Why Your Content Gets No Views (and How to Fix It) | 1 Hour of Alex Hormozi on Content

0:00What everyone here needs to solve for is the thing that was the most valuable that Jim Launch had and continues to have, which is you want consumable media. Now, what does that mean? If I teach you how to do math, the day before you learn how to do math, it is infinitely valuable. The day after, the value is approximately zero because you already know how to do it.

0:28This is the fundamental issue with education as a product. There's a reason that people graduate from school, right? Is because they have graduated, they learn the stuff. And that's what you want. The point of Tinder is for this app to get deleted. The point is for people to get in a relationship, right? And so you shouldn't feel like you failed if you actually educated someone and taught them. Now there that does create uh business constraints. So what did what did the education system do?

0:55They just invented infinite education. You can get multiple degrees. You can get a PhD. You can get a masters. You can get a PhD. You can get a double PhD. Right? They they just keep selling more stuff. Fine. But for us, I'll give you two examples or actually give you three examples of of groups that created consumable media. Right. Jim Launch's most valuable product that happened or occurred that we were able to give was that we would run ads. We would spend money. So, I'd spend 50 grand putting, you know, renting, this is going to sound silly, renting models, uh, who looked good in gym clothing. Then, we would do a shoot.

1:39Then, we would take those ads, we would edit them, cut them, produce them, and then we would test them in 10 to 20 representative markets. And so for us, we had, you know, 700 plus locations, uh, live and active and cycled over, you know, thousands thousands over the years. Um, but we would say, okay, we want this to be in a Hispanic market, a black market, a white market, a Canadian market, a Mexican market, whatever, right? And so, and we'd also skew this by uh quality of operator, right? So, if you have really strong operators, really weak operators, we want to see if it's representative, right?

2:07And so then what we would do is let's say we tested a hundred ads. We would find the top five winners and then we would hand them to the community who already knew how to run ads and they would run them in their local areas. And so every month you could have a choice. You could make your own ads and see if they worked and spend money behind them. Or you could just get the ads that you already knew worked that had already been tested and then just cash them in.

2:37Which one would you rather do? Why would a if you knew every ad you had was going to be a winner, you would just only run winners. How nice would that be? Well, that's exactly what we did and do for gyms. And so the value of what they pay us is an approximation of two things. One is how much money they would lose trying to test to find ads that worked.

3:01And notwithstanding the effort of scripting, recording, editing, making their own, but on top of that, how much money they would directly make from our ads in general. And so you have both of those things. Now, let's run it through the original litmus test that we had around value creation. So, the closest thing that I mean, the perfect thing I could do is literally just hand them customers, right? That's the closest thing I could do. Now, we looked at that. We were like, should we run ads and just sell them for them and then just send them the gym? We It was something we considered, right? But we decided that was a little bit outside of scope. And so, we're like, well, what's one degree less than that? Well, if we made the pages and we tested the pages and then we made the ads and we tested the ads, then all we would do is hand them a winning scratchoff ticket to put into the machine we had them pay for one time. And so this is the point. If you have a system, right, you have a system that you sell one time, right? This is the education component. This is the model. Some of you, this is B2B, right?

4:00But this works the same B to C. Same concept, but you're just the the thing. You have some core curriculum that you want to take someone through to change their behavior. Fine. Now they understand how to sell, whatever. They understand how to run ads. Now they need the inputs into that machine. You want to be the supplier of those inputs because that's something they're going to need this month, next month, the month after, and has tremendously high and demonstrable value.

4:28So the second uh business had uh he did um wholesaling. He like taught people to wholesaling. And so what he would do is he had his team go find properties and then sort them, list them, rate them, and then every month he delivers a a PDF to his community of wholesalers with prevetted properties and that meet all their deal specifications.

4:57And then all his students or people in the membership community would have to do is just go to just walk it, right? That's all they have to do is just go to the address. And so by doing that, he was able to take all the friction associated if they get one deal, it pays for the whole thing for the year, right? And so again, there's this common theme of okay, how can I do the work for them?

5:20And the 2011 version is how can I take the risk for them, right? So like Jim Launch did the work and took the risk. So I fronted the cash, right? He fronted the labor. And so you want to think how and think about the net the net gain here. Did we make their lives easier without having them incur more cost? Absolutely. Same thing with the wholesaler.

5:45Absolutely. And so there was another guy that teaches people um uh how to do print on demand. So that was his thing like printing print stuff, right? And so he has like 2% churn in his community and what his consumable media was is that every week or every every I can't remember if it's every week or every month, whatever, he would go in and he would show with his tool how he was finding the trending uh products or logos or whatever that were printed and showing them how to sort for them. And then he would make that into a list and then he would put it into the community.

6:24And so the idea there is yet again, how can I chew the food for them and then spit it into their mouths. Disgusting, Danielle. Disgusting. I don't know why you would say that, right? Of course. Like little baby birds. Baby birds, John. Exactly. And so if you're like, "Alex, can you tell me what mine is?" No. Fundamentally, you're going to get paid a tremendous amount of money for answering that question.

6:51But what you need to zero in on is what is this consumable value? And I would maybe even make the argument that's maybe the most important thing that you can do for a membership. I think I'm going to say it. I think it's the most important if you want to drive down churn in your membership. You want to have something that they use and consume on a monthly basis because you want them to use and consume the community on a monthly basis.

7:16And so you just have to think about what that thing is for you. Like are you guys getting this? Like you can always pre-chew the food. Like there's always more work that you can do which is typically in the form of research analysis and then distillation of that information repackaged into something that is very easily usable. And so that is a net gain of time that they get for the value that they'll ultimately be able to trade that for in the future when they use the thing based on the education that they got from you that they paid you for one time upfront that was probably more valuable. So it's like you want to get them to pay you one time to have a system and then many times for the inputs to that system to make the system work. This is fundamentally the idea of like you sell an ink, you know, an ink printer and then you sell them the ink every month, right? You you teach them how to do hair extensions and then they buy your hair extensions every month when they need to use those for their customers. You teach them how to sell supplements and then they sell your supplements to their new customers every single month. Each your customers complexity like that is the work. Like that's what we get paid for.

8:26If you're like, "Man, this sounds hard." Or, "Man, this sounds like work." You know what's even more work? being poor. Like, you know what? It's even more work finding new customers. Way more work than keeping the ones you've got. I'll I'll tell you this from having sold a lot of weight loss in my life. We used to sell fitness nutrition accountability. By far, 75% of the weight was on accountability because it was the thing that everyone felt like they needed. Most people know they need to stop eating cookies and they need to move. They already know that. The problem is they're not doing it. And so it was basically like we just said like we will generically keep you accountable and we had these you know five ways that we keep people accountable and we walk through it was mostly explain like we mostly sold an accountability system which is what I did at my gyms more than a fitness system. It was like these are the ways that we did it and we had three levels of accountability. You have peerto-peer accountability, alumni accountability and expert accountability. You guys want to pitch this is what it is. And so peer-to-p peer accountability is that you want to be you want to know you're going through something with somebody else shoulder-to-shoulder so that you don't feel alone. they're going through the same step at the same stage as you.

9:27They're suffering, they're sore, they feel, you know, nauseous, whatever. It's nice to have somebody doing so you don't feel alone. The second type of accountability, it's nice if somebody's one step ahead. That's the alumni. That's the person at the end of the racetrack being like, "You got it. You can make it. They're cheering you on." Right? So, we have a whole group of alumni who've been there, they've lost 20, they lost the second 20, lost the third 20, and now they're on their, you know, on their on their journey to get their dream body uh from uh, you know, from skinny to toad, right? That's where they're at now. And then there's the third type of accountability, which you want expert accountability. You want somebody who's helped thousands of people just like you get to where you're trying to go. So that when you run into trouble, they've already solved this problem a hundred times before this and they know exactly what to do. So that you can break through the plateau and it doesn't feel like a plateau because it's only one week of lack progress. You got feedback and then boom, you keep going.

10:15And so it doesn't you don't hit plateaus per se if you have a long enough time horizon that you're doing the measurements on because you have an expert who's there who can measure progress in multiple ways. And so for us if you we know that this plan will get you to your goal. And so everything else that we have is around making sure that you just stick with it. And so if you heard that from me as a sales pitch for accountability, you'd probably be ra relatively compelled by that. And you guys, by the way, can use literally all three of those because you have all three of those. You have other people in the community. You have people who've hopefully finished or gotten some sort of ideal that are inside that are your testimonials. And then you've got you.

10:50You are the expert. You have done this with hundreds of people just like them going to where they're trying to go. And when they get stuck, you know how to debottleneck them. And so you just need to package it in a way that they see the value, which I think if you use the pitch, you can literally just download this and just repeat it because it works just fine. My encouragement to you is to think through what the consumable portions of your stuff are. So I'll give you an example. Community is consumable.

11:15You use it and then next like you can't say, "Oh, I' I've communied up. I am I'm filled to the brim on community." Doesn't work that way. It's consumable. Friendship is consumable, right? These are things that you go back for, right? And so the idea is now the the question is how valuable is it? What are people willing to pay for it? Right? That's the that's the the real measure is h how willing to pay are people for community. I think they're willing to pay something. It might not be as much as you want. And so that's why we add these other components into it. But again, just adding more stuff that people don't use doesn't make something more valuable. This is what I like. If I if that's the theme of this call is like if you have one thing that people use and then you add four things that they don't use, it's not more valuable. In a lot of ways, it's less valuable. So we want to make it easy for them. We want to pre-chew their food. We want to find the complexity and we want to do that work in the background. So one of my one of my friends is a very good product uh m he's a he's a he's a product guy from software and he calls them magical products or magical experiences and he he talks about this as though he said it has to happen in the background. It has to feel magical and he obsesses about this $250 million very good product guy, right? And so the idea that that that I'm talking to you guys about is like, okay, what would be magical if you just got an ad, you pressed go, and then money came out, you'd be like, that was magical, right?

12:42If you just said like, oh, here's the list of homes that are already prevetted. I just need to get in my car, be there in 20 minutes, and say, yes, this looks like the pictures I'm in. That's a pretty magical experience. Many of you are giving like the cookbook and saying, make a cake. But they're like, well, I don't have flour. I don't have eggs. I don't have I don't have an oven and I don't have pots and I don't have pans. And you're like just figure it out. But that figuring it out is where the fortune is made is when you figure it out for them. Level one. Figuring out for them at scale. Level two. Just actually take the next four minutes and try and brainstorm ideas for what is consumable valuable for your community because there is a version of it and there's probably multiple things you can do. If you just do that, it may be the one big thing that's the unlock that you need to get customers to retain. I've written a best-selling novel, but I took the writing lessons that I have that apply to both books and ads and outbound and everything and put it into nine lessons that if you use them, I think it will make your writing better. Enjoy.

13:46Alex's guidelines for writing. As soon as you see all of these, you'll see it in all my writing. Cuz the thing is is a lot of people when they try and like pretend to sound like me, they think I sound smart. And so then they put lots of really complex words and sentence structures. It sounds smart because it's simple. Like you interpret it as it sounds smart, but because it's actually simpler, which takes more effort. It's present voice. Like you'll mix your tenses up all over the place. I just try and do present tense whenever I can.

14:13It's active, not passive. Iron doesn't get the strength beaten [music] out of it. We beat iron. Like the body was carried out of the room. We carried the body. Active. So, it's present [music] whenever I can or it's simple tenses. No adverbs. Usually, adverbs are placeholders for shitty verbs. We shut the door really hard. We slam the door. Short sentences almost always max one comma. And whenever you have like two comma, like it's like blah blah blah, comma, comma, and then a thing. Usually, you can just rip it out or reframe it so it's just one sentence or make it two sentences. And then again, the vocab is under third grade. Ideally, fifth grade toss, positive language. And I mean that not like upbeat, but like don't stop.

14:54Keep going. Because people can't perceive negatives. Like don't think of a pink elephant, then people think of the pink elephant. So if you're trying to communicate clearly, then don't say what they shouldn't do. Say what they should do. If I say don't stop versus go, [music] different or keep going. When there's really common sayings like don't stop, that's so common that we've already shorthanded it in our brain as what it [music] means. But if you do with an a like a a more atypical statement, don't leave the facility is different than stay inside. [music] It's just it's just it's easier to understand. Like remove redundant words.

15:24We simultaneously walked out the big door at the same time. We walked outside. [music] And then I always eliminate anything from a sentence, then if I read the sentence afterwards, it still means more or less the same thing. I just cut it. But it's just like video editing. If I watch the video and I cut out a part and then I watch it again and I don't miss it, it's killing darlings. You know what I mean? But that goes for words, too. Like, if I have a couple words in a sentence that I cut it out and it still means the same thing, I go with it. Hemingway has like six of those built into it. So, Hemingway, I literally think is the greatest writing tool that's ever been like created. It gives you fast feedback cycles cuz as you're typing, it changes the color. So, in terms of immediiacy of like feedback and it shows you because it's color based what mistake you made mistake, you know, just not Hemingway and these are not like Alex's rules for writing.

16:13They're more just like rules for good writing. This is how I do it. And so, like you put all those things together and that's like >> let's do it. >> All right. So, I sell Yeah. sell tax strategy and tax filings to people overpaying in taxes. Uh, currently make 4 million now. Would maybe like to exit for 100 mil. >> And what's stopping me is not having like a massive brand. So people don't really know us when they think tax. We want to be first of mind. >> Um we make videos but barely get any views but brand will unlock us you know hit that premium and have demand gen

16:43>> and you know if we can't build brand um business is over. AI will start taking our lunches >> and you know people um won't be willing to pay for a premium relationship >> you know but ultimately no one will know care about our business and we will not be able to hit our revenue goals. So just you know how do we build a brand? Been making videos for four years on all social platforms for you know posting five times a week and still can't get views. >> Okay. So I'm gonna rewind a second. How are you getting customers right now?

17:09>> Um word of mouth referrals um from our existing clients. That's our biggest one. And then some trickle in from Facebook groups. And then we also have we run some paid ads um but not really haven't done really well in that in that space. >> Are you supply constrained right now? Like can you handle more customers? Yeah, we can handle more customers. >> Okay, got it. What's the pricing model and who's the avatar? >> Pricing model is 3,000 bucks. Come in, get the tax saving strategy. So, it's a full money back guarantee if we don't find 3K for you.

17:38>> And then after that, you get enrolled into the membership. You can apply that 3K as a credit over the next 12 months. >> And then the membership, it's where you do your filing, the accounting, the, you know, bookkeeping, couple calls, the whole enchilado. Uh that's it ranges from complexity anywhere from 300 to 3,000 bucks every four weeks. On average though it's like 500 bucks every four weeks. And then we sell to a triangle of people. It's business owners, real estate investors, and high W2. I'm in San Francisco, so a lot of high W2 folks. Yeah.

18:07>> So anyone that just has that feeling where usually we're their next stop after their Turboax or they're down the street or mom a mom and dad's accountant that doesn't do any tax strategy, we're usually their first stop for tax strategy. >> Got it. Got it. Okay. Um All right. So,

18:33>> why do you think the content hasn't worked? >> Not that interesting of a guy. Um maybe the value isn't there. Um so, like we've gone from like the education side of like, hey, here's all the tax strategies you can do. Come talk about the strategy itself. Um, I know my personal belief talking with my wife and stuff is like I think tax is just a very dry industry. Maybe no one no one cares because people barely file their taxes now. Like we run around people who don't file their taxes even. So yeah. Um might be just a dry ass industry. Yeah.

19:03>> I I I would reject that. Um >> yeah. >> So I think uh if you look at um Erica Taught Me, she has a Have you Do you know who she is? She's got like she's a lawyer. She does >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think legal is more boring than taxes. And she's got like five and a half million followers on just like Instagram. >> So, I don't think tax is boring. I think you might make tax boring. And I say that not in a harsh way. Um

19:31>> Oh, yeah. >> Also, >> I probably do. >> Yeah. I'd also look at um Viven 2. She does uh some financial stuff that I think is more like tactically personal financey. I think there's also like you look at Dave Ramsey obviously he's personal finance as well but in a different kind of flavor more on the savings side but I think absolutely if you did like live like hey well I got two things you can do right now like you demonstrating the expertise I mean look at what I'm doing right business advice could be you know perceived as boring so it's like I mean at the end of the day people like making money and people like saving money and so I don't in some ways if you think it's tax then it's boring if it's like let me let me show tell you how I saved this guy $100,000 in his pocket in 20 minutes. That is far more interesting.

20:23>> Mhm. >> And so I think demonstration of expertise in a world of AI is super super important. Um and will be something that AI will not be able to fake. So I would say do that as a content strategy demonstration demonstrating the expertise. In terms of your um where are you where are you posting right now? Um, Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook. Facebook's been getting some traction lately, actually. >> Facebook has the most users out of any social media platform. Yeah, totally.

20:50Yeah. Also, >> buyers on Facebook, dude. Like, like the older demographics there. And guess what? They have the money. Uh, so I think you should totally double down on Facebook. It's it's actually like people are not using it enough. Like we we grow disproportionately quickly on Facebook as well. Um, okay. So, the content you're making, you were making tax stuff. You shifted to making something else. What is that? >> Oh, no. It's all tax stuff, too. We We've just been making more tax.

21:17>> What's the process? >> You just say like, "Here's a tax like here's a tax code you didn't know about." >> Um, usually like, "Yeah, they here's a tax like strategy paying your kids, Augusta rule, rent." >> Go real stories, man. >> Uh-huh. >> You have how many clients you got? >> Uh, near 800. >> Okay. So imagine as part of the value ad that you have, you also do a personal call with them like what I'm doing right now

21:43>> and then you and then you do the fastest diagnosis of their business and you cut it down and you start clipping it. >> So now it's a value ad and it's marketing >> because you just it's not interesting because it's hypothetical. >> So what makes content interesting is stakes, >> right? You have to have stakes. Yes. >> Yeah. >> And so there's ways of making stakes which is the artificial way which is like you just create a hook. A hook creates artificial stakes, which is curiosity. What if I basically I wasted my time if I don't hear the rest of this? That's the stake with a good hook.

22:13Right now, if we want to create real stakes, it's like uh you know, if someone starts a call and says, um, I'm on the edge of a cliff. I'm about to jump off. Um, and if people actually believe that, the stakes on the call are life or death, right? And so, you will get watch time. Now, of course, you want to do this ethically and what not, but I use it as an example. And so for you, you need to are you studying anyone in the space that you like admire that you think is doing a good job?

22:40>> Not not studying game tape. Yeah. >> Yeah, dude. Like look at what the people who are in like I just gave you two, but like you should have like a list of 10 who are doing better than you. Look at the hooks that they're using and then say, "Okay, can I use this hook and then solve it a different way?" So my I don't I'm not a big believer in copying people's content. I think it's a bad idea. But if you want to use a hook, I think that's whatever. If you had, you know, you want to reuse five or 10 words and then you have a very different delivery on that hook, I'm all for that.

23:07And so I think a combination of studying the people who are in the space, modeling the structure, because you have to hook, retain, reward is the is literally how content works, right? I'm going to bet that your hooks aren't that good, and that the content itself is generic rather than specific. And so people like, think about how silly I use this example a lot, but I think it drives it home. Like Dave Ramsey literally tells people 3 hours a day, 5 days a week for 40 years, spend less than you make. That's the concept. I could make an argument that that is drier than tax, right? But when you get into the story of it and it's like, oh, my husband's cheating on me and he did this thing now. It's like Phil, you know, it's there's drama there, right? So, you can use the stories because at the end of the day, you're just going to give him a couple pieces of advice and you're like, well, shoot, there's only so many tax codes.

23:53It's like, dude, he literally tells people to spend less. like it could the the the advice couldn't be simpler, >> but it's the situation. It's the context that makes it interesting. And the stakes is what did you spend last year? And imagine the one where it's like I have a $500,000 tax bill and I don't have the cash >> stakes. And I bet you have you had that situation come happen. >> Oh, yeah. Uhhuh. >> Right. You have amazingly high stakes in this business and you're just not using it.

24:22>> Oh, okay. So using clients, confirm it's cool with them, chop it up, mix it up in terms of demonstration of expertise. >> Yeah. >> Is that just like a like a like a show? >> No. No. Like I'm saying, demonstrate your expertise. I'm demonstrating my expertise right now. >> Mhm. >> Right. You do what I'm doing. >> Show you helping someone save money on taxes. >> Oh, okay. And use a medium through through a client.

24:49>> Yeah. Are you do you have any you have because you're local, right? >> Um I wouldn't invite me that >> as in like you have inerson business. You said San Francisco so a lot of people you're in the Bay Area >> it's fully remote actually. Yeah. >> Okay. Well worst case if they're all if they're all geographically located you can invite them in to do some stuff. >> Oh okay. Okay. So do it IRL. Don't do a Zoom call type. >> Yeah. I think IRL will work a lot better. >> Oh okay. >> If you have that ability which you do do it. You know what I mean?

25:17>> Got Oh, okay. That's a key part. >> Yeah. I'm saying like, >> okay, >> Dave Ramsey's remote, so I'm not I don't want you to get this belief that it doesn't work the other way, but I'm like, if it's your first shot, you'll have better you'll have it'll be easier to get it to work in person than it will be remote. >> Oh, okay. Yeah. >> So, let me give you the TLDDR on this. You need to build in to your delivery model a mechanism that on a monthly basis you are going to talk to 20 to 50 clients and you're going to talk to them in person or remote and you're going to record that so you can add them give them more value and you're going to structure the call in a way so that you can start with the stakes that they're going through their last year's bill versus this year's bill or maybe how they started and what they're you know the bill that's upcoming and how we're going to try and pay it down whatever it is. And then you're going to go through one to three tactics that are going to help them. That's it. And you do that over and over and over again.

26:12>> Gold. Okay. Nice. Oh, that's solid there. And then fill down. And then are they in that clip or no? >> Yeah, of course they're clip. >> Get their consent. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Okay. Get this. Get just get consent. >> Yeah. And you can also just blur out the like this is where this is where a phone works well because you don't see the faces. It's John from whatever. Like no one knows, right? So you could just do face and they could deal all the financials. But if you if you have no face and it's just John, who knows, right? So you can do it that way or if they're in person, you can blur out the face. Either way works, man.

26:42>> Okay. And then generally our meetings right now are about an hour. Like would it be that long or no? >> No. I mean our meeting right now is 10 minutes and we're about to end. >> All right. So just Okay. Quick things. >> Yeah, dude. It's just like you're you're you're good at this stuff. You're doing 4 million bucks a year, right? So you don't suck at it. >> So just just give them one or two things that you can that that they can that they can take away. And also, you can just consider calling like you have followers, right? >> Even though you've been posting for a while, DM some of your followers.

27:08>> Just say, "Hey, want to do a free free tax?" No pitch. I'm just doing it for content. Your lucky day. >> Nice. Uh-huh. >> Cool. >> Dude, so solid, man. Thank you so much. >> Appreciate you, dude. >> All right. >> You mentioned that a lot of creators start with one thing, then they eventually burn out. And how do you build a scalability? Like Graham Stefan's a good mutual friend of ours >> and Graham has openly talked about how he is getting really tired

27:33>> on his like 3 years ago. >> Yeah. I've noticed Graham every year talks about and even when I met him he was doing like three videos a week and you just run out of topics and to your point you just become a news reactor and that's not something he enjoys as much as doing. And >> in a way he's found a lot of success now with his podcast channel for a while like he spun up a coffee business. >> Yeah. >> And he's also talked about how the coffee business didn't work. And so I think it's interesting because on the one hand everybody's like well acquisition is one of the most important things to a business. If you're a creator you're going to succeed. On the other hand, hey Graham did the coffee business didn't necessarily work. Emma Chamberlain's talked about how Chamberlain coffee line also doesn't apparently make money. There are many creators who go to the business path and it seems like well maybe that was not the right play.

28:17>> So two really interesting things about this uh well Graham specifically and then also in general. So um I think we need to be very careful about what audience we want to gather. >> And so Graham's audience has been predominantly people who don't want to spend money. >> Yes. Frugal. >> And so he gathered everybody together who don't want to spend money >> and then was like, "Hey, spend some money." [laughter] >> And so I think there's I think it in some ways it's hard it's almost harder for him to sell something than almost anybody else,

28:46>> right? >> Uh because of the nature of his brand specifically. That's why I think like for him it's like doing media stuff in some ways is probably an easier he can sell to advertisers and he can they can have the the good luck you know but I think for him like something that would have been on brand would have been like honey >> right before the the the l before the scandal right but pre-candle honey I think would have been very on brand for him to offer saves you money >> yeah and he could have made a lot of money on that and so I think all discount related things or discount related financial services probably would have been good angles for him so that's thing one thing two is uh so I guess that sorry I was getting into thing two which is uh picking the right product right

29:18>> uh so you have right audience right And so I think that having the saving money audience, you can make money from it, but getting them to buy something that would be considered frivolous, which is just like coffee. Now you can try and position it as like, okay, it's not Starbucks, fine. But now you're literally dealing with a commodity. Like it's tra like coffee beans are traded as a commodity. Like very hard to be to have alpha from a brand perspective when the whole brand has been built on don't buy. Like this stuff comes off the same factory floor as this stuff and they just put a markup on it, right? And so from a product perspective, I actually think creators are horrendously bad at picking products. M

29:48>> like the amount of conversations I've had with creators who are like hey I'm thinking about launching an X and I'm like what? So on one hand I like these are real conversations I've had where they're like yeah you know I read Peter the 0ero to1 and I think I have to create like a totally new category. >> Yeah. Monopolizing. >> Yeah. And I'm like dude you already your your monopoly is the attention. >> You can sell a commodity and as long as it's on brand you know like with with with you you'll probably be able to do really well. The followup question is, will you do as well as you could have otherwise done if you picked a better product? Which then goes into kind of like circling all the way back to acquisition.com in terms of what we do is we I only really solve for revenue retention.

30:26>> It's like really the only thing I care about because on a long enough time horizon, anything that retains customers becomes huge. >> Mhm. >> If you know how to advertise at all, which if you're a creator, you do >> and if you can keep the customers, then on a long enough time horizon, you become you you build a massive company. >> Right. It's surprising you said retention instead of growth actually. Well, at bas like level one like keep customers, level two, grow those customers too and get them to bring more. But yes, uh and so from a product perspective though, I don't think enough of them are thinking about reoccurring and recurring revenue. And my two cents for anybody who's a creator who's listening to this, do not try and solve churn.

31:04Try and find products that people already don't churn out of and then make it your own. I spent a huge amount of my career banging my head against the wall >> trying to figure out how to make something that people inherently leave like a gym membership uh something that's sticky >> and I've learned a ton and so there's lots of what I would consider like blocking and tackling tactics that I have learned that will will that will that will improve churn >> but to conquer churn like how many of you have turned out of your internet lately how many of you have turned out of your cell phone bill how many of you have turned out of your insurance bank

31:33>> account for that matter and you're still with them >> of course and so you think about these products and so I would rather find products that people already don't leave and have no affinity for and then try and just shift them over. Now you're like, "Wait, how can Well, aren't they technically turning out of them?" Yeah, but I'm being laser targeted in how like, yes, that's the point. That's the advantage that you have as a creator is that you can bring those people over from what is otherwise a commoditized product that they don't care much about but still pay for rather than trying getting people to care about your product in order to buy it.

32:01>> You might remember 2021, everyone is really excited about the creator economy. Everyone thought it's going to be the biggest thing in the world. one because co everyone's at home they're watching online videos and two because Tik Tok short forms going on the scene everyone's getting millions of followers and then 2022 2023 there actually was a bust where a lot of people were like oh creator economy is not going to be a thing and it's because people weren't able to monetize they have all these short form followers they didn't really see >> I had really strong views on this >> oh >> what are you thinking

32:27>> so I think it's because the people who are allocating money didn't understand media >> at this level like I I would I would wager that you and I probably understand the creator better than most. And I I think that fortunately unfortunately I think short form content does not build tremendous influence, >> right? >> I think you can bring awareness. Uh but if we think about influence in terms of like what percentage likelihood can we get the audience of this person to purchase something? Um you just need Okay, so four elements for influence. So you've got likeness. So is does this person look the way that I look? So because of that I will trust them more and be more likely to follow their directions.

33:13>> The second is credibility which is say do correspondence which is basically does this person have evidence or proof that what they say is true. Uh third is you have uh power uh and power comes from someone doing some directive that you have stated >> uh and then yielding a positive consequence from it. And so I'll give you an example of this. So, uh, Huberman made a short about if you have hiccups, how to stop having hiccups,

33:41>> right? >> And I remember watching it and being like, well, I don't have hiccups right now, but I'll try to remember this when I have hiccups. And about a month later, I had the hiccup. >> And you followed it. There's power in what you said. >> And then I did the thing >> and the hiccups stopped. >> And so in that moment, Huberman gained influence over me. I am more likely to follow a directive in the future. M >> and so status is the is the fourth thing that gives you influence which is relative control over over uh reinforcers meaning uh if I am a bartender and I control a scarce resource which is alcohol I have status in this setting

34:14>> uh because I control the things that reinforce >> doesn't matter how rich or powerful you are the bartender >> in this setting I control what's scarce right and so uh if you were a billionaire you control money and so you gain status just from that presidents and politicians also have status because they control resources of the Right. But they still control resources. And so um women have status because they control a scarce resource for men. >> Just being real. >> Y >> and so they can influence behavior.

34:40>> Mhm. >> And so all of those things um increase likelihood that you get adherence uh from or or compliance from a request. >> And so if you have all four, then you are incredibly influential, >> right? And big picture, our goal as creators is to gain actual influence so that we can influence uh the behavior of a large group of people,

35:04>> right? And the way to do that most powerfully is to give them something, some sort of directive that they follow and their life gets better >> and then they're more likely to adhere to a you know following request. That makes sense. So if that's the case, it's very difficult for you to do that well with very short content. >> And so to put this in context, let's say that somebody has consumed 20 YouTube videos of mine. And let's say that that those videos on average were 30 minutes.

35:35All right? So that's 10 hours of of content that they've consumed for me. Okay? Right? Let's do the math here. If the average short that I put out is let's say 20 seconds. Okay? So if we have 20 seconds for a short, that means it's three shorts per minute. So 10 hours time 60, we have 600 minutes is what my longs were. >> Y >> and we'd have to triple that. So they would have to consume 1,800 shorts of mine. >> God, >> right?

36:00>> And so I think that what's happened is that people have wildly overleveraged followership and views for influence. M >> what's interesting is that like small businesses I remember uh Michael showed me this actually he saw this little Q card. He took a picture of it from like a car detailing business or something and they said uh for 400,000 views on Tik Tok or 10,000 views on YouTube

36:27>> Mhm. >> $500. So any creator who wants to make something about their car car detailing organically, they'll pay them $500 if they get 10,000 views on YouTube or 400,000 views on TikTok. So they had they had already basically appropriated that as 40x is the equivalent uh amount of influence. And if it were me, I still would probably rather have the 10,000 views on YouTube. If we're looking at this um what's her name? The the dancing girl Charlie uh Deilia, right? So I think she's had a couple of things that didn't work as well that like and again it's if I make a brand built around slapping strangers in public right as a complete extreme

37:04>> and then I launch a credit card does that really carry there's no SEU correspondence I have no proof right so I have no proof that >> she actually did partner with a credit card company by the way >> right and I think she had a popcorn and to be clear I'm I' i'm there's no shade here that's not my not my my point here my point is to help creators monetize eyes. And so I see the point of short form as one thing, which is to drive them to long form or if you can obviously deliver some sort of value like I got from Huberman in that in that short clip. But the thing is is that the likelihood that that occurs is really really low. I have a pretty decent memory and I remembered a short from a month earlier and then actually did it and got a result. Super unlikely. Now, if you listen to Huberman on a daily basis, for example, he probably gives 80 directives over his every podcast and all all you have to do if you're a long form listener is listen to one of them over a month and your life gets better and he gains influence.

38:01>> And so when he then makes a product recommendation, I'll bet you that the Huberman collabs have probably crushed >> Athletic Greens if you want. >> And he's got broke he's got the sunglasses thing. Um I think he's promoting David Bars uh which is actually high protein. >> Yeah. So like uh and those collabs I think have probably gone pretty well, right? And Rogan also to the same degree like when he makes when he makes recommendations like a huge amount of people like including presidential recommendations, a huge amount of people follow and this is where it gets really [ __ ] interesting. So again it's all of those elements. So, if you have a, let's say, somebody who's a long form host, doesn't talk about politics at all, shows no knowledge of the stuff, has a big audience, brings uh brings somebody on, their endorsement probably matters little. If their audience pays attention to a political candidate, then that's basically just functions as an ad and the political candidate is doing the influencing on their behalf. But for their endorsement to matter, not just their distribution, they have to have demonstrated some credibility around the topic so that people say, "This guy is informed.

39:03>> The value to be other than you've reached a million people or whatever, >> right?" >> Joe has done a ton of political stuff >> and like it, don't like it, whatever. He's demonstrated that he's at least spent a lot of time trying to research the topics with the intention of just trying to find truth from an independent perspective. I'm not getting into like the the weeds on either side here, but just that that has been the intention. And so he is tremendous influence because most people think at least I think most consumers think this way. Uh I don't want to do all that work.

39:29>> Uh I'll just trust him. >> See what's fascinating you describe the primary function of short form to drive to long form because you go to a broader point. You're saying that people had followers but they didn't have influence because influence comes from the four things you just described likeness, credibility, power, status. Initially what was going through my mind was yes 2022 2023 saw a bust because a lot of investors confused influence with followers. Yes, >> because there were more followers brought to the eos but nothing else.

39:56>> The initial premise I was operating was in 2025 which now I'm rethinking oh but now people have figured out how to use short form to upsell to products and services whether on school or >> or >> or these other 15 different monetization methods where these short form units are just becoming really marketing >> school is the best one. Yeah, >> I mean it is the best one. Well said.

40:22Well said. >> The premise for me was, oh, now short form, it's actually just marketing. Like they're just like commercials. Yes. And so the monetization is coming back. The short form is not really successful in growing your influence, but it is successful just from a distribution POV. >> Think of it as like awareness ads. >> Yep. And so what happens is the objective in my opinion. So like the ones you like school for example if you're a short form person it's like how can I just get them to take the tiniest amount of action which is to go into a community where I can get way more interactions with them on a much faster feedback loop so that I can gain the other three or four more like harder right. Um but what's interesting is like the people who I think are doing really well on monetization right now for Tik Tok are doing Tik Tok shop plus lives.

41:06Yes. and what's alive long. >> I think there were some creators that were still wildly undervalued. >> Yeah. >> And many that were wildly overvalued. >> And this is the uh you know the classic story of like I had two people that I paid 100,000 you know had 100,000 uh followers on Instagram and I had both of them do a shout out for my thing and one guy drove 10,000 customers and one guy drove zero. How is now assuming it's not bots, but like there's definitely legitimate creator accounts that have 100,000 followers.

41:37>> I sell genetic reports and supplements >> and we've done 51 million going to be 51 million this year >> and every year is growing. So about 22% growth this year about 22%. >> Um a lot of our systems are in place. The place the system that needs most work is our marketing and funnels. Our retail is by far I wouldn't say by far we do about 22% retail 40% wholesale and the rest on Amazon.

42:08>> Okay. >> And I would say the biggest thing holding us back is probably me. Um because I have a headful I'm a doctor and I have all this information and I have all this genetic stuff and I have all these different types of people coming to me and saying I have this problem. Can you apply this genetic solution? you know, I have these genetics. Can you evaluate the problem and give me a a guide? Yes, here it is.

42:35So, I deal with infertility, pregnancy, neurotropic issues, depression, anxiety, ADHD. I mean, all that and I can solve it with my systems. >> Okay. >> And I've got tremendous outcomes, right? >> And that's why we grow naturally word of mouth as fast as we have been. >> Only word of mouth. >> Yeah. Word of mouth literally >> this whole time. >> Yes. >> Wow. >> We we do have >> Google and beta. Um, but

42:59>> what are you spending it as? >> Maybe 60,000 a month. Okay. 50,000 a month. >> Yeah. >> Um, and they don't they convert, but they're not >> No, I will agree with your claim. It's worth >> Yeah. Um, so I would like to establish clarity for myself so I can go to my team and say, [clears throat] look, this is the one thing that we're going to be working on. >> Yeah. >> And we're going to be dealing with, say, infertility or pregnancy or what have you. And then we we build the funnels and the systems and the director of marketing or whatever the title that's going to be guides the team and we can then grow and keep going and the next dollar figure I don't really care. I don't think I'm going to sell. I'm not sure. I got three three sons.

43:40>> Yeah. >> Um you know, extremely profitable. I'm happy my CEO and I are both we love the business. As long as we're having fun, we're keep going >> and um you know, [clears throat and cough] I'm comfortable. I've got all the money I want. I could retire now, but I I I have this knowledge in my head. >> Got to get it out. I want to help more people. >> Why do you So, why do you want to, >> Unless I misunderstood, why do you want to niche down?

44:05>> I want to not niche down necessarily. >> Yeah. >> I want to establish clarity. >> Yeah. You want a unified message. >> I want to get a unified message. And how do you unify a message when it's whole body and you have all these people? I mean, I used to go to >> Well, I think you chunk up. I mean being like to me the message you have is really clear which is that the problems that you have come from your genetics. >> Well they come from your genetic vulnerabilities but they they truly come from your environment and your lifestyle. >> Okay.

44:31>> So >> so it's like your problems come from one of three places and we will help you with this one or like I think this is I don't I don't think your messaging is that as confusing as you feel like it is. >> Well let me let me give you this. >> I feel like I understand what you do. >> Yeah. So I wrote a book called Dirty Jeans. Not these but genetics. Right. So >> that would have been a turn. Yeah. >> So I didn't used to do landscape construction but um so with dirty jeans the concept is we all have genetic vulnerabilities. The majority of the genetic variations that we all inherit we all have

45:03>> predispose us to various risks high blood pressure anxiety certain situations what have you. I can look at your genetic report and say look you have generic vulnerabilities here. If you apply this lifestyle that clean up your environment, eat these foods, avoid these foods, supply these nutrients, evaluate these labs, you can bypass all those genetic variations. >> That's that's the concept. >> Yeah. >> So, optimization of genetic vulnerabilities improving outcomes.

45:28>> I feel like this is so clear. >> I'm trying to I don't understand what's wrong. What's wrong is is well possibly I've been talking about >> is the site super confusing like like with this like people do people come in confused >> customers will come in well there's a lot of influencers out there which I don't name names but MT Jafar who's heard of the genetic variation MTJR okay so MT Jafar it's it's a common genetic variation which

45:56>> I thought you were naming names no >> I was like this guy just came out swinging he's like let me tell you about Joe Rogan I'm going to name names. >> Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. >> Well, yeah, that [laughter] that All right, >> you're good. Okay, so MT Jafar. >> Okay. >> Sounds like Aladdin. Anyways, >> yes. Yes. >> So, I am I would say the world's foremost expert in this area. >> And so, these influencers have hacked on to this.

46:22>> Yeah. >> And they're using fear >> to sell supplements if you have the genetic variation. >> Yeah, >> that is incorrect. Okay. So, I got to get back on social media, even though I was on social media in 2011 and 12 and speaking all around the world on this. Now, I feel that I have to get back on social media >> and talk about this. >> You think you can go recruit those influencers and like teach them the light?

46:45>> Well, what's funny is the influencer that you're talking about, uh, he read my book and said I was a major influence on him. I was like, "Dude, you need to read the book again." >> Yeah. >> Okay. [laughter] So regardless. >> Yeah. >> Uh he's a fan. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> Well, I'll say this. Like I think that um to me I'll say this. I think that probably I think I speak for everyone here. I speak for all of us. Um I actually think that what you have is really clear. Like I wasn't really confused by anything you said besides MTFAR. Um but but the actual like what you do it's like you have genes. We test genes. Three things influence them.

47:25these things you control. This one we add in and we sell it. >> That makes a lot of sense to me. >> Yeah. We sell it but also we we just have tools that help you understand. Yeah. Because even if we don't sell it and I actually >> You still help people. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I don't want people to buy a supplement if it's the wrong one. And that is actually a huge problem. You know, our sub is really strong and effective if if a mother buys something for herself. >> You're making the best sales pitch. It's awesome. >> Yeah. Well, it's true though.

47:50>> If an erection lasts longer than four hours, like call guys, be careful. I don't want you to take too much. You know, you're crushing the pitch. [laughter] >> So, so how do you design a a marketing funnel that would convert a confused mother who's >> or you know, an infertile dad? >> This is a quiz funnel. >> Yeah, I figured you were going to say that. >> Yeah, for sure. I mean, this is like I just figured you already had one.

48:16>> Well, I need a team that will build it for me. >> Yeah. Um this is this is super like you just don't know anybody in the marketing world. But what you need here um what you what you need though is like you need one guy who like this is not this is it's just somebody who lives outside of your world but in the marketing world who here is in the marketing world who's like considers himself what is he what he's asking on a scale from one to raise your hand is it hard to build

48:42>> right this is super easy to build like you can build this as an afternoon. This is like a jaw form that has that has quizbased questions that then just decision trees into 10 different videos based on the 10 most common issues that people come in with. >> Yeah, fair enough. >> It's literally it. And then after that makes recommendation to physical products like super easy. >> Yeah. >> So my plan is to make a bunch of videos for YouTube longer formish and then cut them short on you know whatever and put some on LinkedIn for B2B. I would do this if I were you. I would recruit as many influencers who are science scientistic. I'll say that not scientific scientistic about health and wellness and things like that. I would recruit them after I build my uh quizbased funnel. And then I would have my kind of low ticket or low barrier offer be the genetic test. So they take this and it's like great, you could be disposed of these things but take our test. Great. And then they get their test results, which I'm assuming gives them recommendations on supplements that they would.

49:42>> It does not because I don't I don't I think we're the only ones that create a genetic report which don't then sell our own supplements because I don't want people to go with supplements [snorts] first. Okay. >> I want them to do lifestyle first. >> Yeah. I had to like shake my own head. I be like, "Yes, rest." That's good. Yes. Healthy. [laughter] >> Be a good person. >> Well, it's true though. No, I mean, I know it's true, too. We all know that you you want to help people. [laughter]

50:12>> You're eating, you know, absolute [ __ ] right? And there's like, stop eating the crap and you might not feel so bad. >> Yeah. Yeah. And buy my supplements, but um you feel 10% better. 90% comes from Novvic Flurries, 10% comes from my supplements. Um but but do both. Um, but anyways, so uh on the way in, this is this is influencers to me, influencer traffic on the front end, literally just preaching your gospel. Have them read the book, take out the snippets, you know, promote that to their audiences.

50:40We have to have some front-end offer that they'd be driving towards. I'm guessing the genetic testing would be the thing. Do you sell via phone or people just it's follow-up sequences that then get them to buy the products after? >> Followup sequences. >> Okay. Right. So then if then that makes it even easier because if you're willing to do affiliate how much does the genetic test cost? >> Well, we stopped offering it and I just emailed today uh whole genome company that we have good report with to white label it.

51:08>> Um we couldn't control the quality of our genetic. >> What's the cost? >> Uh it'll be $400 whole genome now $45 $500. >> Great. So this is what's the margin on that? >> Uh it's going to be low I would imagine. >> Okay. So >> I don't care. >> Yeah. >> [laughter] >> I believe you. So, this is what I would do if I were you and I wanted to grow this and help more people. I would recruit the influencers. I would say, "I'll give you 100% of the profit on the front end test because I want as many people as possible to get tested." And then I would give them all of that profit. So, you make zero on that, which you'll love. Um, [laughter]

51:44>> I did work with Mother Teresa for a while. >> I believe I believe all of this. [laughter] And then after that, I would have all my segmentation sequences where I can maximize profit. And you're going to get so much ancillary because people are going to hear about it. They'll still go to the site and buy and then the people who go through the test, they'll be happy to push it because they're going to make decent money on if you give them all the profit, but it costs you nothing. So great. And that way that would be my that would be my process to really >> So as I build a personal brand, is it better to become an authority in a certain skill and then start posting content or is it better to start posting content without being authority in that skill? Great question. So, my perspective on this, and this probably will differ from other people's, but I can only explain what I do, right? And the kind of the thinking process behind it. I I never want someone to question whether I'm legit or not, right? And I I I think that way, and maybe it's because I just have like massive insecurity. Who knows? Um, but the the reason that I I tend to always start with proof, right?

52:39And so, I would rather like and if you don't have external achievements, right? Then you need the achievements to be effort-based rather than external. Okay? So what does that mean? So instead of saying, "Hey, I did $100 million launch, that's an external achievement. Everyone can see that, great, lots of money, etc." Right? I could say, "I made 35,000 pieces of content." You can control that. Now, whether you did a good job or not is is a separate thing. But when you do effort-based achievements, it's kind of like grind or pay, right? And so in the beginning, you don't have the the money or the proof to do it. So you have to grind. And so grind-wise, it's like, I'm going to make 35,000 pieces of content and document what you're learning along the way. that's fine.

53:15Like that's the game. And so, um, that will be kind of phase one. Phase two is be willing to work with people for free. People spend way too like I'll say this differently. If you're getting started, every single business to this day, I still start with free stuff because I want to get feedback from people. I want to know what they like, what they didn't like, what their pain points are. I want to figure out how to how to smooth out the process. I want to figure out all these different things. And me trying to guess at that on my first shot and ask people to pay me, I'm like, I don't want to do that. I'm going to have bad reputation. I don't want it. Right? And so, it's going to take you so much more time. Think about this. For you to get 10 customers who pay you with it never giving anything away for free is going to take a long time. You getting 10 people to start working with you for free and then using the 10 testimonials you get there to then get your 11th, 12th, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20th customer is going to take you less time to get that 10 paying customers if you do 10 for free first of whatever it is that you sell.

54:15So that's my that's my two cents. Um, more people knowing about your stuff is not going to make you less money. I do think though that like big big big picture, it also kind of depends what you're going to get into. If you want to be you know, it's like I want to be a business coach. It's like, well, dude, just look at the people who have the most who have the most um credibility in in business. They have some big giant thing behind them, right? I would not try and compete there. I would try and compete on a much smaller pond that I can be I can be king of a very itty not even a pond, like a puddle. Like just be king of this itty bitty puddle and create proof around that little bitty itty bitty puddle and you will find people who are willing to pay you because you are a specialist and because they have access to you. Okay. Um, and I'll give you I'll give you one more tidbit for those you guys who are starting out and then I'll take the next call. So, when you're starting out, you always have an advantage. All right.

55:08Every every position has an advantage on the board of the game. So, if you're if you're if you're a Super Bowler, right? You're you're you're a G or whatever you want to say, right? My position is to say don't go with Weenie McGee over here. He's in his mom's basement and doesn't know what he's talking about, right? I have been doing this for however many years and looked at all his credibility. looks all has proof, right? Cool. Weenie McGee, right? Is be in his mom's basement and he's going to be like, "Don't don't hang out with Alex. You're never going to talk to Alex. There's no chance, right?

55:37You're going to be talking to someone three levels down from him and you're just going to be a number to them." I mean, that's what I would say. Of course, we don't operate that way, but like that's what you would say, right? And so, if that's your position, then you say, "Dude, you're going to get my phone number." And so, it's not, "Am I better than Alex?" Of course I'm not better than Alex. Like, own that. Of course I'm not better than Alex. but I am better than the third rung down on his company and you're going to get my phone number and I care about my reputation and that person doesn't.

56:04That's where you compete. And so that's how you can start getting a foothold, which is why there will always be room in the market for people who are new because people who are established are going to have their position to play. Cool Cola Classic is going to say, "We're the classic. We've been doing this forever." And the people who are new and Upstart is like, "Hey, I'm a young founder. Just try my soda out. If you like it, tell me. Give me feedback. I'll try and fix it." That's the position. Both can win. And for anyone who's like, "I don't think this will work." Or something like that. It's like, dude, like I was in the same position. It's not like I'm 50. You know what I mean? like I started at 02 and you just have to outwork, right? And you got to say like I'm willing to do more than those guys are and in the beginning people don't want to say it. I'll do it for less until eventually you have proof and then we have proof it becomes a virtuous cycle of charging more. Hi

56:45>> John. What's up man? Tell me about the business. >> Yeah. So we help people with scrolling back get pain free with our online program. We're currently doing about >> talk a little slower. Talk a little slower. >> I think our constraint is uh >> talk a little slower. >> Consistency. Can you hear me? >> Oh yeah, sure. >> Okay, >> I can >> talk slower. Yeah. Yeah. Talk slower. Talk louder. Okay. >> Okay. >> Yep. So, we help people with chronic back pain and satica. Um, we have an online program. >> Okay. So, online. >> Okay.

57:10>> Yep. >> And you help with back pain. Got it. >> That's correct. >> What's revenue? >> And we're doing n uh 95 grand a month. >> Okay. So, you're doing a million bucks a year roughly. Okay. So, you're doing a million a year. Great. Um, how are So, I know you're online. Are you selling via checkout page or via sales call? >> We do a DM to triage call to sales call. >> Okay. So, sell. Okay. Cool. You're doing online sales people. Okay. >> Yep. >> Okay. Got it. And how are you getting leads?

57:38>> Uh it's we have a million followers on Instagram. >> Okay. 1 million on IG. Anything else? >> Uh yeah, like 200 grand on Tik Tok. >> Okay, cool. Well, you've probably already seen the difference of uh the value of 200,000 on Tik Tok versus 1 million on IG. >> Yeah. >> Want me to give you a quick hack to turn those uh Tik Tok people into uh more value, >> please? >> Yeah. So, we have found that the best uh call to action for Tik Tok if you want to sell higher ticket stuff is actually make the CTA DM me on Instagram and then put the link to your Instagram.

58:13>> Wow. Okay. >> Yeah. >> So, like on Tik Tok, you get people to DM on Instagram. >> I know. But you already have your whole DM team set up on on Instagram anyway. So, like it works great. >> Yeah. Cool. >> All right. So, that's thing one. Great. So, uh what do you want to do? What's the limit? What's what's holding you back? >> Uh it feels like he consistency. So, we have one sales rep and two setters and I want to get more sales reps, but it's just like one week we'll be filled out weeks in advance and then another week we barely get, you know, enough leads to fill up one and then we just end up pitching on every single post. So, it just feels fatiguing for the for clients. So, I'm curious, do we start ads? Can we start retargeting or do we need to fix something first?

58:48>> How many posts a day are you putting out? >> Uh, we're putting out one post a day on Instagram. Uh, we tested two, but it's just uh like we really focus on we edit it for eight hours, we make it great, so it's one a day. Okay. I think you can probably make more. I'll just I'll just put that out there. I would I would 100% not believe in the mythology of like there's a platform limit. There totally isn't. >> And that's on and I I I pretty much stand by that on every platform.

59:13>> Um like Fox News puts out one I just looked this we were we were calling up this morning. Uh does one long per hour on YouTube. >> Oh wow. >> Right. And they do like 300 million views. >> Right. And uh there's a Bollywood account that gets a billion views a month on Instagram and puts out a 100 posts a day on Instagram. >> Jeez. Yeah. >> So you have to think about it like this. So instead So I hear what you're saying with the fatiguing audience. I think more realistically you're fatiguing your editor, not your audience. I think they're not making good enough stuff.

59:43No, I'm being real. I think they're not making good enough stuff. Like your audience has no has an insatiable demand for value. >> Would you like believe that in your core? >> Your audience has an insatiable demand. It will literally never it's an endless pit when it comes to value and has almost no appetite for fluff and waste. So if we I don't know if you can see the YouTube but if we have let's imagine that this circle represents a million people. Okay.

1:00:07>> When you make a post you're getting like 1 to 2% of your audience to actually see it >> right? >> Mhm. >> And so if you make more posts you'll just have more one to two% that see it. >> Okay. >> Okay. Now, where your issue comes up is that when you make your call, you know, your direct call to action posts, then it's like goes from like that kind of thicker dot to just like an itty bitty speck because your your reach gets um hammered, right?

1:00:34>> Uh we actually do a call to action on every post like at the end. That's fat. >> Well, it's it's not it's not the end of the world. Again, all that matters is like how long is the CTA relative to the post, right? So, it's usually like are you doing a mini chat integration? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So, how long is the CTA? >> Uh, it's like six seconds. >> Is it That's long. Is it pre-recorded or is it like pre-recorded then stapled on or are you making them native every time?

1:01:01>> It's native but it's the same every time almost. >> Yeah. So, you want to swap out what the lead magnets are constantly? >> Oh, okay. Got it. >> Right now, because like why would they respond? They already got it. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Right. So, all right. So, I'm going to I'm going to write down little nuggets for you. So, number one, we're going to go Tik Tok Tik Tok uh DMs to IG as CTA.

1:01:24Number two, we're going to make more lead magnets so that you can alternate through them. Number three, uh I think more content is a good idea. >> Okay. >> Number four is I think you need to lower your time uh your CTA time. So, I would probably I would shoot for like 3 seconds or less um for your CTA. The thing is it'll kill the it'll kill the view through rate, >> right? And then that's killing the amount of reach you're getting.

1:01:52>> Mhm. >> Yeah. Okay. And you're doing comment like book or comment whatever and then it DM them the thing. >> No, we actually do a like for free static assessment and then we just basically say comment for an assessment and then we book a call at DMs. >> Yeah. I mean that's also a really heavy ask. So it might be worth considering like >> a cheat sheet and then a triage question. Okay. >> Because I mean like that's like the heaviest right hook you can do. Um yeah, I'll give you guys a little insight also to the my live stream bros. Um

1:02:25>> on one hand like when we do ads that are like direct to workshop that's like quote the heaviest ass like hey come out to Vegas right that's pretty you know it's got it's got to have a hurdle etc. Now when we have a scaling road map which you may have seen ads for right the scaling road map um has lower immediate uh rorowaz but over a 60 or 90day window has superior ro to direct workshop in addition to that it also has like 10 times the reach because getting somebody who's a little bit like somebody who's like yep I want to come to a workshop like they've already consumed like this that's almost like it's almost like uh worm audience retargeting more than it's like an ad and a process that like nurtures you know prospects and and you know warms them up, provides value, etc.

1:03:07>> And so I think if you want to >> broaden uh kind of like the net that you're going through, just make the ask that you have a little bit lighter. So I think one, you've got your direct like if you're doing one a day, I would do like maybe two a week of the direct one and then do the remainder of them as posts that are um like lead magnet centered, right? Like seven tips to fix this or whatever, right? And you you can spin I'm sure you can spin a hundred of those things. It's not it's not that hard. And then the triage question is like, "Hey, are you here for free stuff or do you want to solve the problem for good?"

1:03:38>> And they're gonna say, "I want to solve the problem." Then you're like, "Great." And then you're you're into a sales conversation. >> That's great. And then at what point would you start retargeting ads? >> The thing is is okay, this is this will be great for everybody. So again, I don't know if you can see my thing. Um, so if you think about your audience as this pyramid, right? the people who are buying from you right now are this like tiny tiny little top 1% here. And so there are some things that there are some actions that could get you to to convert just a higher percentage of that 1%. Which means that like we could make the the well or the pyramid

1:04:14>> larger which we would do by posting more times and making better content, right? Or we can keep that pyramid the same size, right? And then we can move this line of what percentage we're converting and make that a little bit deeper. When you add a sales team, that converts a higher percentage of the audience. When you add ads, you're going to convert a higher percentage of the audience because you're just going to have your ads shown to a bigger percentage of people in that sphere, right? And so it's almost like reaching into forward revenue and pulling it forward, which is fine as long as you're filling up the bucket, right?

1:04:50>> So I would Right. You get what I'm saying with that? So, you will absolutely make more money if you have a sales team and run ads. No question. But then you will hit another plateau >> and you will still be limited by the growth of your organic unless you create a true cold traffic acquisition channel, which is a different monster and beyond the scope of right now. All right? And so my recommendation is um I would want you to double your content and if you want to keep one of your your CTAs as uh because I don't want you to like I don't want your business to go down. Uh, keep one CTA as your direct to, uh, you know, book a call and keep the other and make the second CTA for the lead magnet and just do two a day.

1:05:28>> Sounds good. >> Cool. >> Sounds great. >> All right, rock and roll. Appreciate you, John. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> Yeah, thanks for calling Herozi Highline. So, I see content in three buckets. On one extreme, you've got entertainment, which is the entire point of entertainment, just to define the term, is to get people to watch. The only point of the entertainment is to just get people to consume it. That's it. If it accomplishes that, it has succeeded.

1:05:54On the other side, you have education where the point of education is to get someone to change what they do. Right? If you try and teach someone how to answer a phone and then in the same situation, the phone rings and they don't do something and then after they watch you do something, they then change what they do when the phone rings the second time, they have learned. So the point is to change their behavior. If educa- if the video or the content does that, then you've succeeded at educating them. And lastly, you have edutainment, which has the point of both trying to teach and entertaining at the same time.

1:06:27And to be clear, it's less that you make entertaining content or that you make educational content. It's more that you make content and people are either entertained or educated as a result. And so you can mix one thing that entertains some people and then that same thing educates other people. And so I just want to make this very clear that you don't control the audience. You make something and then education or entertainment occurs.

1:06:58But for our purposes, I'll define the content category as the most common outcome of your content. And so if a lot of people are entertained, then you've made entertaining content for the purpose of this presentation, even if one or two people learn something. So for example, some creators might learn stuff from Mr. Beast videos. Wow, I learned how to make videos. But the vast majority of people are entertained. They watch just to watch. On the other hand, Walla, who's one of the number one educators on YouTube, you can even see the different look and feels. And don't worry, I'm going to get into that. He may entertain some enthusiasts around that subject, but mostly he educates students.

1:07:35And until recently, I've been trying to figure this out. I've spent a lot of time really working through this. And so, I actually have videos in all three buckets. I have entertainment videos where the point is to get people to watch. I have edutainment videos where we try and teach and entertain at the same time. And then we have education videos where we just want to change people's behavior. We just want to teach them something. And so the first change number one that we see over lots of the data I'll support in a second is that I'm going allin on education for three reasons. Number one is that when we looked at all of our data all views are not created equal. I'll dive into that in a second. Number two is I like educational videos and number three is I like people who like educational videos too andor people who educate themselves, people who want to learn. And so let me explain these. So all views are not created equal. So there's this theory and this is going to this will be one that's going to rattle some cages.

1:08:29There's a theory that media works like a funnel. In fact, the vast majority of marketing infographics and things like that almost all are funnels. And the theory goes like this. You make entertaining content and then the theory states that people who watch that content then will go to more educational content. Okay, sounds simple enough. We've got something wide, we got something narrow. Fantastic. But in our experience, in my experience, and based on our book sales, based on our email opt-ins, and based on the applications we receive at acquisition.com to become portfolio companies, it works much more like this, which is that entertainment people want more entertainment content and education people want more, say it with me, education content.

1:09:20And so in other words, these people do not become these people, not in any appreciable rate that we would build a business around. And they certainly don't read the books, join the email list, or apply to become portfolio businesses. So if I want more of these people, then they deserve the stuff that they value. And so that's the first reason that I'm doubling down on education. All views are not created equal. Number two, the next is that I simply like doing it. All right? So, you know, I do believe that you should try and do stuff that you like doing. And if it happens to also be in line with your goals, awesome. It's much tougher when the thing you like doing isn't aligned with your goals. But in this instance, when I got that first piece of data, I was like, "Thank God because this is the stuff I like making most." All right? And so, when I talk to ideal customers, in my mind, they are business owners and business interested people. Because if you know me and anybody who who's close to me would probably attest to this is that like if you hang out with me for any amount of time, we will probably talk about business because it's what I love talking about. I I eat it, I sleep it, I drink it, I work seven days on it and like I skip holidays for it because for me it is the holiday. So this is what I like doing and this is what the people that I like serving also like and so they like it better too.

1:10:37And this is where it got confusing for me leading up to this and why this is so important is that it got very confusing when you have so many people saying, "Man, I really like the entertaining content." And this is where it gets difficult. This is where you have to read between the lines of the comments rather than just reading the comments themselves. Right? Because the thing is is for us, or at least for me, they weren't necessarily who I was trying to attract. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, hey, if I could serve the whole world, I will. But I know that I tend to do better serving people who want to educate themselves than people who just want to watch or consume just for the sake of it. And so that's why I'm doubling down on going from edutainment some entertainment some entertainment to education. So that's number one. So let's talk about change number two that we saw going from for us to for you. You're like what does that mean? Let me explain. So recently a mutual friend came to the headquarters and he said, "Hey, I've been consuming your stuff for years, but recently I just haven't been watching as much." And he said it off-handedly. He wasn't like trying to smash my ego into bits. Um, and he failed at that. Uh, [laughter] but when he said it, I really took it to heart, right? It was very gut-wrenching.

1:11:49He said, "It just doesn't resonate as much." I was like, "Okay, got it." It felt like a gut punch since he's literally the person I could help most. This is a business owner doing 10 million plus a year. I was like, "Man, well, that sucks. And that's when I realized that reading the comments actually led me a little bit astray and for you might be leading you astray. And I'll give you some data to support that. And so some people loved our different styles but not the people that I ultimately wanted to help or am best suited to serve. And so we realized that we were serving the wrong who and that had some very significant downstream impacts on what we made and how we made it. So what is making for them or for business owners content really mean? Let me break this down into tactics. All right, so tactically it meant five things.

1:12:36Number one, different packaging. Number two, different introductions. Number three, different meat. Number four, different visuals. And number five, different what I'll call pre-work. All right, so let's start with number one. So, the difference between these two thumbnails is going from vague to clear. All right. So, if I looked at all the stuff that we did in the past, if I said, "What is the video on the left about?" You'd probably be like, "I a rule of some sort that might have to do with money." Not sure. If I said, "What's the what's the video on the right, the yellow background video?" If I were to describe it, I'd probably say a map or a blueprint or schematics of some sort that go from zero to a million. Okay. Well, guess what?

1:13:21The one on the right, this is exactly that. The one on the left actually has nothing to do with what that thumbnail looks like. And what do you know? When people click on something that they don't know what it's about, they have a smaller percentage of getting something they actually want than if you say this is what this is about, and then they get exactly what they think it's about. So, we're going from vague to clear in both what it looks like, the thumbnails, and what we say about it, the headlines.

1:13:47And so that's number one from a packaging perspective that we will be changing andor going more allin on. And I want to take a pause here for a second about this. There was also kind of a pervasive narrative in in the kind of marketing world. It's like you got to have curiosity. You got to like you don't want to tell them everything. You want them to to be able to get no like if they want that thing they will click on that thing and then you just give them that thing. And that has been a very hard lesson for me to learn and so I share it with you now. So the second is different introductions. You guys feeling this? Okay, good. Okay, different introductions. Now this one is really big. So going from confirming the thumbnail or confirming the headline to proof and this is super important. I'll explain the difference. So a lot of the things that I learned like many of you if you are trying to get into content creation of any sort or media is that you look at the people who are who are the biggest, right? And so oftentimes the biggest people in media are entertainers. Now why is that? Because everyone gets value from entertainment.

1:14:50But there is no one thing from an education perspective that can provide value to everyone. Why? Because everyone already knows different stuff. So if I educate a wide slice of people, there's still already people who know that thing and then do not get value. So entertainment by definition will always be greater or larger the followings for those people than people who educate. there is no no bones about it like it is that way and so a lot of the lessons that entertainment teaches everyone listens to because they have the biggest followings but I don't think the actual tactics they subscribe or espouse are correct at a tactical level at a principal level yes and so let me just say a second about what that principle is is that the person who's going to consume the content we want to increase their perceived likelihood that they will get what they clicked. So, just like the headline and just like the thumbnails, now when they said in entertainment, you want to confirm it.

1:15:46Well, that's because most of the sensational entertainment is something crazy. And so, the likelihood that someone just got the click so that they could not do that crazy thing is pretty high. And so, if you want people to watch you smash a Lamborghini, then you better have the Lamborghini next to you or people aren't going to believe that you're actually going to smash it. Now, let's flip to entertainment for a second. Sorry, let's slip let's let's switch to education for a second. If I say I'm going to teach you a physics thing, I'm going to teach you about the law of I don't even know what the first law of physics is, but if you push it, it will move. Something like that.

1:16:22Anyways, if I want to have proof or increase the perceived likelihood that they're going to be well taught, then what I actually have to do is edify the person. Why should I listen to you? If I'm the viewer, there's a zillion people that could write something on a board. But if you're a PhD physicist, then the likelihood that I will listen to you and that I will get what I want is much higher. And so in both of these examples, we are actually doing the same thing, but we do it differently if you want to educate. And for me, when I looked at my videos, and I'll explain the data in a second, it became really clear.

1:16:59And so in entertainment, it's say the title again and then literally show them what was on the thumbnail. In education, it's show them that you can do what you promised them in the thumbnail. And that's the difference. And to figure out what made intros for our videos work, I actually rewatched my top 35 educational videos. This actually took some time. And so let me just save you like a lot of hours and just give you the nugget. And so I actually developed a new moniker around how to think about introductions for ourselves that I'm spreading throughout my whole team and you can just steal it.

1:17:35Proof, promise, plan. So I'll break down all three of these. So all of the introductions of the best education videos that we had had these three characteristics. And I want to make one point about the order of these is that you can have these three mixed in any order you want. I would emphasize the one that is the most important for that particular piece of content. So if you have something that you're making that you think the proof is going to be really important, then lead with that.

1:18:04If you have a promise that's incredibly important for the audience, then lead with that. If you have a plan that for some reason is going to be more emphasized, then lead with that. But I would say that for our content, for the most because I'm a business educator about making money in general, most people have this big glaring sign above their head before they can even turn on the volume of their brain, which is why should I listen to you? And so I tend to lead with proof. And so proof is that you prove that you know what you're talking about. You give people a reason to believe you. The promise is to tell them what they're going to get or learn from the video. And the plan sets the expectations of what will happen next.

1:18:41So, let me give you a real world example of this. I started this presentation with data that shows that I've done what I'm talking about. If I went up here and just skipped this part, you might be like, "Okay, all of this up to this point, why should I listen to you?" And you'd be right in thinking that because you have no idea who I am. I could just be some random dude that looks like a Birkenstock slightly lumberjacky-ish weirdly dressed man. Like, why would you [laughter] listen? And you'd be reasonable to believe that, right? But if you start with that, then you're like, "Okay, well, he knows something."

1:19:10The promise was what I said you would get at the beginning. I said, "I learned six things that made money and grew my brain that you can use today, and I'm going to save you $4 million in three and a half years, and you'll just get all the lessons that I learned." That was the promise. Making sense? Okay. And then finally, we had the plan. I said, "How are we going to get there? How am I going to complete that promise?" I said, "Well, there's six changes and I'm going to walk through them." That's the plan. And so leading with those things, we found got business owners or the people that I'm interested in to actually better frame and perceive and get educated on the content that we're talking about.

1:19:43And so that's what we're changing out of our introductions. Third, now let's talk about how this strategy changes the meat of the content. What we're actually like the the real bones, the potatoes. All right? is that going from be realvlog stuff because we have made that to list steps and stories when we looked at the educational content that did the best they had more of the right and less of the left from razle I would I would love to say to dazzle but it really is it's just razle on the left and so I actually wanted to show a different type of content so I don't want to make this seem like this is all youtuby I just have like long form video there has all of the elements and some platforms don't have all of them so you YouTube's a very easy platform to to base this off of But this is from Instagram and Tik Tok would function the same way etc. So if you look at the squares here, I just pulled the last 30 days of content that we made and I looked at our bottom performing over the last 30 days that we posted that were reals and then I looked at the top. Now interestingly it was a almost a perfect reversal. So the bottom 12 videos that we made, eight out of 12 I would say had more razle emphasized.

1:20:53It was more about effects, a little bit higher production. And on the flip side, and this is what was crazy, and this is why I'm sharing this stuff with you, because like I would I would literally never have guessed it. And that's why we look nine out of 12, 75% of the best videos we had emphasized language, emphasized the actual message more than the production. And so it was about emphasizing the language rather than the razle. I find this very fascinating.

1:21:19Now, to be really clear, you can have really bad language. you're like poor vague unclear language and it won't do well and you might have razle that just absolutely crushes. I just look at the trends of 75% on this side were this style or this type and 75% that weren't as good were this style. Well then let's do more of this and less of that. And so those are the main meat changers that we're doing in the videos. We're emphasizing language. This also is true with longs as well. So, if I go and show you this real quick, language that's on the screen and that's from one of our best videos ever. And that takes up 70 80% of the video is actually just words.

1:21:56Interesting for me at least. I mean, I was a little offended because I thought I had a, you know, good face, but apparently no one cares. [laughter] So, that's what we're changing about the meat. So, let's talk about visuals. This one's a big one. All right. So going from overp production and I want to be clear not overp production over production for the objective. So it's not like we did like my team did anything wrong or anything like that. It's just that if we want to educate sometimes production distracts from the objective of education. If the point for entertainment is to get someone to watch, then adding lots of things can be a good thing. But if you're trying to learn physics and there's whisbangs and popups and changing backgrounds, it's really hard to learn. And if that's the throughput or that's the point of the video that it actually detracts rather than adds. And so the difference that I put in this example here is we have a background that changes colors while I'm teaching something. It does not help someone understand the subject matter better.

1:22:55Fundamentally, changing background color will not help anyone learn more. On the flip side, clarifying what words on a screen are because maybe my handwriting is not that good, would help people understand that's the difference. So overproduction to effective production from distracting to enhancing from visual effects to visualizing data. So instead of having flames behind me, it's what does this look like on a chart? So we can give relative scale, so we have scope so we can show changes over time.

1:23:28And so that's how the visuals that did the best looked like. And then number five, let's talk about pre-work for a second. So going from postp production to pre-search. So instead of saying, "Hey, let's just record something and then fix it in post." Anybody who's in the media side knows what I'm talking about. Four weeks of editing after, you know, almost no prep to get a video out. Well, what if we did four weeks of research and then we have almost no editing because we thought of everything ahead of time.

1:23:59Well, guess what? The videos where we spent I mean, we're like the the the hour to hour ratio is stupid. And I'll get to that in a second. But if we spend a quarter of the time that we used to spend on post in pre, we eliminate 90% 90 maybe 95% of our post edit work and manh hours. And for the business owners in the room, that's real cost. That's real savings. And for the also business owners in the room, that also means increased production. So if I can take a quarter of the time and I can get almost zero time on the back end, that's four times the videos. But not only is it four times the output, it's also higher quality for your goal and your audience.

1:24:43So this was a big thing that we noticed. The videos that we spent the most time on the front end, we spent less time on the back and they did better. And so we want to spend more time before than after. And so this is my little quote if you want to write something down. Uh an ounce of pre-work is worth a pound of post. So that was my little my little take on this. And so by focusing more on what educates and what it means, we do great. And everything else distracts from that goal.

1:25:10And so those are the five things that we're changing tactically and that we're doubling down on to cater to business owners. this, at least for my audience, is what they cared about. And I happen to be in that audience, and I feel that way, too. So, I'm happy about it. So, that's how we went from for us as media people to a degree because I've gotten into this now, uh, to for you or for your audience. And for me, that means for business owners.

1:25:35So, now let's talk about wide deno. All right. And this will also ruffle some feathers and, uh, rattle some cages. So, instead of talking about relationships and college and food and lifestyle, I'm going to be narrowing down or doubling down on, if you will, business, business models, business leverage, and selling in a business. Notice business being in all of these videos and all these topics. And so, that's how I'm going narrower. Very simple.

1:26:09Now that I'm going to go back a slide cuz I want to I want to hit on this for a second. Just like I said earlier that people who like entertainment also just want more entertainment. What we also found is that people who I'll go back real quick. People who watch relationship stuff want more relationship stuff. And as they should, that's what they clicked on. That's what they want. That makes sense. And people who want to learn about college are people trying to make a decision about college. Guess what?

1:26:37people probably aren't business owners and people who want to learn about food, they watch other food videos and people wonder about lifestyle probably watch other lifestyle videos. But for me, those were not necessarily the people that vibe the most with my stuff. And that makes sense because to be fair, this is a little bit more foreign to me. When I talk about business, I feel very comfortable. When I talk about these things, I just give what I would consider hot takes. This is my perspective.

1:27:04So that is what we're doubling down on in terms of the topics that we're choosing for the content we make. So that's number three. Let's go number four in terms of the the things we're doubling down on. So before this, we used to track views. This is another big one, man. All six of these are big, man. I'm glad I made a presentation about. So before this, we used to track views as our primary metric. So I'll take a second here. Who uses be honest? Be honest. Everybody's like likes don't you can't trade likes for for paying rent.

1:27:34You can't pay payroll with views. Sure. Okay, got it. Who here actually tracks something besides views? Let me say it again. Who makes views the most important metric you track? All right. Right. A lot of you. That's okay. Me, too. But I'm going to give you a good metric that you can track. And this is after pouring through. Believe me, I'm a big data guy. Um, a metric that you might not expect.

1:27:58So the main reason is that I had a six to 12 month deal cycle. So, I started by using views because I really had no other metric because for those who don't know what I do, well, I'll explain in a second. But we had no idea what what it would do besides driving awareness and I didn't really have any other objective, right? But in that time period of doing a deal in every six to 12 months because we buy companies, that's more or less what we do. Um, we began seeing a much closer correlation with faster feedback metrics. And ideally, in any business, you want as little latency between the metrics you track and the behavior you want to change. And so if you want to get people to change something and you want to look at something that takes a year to get feedback, really tough to change behavior. But if you can have a metric that you can see daily changes or hourly changes, then those are things that are going to much more quickly change behavior. So that you can have a hundred feedback loops in terms of changing and getting better than one every year.

1:28:50And so besides book sales, optins, and applications, there was a metric that stood out as fastest and most measurable. It was ad revenue. And this is really surprising to me. So, and I this is the point I want to make real quick is that to be clear, for those of you who don't know who I am, ad revenue is not how I make my money. All right, just very clearly. Um, for those who don't know, my wife and I exited our first big company uh for $46.2 million in December of 2021. You can Google it.

1:29:15American Pacific Group was the private equity firm. Jim Launcher, Prestige Labs are two of those companies. Um, and since then, we invested and bought a number of companies that have grown a lot and do over $200 million a year. So, I do media to feed a lot of different things, but I don't directly monetize the media and like ad revenue is I'll explain why in a second is an important metric that we can use for everything else. Okay, so these are companies that we own. Great. So, for me, I pretty much always ignored ad revenue and just saw it as something that could offset some of the cost of my media team. There was really nothing else. But I was wrong.

1:29:46It's actually so much more. So, let's let's dive into a little bit for a second like how does ad revenue come to be? So it comes from two things. This number of views times revenue per views. Now the actual term is RPMs which is revenue per meal which is French for thousand. But it's number of views times the revenue that you get. Okay. Per view. Fantastic. So it takes into account and this is why this is important because we thought views and that was the only metric we had. But we had to have something to counter it because otherwise then you get views for view's sake. But we needed a quality metric with a quantity metric, which by the way, paired metrics, if you're ever tracking something for a department, having like number of tickets resolved with rating against the the the resolution of how well those customer service reps resolve, paired metrics allow you to get to the best or most effective throughput for any department.

1:30:33And I just didn't know enough about media to find out what our paired metric was. And this happens to be a single metric that pairs both. And so it takes account the quality of the audience which for me was business owners who have amongst the highest spending power. And so RPMs are the highest. Now for so for me the RPMs go up. It means I'm getting more of the quality people that I want. And so this gave me and my team something that we could shoot for that bounced making videos for the right people who wanted to watch. So I mean ideally we absolutely want to crank views with the right people. And that's what that was able to track for us. And looking backwards, the month with the highest RPMs and ad revenue also created the most book sales, the most opt-ins, and the most business applications.

1:31:16And this had nothing to do with how many views we got. In fact, we did kind of an experiment lately where we did 90 days of almost no business stuff. We just did more uh more edutainment and entertainment style uh content and our views went through the roof. Like way up, two 3x what we're accustomed to. But even with the increase in views, our ad revenue dropped by half. So, we're actually getting the wrong people. And I share this with you so you don't have to. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10stage road map from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so, I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business. what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate. And we've done this across software, physical products, uh, service, businesses, brickandmortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so, the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.comroadmap, just enter your info, and it'll spit it right back to you. All free.

1:32:23And so the nice thing about this from a team perspective for those who do have larger teams and want to translate this over is that my team now has real-time access to this. So they can see every single piece of content and the ad revenue that it generates. And they can quickly generate baselines in their mind of what's good and what's bad on an objective metric that really is good and bad rather than just like, hey, this video cranked. Yeah, but it didn't it didn't bring any of the right people. We got this thing that had 10 million views. Okay, but it drove nothing.

1:32:49Versus we had this video that had what? 100,000 views and it made more ad revenue than one that had 10 million and we saw the corresponding increase in the metrics that matter to us. And so that's why we switched from views being the metric that we're optimizing for to ad revenue because it's a leading performance indicator. It happens almost in real time rather than something that happens in a big in a rears to give a fancy word later. So that's number four in terms of the things that we're doubling down on.

1:33:19So, let's talk about the fifth one, shorts to longs. All right, this is yet again, another big one that's going to ruffle some feathers. So, for a long time, the prevailing idea in content marketing was again a funnel. It's like everything's a funnel. All right, and it was believed that shorts viewers got more people to then watch longs and then those long viewers would then translate into becoming customers, right? So, people watch shorts and then they watch longs and they give you money, right?

1:33:47That was kind of the prevailing thought. But again, when we looked at the data, it looked more like this. Shorts viewers watch more shorts and long viewers watch more longs and customers buy more. [laughter] And so the point is that that these are different audiences. And I will make a note here that this can change my platform. So I might be a long viewer on one platform and a shorts viewer on another.

1:34:17And where I do think the magic happens is where you can have shorts in one thing and so someone finds you on Tik Tok, but then they are a longs viewer on YouTube and then they watch your longs there. So I do think there's an element there, but not the way the narrative goes. And so for us, longs drive a lot more conversions than shorts. Conversions being book sales, opt-ins, applications, right? And business related content, unsurprisingly brings more business owners than not business related content. And so we are going to double down on more longs about that stuff and change our short strategy to keep the volume the same but focus more on business overall.

1:34:57And again, people watch differently on different platforms. So making shorts in order for people to on a different platform watch long still carries as far as we know. So despite the mega obsession with shorts that has kind of prevailed for the last few years because it was a new, you know, format of content, we're putting now more emphasis on longs overall for now as far as we have data. So that's number five.

1:35:23Now let's talk about the sixth one that I'm going all in on. Assume more to assume nothing. All right. So what does this mean? So let's start with assume more and what that what that really means broken down. to assume more means I made content assuming people already knew me. Okay, so here's an example. The Alexi guide to haters. I might be like, if I don't know who Alexi is or have never seen that face before, why do I care if I see the day in the life of Alexi? Yet again, I assume everyone knows me in this. I'm I'm sharing these mistakes with you as far as I'm concerned for getting new people into my world. It wasn't made. I assumed like everybody's going to know me. The Alex Ramosi diet, everyone knows me. No, they're like, who is this guy?

1:36:11Right? And here's why this matters. If you want your content to bring people who don't know you, which is why many of you guys make content, then you can't assume they do. And so this is what this looks like tactically from a headlines perspective. If I were to remake these today, I might try a first crack at business influencer crushes haters and shows how you can too. Okay. So now if I'm clicking I would understand at least that this guy is a business influencer of some sort and he crushes haters. Okay. Why I might want to see haters get crushed. Uh day in the life of $200 million per year CEO. Okay. Now the jet tells this me that this Alex Ramosi from the the first one before Alexi is maybe rich or maybe he can afford a private jet. But now I know he's a CEO because I could be a rapper. I could be more realistically when I walk around the place that I live all the people that in my community assume that I'm a football player. It's the number one thing I like. So you uh play football. on the hockey team. And uh I I say no, I can. Nope. Nothing wrong with that, but no, that's not what I do. Um and then the third one there, Alexi diet, 16 hour workday, six-pack diet for business owners, whatever. The point is is that we actually make it welcoming to everyone.

1:37:15And so here's how we do this tactically within the content itself. So we go from they know me to introducing yourself every time. So earlier I was like, I'm Alex Mosie. This is what I do. This is the the the survivors have gotten whatever we introduce ourselves. Two, they know why they should listen to me. Tell people why they should listen to you every time. Three, the inside jokes. You know how I get. No, I don't know how you get. Please fully explain the reference because that reference is another piece of content that I haven't seen because it's the first video I've seen from you. And if you tell an inside joke and someone doesn't understand the inside joke, guess where they are? On the outside. And guess where people don't want to be? on the outside. And guess where people spend money? On the inside.

1:38:00And number four, going from acting like you're already friends to pretending everything goes to people who have no idea who you are. And when you make content, so people who don't know you can enjoy it. More do. And for those of you who are worried, because I can already hear the thoughts that are coming up. So let me just address those right now. I see you. I'm gonna lose retention if I introduce myself. Okay. Well, let's play the equal opposite. Would you rather fewer people know who you are or more people who have no clue?

1:38:32Because on one hand, we have some people who know you and on the other hand, we have lots of people who also don't know you. So, you're in the exact same position you were before. Two, well, aren't people going to get sick of this? You're going to keep saying your name every time or keep introducing yourself. Well, from what I can tell, if you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling road map that I've used to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 10, and 0 to 100 plus. And so, you can click here and you can check it out.

1:39:06Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you. And uh enjoy.