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0:00So this is a brand new playbook. I think branding came up a bunch. And so one of the things with branding is like how do we how do we reliably get how do we reliably make the associations we need in order to attract the customers we want who buy and buy at the highest prices and continue to buy and refer friends. And so the thinking it starts with who do we want to make our associations with, right? And so in the beginning when we're making associations, the goal here from a branding perspective is four things, right? We want to have status, which means that we control scarce resources in some way, okay?

0:33Number two is that we want to have power, meaning we have we tell someone to do something, they do it, they get a good thing to happen. That's power. The third is credibility. So is there third-party evidence is there evidence in the world that what we have said is true? Now, I want to be clear with each of these objectives is that one thing can happen that checks multiple of these boxes, right? So like if I sell a company for example, it gives me credibility because it's like okay, this guy has sold a company before and for a large amount of money. Also, the money from that sale gives me status because status money gives status because it's scarce resource. All right, now let me pull this out. If I just had money, I'm a trust fund kid for example, uh or something like that if I if that were me, I'm not that, so don't clip this you crazy persons. Okay, all right, I'm not a trust fund kid. Uh but if I but if there were a trust fund kid, right? That guy uh would have money and he would have more status than somebody who has no money. But he would have he would not have credibility because he didn't do anything for it, all right? Just to be clear here. So you'd have more influence than someone who has nothing, but not as much influence as someone who had done something. So we got status, uh we have power that you that you follow their advice and then something good happened. You have credibility, right? You have proof in the outside world, and then you have likeness, right? Just are they similar to me in both the way they look, but also the way they behave, their values, etc. And so if you think about like the most influential person in the world for you specifically would be someone who is your identical twin, right? Who has done things uh and and has proof that what they've done worked, then they told you to do something, you did that thing, and it worked. And if they have more influence, they've told you to thousands of things, and thousands of things worked. And uh they have they have the original status, which is like they have something that you want that they have, right? And so that would be like the most influential person in your life. Now Now if you think about this from the perspective of like a parent, right?

2:30A parent, you know, has some level of likeness with you. Uh they've told you to do zillions of things throughout your life, and many of them, despite the fact that you might have some weird relation with your parents now, many of those things did work. When they said, you know, like, "Don't touch that. It'll hurt." And then it did, you know, things happened according to plan, right? Now, whether they have credibility, different question. Whether they have status, different question. But you can imagine, you know, if some if some guy is into business or wants to be in business and their father uh was involved in their upbringing, and has status, has credibility, has told them to do things and it worked, and they and they and they are similar to them, that person probably has tremendous influence over their child, right? And so why am I explaining these four things? So when we're creating a brand, we're trying to demonstrate as many of these things as possible. And so I want to be clear here, there's entertainers and there's educators. I'm speaking more specifically to educators because I would say that's the vast like far more people who follow my stuff tend to fall in that in that category. And when I say educator, I want to be clear, it's not that you sell stuff around education. If you're in plumbing, you make content that's going to educate, not necessarily entertain. People are like, "Oh, I can't wait to can't wait to watch this toilet video." No, it's like you want to make content that's going to provide value.

3:42You're going to give people instructions they can follow and get a good result, right? And there's a reason that um a lot of the content that I have is so instruction-based. One is cuz I want you to get good results. I want you to use this stuff in your life, but ideally use it and good things happen as a result, you then make that association with me and then you say, "Oh, I will be more likely to follow his uh his instructions in the future." And so, you gain compliance. So, many people all humans have other humans who have more influence or less influence over them and it's predicated on those things. So, hopefully that makes sense in terms of how how I think through this. And then

4:14>> I have one. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> I think a lot of people on here have made branding mistakes. >> Okay. >> They've done something, they've messed up, maybe they >> oversold, maybe they you know, made a mistake online, they posted something icky. How do you think about dealing with branding mistakes? I know you've got a formula in here. >> Yeah. So, here's my here's my best analogy for you and I talk about it in the in the branding playbook. So, if we have a bouquet of roses, so if I give Leila a bouquet of roses, yes, I give Leila a bouquet I've I've given you flowers before.

4:44So, I give Leila >> So seldom. >> I I probably should do it more. Uh so, I give Leila a bouquet of roses, right? Now, if I give the bouquet of roses, fine, that let's just consider that my reputation. Okay, it's all these roses. Now, all of a sudden if I hand Leila this bouquet of roses and then one of them is rotten or broken or both, it kind of spoils the impression of the roses. Now, if I have four roses and one of them's cracked, it's like, uh that kind of like it would it's like like it's as silly as that sounds, it's a black eye on the brand, right?

5:13Now, how do you overcome this? And here's one of the things with branding that everyone like I think people fail to understand. You can't ever remove the broken flower. It's permanent. That association occurs. But, you can dilute its influence on the person. So, I'll explain. So, if I still have this broken flower, what do I do? Well, if I have seven bouquets of red flowers and there's one broken flower, she's probably not going to notice it that much.

5:41And so, this is fundamentally how you can recover from a branding mistake is making more higher volume associations with the good stuff and fewer associations with the bad stuff. Now, within that context, I talk about this in the playbook, all right? Um there's three kind of degrees from a from an influence perspective that I think through in terms of a brand. And they are in decreasing or in increasing order of effectiveness. On the furthest out rung, you have the things that you say about you, right? That's the furthest rung out. Maybe they'll believe it, maybe they don't, whatever, right?

6:15The next rung is what other people that they respect say about you. Significantly more powerful. This is a reason that social proof, reviews, like if we were to split this in two, it would be other people that you don't know, and then other people that you do know and have influence. So, if I just split that second ring in half, that's what it would look like. So, generic social proof, and then even within that category of social proof other people that you don't know, it'd be other people you don't know who are exactly like you would be more powerful than other people you don't know who are not like you, all right? Hopefully this is making sense. Now, the bottom and the closest rung to influence over you is what you think about the person. And the way that that actually occurs is going to be your experience with the products or services that that business has has delivered to you. So, I'll explain. So, Apple has, you know, for years has had a really, you know, wonderful brand, right? I'll give you I'll give you a Nike example, too.

7:05They have these great associations with these, you know, goats and these super aspirational figures, right? But if you bought a Nike product and the product sucked, they could have as much marketing in the world as they want, the best quote brand in the world, all the best associations, but if the product sucks, people find out pretty quickly. And so, you'll get the first purchase, which is why the brand loop has to be continued through product back up to the top again, right?

7:31And so, if you if you create this image and you make these associations enough that people do want to make a purchasing decision, once they make that decision, it doesn't matter how good I say a restaurant is. It doesn't matter how good I say a movie is, right? You see the movie ads, what the movie says about itself, you hear friends say, you know, I saw that movie, and if the friend uh you see other people saying they saw the movie and you heard it was good, then your friend sees the movie, and as long as you have the same taste in movies as your friend, then you might think, okay, well, now it's significantly more likely that I'll watch this thing. But at the end of the day, once you watch the movie, you're going to decide if you like the movie or not.

8:05And so this is kind of how you walk through this uh from a longer-term perspective. And so hopefully that makes sense, and this is some of the stuff that I talk about uh in the branding playbook, which is uh right now, some of you guys might have noticed this, but direct response isn't really isn't really performing like it used to, and I noticed this 5 years ago, which is why I wanted to like, you know, I had to change my stripes. I had to like I got to get ahead of this. Um and so I started making content, right? And so um the thing if if anyone's like worried like, oh, it's too late to start. Actually, it's a really good time to start, and I'll explain why.

8:375 years ago, 8 years ago, content worked a lot more like an email list, which is like, you know, people would see some content, and then they would hit subscribe, and then they would get that content, almost like a digital email list. It's shifted now with TikTok, and the algorithm's changed. So it's become interest media more than social media, but the term is still there, social media, but I wish everyone just call it interest media. And so if you're like, man, what type of content do I make in order to build the brand that I want, we need that content to attract the right type of customer, which means you don't want to make content just to get views.

9:08If you do if you just remake memes, right now for us, the green man was a whole thing that, you know, that we did cuz we wanted to have a I'll explain that later. It's a faceless character thing. But um but if you just do re- remake funny memes and you're a plumber, the likely that you're going to get customers from that is relatively low, right? Compared to something where you're actually helping somebody who's trying to deal with some plumbing-related issue, and here's three things to consider when you're about to fix this problem, right?

9:34Now it's going to get few more fewer views, but because of how good the algorithms are now, they will display that, they will literally serve it to customers or people who are most interested in that right now. And that's because the AI already knows what it's about. Right? Like I get served super super niche like fat uh welding and fabrication for like gym equipment because I'm a big gym gym equipment like content consumer and also buyer. And so I get I get accounts that are served to me all the time with like 500 500 people, 2,000 followers, 5,000 followers. And I can imagine that business owner being like, "Oh man, I should make some I should make content about like personal development." It's like, "Dude, no. Just like keep showing your the the cool stuff that you're building. And the people who like the cool stuff you're building are the ones who are going to be attracted to your stuff. And that's what you want." So I just want you to like completely divorce and I've I've like I think I've done a decent job with the team of consistently we're keeping pushing away the the how well are we doing has something to do with how many views we're getting.

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