How to Become Disgustingly Good At Personal Branding

Most beginners building their personal brands think that they need to improve their content. But after 17 years of building personal brands, I can tell you the most important thing is to get your brand foundation correct before you ever touch content strategy. This is some of my favorite advice to get you started. So where do you start if someone comes to you and says, "Look, Caleb, I've heard and I've seen a lot of people having success building a personal brand, putting out content to grow their business. like what what should they be doing? What's the first step? — Well, I think a lot of people are talking about building a personal brand right now. It's the buzz. It's what everybody's doing. And I think what a lot of people are falling into the trap of is they just start making content to check a box. They're like, "Well, I got to, you know, sell people. I got to market. I better make content. " And I think that a lot of people would be better served in making content if they start with the end in mind. And so I use what I call the brand journey framework. It's four very simple, very basic questions that gives you an immense amount of clarity. — And so we start with the question that is our end destination. And so I always ask, what is the goal? What is the outcome that we want to have happen on the other side of building this personal brand? Because you know if you're going to do that, you're investing a lot. — Yeah. — Money, time, vulnerability, right? Like you're way more transparent with the audience and public than if you choose not to do that. So there's a lot that you're investing. So I think you need to know why you're doing this. Otherwise, I think a lot of people actually probably don't need to make content. — I think a lot of them probably shouldn't. But anyways, you start with that question. And then the next question that you ask is what would I need to be known for in order to get that outcome that I desire. Right? The third question is about doing. We become known for things not by what we talk about but by the actions that we have taken and the results that we get. And so it's what would I have to do in order to be known for the thing to get the outcome that I want. The last question brings us to today. — Mhm. which is what would I need to learn in order to do the things to become known for the thing to get the outcome I want. So like if you for example want to speak on stages to inspire young women to build a successful business, you probably need to be known as a woman who has built a successful business and helped other women build a successful business. — Okay. Well, in order to be known for that, you got to build a successful business and help people. But then within that business has so many different departments, right? Marketing, sales, HR. And within each of these departments, there are millions of little skills that you need to learn. And that gives you the road map of how you go from right now to your desired outcome. I have the ambition, and it's a little audacious, but I would like to work with the number one industry experts in whatever category I find interesting at the time. In order to have that happen, I would need to be known as somebody who has helped scale personal brands that convert in the way the personal brand desires — in multiple spaces. — Yeah. — Right now, I've only done it in entrepreneurship. — Mhm. — I haven't worked with a scientist. — Yeah. — Right. musician. Right. And so, in order to get my desired outcome, I need to be known as being able to do this in multiple spaces. — Mhm. So then the next the third one becomes very clear. What do I need to do? I need to work with a scientist or a whatever, right? I'm just using that as a random example. It could be a painter. It could be anything. Uh because I just want to work with industry experts, — right? And then what would I need to learn? Well, when I decide what industry I'm going to jump into and work with a personal brand, I need to learn that industry. — Sure. — I need to learn the viewer, the customer, all of that. And so that gives me a very clear path for these next, call it 5 years. cuz I don't know what the timeline actually will be. — As someone who has built some of the biggest personal brands that we know, what do you hope that they take from the conversation you and I are about to have? — A practical, no [ __ ] approach to building a personal brand that allows you to get closer to your goals, not further. Not one that is obsessing over trying to get a ton of views and go viral and hacking the algorithm, but one that actually takes the problems that you are already solving for your customers and allows you to do that at scale through content, — you know, cuz you uh you have such a great way of like simplifying things. And so for me personally like I'd heard so many definitions of what a personal brand is but when I heard your definition it clicked. So to begin can you give that to people like what is a brand? — Absolutely. Well I believe that branding is just a pairing of things. Now if you want to do good branding I think it is a

intentional pairing of relevant things and this is the key done consistently and if we do that over and over again we get the byproduct of branding which is brand and that is when your audience inherently associates you with another thing Ideally that thing that you are intentionally pairing yourself with. The example that I like to use is Nike and Michael Jordan. That was a pairing, a very intentional pairing of relevant things. Nike was entering the basketball market. Michael Jordan was the basketball god, right? And the key though is he didn't wear them one night. two nights. He wore them every night for his career. — That's the consistently part, which I'm sure we can get into in a little bit. like that's why you want to say the same things over and over rather than that being the reason why people talk about not making content. That's what you should do. I believe the potential of your personal brand is actually predicated on the success or lack of success you've had in your career or life. And so the point being, we need to do epic [ __ ] so that people want to follow and actually listen to what we have to say. I think so many people are trying to uh force a personal brand in, you know, Instagram, YouTube, whatever, and they're wondering why people aren't listening to them. And it's because maybe we haven't done the thing that the people who should be following us want to do. And so I believe that there needs to be a focus on doing epic [ __ ] right? Like you mentioned some people that I've worked for in the past. I believe that is a big reason why we have had the success in building my personal brand the way that we have in the first year. Like the fact that we have almost 90,000 subscribers on YouTube within the first year or 53,000 people on our email list. This comes from the fact that I have the credibility in my background and then I continue to do epic [ __ ] We released a 6 and 1 half hour free course. I don't know if any wild characters in here have seen that, but we put out a free 6 and 1 half hour course on YouTube in I think month three or four of making content. And the number one thing that I get asked on almost every podcast is about that course, that crazy thing that we did, right? The majority of the industry is selling that behind a payw wall. We put it out for free completely for anybody to consume on YouTube. — And then that thing generated 53,000 leads. — Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, it's still cranking today. Like right now, if we looked at it, I think Trevor and I noticed in the last 48 hours, it still has gotten 3,600 views. Like, it's almost a year old now. — I also think a lot of people think they got more game than they do. M — if you haven't done dope [ __ ] — you are less likely to have a dope personal brand, right? It's just how humans work. Yeah. — And so I think there's a lot of people that uh it's not that they're afraid to give out free game. It's that when they try to, it's really not that deep. — Yeah. — It doesn't actually hit for a lot of people. — And I think what it is uh I know for me, I can speak to this very clearly. It's they might be an expert and they might be really good at executing but just because you're really good at doing doesn't mean teaching. And I had to go through a very intense period where I learned how to take the things that I was naturally doing, — right? My normal mo, my way of operating and figure out how do I chunk this down into actual skills, activities, tasks in order to be able to teach other people. Right? That's what I'm describing is the process of going from individual contributor to leader — and then from leader to public teacher. — If someone wants to build a great brand story, but they don't have those case studies yet and they're kind of starting from scratch, what advice do you have for them? — Don't posture as an authority. Yeah. Like there's nothing more disgusting than someone who has no reason to be speaking like they know what they're talking about when they don't. And you're entering a terrible competitive landscape if you do that by the way cuz you will get beat out by the people that actually know what they're talking about. Your competitive advantage when you are coming up is being a vessel for the learning to your audience. — You're trial and erring and sharing those things. — I'm the proxy for you guys. Come on my journey. I'm going to spend the money and the time. I'm going to make the mistakes. I'm going to burn the bridges. I'm going to figure this [ __ ] out and you're going to learn from me and avoid all of those things. That should be the frame if you're on your way up. Like, don't be the [ __ ] 23 year old in the basement on TikTok. Not a good move. — You see, dude, Miami breathes those guys. — Yeah, — they got a lot.

— Dude, if I had a dollar for every McLaren 19-year-old in a mansion — that's rented. — Yeah. I believe that there are really like three different levers that you can pull to stand out. And the second two are really great. They're awesome. But the most important one that has the most amount of outsized returns is your contrarian belief. And I believe this is the catalyst. This is when you see something in your industry that a lot of people believe to be true that you fundamentally disagree with. So for me, for example, uh the majority of my counterparts and people that talk about the [ __ ] that I talk about, they talk about going viral. That's a huge thing. That's the majority of the industry. And I think going viral is great. I have no issue with it. I just think it is not a healthy way to build a personal brand optimizing for virality. I believe you want to optimize for trust. And so that's something that I see in my space that a lot of people are preaching that I think is fundamentally wrong. Another example is the man, the myth, the legend, Gary Vee. He came onto the scene in a time where Fortune 500s and 100s, a lot of them still are doing this today, but at scale at the time, all of them were spending their money on TVC, Billboard, uh, direct mailers, all these traditional forms of media. and he's like, "Hey guys, there's this like crazy thing out there called Facebook. " And I think it's going to be a big deal, right? Wildly contrarian take. He saw what was in the industry, what everybody was saying, and he had a wildly different take. Another example of this, not on the personal brand side, is Savage Fenty, Rihanna's uh lingerie brand, right? They did an amazing job of looking at the market and realizing, you know, Victoria Secret dominated the market and they marketed to like one body type and that's it. And they decided, okay, we're going to go with body type diversity. We're going to pair ourselves to show that women of all shapes and sizes should be able to buy lingerie. And so what do they do in all of their imagery? They show that and then they become worth over $3 billion in like less than three years. It's like [ __ ] crazy. they grew so fast and I believe that's because they spotted something in their industry that they believed differently on and they felt they could have a different impact on. And so what I encourage people to do is either at a really high level, it might be something big like what I'm talking about or it might be something small, it might be something basic like uh you know a videographer. Everyone says that you should be using zoom lenses for vlogging and you believe that it's just better to do the craft with prime lenses and so that is your take and that's what you're bringing to the industry doing. Okay, cool. I gave a wildly niche uh example there. All the videographers, shout out to you. Like that is what I believe causes people to stand out the most. I believe this more than your thumbnails, your titles, your hooks, like even the ideas of the individual pieces of content itself. I don't believe that's why brands blow up in a powerful way. I think people get views that way. But a strong personal brand, I believe, is established by seeing this thing in your industry that you want to see done differently and then like we said earlier over and over sharing that. That's why every podcast, every piece of content I try to push optimize around trust, not virality. It's something that I want to be known for. So 100% like if if nothing else actually from this podcast episode if literally nothing else. If you walk away and you figure out what you believe differently about your industry and the key is don't make something up. Don't be contrarian for contrarian's sake. It needs to be something that you believe at your core when you speak about it. There's a certain level of passion, whatever way that comes through with you, but there needs to be a passion and conviction around it. It needs to be real. But if you figure that out, that is your differentiating factor more than anything else. — How do you decide what your POVs are? Like um — a lot of people when I ask them this question, you know, what do you believe different? They have a very tough time answering the question. — Um people that are really in it and have been in it for a long time, they have no problem answering it. But the people that are a little bit newer, uh I'm talking like less than eight years in the industry you've been in, you probably couldn't articulate it on the spot. So, what I encourage people to do is uh there's a very easy way to do this. It's called the two column approach. And this applies to a lot of different things, but we'll use it in this example. What I want you to do is if you've defined, okay, I'm going to talk about marketing. On the left side of this, the left column, you're going to write out all the things that current content creators in the marketing space

are doing or saying that you disagree with, find cringe, disgusting, right? all the different complaints that the audience may have with them. And then on the right side, you're just going to write out the exact opposite of all those things. And that's what you're going to do. If you are getting into real estate content and you hate the cringe real estate agent that's making content dancing and pointing at copy on screen, well then you know you're not going to [ __ ] do that. If you identify that feels very contrived and fake, cool. you're going to be very like authentic and relaxed and that's going to be your frame right if you like me for example one of my big things is I don't believe that views is what people should be maximizing for only I think views are important but not the only thing that's contrary to a lot of what is being said in my space right that's one of my things I speak about the opposite of that — in my opinion — that's one of my things as well too about I'm glad I believe this is the way that you stand out in what people would quote unquote call a saturated market. It's literally doing the exact opposite of everyone in your space. There is not only is it what other influencers or other people are saying, but depending on what industry you're in, there's a lot of industry tropes. — Yeah. — Statements that people Right. Another one that I hate is all press is good press. People have been saying that for years, but it's like I could give you a million different examples of how that is not true, right? But that's a typical trope in brand, in media and marketing that everyone says. And so I would also argue if you can't think of like influencers or people that are creating, what is something that is said repeated like it's just like it's doctrine and nobody's questioned it that you could question? I think what people don't realize is the brands that really pop in the education space specifically, they don't pop because of their titles, their thumbnails, their hooks. They pop because they have a fundamentally different worldview on their industry than any of their counterparts. And that's why their content works. Their content will work. It's why they even pop early on before they have a team that's packaging their content well because it's not about the little tactics. Those are great. Those are awesome. And if you're not very interesting, that's where you got to start. But very quickly, you need to figure out what do you believe differently than most people. What do you what what's a concrete example in the present world of a brand or a personal brand whose worldview is really cutting through the noise — as Cody Sanchez. So around 2020 we were at the peak really I would say 2018 to like now even uh we were at the peak of the only way you get rich is by being a founder of a tech company. That was it. — Yeah. — Everyone was like I got the Uber of blank, the Facebook of whatever, right? Like the Airbnb of such and such. And Cody came onto the scene and was like, "Hey, there's actually this like crazy thing. You could become rich being a plumber. " — Boring businesses. — Exactly. Wildly different than what everybody else in the market was saying. And it wasn't I really do not believe it was her videos in general. It was the videos wrapping over and over this fundamentally different worldview. — Yeah. This was a recent like unlock for me that I had. And it sounds so obvious, but I've been doing this for almost 17 years now. And it just hit me the other day because I was looking at our clients, the clients that are getting the best results and good results, but not as good as I would like. And I realized the ones that aren't getting as good of results, it's not that they're not doing the right things. It's that they we haven't identified what their worldview is that is different than their peers. That is what will cut through everything else. Like I am not the most articulate person. I am definitely not the best looking person. There's that is not any reason to watch my content. Right? We are not titling and packaging our YouTube content with traditional best practices in mind. We're actually going the exact opposite. We're not doing the game of having, you know, I put out a 6 hour and 22minute free course on YouTube. All my YouTube buddies are like, that's 13 videos, brother. — Right? We're doing everything contrary. But the reason why I think it's resonating is because I'm coming onto the scene in a world where the majority of people in my space are saying one thing. I'm saying something fundamentally different. — It's looking at what people are doing. Not only from like what they're saying and preaching. Yeah. How they're showing up. — You know, like I said, uh I casually mentioned it. Maybe some people caught it. — Everybody every bro online shows up with a blue and red light in the background. — Yep. — Just don't do that. Don't put a [ __ ] fake plant in the corner, a bookshelf full of [ __ ] that you've never read and red and blue light in the background. And that's like the beginning right there, right? Like look at how we make our videos. It's pretty different than what a lot of people in my space are actually doing visually. We just released a video where I'm sitting in the back of my [ __ ] pickup truck in

the mountains. — Yeah. I saw it also on the Harley and with your green tones. I see. How important are these visual metrics in building a personal brand? Like visual what you what your colors are, what your clothes are, the language that you speak. Not important. — It is. It's so important and it's not important at the same time. — Meaning in the beginning — it's like an Easter egg like in Marvel movies in — Yeah. It's like that. It's what it is it's an element of branding and everyone thinks that is brand and that's branding but it's an element of branding, — right? — Uh by me intentionally pairing myself with our green over and over again. The audience who's consuming our content regularly is going to start to now see that green and go is that Caleb? — Yeah. — Right. And so that's the importance of it. — It has no effect in the beginning. — It has zero impact for you. And so anybody who is overthinking a brand style guide in the first year of their personal brand is wasting their time. — It's important, but it's not the thing that's going to move the needle for you. — Uh again, the reason why I did that at the beginning is just because I've been in this for a very long time. — And I have a stupid subjective bar that I hold ourselves to on the aesthetic. That's only because I have a production background. It's not because I know that's going to move the needle. It doesn't. The way you present information is also a competitive advantage and can be a hole in the market that you can fill. So maybe everyone in finance is using big boy language that like people like Caleb do not understand. Maybe you talk to people like me that don't understand anything with finances and you have a very lay approach and you speak to it like one of the boys. That's also in my opinion a really great way to stand out is just to speak to very similar information with a different rapper. Yeah, for us um you know we're looking to one thing is aesthetic. We think that we can elevate the whole entire space. We only think a couple people are doing it like this. And then secondly is I think that the conversations that I could have with that 20% with specialists like you. It's unique because it's from an operator's lens. — It's not you talking to another brand guy. It's an operator — talking to a brand guy. And if my customer persona that I want to serve as an operator, it's going to serve them very well. So, that's kind of where my brain goes to. — Um, what about just we're talking about positioning and finding the gap in the market. — How do you not get too bogged down by like copying other people and staying authentic to your to who you are and what you want to be? Like where do you guys get your in like your inspiration from? — In the beginning, you do kind of have to copy. So, I'll use myself with photography as an example. When I first got into photography, uh, after years of doing video, I had to copy the Dylan firsts, the Aaron Brimhalls of the world, right? These were two photographers that I was just like [ __ ] obsessed with their style. And in the beginning, I literally was just trying to duplicate exactly what they were doing, right? Like almost to a tea, never nearly as good, but was trying. And then I think you go to a phase where now you get the basics. if you understand how to get close to in this case a look or whatever outcome you desire and that's when a lot of people I think get lazy and they just continue to do that and they're always going to be the type of people that copy whoever the top dog in a space is because it's the easy route. It's proven that this works. I think where the winners come into play is this is where they start to go into honing in their preferences and they use their preferences to create their own style. In photography, it'd be my own look. In content creation, voice. Right? Right now, especially in the business creator, educational space, we have a disgusting problem where everybody looks like one character and they're all copying this one character. And that's because there's a lot of great success that has happened there. But the problem is then you will always be number two at best. And so what I would encourage people to do is in the beginning look at the top dogs and replicate. But very quickly you want to start looking at success outside of your niche. You're still wanting to have ideas informed by data. I I'm not encouraging people to just like come up with subjective calls in a corner office and be like, "This is going to be great. " Like, no, you want proof that this is going to be a great video, for example. But you should get that proof outside of your industry so that you can look different than everyone in your industry. Cuz the reason why we're making content is to stand out. And if we're doing it to stand out, but we replicate and look like everyone, we're defeating our purpose. — What other uh spaces or industries are you inspired by? — The first one that comes to mind always is video games. I think uh like if we talk like YouTube for example, if we're getting granular for a second, YouTube packaging, I love looking at the video

game space. I think they do an incredible job. I think tech review channels, car review channels. I was actually just having a conversation around this where um and I please forgive me, I can't remember the industry, but he was saying, you know what's so funny is in MySpace, no one has ever considered doing a tier list video. like I think it was they were in HR and they were literally just talking about different HR programs or whatever, but by doing a tier list, they're identifying these different programs that they use that they think are the best or whatever, but it's borrowing a format that they know works for many different industries. They haven't seen it done in theirs. They do it. It was like a 2 or 3x multiplier for them. That's what I'm talking about in borrowing from other industries. Another one that I really like is um there's like an emerging trend right now of these comfort creators. Um they're more like, you know, doing these like new style of vlogs that are emerging that you've probably seen. — What do you mean by comfort creators? — So, we've been in a day and age where a lot of people yell at you telling how wrong what you're doing right now is and how you need to change and be this certain way or whatever. And comfort creators are kind of the answer to that. I think a lot of people got tired of being yelled at or being told what they're doing is wrong, blah blah. And so these are individuals that are still giving advice, but in a softer tone way. Uh, and they're more appealing to the lifestyle of the individual. And I'm not saying that you need to take the messaging from their content, but the way they're packaging it, I think, is very unique and very different and is an answer to what I would call a slight oversaturation of like hardass kind of content. We could probably all relate to this. There's a lot of creators that we consume on different platforms, right? Yeah. Like the team that you have here. Like we all consume on the different platforms. — And there's a lot of creators that we are not subscribed to. We do not follow. It shows up in our feed. We consume it. But we could not tell you what their name is right now. — Yeah. — There's no brand. — No. — Right. And I believe that is the case because we live in a world right now where all these content gurus and [ __ ] are telling people to just download the transcript and then make it for themsel aka don't have an actual opinion on anything. Just regurgitate what you're hearing just information aka the commodity. This is the only thing that everybody can do, right? And so I believe that the best thing that you can do is figure out what do I believe about my industry or the world that is different than everybody else. I've already shared it at least five times in this podcast. Mine, right? I haven't said it directly, but I've alluded to it. My belief, my contrarian view is I think personal brand should be built off of trust and optimizing around trust, not virality. — The majority of the industry talks about going viral. All of them. And that's great to be clear. There's nothing wrong with going viral, but I think optimizing around it is the problem. And so that's my contrarian belief. And I think it's the only reason why we're having, you know, a semblance of some success on YouTube, Instagram, whatever, is it's not because people want to hear me talk. That's definitely not it. It's that they're seeing, oh wow, there is a wildly different take than what everybody else in the industry is saying. I I'll share I am not a life philosophy person and nobody should take life advice from me but my philosophy for life is and I figured this out really early on uh because I have a lot of disadvantages. Um a lot of people would probably assume differently but I have my disadvantages. Yeah. And I quickly learned that in jiu-jitsu uh there's this saying which is you roll then I roll. Whatever you give me I'm going to use as my advantage. Whatever you identify right now as your disadvantage can be the very thing you lean into as your greatest advantage. My massive like brutal level of insecurity of being in front of the camera right now like this, — I decided to lean into that in making content. I'm going to share that with everybody and I'm going to be very like anytime we're filming and I feel like I look fat on camera, boom, I'm going to call it out. — Yeah. — Right. like I'm going to lean into the thing that could be a disadvantage for me and I'm going to turn it into my greatest asset. And one of the things that we're starting to notice is like people are resonating not only with the content we're putting out, but like and this sounds so weird to say about myself. So please hear this through a humble tone, but they're resonating with me the human — totally — as like a good human that they can relate to. Yeah. — And the comment that I'm getting a lot right now is like accessibility and relatability. And I think — yeah, — it's because I'm leaning into what could be viewed as a disadvantage. — The more in my content right now that I put out who I am, my quirks, my isms, all of it, I think that is my competitive advantage. And I think that's what a lot of people's competitive advantage is. So, as we're going through this time where I think

people are starting to realize like, god damn, I've been fake as [ __ ] online, it's time to really lean into the real you, cuz that's not something that is going to be replicated. — Yeah. And that's a way that you can build trust. You talk about that brands and people with personal brands should think about scaling trust. So, can you go a little bit deeper into that and talk to us about how can someone scale trust and why is that so important? Trust is the uh the currency that precedes the transaction. You need trust before a purchase is made. Now trust, you know, looks different, right? Like you bought this liquid death because you trusted at some level that it'd be good, right? Like that it just works that way across the board. Um if we're talking within the space of like educational creators, that's what I'll speak to in scaling trust here. What I like to do is a lot of people will say like, "What do I make my content on? " And what you want to do is you want to share W's that you've had with clients, customers, whatever. Okay? And what you do is you just share case studies, but in a modern way. The majority of the content that I've worked on for other people for the last 5 years, 99% of it is just case studies. That's all it actually is. It's breaking down we did this and got this result whether it's for us or for a client or a company that we own, right? And so by doing that, what you do is you start to pair yourself with those success outcomes, thus creating the brand. Okay? And when that happens, your audience starts to trust you more. When more, they stop just hearing you and they start taking action on what you say. When they take action, if you're good, they're going to get the good results. And then they go from associating you with success outcomes to associating you with their success outcomes. And their trust in what you have to say goes through the roof. They've seen time and time again that they get more back than what they invested with you. And so when you make them aware of an offer that you have, it's a no [ __ ] bringer for them, right? Like I would argue if you guys put out a really long- form piece that everything that you guys teach behind a payw wall, you put it out for free, you would have more people sign up, not less. — The final lie, and we're talking about the five worst lies creators and business owners still believe about content, is I need to go viral for my brand to grow. — Super not the case. Uh again, I don't want this to come across like I am anti- virality. Obviously, that can be very good. What I am anti is having that be your north star that you optimize around. The people that I know that optimize around that um actually I I'll give an example here. If you have a creator who has been going viral on their own content for a very long time and then they go into the world of educating people on how to go viral, right? It is my opinion that what got them the virality is not going to get them the trust as an educator. — If Billy Isish tomorrow was like, "Caleb, I will teach you how to be an incredible musician. You got to pay me x amount. " I have zero belief that she's a good teacher. I think she's a great executor, but the difference between a great executor and a great teacher is like or sorry, massive. It's huge. — And so what happens is in these instances, cuz you called it up at the top, there's a ton of people that are doing this right now. They go viral and now they're teaching people. The problem a lot of them find themselves in is the content that is necessary to make and put out to build trust in them as an educator isn't going to go viral. — Mhm. — They've set this bar now for themselves that they always have to hit that, but that's not going to convert. And so I think for a lot of people, I mean, we I'm sure you have met plenty of these people that have one viral pop and now suddenly they're just trying to recreate that. — Yeah. — And that is the completely wrong strategy, right? Like that is the worst thing that you can do. — The best do if you have your 15 seconds of fame is not keep trying to go wide, but actually go deep with the people that came in and earn their attention. — How would you do that? I mean it what niche are we in? Like is it you know — this is how you would follow up on a viral video which is a question that comes in. I had a breakout video. What do I do next? — Yeah. What is your offer? I would start talking about that. I would just I would just do what I'm doing. I would just give away all the game on how to do what your offer accomplishes without ever engaging with you. By doing this, you increase trust, right? like you guys

have an extremely trusted brand. — I search for anything having to do with video and y'all are going to show up whether it's on the main page or I click on a video, you guys are suggested like everywhere, right? You've built a lot of trust in that. So then I have a high likelihood of believing that your offer is going to provide me even more value. And so that's what I would do if you're if you have a viral video. But the thing is virality is not bad. Trying to optimize around virality in an educational space is the wrong thing to optimize around. You want to optimize around trust. It's not virality that'll convert. It's trust. Trust is what precedes the transaction. Not virality is everything. It makes everything move way faster and smoother in business both on the front end and the back end. That means customer acquisition and talent acquisition. And so ultimately if we are trying to scale trust and we believe that branding is the intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently which then creates the byproduct brand when the audience inherently associates those things together then what we're wanting to do with our educational content in the beginning is we want to intentionally pair our brand with success stories. If you're making educational content, you should probably have clients, customers, community members, whatever that have had success off of what you're sharing. And so what you want to do is your volume, your percentage of content should be overwhelmingly case studies, customer testimonial stories, but not in the boring way that lives three tabs deep on your website that nobody watches in a 2025 contextual way. So what you want to do is you want to share those stories. And what happens is as you do that consistently, your audience will start to associate you with those success stories. And the cool thing that happens there is then they begin to trust what you have to say more. And they go from just passively consuming what you're saying to starting to take action. Education is actually occurring because they're changing their actions. They're no longer doing things the same. And when they do that, they're going to start to get the results. their desired outcome starts to occur. And when that happens, the intentional pairing changes. They no longer associate you with general success. They start to associate you with their success. And when they success, they trust you an immense amount. And what they start to realize is, "Wow, I get so much more in return for what I invest. " Whenever Jay says something, I'm investing my time in consuming it, acting on it, and look at the outcome I get. So then the moment that you make your audience aware of an offer you have, they have an incredible belief that what you're offering is going to give them far more than what they invest in it. And so you're essentially teaching your audience, hey, when I say something, you get far more value acting on it than what you invest. All of a sudden, now your team is no longer trying to do this like woo mysticism and making content. It's like, okay, cool. If we're making educational content, our whole goal is how do we make it easier for the audience to change what they do after consuming this piece of content? There's a lot of people right now that are making what I would call commodity videos. M — they're getting millions of views on YouTube and Tik Tok. Millions. Tons. They're not building a strong brand though cuz the moment that the platform ALGO changes and no longer serves those clips, nobody's looking for their username. — Yeah. — And that's a strong statement, I know. But like there's a difference between virality and a strong brand. They aren't mutually exclusive, but they do not mean the same thing. And I think a lot of people right now are really hot on getting millions of views, but have they built that connection with their audience to where like their audience will search them out or is it just convenient because it's showing up in their feed? — Who had another question over here? So, you say to package uh your content with something that you love, but what about package it with something that you're uh maybe doing a journey of like a 75day hard or uh training for a marathon or something like that? Do you think that would still work the same? — I love doing it. Here's the key. I think a lot of people, and actually I'm so glad that you said this so I can clarify. A lot of people may hear what we're talking about here and think they need to make an entire piece of content on their interest. The big thing that we're talking about here is injecting the interest into the content. So, I have a ratio that I talk about that I think a lot of you should do. 75% of your content should be deep content. 20% should be nichewide. 5% should be personal. But it's not that 5% needs to be a solo piece about it. It's just that you're injecting it. So, for example, whatever you're teaching or educating your audience on, I think that absolutely could happen vlog style

Casey Neistat style throughout your day as you do 75 hard. If you guys study Casey Neistat, if any of you do like vlog style content, I really recommend looking at Casey through this lens. What a lot of people don't realize is Casey is communicating one core message throughout his whole video, but it takes place when he's in his office, then he goes for a run, then he's at a meeting, then he's, you know, in the back of a cab or something like that, right? Traditional vlogging would just have all of those be their own moments. But the best version is taking the one core message or problem that you're helping people solve and carrying that throughout your day. And if 75 hard is something you're doing, then when you're going rucking or whatever, you could be having a you know, an Osmo camera and do a selfie moment like that. That could be something very interesting. I love things like that. Nichewide is it's going to service my ideal customer and customer adjacent individuals. Let me give you an example. The content that the video that I mentioned earlier, if you struggle with making content, please watch this. That is a nichewide video. All of my ideal customers struggle with this. I'm talking like the big dog CEOs that are making the big videos that are getting millions of views. They struggle with making content. And so the video serves them, but it also serves a much wider person in my niche. It also serves the dad and mom who are posting photos for their friends of their family and they're afraid about that. And so it's clearly going to serve my ideal customer, but it also serves more people within that niche that maybe aren't going to be customers right now, but I want them in my world for when they will be. Does that make sense? It was a great question. Thank you. Can we talk about how long it takes to build a brand, though? Because people might see that you put out this 6 and 1/2 hour course and say, "It got 200,000 views in a few months. It happened. " so quickly for you, but the only way you were able to put out that video is if you spend 16 years working with other people and learning brand. So, can you talk about the process and how long it actually takes to build a successful brand? — I can't give you a timeline cuz it's going to be very dependent on so many different factors. But what I do tell people and this will probably sound kind of shocking is I say enter this game not expecting any economic outcomes that you desire for the first 36 months. You will have the proper expectations to stomach the ups and downs because what will happen for the majority of people here is they will get nothing nothing. One thing will pop and then it'll again be nothing nothing. And that's where people get [ __ ] — Yeah. And so like if you go into it saying I'm going to do this for three years and I don't need anything from it, that's when you win. That's how we entered this. I could never have imagined that we would have I think it's like 21 22,000 subscribers on YouTube off of three videos and we released our last one a week ago. So four videos. The fourth one has only been up for a week. Like 22,000. Like that's [ __ ] absurd. And I didn't go in with those expectations at all because I knew if I did, I'd give up immediately. I actually I'll give you my uh move and you can borrow it if you like. I did this back when I competed in powerlifting. I do it in everything. I set my expectations ridiculously low. So like when we were doing the course, like I spent probably 16 17 grand on putting that together. Um, I was literally stoked if we would have gotten a thousand views in the first month. And I told Trevor, I told my girlfriend Cat, I told everybody in my life, I just want a,000 views. That's it. And I think that if you do that, now the caveat is I'm a highly ambitious person, so I think that's the tension that you need. If you're lazy as [ __ ] that is a terrible way to approach it for sure. But if you are the ambitious person, I would argue sometimes potentially sandbagging your expectations can be very helpful. — It sets you up to win because it blows your expectations out of the water if you're like, "Yo, we're just going to do this. We're going to do this awesome thing. We're going to let the market decide and it like not let it hurt your feelings. " Cuz I think specifically when we're starting out in like a creative journeys, when you put so much time and effort into something and the market decides that it just didn't go off or for whatever reason you posted the wrong time, your thumbnail sucked, your hook wasn't there, you're like, you get so down on yourself and it's so easy to let those thoughts creep in like, man, am I not good at this? You know, what's the reason this thing isn't performing well? And when you lower those expectations, something I need to practice more of because I get like very excited. And it's easy because you're very fired up about the things that you do and you put your time into and you're like, "This time is so valuable now, especially now that you run your own thing. " It becomes exponentially easier to flip that and

say, you know, I put so much time and effort into this. I've quit my job. I'm doing this damn thing. I know this information is solid. Why the [ __ ] did this not get more than X? And I think that's a really good way that you're looking at it. It's not having the audacity to assume that people should listen to my [ __ ] I don't care how much effort I put into it. Effort means nothing to them. That's the reality. Like it sounds impressive for a second, but it's like who gives a [ __ ] what my effort was, — right? And so I always like if that course would have gotten 200 views, I would have been like, "Okay, cool. I did not do a good job. " Plain and simple. Now, I wouldn't beat myself up for it. The other thing that I would say to add a little bit of a depth to it is do this strategically. Meaning, we just released a video last Friday, two hours on how to lead a media team. The TAM is tiny. The audience that is relevant to is like Yeah. — zero, right? So, I don't expect it to perform like the first three videos. — I wasn't going to say zero. I was saying smaller, but I didn't think it was zero, but smaller group for sure. You're like CMOs at companies, — right? Yeah. Which is basically zero if you look at the population on YouTube, right? Like it's so small. And the likelihood that that's going to catch on is low. — So again, what I like to do, we're going really deep on this, but I would set up other metrics or ways to define winning. So, for us, when Trevor and I were releasing this video, I was like, I'm going to measure the success of this video based on the DMs that I get and the caliber of people that reach out to me. If I get a bunch of creative directors that are leading the teams for all these personal brands being like, "Dude, this was [ __ ] fire. " Win. I don't care how many views. So, I believe that typically, again, in the educational space, you're either playing a width or depth game with every piece you put out. I would argue the reason why most people are not successful is because they try to do both. Define which one you're trying to accomplish and then measure against that. If it's a depth play, don't look at the ranking. views. That's not the game you are playing on that. So, we've built the foundation for your personal brand. Now, it is finally time to learn about content strategy. Click here to watch.