yeah figure out how you want to deliver it yeah yeah do a a a big one is like this is how i got brand deals when i had no followers i would share screenshots of comments are people of people that were their target audience so they it would be like i would is taking like any little thing that could show my value it could dude i got like random likes on tiktok from like big accounts i'd screenshot them i would like this guy this guy and like it's like in the break like the brain sees like hey if this credible person has has cosign signed him even with this just pub public like then it might nudge them a little bit more in the direction yeah i could give you like a like a step by step like how to how to show your value in like ten different ways yeah that'd would be perfect and like how so one of the things too is like how do i find the people who are in charge of making these decisions like yeah what agency represents that company or if i send a dm like is that the best route to go yeah in some cases it is yeah something into that company using your format i was like shit i i might get a brand deal i might get a free five thousand mile whiteboard out of this man did you did you end blend that brand deal or we're still working on it right okay nice nice yeah i'm i love that and and if you want the dm the ten rules for dms i will put the link below and i'll also put the link to to your stan store below to if people wanna go in there okay alright you'll let's get into the dude so many we're twenty seven minutes in and i wanted to start out with the quick questions and i did i that there we just started we just started going in i love it though i love it that's why i can't do a damn short show i can i can take forever you don't what mean the same and i i likewise alright so this is the deal i'm wanna kinda of bring the audience into this process too so my goal right now is to kind of have a format within the long form format that we can use for short form it's gonna be i'm gonna ask again in quick hit or questions and i'm gonna take this video and i'm gonna edit it down to about sixty seconds and then we're gonna expand on some of the topics and a sixty second version is gonna be for instagram but then we're gonna take the many chat strategy to get people to get into the long form it's brilliant then many chats gonna hire us as consultants that's right no i think they have enough people crushing it right yeah not worried about did do you ever worry like like i i question is like when is instagram i'm gonna clamp down on many chat like what do you think this have a partnership with them oh do they yeah oh so that's why the only like time without going off on a tangent like the only time that they have so they did this recently like would when somebody comments and like if all the comments are the same word they hide those comments so you'll see a post with like eighty k comments but they're all the same so you only see like fifteen right so that's smart so wait instagram is actually partnered with many chat yeah they're they're like a meta verified partner so that is fun to know because i was like how much do i wanna get into like using this feel like and then like instagram shuts down like they're not people's capabilities of using this oh so it's so it's like a must like you gotta if you wanna get people on your email list you shut your account down for using money chat they know because of the like the connection through the api like that you're using many checks oh okay got it that's good to know so green how much is many chat do you starts at fifteen bucks a month but the more contacts you get little more it goes up i think it's like i have like eight thousand contacts right now or like six thousand or something and i pay like sixty five bucks a month or worth like got it alright so let let's do the quick our questions and we'll start with that one what are what are the three essential tools for building a business on instagram as a creator chant obviously notion that's what i used to plan all of my videos and some editing software that you are comfortable with and you can stick with long term i use premier i wouldn't use anything else because i would have to learn what that thing does but don't wanna do that find the find your niche or be the niche i think it's a combination of both so like i'm in the creator space but i tell my story through my videos in a way that only i can make those videos so like i my editing style the way present myself on camera that becomes the brand but i'm within this industry or section of instagram on it so like i am in a way of my own brand because of the way that i structured my videos brandy if you're starting out as a creator should you be thinking about how to monetize through brand deals or digital products this stuff i would say i would say the easiest routes to income quickly is brand deals and then once you figure out what your audience really wants it beats then i would move into the digital product side because you're it's much easier to make like a couple of grand a month off of brand meals and it is to sell a couple grand in digital products in one month you're just starting up very true alright i'm i'm still going i'm still going what's your what's your number one piece of advice for going from one hundred followers to ten thousand followers if i think it's it's two parts right if chat gp can write the video don't post it and if your content is looks the same as everybody else's is why should they listen to you if you can't answer that question don't post the video i love it alright wait wait alright what we got here now three tools brand deals we're gonna chop this up so it's quicker but i kinda liked that the audience is like seeing the behind the scenes of making this part okay what's your number one tip for writing a script for reels tell people what they're gonna get in the first three seconds and position it in a way that only you can tell it so i did this but and i i did this in this in this time frame here's how you could do the same you wanna tell the story of like how you achieve something and tell them that they can do the same by following what you're going to tell them and then tell them i do it for the video love that how long should your video be on reels my my sweet spot right now is like forty seconds anything above that doesn't do as well but people still love the videos so if i wanna make a video that goes semi viral i would stick to like thirty five to forty seconds when you're working with people and you see a videos consistently flop what is the most common thing you're seeing them doing wrong there talking at people and instead of talking to them shout out nana it just sounds like you're lecturing somebody like no one wants to be lecturing too or yeah yeah this yeah they will make videos about things that they have not done themselves and it comes across number one as low confidence on camera number two i can click on your profile and see that you have no business talking about that so why would i listen to you so yeah dude i can't wait to expand on these alright alright you went from three k to forty five k in one year looking back what's one thing you would have done differently knowing what you know now step to one format and step to one format that i know my audience likes and what i also like instead i'm trying to change what my videos look like and sound like every three months and try to reinvent the wheel or change my target audience like i changed my target audience like four times and explain what format it means as it relates to your content yeah so like those the most i think what traditionally instagram rails was for the past couple years it was like the fast paced alex or mo cuts yeah like just you have the retention the the attention span of i don't know a goldfish right now i've tried that and this format wasn't fun to make and i didn't like doing it and it didn't perform well now it's like my videos are much slower but they tell a story and it's a bit of a complex topic for a lot of people and i think the slow pace of the video actually contributes to them learning more instead of overwhelming what their their sense is by watching the video so format is basically b roll voice over talking head transition to more b roll or ipad more talking head more b roll end clip me talking head call the action that's it it's like three different sections i love that yeah yeah yeah yeah okay okay do yeah finding your format what's it it like there's so many things to test with the format too it's like it's like is the script bad is like the camera was bad is the con the content is the first three seconds bad what are tips on like finding your format and that you know first a hundred videos your format and editing style we'll complement and combine them it's so find find three or four different people that you like enjoy their videos from and just take little bits and pieces from those videos and incorporate like you don't have to reinvent the wheel like if i wanted to design my office i wouldn't start with like you know a a blueprint of just the blank canvas and try to draw things that i want i would have a rough sketch of what i wanted to look like in my head yep but i would probably go to like pinterest or instagram and like pull inspiration from there and then put it all together that and like that kind of develops your style in a way too so like maybe it's like you know dark walls plants orange lighting like which is when i like a lot but i don't know what it looks like in my head what the finished product should look like yet because i don't have the inspiration that pulling from different places boosting videos on instagram reels boosting instagram reels when and why if a video does well organically and i mean that in terms of you're getting new people to follow you it's reaching more of the non followers than it is four followers and people are sharing it more often than your other videos boost it but because that video if you post another one the next day is like it's like reels are like razors right use a razor like a handful of times maybe even once and then you just throw away right so if you want the shelf life of that reel to be longer and get them more out of it there's a function on instagram right now that i'm using almost like weekly at this point where it's essentially retargeting so anybody who is interactive with your post in the past year is now to see that new video and chances are because they've seen you in the past for like oh shit he popped up twenty times this week i guess have to follow them now and they follow you and then now they're in your ecosystem so how does boosting work does that like show up on someone's fee like an ad or does it show just like a it shows up as a sponsored post i think the difference in why people might like those sponsored post more is because it's not actually a path right like yes you you kind of feels weird paying for reach but that's sometimes the trade off that you have to accomplish and i'm not saying like i spend thousands of dollars a month on ads i don't yeah like i spend thirty bucks a month on yeah like it's like right now it's like twelve cents for somewhere to follow me so like why would i not do that it makes no sense yeah i i've thought about that for some of them especially in my clips for this podcast especially since there's like a more content like i just wanna i feel like the i get a lot of good feedback from the podcast clips but they're not usually built to be like viral clips yeah so i felt like boosting could help get in front of more people i mean bit like i just saw like like colin and sami amir boosted content it's like the biggest creators are doing like doing this in some way like it's playing the game you're gonna get comments or like dude your sponsoring post and you're paying for reach i'm like it's a business you like what do you mean am i'm not supposed to promote by what i'm doing exactly exactly yeah yeah exactly like you know peep people see hundreds of boosted ads and promoted ads a day but they get mad and a solo creator puts thirty bucks behind for one month so and be gonna get a life man yeah yeah too bad slow down okay question about filming b roll what are your tips for filming b roll for your content and is it and do you reuse b roll yeah so i i would say don't cheap out on a on on equipment get the right equipment so i think if you're gonna shoot b roll outside if you have a camera you need an nd default sir like a variable nd filter this is like more technical but the equipment definitely matters you wanna have a nice composition with colors it sounds very simple but like people have a hard time doing it so just look at like the golden spiral golden ratio and like leading lines like those three things i am almost always like i i vision that in my head before i even take b roll so that's why some of my beer looks pretty symptomatic because i have that in my head like symmetry leading lines golden spiral and the golden ratio like all of those things and i i reused b roll in like every video kinda becomes like my branding right if they see that shot of me walking in like the amp theater in like shit taco which is like that big orange going that you've seen some of my videos like i use that all the time because if like it looks great and people know it's me because that's the probably the only time i'm trying to prove and taken yeah dude i love that and that's why i wanna to know like do you have a like a b roll bank and you like filmed it over the years and then when you're editing a video you just had that as a folder on premiere and you just drag certain clips over as it mentioned two terabyte hard hard drive that i carry around for on my bureau that's it's a lot of science lot of it's four k sixty fps so like the fly like a minute like three gigs or whatever hurdles so let let let's and so let's dump it down a little bit let's talk about just like say someone has this an iphone and they want and they're like they wanna add talking heavy video they wanna add like five b roll clips per video yeah what is like the i i guess like like the way i see it is like i think a lot of people just kind of stack b roll over like a month then they have a folder on their iphone like what i i i even know what i'm really getting out with this tip how can basically anybody shoot be if how any yeah yeah i mean same thing right just i so not to like i don't like plugging in my stuff but like i have literally two hundred ideas of like be in the gear list and like video i think impact i just released so i would think of it like indoor shots outdoor shots product shots and lifestyle shots like those different types of things and there's different like i can make a whole like three hour video about this but there's different like wide angles medium shots and tight shots so like the wide angles is like the environment the medium shot is like mainly you plus the environment a little bit and a tight shot is basically like ever see those close up something like people's eyes and they blink or it's just like their face and that's the entire thing like that's what you can do not that i know everything about you know shooting video and and cinema them but that's kind of the way you wanna approach it is like how many different angles can i get and don't if you think something was well of your car it's like why i'm why you sitting in the parcel so for sitting down and started talking to shit i were good we're good so yeah i was gonna say like if you if you think something looks good just post it like don't look for validation for other people i'm like this is or this shouldn't be positioned this way that's not the right comp like people aren't looking for that and i think like if you if you are looking to get better than ask for the opinion of somebody else who like makes videos and just like hey what do you think of this composition or the colors here or the way that this is framed and things like that like get better by doing and by sharing your work instead of not posting something because if you think you're gonna get judged by other people yeah the only way like i i posted a quote somewhere about this you know this saw somebody many quotes on the dang internet but like the only mistake is like something that you can't get useful information from so like like you guessing whether or not it works isn't helping you like put it out and just see if everything freaking works is i got a question is talking about like guessing i'm gonna ask a pro about my content like i feel like i've been all over the place with mine pretty scatter brain about it i i think the main two formats on my mine are gonna be like these shorts from this show and then i i like i do like the greens like the greet like with my schedule the green screen style videos are like my most accessible right now yeah what can i do to improve them and i feel like i i don't know like i'm trying to figure out like dude i go from i i try to figure out who the heck am i talking to on a consistent basis because sometimes i like talk into like the creator economy as a whole just like this like macro things i'm thinking about it or like ideas for specific brands or then like also and then it's just like helping the solo creator that is like kind of you know less than a thousand followers and they're trying to figure out the first a hundred videos hundred brand deals whatever how to monetize what that like give me some direction give me some direction with my content if you were to coach coach me yeah i would say like i i think the green screen is fine i think the one thing that maybe you don't do in your videos is like you know who's is like who's time like yeah how did how did you get to where you are why do you have the credibility to talk about what you talk about and i think it's like you know you posted both your stories today with like justin bieber like scooter brown it's like oh shit how do you know those people like how get there yeah and like even what you told me and like your your experience with managing brand deals like yeah have to talk about that because now it's the credibility it's not just like true information that you can get from youtube it's like i help to manage whatever you know non disclosure agreement that you have and you can say like well i helped this these types of brands with this budget do this if i if i was you know offering advice to anybody or even my younger self this is what i would do now yeah you don't have to make that every video but yeah yeah that's it's a good point like you don't you obviously know rosie right yeah yeah yeah what what's his story dude he's got his store story dialed in bro it's an elevated of bro he he told the story about how he was at lil house on christmas he said that the business is going under and that he said that he's good and then she he was like i'm a sinking shit you should leave me now and she said i would sleep under a bridge with you and i y'all dude it he said that i've heard him say last story like five times yeah he was he was on my first million last month telling that story i tear it up like i i knew the story i knew the story and it's so dialed in and like and like gary too i was working at the wine store with my dad like this like do they have their story dialed in and it's kinda like loops in like yeah doing that that that is a good point that is a really good point kind of looping in it does have to be that dramatic either but like just a little context that shows like you've been in the trenches in this industry yeah yeah so like there's there's two thoughts i have about that so like the first thing i would do in terms of like instagram is if you went to my instagram right now the first post that i have pinned is the start here with my story like here's how i got to where am right now the second part of that part one is like you wanna have like an elevator pitch version of right so if you listen to any of like alex's podcasts it's like you know i took i i saw my first business for you know forty five million dollars i have a portfolio a company that runs you know half a billion dollars a year and whatever it is like yeah you revenue right so you know like he has do those are something about yep and i think like if you start with something like that like if i started my videos or i like sprinkled in some of my videos like you know i quit my full time job because i hated it and i do this full time like oh shit like now he makes a living doing this like now yeah he has some more credibility yeah so that's part one part two is you know you you kinda wanna have like i said like a few different versions of this that you can tell because it's gonna be totally of different context depending on the context yeah yeah yeah yeah so like just don't be afraid to tell your story and i think yeah that's why people connect with you i i know what you do well yeah a big one is like i i worked in the music industry for about five years and i actually lost a lot of money in the music industry and this was like sort of before like being a creator was like a viable route but like we were creators in a way but like it just wasn't like we were thinking more traditional music music industry route right go through the label big music like that route but then i lost a lot of money was taken advantage of by my own being by my own like doing like lack of assertiveness insecurity not like sure of who i was and what i want to be you know like there's a lot of elements that like overlap to like being a creator now which i think that there's like a it makes me very vocal about like people speaking up for like their worth and like that's why gravitate towards like creators making money and like negotiating and getting brand deals and like not be because i see creative people like and i also work at a billion dollar brand where i i i've hired like over a million dollars worth of like like just creative in general for like film for like like just for like photographers like graphic designers like like animators i've i've been i'm i went from like not knowing how to talk about money as like a creative to like it's i do it every day now mh and so like there's a and like the thing always come back to and people always ask me questions about is like when it comes to like like getting paid like like how much should i charge for this like and i think people come to me because they know like and a lot of it is like it's good it's good have a hype person in your corner like i remember for like the first couple of things like bigger projects child i would charge like people would say now charged six thousand dollars for this i'm like what are you talking about but like just that person saying that probably made me like three grand more than i i would have charged myself mh so it's like part like a lot of me is like just part hype person because i want like i don't want i love seeing create like independent creative get money like i love that because i yeah i'm going on a lower rant this turns into a coaching sesame people you know the the the journey of the journey of a creators are brands podcast maybe but yeah there's a lot of but i think what you're saying is take all of that brain dump it whittle it down to like a couple one liners but like i can incorporate into different context of content like whether it's on a podcast in like a short form video the newsletter like b like have that those little sound bites that i can use you'd be like you can start your video with like what they're gonna learn you can say if by way if you don't know me my name's tom i help billy dollar brands spend millions of dollars of month on creative like you have the green screen your point to like purple there they go into it looks like there's no need to like expand down that yeah you want the name drop specifics it's just like yeah yeah okay i like that i like that that's that's good that that's good i wanna take that thank you you trying yeah awesome yeah we're so we are about we're we're we've been hitting a bunch of topics is there anything that you think that you missed that's like top of mind that you would like to discuss i think like the only thing that like it's not even like a topic it's just like a rule of thumb that i use for my videos like people are like how your videos so minimally edited and how do they do so well i thought it was like oh paced captions i'm like i've it's it's probably some famous artist that i'm just like it's slipping my mind but like the quote that i think about all the time is like you know so your work is not dumb not when there's nothing left messed left the john try the again right your work is not done not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to remove so when there's everything is complete you know that it's complete when there's nothing on the left to remove from the video like that's that's what i think about it ideas like they're so minimal but they're minimal in its own way because if i did add anything that would throw everything out of context and confuse people i think i love that i'm gonna start incorporating that as well because the your your videos are clear and direct to like the point that you're trying to make i think sometimes my mistake is like being and when i say my mistake i've i only say it because i feel like other people can relate i'm like trying to say too much i'm trying to get too many points across but in a forty second video you have to be very clear about what the out the message is and yeah you do a good job so you brain dump it you edit it and then the filter is has everything been removed that needs to be removed is like what would be the question how do you put that in a question i was saying like if i remove this from the video does the video still make sense yes if it does get rid of it i love that alright one more question pertaining to the ceo of instagram if you had one question for adam mo about being a creator on instagram or something that pertains to being a creator what would it be why and why can i not monetize my work yet when can i monetize my work and why is it so difficult for you and the team to figure out how we get paid as creators why can youtube do it so easily is it really that hard to say like somebody click somebody clicked on my profile you placed an ad on my profile specifically and you're still not paying me like you know that they saw the ad from me what's up adam soon like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i love it i love that y so what what i'm gonna do is i'm i'm making a montage of all of the people asking adam questions on this podcast and then i'm gonna make a video and i'm gonna boost it so he sees it doing good good and then i'm gonna get him on the show and ask him every single one of them alright like why is it so hard like i guess that's one thing i just don't understand like if i click on your profile i'm gonna see an at yeah even if it's five cents why is that not attributed to you like what is so hard about that yeah don't make the entire thing perfect to start with like paying people start with just dumping money into my bank account alright how can i make like i even post to youtube but i make like a good chunk of change from youtube but yes yeah if so i go to my instagram analytics right now i owe them seventy three cents i what are we doing yeah you know that no would be because at least give me some like boosting credits like like like you know what i'm saying like some sort of like like that that's actually a good idea you get like money like maybe it's not money so it's like it the money really never leaves them you know it's like you based on the amount of people you've sent like you get boot like money to put towards boosting your own to i don't know program yeah exactly so so where are we gonna send if if you wanna get the downloads that you mentioned in the show where would you like them to to go yeah my instagram page it's at gan dot meyer g a n n o n dot period n e y e r and the sands store link in my bio has few different things it's got my one hundred leads in seven days course so like basically how to you use mini wechat with your with your organic instagram videos i have a whole gear list b roll list video editing presets and a tutorial that don't how to use all that and my store too my gear list is free if you want all of that that's like the paid version of the gear list but yeah basically if you wanna make better videos i'm the person to help you out so i'll limit someone your instagram profile

welcome back to creators our brands i'm your host tom boyd i'm a full time director of content by day by night i am a creator enthusiasts they shares everything i think you don't care about here on this podcast and on my instagram at bonus footage now this episode with na del rey is an incredible one she is the ceo and founder of a company called content flows and she's a creator herself in her company she places creators and influencers with brands and then in her content she shows the behind the scenes of building that company and her vlogs are really cool just a unique take an original feel on a vlog and we talk about that we talk about her our production process how she thinks about filming how she thinks about scripting writing doing voice over fonts editing all all the things and and i gained a lot like i i i left this episode rethinking how i am i'm gonna approach shooting my mic oh like experimenting how i can shoot and film my content i hope you enjoy the show this is another one of those phone calls that is a phone call for the newsletter but we're trying it into the podcast just because it was such a wonderful conversation yeah one question well one i i was have another question but this is the question that i have right now so we're gonna start the show none del ray is on the show she's the ceo and founder of content flows she's a fantastic creator herself you're really forging like this cool like vlog format as a creative the it i don't know what i came put my finger on it but it really feels like a fresh take on like short form blocks like they feel very you there and my one of my favorite things is the like timeless of them i think a lot of your content like is relevant a year from now so it's not like you're not talking about anything that's timestamp stamped like current today it's like this is just like good topics to understand is someone that is building online yeah so i'm curious like so okay i wanna highlight i was watching your videos there's a shot that i really like it's an intro shot of you like leaning behind the computer like you know what i'm talking about i think i know we're were talking about yes i like what made do you think of that like like it's got like i've never seen that like so so easy you're hidden behind the computer monitor and then like you lean over you look and then you look back like like that's just like creative like subtly like different thing that you don't normally see are you just like setting the camera out and and just messing around for ten minutes i i do yeah so basically i don't have like a shot list for my short form so long form very different short form no shot list i kinda just prop up the camera on a tripod i don't know sometimes my full script to the the video sometimes i do but most of the time it's really just me doing my day to day stuff and then i try to add in flair is what i call it like personality of like okay what emotions can i do or things manner i can show on camera that will portray an emotion so like that particular shot you're talking about i kind of knew what my was gonna be and it was i think like probing a question and so or or making a statement that was a little bit i think more jarring not like super positive is more like pointing finger so i knew i wanted to be like i had like this like face on and i was like let me come out from buying the camera make it seem it's kind of like sudden or like mysterious like it's really not that thought out i kinda just like at the moment was like oh my camera and my computer are kind of in the way so how about i just like pop it and pop out because i can't censor it the way i want it to and it looked good without me keeping it here where the camera's is blocking my face yeah no i i like that and that's sort of something where you a point you can get to once you do it a lot you're like yeah if feel like this will work i don't know if not i'll just cut it out but let's just fill anyways mh i yeah i think i always overs shoot myself like if you go through my videos or i mean my my camera roll you'll see there's like i like twelve minute videos and like granted i'm just in front of my my computer ninety five percent of the time like i have my laptop with me and i'm sitting somewhere new but like i'm doing the same thing and it's just like a matter of again talking to people catching these like random expressions i make because like i'll read something or i'll start working and i forget the cameras on and then it's just me doing what i do yeah and like do things really like quirky things and those are the little things that i added into the videos to give it some flare yeah i feel like your vlogs too they it's almost like a it's like a ongoing like bubble you have and then like at the end there's like a takeaway of that thought bubble it's like you kind of me on like what the heck what the heck is this point i'm trying to say yes and then you get to it which is awesome so the whole process like you just did a five part series of like how you do your content you talked about breaking down what you want your audience to feel voice and voice overs filming v roll which we just talked about loving the process embracing failure can you talk to me about like yeah what is like your process so it's like mh i i know in the one video you said that you film like it was it like ten ten minutes of b roll like every other day and yeah are you writing a script and then just going and finding shots that makes sense mh so i never for me obviously i have a business and i don't have much time to solely dedicate to content as much time as people think i put in it's way less because i tried to like streamline it a bit i have ideas for my stories all the time like it'll it'll happen in my head randomly and i always jot them down somewhere and i can expand on them later when i have like scripting time to just like sit there and think and really flesh out the story and the b roll to me is more ancillary like i think it's really important that you have what you wanna say very clearly and that is the like the central piece of your content not so much the visual like it's great to have great visuals but i think we all know there's a lot of people who amazing visuals and it doesn't really do anything yeah because it has to say something so i'm really big on like making sure i have something to say that's actually going to be memorable and then i'll have the b roll to overlay and if there's a few shots that i'm like i really need something specific like sure it'll take me a few minutes to get that shot or whatever i never want it to feel like i'm doing a production because i think that's where people then don't create content because i think like oh my gosh i need to have all this timing and you really don't need to have that much time it's really about your story or what you wanna say that to me gets people wanting to watch or like feel compelled to listen that's more important so i focus most of my time there so what are you filming with i ipod i ipod iphone i'm mom like wow wow that is amazing i'm looking at my airpods i'm like ipod my ipod that's fantastic you're filled with apple iphone my iphone yeah completely there are some shots like if i pull something from my youtube into my eyes yeah into my short form you'll see like oh she's using a camera but genuinely your iphone can capture pretty much i'm it's not that much different in my opinion if you have good lighting lighting is well is yeah you're great at using lighting you're also great at using space like i feel like you use space well in your videos because then you kinda like then that's where you're another probably the art comes in is like how you how you arrange and present yeah captions and text and you use space really well like it's like like every one of your clips it feels like it could be a photo and then there's it's like there's just like like you could screen screenshot any one of them and it would work as a photo yeah so when i'm setting up my camera like again i know what my everyday whereabouts are and i'm strategically thinking about content all the time because that's just my brain's wired that way and it's obviously what i do so when i look at my surroundings i think about like okay where the places and i can get like really nice shots because you can really make a lot out of nothing i really shoot in the same three places and i i posted about that recently because a lot of people were like i don't have like a dynamic life i'm like neither do i i go to my apartment we work and the outside in between of the walk from we work to my apartment is like five minutes like there's really not much more going on in my video you just think there is because of the way i'm clipping it and also the way that i'm zooming in and out of each shot so that it kind of feels different but it's literally the same shot it's just different angles yeah you really are a master of finding different little angles i that was one thing i was gonna highlight it's it i i don't because i feel that way like i feel like i i i work from home got an office in my basement and i like i'm like either working in it there or i'm like going for a walk with my kid to the cold sack and i'm like i'm like where do i film interesting things so i do think like so like i have a question like there's a couple like in the we work office like i think there's something that you do like it's like in a dark it's even in like in a dark room it's like yes it's kinda like there's like a projector or or feeling like behind you mh like well how does how do you make that not look like it's really poor lighting like like that's sort because that is poor lighting yeah not room the room that i'm filming in has no windows and it's a conference room there's a whiteboard and they have like these like little lights above me but they're really placed in awkward position so you can't like there's a lot of shadowing over me and stuff but i just think again like i know that there's a whiteboard word behind me so in my head like blank space is usually pretty safe if you don't wanna have like a cluttered background yeah i and i like to add text on screen so i have these text call outs that come in randomly and i just feel like i'm like oh this is a good canvas for me to put those call outs when i have something like that i wanna point out in the video so use those clips as like my opportunity to highlight those things and not as like the bulk of the video okay and what are you editing on i use cap on your phone or desktop desktop yeah so i actually graduated my phone a while ago but i did use to do it on my phone and i think that's like just easier to learn in the beginning but desktop is like ten times easier and ten times faster okay i got i i gotta start doing it on the desktop because i love cat cut and like i start i i use adobe in my like day job mh it just like it just makes more sense for for those projects is like way bigger files yeah but like the and and then cap on the phone is it's like it's so fun it's like so social first so this so you i just gotta like commit to desktop and yeah it was a weird change like there was a time i think i moved to desktop for like a month and then i really wanted to go back and i was like if i don't stay on desktop i'm never going to learn desktop and i know it's quicker because you can do like shortcuts and you know random across keyboard and eventually like i could never go on my again i'm like absolutely not because you just realized that there is a learning curve but once you hit that curve like you would never go back your phone because there's just you you could literally speed up your content process by like i don't know i think a hundred times like i would take it would take me so long to edit my video on my phone yeah i know i know okay so here's other question well how long does it take you to do captions alone this is my biggest question from people and it's not as long as you think now that i've gotten it down to a science i don't believe it i've gotten it down to a science and i know ways that make it quicker so it takes me to do the captions probably like thirty minutes honestly okay yeah mh a used take whole video with captions and everything think used take me like over two hours so are you for e are you doing any bit of like like the i guess it's just the auto captions or is it all manually just come out so i use to make sure of both i use make sure to both honestly you can do a lot with auto captions but sometimes just depending on the voice over it cap does this weird thing or like it confuses itself and then it like leaves blanks in your in between what you say because it can't register what you're saying if you're talking too fast something so i have to do it randomly manual but i do think that you can pretty much use auto captions for what i'm doing in my videos you could essentially do auto captions okay and i'm and i know that like none some of these questions like i know don't matter but like as a creator it's like hard to not be interested in it and i know that you probably get these questions what is your go to font my font is he becca i use that on cap cut and i bold it not just hell that straight up and not hell that new oh a he i know there's a bunch of he i guess i have to check the number in the and the hell i use but because i guess you're right i definitely use it's under he but i pick something and i bold it i know i bold it and i i guess you're right there's might be a number or something next to it i have to know what number it we don't we don't need to give them all of the song we can let them figure that out right that's so funny someone it's funny because you saying that someone's like it commented back because i always respond with that and then someone recently commented they're were like i did help again and it doesn't look like it and i was like what do you mean like it's literally the same font they're like no it's not i know interesting so maybe you're right no there are a lot i swear i downloaded like because i was using hell and i do that's what i used to i have another one that i use from font or yeah do you know that site it's free font yeah yeah yeah there's one called a l t e dash gore sec something like that i use that one that's very similar to the hell that i use because i remember once time i wanted to find like a different variation and that's another one i use i feel like you've done the type of font too where it's like you it's kind of like there's an no you can like see through it like have you done that effect or is that someone else like through it like kind of like i don't know if it's like that you turn the opacity down or like i actually think what you're talking about i think i know what you're talking about that is something that i think you have to do not on cap cut you can't do it on cap cut the thing that i do on count cut is i use my text with a flow feature and then i put it behind my head so it's not like coming through my my face or my body will be in front of it and the text moves behind me kind of and it doesn't it gets cut off by whatever is in the forefront but yeah i know what you're talking about and that i can't be done on cap grip and so do you make when you do the behind the head is that you just make two layers and then you remove the background on the first one that i actually don't know because that's what i have my best friend she knows how to do that so i have her specifically do it and i think she's explained it before and i don't know i i was forget like you just do her ring nice i love that i love that so you're your most part though you're editing they'll they'll like shooting it yeah all of i'm doing everything yeah okay if i want something like interesting and fancy i'll ask her yeah to help me like do it and she might have to take it out to a different like adobe or something but for the most part i try to not do that because i really just want everyone watching to just feel like they could do it too that's my biggest thing and then settings on filming the camera or filming the content are you doing anything or it just just like how it shows up in in the camera you like messing it shows up in the camera yeah just how it really shows up i just lock the focus square thing on screen and make sure that it doesn't like change as i move because sometimes i'll be walking or moving my hands as i speak like that hot and it might like change the brightness level so i just sure that doesn't happen by locking it on screen and then yeah i just shoot normally when you watch other people's content do you like because i i don't know i i noticed i feel like a lot of the creators i talked to like whenever i see content i'm always like thinking like how do they get that like like like what was their thinking like i try like even when i watch like movies or commercials i'm just like how did they come up with that line like i don't know why i heard out about it but she's like it like it i'm just like curious i don't know why it's it's like i don't know are you kinda that way like you kinda see yes so i definitely yes i think what's interesting is i recently told i was talking about this on another podcast where i was like i actually don't consume as much content as people think because as much as i love content it does i think block creativity because you get really messed up in like how to do other people's stuff and i think what comes naturally to use is usually what you do the best anyways and it doesn't feel like it's coming like you're you're essentially like mimicking someone else and my best ideas are usually when i don't have a cloud brain and i'm really just like thinking about what i feel like would be such a good shot for this or like what it would look like so i don't actually consume as much as you might think but occasionally when i do see stuff like i love to get inspired a hundred percent but i do really try to minimize that because i really want my content to feel like non del ray content like i want people to have have an association in a feeling with what my content looks and feels like so it can't be compared to other people's well you've done a good job of doing that appreciate and so what about we talked about i had a question and i'm trying to remember it right now my my brain was jumping around as you were talking on watching other people's content oh wait here let me look here let me look at my freaking questions so filming embracing failure voice over yeah any tips on on delivering voice over yes i actually love talking about this people because i think this is where most frequent like you can see that they're beginners i used to write my scripts in the beginning and i actually think it's the reverse like when you're more you're at a higher level you can write your scripts and say them pretty well where it doesn't sound like your script but in the beginning you're gonna sound like a robot so i always tell people in the beginning like give yourself like maybe the hook and then go off freely and just see how you do and you're gonna meet a few tries but at least you're gonna sound organic because we all have different inflection points different pauses breath as we speak and we people who watch you will know it's natural and what's not it's just it's an obvious thing so in the beginning i always told people like don't script yourself and just give yourself maybe bullets of things you wanna say because you won't sound terrible and eventually as you get better you'll be able to script your lines and also give like the actual feeling that goes with certain words so when i'm saying my scripts i look like a crazy person because i i'm like deeply saying words that i would try to evo the motion at the same time so i'm using my hands i'm like getting really close like it's really funny but it's like you can't it give those like levels in your in your tone of voice otherwise it just sounds weird and the only way it's not for me is if i do the whole production so right yeah i think we're voice over is in the beginning don't yourself so you can naturally just hear how you say words and how fast you go or how you speak and then when you're more skilled i would write a script and you can start to you know mimic yourself and then you kinda mentioned the first the hook in the first five seconds how do you think about the first five seconds of your videos like where where's your head the dots with the concept i used to be super anal about the hook and then i realized that again like the first five seconds yes they're important but i think the beginning of your video like depending on how long it is if we're just talking about short form i'm just gonna say a minute so like your first like ten seconds are pretty important and there has to just be a reason for like why someone's watching and it doesn't have to be anything crazy like you don't have to come up with this like insane i don't know like i feel like sometimes like hear hooks and i'm like i i would never say that and like you know like i just naturally know would them come out of my mouth and like it just seems off to me and and again it's like i get it like people want people to watch but i think if you're just seriously yourself and you hone in on who you are then you don't have to thinks so deeply about it and my hooks and my videos i don't really think about the hook anymore it's more just like what's again the overarching message i wanna give what's how does the beginning and end tie together because i always wanna make sure that those two pieces make sense because then it's like why did i just watch this and i tried to just pick topics that i think people are seeking to me for it's like yeah they could be you can go on the internet and look for anything you want like why would you come to me for this specifically so that's how i think about it you made a good point i feel like a lot of hooks especially nowadays especially how popular the short form is came in the last couple of years you can like really feel when when it is a hook like you're like oh yeah and and i i've done that because i i'm trying to figure out the same thing like what's my delivery on this second like sometimes like saying i'm like and i watch it back i'm like i would talk like that but yours i'm telling you yours like i i was watching them and i was like what is like they don't feel like hooks like you're just like getting into the action and i think people are almost to like the that like the pick me energy like the like the yeah my shit like like energy and it's more like go just just get into it and like and then decide if it's good video or not just say something good you know like say good that's all people want wow that's the that's the tip i need no i i i was talking to by today i kinda like cluttered up like a video like with too much stuff he was like he was i don't know what the hook is like you're saying like four different things and second time i'm like oh darn it but like yeah i i think i think one thing if i'm gonna observe it is like it's like a singular focus on what your first five seconds is the yeah it's clear mh like you're you're making a point but like again i just feel like the message overall is why someone's gonna be like i love this video i wanna follow this creator i care not your three second perk like it might be dope but that like yeah a bunch of people got hooked or whatever but like what does it matter if like by by ten seconds or even at the end of the it they're like alright cool like don't care moving on like there's just no purpose like i didn't i don't know i just think that it can feel gimmicky if you rely solely on hooks because then it's like well then are people really invested in your content yeah yeah i i agree i agree it's like like over the long term like you just like we're we were talking about this on the first episode y'all gotta go listen to that at we're not the first one has been a lot of episodes but the most recent one with adam about like once you could do a certain point you kind of like earn the fact that like you are the hook like what like like people buy into you like they hear your voice i'm i'm already buying bone into not content like and i'm sold on her delivery on the last fifty i i saw someone's gonna watch it through like you yourself your voice like your delivery is the hook i think that's a really good point to make i mean yes in the beginning you're kind of like trying to do anything you can to get people to at least listen for a little bit longer so it not to negate that in the beginning it is harder and maybe you should try you know just a little bit more on the hook but i think yeah over time as you develop that familiarity aspect of you that someone's watching because they actually are now invested in whatever it is that you're doing or who you are or what your content is about it can it gets less and less about just these like little tiny details where it's like oh like the visual the like because even me i talk about i get i have spelling errors like randomly you can go to my page you can see i have spelling errors and my captions or like call outs and like sometimes people will point out to me and i'm like i don't really care because like yeah like that you know like no one like everyone knows like yeah i messed i'd really like i'm typing z fast or whatever and i just met i'm not super disoriented but like they're here because they're like well i still i love none i love her content like i'm watching it not because i'm not looking for spelling errors it's not crediting her you know like you you earn that privilege from the people who are invested in you because they actually care not just about like the little like the money shove of of all the little gave details i i am with you on that and that's a great point but i am gonna ask you about another another detail mh do you think about the length of videos yes i i would i would be lying if i said no only because i do think that people just naturally have a smaller attention span with just social media in general i mean ad mine has decreased i'm not really like unless it's like a podcast i'm not watching something that's over you know some amount of time for instagram i do keep mine around like a thirty second mark i try not to really go above forty five that's pretty much how i do mine and naturally i my stories that i write always end up being in this like thirty to forty five second mark that mh it's like a sweet spot for me it's like i know i shouldn't write more because i'm trying to be concise and get to my point quickly but for example my first youtube video like i wanted it to be under ten minutes so i think that's still short for youtube because i think people are just more accustomed like twenty thirty forty minute videos over there but i just was like i still wanna have that about my content where it's like not this like massive thing so longer form yes i mean i'm going eight minutes but i still think that's short i do like it to be as simple and concise as possible because i just think if you can face something in a shorter time frame like people just feel like it's more impactful and what would you say your like home based platform is do what is it is it instagram yeah okay it's definitely instagram i started on tiktok and actually grew that's like forty five thousand and i stopped completely because it was just totally different content though what i'm posting now so you don't post any of your ig stuff over there no i actually haven't really a few things in the beginning we're getting posted but now i just haven't and i want to i should repo it just to see what happens but like i just love community building and i think tiktok is very like high awareness and you're not really there to stick ground because i mean there's no stories you're not like dm people you're not you you comment but you don't really like people can be all anonymous on tiktok whereas instagram a lot of people like use this for personal reasons as well like not just business so it's like you get to see the personal profiles of people like interact and engage so like i like being able to talk to people from that perspective and that's why i love instagram because it's a little bit more personal like you get to see the real behind the scenes like if you think about it because someone's just posting naturally more there whereas like if you're posting on tiktok you're not it doesn't immediately get served to whoever is you're followed by you know like it just goes by engagement you know the algorithm them like wants you to get in front of new people and test you to see if your your content is good but like on instagram if someone is engaging with you they will see it you know because it's not chronological it's about engagement so i think that instagram is just like a little bit more i guess personal the only one i can think of you're just closer to your follower base so it feels more personal yeah it's a great answer and i would have to agree with that it just feels like you're like connecting with a real people more consistently and it's a more it's like a like i have more like we both have more followers on tiktok but like mh a lot of our focus became band just because like it just it just feels like there's it's not just a a quantity names game quality game tiktok is like weird because i think like followers they are not as legit as they are in instagram like i because i work with a lot of creators and brands like tiktok following i always think that if you have like ten percent ratio of your tiktok following to instagram like that's usually a pretty like healthy yeah for you know what it looks like to to convert over there and if you don't have ten percent of your tiktok following on instagram that means people over there are not like interested in following you on another platform because i mean there's just so many random bots on tiktok and just like like i don't know i see like people or when i like an influx of new followers there i'm like these aren't even real like how like how are they why are they following like there's nothing posted like i don't get it like it's just mirror so i always think that it's a good metric to know that if you can bring ten percent of your falling over like you at least have some base that's like real okay that makes sense so how much of your day is making content at this point like would would you would you be able to put a number on it like that the amount of time yeah i would say like wednesday to friday are heavy content days for me and they're more so scripting editing and just like posting admin so like making the captions deciding what days are getting posted do you schedule them out no i don't schedule them out i get they're they're posted on the data they're supposed to be posted i just like to have it clear planned so by the time i'm ready to post i have i can just copy and paste the caption that i come up with and i know the link where my video is and yeah it i just make it into a system the way i would do it for like a client because i it's easy to push your personal stuff aside and be like i don't have time and have time but you know we have to always i think still put ourselves first especially if it comes to content like getting yourself out there i mean it brought me so much opportunity so for me to not give it its full attention or treat it as like a client would would be a disservice for me so i take it pretty you seriously by planning but i spend majority of my time on it towards the end of the week when i'm not doing more of like the brand work for the business and it's more just me doing my personal content so when's so like you're kinda just like in the business every other day wednesday through friday you're more involved with making your own content and wednesday like friday of time mh i'll have like big chunks so like before i had a call with you i was scripting for like two hours coming up with the ideas or just like redoing a script or working on my next youtube video like things where i need to sit down and like really flush out my ideas and not be disturbed by like slacks and emails because that that just disrupts my flow yeah so the end of the week is when most people are pretty quiet and i like to spend my time with my content there because then i just i can really focus for like two to four hour blocks so i would say i would say in total let's call it like ten hours a week i'm spending on content got it now the other hours are spent in content flows tell me more about content flows and what that business what you would what the operation of that business is all about yes so content flows is basically like we match make creators and influencers with brands i don't use those two terms interchangeably because i do think there's is a differentiation like content creators obviously don't have to have a following whereas influencers yes they have following and we kind of find and match like the right level of creator influencer to brands dependent on like a campaign they wanna run or if they want to do like more of an organic strategy so we kind of like create that plan and help execute it or entirely execute it you know in that an analogy i have for the difference between like a create like creators for the brand and influencers way i think i it's in my head i gotta i feel like i i got say it right so like an influencer the a creator is like a like is like the brand saying hey we own a billboard and we wanna put you on our billboard that we own and then the influencer is like nah i own ten billboards in this big city over here where everyone travels and i will and i will talk about your brand yeah exactly that's a great analogy i mean that makes sense yes that's close that's no that's a good one because it's true like i think if you're looking for more like if it's not something that's like the brand needs to own on their page it could also be very impactful to get in front of like an audience that is really energized by an influencers community who's already like has their trust and loyalty baked into that person and a brand tap into that versus like i think content creators can be extremely talented and produce insane levels of content because like not all i would say influencers have amazing content but i think a lot of like really skilled content creators have like exceptional content and those are kind of just like bridging those type of people to work for a brand because it's also a different skill to learn how to create for a brand than to create for yourself and then talk about a brand totally i have so many questions right now so what's the like don't you work in a specific industry contact flows with a specific type of brands so we work with cp g brands but i want to like really span that and like as we grow because like i just think there's so many businesses that are i guess content just is still un untapped to an extent like it's a really hard skill to develop like video is the hardest thing to produce it takes a long time a lot of effort and i just think there's so many businesses like not just product that would benefit from going on social media but right now yes you work with mostly cp brands and it's really you're right it is really hard so a lot of what you're doing it's like a brand says we need the a creator for our instagram or tiktok or or it it's both and it can be both and it's usually now more so just like it can be like a campaign to an extent so it's like a launch of a new product or an event so someone's having like a pop up event and they want influencers to come and they want content around that they wanna get brand awareness that we do stuff like that so it's really now kind of unfolded into other areas got where like content can be created okay but some of them it's like a in house creator just like making yes like head hunting for that creator all it's a specific campaign and you're getting influencers for yeah so it's mostly really just like sort sourcing like an accurate list so depending on like the goals and needs of what the brand wants coming up with like people we think would like actually execute this properly whether they were following or not and then bridging them to the brand so like making sure one excited for the brand because i think like there's a lot of u creators who wants to make money and like that's great at all but like if you don't feel invested in the brand or product like you don't really care about the performance and also like the quality of your video so i think it's really important to like find longer term partnerships like strategic partnerships that people really feel like compelled to want to create for that brand over a longer period of time so whether it's like sponsoring them getting them free products and getting content return also paying them or doing you know getting influencers to talk about it in their organic content native to how they're creating you know that's what we try to basically build and then make sure that it comes to fruition in the light that the brand is expects it to because i think that's also what happens a lot is like you work with a creator or influencer and then you're like this is not what i wanted so we're kind of like that relationship to make sure that both parties are happy and it's hard to make both parties happy i've done some stuff in that world we're getting you know getting creators for for brands and i found it it's really challenging because like there's a lot of like circles in that equation that have to overlap like you need to find a creator that's one talented enough like one good enough on camera one that's also part strategist like like kinda nerds out about like like marketing but then also the companies like product and like like yeah brand also is a good communicator also isn't in too like at a level where they're getting like like big brent like making their own content for their own page so it's like really hard to find that sweet spot like what like how are you sourcing the creators i usually a lot of manual searching or you so basically we have like a database is what i call it where we keep the people that we've worked with on projects and know they have this skill level and always like tried to bridge them into our projects but also it's like a lot of brands that they come in like we haven't sourced for that niche of a creator before or influencer so our lists just build out as work comes in and like we find like all of these like pockets of really interesting type of creators which is you like think that like there isn't a niche or something until like you have like source is for something so random you're like what like this is something people watch like it's crazy but like i always think sometimes like the niche sure that people are it's almost like crazy how engaged their audiences can be definitely but yeah there's the point of what content flows does is we're basically nurturing that creator to be successful because we know that what they do best is creation and it's not gonna be thinking about the brand the marketing tactics or like the overall goal of like the campaign so it's like we have to go in and remind them and essentially like and hold them throughout the journey of like okay like here's how you act as an extension of the brand here's how you're styled here's how we want you to talk here's like the emotion mood would like you to portray here's what the goal of the campaign is like here's how you edit here's what you do like it's very much like a hand holding process so that by the time that we get the final product there are no revisions there was minimal revisions like nothing else wants to be res shot or anything that's like throwing it away we're very much like working to get to that point where the brand season it's like like a ninety five percent level done so how do you avoid the the headache of like of like alright the brand is like no but you're not talking about our product in that oh we need you to say more copy from the website like yeah because like because it's very much like people can kinda see through it's not a tv commercial like tiktok or social and like instagram is like they want real people and the more minds on it the more it makes it water down less of a real person and they're just yeah so how do you the brains are staying are they are starting to get that and and how do how i think to that point yeah that's really difficult and i think a lot of brands still don't understand that but the brands that i am bringing on like they have to understand that because i'm like there's only so i can't yeah like i cannot produce miracles as much as i would love to and i'm like this is what i know is going to work or what i believe will work and here's why so obviously there has some data i have to be really strategic about the way approaching it because you can't just tell some they're wrong mostly borrowers accepted that so can it just might not get their business right right and honestly like i am now very okay with not getting business from brands that i know are just gonna be a headache yeah because it just causes way more friction and trust you need and you're like i actually want to produce value i really care about that so i'd rather not take hear money and not work with you because you obviously know best and if you know best then you don't need my help so it's really about being like having that yeah the authority and like the i also am confident in what i do so it's like if someone doesn't wanna listen then i can't help yeah and also that type of brand like then requires like way more time like that's gonna be way more it it's gonna pull from the stuff that you actually enjoy working on yes i've had very a lot of experiences with different types of brands especially in the beginning when we're working with a lot of brands that really that didn't matter because i was like we wanna get the experience but you realize that it's just not beneficial because they end up just taking an almost all of your time and it's really not for mutually beneficial like relationships like like both people are happy like they don't get it or like they don't want to get it in the korean and you have to produce sounds yeah the creator is very confused and then you have to produce something that you don't believe in and then you know isn't gonna work and then it's like well it didn't work it's like will we no it's not gonna work yeah it that's challenging so that's cool that you're at a point where like i mean i think that that works a lot like in the beginning you say yes to a lot of things but then once the demand is high you could be more selective and then you're starting to get better case studies that role in exactly business that's that's also i mean i think to your social media obviously like i always say it's like my living resume and a lot of brands like we'll go to my social media and like see that what i what i produce and they love what i'm making so i'm like okay if you want something similar like this is how it has unfolded like this is like the strategy in which i've created that so like that's essentially what we're gonna do for you but like let's like peel back the layers and figure out like how we do that and like these are the the things that we're gonna have to happen and it's usually different than what they expect but i'm like if you like this content like this is why you know because you're you don't feel that you're being sold to you're not being told anything you're just listening and a big component of why your content works and all creators content works is because it's an iterative process and a lot of brands they want results in the first month and you're jumping into their social and you're like y i can't promise you that we need to test we need to figure out an experiment and then iterate over time and then we'll find our our our rhythm here yeah but like they get that creators yeah creators like it's almost like you gotta think like a creator an independent solo creator there's like living in at their mom's house yeah like who's was trying to fill something yeah yeah like that's that's the mindset of how you need to you get scrappy with it you get scrappy and you learn a lot and i think a lot of brands yes there's definitely a lot of brands that i have worked with where i was like yeah the very unrealistic expectations and i wasn't like super honest with it upfront and now i am because i'm like look like this does not happen overnight like the way i've built my page it's taken me almost like a year and a and a half almost it gets like the engagement rate that i'm at now with like how many comments that come in how many story reviews i get how many people are just like constantly viewing the videos like on a consistent basis organically i'm like it doesn't just happen overnight to give you you see the transition of videos and and how much my my content has progressed and that's come from being iterative and that's what you have to embody in order to like make your socials work because a lot of the times your first hundred ideas will literally suck like literally they will not be good and that's the point to get to being good and you know it's wild too it's like it's like that's my favorite thing about content i think it's like for both a brand and a creator the hardest work is actually up front because like you you talked about it now like you've gotten really quick with voice overs you've gotten really quick with the b roll you've gotten really quick with doing the captions it was harder at the beginning but here's the beauty your audience is also way more engaged now so it's like it's like you're doing less work but getting more reverse yep and no one wants to do the like the grunt work in the beginning to like get to that point because it's like yeah how many people are are wanting to wait a year and a half but it's like if you were told in a year and a half if you would have this super engaged account like would you do it like a chances are you might because you don't have any of the answers like it's a pretty good return like you you've been doing it for years and it hasn't or right like as a brand so it's like why not shy like something else that might get you there in a year where you're gonna have like some people would i think people just want things to happen so quickly because it's just the nature of you know our generation like everything can happen tomorrow like we think people becomes successful tomorrow and it's like they're so much work that goes behind everything you do and in order to build something great like it just doesn't happen in a small setting what is the biggest mistake that brands make with influencers so working with them on their page oh oh my god yeah i think the biggest mistake is they over inflate numbers for influencers who have larger following so what i there things to do is i go and look at engagement rates of like people with like bigger following so i would say over a hundred k and above is like you're bigger follower and most of the time their engagement rates are like one to two percent which isn't bad if you have like a million followers but if you have like let's just say two hundred thousand followers and your engagement rate is one percent by twenty six thousand at a fourteen percent engagement rate is more influential than your two hundred thousand two two percent and i'm like okay so in if the brand looks at that they're gonna be like well we would want to work with a person two hundred k because they have two hundred k but then it's like okay well the price is actually gonna be this and they're gonna charge you maybe like fifteen grand for one post and be super like picky or anal about how they're gonna post it yeah and just be like kind of a a diva to work with versus that person who might be twenty six and smaller is essentially untapped probably not many brands are working with them because they're being overlooked and i call them like untapped talent because there's just like they're are up and coming they're on the rise and their influence is like very really high impact since they have an engaged community it doesn't matter about the follower account it matters about the meaning behind the follower and if these people aren't watching then you're not watching and you're not influencing so i think that's like the biggest thing is people over pay for influencers sometimes and i think you can work with smaller influencers and not like it's not to say that that you shouldn't pay people what their worth but like maybe if you paid that price to someone like a smaller creator they would do more for you on a longer trajectory okay so tell i i'm with you on that tell me if i'm wrong on this point i believe in short like and i'm with you on even working with the smaller creators and mh and so this is the i'm saying working with smaller creators or bigger creators one of my philosophies and i want you to tell me if i'm wrong is that like if you're doing short form influencer partnership if you're doing a short form influencer collab you should and it's on their page you should also be putting money and boosting it because audiences like just just throw it up on their page like audiences like like it's like would you have someone put an ad on a short form video like you're putting so much against that video to work and then you're also probably putting a lot of brand copy in that video that's like even more gonna tank it and then people do not wanna be sold to so like like what i want is like to stop stop working with these creators that like have these really bad numbers and like thinking that like organic alone is gonna work for like yeah i i totally agree with you i hundred i've seen that before and it's just like i i feel like i'm like i know a part of i would assume like an influencer marketer influencer marketing manager at a brand like has to go and look the data after the performance it's like time and time again like why are you not patching that like these are doing so poorly and it's like obviously like if you let creators be as native as possible like it has a better chance but no matter what as long as you're featuring a product like people just know unless it's like literally like so organic which it's so hard to do but like yes if your sponsoring in content like from a brand like where you have to say certain things there's show certain things like it's just gonna obviously not do well organically and it should definitely be posted and i am seeing that more from brands like they're they want to boost it or white list it you know when they get stuff like that and they're actually way more early some of the i'm working with they're really open to making it super native to the creator because i'm like yeah i mean if you're working with like this type of creator versus this type of creator you're gonna get in very two different videos so that's great like you have a variety you know like you want the same video you don't want two people saying the same things like why would you want that you know what i think a good format would be it's like hey let's work with the creator for two videos the first video is gonna be more just organic to them mh and the second video is gonna be more let's what's call it an ad the second one is gonna make us an ad so boost both re target the second one from the to the first one though the people that lost the first one and you have a nice flow i've actually seen that more on instagram where like i'll see like a creator i follow they'll be talking about some supplement they're like like some fitness supplement like mc t oil or something and then and then i'll scrolling in about like thirty minutes later i'll see just like a still image like add around i'm that's a nice it's a nice tea like let the influence put a little money behind it and then like follow up and do a call to action with me with a with another ad yeah yeah a hundred percent percent degree i think i think there's so many like nuances to it but i think people who are so native to the platforms like get it and like a lot of these brands like these executives or people who are sitting in these corporate levels i'm like are you really on social that much and he was like you would know this they just see influencer marketing is big yeah on linkedin and then linkedin yeah and then they talked to you know we need some influence yeah exactly alright cool cool let let's we got a couple here alright there this is a question i wanted to get to okay wait if if you're a creator before we get off the content flows and they wanna work with you how do they get in touch they can reach out to me i mean i'm always sourcing for talented on instagram yeah okay anyone who follows me usually i usually look at people are following me because i like to see the talent everyone's you know if you're on social your creator so it's like what who are you and i just wanna see if like i could worked with you in some capacity because i think there's super dope people on there but yeah always an acting my dms and people can reach out to me perfect now you are working with a i think so a speaking coach and a fitness trainer i'm curious what is a lesson the overlaps that you've learned from both of them interesting that's interesting rose i would say that an interesting lesson i've learned yeah would probably be honestly i might have to just pull in the speaking coach for this one because i think content is very much related to like speaking in general i would say the biggest thing i've learned from my speaking coach that translates to content because they're they're very connected is that when you're trying to send a message or or like teach or talk about something whether it's what you do or who you are like the simpler you can say it the more meaning it has to someone because i think a lot of people and i used to do this like try to add fluff into their explanations or whether they're teaching or gonna be explaining things about themselves it's just you wanna sound like you're doing a lot but it confuses people and i think it's just really important to learn how to say your whatever is that you're saying to someone who might not know absolutely anything about it or you because if they can resonate and under and say exactly what you said back to like that's when you know you have something sticky so i think that's just like a really small tidbit that i've taken from my speaking coach that i apply to how i write my scripts to how i talk about to you on this podcast and how to make contact general oh and i'm gonna compliment that with two books if you're curious on like how to do that and you can't afford to speaking coach right now one book is called it's called get to the point i read it like two years ago i i actually got revisit that because it like it really helped me think about like just like cutting the fluff the fluff and like actually saying something like a lot of the book is like worse people aren't seeing anything like they're not and i didn't realize that until she like put that in my head and i kinda started like look listening really intently to people and i'm like what did they just say like if i have that question when you'd say something to me or asking like that's a problem because i will not remember you and like that's essentially what we're trying to defeat here as content creators you know you want want someone to feel something you want you want when someone says something you wanna be able to take a position in your mind like i'm with that we're i'm against that and if you're not saying mh and most of the times like you don't have to make that decision so your your mind's is not even connecting dots and the the other book is smart b so get to the point in smart b two books that are great on like just like cut the fluff and get to the point they're talking to books i saw you put on your story buy back time are you reading that book yeah i am i actually just started reading it so that's not it's not like i know too much about it but from the first chapter i think it's one thing you learned in the first chapter there or just like does have to be a full lesson just like this this guy so the biggest yeah the biggest thing this is more business related not someone's content but it was a it just really stood out to me and it was just like when you're like when you're thinking about scaling anything or at least a team and that's what i'm doing essentially it's not really about growing the business it's more so buying back your time so you're trying to hire people to get your time back so you can work on the thing that you feel so passionately about and then you know you're good at and i think in the beginning like i just wanted to confuse my schedule and my idea for both of business with like oh we have to hire more people to do more things and it's like no you actually really want to be narrow deep and i need to get my time back to the sense where we're like i know i do content well i know i do storytelling well i know that i should probably like speak more and maybe i wanna write a book one day and maybe like i wanna teach at seminars like these are just things that i know my skill set so as i get better at content and i grow instead of hiring people to do more for me it's more like take time or take things off my plate so i can keep doing the one thing that i do really great i love that they got me thinking that's he you got to the point you got me thinking about how i can apply that to some to moderate content i this is this is a random tangent question do you do brand deals or is like all of your like the way that your instagram is monetized it's through generating business yeah yeah that's funny on the podcast i mentioned earlier that i was on i talked about this and i said i don't do brand deals and when i think about brand deals i think about them in products but i recently got approached by like a software and it's something that i use every single day i'm very open to doing stuff like that because it's like very organic to my business and how i use it in my personal like i would a hundred percent wanna talk about that but like i'm not someone who wants to monetize to like talk about like a thing it's just i have a business and that's where i want to or that's what's essentially generating revenue for me and i don't ever see my content as like a place to make money makes sense like obviously i would like to have my own brand wednesday that makes money but to support or do another brand just doesn't seem organic to me because like my content isn't that you know like i use yes i use software as i use apps but like i'm not someone who's like using products on a daily basis whether it's like me talking about clothing or food or supplements it's like i just don't care you know like i'm a very simple person and i'm like really about my business so like for me to try to integrate like a packaged good which just seem weird yeah opinion so yeah i i hear you i hear if you're like i mean i feel like you could totally pull it off but i like i think one yeah i could one thing that i'm thinking about is like a long term i'm like alright the newsletter and podcast podcasts those types of brand deals they're like seamless in integrations like people are yeah like they are so natural but like they're those two are harder to build but like that's sort of a fun goal to get to that point because you like you work with them and you like sell like twelve slots at once you know and like and you write it one time and you just put it in the podcast and put it in the news that's an exciting way to work with a brand in my opinion yeah i just think it's exciting like again if you're a makeup creator and like a makeup brand wants to integrate their product with stuff like that makes sense but like for me i am like i guess a creator but it's just like the focus is not anything that i'm using yeah unless i'm talking about like software is to be more efficient or something which but i guess could make sense but it's still like i'm like okay i would have to like think about it and strategically place it in there versus like a product would be a really i think far reaching you know point for me to check products like for like what you said like for makeup is like they're actually using it you can show it being used like for people like us there we're more like like a lot of what we're sharing is like it's like knowledge it's it's like information mh then there's just like more selling that has to be done when you explain the brand deal in the video so it's it's not as a natural as integration yeah i really try i only am open to like like this one brandy deal i'm like talking with it has to be super like i cannot you cannot require me to like say something yeah or do something because i'm like it just will not i will not do that yeah do that i don't care enough like i would love for it to work out because it is like i said very again i what i use on a daily basis but if it's not meant to be like i don't care because i have a business and it that's just not what my program is for i love that one more question if you like if you could ask adam one thing that's as a creator about creators and how instagram is is built being built for creators what's what would you ask out area what would i ask him my god that's really interesting i would ask him i guess like the only thing that comes to my head because i it bothers me personally because i've been affected by it as a greater is like sounds and my copyrighted sounds i i think sounds play a huge part in creating like a compelling content and i love using them in my videos but like i've had mine taking away and i'm like this is like so wrong that you know like i just would like instagram to have a bigger bank of like using more like actual songs and music that like doesn't end up getting like yeah copyright flagged or something like that because it's like why is it available if it's like you know gets ruined in the end or like eventually they lose the license or something i just like absolutely hate that so i think that like that's important and even like i know like sounds and sound effects i just think that's the one thing that came in my head because i've gone yeah put a lot of work in that video and then they just pull it and that's a bummer yeah exactly and i had some of my best videos it like they're like scaling and then it's like boom sound removed i'm like oh my god yeah and that's annoying heck yeah i'm gonna my my plan is to like stitch like ask everyone on the show that question and then to send together and post it to to instagram i think that data get that's interesting place i think he'll have to respond to i think you might have to yeah you definitely need to get a lot of people to tag him but oh good is it it i just really fun conversation yeah no i mean i enjoy this i love talking about content obviously as so twenty minutes it when over an hour or my day i know it's okay

welcome back to the podcast this edition is bonus footage from a phone call interview i had with adam w for the bonus footage newsletter you can get that at bonus footage dot c adam went from selling videos for twenty five dollars on fiber to getting thousands of dollars for brand deals and building an audience of seventy k on ig g in one year my name is tom boyd i'm a full time director of content by day and by night i'm a creator ent who is constantly inspired by independent creators out here building real brands and this is the start of a series we're testing out phone calls for the newsletter that turn into a podcast instead of an overly formal podcast setup we're focusing on casual conversations with short form creators to talk about creating content making money and keeping it fun alright let's call adam i really like the aesthetic of it yeah like i agree think i think it creates a consistent look and i think and and we and we got the contrasting colors on accident oh contrary and you knew you knew to go solids too like yeah yeah you solid dude you can't when people have like patterns on like y get that out of here yeah alright cool so i'm just gonna ask you questions so i'm just gonna ask some questions for the newsletter if it makes it to the internet it makes it to the internet as a video how did you come up with that idea to draw the graph in the sand with your finger for that one video you know have you ever dude i don't even know how to say that have you ever seen those like really relaxing like zen garden videos yeah where it's where it's got like the i i don't know what that like a rake and it goes along the sand yep i knew that like the concept was from like if this is like like a eastern asian storytelling technique so i don't wanted to somehow incorporate like some sort of like zen vibe so i knew it just drawn it out dude i love that so much i don't know that there's something more and more nowadays that like seeing real things tangible things than just like graphics on screen is so satisfying yeah it feels real yeah and it and it's good like getting out of your house as well this is what a real world actually looks like you know colin and sami or colin on what the podcast i think the the episode that you highlighted where he he was talking about like what type of youtube channel like if they start from scratch and he was talking about he was like i would wanted to compliment my like goals in my lifestyle and i i have a goal this year to get outside more and i've thought about that so much like i agree with that like so much of content is like especially when the creators where we're talking about creators were like inside at our studio but like i'm like man i need to make more excuses for getting outside and like that that's a great example of that like you can use nature to like tell your story a hundred percent yeah yeah so this is a question you're starting to get some brand deals in in let's say in under twenty seconds or less how did you come up with your rate for brand deals i came up with my rate by always doing something cheaper like i've always had a cheaper price before and then i would be not satisfied i feel like i'd put too much work in and i felt like like okay i wasn't charging what i was worth so the next time i just kinda bump up so i mean i've literally done a brand deal for like twenty five dollars yeah i know just right now and then that was the fifty yeah nah i like that i i i've seen people talk about in the freelancing space if if people say yes to your rate three times in a row it's time to raise your rate so it like raise your rate twenty five percent if someone says yes three times in a row raise your rate twenty five percent and then again and then again and eventually you get to a rate where you're like wow this is insane to say yeah totally yeah and every time you do raise your rate it feels you don't like you have no confidence when you put it out there yeah but i mean the worst thing the worst thing that can happen is they say no and then they go back to your credit rate they say no and i'll tell you from being on that side there's a lot of work if if a brand reaches out to you they do a lot of work to identify creators that that brand approves and the agency doesn't wanna put more work into that because it's a lot of time to do that like hey here are ten creators that this a brand approved i'm gonna try to get them on board like i'm gonna wanna try to figure out a rate that you want because i don't wanna go find more creators okay so so knowing from the brand side like most of them want to pay you what you want just so they can get the thing moving so say what you say you can always come down to if it doesn't work right there yeah and does that mean you should have different rates for inbound versus outbound because outbound is a totally different story right for sure i think if a if a if a brand reaches out to you have a lot of leverage mh mh i did that for spotify once i i was really busy at one point and i was like to make this worth my while it needs to be ridiculous and yeah i just charged the rate that i thought that they would say no to and they said no and then three weeks later they followed up and they said let's do it and what i think happened is they didn't hit their quota for the amount of creators they needed for the campaign and they had extra budget and they're like okay we have enough we can pay that guys ridiculous right now yeah so this isn't about me though this is about you if if okay so you sent some notes over on like this concept of charging three x more say someone has fifty thousand followers what would you what would they wanna do to be able to charge three times what they're charging now i think the first thing is confidence like you have to have the confidence to charge more and you can have that confidence if you can provide something that other creators aren't doing so i find that a lot of creators aren't that reliable with communication times so yeah if you do that if you come up with the best idea not just an idea that you've seen other people do in like the same kind of niche that's a huge one and then just overall the quality of the video like if someone else is gonna spend four hours spend eight hours you know yep yeah that that's kind of you have to find something that will differ right for yourself yeah you're right and i think the first one i think might be the most important is and it's kind of along the lines of like being a great communicator in the process because because even creator managers they're busy and creators are busy so many of them are terrible communicators so you are a great communicator and it makes everyone else's job on the brand side easier yeah would you rather have that and have eight out of ten video or have not as reliable communication in a ten out video do it it like ten out of ten video is is so subjective and like depending on what it is like i this is sort of my i belief if you do a good job of casting the talent like their video their video in my mind is a ten out of ten like like it if like so if the brand's brief is obnoxious and the creators talented i'm happy with the video kind of regardless because like because like the like it's sort of like hiring talent to be like a role in a movie like like the talent gonna be the most important part yeah so i just trust the talent as the strategic partner to do what they think is best i'm about getting volume and good communication yeah so quality i say like if the creators is happy with it and the brand's happy with it i'm happy with it okay yeah now what about like having communication after you sign the like do you want to be as a brand do you wanna be getting updates like hey i'm about to shoot this tomorrow i'm editing this tomorrow or should it just be so you get it done at a rough production timeline is helpful because what you do is you get the brand asking the agency over and over again like hey where are we at with the content where are we at with the content and being able to just give them an update if it's available is definitely better if when i work with in cinematographer make in videos for for brand a lot of them will give a production time lightly alright prep production these days yeah shoot these days the editing time these days and that's very helpful because like then those brand's now sitting there guessing where they're at so maybe like a light little like three point bullet list like hey here's what i plan to do if anything changes i'll let you know oh yeah that'd would be perfect yeah yeah you know what you know what i saw two people do before that was extremely helpful was film two different hooks and say which one do you like better so they'll film two different versions then it feels like the brand has a little pie in yeah and and i think that there's something kinda strategic there too is it's not saying give me feedback on the whole video is saying here's one little part that i'm allowing you to have feedback on and the brain feels like they have buying on it and it it could potentially make it a better video because now they have two options to go with mh and filming two hooks isn't like one of the best ways also to get brands to pay you more so that could be a bargain chip that you use you know dude look at this look at this intel we're dropping yeah that's definitely what i've done before because like a brand will be like hey we can't do this for like like let's say like you can't do this for two thousand dollars like okay what if we include three different hooks yeah that's helpful dude and like yeah the other thing i'd say is just the whole dynamics like there's like a lot of creative people in the mix so like you got the creator you usually got the agency and you got the brand and like each one has multiple people on their the teams there what i find is like some brands are like the more people involve the more challenging it is for the creator so that's why like when i said like it's subjective of like how good the video it is like might not feel good to the creator but like this is the way the brain wants it so there are weird like little nuances there that sometimes make it challenging for the creator to actually perform their best oh totally which like this is another thing that i've learned the hard way is like during that revision process before you sign the contract know who's gonna be looking over the like your videos like are you gonna be revising the video and then the brand like the agency both the agency and the brand revising and then you also need to have like i feel like you need to have a time limit as a creator you know because you don't wanna be making a video and then three weeks later you have a different haircut you know like yeah like that dude that that and i think it's important to communicate upfront the amount of visions so say like as the creator if i give you so like i'll give you and like what counts as a revision so if they do a revision and it's a change of the if they approve the script and then they change the script on you i would try to communicate upfront so it's not tricky after the fact that like hey that isn't a revision that's a res shoot and a res shoot mh you know cost you know couple a couple hundred extra bucks because if it's the brand's fault for your res shoot then it's like that should be on that and that's not your fault and i think that's important to communicate beforehand so like it's just not you know have to bring that bat to the effect what what's the standard amount of revisions for a contract two revisions for the script and then i'd say one read at it because what happens is you want them to be clear and concise with their communication of what they want if they just get like five revisions then they're like one person chimes in then the guy edits it then like three people chime in and and then like and then there's another this way you can get a whole bulk like like like breakdown of like what that brand wants and tailor that at edit because they if they don't they start listening they start being a better communicators when money's on the line a hundred percent yeah yeah totally alright cool so i got a question for you what's your number one tip for engaging talking head videos because talking head videos on our timelines can feel a little played out at time i know i'm i'm i'm a culprit myself what is your number one to to start making more engaging talking head videos i'm gonna think about that for a second i think what you do great is you you change the there's every three to five seconds you're changing where you're coming from and you're not just sitting at your desk and and talking to the camera yeah no that's like the bike thing you are on the bike in the one video right yeah yeah look yeah like that's a fire way to do it talking like that's not talking head but like that's a take on talking to the camera yeah the so from that way it's like almost yeah it's like i would say don't do talking heads if you don't if you look if you have the resources you know yeah y i love that what's your number one take on talking head videos don't or or find a way to make something about that talking head different so like there will be times where i'll shoot the hook like like in a totally different location have the whole hook set up know what text is gonna be above my head and then after that one hook since that's the most important part of the video do the rest of the talking heads but at least have it give give them a cookie somewhere you know yeah yeah i know dude and and like you know i thinking i was like sometimes i think i like like what i have to say is more important than like human behavior like but human behavior is like y if i see a boring video i'm gonna scroll by you know yeah like if i and and it's and it's not a famous person like no matter what you say and how good it's saying so like we gotta start at least me i know i have to be more creative with how i communicate the things i'm trying to get across yeah and if you're andrew hub you don't have to do all of those tricks right dude i think about that a lot like like alex mo is the hook now so like yeah what once you're famous like once you're popular just you are the hook so you don't need to be that creative yeah but you have to earn that right you have to earn that right if you're just snow like me like people were like y why do i care about what this freaking glasses i do just telling me alright cool so i i'm gonna keep rolling here how do you come up what did you what is i we talked about brand deals a good bit is there anything else you wanna cover brand deal was it is a question i have for you is how do i wear this i need a second for this it's like how do you use brand deals to make like a sustainable income so is that through retainer is that having a whole list of agencies that you work with so that's a great question i think i think i think that's what this newsletter is exploring yeah exactly how to do that and it's not entirely easy because what i'll say is it's more not the creators fault it's more coming from the brand's fall a lot of them are looking at brand deals as like one off transactions mh and i think overall the industry would be better off if they like i almost have this role that i'm trying to like somehow articulate but like don't do a brand deal with a creator don't do one brand deal with a creator unless you do ten with them because what happens is you get these quick like transactional partnerships with creators that they don't have a creative relationship with the brand with their audience is like not gonna trust them for like one video and if it's only one video they're gonna like try to overdo it to make it like perform and make it there's a lot of pressure on that one video to perform so then like no one's happy because the video does end up being good the there's not a good creative relationship with the brand and i think the the mindset from brands and creators is like would i do a deal with this brand ten times and the brand would i pay this creator ten times to to partner with them so like i think the mindset is trying to get in a situation where you can do long term partnerships with with brands and i'd say if you got like three you what what you can do is you can come down with your rate a little bit because then you don't have to get briefed every single time there's less like much points like what i would say okay that that would be as a creator i'd say hey if someone comes you for a one off brand deal i would say have like a one page pitch for why you should do ten brand deals together over six months right and if you do that with three brands then you have three relationships so then every single month you're not doing a a new creative brief a new onboarding call you know like you're not learning about all the quirks of what that brand wants you're building this trusted relationship with this brand and then you say hey here are where my audience connects with me the most here's where i can incorporate you into the conversation on an ongoing basis over the next six months and i think that would be the goal brand comes to you for one the goal is let's get them for ten it might end up being five or six but like you say hey i give you a break on this performance wise it'll be better i can incorporate it organically into my newsletter i'll mention it on podcast podcasts over the six months i think that's that's the goal then you only do three you do them really good then you take the stats all the metrics then you put them on one pages for each one then you have all this data to then point to the next time a brand comes to you damn you're good at this yeah yeah yeah i get i that that was off the hit like there's a lot more i could say about that oh the other one is offer strategy have a strategy package so it'd be like hey for another fifteen hundred a month you can ask me anything and i'll respond via email within twenty four hours like something like that like you can ask me anything about this digital space with your brand because if they're coming to you that means they know that your audience you know a lot about their audience your audience follows you and you're on the pulse of it where they're in their little like seeing their little fish ball but you're like actually probably a customer and your audience is a customer and find like a strategy package that is like it's almost like hey i'll put you in my slack group you can ask me a question anything you want one question a day like and i'll answer it within twenty four hours something like that like almost like a product ongoing like strategy support if you're looking at it from the creator side would that allow you to work with more brands that aren't exactly in your niche and aren't the exact perfect fit to offer strategy and to offer other things because like a lot of a lot of times it's hard to get a hundred percent perfect fit for your audience right especially starting out so what's the question is that would that would yeah that that would allow you to work with people and other niches what i would do as a creator if you see someone running ads i have an ongoing list of any company their i see and ad come up because it it means that that company has a budget for sure they paid the creator and they're paying more money to run the ads so yeah putting twenty five thousand to a hundred thousand towards ads they have money for creative so make an ongoing list of that find their emails on linkedin you can it's easy to find emails nowadays like look up how to find people's emails i know you can and like and just have an ongoing list of people that you can consistently see pop up they're they have a lot of money then also look at facebook ad ad library for brands you really like and they're into and if they're running ads then you can i'd say look at three ads and be like hey if you're up and coming say hey i made one that's better than these for introductory price i'll i'll let you use this for a month for a thousand if you want more let's talk like you don't need to be creative a brief by the brand just go and look at what they're doing and make a better version and you make it beforehand you saying hey i'm saying if if you're new if you're brand new don't really have a portfolio i'd say just make one because i've had brands come to me for videos i've made and just say hey can we license that so that's why i know that works like they see someone that genuinely make something and they're like y we know that'll work it's an ad if we put different text on it so i would say yeah for sure if you don't have any like if you're trying to figure out how to get in look at three to five brands that you really like go to facebook ad library see the ones that are running video ads then make a better video for them or just tell them how it could if if you are established and you're trying to get them and you don't wanna spend the time making a video sometimes showing is a lot easier than telling though like mh like because what happens is if you if you send a video it'll be like a lower level person then their job is to sell the person that cuts the checks so it's much easier if they can just say hey look at this video that adam made and just send it to the guy that cuts checks we should work with him you're making that guy's job easier like that person's job is to make good creative so he didn't wanna get you paid so if you can make his job easier he'll find a way to get you paid yeah and it's i mean there's nothing to lose in that situation if you're starting out because you're putting in the reps and then even if another brand comes to you you could be like this is what i can make and you could use that kind of exactly exactly now it's a portfolio piece you learned without you also learned without you know how annoying it is to work with brands you you you like got to a show what you can do without their annoying edits so you're saying like y if you just let me do my thing i'll make something really good like you don't need you don't need to chime in all the time i have a question what's your take on work life balance as a creator twenty seconds or less there has to be periods of imbalance if you want to have like a sustainable balance in the long run there has to be you need to put in you need you need to put in enough reps to make you uncomfortable that you end up like making more output than you normally would that's what you're saying you're saying like sprint and relax seasons like a sprint season and then a recharge i you i think a little bit it depends on your personality but there's nothing more helpful than a spread because it'll it'll help you figure out how you make things what you don't like to make things about it it helps every aspect of it now if you're spending too long on a edit like you have to speed that up so you have to come up with the solution because you have to post tomorrow is is it ear minus sprint like one week i make twenty videos or is it like for this next quarter i'm locked in i'm only thinking content i don't go out i don't i don't do shit besides make content like what does a sprint like on your calendar look like but the big the biggest sprint i've ever done was just it was thirty videos in thirty days and okay it was working like every single day except for one day and trying to improve like your output as much as possible so normally i'm not making more than one video every day and this one i was trying to push it to like could i make two videos could make three videos testing the boundaries of like your creative limits and like how far you could push yourself but also being able to get this like dataset this like experience that you can look at and try to see like what you need to cut like how to refine your process yeah yeah it it reveals truths about your systems like nothing else like there's a reason why like fighters have fight camps and put football players have training camps you know yeah like you need to figure out who's gonna be on our team who fits and who doesn't like yeah and that comes down to like yeah resource like like alright how much time i should spend scripting how much time i should spend filming how much time like editing to like and like what my creative like everything's gonna look different for everyone else like some people have strengths and like really enjoy certain parts that process more i think that's good insight and especially as a creator no one's there to push you no one's there to push you to make things so you have to find ways to yourself you know do a big that's sort of why i love this creator space so much is because like what i realized is like our whole lives were giving were given assignments like from like you know my kids in preschool like or about to go like he's gonna get assignments when he goes to school assignments college assignments job assignments like you gotta do this and we just spend so much time waiting for other people to tell us what our goal should be creators are the like people that are like really courageous when it comes to like this is my assignment i'm creating my own assignment and when you create your own assignment there's like there's a lot of you learn a lot about yourself and there's a lot more buy in for like and like pride that comes in with like just completing that assignment regardless of what the greatest is yeah but that also means you have to not only be the student but you have to be the teachers it's a a homework teacher the principal you gotta be the the the government gotta be everything but and and and it's hard dude it's it it it's hard so like it's definitely not easy but it takes a it takes a certain type of person to be able to to be able to yeah enjoy like there's certain people where like y i'm fine just i need someone else to tell me what to do yep but like creators a specific specific type where they're like that i feel suffocated when i and someone else telling me what to so it's like this little this little world where you can create your own assignment and and use that to you know push the limits of you know what you're capable of yeah yeah alright so i got one i got one specifically for you what's your best tip for editing short form video in twenty seconds or less i think just in general add tools to your bag so that you can use your creativity to express them if you don't have the tools in your bag you don't you can't make everything you wanna make but if you have all of these different skills yeah like let's say it's like animation or let's say it's i don't know masking like the or like audio effects or like sound design you you have to learn enough tools to use your creativity so it's fullest potential if that's the route you wanna go yeah that i think that's a good point maybe like each week challenge yourself to add like a new little editing thing to your video yes and then each week you're like okay at least i have that i can pull on that in the future when when needed yeah yeah just just learn a thing see how you can implement it see if you wanna continue implement it or not and then move on so the the question is gonna be what's the most non obvious thing that has helped you as a creator and like and like maybe the answer is a journal and then you can talk about your journal tell me about the journal you're why are you making a journal that's i'll just ask you that because i think you need the reason why is because the biggest thing i'm dealing with right now is brain fog and that comes with too much consumption so a lot of times you'll be looking for things too much and you should just be producing like that's that's the biggest trap because all these social media platforms are made for you to stay and you need to find next do it and the and the craziest part is the more you post the more you end up online yeah let that's what i've noticed that's what i've noticed so it's like i'm trying to produce more but the more i produce the more i like gotta beyond that kinda of figure out what's working and like you know getting the data here that's the other traffic there so journal is important for you because that kind of brings you out of like the the digital space and like get your it helps with the brain fog because you can get your false down on paper and kinda look at what direction you wanna go yeah yeah and that's one of those un sexy things that like people need to hear it's like alright you need time to write down your thoughts you know you're like alright what's the purpose of me creating this creating any piece of content what's the purpose of me trying to do this for a year you have to know like your wife yeah i'm making that for myself i'm trying to figure out my own stuff you know bro i don't all every freaking day it's it's so game changing and like can tell i i i don't even look at it most of the time i just just gotta yeah you can you can tell journal yeah but that's why you have those like original thoughts i on those quotes everyone else i know but my sheet is my stuff's is not popping though like i i should probably pay more attention to well creators enjoy it but no dude that yeah that's it like just getting it down it's like then you can get your thoughts down then you can kind of use the thoughts as like a puzzle like okay like i keep saying that there like i dude it's a combination of like brain dumping like affirmations like goals it's just like a lot a lot of weird stuff but i'm excited for your creator journal i think someone needs to make that no i i'm i'm putting it together and then i'm putting the whole thing together and then i'm gonna go through the whole thing and then if i like that i'm gonna put it out okay cool are you are you guys guided prompts are using just you've flown i i'm just kinda going with it i do have a journal the guy benjamin hardy mh he he has these prompts that he sends out like every week on friday he's a off things like a psychologist or something like a behavioral psychologist he sends that he wrote this book called personality isn't permanent that was game changing for me and he just sends out these journal prompts like every single friday about like where you're at where you're going like there's a lot there's a little bit of like affirmation visualization type stuff in there but then also more practical stuff for like things you need to cut out things that you wanna double down on it's kinda like actually reflecting on your actions yeah and then how does that help you as a creator yeah i i think just getting your your thoughts on it's hard to actually say it like you can like feel it you can feel the this shift happen and i think it starts this you start to feel patterns of like i keep kind of saying this thing like there's like kinda like is it's like a mirror for your thoughts a little bit because sometimes we start to do stuff like meme desire we start to do stuff based on what other people are doing and i think journal gives you a true mirror of like what is the most sense for your journey and like what you wanna accomplish gotcha okay yeah yeah i i have a theory that like like journal makes you a better person and the better of a person you are the better of a creator you are bro oh my gosh that's my like clip that like like like yeah bro it's so true my favorite creator advice is just good life advice like this one guy he made a video recently and it was just like it was like how to make better content just be a resource and i was just like that's just good like the best creator advice is just good life advice like right if you just walked around like i'm just a resource for people like i'm a resource for happiness i'm a resource for information i'm a resource for like helping people you know think about their mission differently like like if you just think of that mindset like you're a better person oh totally yeah yeah in in every single way it's like are you not gonna like a kinder creator are you not gonna like like someone who's more self aware yeah you know you know it's crazy dude the colin sami amir i've worked with them before and they put out incredible information their incredible creators they understand the platforms as in the top one percent of any creators but i'd say their differentiator is their ability to build relationships like they're just well liked like if they were dicks like they would not be where they're at you know like yeah like and like that's not sexy to like in their forty five minute youtube video on how to be youtubers like they're not gonna say we're likable people because that's like like it's kinda like self indulge you know what i'm yeah but like i think as honestly what besides on being great communicators great creators like i think they're world class at that because i know i've worked with them and i i just i know how they're built and so the reason they're able to get a lot of these big guests is like people like talking to them they're likable like even behind the the podcast format they're connecting with people and like a on a on a more friend level like yeah yeah i i could go on but with more details about it but like that's good life advice learning how to build relationships you are you followed dan cohen at all yeah yeah dude he he has a whole section on like how he built his audience when he was new and like this is i never saw someone teach about this building relationships at the beginning and like building relationships with with creators like one tier ahead of you because then you get like a couple shares from them then one tier ahead of you there then you get a couple shares from them and like you know like social proof and like credibility in the space is so important like oh this person like this person each time like you kinda jump up a little level and like oh totally yeah dude so relationships are just big i'm i'm ranting you guys by the way i don't know if we're gonna put this out as a full interview where we're comments talking for a minute this is meant to be like a ten to twenty minute a call where you experiencing answer that's the nature of it i i i got two more questions gotcha limiting beliefs you had to overcome what are limiting beliefs that you had to overcome and i can't read my handwriting when you're new to the game so like i'd say from like thinking about you you're pretty new to the game yourself how long are you are like a year or two week two years in i started posting on august first twenty twenty three that's when i started take you're super new so this is this is great too like this is what a lot of the newsletter and like this show is about it's like hey it's showing that it's possible yeah it's showing that like y if you do these sprints if you do the mindset stuff the journal like it's definitely possible yeah to like to build an account quickly and build the caveat is i was doing like i actually started out like doing u stuff like like making like videos for people on fiber so that's kinda like i had some sort of pro that's so yeah that's so late that that's that that's such an awesome place to start like yeah oh that that's amazing that's even better that's even better from five to five hundred thousand i'm trying to think of the title you could yeah i know you're not at five hundred thousand but you're gonna get there so what's okay the mindset shift that needed that needed to happen for you to go from five to building an audience of ninety thousand i hired someone that did it for me you know it codes yeah yeah and and it's honestly my biggest thing yeah and guys that's where we're selling our three thousand dollar coaching service now i'm kidding i'm kidding we're not selling anything right but that that'll be a perfect segue so that's awesome so you worked with like all one on one coach it is it's it's so like people don't like talking about it but i think it should be talked about more it's like there's no one that's gonna like help you help believe in you help give you lessons at the right time in coaching so i've done two different coaching things so when i first started posting i had a coach helped me for thirty days we did a thirty day boot camp yeah and against sixteen thousand followers on tiktok and then later in the year i was like alright now i'm having some traction and i'm not making any money then i got a business coach for three months you dog that's that's amazing by working with a coach you're working on you you know and like you said working with other people to become a better person to become a better creator yeah exactly and like it's the it's the safest investment because let's say you decide to not be a creator like are you gonna it's not gonna be a bad thing if you learn about marketing and if you learn about storytelling if you learn creativity you know dude every email you write you fail forward like either if even if you fail at least you've learned about like how to be a better storyteller or communicator if you work with people that edit like know how to talk to people and communicate with people that edit have you ever had coaching yeah yeah it was actually it was actually probably one of the biggest breakthroughs that i had it was like a it was a friend that was doing she had to do pro bon hours and she was just like can i can i like doing with you and that was like a big mental shift that i made and i started making a lot more money talking to her yeah then i say the next thing was therapy like and that's not something i would like that that it's like how to build an audience online get a therapist but like that was honestly one of the biggest things was like like right after i i i like was consistently going to like therapy i started having the best success online wow yeah dude it i gotta get one yeah yeah the that's the next one get it therapist yeah cool so it let's let's do two more questions here do it that i am trash at writing hooks give me your best tip for riding hooks in twenty seconds or less if you show your hooks to five different people do they all understand it the same way and i got that from my coach zach k you do you know you know that's right yeah let's go that's somebody buddy we're gonna we're gonna interview that for this he doesn't know yeah he haven't asked them but but we're gonna interview yeah he's the best no yeah if you if you show your hook to five different people do they interpret it the same way if they don't you have to make it clear to zach k let's go i had him on the podcast yeah so he his coaching program was game changing for you game changing yeah it's peak for itself already that's amazing yeah y zach give me a link and let me be an affiliate let's go yeah yeah yeah no i dude that's a that's a really good one if you send it to five different people do they all interpreted the same way so so would you suggest maybe having like a text group of five creators that you send it to yes or being so confident that it's dumb down enough to be understood got it it got definitely the more opinions better but more opinions better to a point sometimes you can overly rely on like getting opinions before you post and then you start incorporating everyone's opinion and like it becomes something it wasn't even initially yeah but yeah i think maybe maybe if you're questioning it like hey send it to a couple of people how do you interpret this so like what was it what was your tech took on your last video what the hell was it it was like i was dude i really like this clip from this podcast how i write from this guy jason freed mh cars beeping i got turn the shit back i really like this interview and like his thoughts on writing and the importance of it and i believe in that like like writing is kind of the foundation of everything it's like if you wanna go get a job if you wanna quote email if you're emailing a coworker if you're like emailing your landlord like like like it's like writing the foundation of any communication right then like writing leads to video then video leads to you know like you know more relation like relationships right i wrote these questions down for the podcast you know like like writing is the foundation of everything and i really like some of the points that he had in writing but i'm like in my mind i was like most people don't care about writing so i was like how can i make more people care i was like oh like anyone can try to get a job and anyone wants to keep their job so he was talking about the importance of writing and then like a tip for writing in this podcast so i was like i wanna mention this in some way so i think i forget what the hook was like you know it's not a good hook so there was a audio hook and then there was a text hook mh and it was just like job security like the new the new job security or something like that and then i was like the the the hook was the verbal hook was like the number one skill you need if you want to get the job which i yeah yeah so so so that's like is that is that clear enough it's not clear because it's not clear because i don't because i'm like yeah it's not even like i tried to force the idea into like potential audience yeah and the the the biggest one that i've i've also just learning about is does it create curiosity desire or fear and knowing which one it does does it create yeah job security i wonder if a better one what what how would i say that better and do you do different text with what you're saying that was a question i had like so i said one thing yeah i said one thing and the text is different you you only say the same sentence twice in a row if you really wanted to hit home otherwise there can be something else be said okay further drive that point you know got it if you don't do this you'll lose your job like is that if you your hooks are good like i sometimes i don't know why i watch and i'm like i just wanna keep watching i don't really know structurally why yeah i mean usually i'll i'm i'm not in love with my hooks all of them because they're pretty like like hardcore like sometimes i feel like being like a little phony yeah but that imagine that's why i don't feel hard yeah which is totally fine and some people don't but it's it also is harder to execute on i think what would be a better one give me give me one better one and then we got a rat because i have a call right now alright tell me tell me what the tell me what the point of the video is what was the what's the point of the video i wanted people to see this clip from this guy about writing and understand the importance of being a good writer in their job work freelancer or as a creator okay so you yeah so it basically yeah so the desire that you chose adam all of those was having job security because he mentioned that and also ago that's maybe a way to lead into it yeah so so you said you said this is how you get your next job and then the other one was job security yeah and for me when i'm like you're not paying that's not a clear enough painting you're not painting the picture my head if i i'm not i'm painting a couple pinning yeah it's it's more abstract yeah yeah yeah and then it's like you have to know like is that what people really want if if it hit with you odds are it's gonna hit with other people but yeah sometimes not know in in hindsight i would've just been like this made me change my how i think about writing or the like just something that like was really true to me instead of trying to game it as much yeah oh that could totally work and even if it doesn't get as many views like that can lead to like a bigger impact for the people that see which is not a bad thing you're right you're right yeah yeah bro i appreciate you so much this was fun what's one question you have for adam missouri if you could ask them if you paid creators on your platform wouldn't that elevate all of the content on your platform that's simple you know that's yeah yeah oh alright cool

first welcome to the show you sent me a text and i'm gonna use this text as a introduction to you the text said i'm am a producer not a creator so i want you to introduce yourself in a way that explains why that is true i love it great craig kick off yeah i'm fascinated by creators and just being able to create online and i've never really had an audience of my own and that's because i've realized that i'm a number two guy and being a producer and helping people and enabling people to see their potential reach their outcomes and their strengths and i c founded a company with a nurse he had an iv id iv for a breakaway iv adapter we took that through the fda i c founded a company with a seasoned med tech entrepreneur and we built like a hospital innovation agency and then i do permission those projects and got in the eyes of greg is and we are now collaborating a late checkout and building a holding company of community based products so my whole life has been just being a producer and doing permission projects to be like a dope number two so what is the difference between the producer and a creator like what is the main thing in your mind that like because i love that and i i think that there's something there that a lot of people can relate to that like they wanna be involved like they have they know what they execute on and they know who they wanna work with it's just like they i i think like you you it's hard to go to college to learn you know there's no certification besides maybe the permission was apprenticeship for one dollar course from jack butcher but tell me more about the main differences between a producer and a creator it's a great question it's subtle really mh i think producers are creators they just don't have that big audience that big distribution necessarily and they are a little bit more operational and how they see things but to be a good producer you need to be a good creator because you need to know how they think and you need to basically think ahead of them in a lot of ways from a business standpoint so that the creation can actually produce content produce revenue because i think a lot of people get into this space where they have this big audience and then they're begging for to build a business or have a business to to live off of that audience yeah and and a lot of a lot of people are yeah are they're able to build and get attention and build trust in a relationship with random people on the internet and call them an audience but then they're like okay now what now what do i do and i think most people that end up being successful they have some sort of producer in their world whether it's like a manager a business partner or some sort like a a friend you know like there's usually someone else that that that is like helping bring that business together now tell me more about i wanna go kinda into kind of tie connect you what you do as a producer with this whole idea of permission list projects and so i want you to give me a little bit of background of who greg is is what lake checkout is and how you got in touch and and kind of got into that world without a following with and yeah and just got got the attention of of of of greg totally greg is a really entrepreneur siri sold three companies before the age of thirty all around community based products and during the pandemic he got really big on twitter by publishing the same thoughts he had been publishing for like fifteen years and so he grew a big following that's a little nugget there as well it's like just keep being consistent for fifteen years and your stuff will probably pop no matter what you just gotta put the reps in but yeah so he just built this ping audience and he was building this company called late checkout and it was a holding company for community based products yep and what is community based products it's that connecting the customers into a place where they can become more alive be more connected and really reach their goals so web three to the number on community but what we're trying to build is like community is injected into products so we've got five different companies that we're building and you know i was burnt out in the med tech world i was trying to sell my agency that it started before and in twenty twenty three the beginning i was like i'm i'm doing dope things with dope people this year so i built this little brand called doo and it had eighteen followers on twitter and i was like alright who are my five people that i'm trying to work with like jack butcher was on there yep he doesn't need me so he said nah i'm good yeah yeah yeah but like sean por from my first million and he he already had his stuff locked up as well that's what but i was doing projects for them and then greg was on the list as well yep so i just visualize one of his tweets and kinda went mini viral he slid into my dms like hey who are you from this anonymous account eighteen followers due within and then we just started jamming on facetime within like thirty minutes yep and then the next thing was so we just we just talked a couple of times over the next several months he's like what are you gonna do next do you wanna build together so that's amazing that i love that because now you're you're you're you're actually building with and like and that's just a an example of it doesn't matter how big like especially as a producer right it really doesn't matter how big you're following is and and i i pulled this kind of breakdown of what arbitrage means or or arbitrage in the digital world when it comes to producers and creators and this is from the permission list apprentice or apprenticeship like download or whatever ebook whatever jack what you made okay it's arbitrage makes the world go around and we're just gonna comment on this based on like your experience the traditional definition arbitrage is the per is the purchase and sale of and asset in order to profit profit from a difference in the assets price between markets the reframe is arbitrage is the difference between what you can do and what someone else can't won't or doesn't do you capture value by demonstrating your ability to do something for someone that they know that they didn't know as possible until you make it abundantly clear by showing them and and so that like i love that breakdown because like basically you don't like you don't wait for someone else to give you permission you create the thing it shows them what's possible and then of course once they start connecting dots of like the potential of like what this could do for their brand their product their thing their mission they're they start thinking of ideas okay well wanna execute that and who who they they're gonna execute it with the person that made the thing so to yeah so tell me like when you do those things were you thinking like how how much was it more following your curiosity and then like hindsight twenty twenty you realize why those things work now or did you kinda go in with like yeah i i'm this is my strategy i'm just gonna make stuff for other people and then events it'll lead to a a relationship it's always been my mo to be honest it's just yeah just could what do what do i have it's like i have baby mh it's like what how can i win even if i lose these permission those projects that i did like in that like discovery i wanna do dope things with without people they were all the same outside of like greg i would do one for convertkit even like a whole breakdown on there like commerce creator analysis like i was gonna go try to do like growth for them or something and do i use that sold like ten thousand dollars in consulting off of that same exact presentation so it's like how do you how do you win even if you lose it's like what do you have and what key you do and then go do it for the things that you want i'll i'll give you another story it's dope and completely separate my conley a group in memphis so mike conley g basketball player took us down down the road into playoffs like just iconic fourth pick and and really just like it was a cornerstone of memphis where where i grew up he gets traded to the jazz in twenty nineteen and i look at the calendar and like he's got a comeback date right around thanksgiving i'm gonna be in memphis for thanksgiving because my wife's family lives there i make shoes on the side just as like a fun hobby and i've been to a ton of g playoff games a towel came with all of those games so i like i like forty towels or shopping that i just collected so i made him a pair of shoes out of the towels tweeted tweeted it out and i was like yeah let's get these in mike's hands like i'm trying to hang out with mike mike conley yep and guess what spent the whole day with them like doing interviews press tours got to handle deliver them to him and it was just an absolutely un experience that i wanted to try to have and at the very least i would have the fly nike kicks that i designed for my conley but they would be on my back books shelf right now yep at the exactly that see that's like a it's there's something there too where it's like these projects i think a a big important thing i'm gonna highlight there's is the following of your curiosity around gotta enjoy it you like what what are we doing if you're not enjoying yeah yeah yeah yeah well i i i but i think that's also helps as like a compass like because it is you know a lot of people will be doing these types of things in complement a school or their day job so like don't don't the don't create a job that you don't like you know if you're gonna create a job create a job that you actually like that's right and your compass gets stronger over time so like if you were just starting out doing this stuff like take and and find out what you hate find out what you don't do take so many so many yellow because like dude don't get a strong quality me don't take like dude yeah i mean there's so many ideas that i'll never talk about it's like because oh my god i hated it oh my gosh f scrub the internet like like get them out of here for sure dude i i love that like and that that is a it that's just like a building your own resume your own portfolio of like fun little things like and even like if that doesn't like that's still like a really cool this this is something i i think about is demonstrating your way of thinking so a lot i i i've gotten consulting jobs like real jobs like built relationships also just giving people like ideas and say hey if you are gonna do this like this is what i would do and i give them like a like a breakdown and that is like the the simplest way to market your way of thinking and people buy in like they subscribe like for you like that first phone call with greg and and like you know your design and like in a way you visualize like visualize visualize value for him you it's kind of like the tip of the iceberg of your way of thinking that then he's like i wanna subscribe to more of this and that's what i've realized is like it doesn't always like it doesn't even need to be redesigning shoes out of a towel like it can be like hey here are three things like you know i an idea earlier it was like i i wrote these three down if you wanna manage a creator what is stopping you from going and getting them three brand deals like you know you could totally create a portfolio for them based of off of everything that's public for them you could find you could do a little research and like look at the products that they actually use you can go on linkedin and find like the influencer partnerships at these companies and these agencies and you could let you could like literally like just email your favorite creative like hey i landed three bland brand deals for you like which one do you wanna do like if you have management whatever you wanna it just take them if not like like just like doing something like that you'll get better at cold outreach you'll get better thinking in terms of like a creators but like there's just like a lot of things that you can do that take not not that much like think like actual doing and that's that's being a producer right like the creators are putting their brain on the internet every single day yeah you don't need five minutes to hop on a call to pick their brain like broke their feed yeah it's how they all out there yeah yeah so you just have to sift through and like read through the lines and see how they think and it's easy you know what brands they would wanna work with a hundred percent a hundred percent you can just go and do that another one i was thinking was you could go to job boards and you could look at like if you wanna get into like the u space right you could look at job boards look at who's hiring for influencer creator like directors or like managers right so you know that they have a budget for influencer and creator content then you go and just get them three influencers and just say hey here are three influencers these are the scripts for their videos if you want me to excellent execute on the if you actually wanna take it further and you have the ability to make the videos just make the videos yourself and just be like yeah and then here's another thing you can even just run money to what like like publish them and boost them and then and just like hey look at the results i got you and you like you like i mean that that one takes more of a little bit of a like there's just like a lot of ways where you just don't have to wait for anyone to get results yeah it's like and you can do those videos follow that thread and do the videos post them if they go well organically be like y i'm down to give you the spark link for you you can publish this put pump of ad money into it it's free creative for them and then that gets you a conversation yeah like how to think about this stuff is just like getting to the next gate of conversation you don't need to go from zero to i'm a partner or zero to like we collab it's like not that just get on the phone yes and and that actually that actually brings me to to this little part and i want you to respond to this things you don't need permission certification six figure tuition things you need patience practice skill consistency and what you were getting at was like the trust factor like trust builds over time like so you starts with one little like block of trust then another block and then like and then you keep kinda of stacking these blocks and then you're a partner but it starts with like that first little block that you're building showing them how you can give them upside and if you are consistent and you finally do get on the phone or the next gate after a year it's so cool to go back through all the stuff that you sent them in the channel that just like dude i've i've been here i basically here for a year and like that idea is still good that i sent you in july and that's december so like if dms are open like it's you're un ribbon like everybody dms i'm always surprised like how easy it is to get in touch with people people's emails are just out here while and like somewhere on their website or they're a manager look this is something that i i've realized connecting people is a very easy way i remember that dude james alt he said this he is called a like idea machine or something and there was like this little excerpt in there that kinda changed the game for me and he was like if you don't have anything to give like if you have no skill right now he's like the minimum that you can do though like you can connect people like so find some they need something like like whether their podcast like like you reached out to their management hey like i heard someone so talking to this i got in touch with this and they this person at x company they said that they're interested i would love to connect you i want nothing from it and like you're then top of mind for that relationship if it works out you know like you're like the guy that made that connection and like now you have two more connections that you added value to because like they made like a net new like thing together like like just connecting people like put down a list of ten people that you follow and be like alright well and they don't even have to be that big we talk a lot about b to b someone's someone's writing a book and you see on their newsletter that they are they're ab b testing book cover ideas right yeah go and find five graphic designers that are just dirty you know and say hey like like get their contacts like hey like i would love to make a connection with this guy like like that there's immediately like saves them time like you head hunted for them you know like like i'm just trying to say like there's ways if you don't like because i've i've never been someone that actually felt that i had a particular like skill set like like whether it was like editing videos i was alright like writing copy i was alright you know graphic design alright you know i didn't i was always like kinda like i could get by but like i never felt like i could charge for that so i was like how do i start like building relationships in the space and then i just started connecting people and i don't know i it's just like a it's like a fun brain exercise too to be like oh who can i connect here to to provide immediate value to it because you don't need to be exceptionally good at anything to do that yeah expert generalist you're good at a why a little different things and connect connect to the dots you're a good storyteller too yeah but that that took the my storytelling is hard to like package for a brand you know what i'm saying like like because i'm so like emotional you know and like ex it's like hard yeah i i get i am good on camera like that is the one thing that i i am good on camera i'm good at like kind of a emo and like being able to like be on the fly like vlog stuff but i don't the problem is i don't like doing that for people that aren't me you know i'm saying like i don't like doing that for like a brand because then i then i feel like i have to act and i don't like acting but that's a whole another story you so so this is next another one i'm gonna i'm gonna let you respond to this because i'm talking my my my rear end off so how do you make connections with people whose time is valuable one by clearly articulating your ability two by clearly articulating their upside more attention on their work upside doing something you saw the mask for upside building them a tool that saves some time upside introducing them to someone that can help them connections upside showing them a specific untapped opportunity upside where does your brain go well and let's think about this like through like a twenty two year old that has just graduated college and is like feels creative feel like they have something to give the world but they don't really care about their degree that's the person ever thinking about i love it been there done that yeah so who's was just starting out here's the playbook should we do a playbook let's do a quick let's do a bang bang high level playbook it's a one two through git curious number one just start like what peaks your interest take some take some notes study how you move on the internet create a swipe file called the got got swipe file and just store that stuff if you bought something if you save something if you like something keep your got god's swipe file alright so that's get curious then you're gonna recognize your skills what are you good at what do you like to do your this is where you're gonna be taken else you're gonna you gotta go with the river go down go down the the river and really like gravitate toward your strengths yep then find people that get you amped like damn i wanna i wanna connect with that person man if i could just talk to this person it would be so not to suck their energy or sucked their information but like i'll just like because i saw exactly i'm outside like and like caring that you actually like wanna link up with them so that's number three was that number three yeah yeah and then number four shots on goal baby yeah just reps let a fly reps in and then number five most importantly is exhaust reg repurposing reusing all of that stuff that you put in to take more shots on goal yeah whether that stories repurposing it for other people tweaking a couple things a portfolio that's it i think that's the five so i love that i love that and i'm gonna throw in one more as you're doing that i i don't know how to how to articulate this but like patience and timing is key so i a lot of the opportunities that that i've received usually weren't when i was reaching out about them or like it was more that's more like a get in their universe like mission right we're never expecting within three to six months anything's is gonna come out of this and that i think that's a big problem like people kind of do this in a transactional way where it's like i'm i'm kind of building in a way that's gonna complement what they're building whether it's a connection asset like something an idea whatever then planning to see like hey if you ever need this hey you i think let's use like creators that wanna work with a a specific brand you know the way that i've received brand deals is making content around a thing then the brand contacts me and like oh it's like cool like and then three to six months later they're like they actually have a campaign and a budget and they're like who's a good fit for us oh it's that guy three months ago but at that time they didn't have the budget you know they didn't have a campaign so i think a lot of creators like they'll reach out the brands like wanna work with them but like understand that when they make like a budget for brand deals it's usually three months ago then they made a strategy then they're implementing it and they already have creators in the pipeline so it's more about just building the relationship when you get that first connection with them then just be patient and continue to build and implant these seats if you're thinking in days you're cooked you gotta decades like if you're gonna run this playbook you gotta be thinking decades and for you selfish officially how can i connect the dots and reverse so you just wanna get as many dots as you possibly can they'll always connect in reverse you just don't know how those will connect necessarily but yeah consistency and timing and not caring about an immediate validation result which in this world at at dopamine hits good luck a lot of the text that you sent me have said have a common theme is this idea of b to b this idea of b to b and like explain that from like a creator sense so like like is my podcast b to b like like i i guess it's creator a creator like yeah feel like i could right yeah i feel like i could tighten it up though you know like yeah like do i make my podcast for brands and agencies or do i make it for creators trying to get brand deals like you know what saying would that would like would that be smarter depends on what the outcome is you try to sell brand deals i don't know yeah i don't know i don't know you're like you're but if you're thinking in terms of like a creator like there a lot of their business it's either like building products or it's it's it's yeah i guess it's like how to help creators build businesses right like you're i don't create creators are brands yeah are brands are businesses yes businesses are legacies baby well we'll so but what i i yeah i'm i'm trying to think i'm trying to think the the the angle like like yeah creators are like essentially all entrepreneurs so the the podcast is like i find that there are a lot of bigger creators that listen to the show it's not like a super popular show but i do think that like my audience has a lot of people in it that like have built it's like a lot this the this is the situation i think a lot of people they've built audiences now they're trying to figure out the next move and i've done a good job of like getting creators that have built audiences and kind of figure out that next move and kind of help give them some context or inspiration or ideas around like what to do with this this audience that they built so it's kinda b that's why i like b to b because it's a river it all flows down to b to b land really and the cool thing about b to b is b to b is just a bunch of c's you know you're you gotta sell people at the end of the day and their consumers on the inside of companies but you're just kinda selling into committee there's usually three or four people that all have different motivations and you gotta have a little bite for all of them think i think that's why creators should be thinking like businesses five ten years ago it was much easier to build a bigger audience in like formats where you really can get trust in connection with an audience now it's harder to do that because like the way to build a big audience is through shorts and so like people are building shorts that like if they build a big audience it's usually like a very wide general audience it's not like a any a specific domain that like is looking to solve a specific problem but if you go the route of like hey i'm gonna go in for a domain and solve a problem for them then you're the go to person in that space and you actually have then i it's probably easier to create products because like you're solving something for them yeah that's you don't have to boil the ocean and b to b as much it's accountants you know like i'm a an a a creator for accountants or i am a financial adviser for small and medium sized businesses doing five million in revenue like it's just so specific and they have purchasing power and a desired outcome that all ties back to money and not to only do things for money but usually like business outcomes are tied to money yeah like the the one guy on the one podcast that you helped produce he was talking about it has a podcast it's like alright i think you might not have said this outright but i either his podcast or just like he's just talking about a b b podcast like the podcast podcasts for cmos and if you have a c a podcast that has all cmos that are even it's just a thousand listeners that is a very that's a like a like you know exactly what you can sell them but also you have people that like have our decision makers have a lot of budget to potentially spend for tools that help them be a better cmo so it's like that audience even though it's a thousand can probably charge just as much as someone that has a wide audience of fifty to a seventy five thousand it's just you know random people like like listening to like pop culture shit yeah to my language now i gotta hit the explicit button and the the follower account used this mean like not that many people had it like a high like bigger following he'd be like oh this person is stands out in this space but now everyone's getting big followers so it it just not us lesson and less yeah i think reach and who is like really either go for insane reach or go for hyper specific who's either go dumb and far or or smart and specific sure sure i that out inform you know that that's what this pocket that's what we should do we should just get on the call and i'll just like i'll just like say it be like the it'll be like the dumbest things to visualize value with but like but like actually you have nuggets of wisdom you know yeah like not in all or confucius it's just like go wanda you good dumb and what i say dumb far but like it it i that's i i i mean that i mean that yeah sure i think the vanity thing will wear off with the big followers like it is a nice like okay cool they're trusted but like i would never if i was starting out today i mean i don't have a following but i'm seeing a lot of people with following like the audience who really matters it really really matters the who the who matters like could you is in your freaking audience you and it's worse if you have a huge audience too and then you realize that you don't have the who that you want bro bro when i i i was getting one of my first brand deals and like and like they didn't wanna pay me the full amount so i i took certain shots of the creators that follow me big creators and i was like listen you're selling a product is for creators this is the like i literally took screenshots and just threw them in a doc and i was like these are the people that follow me and like they're big creators and that helped me like get get the rate that i wanted the who the who mattered to them and i i think that's important what how what's the next thing that is there anything that you wanna segue into now i think it's just an interesting time to use the internet to leverage b to b activities like that's what i've been on for the past know last couple years it's just it's not about content for content sake but it's just is the most asymmetric high leverage like minute per minute value that you can do really for business or creator i know there's was a lot but that's what i think all of this comes down to it's like if you're a creator starting out like get weird on the internet if your a business get weird on the internet well you know you know what you know it's a lot like so i started making content that was like for a wide audience and i had a couple videos go off and then i just didn't like the videos and i didn't like the audience that i was building i was like i was like this is kinda like leaning into like very pop culture trendy like i don't like then i started making some some videos that like i would literally i like my measurement of if it's a good idea is if i would text it to a friend so like if i would text you something like even if it's a quote even if it's an idea like that in like i'm like i send it to one person i'm gonna start just thinking like what i send us to other people and i would have these ideas for like influencer partnerships for commercials just for like things and say them to friends or just think them and it this is what kind of veer like my made my content like i think confusing to some people but it also led to a lot of like really good relationships was just giving out ideas it's like through short form video i i was like mh you know i'm just gonna take brands that i like and like come up with like influencer collab ideas for them or commercials and just put them out there and the videos did not pop off but the right people saw them and the right people were able to use them as assets to say like when a friend was like hey we're looking for someone that could help us out with this campaign they would share the links to those videos like y this guy got a creative mine and like i think i think you should work with them who mattered like it was like one to five people they like actually like mattered in that situation and people would look at my content and be like oh tom tom's content is way less successful than like the first year or two of when he was posting but that's based off of how they're measuring it i know that it's more successful than ever you know which is either liking it yeah and i'm liking it and i'm enjoying it and like i'm like it takes a lot of like ego checks to like not just wanna like play the game it might be the wrong decision but you know and so and and it also comes down to like what you wanna like what your goals are as a creator like i just realized i was like the more i'm gonna make content that i don't like the more i'm just gonna create a prison that like i have to keep making that and then like your audience need you to be this character and need you to meet keep making that and i'm like no already like i already have a job where like people tell me what to do like i want i wanna create a space and like maybe my i know that my i know for sure my follower my audience size is not as big as it could be because i've chosen to do that and i i don't know i i don't even know if that like is right or wrong i'm just saying that's what i've i've kind of done what are your what are your thoughts on that i think this should guys will eat you up is internally and externally it's like i should do this i should do this and i should do if you're liking it and it's producing results that get you where you wanna be even remotely i think it's a really good thing to be doing and like that's okay yes always gonna be pressures and and you know what those videos usually have like like sometimes i'll i'll make like a video that is like very specific like this this is actually an idea like i was like yeah what if my audience is like i just make content for big creators like my content is through the filter of like how creators that they have gained three hundred thousand should be thinking about their content now i'm really talking about b to b and it's a very specific audience of that i really like that because it it is niche and enough like i think when you're picking a niche you should be it it should be scary who was talking about this with like when you pick a niche or like when you specialize in something you can still you can still totally like like the positioning of like what you do and who you do it for is more of just like it actually just helps with word mouth it helps like publicly like how people talk about you who do you think of what do you think of rap videos who's the coo height williams i was gonna say lyric lemonade oh yeah for that of yeah that definitely though them now and then like height williams like in the two thousands but yeah yeah yeah no you're you're right you're right like own that lane like why would you even like be known for like the the the top ten in that lane it's really easy to talk about that person the word yeah is i think i like you going upstream to these big creators and trying to turn them into businesses like being a producer like building out a membership model whether that's like community based or building a software like look at it what creator has they're like what do business that's why we keep going back to b to b what do businesses have like they out they look at their resources they look where they should allocate those resources time money etcetera people and then they go and try to build value with those resources what do creators have distribution how do they use that i have eyeballs or like connections or whatever it is this depending how do they use that to go build value for their enterprise around there like a camp basically yeah yeah that that is a that the this is a question i'm not good at actually executing that i'm good at the ideas so i'd i'd have to partner with you to actually do that but like i'm good highlighting that i'm good at seeing at who's doing that well and kind of like putting a flashlight on you know magnifying or high beams on that whatever and and and and turning up the volume on that i'm not good at actually the building out of that yeah that's what we've got at late late checkout out we've got brand kitchen yeah which is basically like a studio that partners with creators to build audience product fit that's products so mh we we've done we've got a couple deals in discussion now we've honestly passed on a ton because it's gotta be the right fit and it's you gotta like move out of creator mode and into like i'm about to be an empire mode what would make a good would you say like creator product fit or like so it's it say someone has a big audience and productivity and mh before that goes yeah like one do you say that like one you're like that's the most non niche s niche mh like what would be a better productivity niche like productivity for people that use notion or something like that it's better and then what may would make their audience enticing for your them to work with them like to help them build a product or like a brand around that like what makes it what's a signal that shows that their audience is is is a good fit to like build something around yeah i think demographics spending power what they bought from the creator in the past what their comment section looks like if they're big youtuber like using tools like mid iq to scrape and like aggregate all that data and that's what we do at late checkout agency lc is like basically this like community based approach we use ai and data to basically build products for enterprises but also our incubation to basically future proof these businesses just say eighteen to twenty four months ahead so we look at all of that stuff put in a little like rubric like what could you do showed you do what do you wanna do and that's like the intersection so like for the productivity space is there a certain platform that is more enticing is it like youtube or like podcast creators or or need to we wanna do b stuff but so like i'm saying like what if they blew up through short form content like like like i hard i feel like those con those audiences are less stable yeah they're very yeah that's like more like gotta capture the moment we we like long tail trust like pods and youtube and or a combination of those two things like we want the pair social relationship to be like really high basically so like they like i wanna their audience should feel like they know them and their friends and like they would they would jam on them or they would take them a business idea or that kind of thing like how do you measure powers social relationship is that just like a like a it's a has like a bon vibe it it's just like a vibe it's just yeah because like i i know i know like i know when there's a good vibe right between the creator an audience sometimes it's like it's like hard to totally explain like i know engagement rate is supposed to kinda do that but like sure form content is so like like you can have like a couple you know last ten videos like totally flop compared to your others and it's just like messes up everything there you know like i don't everyone's pulling engagement rate from different websites like i feel like it's not best indicator so it's mainly just vibe and then like a a slew of other things that you kinda pieced together yeah like lt tv like what are what are they purchased in the past like have you sold your audience anything it's not then like what are we doing yeah like i'm gonna take a big swing like why wouldn't you try to product your audience first so a lot of people have audiences and they sell their audience we're more interested in selling to the audience yeah and that's where i think like the overlap with b to b comes i love that bro alright so now it's let's say someone wants to work with you they wanna build a do within how can they get in touch or do you not want them to get in touch and that's that's their first project to figure out how to get in touch no you get you get in touch i take take swings for sure yeah i'm jordan mix on twitter or x jr r d n m i x i run a little side brand called do within just all about doing cool things with cool people and cool places that's just a newsletter right now and just like a creative outlet for for my where i put all these ideas and then yeah we run a membership based community at late checkout called community empire if you wanna build an internet business that's the best place on the internet to do it and comes with a bunch of stuff trainings workshops free tools then yeah late checkout dot studio check out what we got going on the hold cow if you wanna if you wanna jam or operate one one of our businesses in the future hit me up we're always building a bench a strong operators so come through let's get it sure thanks calling on the show you man jordan and i have these conversations and through text through phone calls and we just kinda geek out and love this space and and we're were like yeah let's just let's just record this conversation so i hope you enjoyed the show he's a really bright dude he he understands and sees this space in a way that most people don't but he really gets it i jordan and i appreciate you having a i have cup you coming on the show have a wonderful inspired day

this is the great short form video dilemma in the last couple of years platforms have rewarded short form creators and in that discovery phase creators were figuring out their content but the platforms were also figuring out which creators should get pushed and and how they should get pushed so there's like looks like a lot of different moments in time where certain types of content would work and some of those creators were able to ride those moments but then they built audiences based on those moments not on their unique po not based on like the trust like building actual trust with an audience so it was more just like these videos in this moment that built this audience but it wasn't them and like a unique poe or like story or like nothing to really hook people to have them come back to the creators content the the other thing that creators do is they a lot of short form creators that had to be very reactive to i just should give you a whole breakdown this video i'm wanna tell you the problem i wanna tell you the creators that are doing right and we'll tell you a quick solution now and this is just stuff that i've observed talking to creators working in this space so the other type of creator makes content that is like very current relevant and trendy and that creator then blows up based on more reaction style of content and when you're blowing up based off of reaction style of content one you're you're usually using like other people's assets so you're doing like reaction videos or you're like talking about something that's current in trendy celebrities like pop culture or stuff like that that you actually don't own and then also it's hard to monetize that type of content because then like one you don't own it and two when you work with a brand it takes two months to like go from idea to feedback to publish usually with a brand one to two months so that content isn't relevant and trendy anyways by the time you publish it you're usually missing the wave so it's a challenge so like some creators blew up based off of a moment on the platform where they were getting pushed and they were getting a lot of reach but they weren't actually building trust with with their audience now they're confused because they're like oh i thought my tried in two tech tried and true technique was the formula but it's not being rewarded anymore i'm making the same videos but i'm not getting any reach and then and then so it's hard for them to monetize and then it's hard for creators to monetize that react to moments in our trendy and and and like tapping into like pop culture and like what's being talked about in the moment because one they don't own the audience and then two it it's like that's the type of content you make so it's hard to do brand deals around that but there is a solution and there are creators that do the short form thing correct and it's the creators that do these content series type content or like another word is content franchise they create something that is an ongoing series that audiences throughout the the video they're the the series and whether they call it a series or not it is a series because it's following like the creator is making the moment they're not reacting to the moment they're not reacting to the platforms moment and they're not reacting to pop cultures moment they're making their own moment through a content franchise and creators that do this well is one is jacob's za and he does these like follow along like i'm gonna build a desk for my mom video and he makes ten videos about building this desk coming up with the idea drawing the idea going to home depot getting the supplies like telling the story about why this desk is important he like you follow along this entire series now that's much easier because to to to monetize through a brand deal because there's certain like throughout that moment you can inner weave things that he's using in that process and people are bought into the story the franchise the it's like a creating literally your own season jewel montgomery is doing this incredibly right now she is doing a whole series where she's trying to find the love of her life and she's trying to she's trying to i think get in like model fitness shape or something like and i take you across the through the journey of like following her her journey to like get and get like model fit for the summer or something like that but both series like it's just like these little like ongoing anecdotes that she's building trust throughout the process but then also like you wanna hear about her dating journey you're hearing little like anecdotes about how she's using the app like her move to california and you're following along throughout the process so she's created the moment and then creates the shorts on the moment that she's created she's not waiting for other people's moments and broccoli rob knows this he's a private chef chef for for like wealthy people in the hampton and he brings you along the process and he just kinda gives you this look into this world of of of being like this independent private chef for rich people in the hampton so the curiosity around that like there's on a lower like oh like what are these houses like who who who's he even cooking for but you don't really know you just get to peer into this world and he brings you along the journey but it's it feels like an ongoing series where it's like he's just like discovering like like new new ways of cooking but then also new ways of being like an independent private chef and like your own business owner and you are now interested in his moment instead of the moment that he is just hijacking so that's the one technique create your own content franchise if you're gonna be a short form creator everyone says oh long form is better than short form for building trust and because there's more time you spend more time in aggregate listening to this creator unless the creator has a series because then when you watch one then you wanna watch twenty so it's essentially the same length of a podcast so that's the beauty of that that's sort of the best of both world you create these little moments that have the potential for going viral and then people buy into that world and then they wanna binge the rest of them so that's that's one strategy create a content franchise it that's it's easier said than done obviously i haven't successfully done that but that's what i'm seeing the best creators do and then the other thing is if you build an audience six hundred thousand a hundred thousand two million that isn't engaged anymore your whole goal should be trying to get these creators use this all it's like one like as much as people don't wanna say following doesn't matter it does matter in the way that it does communicate status like that's the first thing people say in podcast podcasts like how many followers someone has it like people it's it's sort of like a college degree like it doesn't mean much but like people still kinda like care about it you know like it's still a bit of like a a a a a way of signaling some sort of status in a space so at some point you were able to figure out how to get this many followers and that does give some some credibility but like it's hard to get brand deals like like it it can make you a leader in that space but it's hard if brand deals or your thing it's hard to get brand deals if you have no engagement with an audience so your thinking should be how do i get a percentage of my audience to buy into a series whether that's on that platform or you move them to another platform that is easier to monetize like a newsletter or a podcast so create a content franchise that is like just a different format find a hook point find like a simple approach that will get people onto your list or onto your podcast that gives people an actual franchise that is like a consistent theme that you can show up every single week for that then becomes easy to monetize because a a newsletter on a podcast people don't mind brand sponsorships as much as on them people are more trained to accept brand deals on on newsletters and podcasts because it's a format that you can easily it doesn't affect the content we're in short form it's hard to integrate a brand without it like veer off the story but podcast podcasts and and and newsletters like people are more trained to like more forgiving to seeing oh yeah that's cool like it's almost in some spaces it's almost like credibility like oh they're getting paid to like write this newsletter like that means there must be a lot of people watching them that means they must be important but short form people have way less patients for short form video especially if there's no like series or ongoing story that's tied into it like i think jewel as an example is she was leading she was telling everyone she was moving to california then a moving company sponsored her and like helped her like ship all her boxes to california like that doesn't change the content that just supports the content that's the best kind of brand deal when you have an ongoing content series that integrates the the partnership within that now newsletters in podcasts like i said it's essentially a a content franchise in itself where people are way more forgiving and they they're they're cool with brand deals happening on those channels so your number one goal will be like okay if i have six hundred thousand how do i get ten thousand people that have a very specific want and need to this certain like like if your thing is productivity i would like maybe make something like how to use notion like notion this is stupid but like weekly notion tips for productivity so you know notions like a big vertical you know the productivity is how do you combine them make a specific newsletter run a specific front like like direction like a specific need within a segment of your audience so now you have this list of ten thousand people that want notion notion tip so now you know their notion users and now you can go to any sort of brand that would help integrate with that especially notion like i know notion sponsors a lot of people like there's a lot of like clear and obvious potential integrations with that type of newsletter so like these are just some ideas like it's like you a big audience now how do you get them somewhere else and then maybe in your big audience how do i create a content series and just start fresh my mind about like your know how i approach my content maybe it's just a segment of my audience that i'm gonna deliver this to but be fine with that and like know that like the it it's more of a long term play to create this ongoing series that people are buying into so that's the great shorts dilemma and some potential solutions for it have a blast out there

three kindle highlights for creators who are making goals you're at a point where you're saying hey i wanna i wanna create goals for the next three months six months year whatever and you're writing them down and you're thinking about how to be the most effective as possible with your time in order to hit these goals now i'm not an expert in goal setting in writing goals but these are these are things that from authors there are experts that talk about how to be efficient and effective with your time that i wanna highlight and share with you that let's share this episode with a friend pick one friend who is a creator who has the dog in them that you think has a lot of potential that is excited to put their ideas and scope their ideas in a way that builds an audience makes money creates a on a digital brand in some way share this with them share with share this with them to help them also gain clarity on their goal setting process as a creator that would be that would make my day as a creator so one this is from the book ten x is easier than two x these are actually questions that i highlighted what is your twenty percent that if you went all in on you become ten x more valuable and impactful what are the few things that you do and the few people that you work with that produce the most of your excitement and success what is your eighty percent that is keeping you grinding away and ultimately a distraction for your biggest future jumps what is your twenty percent spend the most time as you possibly can in your zone of genius from you your unique ability how can you allocate your time so you're leveraging your strengths as much as possible if you are successful at someone else's goal is it actually successful if you find success in a goal but that goal that goal was created to make someone else happy is that actual success or is that goal what was that goal created to compete with someone else is that actual success i find a lot of people they see what other creators are doing and they say that's the race i wanna be in but it's not actually giving them joy giving them energy it's not actually from their natural strengths or abilities so then they get burnout out they don't wanna continue to do those things and and and continue to build that brand so what is the twenty percent what is the twenty percent that if you went all in on you'd become ten x more valuable and impactful how do you focus on those for me it's hiring an editor i need an editor for this podcast i need an editor for these clips for the bonus footage account and for the creators our brands account that would be like i'm a good editor i'm not a great editor that's not my zone of genius now if that's your zone of genius and you don't like being on camera and you wanna and you wanna help inspire connect bring value and serve creators in a major way then hit me up hit me up and i'll i'll i'll send you some content to edit and and we'll see if you might if we might be a a good collaborating together that that that that that's an example so how can you take that example that my strength is is writing creating being on camera it's not editing and and that's the eighty percent i spent eighty i probably said more than eighty percent of my time like editing and cutting up clips i need someone that knows that space much better than me and it's also their zone of genius and they love to do it so this quote is also from this book the scariest and most exciting thing you'll ever do is to be your your true self hold nothing back with no apology hey y i i appreciated that quote so let's get into the next book buy back your time anyone in this con this dovetail nicely with the first one anyone can systematically arrange their work life so their days maximize time in a zone of creativity business owners often try often try doing things themselves because they worry that no one else will do their job as well as them this may be true but if even someone does your job at eighty percent of your capacity that buys back a hundred percent of your time so if i hire an editor that buys back a hundred percent of that time for me to be in my zone of genius of writing creating connecting building relationships things that things that i are my natural strengths and i do the best you can also consider so this is actually i think a great point two you can also consider the ten eighty ten rule do the first ten percent of the work have someone else handle the next eighty percent and then come back to finalize the last ten percent that way you've played a role in con the the cons conceptual centralization and execution but you've also carved out a huge chunk of energy and time for yourself what can you delegate and replace what can you give ownership to someone else i think that there's or what what can you just eliminate like if if if it if it's not in your twenty percent you know some you know obviously we have we have day jobs we have client work we have stuff like like i i i don't think that you can there's that it's hard to fully optimize and only do you're gonna have to do some of that eighty percent that that doesn't it feels more like a a chore than and in an actual space of of giving you energy and and from your natural strengths you can improve this you can iterate it you can get it to thirty seventy you can get it to to forty sixty you can continue you it'll how what can you eliminate or delegate and or what can you look at like okay i'll do the i'll do ten percent of that let someone else edit eighty percent of it and then i'll come in and add like the the you know the last couple edits to to get this to where i wanted again that that goes with the first one how can you spend the most time possible in your zone of genius because that is going to produce better results you're gonna be a better creator you're gonna serve more people it's gonna be more enjoyable and you're it's less likely that you're gonna feel burnout out with your brand getting results the agile way if this were friday so like this is now now we're the first two are thinking more from a standpoint of of of direction of of goal right now this is a little bit more tactical when you're chunking out your weeks and you're writing out your tasks in order to hit those goals if this were friday what are the three most important results i would want to show what would pay me the most if it weren't done by friday focus on outcomes not activities or tasks so you you you think about the outcomes that you want on friday then you chunk down the tasks that will help you get to those outcomes and it's probably like three to five things then each day you do three to five things to get you to those outcomes like for me you would be publishing a podcast that's one of the outcomes i want for this week along with that it's say three to five clips so how do i then delegate those three to five clips to someone else or or am i gonna edit them because i don't have an editor right now what would pay me the most if it weren't done by friday like for me like i think a a big thing that would pay me the most is if if i didn't work out at all if i didn't get three to five good workouts in so but make sure when i'm on monday when you're when you're scheduling out your week make sure that you you write out time for all of those things that if it if it hit friday and you didn't do them you'd be like oh like i didn't make the most effective use of my time this week and and look at those three to five things what are those things that if they would if you didn't do them by friday they would pay you maybe that's getting up a youtube video maybe that's you know hiring and assistant like you know set it or setting up it could just be like setting up five phone calls with other with brands you know the something like that like by friday what what are the results that you want and then chunk down the task and activities around that now this one is from the book deep work i am para this but it's called schedule time to be on social so most people and and and we need to talk about social because everyone talks about goals and they add things to do on their to do list to get to these goals they add you know time for writing time for creating time for connecting building all all of these things but i think removing things that are gonna to be distractions are just as important and the biggest distraction of course is social media we don't have to go into into depth about how much social media is a distraction and why it's a distraction and how they've engineered these apps to talk it's a just hijack our brain and make them super addictive but that that's that's just obvious at this point now you need to create a plan to not allow this to be a distraction so you can focus on your zone of genius every time that anything is pulling you from your zone of genius we need to be thinking about how to get this out of our way when it comes to social and this is what he talks about in in deep work most people schedule time to be off they say okay this weekend i'm gonna be off social media so they schedule time to be off he says you need to schedule time to be on so the default should be off social media am not on this thing i am not on this tool that is pulling me away from my zone of genius i am not on this tool that is not even a tool if i'm on it mindless you need to start thinking like a producer unless like a consumer you need to be the one thinking i'm putting food on the shelves i am not the person walking aim through the aisle just buying the stuff with the brightest colors and the and the most sugar and and the most palatable that's what it's like that's what it's like where we're just scrolling mindless but one of the best strategies and i've done this successfully around twenty percent of the time i need to get better but especially if you're a professional that needs to be on social media like myself probably like you if you're a creator and you're building online if we're just if you just let yourself go willy nilly the platform is going to out you the like they've built it in a way where you know as you go on just to check your video that you posted then you start scrolling a couple of videos all of a sudden you're on there for twenty five minutes that pulls you from twenty five minutes of focus time and that happens throughout the day on a consistent basis so instead of going and just aim checking from time to time because we know time to time turns into all the time schedule time to be online schedule specific time throughout the day now it could be i i this is what i would recommend twice a day for fifteen to thirty minutes you will get your hit a lot of people say like oh like if if i'm not on social media i'm not gonna know the trends are i'm not gonna know what like you know how how the culture is moving i'm telling you if you're on there for fifteen to thirty minutes a day it is more than enough that's up that might even be too much so i would say fifteen to thirty minutes is find another rule that you could do is i'm only allowed to go on social media every time i publish something that's the producer mindset you publish something and then for fifteen to thirty minutes after you publish that then you're online and kinda checking out you know what are people talking about what are the trends but then the rest of the day you log off you be in full creator mode you be in full builder mode that's how you take that control of these apps that have been specifically engineered to hijack our our brains and to pull us away from our zone of genius but as a creator your job is to create systems and structure that set you up to spend the most time in your unique abilities that's all your goal should be around your entire goal system should say how do i spend more time doing the things i'm best at that's it if you're gonna take one thing away from this video it's how can i spend more time doing the things that i'm naturally good at and that i naturally enjoy and number five this goes nicely with number four you've heard of the this the hidden genius book you've heard of the whole thirty diet but have you heard of the content diet people are obsessed about the food that they put in their body but spend all day to all you can eat content buffet according to paul the author of the hidden genius book what we may need to consume is a content diet what you eat is who you are and what you read is who you become we often neglect our content diet the information we feed our brains on a daily basis who are you hanging out with that's what content is these power social relations ships people's ideas their outlook their mindset we're becoming what we consume a large portion of our content is determined by the people whose opinions we value and word words we absorb absorb absorb one exercise you can do is a content audit look at the books podcast podcasts and tweets and television you consume these are the people we're hanging out with these are the conversations you're having these are the things you are impress your subconscious mind with are they getting you closer to the person you wanna be or further i think that's a great question i want you to look at your feet and be ruthless who is actually adding value and why when i say value not just what they're saying the topics that we're subscribing to the people's outlook that we're looking to s is contagious all of these conversations you know if you're around a negative person for ten minutes like you start to feel that and that's the same thing with our content you need to be ruthless mute people un follow people if if if you wanna un follow my content please do that you should protect your psyche i i honestly think you know what that's a good goal as you're as you're making your goals one of your goals should be to mute more people if it's junk food content get it out of here you and un follow any content that isn't helping you get to where you want to be whether that's their tone their outlook the the messaging the topics like whatever ninety eight percent of it is junk food find your five to ten accounts that you wanna just you want these things to be your biggest inspiration over the next ninety days six months and just go all in on them you it it actually the less you follow the more you'll be able to actually put into action the principles that they're talking about anyways there's kinda too much content coming to us nowadays it's impossible to put all of that in action at the same time so follow a couple people follow the principles that work for them and then ask yourself how can i implement these into my day to day activities to help me get me closer to my goals thank you for listening to creators our brands i am tom boyd i have a great time recording these shows i appreciate you for listening have fun putting these goals together and have a beautiful inspired day put the camera on your face place put

i did not know that m ms i love and trust would steal for me and five other things that i learned about a creative career from the pickle ball court and before you say tom why are you telling me about pickle ball right now trust me one i understand where you're coming from i thought it was a silly sport too but i've been playing this year and it's a lot of fun and i've been getting a lot better and i have goals about the level of play i wanna be at and in the process of pursuing those goals i've seen a lot of parallels that'll make a lot of sense to you if you are a creator a creative professional anyone that is like doing work where you're relying on your imagination and your creative function to make money so let's get into it i don't know if you believe me that it'll make sense but it'll make sense so i did not what's the first one i did not know that m ms i love and trust would steal for me when i was in the music industry i went into this world bright eyed bushy tailed and i lost a lot of money in the process when you walk onto to the the pickle ball court bright eyed and bushy tailed just there for a good time you quickly see the areas that you need to improve upon i grew up in this world where all of my family are educators i grew up in a world world where what you say is what you do you get a degree you get this job you you put in the work you get a return for that this creative career this new world where there are seemingly aren't that many rules you have to learn quickly and what i learned is on the pickle ball court if i lob a ball and someone smash it on me is it their fault for smashing it on me or is it my fault for lobbying the ball up that's what i realized i did in hindsight in the music industry i sat there and i was lobbying the ball up and of course in that industry that plays by those rules which aren't rules they're gonna smash it on me but i grew up in a world where people would have played nice they would have been like oh he lob it up he's a new player boop i'm just gonna like softly hit it back to him i'm wanna play nice because everyone trusted everyone because it wasn't the world of business i realized that if i wanna play in this industry people are going to take advantage of me if i don't speak up if i don't ask questions if i'm not confident in the value i bring if i if i don't understand how to communicate the value i bring people are gonna smash it on me and that's how they play that game there two don't be mad at to people that are better than you be inspired this one dude that i play with is a lot better than me and when i first started to play with him i wanted to find reasons to not like him it would rationalize the fact that he's better than me right it would like it would it was looking for an excuse of saying like oh yeah he's he's but he's this but he's this way and but here's the thing great dude and i it turned out that instead of trying to find things that are wrong with them i started studying his game i started inquiring the work that he's put indicate where he's at and i started to i think about this with the other creators that i had fire sometimes we watch a creator that's doing well and we're like we wanna see the flaws we wanna see what you know the the the things that make them human to like make ourselves feel better that we're not in their position instead let's look at the things highlight what they do incredibly see how that can help not influence the style of but influence the work ethic influence the attention to detail this is what i realized too his strengths are different than my strengths some creator strengths are different than your strengths it's not highlighting oh i i wanna play exactly like them i wanna use my strengths the way that they use their strengths don't be mad if people for being better than you be inspired number three the better you get the better i get the better i get the better you get i was playing with a group of people it was four to six of us when we would rotate out and then as soon as that and that was for a couple months and then as soon as i started going playing at this this club this this club sound fancy saying that i got a lot better because i started playing people that were a lot better than me i started playing people with different styles of play i started learning from a variation of other people they were all better than me that's important when it comes to the people that were surrounding ourselves with the people we follow the people we work with the the content we're consuming as a creator you want people to be better than you it elevate your style of play it elevate how you create it elevate how you think about content when you're playing with other people on the court you know as much as you want like the goal is to win and beat them because that's it's a game it's a competition i i think like watching other creators when they add a new skill when they get better at a specific thing cheer for that oh that's exciting because that's gonna make me better because i just observe that the better i play the people around me can learn from my game everyone it compounds everyone improves when you improve and vice versa i think there's ways to highlighting certain things in that building this trust between the people that you're building with that you can call other people out for ways that they can improve if you see someone that is making a mistake better for your game and their game for you to coach them on how to improve that thing so i think sometimes we get defensive if someone's like hey i noticed in your videos you do this your lighting is like this way you're being too much like this person i i've had that on the pickle court where people will will call me out for something and then like i try to get defensive i try to rationalize why i do that thing maybe instead of getting defensive look at that as like a clear opportunity to improve look at that as be receptive to that actually be grateful that someone had to courage the balls to call you out on an area that you can improve i actually like honestly when i'm playing with better people i look at them and say hey after the game i say what can i do to improve my game what areas do you do you think that i should focus on it it takes humility i didn't wanna do that at first there's the there's like ways to call people out on it that isn't kinda condescending like oh you're doing wrong it's usually after the game call them over and say hey when you do that specific shot here's a quick tip here's a quick way to improve that and even ask i'm like hey would you be open to some some feedback on on your style of play you like kinda like set it up in a way that is invites them in on it and it feels collaborative because the better they get the better your partners get the better you peep the people you're playing against to get the better you have to get and i love that i love seeing creators that are constantly improving look at the people you're having conversations with start a creator group chat start a creator discord with i i don't think there should be too many people five people five people that are all adding skills to their bag each week i have this we had this great thing with the people that i i play with where we would say hey what skill are you adding to the bag this week like what thing are you focusing on and improving say that to your creator friend hey maybe this month we all challenge ourselves to add better hooks to our videos we challenge ourselves to to add better captions to add better b roll to experiment with new styles to like you know all challenge yourself on a new style just to just to just to stretch yourself and flex your your your your skill set a little bit more because the better they get the better you get so create a circle of creator friends it could start with one it can even if you don't have friends right now just pretend just be like alright these three creators they're in my creator group chat follow their accounts mute everyone else study their style study little things that you see them working on you see a new style of video write it down write i'll highlight certain specific notes from that video and then say how can i add that to my bag how can i add these skills to my bag because the better they get the better you get wish for other creators get excited for other creators cheer for them to get better because the better they get if you don't have too much ego if you have a growth mindset the better they get the better that you get point four it's less about hitting winners it's more about being patient and consistent so the best players if you watch them they're not playing that chaotic they're not going for big place what they're doing is they're going for consistency they're going for patience the parallel is not going for big viral hits every single time but rather working on the fundamentals focusing on showing up on a consistent basis whether that's one video three videos five videos a week whatever whatever it is showing up and doing those things consistently instead of going for the home runs and going viral there's nothing wrong with going viral because obviously when you're playing patient you're gonna get those opportunities for those smash for those winners but the idea of just trying to go viral every single time what i see is sometimes it makes people act out of character it gets people out of position it it makes people build a brand that they're not entirely in love with so the best players focus on playing in a way that is even ke playing in a way that is patient now i'm not saying that there aren't successful creators that just look to go viral but what i'm saying is like you have to look at success as a creator as do you like what you're making you could go and build a brand based off of viral hits but then you have to keep making that type of content and what happens is you build this brand off of these viral hits and then you have to keep showing up as that brand and as that person which then leads the burnout so instead i think it's better to be a sustainable creator where not only sustaining the level of output but your enjoyment in it because if you're sacrificing your enjoyment just for a viral hit then you're not gonna wanna sustain and keep doing that breath i think it's important to play the patient game work on your fundamentals show up for the creative process every single day build a deep work habit build a a habit of focus around little iterations getting incrementally better day by day and then those rant winners will come but they'll be rooted in a foundation of a brand that you actually like instead of just going for the viral smash and partnerships this is my favorite one but let's let's talk about creative collaborators it's so important to compliment each other other's strengths you can have two people that are really really great incredible world class of what they do but they their strengths are the same so they don't really compliment each other too well and you hear a lot about like the visionary and the operator or the the the the the on camera person and like the behind camera person right the the there's like you have to depending on what your creative craft is i think it's important to find people that compliment your skills well for me trying to hire a you know if i'm gonna build a company i'm more of a big big vision thinker i need someone that's gonna handle the day to day operations of something the same way on the court i'm i'm running around like a man man if i playing with another person that's running around like a mad man we're gonna be running into each other so it's funny because like sometimes i play with people that are like really good but we had the same playing style so we don't mesh but other people they like to stay their ground they're just sit consistent they they hit a certain shot of specific way and i start to feed off of that and i start to see the opportunities and then i i get some big big shots because we're working together the way that our styles work the second is communication knowing where each other is on the court communicating which balls you're gonna take which balls they're gonna get you know the people that don't communicate they run into each other they i hit each other in their head is no fun but the the same thing with if it with a creative partner being very clear about what the goal is being clear about how your strengths are gonna compliment each other being clear around the things that you want each other to improve upon it like the things and and being open and that's where the trust comes trusting that hey if i if i'm giving you some feedback it's like from the best place i'm not trying to make you look bad we're where we both have this same goal of getting better and working together and winning this thing that goes for both creators and partners on the pickle ball court the i know this isn't really about like pickle but i'll tell you why i enjoy the sport and this is what i've realized is for people that have creative jobs we spend so much time sitting behind the computer looking at a green in our own thoughts going back and forth on on like decisions on things that we wanna make and i've realized that pickle ball is a great way to get in person social interaction one i'll sweat a like a good a good workout but also you've you kinda get in flow a little bit like you can't think about anything else besides the game that you're playing you know when you play golf even like even like basketball like you know there's like downtime in between plays like it's a little slower like pickle a ball like there's a ball on the court your mind has to follow it and for like two hours couple nights a week like you you get complete flow and it's it's such an enjoyable game for that reason the name weird it's definitely cooler to be good at tennis but like also you can see and feel yourself improving in the game too so it like you can see the parallels between like a creative career of trying to put your ideas out there and getting better at the this sport and i've really enjoy the process of like having this little like side passion hobby and i've actually thought about like making content around it more but for me and this is like a creative career thing i think you gotta have things that had nothing to do with monetization nothing to do with oh what's the what's the strategy here what's the game plan what's the angle how are we gonna sell this it it's like good to just like half stuff that is just yours so that's something to keep in mind too so whether that's pickle ball hiking fishing what whatever i'm a whatever fun thing that you wanna explore i think you gotta have that for yourself too have that a little time where you can go disconnect and and just and just focus on something that is like that this it's just gonna bring you pure joy and and and happiness but y i i hope these helped you in some way shape or form thank you so much for listening to the creators our brands podcast i love this stuff i hope you have had a beautiful inspired day keep cooking put the camera on your face stop playing star playing

this might ruin my career her numb to your own knowledge that's new i i've never heard that one like fuck the college degree you created a social media page so strong that the biggest superstar in the world invited you to her house i wanna know if this was strategic oh that's strategic yeah and that actually started as a linkedin post i have these things that i call like engagement based or like oh i've never heard this before let's talk about that so courtney welcome to the show to hopping on the podcast i you know your content i feel like it's been popping up all over my for you page and i i've just resonated it there were two specifically there was there was the naval one and then there was the one why brand suck on social media and i'm gonna i'm gonna say the intro the the hook here was was fantastic so some thirteen year old kid from ohio with nothing more than an iphone six and a seventh grade education is going viral on social media while your forty six year old nba educator strategic marketing media advisors slash advertising industry executive cans winner can't crack a hundred of views let's talk about that oh my gosh it's so funny because i i always iterate on my content and that actually started as a linkedin post i posted like five years ago and i've just like kind of made the hook a little bit more and more engaging and finally this it hits every time i'm like god i gotta film this as a a tiktok but i i it came out of frustration like i i think i i i from the agency world and you know have been both agency and in house and i've just always had this frustration especially with like marketing directors and cmos because i'm like why the fuck are you not getting it like you clearly are not consuming social media and being the person that's in charge of brand social media as the met social community manager the director are coming on social media consultant it is so hard to get across to hire ups or people that like kind of have this clout in the industry that aren't actually spending time on social media and so that was my way of like trying to like beat it over their heads and be like what the fuck are you thinking like time to actually like engage yourself in the platform in order to understand it i was having the same conversation with a friend social media is like a volume game and it's an experimentation game and each time like the their mindset is not to put it out and like test their mindset is like to put it out in the be a tv commercial and that just doesn't hit on social media yeah exactly it's it's funny because most of the brands that i work with or have worked with will show me like individual personal brand accounts and be like oh we really like this account we really like that account and it's just no no one's excited to consume a b2b b saas companies like next tweet like nobody's excited to consume brand content because it's so detached so even though they come to me and they're like oh we really are inspired by this personal brand creator they want you to jump the only part they want you to take from that is that they have a lot of followers and engagement but they don't want you to follow that strategy at all which i think is totally detached from reality and the creator too what the magic behind them is they're following their creative impulse where they had that spark of an idea when they were standing in line for their their smoothie bowl and then got the smoothie bowl went out sat in their car put the camera on and started talking and like they didn't have to send this idea with a perfect presentation send it to ten feet you know like there's that there's that magic that i think i think people are getting and because of the type of content that you're making i think brands are starting to get it i'm seeing more like u ads more partnerships where people are like yeah iphone send it make it look and feel overall make it look and feel native but there's still a lot of people just moving really slow in these types of things yeah i i was working with a perfume brand recently and i'm not even really a perfume person but they wanted to work with me and hold on did i cut out okay i'm back you're good i was working with the perfume brand recently and they wanted to give me this script they wanted me to read why their perfume is awesome and i was like actually that's not gonna work but i do have this cheat code around every time i put a perfume on or put a can and i say an affirmation so it like comes back to me as i smell it throughout the day can i do a video talking about my affirmation hat and just happen to be holding your perfume as like a product placement instead of totally like like the notes of this perfume because people don't care like they don't care they want what's in it for them they don't want you to be selling to them and so i think that there's yeah like you're saying there's a lot more organically integrated brands and i think that's only going to like continue to grow more and more and and do you so when you did that video was that like a influencer post or like a u for their their account that was me working with them as an influencer so posting it on my account are you also working with brands as like a strategic adviser executive nba educated marketing do you work in that capacity too like it because it is some of your your content elite like that's the understanding that i got yeah yeah i do i'm i work as a social media consultant for brands but my sweet spot what i really like is being a social media consultant ghost writer manager for personal brands because again the personal brand is where you more yeah and you can teach someone and train someone to like honor those downloads they're getting at the smoothie shop and like teach them and train them how to refine their content where there's just more openness from individuals even if i am working on a brand i'm still gonna try to at least give a recommendation of let's get the founder on here let's get personal stories but i think human centered and social media is so lacking people don't care about your product but maybe the story about how the founder you know and getting your audience involved in the mistakes that they've been through like that's what people want that's actually helpful you are correct and that's funny too the that's one thing because i wrote down this a couple notes i kinda geek out when i see a new creator because like there's that that period when you see a new creator and it's like it's all fresh like it's like you're seeing it for the first time and you can kinda observe like their unique angle how they film on camera like just their tonality they're pacing of how they talk like i i i just love that stuff the one thing that the so there's what what what one thing i wrote down when i was like kind of looking at your content it it was it was like i think this is one aspect there's a lot of aspects while your content working obviously but like ai like no one could put your scripts or your talking points into an ai generator and be like give me these five points let you know they're all like your whole problematic career career cheat code series no ai could spit that spit that out and i that's i think that's why it's you're kinda is so refreshing yeah i try to talk about the things that people aren't talking about or maybe something somebody innate knows but has never heard it or seen it verbal and that's where you're right i don't think an ai could spit that out because it's not common commonly talked about so i really and it's experience driven like it's from your personal experience exactly exactly but i i just really deeply care about like access to information and cutting the bullshit like getting straight to the point giving people the access to information and where ai is pulling from is like articles and google and whatever and all of this they don't even have that information right so again that's kind of going back to what you're saying about like honoring these downloads and like speaking from the heart and your own experience because i do think the landscape is getting more competitive with ai so if you can even be like an iota interesting in any way you're gonna stand out and i think that's great for creators is like the competition is good but it's it's just gonna be so much easier if you can insert your personality or your unique perspective rather than trying to refine it or make it perfect yeah it's an incredible point i also noted the fact that you're able to cover multiple different areas so you're not only on one side you're making this content for you know problematic career cheat codes for someone that is like more in a corporate setting then you're saying hey brands you should be this is how you should work with creators then you're sharing your personal insights around like naval and like the content that you're consuming yourself i i that that kinda opened up my mind because sometimes i i with my own kinda like oh i can only talk about these things no you could you could you can share a little angle of all of it absolutely i always say in order to be interesting you have to be interested and so i don't believe in niches i do find value and you know creating a strategic content plan i definitely do that too but when it comes to a niche i think your niche is just what you're really interested in because i didn't even start talking about that on tiktok i started talking about everything i'm interested in including how i have a side hustle as an airbnb host and how i do yoga and yep i like her own austin and people really didn't care about that stuff but what did hit was career an entrepreneurship and what i'm learning so if i would've have stuck to one niche and ben like i can only talk about airbnb i can't expand beyond this and whatever that's gonna go out outside my niche confused my audience i would have missed all of these opportunities that are coming from me talking about my career and you're numb to your own knowledge like i kind of thought a lot of this career advice was obvious until i put it out people are like oh i've never heard for and i'm like oh i'm glad i tested it out and didn't say that again you're you're numb to your you're numb to your own knowledge yeah that's so true is your numb your own strengths too sometimes where it's like you're good you've always been good at it so just naturally you just like oh like this is just the way people operate but then you realize like oh there's a market for this i can charge for this i i i should lean into this if i'm enjoying this too so the the the problematic career chico codes so i'm curious about that series because i love the idea of a content series i've been experimenting with like trying to figure out like what my content series would be but i i'm curious how this did you go into this thinking i'm gonna have this as an ongoing series or were you just testing formats the first one happened to hit and you're like oh there's more where that came from yeah i did not go into it with a series i had it written in my notes app as like a linkedin blog post maybe a year two ago was too scared to put on on linkedin and like that's a little too much but i yeah it it started hitting and people were asking for more content and asking questions and i don't go into any content series thinking it's gonna be a content series i post i experiment and if something does take off and if there's a lot of curiosity then i'll create that and build it into a content series and then a lot of it you said it start as a linkedin post or is a lot of your content are you like writing them out first most of onto this yeah written blog post or written like short form on on linkedin do you always test by publishing it in written form first or some of the times you're just writing it for short form and you make it a short form video or you you write it and then you're like i'll make the video version where i'm talking talking to my k i i like to know out about this stuff i told you that yeah no i find it i find process extremely interesting the reason why i use linkedin as my original platform is just because i've been on there for five years i posted like every week last five years so i have a lot of content to pull from and a lot of content that i can repurpose on other platforms so what i do is just i find my outlier so i analyze my top performing post from linkedin and that's the content that i'm gonna use a script and put out on other platform test in different ways yeah so it's all like my litmus test i love that linkedin is like the the the testing area and then you kinda tick tiktok fight it from there and like okay how can i make this and then so you had this post to say pro problematic problematic career cheat codes is it how are you thinking about like because everyone talks about the hook i i i sometimes like i get mad as a creator i'm like i'm even gonna think about the hook i'm gonna make videos the way i want and then usually those videos work so i'm curious when you're thinking of that blog post are you just saying how are you then crafting like the first five to ten seconds is it getting people's attention in those first five seconds are you just kinda going based on what what the blog post was so i try to think ahead of what hate comments i'm gonna get and i make a headline to or a hook to trigger any hate comments like trigger them even more so interesting i have i posted about you know know a super viral about like seven eight million views about my house and i knew that if i said the word randomly bought a house rather than bought a house it would trigger people because i have a very beautiful house that i bought and i know people i thinking i'm like people are gonna be in the comments being like oh you're probably an napa baby you're probably a sugar baby you're well brat so i'm like how can i trigger that even though it's not a true thing i knew that they were gonna come in how can i trigger that ahead of time so for my problematic career cheat codes i think my hook was something around like i'm probably gonna get canceled for this this might ruin my career because i knew people would be in the comments like i can't believe you're saying this out loud this will ruin your career you know you suck whatever and so i just ag agitated whatever resistance i i know i'm gonna get that's good stuff that's new i i've never heard that one i think a lot of people try to run away from the trolls or the haters but they're a huge asset they can help blow up your video you get people arguing the comments like there's no viable video where people aren't arguing in the comments and talking shit so you can learn to leverage the the trolls that's that's yeah that's a great mindset i've really i i i really like that outlook it's also a bit empowering too where a lot of people are like i'm afraid of that but like you're saying nah like that's an asset lean into it absolutely and i just tell i guess light myself and i tell myself they're all bots they're probably not all bots but i'm like oh that's just a bot not or they're like yeah yeah no no that that it's you kinda have to do that and and i think i forget who it was because i remember before i was kinda of posting more consistently i was working more behind the scenes with brands with creators being like more of like a consultant right hand type guy and then i was always afraid to kinda like post myself because i think like i wouldn't say it out loud but yeah the comments were you know just like anyone can just throw their judgment as you and like i don't like that feeling and i think i forget who it was ram seth i think he said because he he leans into the trolls too i don't know if you know him he's like the financial guy yeah he said he said my mindset said is like i don't wish for the comments to go away i wish for me to get stronger and that was cool he was like something that he can control he's like whatever like i know who i'm trying to serve and who i'm trying to reach so i need to get stronger my four too for my belief in this content i i think also i just tell myself like if i was in their situation and grew up in their family and their city and had all of their upbringing i would say the exact same thing they're saying right also true also true yeah yeah have have empathy for it you know you know maybe yeah may yeah and then appreciate like your outlook on the world and how you've gotten to this point that's can can we lean into a couple of the career cheat codes yeah the audience for this show it's it's i i'd say it's a good amount of there's full time creators there's part time creators there's there's creative there are like more freelancers behind the scenes there's people working at jobs and doing part you know part time like there's people like and and i honestly think i don't know how you you feel about it but i think you'll see more part time creative we're like creating is like is like you said in the one thing have a side hustle where it's it's like people don't even wanna go full time they like a little bit of security with that that that paycheck but they also want it's like starting a business on the side where normally you would go start like you know you you would install polls in the summer if you're a teacher now you you make content on the internet and like you know teacher id is right i don't know why i thought of that example but so the the i really like the one so the one video you talk specifically towards early in your career so work for smaller companies instead of larger companies that's something i agree with can you can you expand on that so i'm i'm in the marketing space and i know you are so this is true to marketing i yes people will be like oh so does this work in finance i'm like bro i know i've never been in finance yeah be like doesn't work caveat well yeah yeah yeah let's caveat out that marketing creative communication space and that's exactly what i've been in marketing can communicate like journalism o tv all of that yep so yeah working at smaller i i started off at small advertising agencies like fifteen twenty people and it was a lot easier for me to take on bigger projects become a manager lead an account rather than just being a small person on an account and i i just see when people start at really really big massive corporations they the dead in their eyes like they don't it's a lot harder and you get paid shitty or often working at smaller companies but you learn to hustle and you learn to grind and you're not like baby into this one task that you're up on you did it like you really have to develop an entrepreneurial mindset if you're working on a small company or a startup up and i know that sucks and i know that's messy but it really does help for the future your ideas have more of a potential like impact on the company that then you can flex on your resume definitely that that's huge yeah like if you're working on a small company and even something so small let's say you want to help plan the holiday party whatever you can't do that at a giant corporation yeah but like well you have to go through the hr team that runs the holiday gifting team blah blah like if you're at a small company anything you wanna do maybe you're not gonna be able to do it but you're at least gonna be heard like maybe you wanna pitch something to a client maybe you can't pitches a client but they're gonna talk you through it and why they're saying no to you we're at a big company there's not even an option to even ask or even present they're gonna turn you down immediately and bigger companies are i think is this the right way am i using risk more risk adverse yeah where yeah that i'm using that right where you know you might have this really cool idea for the company but like it has to the same way we talk about like you know then working with the social media team you pitch an idea i wanna do this cool thing now i has to go through like ten people that like to eventually get the check cut and then if you get a big check cut to put this in motion now you have all these people watching closely on like the success of this and like the or they're they're yeah they're they they just don't even want to risk that because like there's a lot more to lose because they're a big company but there's a lot more upside for taking risk as a smaller company definitely i i encourage anyone earlier in their career or even if you haven't worked at a smaller company or a startup do that some time like and if you can't if for some reason you can't make a friend make friends with a startup up owner make friends with your friend that's running a farmer's market booth and just like help out for a day try to get your hands in the weeds of something small something that somebody is creating rather than this big established thing that can make all the difference in your career because it really shifts your perspective the your second one here is or on this list is all internships should be actual experience so if you i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna compliment that with something too is like all because the next one is about side hustle all side hustle should be actual experience too and there there's this kind of theory i have around like you know not i feel like a lot of people i know go to college for no clue what they wanna go to school for but you still have a lot of free time that you realize you don't have in college and i encourage people i don't know if they listen because i don't know if i would listen put to like take on side project like get two or three buddies take on a side project like you said whether it's like hey i'm gonna start a weekly farmers market on campus or i'm gonna throw a concert in three months and i'm gonna do with the like that's all experience that you can add on your resume and that's so much cooler than like oh i got this little internship like that like anyone else coulda got i could i this not a question i'm just kinda compliment yeah for sure i i actually hired somebody once because she started a taylor swift fan page in high school i don't think she went to college she started to taylor with fan page in high school the fan page was so successful that taylor swift like flew her out to new york to sit down with her and thank her and the whole she created these community gatherings but she didn't have a college degree and i'm like fuck the college degree you created a social media page so strong that the biggest superstar in the world invited you to her house like fuck yes that is yes insane and she was like didn't even know if i should put that on my resume i'm like what that's the first thing that should be the resume yes because that's someone that gets it like you get it you get that you can be creative and you're thinking you're not just going down this like boring ass path but that is the type of stuff that's really cool or like you're saying whether you like put on a party with your friends in college and you make some money or maybe you lose shit ton of money like fail early and fail often and it's all positioning too it it it's it's how you talk about that like i used to shoot music videos and then you know for my silly little like group where we were trying to make people laugh and i and i was just like wait like i'm i was basically directing all those videos i was writing all of them i was producing them and then i realized i had these skill sets their marketable skill sets that then i could people could pay me for and i just how to like position them is key so play around with like all of your experience if you're the captain of your football team right and like yeah i don't know like just just like there's ways to word that that look good to to people that actually get it definitely i i think anyway you can add that in is positive i i was like i did the score board at soccer games in college and i think i put that on there as like i was a you know media something controlling that telling i don't even know how i exaggerated it but really anything can be can can be experience yeah you know it's funny i i heard someone you know how i said content series mh at the beginning here about this series mh this particular this year's were you're were talking about i heard someone call like a content series a content franchise once and she was in the advertising industry and i was like that sounds so much more valuable to her brand calling it a content franchise and it's it's all about positioning same thing but like now hey do you wanna partner with my content franchise i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna take that that word that's that's a really good way of positioning because it it really is like a franchise and i think that it's going to grow even more like content series content franchises or whatever it's gonna grow even more because we have these things like netflix or whatever where they're dropping a ton of episodes at once right and seasons of this episodes and now people are doing that with podcast podcasts the next place that naturally goes a short form video i have i i'm gonna i wanna make a video about this but like i didn't i haven't made one yet but so i'm bop all around here like this is the nature of my my conversations i apologize but i have a theory that brands should actually start thinking more about sponsoring a format instead of sponsoring the creator when you're looking for creators to work with find the format like your format your franchise your series that work fine you know emily z the girl they did the the logos and made her that's a format sponsor the format because the audience has already bought into that format the guy that responded to all the comments and he like enact them i forget his name sponsored the format like people have bought into that style content so when you sponsor that they don't care because they like the format like they know the setup in the punch on so your format any brand sponsor courtney format of problematic career cheat codes sponsor that format i have a a crazy story there was a i'm not gonna name names but it was a major major tech startup up that's doing really well in like the ai space and the automation space i've used them for years i like them crazy anyways they reached out and they were like we wanna do a video with you whatever and i said yeah it you would actually be perfect to plug into my problematic meta career cheat codes because i've already mentioned you i already organically used you i've already mentioned you several times and they were like no sorry because we like that's against our campaign that's not in our brand guidelines we can't do that so they made me record citi the ass script that performed very poorly it didn't go on my account thank god but i was like are you kidding me like that would have been so much tee it up for them i know and they were wrote they said no they've i know it was crazy i'm like you guys are are insane this video is not gonna perform well and it didn't perform well obviously so if cheers i know do do i have a question do you think sometimes and like we you talked about having like empathy for people situations when they're you know they're putting negative comments i've thought about this angle too from like the brand's perspective because like when they're at a bigger brand like people have jobs to protect there there much they'll sway way more to the side of like not looking bad in front of this cmo then like because like the reward there for them is like alright if i this creator does a million views but says something that is too spicy and then like my job's affected like is it like almost too risky for some of the these but the problem is the brands that have a lot of money are the bigger ones so it's this is a challenge across the board no i agree and i try to have empathy for those social media managers that are influencer managers that are reporting to the marketing manager that reports to the no like i get it i just personally have never in my corporate team i've never respected that and i've been the crazy one so that's why i say you should always have a side hustle because like truth of what actually is going to work you're right that's really hard they could lose their job over it but also like i don't know you have to have something going on in the background because or something another stream of income because if it does come to a point where and this isn't even a big deal whatever but you're in your job and they're telling you to do things you know aren't is not gonna work that's soul sucking like that is definition selling your goal yeah and and honestly if you do then have well okay let's go into the side because that's the next point the side hustle and it also pairs well with the the naval navarro ra can't the side the side hustle like especially in creative marketing spaces i've learned more from my side quests than my main jobs right like i've learned more about social media that then i it's like almost like i can go experiment on my time and then bring what i'm learning back to the people i'm working with so that that's that's an upside for the people and work we're you know like your your day job right when you do a side hustle if it's in in the content space to what you're saying is you start to feel a little bit more confident where you're the boss right you have a side hustle comes from your brain you're the boss you make the decisions on it you start to get some money you start to make some impact you start to feel more confident that shows up everywhere and your personal relationships in your job in the side also and then yeah yeah so and i didn't even go to the naval part but like comment on that and then we'll go to the naval part yeah that i mean that is beautifully expressed you're exactly right it really builds your confidence it really like puts you in again shift your mindset of like oh okay like i can do that i can kind of like move this thing here and that moves and for me when i encourage people to have side hustle it's really not even about money it's the fact that you can make make even one dollar right like i will so proud when my ebook made its first ten dollars because it's not hard to go from making ten dollars making a hundred dollars through a service through a thing that you're selling whatever but it's really fucking hard to go from zero dollars to ten dollars or a hundred dollars or whatever that first increment that is the hardest part but once you do that again there's a shift of like oh shit i did that on my own like what else can i do and that's really really exciting so they're earlier you can do that in your career i think what you're saying the more confidence you have to push back and also to be like okay fuck you i'm leaving i'm going to their job if you want to yeah and and well there's a lot of things i wanna comment on about what you said but as you were talking i realized my this podcast my favorite thing about this podcast is my one the excuse for me to connect with like minded people so i'm glad over connecting here but like i realized too like my wife's graphic designer two she's a like a creative herself and we we look around like a lot of our friend groups and like no one does even remotely close to like what we do it like it's like feels like a lonely venture right to start creating online putting your ideas out there the failure within the first hundred videos then to that first dollar and like even though when we go online it seems like there's a lot of creators when you go to the grocery store none of those people are creating you know like like there it's the only way we're meeting mostly mostly when i meet creative it's all it's all aligned it's like in the dms and this is more like y we're we're here like just being like a what's the word not not a place event but like a place to just kinda like have your thoughts to be validated as you're pursuing these goals of trying to make that first one dollar definitely i that and that is really special that you're creating that place for your audience because i i couldn't agree more like i don't have people around me that are doing something similar it's it's crazy and you're right it can be lonely but i think i i think that just shows that you're like way fucking ahead of the game like it seems like it's saturated it seems like there's so many but it's way ahead of the game and and then to have like like you know as a creator you know especially when you're getting started like you was thinking about your account when i was kinda like writing down notes and i was like it's so like i still think it's so cool and i that someone can just like alright one day i'm gonna i'm gonna start this account i'm gonna start sharing my ideas and like naval new wealth is created by code or media and this is from your five lessons from the ball ravi cam video new wealth is created from code media so if you can't code you have to create media books content etcetera where like you can share this one idea once and it can connect with so many people and like move someone in like shift someone's mindset just a little bit that adds a little bit of value so i i think that's i think that's something that you do really you're doing really well and then especially you did it in this five lessons from the vault video so let's talk about that because that was a big shift in my my like outlook to like how i created content as well and you said that at the beginning of like was at what point in your content creating career what what were the major shifts from the naval like coming across his content i i didn't word that well but you're gonna you're i know you don't know with doing yeah i i did biggest shift was the the two things that you called out if you can't code create media and i'm like oh shit i can't code and i'm really good at creating media so i guess i'm gonna dive even deeper into this and then the second one is about leverage the the conversation around leverage with mind blowing to me because i i actually went through this book called d one thing if you haven't read it definitely recommend but i realized that my one thing i should be focused on is creating as big top of funnel as big audience as i can because as i'm putting out these different products it's just gonna make it easier and easier and easier and that's where the concept of leverage comes in where again i have a book that's ten dollars if i have a hundred fifty thousand followers right now i have one point five million followers right now just by doing nothing that's you know ten my revenue on that book and so audience sizes is huge because there's no extra effort that goes in into creating that thing and that was the shift once i understood that i'm like wow this skill that i thought was a silly skill whatever is actually really really really powerful the other ones you have here is if if you hate money were rich people you will be poor i think that's a great one i i i remember feeling that way too it's like oh if you have money you must you must be like the the people in the movies you know and like but you know the way he frames it is like no it's just like it just helps create time freedom it's just people that were able to organize resources better than you were able to you know it's like you know there are obviously people that i i think a good example is like yeah there's a lot of rich people examples that are that are a a holes but then there's also a lot of poor people examples that are also a holes but i have a theory that we just don't we're just not jealous of the poor people so they're not top of mind no that's so true and it's it's just a tool right it's the same thing as like fame or like actual physical tool it's a tool and it's what you do with it and you can do positive things with that things so you could do negative things i mean personal brand is a tool too you can you can spread love or you can like be mean to people it's really yeah it's really up to you so the then the next one here is set an ash but aspirational aspirational rate and enforce it i like that chat the like when he said that i think i ran that back multiple times on the on his podcast when he said that said an aspirational rate and enforce it so he said that like yeah before my rate was like before i was worth this rate i just decided my rate was worth like it was like was say five thousand or something insane yeah he was like so instead of like i i started to realize like if i bought something from amazon and that if it would take me an hour to send back it would be more affordable for me because of how high my rate is to just throw it out like i think that was an example i only actually did that but i was like but like he kind was good at like painting that imagery of like don't do things that are less than your rate oh my gosh that the whole rate thing was why i started del and why i started taking it seriously like oh oh shit it's time for me to learn to delegate because anything i can do my ass operational hourly rate right now is the actual rate i charged for hour which is two hundred fifty dollars an hour which i should up that for my aspirational yeah naval sure i should've have charged me to be listen all this is free episode she gave me the pre ninety nine rate but it it really did shift my mindset out of like oh shit okay well this one thing like my bookkeeping or my accounting or like res scheduling my post pulling my analytics like i that's not worth that much amount of money for me to do when i can out that for twenty dollars do now do you have like a virtual assistant yeah i have a virtual assistant through a tool called time etcetera and it's really good they like hold your hand through it and really teach you how to delegate because i needed baby steps like it was terrifying for me what is it called time etcetera like time etc when it comes to content i'm i'm curious because like i'm at a point with the podcast where i'm like alright i really wanna do the podcast i wanna do shorts so i wanna do all these things but like in order to juggle of it like i feel like i need a help with the process like whether it's just like making clips from the show publishing them like is there any creative roles from time center or is it more is there more like what you would every like special you can have multiple people you can have someone with korean specialty with like accounting with spreadsheets with whatever you your niche is which is which is really cool which is why use them i'll i'll send you my referral code i i yeah because i talk about them all the time they've definitely definitely helped me a lot is it like one person you're working with or do they give you like different people per job do you like buy a bunch of hours upfront in the month you subscribe so i think it's like three hundred seven hundred or twelve hundred a month and then you can use unlimited people i usually just use the same person but you can really like i so i could start it at like three hundred a month and then get a lay of the land and scale up from there yeah cool this is not an ad y'all this is not an ad i might take this clip and send it to them and say i'm cutting it out unless you pay that absolutely i wish i wish they was sponsor to me i've emailed them like a million times i like i'll be your agent i'm good i'll i'll i'll i'll find i'll figure it out they just sponsored to pod honestly i think they're they're based in the uk so they're not like super like america we'll put them yours this this is actually a funny and interesting thing about the naval ra video so the video comes out it's like i forgot i forget the hook it was great it was like this guy what was i think it was like this man has taught me more in my life than anyone else or something but it was worded better yeah i wanna play it this man influenced my life more than any other person on the at the earth i've started listening to a stuff eight months ago and since then i bought a house i take my first thirty thousand dollar a month i hit over a hundred thousand tiktok followers over twenty thousand linkedin followers i've been like fucking driving because of naval all one more that that was my favorite part but then you go into here five five lessons i've adopted from the this is something and i wanna know if this was strategic there's only four oh that's strategic yeah i i have these things that i call like engagement bait that i'll sprinkle through my videos so that could be something as simple as like on my microphone i'll add a little bow to it or maybe my dogs in the background like wearing something funny or maybe i'm something or mispronouncing a word yep and people love to correct so if you can just subtly sneak in a little piece of engagement bait i mean the easiest thing to do is just mispronounce something and everyone will be in your comments session being like it's actually what is that why you said in the other video you said cons yeah yeah yeah i love it's like there i didn't i didn't purposely it mispronounce it i just didn't know how it was pronounced and didn't bother to look it up because i'm like if it's wrong it'll just be a fun yeah yeah okay okay no that's it's so funny because like i don't know who would give a crap i have a couple friend like creator friends like through dms that like we like oh that's so interesting but like like i don't know like seeing the you know like it's such a thing i just nerd out on was like oh she said five things but there's four i wonder if like i wonder if that was strategic so is it so i thought it might have been strategic from a retention point of view where people are kind of waiting for that fifth one but it doesn't come so you get them to watch a whole video but you're but you're saying like it was your angle is more like the engagement bait is more oh people are gonna be like oh there's only there's only four did people say there's only four yeah oh yeah our people would be like waiting on number five does that like and but then that sets you up for a part two mh exactly exactly the perfect setup which i should make that one do a series specific knowledge is is something that i feel like i intuitive to understand when naval ra can't talks about it like i get what he's saying but i don't know how to explain it to someone else like i wouldn't be able like if someone like hey explain to me what specific knowledge is i i basically i i think i i don't know how i would go all of the things you do like your experiences and the lessons that you can apply to your skill i don't know need have a good way of putting it i think i i teach on this when when it comes to deciding like what you're gonna post about but instead of trying to be the best at one thing all you need to do is be the best like i don't know ten percent at three different things or four different things and that unique combination of skills nobody else in the world is going have so i'm not the top one percent of social media managers in the world but i'm you know definitely top ten in personal branding it definitely talk and in like on camera speaking and definitely talk ten and like sneaky hooks and you know all of these different things come together so beautifully and strategically rather than trying to stick to one thing because the one thing especially if with something broad is be really hard to master and be truly like elite in that thing what is your specific knowledge that you are building my specific knowledge i the thing i come back to is personal brand or human centered social media so just how do we make social media more human and have less boring brand that aren't providing any value so human centered and social media personal brands is my specific passion when it comes to marketing and i think there's gonna be more and more of a need oh yeah like the more you see things being automated the more you see people just copying like i even like i'm obviously a dude so i and like i have like the nice camera and the nice mic and like i started just seeing everyone just like i was like i'm just gonna be grouped in with all these other marketing pros like like and like with all their templates and i'm like how do i just start how like what is my angle and i'm still kinda like experimenting like what is my angle it's like it's like that mother that m effort right can't say the same thing as me right and i think you're good at that yeah thank you thank you i appreciate that yeah and i think it's just throwing out things and seeing what sticks because you're not again you're numb to your own knowledge so there may be something maybe when it comes to like production in and how that integrates with social media that you're particularly good at that you're like that's obvious everyone knows that and they really don't know so it's kind of just testing out all of these different things and seeing what works the best because you're you aren't gonna necessarily know what that is like your audience is telling you again i didn't set out to write problematic career cheat codes and write about career tips because i thought they were obvious but turns out like that's what my audience really finds value in it's so funny i came on the shelves i was like we're gonna have a twenty minute episode we're going we're going on but like what is like a tip for because your delivery your on camera delivery is strong is there so thing you're thinking about like as your actual like practically like you're saying the words is there like a anything i've heard people doing like a like a scythe before they go on to kinda like you know even out their tone out is there anything that you do to kinda just just get that confident delivery going yeah i think one thing i do that helps is i put on ten minute record like where you can click sixty seconds or ten minutes ten minutes and just talk all the way through and cut it down oh yeah so i don't do takes and i think it's really natural because if i mess up i'm just like blah blah blah and then you keep throwing and i keep flowing and i i i try to think that i'm talking to a friend so like i had a friend here i was trying to explain them something like how would i explain that that to them i also have a great tip from a speaker that told me to try to emphasize or like pronounce every end of the word like think of the end of the word and make sure you're pronouncing that i don't always do that because people will come on my speech but yeah i just talking all the way through but also i i have to validate show training background so that i think that makes easier that does show up i can see it but no that's a great point because it's like i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna cloud an analogy here so it's like if you're playing like a like a professional basketball game you got the referee blowing the whistle you're starting and stop and you never really getting like flow right but if you're playing street ball with your boys you're having fun you're playing loose so like that's what you're doing when you're just recording for ten minutes straight and then you can just take the bits in the parts that are like you you just say oh yeah that that i deliver that one the best and you you trim all the rest absolutely i think too again back to your juice shop example if you just get an idea or you're really mad about something or are you really passionate about something and you're like in kind of an emotional state that's a good time to record too i have someone that's going through my tiktok course right now and she called it grant what plug it yeah well it's actually already you can't sign up anymore you can sign up for the waiting list for the next one but yeah i i have a a tiktok course the cohort that i'm teaching but one of the girls really cares about she's really passionate about inc in brand advertising and her videos just take off because she says she waits until she sees an ad that makes her really angry because they're doing something that she doesn't like you know think is okay or good and and she like uses that anger to have a really good delivery of like fuck e i can't believe it doing this this and then yeah like yeah it works so good so if you can find an emotional state like lean into that okay and and and one more how do you feel about with your content are you batch recording anything so you you you sit down for ten minutes are you doing that for like three or four video straight or are you just kinda sporadic like hey i know i'm gonna get the content up this week or is there like around to the reason behind like when and how you're recording well i would like to batch record more and i would like to become more consistent but if i record one video i at least record to because i already have my phone set up i already have a mic i'm already like you know in a certain spot so i at least record two and i usually just leave the other one in my drafts and even if something is bad i'm like that was a bad take that was stupid whatever i'll still leave it in my drafts because if one day maybe i'm out and about i don't wanna sit down and record but i'll just go in my phone look through my drafts and be like oh i don't know why i thought that video is sucked like that was actually good i'll i'll publish it or i have these like things that are kind of half baked ideas so yeah i think it's great if you can try to record two things at least two things every time and at least keep it in your drafts because that might come back and be a really great video that's a great quote if i record one i'm gonna record too like i like how do you wear that like i like that that's a good because you're right you had the camera set up already and sometimes like your head space in that moment doesn't really get down with how you delivered it but later you're like oh like there's nothing wrong with that video i'll use that exactly exactly alright courtney y this was also lot of sound bites from this episode where can we go watch more of your content yeah you can find me on tiktok at courtney period period johnson and on instagram cor johnson that's court l y n n johnson wanted it's ask i wanna to ask about instagram okay ask ask me what install okay are you just it like when you consider like what your home base is is it like for a short form content is it tiktok first and then you take those and then you post to instagram and and yeah then how are you kind of thinking about instagram versus tiktok when it comes to posting yeah someone reach out to me and pitch me like hey i'll run your instagram for you just me saved down all your videos i'll optimize them for instagram and publish them and i was like alright so i've been doing it for like two months go she she doesn't for me i don't do it i don't even touch it so i don't know what she's doing which whatever she's doing is working because i've like doubled my followers so it's very much tiktok first and then the content goes up on instagram and my content goes up on youtube shorts too and it's interesting because that also serves as litmus test because some things are really hitting right now on instagram that didn't even take off on tiktok and i'm like oh maybe i'll re record that in a different way for tiktok oh interesting it's like cool any tidbits about about instagram oh or or your your your girl like you're like kinda like i really know so yeah she's she has her tips and tricks i really honestly don't know but i mine still my main platform even though my biggest audience is tiktok my main platform where i make the most money off of is linkedin and so i encourage everyone to start posting on linkedin because it's just it's so boring and it's so un sexy that if you can have like an iota of personality you're gonna get clients from whatever freelancing you do so everyone going on linkedin linkedin is definitely my main driver by revenue yeah and then based on your example it forces you to write it forces you to organize and clarify your ideas and it also allows you to test and see which ideas are connecting with people where you can then turn those thoughts that you've clarified already into short form videos and absolutely you'll you'll be sitting freddie really so courtney thanks again did i cut you off when you were promoting so no yeah if you just click my bio links in any of my socials you'll find all of my stuff up i have a ton of free resources i have a newsletter i do cohorts every few months so yeah come hang out with me amazing cool thanks so much courtney awesome great chatting tom thank you for having me

yeah alright so let's get into that let's get into that is there anything else about i would let's do a a phone call catch up for real though like it really like i would love to like get for sure jam real jam jams content ideas i would love yeah well that it it is great because last time we did connect like literally the the next day i like was energized and i made a video that like is one of my most successful videos yet so i hope the same for the audience that listens to this one and and just to listen to our conversation so you're is you've switched up your content and you're now in like a different like you switched it up slightly like like you changed the direction a little bit and how many followers have you jumped since then so i think my audience is about half and half so about yeah two hundred thousand were following me for the marketing content yep and about two hundred thousand follow me for beauty and or wellness amazing and then here's better question how do you feel about the content you're making now it's so much more fun now i can't even describe mh i still run into the same frustrations and the same like feelings of burnout occasionally but when it's time to actually create the content i'm having more fun when i do brand collab i'm having more fun when brands reach to me about collaborating i'm actually excited and i'm actually getting p from brands that i would be spending money on anyway mh the events i go to our more fun and then like the creators that i've met and that i collaborate with and stuff are like more aligned so it helps a lot like you still it's not perfect but it's still just so much we're fun and more worth it i love that for you i love that for you thank you yeah yeah so which direction do we wanna go with that is that like i'm can we talk about like why you made the decision to switch it up and and initially like just the the feeling because i think a lot of i don't know you probably talked a lot i feel like i have that conversation a lot with people like hey i built my audience based off of this but like i'm not feeling this right now yeah and you've been able to successfully kinda pivot mh and find like a lane that is is is more enjoyable for you from a creative standpoint mh can you talk a little bit about like like the courage to just do that and like i like and test it and and actually make it work yeah for sure a few things one i would say you're gonna get sick of any type of content at some point yeah so i would just say don't make the switch on like a really bad day but you are having high performing content and you're and you're doing well and you're in a routine and everything and you're still just like not feeling gratification from the content you're making then maybe it's time to make a switch and then i advice wise would say everyone overthink it so much and you think that your audience is gonna be like what is this new content this is so weird are you yeah and you can post no like you can post an explanation video if you want you can post a few explanation videos saying hey this is what i'm doing now and this is why but chances are that's gonna get pushed down pretty quickly by all your new content and no one's gonna see it and you're still gonna get the occasional comments and then it's just gonna taper her off and they're gonna be like well this is the type of content you make now and i also think that we overthink the way that we have to make the switch and we're like we have to be so strategic about it and this has to make sense and how do we make this i need to delete all my old stuff i need to like yeah yeah i know being announce spin you know just yeah us make the new content just make the new content just just oh y'all that's the podcast thanks john but it's so true though it's it's honestly like it's like it like sometimes takes our friends saying like try it like no one really cares about your content as much as you think and the this is the thing that i'm curious too because when you were first making that the content it was very aligned with sort of like how you make money right like it was like you you were getting a lot of like clients that way and like that's something i don't know if that's like a mindset thing for me but i think that's where i've started to go with get with my content i'm like i'm like how does this become like a business you know and like that i don't know if i like like sometimes when i overthink that then my content feels like there's an agenda there right like and then it like puts a limit on like how creative and how fun i can get with my content so do you have any advice on thinking on that or you just like hey i decide i'm gonna go willy nilly use the stuff that i i actually use and like the business will figure itself out yeah i think if you spent a lot of time creating a certain type of content that brings you business you will be surprised by how many opportunities exist even after you make the switch because you've already made those connections and you've put your name out there i think you can continue with the business content especially on linkedin maybe on i'm a separate account if that really helps you if that is your livelihood but i think when we're thinking about how to monetize content you can monetize literally any type of content and i think this is the same advice that people should be getting when they're are choosing what to major in in college i know when i was choosing it was very pragmatic and it like what is your skill set gonna be and how much you're gonna make when you graduate and now especially living in new york there are experts in literally every discipline and if you plan to work your off and become the best at whatever you're gonna choose to do then you'll be able to monetize it you'll be able to make a career out of it yep that's a great point that's so far your that's sort of where i'm going with my content like i'm like i'm excited about this thing like this random author that no one knows about i feel like more people should know about and i'm like like just make that it doesn't have to be like the creator economy stat so they did like like i get like too slow called like i need to be over for that and then you overthink it for sure it gets tiring definitely gets tiring so you you've talked to me before about like finding your format you like is that what you call it or like or like signature series i feel like there's like a a framing that you have for yeah like yeah i always say finding your format and i think caleb the can i come in your apartment apartment tour yep coins that on colin and sami and then alyssa alyssa tiktok whose content i'm obsessed with she always talks about finding your signature series and yeah i think that's really important for your growth as a creator and for your audience getting to know you and i also think it's just really good for your mental health i for the longest time was like i don't wanna have a niche because i wanna be able to post whatever i want based on how i'm feeling i don't wanna be pigeon hold but i think that a niche if you view it more as like in anchor than a box is really helpful to you as a creator because let's say i'm gonna okay beauty it's gonna be my niche then i know i can film my get ready with me is if i have a beauty product i'm really excited about my audience is like that if i'm gonna go get my hair they're gonna like that but then i don't feel like i need to film getting dinner with my friends or going to this workout and you can maybe you post a story if you wanna really share more of your life but you don't feel that same pressure as if you're like i'm gonna be a lifestyle creator and i to everything yeah that's a good point and and when i look at your content too now it's like like it doesn't i'm not your target audience but what like when i watch it i'm still entertained one and two i see like you as a friend i'm like she it just feels so natural right like thank you it it just i'm just like yeah like it doesn't feel like you're trying i feel like there's times where sometimes you come across creation yeah they're really trying to make something work and like it's missing the market a little bit but like you've really you've done a good job at finding your quote unquote format is they're like within this series that are like the content that are working for you is there any like lessons that you've learned when it comes to maybe how someone can experiment and find their their series yeah for sure with finding your format i think you can't be forcing it too much the way that i found like a series that worked really well for beauty it's called high maintenance to be low maintenance and i just i went to go get my nails done and i was watching heard you my nails it was a russian manic here and i was like this is so satisfying and i'm just gonna like record this and make a tiktok i think people are were to love watching this and then when i went to record the intro to it where i was like hear me out high maintenance to be low maintenance because that's just how i think about it in my head because you do sit down for like three hours for this manic care but then you're good for four to six weeks and i was like i'm gonna force myself to film this intro as if i'm talking to a friend instead of filming it to viral because as someone who is like very strategic with content it's hard to get out of my own head sometimes and be like you don't have to use you in the first sentence of the video and you don't have to set this up in the perfect most statistically stacked way yeah you're gonna have to be more patient if you're not gonna be as strategic but then like once people do connect with you it's so much better of a connection and through like that in my workout class videos and stuff i have gotten so much more like my following is so much we're high quality and the comments i get are so much more fun and meaningful they're like oh my i love your content or i'm so glad i found your account i never used to get that with like the strategy only content and then i've also gotten to me a lot more of these people in real life because i think my life is like more part of my content and i've met people out like oh my god can i see your nails or like that's that's amazing that was so fun oh my god and i met a few girls when i was at the beach this summer who were like oh my god i saw your video about tracy anderson and i'm like this is so much cooler than someone just like thinking my advice is helpful which is like also cool in its own way but it's like oh my i feel like we made friends over the internet yes and it started with you saying hey i don't want to talk to the five million that might see this video i wanna talk to the one person that might find this quirky thing that i'm into like also interested yes you have to do it like you're talking to one person and in a casual way like you talk to your best friend or your sister or something the content comes out so much better and you reminder yeah like you'll have to work harder and or just be more patient i guess for that content to work well you know it's funny you talk about like the tactics or like the the and like the breakdown like the strategies that you know that like people that are in the space like me and you like you know you you can like the you in the first three seconds and like put a big stat and like the and like what happens is i realize realizes is once everyone starts doing that they start to not work like like the stuff that we think works it's like if everyone's saying you then it doesn't become special then everyone's just saying the same thing where you were like i'm just gonna go that's something especially i don't know how well on instagram or youtube shorts but tiktok seems to be like the more specific and like quirky like like very detail that you can get yeah the more people it actually connects with like and and this is my a little bit of my theory it's like curation is important nowadays yeah so there's so many so many people selling things there's so much content coming at your face every single day people just want like a trusted source to be like y what's good what's not and you everyone has to has nails like everyone has to like there's a like they're looking for solutions and like you're someone is like hey i'm showing you this this is my experience and like it's very specific thing a lot of people can relate to but you're doing it in a way that it feels like you're talking to our friend yeah exactly and then it's just so much more fun and satisfying that way and i think the curation thing that's a great point i think that your tiktok feed as a whole is starting to matter a lot more than it used to and it's starting to be a little bit more like instagram where people wanna come back to your profile and see that you are a pacemaker in this category and this wasn't a one soft video because if someone likes your one high maintenance to be low maintenance video they're gonna be like where i wanna watch the ten other ones you you talk about like burnout and like just being excited to create content in your mind is there any sort of like production schedule you got going on where you're like alright monday wednesday friday i'm gonna make videos or are you just like y i'm in wing it mode yeah i'm i'm really to be better about this because i think it's important for your mental health and your longevity as a creator to have a production a production schedule i think the best we got moods sometimes i just don't like to record it's so hard as a creative because you do wanna be like vi when you record because you're phone like doing yeah some days you're like y i need to i need to get i need to like connect yeah and then other days i'm like i get that camera out of my face and which is surprises to some people so for sure i yeah go i don't know if you know alexis barber or her content but she had a great podcast episode on the way that she blocks off her time and i think this is like the best setup for creators and it's basically like you do these interchangeable blocks kind of and you're like okay either monday or tuesday i'm gonna sit down and i'm gonna like yeah yeah exactly i'm gonna batch some content if i wake up feeling good on i'm i'm gonna get all that content done and if i don't then i'm gonna do my task work and i'll flip it and i'll do the content tuesday and then i do think that it's important especially when you're getting started as a creator if you are gonna build that pair social relationship with your audience if lifestyle is your goal you should be present on social media daily at least for a period of time i don't think you need to continue that forever maybe just like via stories or something but if you if you look at most of the bigger creators who have these really really this strong influence they were super present like multiple times a day in the beginning and then they back off as their careers progress and as you know who they are so they can post and you're always gonna be interested so i think what i'm trying to do right now is like a daily vlog kind of video like maybe i just vlog my morning and that's current maybe might get ready with me because i'm already doing that daily and then if i am gonna do anything that's like more personality involved where it's like a vlog doing a fun thing or if it's like me talking about a specific product or trying a different hairstyle like that is the kind of stuff that maybe i'll batch a few of those on monday so i got ready to post through the week and then your edits are you filming and editing them yes cap cut yeah cap cut so i film on my camera edit or not on my camera on my iphone camera you got a camera moving up in the world i do okay i actually do have two dslr and but used be yeah because it's just faster and i like the iphone back camera it's so good if you flood the subject field with enough light than oh it's there's nothing it can't pick up yeah you know what i learned too if you turn down the exposure you lock the exposure off and you turn that down a little bit it because sometimes iphone's over overexposed so it feels like very much like iphone footage if you sometimes you knocked you down like seventy five percent and lock it it usually feels more like a dslr yeah for sure no i love that i needed to show that you filled with your iphone and then you edit in cap cut yes and i just saw all the tiktok updates about being able to edit and upload in batches and schedule your content now i did not know that it i literally just saw it on tiktok today i haven't started yet true i mean it was tiktok itself the app that okay yeah or it must be true really but i'm gonna start scheduling some of my content out at least the stuff that i batch and so at least like that's going live and if you feel horrible one morning or something twice yeah like the i think you did like a mont talk like like vibe edit that's all cap cut yes everything's capped and i have had so much fun with those vlogs because it's just like a little scrapbook of me and my friends that's what those felt like oh thank you yeah those take a really long time to make and i think people generally aren't very interested in them until they know you as a creator so i wouldn't put time into them as like a social media growth strategy but i think they're fun to make they're good practice and then like as you grow people engage with them more and it'll help them get to you did i make up the fact that you went to mont talk it was a beach town i was like yeah i was was that okay okay that's what i thought see that's the thing about the content it's just like it comes so quick i'm like yeah that i feel like that's where she was but like it was the so let's talk about the production process of that wants to film of vlog of their weekend away with their friends yeah are you just stacking little clips here and there and like you not camera out at the whole time just you know little moments here and there kind of let's just stacking them throughout the weekend yeah for sure and i think you'll find that especially with young your people people like getting the content they like don't mind you pull out your phone and they're like ready to perform oh they'll run it back like you want me to do that walk again there were clips in there where i was like do that again do that again looks fun and do that again do that again it looks fun i feel like that's a that that's a thing that could be a thing yeah and people are down like they immediately do yeah oh that it's not even a question it's not like not do it again for what it's like oh yeah we're running that back like i i i i know what you're doing here they know and then it also helps having like a bunch of friends who are like also into content or just like younger like whatever who will do a shared album with you so my friends in usually after we do a trip we'll do a share album dollar roll and then we'll like pull a few of my hampton logs where like mixes of like mine and my friends who i went with that makes sense yeah in the so easy you to share content nowadays yeah we all have like shared icloud albums and you just get little clips throughout the weekend whenever people are doing fun stuff and the more you do it the better you are at recognizing what will be like a fun vlog clip and it's usually stuff that you wouldn't initially expect or if you were like an instagram native creator you might not spot because it's not gonna be you know like the really pretty breakfast or like the perfect drinks that were served it's always like someone goof off on the train or like someone standing on a bench at the end of the night like back how how long does it take you to edit one of those you said you say it takes takes long is that like an hour or is that like four hours yeah well luckily the train back from mont talk has like no signal so i just like sat there in edited you can't get wifi f or like data it's a perfect constraint for our creative exactly i would say one of those takes me two hours maybe gotcha it to edit it and part of it is just because i'm being a little bit of a perfection with it but basically i dump all the footage in there i choose the song that i'm gonna use and then i like stretch out the audio on the timeline so that i can see like where it peaks and then i time the clip changes with the audio peaks so that it's like on eat let's let's let's lean into that because i think that's important yeah that that's like a subtle thing that like makes a video feel like cool like like what's the word cohesive yeah i don't i don't like it just hits it hits because the the the the clips cut where the hits are yeah my goal is to always make people feel like they were there with that type of content yep and i think when people do a great job you're like oh my god i just like know how this weekend felt and i had a creator friend say that they wanna make their vlogs dance like their vlog footage dance with the music and i think that's like the perfect way of viewing it i agree it's like hits it's more satisfying yep so you zoom in on the audio the audio then shows the peaks of like where the hits are yeah the the of the beat and then each cut just lands on that beat yeah exactly and so with a lot of you know because usually there's like some sort of consistent beat within a song you can figure out after you time up the first few clips like okay oh point three seconds should be yeah yeah got it and then you just each one and then you then it's like a puzzle from there then you have them on a timeline you move this one here and cap is like so freaking fun like i i've been editing on adobe premiere for ten years on my desktop and like i force myself to learn cap cut in the last year and i find myself using cap cut on a consistent basis especially for like any short form content yeah it's it's so easy to use it feels and looks so native to like short form platforms yeah it feels like you're not trying too hard like even if you use like text and moves it's like it just has like a internet like you know short form vibe i have a i have a a a hot take about cap cut i think cap cut will make more what's the word more creators money like like make creators more money than adobe premier would or will in the next five years like adobe premiere premier obviously has so much space in like traditional editing worlds but half cut is built for the everyday creator yeah i totally yeah it's so freaking rad that like i remember the the the barrier to entry to learning adobe premiere it felt like such like like oh i have to watch like this whole course so i have to learn from this pro like cap cut as you get in and you can you can be pretty good within like a month if you just use it every single day yeah for sure i guess i take for granted my cap cut skills because i've been using it for so long but i do feel like it's so intuitive and i can do things so quickly with cap cut and i ran the same thing i used imovie and then like what is the one other one people will use for you youtube imovie i use adobe premiere there's final cut yeah for air it that's probably the other one and then i think there's like one other one that like real filmmakers yeah make it yeah yeah but i remember trying to learn those software it same thing where it was like oh my it's gonna literally take me months of watching youtube tutorials to be decent at this whereas with cap cut like you're literally dragging and you're like tapping and splitting it's like it's so easy gray footage from your phone it's yeah i i i love it like i i like i how let's say you didn't did you just get started did you like watch youtube videos on how to use cap cut or you just kinda tinkering and wound over time well it's buy by dance so it's the same you know like ui a lot off same yeah yeah and so i had been editing on tiktok for maybe a year before i started using cap cut and so then when i got cat cut yeah it probably took me like three days to feel like i transitioned yeah i any any any any other cap cut related tips that you did the music one any text related things they that you do like little subtle things that you might add in your videos yeah i think especially for instagram reels having a text on the screen for like the whole video is a good play for a lot of niches like if you're a beauty wellness fashion whatever if you wanna like describe the outfit or the look or something you're doing and just have that text live that like title text basically live on screen that works well with reels then it can be like aesthetic choice i think captions are great to use although i just kind of let tiktok auto captions do their thing mostly now i would say make sure you're exporting in the highest quality because you i'm sure you already are doing that but you know nothing that that that i might not be right when you're exporting just make sure it's on like four with like as many frames as possible okay like very crisp that way but yeah i mean i i think that's pretty much it just play with it and give yourself time so you export in cap cut and then when you upload the tiktok you will then let tiktok do auto captions from there yes because i don't love having them on there and like not giving people the option to turn them off because they can get in the way of other stuff and i would also say oh oh so you don't do like the text on screen you do it's like the it's like the pop up that you can fold down if you want to yes yeah tiktok has like true closed captions now yeah that you can choose to turn off and i usually keep mine off i just usually watch where i have audio and then i feel like there was one other thing i was say i don't remember yeah i definitely cut you off no that's okay i don't remember exporting d captions the mute music music i was just gonna say generally you wanna leave the sound off unless it's gonna be like a completely original audio so you could do like or voice over or whatever in cap cut obviously export with your sound otherwise add the audio on later because you want to like there's a way bigger sound library on tiktok and you wanna choose like a trending sound on talk and then you wanna choose a trending sound on instagram reels and i've been seeing a lot of my friends lately put their own like original audio or their tiktok audio on reels especially since you can export from tiktok without the watermark now and then they're just getting taken it says audio unavailable i just scrolled through probably fifty of my friends videos right before this looking for fun instagram audio and like ninety percent of them were audio unavailable wait so so what's the fix for that you're saying it use something in in in the apps that are actually available don't even if you edit it with a song then in the apps find the song that you edited with and then upload from there yeah well you shouldn't have an issue because tiktok or instagram uses a guy well on tiktok usually at least for me when i'm editing a vlog i'm using a sound i found on tiktok anyway yeah so i in cap cut like cap cut is synced with ticketing tiktok well actually what i do i guess this is another editing trick is all find a song that i like on a tiktok video i actually have like a whole folder because you can save tiktok and then you can organize them into folders i'll save one with like audience that i like and like ideas yeah and then i go back and i'm like okay here are some vlog ins info videos i liked and then i'll download the video onto my phone and then i will export the audio in cap cut so when you go to add audio and cap cut there's a button that says extract in and you can extract the audio and then use it to time it up there and then you can either just leave it on there because take tiktok doesn't take it down or you can add the original audio on tiktok got it that makes sense alright so what's the fix then to take that to instagram if they're gonna pull it so instagram does the same thing where if it is a sound that's available in there it audio library they'll use ai and they'll automatically they'll find it to yeah that for you but because there are so few songs in the instagram audio library i think you should have a separate safe folder on instagram of real audio that you like and then just add an instagram native audio onto your video there got it okay that makes sense okay and then now voice over so you adding when you're adding voice over are you do you write it down or do you wing it are you just are you just talking talking because you're good at you're good with that or you have a little outline that you you go by yeah i like to have an outline in certain cases like when i reviewed the tracy anderson class there were so many things that i wanted to say that i just had like a bullet point list written down so it wasn't scripted but i was like i wanna make sure i remember to mention this and this i think bullet point is usually my favorite way to do it so i kind of have a little bit of organization to my thoughts but if i were gonna choose one or the other i would say wing it and marry the way that you would describe the experience to a friend or a sibling got it yeah like casual like non super fancy words just key like pretty straightforward add a little personality in in there even messing up does well it does i've noticed that more with with content where people like they'll like stu and then like say the word like fully without cutting it out and you kinda like that because it's like doesn't like this is just like my friend based facetime it you know that's how they would talk exactly or you're like oops i don't know what that was like i've heard that in the few yeah yeah yeah i heard alex early other day on a vlog saying like oh my god i can't even look at this part because it was like them doing shots the night before and she was hungover when she was voicing over and i just love that she left that in there like feel like gets tequila right now like the mess ups are content yeah it makes you feel like you're hanging out with the person it's it's incredibly true now the the i love the cap cut breakdown i would suggest download cab i'm just i'm bullish on cap i think it's like a a great app it's like it's also empowering to know that you can go from like idea to publish like with nothing but your phone and and like like the yet this whole studio right in your hand so you do the switch up of the content you initially were you know focused more like business marketing like breakdowns like more educational now it's more lifestyle how does the current con content play if at all into like your day to day work that has been interesting and i can't wait until i get to the point where like content is the may day work work yeah yeah yeah and i do feel like i'm getting kind of close to that especially like the recent brand collab and stuff have been way more fun and i started working with management you got manager yeah but i also will say to your point about what you were saying kinda earlier with like the podcast production and everything i think we have a tendency to think that like oh if i raise venture capital i get these investors i get this manager i get this whatever that solves yeah yeah like that gonna take my career to where it needs to be yeah and like no one's coming to save you i know that's like its own kind of cliche at this point but you it's it's gotta be you like my manager can't make brand deals happen out of thin air if my engagement isn't there that that makes sense but like that is one step to allow you to go all in and more focus more on the conference and like develop that relationship now so as the bigger ones come in you're you're on the same page yeah for sure and she has great brand relationships and she used to be an entertainment lawyer so she can review my contracts for me and she yep you know has like she just like helps take a lot of that kind of stuff off my plate but my content is really separate from the work that i do with brands and other creators right now and so basically i still help other people with their content production with their marketing but my personal content is just kind of separate so i'll like vlog my morning routine i'll vlog my get red or like film my get ready do some of my content in the morning and then in the afternoon i'll do my work for other brands and creators yeah and i would love to not split my time like that much harder yeah yeah i hear you on that i hear you at the same time like it's funny because like it it's not connected but it is like the value that you bring to them you're like you're out here field testing you're out here like like in the world like you the stuff that you're learning on a day maybe basis as a creator you're able to bring to to the work but i love that the goal is full time full time creator yes and i think i'll always have some sort of like brand or business or something that's like separate from myself just because i love building brands i think it's really fun but i would love to have it like tied in more with my content that makes sense that makes sense and like you're yeah you're you're like you're always advising offering strategy like like helping people build in some way but i i i see what you're saying so like the the tie in would be more like i yeah how would that play out like the like is is there an angle where you could get like i don't know i'm thinking out a loud more as a friend now but like as you continue to build your brand and this is why i feel like i see a lot of creators get it's like hey we want you to be an an advisor for this company like just like think about us and like and then that you could film your meetings with them and like it then it kinda all like in like there's an intersection of all of it yeah for sure and i've seen some creative friends do that recently too and i think that's like just such a mutually beneficial relationship and it's it's just so fun for the creators it's great for the brands like i love that people are starting to do that and just think about different ways brands and creators can collaborate other than like the ones off sponsored video so yeah would love to do more of that when i think about if i had i guess like my dream setup up with content in business content would be my full time thing but then i would have some sort of business that felt like a passion project and i think it would be really cool to have a brand that's just like products that i genuinely love and use and to scale that brand slowly and thoughtfully and in a way that was like i don't know it sounds so cheesy but like with love like just like making that because of just like doing it because i love it and building it in a way that i'm just like really proud of and i just like love the products and everything and i think that content and just like your platform as a creator affords you that opportunity to not have to rush it to you know get a paycheck yeah that's beautiful i i i'm with you on that like i i see like i i get what you're saying when you say that and i i think i see a lot of people bigger like creators successfully do that where it's like alright they built up this revenue stream that allows them to be pretty picky about like the business that they wanna pursue and it's like they have the the the the the you know the financial things set they had like the creative set now it's like alright how do i apply this in a way it's like really exciting to me and like is kinda complements everything else that i'm doing i see that i i know that that's a like i feel like everything you touch like you you figure out solutions for so i like this new goal for your content and where you're gonna bring that business thank you and i think that if you like as you scale as you advance in your career if you're doing it thoughtfully and with intention you can it's easier and easier for you to like maintain your integrity and like stick to what is like an alignment for you because you have more opportunities so like your your platform is bigger and you have high better engagement you can be picky about your brand deals because you're not stressed out about you know making rent by endorsing x y z brands you can only work with your favorite brands and then your business grows and that's even more reason to be picky about the other brands that you work with but then because you have those brand deals you can be really picky about the way you scale your business and you're not like constantly just trying to like stretch revenue so yeah i just think content is like a really awesome thing if you can get past that initial really challenging building phase yes yes it which is challenging exciting it's it's a great test of yeah it like i i think that the theme here is testing and iterating like that's what you and i think we did plug you kind of low he plugged the first episode so listen to the first episode with jules i'll link it where we talk more about the beginning of her career her or like her her marketing content like how she got started building the the initial following and then this is a good compliment to that it's like alright like like as you as you kinda get in this space the whole thing is testing and iterating and testing not only what's working on the platform but what's working for you like what gets you stoked to create because like there's there's it's just not fun to like like the there's a lot of content that i know that i could make that could perform but i'm like i know that the more i do that like the more that's that's what's gonna be like the brand the character the persona that i'm then be making my job and if you get to define what your job is you might as well start with like that that love and curiosity it might take a little longer but it'll be more sustainable yeah absolutely the last thing you wanna do is create another job that you hate to escape the current job but you hate it yeah yeah just work that that's the job you hate yeah exactly why don't you keep the current job you hate fun thing for you oh what was the thing i was gonna say that alicia said i don't remember if was a really good thing for oh sorry so recently i don't know if you've seen her tiktok strategy content but i'll send it to you after this but i i've been just like obsessed with it lately i basically have an folder at this point and it's she said most creators don't have an idea hydration issue they have an execution issue and i think we kind of know that in that we know that the content production part is the hardest part but i think where we fail ourselves is we spend so much time studying other people's content thinking about what content to make thinking my life isn't interesting enough i don't have enough lighting or my clothes aren't cute enough whereas like what you really need to do is just start making content and i get so in my head because i'm such analytical person but like if i took all the time that i spent analyzing and planning my content over the last six months and put it into making content i further yeah yeah that's a great point i think that's a good one to that's a good one to end the episode on if you just like take the take the three best ideas that you have right in front of here and make them in three different ways boom yeah there you you got a month worth of content that you can test and then learn and iterate from exactly you're never learning from thinking about it you're never gonna get it right saying they're thinking about it you're learning by making ugly content and by listening to the creators our brands podcast hosted by tomboy boys i love it jules thanks so much for coming on the show what what's the what's the current handle that everyone should go follow you at it's julia g monte everywhere and thank you for having monty everywhere amazing

tens of thousands of people it's so crazy start their monday mornings listening to rich havoc he makes a video of him walking around his apartment complex twenty six million views bro yeah yeah it was one of those twenty six million and i finally dm that that's the podcast framework we're the most successful podcast personal finance at abraham ramsey why don't we take the questions via instagram dm which would force people to then go find us on a social channel i'd rather be top ten on one platform knowing that all of our listeners are migrating to this one platform pushing us up in the room we're trying to be number three number two number one on spotify where do they people come from live streams on tiktok i was probably spending ten twenty thousand dollars a month just on the production of this podcast we're spending a a riverside subscription which is like about forty bucks a month like i just want y'all out to know like because of you guys i am top five on you know spotify business and it's so fucked got dollar mike for a top five business podcast on spotify five i gus here but screw no you can wait extra you and i both no like i got that dog and i to dive into all the growth hacks in different ways that we've been able to grow the podcast hey last time you on the show you dominated a couple different domains from short form creator to newsletter adviser investor now you're like that's not enough i'm coming for the podcasts i'm excited to talk to you about this top five business podcast on spotify five rich habits a couple weeks ago i think it was june u deem me oh id me talking about like congrats on the show and you gave me like a little bit of insight you said hey we're at around fourteen thousand downloads a week i'm curious where are we at now forty seven thousand weekly and that that this is what's interesting forty seven thousand weekly weekly unique listeners yeah you so like inside of us what does it called spotify for podcast right anchor dot f yep they've got like the it shows you the weekly unique listeners like the unique devices that have tuned in and then it shows you like the download the plays i think that's what they call it yeah and that's broken out weekly and monthly yeah we're on the forty seven thousand range and we're growing about ten thousand week man so it's it's crazy just to just to see sign some of that growth there but happy to dive into all the growth hacks in different ways that we've been able to grow the podcast to you know where it is today here in this episode yeah man and and a fun fact about it is you know obviously i geek out around like whenever i have friends that create new content formats i like gotta go check out austin show and i checked it out for like just checking it out like because you know we're we're you know we're creator buddies and i was like i gotta listen to the show and then i became a fan like i i like i when the show pops i am one of those like this is this is such a good digestible format you know i'm kind of a i'm kind of a new when it comes to a lot of like you know financial advice and like insights and it's really neat to see their perspective from you and robert's combined in that format so tell me a little bit more about the show when it started how many episodes in and and yeah just a little bit more about like the the background of the the launch of the show hundred percent so rewind to the start of the year and robert cro new year's resolution now again robert cro is fifty three fifty four right so he's in his early to mid fifties he lives over in florida he was the founder of silly bands the rubber bracelet company that did two hundred million dollars in sales rate he he's that guy so he's a an entrepreneur threw and through he understands businesses money all that fun stuff he's a a a d of millionaire and so he's like you know my new year's resolution for twenty twenty three is to create content so the first thing he did is he goes to tiktok he makes a video of him walking around his apartment complex pretty much saying hey here are the three things everyone should be doing if they wanna become the first millionaire in their family he talked about you know getting rid of the the time sucks where it's to trade in maybe an hour week netflix of an hour of reading a book like atomic habits or something else that you're really passionate about that video sound crazy yeah twenty six million views bro yeah crazy yeah i was one of those twenty six million and that's just on tiktok another ten million or something on on yeah you know instagram and so i'm over here looking at like man this old guy really got some really you know good stuff to say he's very articulate delivers it in a very awesome way like let me just you know follow him and i'll just kinda keep tabs yeah so weeks go by maybe it's like february now mid february and he's making you know continually making the content two or three videos every single week and i finally dm them and i'm like hey man love the content i'm doing some cool finance creator stuff too we'd love to share what i'm working on love to learn what you're working on and maybe we have some synergies maybe we can work on something together in the future just like you know but would love to you know sit down and talk and so we had a conversation in in that that first meeting i was like hey this is cool i like our dynamic because like you're this older guy who's got you know he he's like the old tortoise he's got it all figured out he's done it he's he's made the mistakes and he's made the triumph and so he's seen that where i'm sort of this younger guy who's you know just turned twenty seven and so i'm trying to figure it all out still i'm like i'm not yet a millionaire i know i'm still trying to figure out the businesses how do i do this how do i do that and so we kind of came together here as this dichotomy of like you know what are these rich habits that every single person should be thinking about as it relates to personal finance and investing business finance and mindset is kinda what we what we could lean into there that these people should be thinking about to really begin working on their wealth building journey right so that's one where we came up with the name rich habits of the podcast it's like how do we get people thinking about the new habits and their daily lives that they that they should be implementing here and i was like alright man so let's think about how this podcast really takes shape i mean like listen this is it right we're in this meeting thinking about it really trying to put pen to paper and after coming up with a bunch of different names you said on rich habits and it's like okay you have these viral videos that get millions if not tens of millions of views online people obviously like what you have to say they have their own perspectives but you know these videos go viral for a reason right so why don't we take these same three topics because he whenever he makes a video he does it in three so like here the three steps on doing this so here's the three considerations for that yep and it's there it's very direct man a hundred percent so what he's is doing here is you know he's got these direct simple you know three key steps i was like alright robert let's sit down and let's just extrapolate upon a little bit what these three you know steps are and just give a little bit more color maybe a a a little bit more context around them and then maybe have some really strong call to actions for every single one so that that that's the podcast framework dude it's like we we see what video go goes to the most viral the feedback we have in the comment section definitely you know dictates a little bit of the way we navigate that episode and our most viral episode is essentially a copy paste of his most viral video which is how to become the first millionaire in your family those three considerations on you know what you should be thinking about in that that episode of the podcast i think they're just closed on a hundred and twenty thousand cumulative downloads since inception of february which is pretty cool interesting not just that was the playbook i think that's such a smart strategy in instead of how most podcast creators do it it says hey let's make a long form podcast they make shorts from that you started with the shorts and said what is the world already told us they want to know more about and they're curious about then you built the you you program the the content for the podcast around them mh a hundred percent and so you know now it's fast forward maybe five or six episodes right we're really starting to see some momentum and we tested something and we didn't like how the outcome was so we pivoted but that test was recent news right yeah you you hear from you know the all in podcast those guys are always talking about know business and recent news so we tried to own sort of twist on the recent news if that was sort of the debt ceiling that was happening over the summer maybe that was the apple high yield savings account we tried a little bit we didn't really like kinda where the those episodes were going it was more like an intro so you know we tried that for three or four episodes wasn't really how we were wanting and so we went back to the original like listen three simple points every episode people come they know what to expect and then get out and we so the they're shorter episodes too right like seventeen to twenty minutes yeah yeah every every episode see like that i i talked to you about my thinking around this show and i i will get to your point that i i really cut you off on but like i wanted to mention that because i feel like especially newer episodes or newer a newer podcast people like i don't know and new if i find a new host i'm not probably willing to buy in for an hour of of listening to them but like i look at seventeen twenty four minutes i'm like that's approachable i can do a walk around my neighborhood and knock that piece of content now mh hundred percent or you know i'm commuting to my job i got a you know twenty thirty minute commute like i'm i'm i can dedicate one commute to see if i like it or not versus the three commute for the hour two hour three hour long at the by the time you go through that there's like five other podcasts that you wanna listen to it too and then like you forget about the one you have listen to i love that i love that thinking alright i go what did i i cut you off on when you say no so i i was gonna say too like you know thinking about how the how each episode kind of started to transform away from just this original three point section yep is that was that was i'd say the the playbook for the first maybe ten episodes or so and then we realized people had a lot to say we got a lot of questions in the dms on our instagram we got a lot of questions on our live streams we got a lot of emails of people saying hey man i got this quick question you guys mentioned this can you give me some more clarity or what about my personal situation like i'm just trying to get some more color here and so was thinking like wait a second who out there has the best quote unquote most successful let me say that not the best but most successful podcast and personal finance that's dave ramsey right yep guys a billionaire he's got hundreds of thousands of people that listen to his stuff every day if not every week right yep and his whole show is question based right people call in they ask a question he gives his hot take and then they they leave so we now i was thinking like wait robert why don't we also start taking questions and we take the questions via instagram dm which would force people to then go find us on a social channel and follow us so now we have a little bit of a community going on got four thousand followers excuse me got four thousand followers over there now which is really exciting but dude we get probably three to six dms a day on instagram of people wanting to get their questions answered so here's why that works one once we answer the question we always say their name right hey jessica b thanks so much for you know this question who doesn't wanna hear their name shout out on a podcast that's so cool right y you're ball in as i listen now oh hundred favorite show for sure absolutely so it's like hey jessica here's your question here's robert and nice take you know hope this helped right and we did answer three questions every single episodes that that was three chance so sometimes it got up to four but about three or so an episode and it really gave these listeners the opportunity to say wait a second this podcast that only helps me from these three points but like i can come to them with a question they'll acknowledge that question and then answer it on their podcast and so okay so we get all these questions a day austin you don't answer all of them obviously we only answer three to four a week but this now gives me an opportunity to build you know goodwill and some good can with these people in the dms so you know page out gary book give give give ask we're gonna start you know monetizing this audience in a meaningful way and for us to do that i wanna have some goodwill some good can or some good you know relationships and community with these people therefore whenever i ask them to if it's purchase a a course or sign up for a platform or do something that would monetize our podcast and help us in the long term they would be more than willing to do that because oh yeah he already answered for my questions in the dms like i i like these guys a lot yeah and i wanna come back to the i love that strategy one also it feed you wonderful content ideas like it usually if it resonates with one person it's gonna resonate with more people i i also wanna come back to the monetization thing but first wanna go back into the those like first jump of listeners like the the one that got you know it the the most popular show right now where would you say are you able to tell where most of that audience is coming from yeah so i would say most of that audience so i'll answer that two ways one spotify ninety three percent of our listeners are on spotify and i believe we've been picked up by spotify re engine and they're like just kind of getting us on their picked for you page whatever it is can't really control that but spotify is where ninety three percent of our listeners are and we we we we've chose that methodically here so was actually gonna double click on that we thought why do we wanna have why do wanna be everywhere i'd rather instead of being you know top hundred here top two hundred here top fifty here i'd rather be top ten on one platform knowing that all of our listeners are migrating to this one platform pushing us up in the rankings dude we're like a top one we're like seventy five an apple's business charts i don't care about apple business charts we're not trying right no one listen to our stuff on youtube i don't care about that because we're not trying to like grow a youtube channel we're trying to be number three number two number one on spotify business charts like that's the goal for next year right so we'd like double down on one platform and we're just solely focus on sending people to that one place versus having them sporadically go everywhere i think a lot of podcasts are like yeah we're available on i heart and apple and spotify in youtube and abc b c x y z it's like i'm glad you're available there but where are you really pushing people too man because like if you wanna rank on charts without paying for it which unfortunately we see a lot of people do right if you wanna rank actually rank he gotta have them be on one platform and that's what we leaned in there on spotify but to answer your question there tom so spotify but where do they people come from live streams on tiktok i have seven hundred and fifty thousand followers robert's closing in on one point one million followers on tiktok every thursday night him and i are live for an hour and a half where we just answer people's questions and it is a blast people hop in hop out to get their questions answered we talk about whatever's is happening in the markets and the economy and the news we get anywhere between twenty and thirty thousand people that kind of come through their our our you know doorway there of the live over that hour and a half long period concurrent up between call it i don't know four to seven hundred people depending on how many people are tapping the screen but you know we get tens of thousands of people that might have not followed us or you know you know you're scroll your for you ups page you discover new live streams so that's where we really really were able to double down on our boots on the ground growth and marketing of like if you like this cool dynamic of q and a that robert and i have if you like the information we're sharing you're gonna love our dynamic on the podcast is a link in our bio go straight to spotify you click follow you click listen and whatever you wanna do and that is how you know full stop how we got our tens of thousands of weekly listeners i love it okay okay okay so do you think like are if you're going to kind of look at the the couple of components that allowed you to rank and then be like a suggested show on spotify do you think it was a it was like a it was complemented by like spotify saw that you had this a good amount of people coming in and then took that information it was like we need to suggest the show and like found like others in your category like what like why is spotify suggesting your show is there like a is there like a connection is there someone i can i can email and say hey suggest my show you know like what it is all organic so i don't know the answer to that spotify i think it's so funny too i created a email address rich habits at gmail mail dot com like i don't know april because i was like we don't need one for the first like you however her many episodes finally created one and then i went on vacation for my birthday with my girlfriend she she bought us a a resort trip to mexico it was so much fun and i finally come back i forget about the email just entirely and i log in now six weeks later after i created it and we got an email from this woman that works spotify she's like hey i love your show i'm listening to it you guys are great like we would love to just i i wanna just be your friend here right i don't know what you guys are looking for i don't know what's going on but like she saw a if you have any questions for us if you have any like trouble with our you know hosting platform or publishing platform whatever it's called aka anchor or you know spotify for podcast like let us know if you have any trouble there maybe you're ready for mega phone like just if you have any questions at all for the podcast i'm your person so i'm sure having you know that person as our rep quote unquote you know maybe helped catch the algorithms sort of suggested i don't know how the algorithm works but yeah i guess i mean i i don't know i i'm really speechless well well the reason i i asked that is because i know in the music industry the whole place is to get people that can can put you on their specific playlists mh and if you have a plug there like a lot of it is just like kinda like finding in the it's not like public kinda like just you know touching elbows in the industry to kinda get those key key connects so obviously it wasn't entirely from that person but it does help to have someone within the their world be like this is a really good like their goal is to have great content on the platform because it keeps more people on the platform so they come across your show but then also probably get that initial or like they see wait there's people coming in from their big accounts on tiktok every thursday night and like they're they're seeing that that data that signal and then you know i i i like that that's that's a like that that because that's a lot of people's goal i wanna rank on spotify i think it's rare especially business is so competitive to with how how what a couple months you guys are top five on spotify charts that's insane i appreciate it bro yeah i mean i i mean it's kinda funny i didn't think about the ranking on spotify until because i didn't really like check it i was all consumed about apple and like think there i was like yeah like top whatever over here there and i was like wait how do i look at spotify and i remember the first time i looked it was like we're thirty one and was like y we're like almost top thirty this is crazy that's and we were top twenty and i was like oh my god like how like wait a second we're top twenty and we have like seventeen thousand or fourteen thousand people who are listening how many thousands do we need to be top ten or top five right and it's kind of interesting too like thinking about the charts here i'm i'm not sure when this is gonna be released but alex cia just came out with this awesome i think it's called hundred million dollar leads book that he wrote and he had this big event around it and then he gave away the book for free as an audio book on his podcast and i don't know if you notice but he in the past he his he always would of trend around the top ten to top fifteen range on on spotify but he's number one right now because all the people who are jumping into listening to his audiobook book and so it's like so funny to see another example this is like bloomberg they came out with a podcast that was like number one of the business charts that was obviously like not bought but it was it was playlist or you know is placed yeah yeah and it was you know it just that doesn't happen overnight like that and they they were number one for like maybe i don't have two weeks or something then now they're like who are they but what's crazy is to see the staying power of rich habits on these charts versus the people that come up and they go down they come up they pass us and they go back down they come yeah i'm not saying alex from mo doesn't deserve be number one or this you know other bloomberg podcast doesn't deserve me number one like i'm sure they do but just like we're betting on the long term we want the staying power we wanna be a top five top ten business podcast for several years going forward now and to just make sure that we have that continual you know inflow from the tiktok community from the instagram listens and followers across all types of yeah all angles man like this is gonna be we want that long term game for sure so any other little tips that could potentially help with the ranking like i'm thinking business like the category that you're like when when i signed up for my show i i like just i clicked the random i i don't even know what i like like like i'm not that intentional about that that's level what i feel like i should be or like anything with the descriptions that would help you maybe get suggested like if you listen to a ramsey show you might you might like rich habit it is there any connection there or you kinda just guessing and and testing in there as well i think i'm i think i'm definitely guessing and testing as it relates though to apple podcast i quickly realized that we had nowhere near enough people because again ninety three percent listen on spotify it's like there's no way that we're ever gonna even rank in the top two hundred on apple but i did change the characteristic to your point to entrepreneurship okay and now we're a top thirty on apple's entrepreneurship right so it's like that's not exactly a hack it's just like being a little bit more niche right because there's like less competition there and what was it before business okay and where do you do that you do that within anchor or or with this i think i did it inside of like apple podcast connect or or whatever there sort of like hosting platform is there yeah okay but you know i i mean at the end of the day how did we go from a top you know one hundred to a top five on spotify business we never missed a week we've been making podcast podcasts we have twenty seven episodes now that are live and we never missed a week so haven't made twenty weeks in a row now twenty seven weeks in a row now i also think there's something to be said about the fact that i think you know this too a lot of podcast podcasts stop after episode ten episode twenty episode like whatever right like continued going so that's the second thing and then the last thing would be like what what do you have that i guess two more things one to my idea of like the tiktok live streams like do you have some sort of network do you have people that already care about you over here are you want like how can you bring those people in and then you know the the sort of last thing here is thinking about now you know for the podcast itself how are you going to be able to keep these people coming back on a weekly basis because it's not just about the new listeners right but it's about the people that click the follow button are coming back now every monday rate how many like tens of thousands of people it's so crazy start their monday mornings listening to rich habits and so it's like how do we keep these people fed how we continue to private provide them value while also hopefully monetizing against them at some point but like what are we doing to feed them keep them coming back build the community and give them what they need on a weekly basis yeah and i i think you make an incredible point that you know that is you know all the little tactics having really good content that people don't feel like they regret the twenty five minutes that they listen to the show you're gonna get that listener again and you're gonna get that not when a new person comes in and you have a catalog of how many shows now twenty plus you're gonna get multiple listens from that one person that is coming in into your your catalog now hundred percent the the the other thing that it i think is important to note is how you initially reached out to robert it wasn't like anything where you're were like hey let's build something big right now it was like hey let's just connect and i think you're really great like i feel like you and christian you guys are great at building relationships in this creator world so like that's a that's a key component too the chemistry that you you have like how you complement each other are there any tips for if someone is like hey i don't think i can carry a show or i like i'm very interested because i've definitely had that interest i'm like maybe it it'll be more fun to just have a partner to like do the show with then you can really get that rhythm and flow like you guys are or any tips around finding like a a a partner that might complement your your educational show in any way yeah i think i think at the end of the day my purpose of wanting to start this podcast was not just like hey surgical podcast but it was also like i want to learn from this guy yep right i want to be able to ask him questions or bring different scenarios or different ideas present them in front of him and say hey here's where i'm at or here's where our listeners are at which also resonates with me right you're the guy that's got it all figured out like i wanna learn from you and so i think what could be interesting for those listening that are thinking about starting a podcast or you know to your point maybe you don't wanna be the single person to run it is is there someone out there that one wants to perhaps because robert again his his new year's resolution was like i wanna be one of these creators that can teach people and like show people the the the the ways that i've been able to generate this much wealth and so are there people in your network that you are curious that you you know would want to join you on a journey like that of not just learning what they wanna be the teacher they're not just teaching you but they're also now teaching the hundreds of not thousands of listeners now to a podcast that you all start together i think what's really powerful to your point about the dynamic between us again i'm very and it was kinda funny dude we i we had to change the intro so we had a specific intro for the first like five episodes that was like you know here's robert he's crushing it it's got all this money and i'm awesome i'm just figuring it all out right we're next for you and i both know like i got that dog in right i'm doing some cool shit and so like robert was like dude that and and so she's like no i gonna send my my girlfriend too she was like babe i think you need to like kinda brag on yourself a little bit here in this intro because like you just say like you're this kid but like you've you've done some cool stuff you know most people about this industry yeah yeah and so she's like you need and some robert it's like yeah man like don't get me wrong like you know you are figuring out but like you got some stuff to brad on dude like let him know i was alright so we had to change the intro there a little bit but at the end of the day really comes down to like what's that dynamic between the two y'all and like how are you able to kinda of bring that sort of dynamic not just in a way to benefit yourself in them but also your listeners yep i love that the kind of theme that you kinda keep saying without saying it it's you're testing and iterating testing and iterating okay the intro we gotta tweaked that a little bit like it's not totally i'm not fully aligned with it let's switch it a little bit the format you know let's try to do more current event type stuff doesn't really hit with us let's go back to what was working and like that kind of like mindset of testing and iterating i think is so key the other thing that i'm i wanna highlight is i feel like there's just i don't know how popular this turn is but a buddy of mine uses this word a lot and he he always admire like he calls him like frictionless creators where it doesn't seem like like to go from idea to publish there's not a lot that's in the way and like from like crazy production you know like needing like a whole team to edit like all this sounds stuff of a a producer it feels like you know it's a remote interview you kinda have your format down it's you're you're in your house you know it's like it feels like you're able to go from idea to publish really quickly so can you tell me a little bit about the production process yeah that's actually something i'm totally forgot about because it's something we're really excited about and something really proud of right so dan really or i'm sorry robert is really good friends a guy named dan dan fl or fl schmidt i don't remember what that his name but he's he he's also a business podcast and he's like number of one to five on the apple business charts at any time but he's got a whole studio he's interviewing mark cuban he's interviewing floyd may weather he's interviewing awesome people right and he's crushing it he's got employees and producers and ed like bruce probably spending ten twenty thousand dollars a month just on the production of this podcast like we're spending a a riverside subscription which is like don't know forty bucks a month and i think it's twenty nine ninety nine yeah man i use use my link use my link not austin dude i love river i was just podcast movement in denver and the the riverside was there i was like i just want you y'all to know like because of you guys i am top five on you know spotify business and it's so fun so dude i couldn't be happy with riverside so yes you yeah i i highly recommend it as well you can use austin so it's cool well i'll i'll send them a commission but i will say you're right right the idea was to your point i think it you know back to this idea of like how do we stay frictionless from a from a creative perspective where if we do wanna have some different ideas we do wanna like you know ab b test on you know current events q and a this or that there's not much of a you know it's not hierarchy of people that we okay let's run it through the executive producer how does know the editor think about that when do you think about that this and that it's like yeah we'll just try it and then we'll see if it works for couple episodes and if it doesn't we'll go back to what we're doing because we own the podcast we do wanna do and we're just filming this on some sixty four dollar microphones on amazon on riverside twenty nine dollar month subscription service right it's what's the microphone we got name in the microphone when you say that oh my gosh may m a o n o i bought it three years ago three six four dollars yeah do you like sixty bucks sixty four dollar mike for a top five business podcast on spotify it's crazy bro that that's the thing if anyone's listening now let me just like really rub your shoulders and like moving in the right direction of you don't need that six hundred dollar share microphone you don't need the podcast producer you don't need the studio you don't need any of this stuff all you need is an idea a topic and the patience of podcasting right you you don't need all these other crazy things to go from zero to top five right it just you don't need it i mean i this is literally proof in the pudding that you don't need it and so as long as you have the patients back back to what i saying before right twenty seven episodes in we had no real friction on the fur or no real traction rather on the first seven or array episodes after about episode ten we started seeing a couple thousand people listening it was really encouraging we got some people to hit us up in the dms and that's how it kinda came to that idea for the q and a but like stick to it use what you have around you and to your point of being frictionless pivot a b test and go from you know zero to one as quickly as possible and reiterate as as as you see but yeah and you can always i love the idea of starting hey what is like the most minimal setup we can do because you can always scale up from there it's harder to scale down like don't worry about like you don't have like a fancy inch intro you don't have like a a theme song you know some people all need to wait look to get like a bit i'm i don't think you do i don't think you have no i have no songs i i use a google doc where i write my intro it's i've i read the same intro in the first you know forty five seconds like two just saying or content yeah yeah i dude i love that i mean i think you're low keep one of the most well rounded creators that that's out like on on the educational side like from from the shorts to a mastering you're finding your format there from the newsletter finding your format to go for it it's hard to go from shorts to long form i'm i'm curious and you you're you're you're you're showing that you can master that as well on i'm curious this is a theory that i've started to kind of think about more recently because obviously i'm i'm looking to grow this show took a little break this summer because you know it was the summertime time and was just like i was just kinda like figuring out like kinda where i wanna put my energy with the show but it we're we're we're we're getting back into it now i had this like idea i'm curious because you guys kind of prove it to be true i'm like one of the best ways to have a popular podcast kinda is to be popular already like like it's so much easier right be like and and i'm thinking in the world of short form content it's really hard to like like no one really understands like a spotify algorithm like you're you're one of the people that is on top that i've ever talked to you that kind of like seems like you've tapped into something over there more than anyone else i which which i don't even know if you'd be like i don't even know how to coach you how to do it we it just it just kind of like ser happened the i'm curious how you feel about that like and and just to button it up is i'm like is it make because it make more sense for me to really go hard on blowing up the short channels then like what you're doing then look at strategies to bring that world into the podcast instead of trying to like go all in on the podcast which is long format it's hard to get people to buy in from the jump it's harder to get like tap into an algorithm i'm curious what you're thinking is on that i would not depend on the algorithm whatsoever right that's not anything i understand or even thought was a thing i had no idea that spotify recommended podcast to people so that was never part of the playbook the playbook was always we are popular on tiktok and instagram how can we lean into that existing popularity via these live streams drive people to go listen to our podcast as well yeah so to your point yeah man and now it this doesn't have to be short it might be a newsletter it might be a blog it might be you know something else that you've already got going on your whole whole youtube channel but i a hundred percent agree with that you know idea of b popular already to have a popular podcast we just saw what you know bobby i've even i even wanna say her last name but like exactly she i'm not saying she was popular already on tiktok but drake popular no i'm saying no she was popular she had millions she had millions of follow really and yeah she had millions of followers already on tiktok my wife followed she was like she was like yeah my it's like mommy tiktok like has a drink i'm gonna show i'm like no i'm like i it was it was like and she's been following her before before that so that sort of my yeah my i thinking on it i'm like because there's more of like a understanding around like alright how to make sure it's it's it's it's way more it's much more clearer to like how to get in front of a new audience when it comes to short form content and you know finding a way to tap into that then like you're doing which i think is probably the biggest contributor to the success of your show is that tiktok live stream which i i haven't heard that before when you're doing that show how are you plugging the podcast are you is there you're no no no so we've got woman named ali who's like a moderator in the chat and so like yeah people like say inappropriate things for kick him out but as she's like moderating the chat she'll also like drop in like austin and robert's podcast rich habits go listen on spotify like in the chat continuously but and then about every ten or fifteen minutes like between questions like by the way guys just remind everyone here we got a podcast and we are always talking about business finance and mindset on that podcast if you like the dynamic go listen to it link in both of our bios it's called rich habits every monday morning we come out with a new episode twenty to twenty five minutes tops so you guys are gonna love it that little plug right there just continually for that you know hour and a half long it's it's thousands of new weekly listeners okay okay i like it i like it interesting interesting i like it my my my brain is buzzing with ideas right now okay so now the next thing would be so you're on onboard with that like maybe maybe my strategy to grow the shows is like y time maybe do a sprint for a couple months and really blow this because right now when you're building this what i feel like i'm doing i'm building a bunch of little walls mh i'm not building one big wall right like and i feel like if i'm gonna focus in one thing which it seems like you did you know you you did the shorts you built up that channel then you built up the relationship you kinda leverage that into the long form for the newsletter and you tested some other podcast podcasts formats s too and i think you really hit your stride with this one oh this is a quick question the newsletter how many do you how how much because how do you think that's contributed to the pocket not at all no no not at all yeah i'm think i maybe mentioned it once or twice in the newsletter it's it's not something that because the thing is here too right it's like the newsletter is ver that it might be for people that know yeah i thought like they like people already like like if you remind me news newsletter you already know you're more in the in the world okay so it's because the podcast is more for like people wanting to learn these chat the newsletters for people that have their rich habits yeah hundred percent and i think what's really interesting right and i was listening to one of these like fifty or sixty minute long presentations coming back to mo just the genius he is yeah he was talking about entrepreneurship and and the compounding of of time and energy and focus and i've seen that a lot of creators over last three years of just observing and working alongside cool people including myself i follow into this all the time i'll have a new idea i'll jump start it i'll launch it it's cool it monetize a little bit and then oh new shiny object i'll have a new idea i'll jump start it i'm monetized crazy thing we shiny object right and i just creators i feel like we always just as creators wanna do that we're an actual actuality it's like wait a second at y'all if i didn't spend you know the two to three hours a week i do trying to you know get back to people on twitter if i didn't spend my you know this or that on these other platforms i went all in on the newsletter i guarantee my newsletter would be a three to five hundred thousand dollar a year business guarantee like it would i just know it i just know it would and so it's like but unfortunately we don't have the time energy focus to do so it's like let's just kinda have that as the side thing and here there but what i'm saying to you here tom is like if you identify something but you wanna do and really give it time i think i think as a creator i i'm really not patient sometimes i'm like oh man i only got three thousand you know views on this or got get views on this or two thousand likes or whatever it's like time for the next one let me try again i'm try again let me try again and i think like as creators if we can take a zoom out and just think like i'm gonna post a video every single day to tiktok for nine months i'm not even gonna worry about it i'm not gonna worry about the comments the likes the shares i'm just gonna be continual try and provide value for nine month straight and see where i am i'm gonna post a new weekly episode to a podcast called rich habits for twenty seven weeks i'm gonna see where we're at right yep i'm gonna you know make a news newsletter three times a week versus you know one or four times a week versus one for nine months and see where we're right it's like commit to doing something really cool and then just grind it out for nine months and then after that nine month period then you take a step back and say was this right did it work if not let's try and learn reiterate and like how can i take my learnings and do something else and i think we're still compounding that out right now with the podcast right we're at week twenty seven hopefully we'll get to week fifty two without any interruptions like we're halfway through the year right and we'll see where we're at in the next six months and i'll report back and i'll hop back on the you know this podcast and we'll talk more about it bro but i think that's a really big learning as a creator that i've i've learned over the last couple years is like find something that you're really passionate about double down on it create some crazy shit for a nine months six to nine months easily and then come back and say did this work or not versus oh let's do this for six weeks let's do this for four let's do this for twelve let's do this for you know four months or whatever and it's fun because as creators were smart we know how to get those early likes know how to get those early views that that early money of monetization of the brand deals right it gets us excited as like we're building and we're we're actually doing more things but more tentacles is not always a good thing sometimes a good thing might just be having one big mountain of something that's been compounding on itself for the last six nine twelve months that will continue to compound on itself for the next two to three years and then you can leverage that into the next project you fund are how do we use this to then make it much easier to then build the podcast on top of this we have this good faith built up with our tiktok following now we can see if because it's hard dude it's like i know the a big challenge for people building podcast are it's a very different type of format to engage with than a short on tiktok right like it's a whole different app to get people to come over to this one like i've talked to people that have some of the like the work with some of the biggest podcast in the world and like they like they're like y we don't really know how exactly how to get people like it's like kind of mystery to most people the whole thing is like to market within the the the platform that people are already consuming on so one of what's it's known to be one of the better ways is to promote your podcast on as an ad on someone else's podcast because they don't have to leave the app to then go subscribe where tiktok you're it's like a whole different format then go over so it's so impressive what it just shows the goodwill and like the the the connection that you actually have with your and you're able to build real audiences on short form platforms but most people say like you really can't do you're able to do that then leverage it into another platform real quick let's talk monetization what is your thinking on that so are you thinking sponsors you thinking digital products or a little bit of both you're gonna play around i think a little bit of both right so right now we're averaging around two to three thousand dollars a month with the span the spotify ad network we're at the automated ads that just kinda drop in there okay that should probably double by the end of the year assuming that we're also able to move over to mega phone which is something we're really excited about here in the coming weeks so let's call that a conservative five thousand dollars a month by the end of the year from an ad read perspective you know we've worked with a couple etf companies we've worked with master work we worked with public dot com so i'm i'm hoping that happens and continues to move in the right direction we'd love if you're listening right now is and you're like a tech or something and you're trying to like talk to anyone between the ages of like thirty five and fifty which is like our bread and butter listener right now and you have a product you wanna talk to them and you're like finance focused let me know we would love to have someone come in and like quote unquote like own the rich habits podcast right it's like this does necessarily a chat with podcast a aka public dot com or like master you know whatever those like cool things are so if you're listening that'd be cool but we'd love something like that to big be very continuous with our host read ads and that way you just have that one person that just like wants to bet on us in the long term and then lastly from the digital product perspective we are just now wrapping up something called the rich habits podcast wealth building blueprint it's gonna cost forty dollars it's a video course four modules it's pretty cool we price it at one dollar per minute so it's forty minutes long so fifty cents per minute from each myself and robert and we talk about four different things we're talk about earning more money through side hustle paying off your debt so debts snowball debt avalanche repairing and building your credit score and investing for retirement four things ever show know about and that's gonna that's gonna sell like a hot i'm so pumped like none of these fake guru like nine ninety nine two thousand dollar like course mastermind might like fuck that screw that or i don't if i can discuss here but screw you can you can you can i i love the passion the enthusiasm around that that's a really good concept that's a great price point when when is that gonna be available should be available by mid september we have wrapped it up we used an awesome you know media company to help us film it and edit it and you know really package it it we're really excited about it so mid mid september so where now where can everyone listen to the show and get that if they're interested so it'll definitely be in the show notes of every episode that once it's once it's live so just click any episode of the rich habits podcast and you'll see it in the show notes of the description have you wanted to describe it there but yeah we are on spotify and apple and you'd see on plan yeah this is spotify that'd be amazing amazing yeah go listen to spotify to help help get him in front of the the other people that might be in the top five right now austin thank you so much for coming on the show it's always a treat getting you on i i'm telling you to such a well rounded thinker in the creator space so connected so smart and bright go check out austin stuff man thanks for coming on the show thanks again tom