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

In the last 12 months, my social media hit a grand total of three billion impressions and brought in four and a half million new subscribers. And with

that, I managed to break the world record for the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time, generating just over $105 million in sales in a weekend. And here are my top lessons

weekend. And here are my top lessons that I've learned when it comes to building a bristal rate. Enjoy. You guys

want to hear something absolutely insane? I was able to take home more in

insane? I was able to take home more in a year than the CEOs of McDonald's, IKEA, Ford, Motorola, and Yahoo combined.

as a kid in his 20s and I have continued to for over half a decade which resulted in a $200 million per year portfolio and $100 million net

worth by age 32 and no one is more surprised than me. Me expressing that fact will create envy in some anger in

others skepticism in most confusion in old people and inspire a select few. You

are who I made this presentation for.

But before I dive in, raise your hand if you'd like any of the following things to happen. To be able to charge two

to happen. To be able to charge two times, five time 10 times more than your competition for the exact same thing.

Like Yeti, we have basically identical cups and somehow they're able to charge $40 versus $10 simply because of what's on the cup. If you'd like to be able to have customers buy from you over and

over and over again without considering competition, like Harley, once you're a Harley guy, you stay a Harley guy for life.

And if you'd like to virtually guarantee sales in any new business or product that you launch, like Apple, a lot of people just wait in line. They say,

"Just leave my credit card. Just bill me and send whatever you're going to come out with." And that's more or less how a

out with." And that's more or less how a lot of Apple buyers are. Once they

become an Apple person, they become an Apple person for life.

So if you like that stuff, great because that's what this talk is about. And so I couldn't figure out how these brands, these companies were able to do this, demand these prices, get people to stay

loyal for a really long time.

And I felt like for me, I always had to like beg, borrow, and steal. And I had to squeeze and push so hard just to get people to buy. Whereas these companies made it look effortless.

And it's because I didn't understand this one thing and that's the subject of the talk today. Brand.

And the thing is even people who claim to understand it often don't. And the

few who do understand it do a terrible job teaching it. So this definitely isn't going to be marketing 101 class on branding presentation colors and logos. And this definitely isn't going

logos. And this definitely isn't going to be about feelings, presence, intuition, or whatever. This is about making money.

And this concept that I'm going to explain to you is how I built a 7.8 million person audience across all these platforms in the past 40 months or so. I

sold over a million copies of my last two books and do deals worth hundreds of millions in our holding company acquisition.com.

acquisition.com.

That is why you build a brand or at least that's why I built mine. And so

today I'm going to cover three things.

Number one, what branding is. If you

don't know what it is, you certainly can't build one. Number two, why it makes money. Because once you have it

makes money. Because once you have it built, you're like, "Okay, well, how do I trade this thing for doll hairs, which is what we want." And then third, how to start and grow yours. So, let's start

with the first one, what branding is.

So, when I decided to build a brand, I looked at what many popular marketers said about it. Here are some popular definitions that I have removed the marketers from them. This is not

throwing shade, so I'm just saying them.

A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization. A

brand is not what you say it is, it's what they say it is. A brand is a set of expectations memory stories and relations to that. Take it together.

Account for a customer's decision to choose one product or service over another. A brand is emotional shorthand

another. A brand is emotional shorthand for accumulated and assumed information.

A brand is present when the value of what the product, service, or personality means to its audience is greater than what it does for the audience. A brand is a product, service,

audience. A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other product, services, or concepts so it can be easily communicated and usually marketed. Branding is the process of

marketed. Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name, its qualities and personality. The

promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design. If these sound vague

distinctive design. If these sound vague and confusing, it's because they are.

And I was just as confused as you when I was trying to figure this out because none of them told me what to do. And so

after looking at all these marketers words, I think I pieced it together. At

least enough that once I started thinking about this way in a different way that I'm about to share with you, my brand grew and it grew fast. And the

reason this is so important is that if you don't know what to do, nothing's going to change. Fundamentally, if you don't change your behavior, obviously nothing's going to change as a result.

And so I want to define this one term before we get going. Learning.

Who here came to learn? Raise your

hands. Fantastic. All right. Other

words, just be talking to the wall. So

learning means same condition, new behavior. And so if I wanted to teach

behavior. And so if I wanted to teach someone a phone script, then after teaching you the phone rings again and you say the new script, you learned,

learning occurred. On the other hand, if

learning occurred. On the other hand, if I tried to teach you the script and then the phone rings again and then you change nothing, no learning occurred.

You learned nothing.

And that's why none of this stuff that these guys said helped me because I didn't know what I could do. I didn't

know what behavior I had to change as a result of this.

So, I didn't know how to do it. And so,

here's how branding happens. Branding is

a deliberate pairing of things through an outcome. So, I'll say that again. Branding is a deliberate pairing

again. Branding is a deliberate pairing of things through an outcome. So, let's

use Coca-Cola, drinking it, and liking it as our example. The yum, aka the outcome, that's what people get. They

pair that with drinking the action, that's what they do to get it, with Coca-Cola, the product. So, the next time you want some yum, you're probably

going to reach for a Coca-Cola if that was paired for you successfully.

And so, branding is a deliberate pairing of things through an outcome. That's it.

But sometimes businesses pair stuff pair their stuff with things that people don't like.

That's bad branding.

This leads to losses for the business.

Now, some of you guys may have seen this. This is Dylan Mulvaney doing a

this. This is Dylan Mulvaney doing a collaboration with Bud Light.

There's a lot of press around this advertisement. This advertisement was

advertisement. This advertisement was actually a great advertisement. And you

might think I'm crazy, but it was. Let

me explain. It's just not the way you might think it was. This is a great advertisement because it let a lot of people know about their stuff. It let a lot of people know about the product, about Bud Light.

By the way, if you're curious, that is the definition of advertising, not branding. Advertising is letting people

branding. Advertising is letting people know about your stuff. Branding is the pairing that occurs as a result. So, it

was good advertising, but bad branding.

Many customers hated this pairing. Lots

of people found out, but a lot of people hated it. good advertising, bad

hated it. good advertising, bad branding. And so as a result of this bad

branding. And so as a result of this bad branding, people not liking the pairing, fewer people bought the product, which netted a loss for the business. And so

to fix this, Bud Light paired their product with stuff the audience liked, like Shane Gillis, who is a man's man comedian, and the UFC, a man's man of

sports, if you will, and sales began to recover.

So that's the 101 explanation of branding. Let's go into 2011.

branding. Let's go into 2011.

So to go a little deeper because the better you get at this, the more money you will make. Like the more nuance you can understand how to brand and build a brand for yourself, the more money you'll make. I promise you that. And so

you'll make. I promise you that. And so

to some people, the Dylan Mulaney pairing was actually good in general.

Both good advertising and good branding.

Hear me out. For others, it was bad.

Obviously, all pairings have positive and negative results. And that's because everyone's

results. And that's because everyone's different. Everyone has different

different. Everyone has different preferences, but for a business, you can objectively see if a pairing was good or bad, whether it netted you more money.

So more people disliked the Dylan Mi, tough name, Del Mulaney pairing. So

sales suffered, making it a bad pairing.

So this isn't opinion. they objectively

made less money and so this pairing was a bad for their ideal audience. Now the

301 version of this is is there a company or a product where the DM pairing could have been both good advertising and good branding so that the majority of people would have bought. I think the answer is yes. It

bought. I think the answer is yes. It

just doesn't necessarily mean it's Bud Light for conservative males as the primary audience.

And on the other hand, some people love the new Gillis and UFC pairings and some hated it.

But more of the audience that is their ideal customer liked it, saw it as good and so the business netted sales as a result and they made more money, good branding.

And so for Budweiser, and I just want to call this out, this is specifically for Budweiser and their customer base. It's

not that Shane Gillers to the UFC is magic in some way or Dylan Mulvaney is unmagic in some way, but for that specific audience, yes, the pairing mattered and how much of the base liked

it or disliked it.

So, if you're anything like me, making money is the point. So, let's drive this home. If you made a pairing of your

home. If you made a pairing of your thing and your customer, and you got to choose which outcome you had happen, so you have your product and they drink it.

there's an outcome that happens afterwards, right? That pairs with it.

afterwards, right? That pairs with it.

On one hand, 75% like it and 25 hate it.

Or on the other hand, 25% like it and 75% hate it, which would be the bottom example.

Which would you choose?

More money. Good. The big the big green one. Yes, of course. The top one because

one. Yes, of course. The top one because it would make you the most money.

And so to be clear for the 2011 level of understanding, branding always happens.

Branding always occurs.

But our goal is good branding.

And good branding is a deliberate pairing of our business with good outcomes for our ideal customers.

And so what you pair your business with determines two key things. One, who pays attention to your business. and two

whether they go towards her business like the UFC example or away from her business like the Del Mulaney example.

And so at the beginning of this I said I was going to cover three things. The

first thing I said is what is branding?

But now that we have gone through that I want to resay what I walked us through which is what good branding is ideally what we're shooting for. So now that we covered that let's talk about why it

makes you money. Why good branding makes you money. Branding, as I define, it

you money. Branding, as I define, it happens everywhere all the time, but businesses use it for profit. So, let's

look at some of the earliest uses of branding to figure out how we can use it. So, these are the first

it. So, these are the first entrepreneurs who use branding to make money. Real quick, I'm going to show you

money. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage road map from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple

companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so, I can say with a lot of

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

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.

acquisition.comroadmap.

Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you. All free.

The earliest version of branding that we can think of, at least that I can think of, happened on livestock. It was

literally a brand. They would heat up metal, they'd sear it into the side of a cattle, and they would get a lovely little logo. Maybe we'll have a Nike

little logo. Maybe we'll have a Nike swoosh cow someday. And so, they literally burn these symbols into animals. And those symbols had a magical

animals. And those symbols had a magical effect.

So, let's say you're walking around, you see a cow with no brand. You say,

"Hello, cow." The cow says, "Move back."

And it has nothing on it. This is just a cow. You might leave it alone

cow. You might leave it alone and that might be it. On the other hand, let's say the cow has a bread you recognize. Say it's your neighbors. You

recognize. Say it's your neighbors. You

might be like, "Hey, that's Bill's cow."

Now, if you like Bill, you might grab the cow and pull him by the whatever you pull cows by and probably return it to Bill. If you hate Bill, then the cow may

Bill. If you hate Bill, then the cow may stay lost in the wilderness forever and become lunch for your family for the next month or two in the form of

delicious burgers. Moo. But either way,

delicious burgers. Moo. But either way, for better or for worse, the brand affected what you did. It affected your behavior.

And so to take this to the 2011 level, what if you see a branded cow, but you don't recognize the brand? You might be like, "Who this? I see a logo, but I don't know anything about it. Well, then

you would treat it how you treat branded animals in general in that you just know that it belongs to someone. And so, you would treat it the way that you'd treat it as though it belonged to anybody else.

And even if only a tiny bit, you would treat a wild cow different from a branded cow in general. So, if you had one that was wild and you had one that you didn't recognize but was branded, you would still probably treat them differently. So that just shows you the

differently. So that just shows you the power of brand as a concept because it dictates a tie between that cow and a human being or some complex animal that can brand

cows. And so these are all effects of

cows. And so these are all effects of brand in general. So that's how it affects what people do. And so now I want to get tactical on how to get how we translate that concept into getting

them to buy. So let's say we pair our brand. So this is where we get really

brand. So this is where we get really tactical. And this is like okay if you

tactical. And this is like okay if you don't have a brand this is the step by step right now. So you have a weak brand and we say it's a weak brand because it's starting out. You don't have a lot of association. Fantastic. So now you

of association. Fantastic. So now you want to pair it with people, experiences, other c other stuff that your ideal customer likes. So in this instance, I'm using little Nike pairing

with LeBron and Tiger who are champions, world class, goats, etc. And so people who like sports and competition would see that probably as a positive pairing

aka good stuff. And so if we do that pairing or we make that pairing for the majority of people branding will occur and so the brand grows.

And so the question then follows what's the benefit of a strong brand versus a weak brand?

And so the the the weak brand is before the pairing. The stronger brand is after

the pairing. The stronger brand is after the pairing. So, a strong brand turns

the pairing. So, a strong brand turns commoditized products like a $5 white t-shirt plus the strong brand into a premium product, a higher value brand

name product.

And premium products with a strong brand then get customers to want to pair themselves with the product so that they can associate the outcome

themselves with the outcome the brand delivers which they do with their money. So, how

do they make that association? They give

money. They get the shirt. The

association happens based on what they've seen where that logo has been elsewhere. And so, then they go from I

elsewhere. And so, then they go from I want to be a winner to exchanging money and saying now I am a winner or I feel like a winner. That's how this works.

And so, this means that if the ideal customer likes sports, winning, and competition, etc., then they're more likely to buy stuff from a brand paired with those things. So, let's lay it all

out. Weak brand

out. Weak brand paired with stuff customers like creates a strong brand. Strong brand gets put onto a winning product, transforms a

generic to- winning product. Then the

customers want to associate with that winning product. So they buy the product

winning product. So they buy the product and they put money into your bank account in order to do it. And so as long as you net a positive between what it costs you to associate with Tiger and

LeBron and how many t-shirts you can sell a result, you make money.

And so here are some steps in words for those of you who are more word people.

You start with a brand that means nothing. You have a logo just like the

nothing. You have a logo just like the cow that the other person didn't recognize. People know that it is a

recognize. People know that it is a brand. They just don't know what that

brand. They just don't know what that brand means yet. So it means nothing right now. Then you pair that brand with

right now. Then you pair that brand with something or someone that your customers ideally like.

Third, your brand starts to mean the thing customer likes to them.

Then they want to associate themselves with that thing they like or get more of it, but they can't buy that thing, but they can buy a tiny sliver of that association.

So they buy the shirt with the logo that means that thing to them. And so they get the shirt, you get the money, and it all happened because you deliberately paired it with something they like.

And this happens everywhere. So Dolce

and Gabbana, classic example, they paired with Kim Kardashian. They made a line specifically for her. And so for a lady who wants to associate with fame,

beauty wealth that would be a pairing that makes sense. And so that lady who wants other

sense. And so that lady who wants other people to associate her with fame, high class, money, luxury, wealth will then buy Dolce and Gabbat and be like, I'm just like him. Now she might not say that directly because she might just

associate with the values, but the transference still happens.

And so when someone looks at two products that on the surface are generically the same, you've got two t-shirts. One that has a weak brand or

t-shirts. One that has a weak brand or no brand and the other that has the strong brand, the person that has the strong brand, they're going to be more

likely to buy and pay more for.

And this happens because they actually buy the elements that we've deliberately paired with the brand which they identify with.

And at this point of building a brand, you do this to change customer behavior.

And that is, excuse me, that is the point of building a brand to change customer behavior in your favor when they see it with a product.

And so this is a quote from Warren Buff that I like a lot kind of signifying some of the elements of the benefits of brand. He said, "The single most

brand. He said, "The single most important decision in evaluating business is pricing power. If you've got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you've got a very good business. And if you have to

have a prayer session before raising the price by 10%, then you've got a terrible business. And so if we have an ungraded

business. And so if we have an ungraded t-shirt for $5 and we say, you know what, we think we have a strong enough brand that we can raise the price and then boom, we can raise the price and

still not lose that many sales, but we in this case 12x the price. Good

branding drives that premium pricing.

Good branding also improves advertising.

So, with the generic brand, if you're marketing this white t-shirt, you might get half a percent of people. There are

many white t-shirts. There are many like it. This one is mine. Just kidding. So,

it. This one is mine. Just kidding. So,

the point for those of you who got the reference. Um, so if you have a 0.5%

reference. Um, so if you have a 0.5% clickthrough rate on something that's generic, there's nothing special about it. On the flip side, if you have a Nike

it. On the flip side, if you have a Nike brand t-shirt, same identical t-shirt, and it has the swoosh, now you might get six times as many people to click and buy at a higher price. See how these

things stack together? That is why these brands exist for such a long period of time and make so much money. So they get cheaper customers, they get higher returns, and they have better response

rates in advertising.

And on top of that, if if as if that weren't enough, good branding also drives customer loyalty. Aka they buy more stuff more times. And so like the Apple example I gave earlier, once you

buy one Apple product, you tend to buy more and you tend to keep buying them.

And so this also a good brand also protects your business from competitors stealing that customer in the future.

And so as I promised in the beginning who's seeing how this all this stuff allows you to one be able to charge 10 times more than your competition, two get higher returns on advertising so you can scale that much more that much

faster. And then three get people to

faster. And then three get people to keep buying for life compounding your money-making skills for good. Okay?

which is why building a brand will make you lots of money. It's also why brands outperform commodities in every single industry and give a lasting competitive advantage

that to be fair is theirs to lose. So

here's another quote from Uncle Warren.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation in five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

And so I said that I was going to cover three things. One, what branding is,

three things. One, what branding is, which we redid what good branding is.

Second, why it makes you money. And we

got that. So now let's go to how to start or grow your own brand.

So if branding is the deliberate pairing of things, your thing plus what your ideal customer has through an outcome.

And good branding is the deliberate pairing of your thing with something good.

To start a brand, we have to know what we want to pair it with to attract ideal customers. So here we've got Bud Light,

customers. So here we've got Bud Light, UFC, good outcome for the majority of the audience.

And we want to understand that just as much as we should also understand what to avoid pairing our brand with to lose customers like the Dylan Mulvaney example. And so here's how I like to

example. And so here's how I like to think about assembling the pairings for brand. So if you're at ground zero, you

brand. So if you're at ground zero, you have you have no brand. You've got these elements that haven't been put together yet. So I think about it like

yet. So I think about it like a table full of flowers. So if you want to put a bouquet together, you start by having lots of different flowers all over the place.

on their own. Those flowers are not a bouquet. Just as products, values,

bouquet. Just as products, values, experiences, people, etc. on their own are not a brand.

The flowers are like the brand element that we pair with stuff our audiences like.

With enough pairing over and over and over again, they form a bouquet.

Now, replace the word bouquet with brand.

And so, that assembly is the connection.

It's the association between those things because a brand fundamentally doesn't actually exist. If I take the flowers out of the vase and scatter them across, was there ever a brand to begin

with? It's simply the association we

with? It's simply the association we make between those things that creates the one of one brand.

And if we unravel it, the brand disappears.

And so the deliberate pairing of those things makes the brand. And if we want to get narrower on our brand, so let's say I talk about tacos lifting and philosophy, if I want to narrow my

brand, I'll just talk a bunch about tacos. And then all of my flowers are

tacos. And then all of my flowers are just taco related. If I'm only talking about tacos, but I want to expand the stuff I'm talking about to my audience and maybe capture a wider audience, then

I might talk about tacos, quesadillas, burritos, things that are tangential.

And then if I wanted to expand even broader, I might just talk about food in general. And then I might talk in

general. And then I might talk in alcohol. Then I might talk in

alcohol. Then I might talk in restaurants. And then things that go

restaurants. And then things that go wider and wider from there. And so we get narrower as we niche down and we go double down on one type of topic. And we

go broader when we branch out.

But distant and random pairings hurt a brand because they're so hard to make the associations with.

And this is what most brands are and do.

Most people's brands happen by accident.

It's just whatever they appear next to, whatever the people associate their stuff with. Good branding happens on

stuff with. Good branding happens on purpose because like what are we looking at with a a bike, a single flower, some socks, and a burger? Not a lot. Not a

lot to hold together there. And so,

think about it like curating a garden.

You want some flowers to grow, and you want to pull out the weeds. You have to do both. You have to add the good and

do both. You have to add the good and take away the bad in order to assemble the ideal brand for you.

And in the beginning, our brand won't be strong just like yours won't. If you're

building it, then you might only have a couple flowers there. And it's because you haven't had that many instances to pair your brand for that customer.

But the more good stuff we pair with our brand for the customer, the stronger it gets. If you go from one flower to many

gets. If you go from one flower to many red flowers or many red roses that become a bouquet of red roses, that's what you're about. And the more you're about it, the more the brand strengthens.

Now, what if we make a branding mistake and pair with the wrong thing? Because

it's going to happen.

One bad pairing can absolutely hurt a brand. So, if I now give my this lovely

brand. So, if I now give my this lovely red rose uh bouquet to my wife and I say, "Hey, don't you love this bouquet?"

and she sees this rotten flower sticking out the front, she might be like, "This bouquet sucks." Or, "This brand sucks."

bouquet sucks." Or, "This brand sucks."

Or, "Hey, that guy got a DUI and I thought he was this paramount of good ethics."

ethics." Well, that would hurt the brand. And so,

just like one ugly flower messes up the whole bouquet, it changes how everyone sees the brand. This bouquet sucks. Now,

to recover from something like that, you just have to overwhelm customers with the stuff they like until eventually the bad pairing shrinks into irrelevance.

So, we don't try and eliminate the DUI.

We don't try and eliminate the dead rows. It happened. There's nothing we

rows. It happened. There's nothing we can do about it. But what we try to do is just overwhelm it with way more of the stuff that the majority of our people actually like. And so, Kanye, for example, has said some things that

people don't like.

But he also comes out with products that people love. He made a Super Bowl ad. He

people love. He made a Super Bowl ad. He

sold shoes. He just came out with an album that came out after having some cancel culture stuff around him and things he had said. And so over time, people forgot the bad stuff and

associate the good stuff back with him and purchased. They still bought.

and purchased. They still bought.

And so you need to decide what values, people, experiences, etc. that you want to use to connect the audience to your product.

and equally importantly, what things you want to avoid, remove, or ignore from the stuff they hate.

And so, it goes without saying that even if you say your premium, but people think your thing sucks, that suck will stick. And so, up to this point,

stick. And so, up to this point, everything I've talked about has been the things external to the product.

They've been the people you associate the product with. Now, almost all of that occurs prior to purchase. So, you

can absolutely get someone to buy the thing. But how many experiences are

thing. But how many experiences are people going to have with the thing once they've purchased it? Probably far more than they have with your advertisement.

And so the advertisement can let people know about it. The branding makes a good association for the person. They make

the purchase and then afterwards the product does a lot of the branding after that. Because if I buy that amazing Nike

that. Because if I buy that amazing Nike t-shirt and there's a hole in the armpit when it comes in, I might say, "This is the first time I ever bought a Nike product. This product sucks. Therefore,

product. This product sucks. Therefore,

Nike sucks and then I think the whole thing is a shame and then I also start to hate LeBron for even recommending, right? Starts to transfer backwards.

right? Starts to transfer backwards.

Now, on the flip side, brand can influence how people see the product.

So, if the product is what I would call good enough, so it's it doesn't have any holes in it. Now, is it the highest quality it possibly could be? Maybe not.

But, it's good enough that no one's going to find an immediate problem with the product. That's where brand can

the product. That's where brand can carry you the extra distance to still make it a positive experience for the person. And so brand in a very real way

person. And so brand in a very real way can affect how people perceive value through products.

Now me personally, this a pro tip here.

If I'm going to charge a premium price, I absolutely want to make sure that the product is dialed so that I only further reinforce how much they like my brand rather than let my brand carry me or at

worst have it conflict with the impression that I gave them of the thing they were going to buy prior to them buying it. This is a quote from Warren.

buying it. This is a quote from Warren.

Your premium brand had better be delivering something special or it's not going to get the business. And the only tweak I'd have on this is that it's not going to keep the business. You'll get

the first purchase. You just won't get the ones after that.

And so all these things are like, okay, got it. So brand is pairing. I get how

got it. So brand is pairing. I get how the pairing makes me money. I have these big margins. I got more CTRs. More

big margins. I got more CTRs. More

people buy. And as long as my thing doesn't suck and ideally that it's good, people will keep buying. Awesome. But

how do I measure that?

So brand has three main metrics. One,

which is influence, which is how likely it is to change someone's behavior. So

if I show someone a brand and they react in any way, they recognize it and they they they do something about it, then we have influence. Second is direction. Are

have influence. Second is direction. Are

they changing the way we wanted or they running away?

And third, how many people it changes for? That's it. So if I show 100 people

for? That's it. So if I show 100 people and 100 people react versus two people react, the 100 person reacting at least recognition that is the reach, how many

people it changes it for. So taken to the hypothetical extreme, a small, weak, and neutral brand, very few people will recognize and the people that do don't care that much about it either way. And

on the other polar extreme, you have a large large, strong, positive brand. So

that would be lots of people recognize the brand. It changes behavior when they

the brand. It changes behavior when they see the brand and the behavior is generally towards. So they try to do in

generally towards. So they try to do in accordance with what that brand is asking someone to do.

And I want to make this point.

A lot of people have this misnomer that any strong brand is polar. That because

lots of people love it. Lots of people also have to hate it. Now, I say this by percentage, not necessarily by absolute.

If you have if the whole United States knows who you are, you're going to have a percentage people that hate you just because there's crazy people. And that's

not what we're talking about. I'm

saying, is there a brand that can have that kind of status that isn't polar?

So, I'll give a polar example first. So

I have the silhouette of Donald Trump here and he has a very strong brand. He

has a big reach. Lots of people recognize him. Even just the silhouette

recognize him. Even just the silhouette alone people recognize. He has strong influence as in the percentage of people that when they see this have a reaction in either direction, positive or

negative. But just that they react shows

negative. But just that they react shows that he has strong influence. And then

third is the direction. Now for him he is polar meaning many people move towards him very strongly and many people move away from him very strongly and so many assume that all brands are

that way and that's just because there are many examples of that but that doesn't mean it has to be that way and so I'll give you a different example so some brands manage to change many

people's behavior towards them all at once and so like Taylor Swift sure I'm sure she's got some crazies don't get me wrong but the vast majority majority of people who see Taylor Swift recognize

her. She changed their behavior and most

her. She changed their behavior and most of the time it's towards her. So, she is a large, positive, strong brand. This is

also personally why I think the idea of like seeking out controversy absolutely gets you recognized, but you don't have to make that trade. You can absolutely just build a strong positive brand.

Mother Teresa has a strong positive brand. A lot of people know her,

brand. A lot of people know her, influenced a lot of behavior, did a lot of good stuff. Most people are like, "I hate Mother Teresa." Some people do, but most people don't. And the same thing goes with Apple. A lot of people like

their products. I'm sure there are some

their products. I'm sure there are some tech geeks that are like Android's way better, right? Or like PC is awesome.

better, right? Or like PC is awesome.

And that's great. That's good for them.

But the vast majority of people who encounter the product like it, which is why they're one of the largest companies in the world.

So all those examples that I gave you up to this point have assumed a large audience. And I do that because this is

audience. And I do that because this is a prestition and it makes more sense for me to work with you on stuff that you already know. But this concept carries

already know. But this concept carries independent of whether you have large reach. And this is why it applies to

reach. And this is why it applies to you. So if you had a small audience with

you. So if you had a small audience with high influence, what would you have?

Got mom and dad. They are high influence as in most people when they see their parents their behavior changes.

They have low reach because for you they're only your parents. They might

not be any I don't they might be some other people's parents but not very many people's parents. Uh so you have low

people's parents. Uh so you have low reach. Um, and it will be your behavior

reach. Um, and it will be your behavior will go towards for some and away for others. Meaning some people hate their

others. Meaning some people hate their parents and don't want to do anything they say and some people like their parents and do whatever they say and there's a lot of people in between.

And so that's how we measure if what we're doing to grow our brand is actually working. Are more people

actually working. Are more people finding out about it?

Are more people changing their behavior when they do it? And ideally, are they doing that towards the direction that we want them to go? So if I say, "Hey everybody, go click here. Go download

this thing. Go attend this event. go buy

this product, whatever it is. If a lot of people do that, then we know that the brand is growing.

And so we want when we want to build our brand, we want to pair our stuff with the things the highest percentage of our ideal audience like. And so whenever we pair anything with a brand, because especially if you're starting out,

everything is new. And so every new pairing has risk. And so you risk losing a certain percentage of your audience who has a bad experience with the thing you pair. There's always that risk.

you pair. There's always that risk.

There's always going to be some people who don't like something you do. If

anyone's seen a small town band, go hit it big. Some of the oldtowners are like,

it big. Some of the oldtowners are like, "Oh, they sold out. They did whatever."

But what they did was they gambled the short-term loss of that local audience potentially for a much broader, bigger audience. So they made a bet. They did

audience. So they made a bet. They did

lose people. They did gain people. They

just gained more than they lost. And so

to the same degree, when you make that bet as the local band, you risk gaining other people who have had a positive experience with this new thing. And

ideally, we have more green than red.

And so those news pairings, the new pairings you make with a brand always lose audience, right? He's sold out. I

like the old stuff better. This also

happens with content. And so this person is the red bucket. Fantastic.

And the new stuff might also cause people to say, "No, this new stuff rocks." And that person is in the green

rocks." And that person is in the green bucket. And so whenever you try to grow

bucket. And so whenever you try to grow and you make any new pairing, meaning you make new content, you make a new genre, you make a new song, you make a new anything,

you make a bet that more people from your ideal audience will like the pairing than people who don't. TLDDR

that you'll net an increase in reach, influence, and positive direction.

And so my ask for over here is don't let the five mean comments stop you from gaining the 500 new people who like the new thing.

So let me finish the real life example to make this whole thing real for you. I

want to associate myself with business value. So I associate myself with making

value. So I associate myself with making people money and growing their businesses. So there's me, there's me

businesses. So there's me, there's me making content and then ideally money.

And so the best way I can do this is make content for the small business owner to consume and books for them to read and use so that they then profit

the good thing. And then they associate that growth and profit with me. And so

then they consume more of my stuff. They

drink the next soda. They buy the next shirt.

And so the next time they want it to happen again, they take the action where they have a higher likelihood of taking the desired action. And equally

important, people who don't like business stuff won't like my stuff or they'll just prefer to watch other things. So you've got this married

things. So you've got this married couple. They say, "We hate people who

couple. They say, "We hate people who talk about money." They're probably not going to like my stuff. And that's okay.

But people who like business, have a business, or are trying to start one might want more. And

this grows the brand because people consume the stuff and they say, "Hey, you got to check out her stuff." And

then that person they tell it to says, "Right on." They check it out. They get

"Right on." They check it out. They get

that positive outcome. They make the pairing as well and the brand grows and ideally with my ideal audience. And so

to see this in action, if you use this information from today to make money, good branding has occurred.

And so I said I was going to cover three things. What branding is, ideally what

things. What branding is, ideally what good branding is, why it makes you money, and how to start and grow yours.

So hopefully you feel like I fulfilled those three things. And so now we can test if the pairing good branding actually occurred.

So if you were my ideal customer, so here's a business owner. Okay, awesome.

A lot of you. Fantastic.

We can see objectively if this provided value. Did we get a good positive

value. Did we get a good positive outcome, a neutral outcome, or a negative one? You might be like, I hate

negative one? You might be like, I hate this guy talking about money, or you know what, I think this could make me a ton of money. Well, we'll see.

So, I want to further associate myself with value and making you money and growing your business. So, I want to give you guys two gifts for free. The

first is for existing business owners who want to scale. So, most of you guys should raise your hands. I have two books, $100 million offers, $1 million leads. People say they made them money.

leads. People say they made them money.

There's a lot of five star reviews on them. Fantastic. And I made video

them. Fantastic. And I made video versions of these books that you can get absolutely free on my site at acquisition.comtraining.

acquisition.comtraining.

This is me further associating. If you

if you like this, you're going to love that. And they'll make you more money

that. And they'll make you more money for free. That's what it looks like on

for free. That's what it looks like on the inside. These are legit courses.

the inside. These are legit courses.

And you can get those video versions on my site again absolutely free.

Now, if you're like, man, I don't like watching stuff. I like listening to

watching stuff. I like listening to stuff. I want to provide value for a

stuff. I want to provide value for a different type of ideal audience, which is still business owners, but business owners who listen rather than business owners who watch, which is also fine.

And so if you are somebody who's not a reader or not a watcher, I've got the books on my podcast absolutely free called The Game. They started episode 570 something. And so that's what I have

570 something. And so that's what I have for business owners. Who hears earlier on and they're like, I want to start a brand. Okay, cool. So this is for you.

brand. Okay, cool. So this is for you.

So IGPM, a coowner of school.com. Really

awesome platform. Helps people get started their business. Um, and so anybody here who watches this or listening to this and wants the tools, the training, and a community of other people starting brands with a little

friendly competition and some prizes, we made a step-by-step process on school to help you get started and you can start for free. So hopefully I succeeded in

for free. So hopefully I succeeded in providing value and a good pairing occurred. Ideally, good branding

occurred. Ideally, good branding happened. Otherwise, I'm sorry for

happened. Otherwise, I'm sorry for everybody else. I hope good banning

everybody else. I hope good banning occurred. Um, and for those of you who

occurred. Um, and for those of you who either start the school games for free or use my stuff to grow your business, I will see you guys soon. So, go to schoolgame school.comgamesac.com/training

school.comgamesac.com/training

and I will see you guys all there. Thank

you guys so much for your time.

>> So, next I want to talk about how I gained 7.8 billion followers in just 40 months and the six key lessons that you can use today.

>> Let's rock. So, you guys want to hear something absolutely insane? Well, in

the last 40 months, my YouTube grew from zero to 2.23 million subscribers. My

Instagram grew from 7,000 to 2 and a half million sub subscribers followers.

You get the idea. My LinkedIn went from 0 to 324,000 followers. My Tik Tok went from zero to 856,000 followers. My Twitterx,

followers. My Twitterx, the artist formerly known as Twitter, uh went from zero to 617,000.

My Facebook, which we just started, went from zero to 25 thou. There we go. Going

in big Facebook. Um, my podcast went from 3,000 downloads to 25 million downloads. And my email subscribers went

downloads. And my email subscribers went from zero to 700,000 for a grand total of 2 billion impressions over that time

period and 7.8 million new subscribers and for a grand total of a million copies sold of my book. For those of you who are like, "Well, what does that

mean?" And I'll get to that in a second.

mean?" And I'll get to that in a second.

So in 40-ish months all of that happened and I show all of this as proof to start this to show one thing is that this

actually works and you can build a brand without babes, without stunts or kittens.

And I start this proof because lots of people talk about stuff that they haven't done and teach a lot of sucky fluff as a result. You can see the man there. He's saying the truth. This This

there. He's saying the truth. This This

fluff sucks. And I refuse to do that.

And so before we got the two billion impressions and the 7.8 million subscribers, it wasn't like this.

Because 40 months ago, I started with zero subscribers and a big quote fancy plan.

And my fancy plan had three steps. Step

one, make as much good stuff as I could.

Step two, post it everywhere I could.

And step three, learn as much as I could. And after 40-ish months,

could. And after 40-ish months, $4 million in team, equipment, vendors, studios, and software,

a,000 hours of me on camera recording, and 35,000 pieces of content. Let me say that again. 35,000

that again. 35,000 as in count to a thousand and then do that 35 times in a row.

I learned a lot of what not to do, but I did learn six things that made money and grew my brand that you can use today.

Now, what I'd like to do is for the remainder of the presentation, save you the three and a half years and $4 million so you can just get the lessons

without the scar. So, that little box is our box of six lessons. Cool.

All right, let's rock. So, here are the six changes that we observed over the last four 40-ish months that actually worked.

Number one, going from edutainment to education.

Number two, for us to for you. Number

three, wide to narrow. Number four,

views to revenue. Number five, shorts to longs. Number six, assume more to assume

longs. Number six, assume more to assume nothing. Now, most of those, I promise

nothing. Now, most of those, I promise you, I will explain. And if it looks like uh I think I know what that means.

Believe me, there's a lot more underneath of it. So let's start with the first one. Edutainment to education.

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.

On 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,

them. And lastly, you have edutainment, which has the point of both trying to teach and entertaining at the same time.

And to be clear, it's less that you make entertaining content or that you make educational content. It's more that you

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.

But 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.

And until recently, I've been trying to figure this out. And 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

buckets. I have entertainment videos where the point is to get people to watch. I have edutainment videos where

watch. I have edutainment videos where we try and teach and entertain at the same time. And then we have education

same time. And then we have education videos where we just want to change people's behavior. We just want to teach

people's behavior. We just want to teach them something. And so the first change

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

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

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 gonna this will be one that's gonna rattle some cages.

There's a theory that media works like a funnel. In fact, the vast majority of

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

educational content. Okay, sounds simple enough. We've got something wide, we got

enough. We've got something wide, we got something narrow. Fantastic. But in our

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.

And 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

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

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

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

people. Because if you know me and anybody who is 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

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.

And 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

content." And this is where it gets difficult. This is where you have to

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

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

attract. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, hey, if I could serve

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

off-handedly. He wasn't like trying to smash my ego into bits. Um, and he failed at that. Uh,

but when he said it, I really took it to heart, right? It was very gut-wrenching.

heart, right? It was very gut-wrenching.

He said, "It just doesn't resonate as much." I was like, "Okay, got it." It

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

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 does making for

them or for business owners content really mean? Let me break this down into

really mean? Let me break this down into tactics. All right, so tactically it

tactics. All right, so tactically it meant five things.

Number 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

about?" You'd probably be like, "I a rule of some sort that might have to do with money." Not sure. If I said,

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?

million. Okay. Well, guess what?

The one on the right is 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

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.

And 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

about this. There was also kind of a pervasive narrative in in the kind of marketing world. It's like you got to

marketing world. It's like you got to have curiosity. You got to like you

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

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

entertainers. Now why is that? Because

everyone gets value from entertainment.

But 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 an entertainment, you want to confirm it.

Well, that's because most of the sensational entertainment is something crazy. And so, the likelihood that

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

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 switch

second. Sorry, let's slip 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. Anyways,

move. Something like that. Anyways,

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

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.

And 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.

Proof, 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

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.

If you have a promise that's incredibly important for the audience, then lead with that. If you have a plan that for

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. So, 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

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 listen? And you'd be reasonable to

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."

The promise was what I said you would get at the beginning. I said, "I learned six things that made money and grew my brand 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

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.

And 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

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 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

top. Now interestingly it was a almost a perfect reversal. So the bottom

perfect reversal. So the bottom 12 videos that we made, eight out of 12 I would say had more razle emphasized.

It was more about effects, a little bit higher production. And on the flip side,

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

production. And so it was about emphasizing the language rather than the razle. I find this very fascinating.

razle. I find this very fascinating.

Now, to be really clear, you can have really bad language. They're like poor vague unclear language and it won't do well. And you might have razle that just

well. And you might have razle that just absolutely crushes. I just look at the

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 changes 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.

Interesting 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.

So, that's what we're changing about the meat. So, let's talk about visuals. This

meat. So, let's talk about visuals. This

one's a big one. All right. So going

from over 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

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

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

teaching something. It does not help someone understand the subject matter better. Fundamentally, changing

better. Fundamentally, changing background color will not help anyone learn more. On the flip side, clarifying

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

chart? So we can give relative scale so we can have scope so we can show changes over time.

And 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

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.

Well, 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 man-hour. And for the business owners in

man-hour. 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

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.

So 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

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

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.

And 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

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

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.

So now let's talk about wide dao. All

right. And this will also ruffle some feathers and 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.

Now that I'm gonna go back a slide because I want 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

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?

Those people 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

comfortable. When I talk about these things, I just give what I would consider hot takes. This is my perspective.

So 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.

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

second here. Who uses be honest? Be

honest. Everybody's like likes don't you can't trade likes for for paying rent.

You 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 was after pouring through. Believe

me, I'm a big data guy. Um, a metric that you might not expect.

So the main reason is that I had a six to 12month deal cycle. So I started by using views because I really had no other metric because for those you 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. Ideally, in any business, you

metrics. 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 a

change behavior. But if you can have a 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.

And so besides book sales, opt-ins, and applications, there was a metric that stood out as fastest and most measurable. It was ad revenue. And this

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.

American Pacific Group was the private equity firm. from Jim Launch and Prest

equity firm. from Jim Launch and Prest 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

media team. There was really nothing else. But I was wrong. It's actually so

else. But I was wrong. It's actually so much more. So let's let's dive into a

much more. So let's let's dive into a little bit for a second of like how does ad revenue come to be. So it comes from two things. This number of views times

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

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.

And I just didn't know enough about media to find out what our paired metric was. And this happens to be a single

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

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.

And 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

people. And I share this with you so you don't have to. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage 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

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

to you. It's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.comromadap,

go acquisition.comromadap, just enter your info, and it'll spit it right back to you. All free.

And 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

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.

views. Okay, but it drove nothing.

Versus we had this video that had what?

a 100,000 views and it made more ad revenue than the 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

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.

So, 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?

That 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.

And so the point is that that these are different audiences. And I will make a

different audiences. And I will make a note here that this can change by platform. So I might be a long viewer on one platform and a

shorts viewer on another.

And 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 longser on YouTube and then they watch your longs

there. So I do think there's an element

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

goes. And so for us, longs drive a lot more conversions than shorts.

Conversions being book sales, opt-ins, applications, right? And business

applications, right? And business related content unsurprisingly brings more business owners than not business related content. And so we are going to

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.

And 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.

Now let's talk about the sixth one that I'm going all in on. Assume more to assume nothing. All right. So what does

assume nothing. All right. So what does this mean? So let's start with assume

this mean? So let's start with assume more and what that what that really means broken down. Susum 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

haters. I might be like, if I don't know who Alex Rousei is or have never seen that face before, why do I care? If I

see the day in the life of Alex Ramoszi, yet again, I assume everyone knows me in this. I'm I'm sharing these mistakes

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 Ramoszi diet, everyone knows me. No, they're like, who is this guy, right? And here's why this matters. If you want your content to

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

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, well 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

CEO. Okay, now the jet tells this me that this Alex Ramoszi from the the first one before Alex Ramosi 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

player. It's the number one thing I like. So, you uh play football, are you

like. So, you uh play football, are you on the hockey team? And uh I I say no, I can. Nope. Nothing wrong with that, but

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

owners, whatever. The point is is that we actually make it welcoming to everyone.

And 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 Alexi. This is what I do. This

is the the the subscribers I've gotten.

Whatever. We introduce ourselves.

Two, they know why they should listen to me. Tell people why they should listen

me. Tell people why they should listen to you every time. Three, the inside jokes. You know how I get. No, I don't

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.

And 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 are worried because I can already hear the thoughts that are coming up. So let me just address those

coming up. So let me just address those right now. I see you.

right now. I see you.

I'm gonna lose retention if I introduce myself. Okay. Well, let's play the equal

myself. Okay. Well, let's play the equal opposite. Would you rather fewer people

opposite. Would you rather fewer people know who you are or more people who have no clue?

Because 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

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

introducing yourself. Well, from what I can tell, warm people like the reminders and cold people need the introduction.

And as a total side note, this is a fun little experiment for everyone here. You can run this when you

everyone here. You can run this when you leave here.

If who here actually who here actually has posted content in the last year?

Okay, good. Okay, good. For a second, I was like, this would have been really bad if no one had raised their hand.

Fantastic. Okay, I want you to look at last year and I want you to look at your number one piece of content. And this is what I want you to do. Just post it

again and then let me know how it does.

And I will bet you that it does just as well or better than the stuff that you're posting right now. And let me tell you one reason why I believe that to be true. Because if you have been posting consistently, guess what's also

happened? More people have entered your

happened? More people have entered your audience. And guess what? They haven't

audience. And guess what? They haven't

seen that amazing piece of content that everyone from last year said was the number one best thing you ever made. And

you know what you said? New people, you don't get that. That was only for my old folks. My OGs, they only get that. No,

folks. My OGs, they only get that. No,

you got to reintroduce some of the stuff your greatest hits. You got to bring that stuff in so that the new people also know what your greatest hits are so that the lore continues to compound and grow.

So number three and this one or sub point and this is one for me personally. I follow a bunch of quote accounts. I you know I I like comedy and philosophy and like fighting.

There's like kind of categories that I follow and gym equipment. And so I get quotes a lot on my newsfeed. But you

know what happens when I see a quote from Sophocles or Epictitus yet again that reminds me that I should just toughen up and keep going. I like the

reminder. I'm not like Epic Tetus God,

reminder. I'm not like Epic Tetus God, you lived 4,000 years ago. Like, get

over yourself. No, he's not making new content. But guess what? People still

content. But guess what? People still

post it and people still read it because we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. At least I do.

To give a little tactical one on this from mainstream because this will might resonate for some of the older people in the crowd. There was this thing called

the crowd. There was this thing called television a while back. Used to be big.

Anyways, instead of having on your phone, it was like this big screen on a wall. You had a is a whole thing.

wall. You had a is a whole thing.

Anyways, I won't get into it. It's like

floppy disc regardless. Floppy disc was okay. Anyway, so so there used to be

okay. Anyway, so so there used to be this thing where at the beginning of every show there was a theme song, right? So they'd be like cheers where

right? So they'd be like cheers where everybody knows your names and there's always a little introduction. It says

produced by and all that stuff. And if

those shows that spend gazillions of dollars on testing chose to think that despite selling more advertising space, it was worth having the same exact theme

song and introduction for the show.

Don't you think it might be worth that for us too? And here's an interesting thing. The last thing, positive

thing. The last thing, positive associations and sticks. If you actually get singongy about how you introduce yourself or the things that you relate to you, it starts to become something that people expect and then they start associating it with all the positive

other experiences they had with you. So,

if I always introduce something a certain way and then I deliver value afterwards, they associate the introduction with the value. And guess

who else do they associate that with?

You.

And so for those of you who are concerned, you can add variety to this.

And I want to show you a cool little real world example of this.

So the Simpsons has the longest standing show to my knowledge that has existed on television. And the introduction is the

television. And the introduction is the same. Now Bart would be like 70 by now

same. Now Bart would be like 70 by now or whatever his actual age would be if it was actual humans, but it isn't, right? And every introduction has Bart

right? And every introduction has Bart at some point in detention writing something on the board. For those of you who don't know the Simpsons, every one

of the introductions actually changes.

Every one of them. And so they still have the introduction that has all the positive associations with the funny times and the humor and the laugh that you've had with the show, but they

introduce a tiny bit of variety into them to keep it interesting. And then

what happens is people look forward to these introductions because they want to find the Easter egg. The real fans now get catered to and the new fans don't know about it yet, but they will. And so

now you actually serve both sides of the audience, the people who know you and the people who first who are just coming cold.

And so that's it. Small variation, same introduction. You let the new people in

introduction. You let the new people in and you give something to the the people who already know you. So title it like they don't know you. Introduce yourself.

Say why they should listen. Prioritize

the content that makes sense for strangers. Dep prioritizing the vlogs,

strangers. Dep prioritizing the vlogs, the hot takes, the opinions. Because

if you can serve both audiences, serve both. Let the new people in rather than

both. Let the new people in rather than have a wall they have to jump over. Let

them in on the joke. Fully explain the references that you make. Make all jokes inside jokes for everyone.

And then finally, mentally act as though you're always talking to a stranger.

because if the content does well, you are.

At least that's what I'm going to be doing. And so that's the six big change

doing. And so that's the six big change that we're doubling down on. And so now that we covered those changes in my strategy, I just want to get real for a second. Everything has a cost. And it's

second. Everything has a cost. And it's

not that other types of media or other topics or other formats don't work.

Obviously, we had a smorgas board. We

had a huge variety, a cornucopia, myriad content types that we did over the last 40-ish months. And obviously, we had 7.8

40-ish months. And obviously, we had 7.8 million subscribers and two billion views during that time period in a niche audience of business owners, which is pretty good. And so, it's not to say

pretty good. And so, it's not to say that other things don't work.

I'd even say that my messups also worked to a certain a small degree. It's just

that they didn't work as well as something else might have. And so the game, at least as I see it in entrepreneur, entrepreneurship is figuring out what's my biggest bang for a buck, right? What's the content that gets me the most of everything? Because

you only have limited resources. You

have time, money, energy. You put it into your team and that goes onto social media or the media that you that you market on. And then that has output. And

market on. And then that has output. And

so if you can become more efficient with the inputs you get, you get more output on the other side. And so the question becomes with the resources I have, how can I maximize the number of the right

people who find out about my stuff?

And so this is something that I live by.

Anything works better than nothing. So

raise your hand right now if you haven't made a piece of content in 90 days.

Okay? Just do something because if you do something, you will do better than what you're currently doing.

Two, some things work better than others.

And three, nothing works forever.

And so the requirement of the entrepreneur is to start doing something, see what works better, and then do as much of that as they possibly can for as long as they can until it

slows down and then figure out what the next thing to do is and then do as much as they can at that.

So, is that helpful in terms of understanding content and media?

>> Yes.

>> Awesome. Do you feel like you got at least one lesson without the scar? saved

at least a tiny percentage of the $4 million that I spent learning what didn't work so I can show you these six things that do. Okay, good.

Would you like more stuff like this?

Okay. Well, then I've got a bunch of free stuff that I can give you to help you grow your brand and make some money.

That'd be all right. Okay. So, if you're just starting a business right now, raise your hand. Okay. This is for you.

I'm the co-founder of the school games.

Inside you'll find courses, full day trainings, the easiest business model they know of to use this med this media stuff because it's one thing to just say like, "Oh great, I just watched this whole thing on media. Now what do I do?"

Well, this gives you somewhere to actually practice it like a sandbox. You

can learn it and you learn by doing.

This is one of the lowest stakes way to make money, get your first dollar across the finish line. And so, fun fact, something I'm very proud of is that right now 30.44% of people who finish their first month make their first dollar online by starting an online

community. I think that's pretty cool.

community. I think that's pretty cool.

And so you can start that for free by going to school.comgames. All right,

tell them I sent you. And so that's for everybody. Raise your hand if you're

everybody. Raise your hand if you're business. Uh uh you're starting a

business. Uh uh you're starting a business right now. Okay, that's for you. Now, if you're a little further

you. Now, if you're a little further along in your business journey, I've got free stuff for you, too. All right,

trying to feel like Santa Claus today. I

wrote these two books right now, which have 25,000 five-star reviews, and they sold the million plus copies. And I made courses for each of those books that are free on my site. Right? You go to acquisition.com/training. So if you like

acquisition.com/training. So if you like this stuff, you want to learn more about offers, you want about advertising, more about getting leads, paid ads, content, all of that stuff so that you can start making money within your business or scale it from wherever you are to wherever you want to go, I've made this

stuff for you. These are real courses.

It's not barred anywhere. You can click there, watch them all. All right?

See, I put that for myself because this is how I roll. I get in the get in the zone. So otherwise, you guys are all

zone. So otherwise, you guys are all amazing. You can go there for stuff that

amazing. You can go there for stuff that will help you practice this stuff.

actually do it in the real world because if you just walk away from here today and you do not execute anything, you learned nothing. And so, for the love of

learned nothing. And so, for the love of God, just do one of the things so you can get a tiny percent of that $4 million and the 35,000 pieces of content and the thousand hours that I spent recording. Just do one of them so you

recording. Just do one of them so you can take that lesson for you. Thank you

guys.

Now, building your personal brand can sometimes be overwhelming. So, I want to help you cut through the noise and give you one more quick tactic that's helped me grow my audience. I'm about to teach you a rarelyus method that I used to

grow my audience by 5 million people in under 24 months. And the crazy thing is is 24 months ago I had less than 10,000 followers. And I knew nothing about

followers. And I knew nothing about YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, any of these other platforms. And the reason that I was able to catapult to, you know, a top 1% creator in that

24-month period is using this method that for some reason no one really talks about. Whenever I enter a new space,

about. Whenever I enter a new space, whether it's trying to learn a new skill, a new platform, a new anything, I realize there's a massive amount of skill deficiency that I have to overcome as fast as humanly possible. And so I

can either deploy time or I can deploy money to save myself time. So within the world of organic content, I was like, who can I pay to shortcut my path to getting to where they are? So on one hand, I could go to like celebrities,

and I did go to some of them, and they would give me their strategies, but it was like very personalized and tailored to them, and I didn't think it would apply to like how I run acquisition.com in my daily life. On the other hand, there was like the coaches, gurus, etc.

that I could go to and I didn't want to do that because they might be using something that worked like 5 years ago, which honestly I see all the time.

They're like, "Guys, you've got to do hashtags on YouTube videos." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" about like this. That's that's not true. And the

this. That's that's not true. And the

third option, which I ultimately went with, are advertising agencies. And what

an agency is is just a business that sells services of advertising on your behalf. I can pay someone to run ads for

behalf. I can pay someone to run ads for me. I can pay someone to cut, edit, and

me. I can pay someone to cut, edit, and distribute content on my behalf. So,

what I want to do is help you decide whether or not you should use an agency and avoid what I call the agency trap.

There's different tiers of agencies.

There's the guys who just make stuff, and then there's the people who are real pros. Contextually here for one brand on

pros. Contextually here for one brand on one platform, a small one might cost threeish maybe 5,000 a month. The more

advanced ones are usually in the 15 to $30,000 a month. So it's significantly more money. So here's how I use agencies

more money. So here's how I use agencies now and how you can too. Phase one is I get what I would consider a basic agency. So long form getting into

agency. So long form getting into YouTube. The first step I did was I

YouTube. The first step I did was I hired a $300 to $5,000 a month agency and they just got me to commit to doing three videos a week. They just trimmed it, which means you take out the oo's and o's, put an intro and a thumbnail.

The main objective of that first phase was just to get the basics down, forcing me to create content on a regular cadence. Once I have more context,

cadence. Once I have more context, because I've spent 3 6 months working with them, seeing what the audience likes, then I'm like, okay, now I want to learn everything. So, I go from beginner of learning the basics and

doing the fundamentals to how do the top creators create on this platform. No

business owner should change their business for one client. And so it makes sense for both me and the small agency or for you and a small agency to part ways at some point when your demands for

what you want exceed their capacity. So

then I work with the much better more advanced agency works with the top creators to learn all of the more nuanced pieces of the platform. So

rather than agree to their initial terms which is basically pay us as long as humanly possible and we hope you pay until you die. This is exactly what I say. Gather around. I want to do what

say. Gather around. I want to do what you do in my business, but I don't know how. I'd like to work with you for 6

how. I'd like to work with you for 6 months so I can learn how you do it.

Plus, I'll pay extra for you to break down why you make the decisions you do and the steps you take to make them.

Then, after I get a good idea of how it all works, I'll start training my team on it. And once they can do it well

on it. And once they can do it well enough, I'd like to change to a lowerc cost consulting agreement. This way, you can still help us if we run into problems. Are you opposed to this? When

you start that way, I like it because you're starting with very clear intentions and you're saying, "Hey, I'm going to commit to 6 months. This is

what I want from you." And I'm also saying I'm going to continue to pay you after the engagement's over for a much higher leverage, much more profitable consulting engagement. So that's what a

consulting engagement. So that's what a lot of agencies would ultimately want.

And if I need to pay a little bit more than the agency fee upfront, then I'm willing to do that. I also understand that as I start to train my team on internally, there will be a period of time where I'm paying both them and my team. So you're paying twice. The thing

team. So you're paying twice. The thing

is is that when you do that, you're actually building the enterprise value of your business and you're building the asset that you own rather than being reliant on somebody else who eventually

could, if you wanted to, cut you off and then you'd be dead in the water. Or what

more realistically happens is they gouge you and they continue to raise their price because they can see how much money you're making from the thing. With

that new agency, we ran the same play.

Hey, we want to learn from you. We want

to understand why you're picking these things. We want to understand the

things. We want to understand the decision-making process, etc. I start documenting what they're doing into our processes internally. We want to start

processes internally. We want to start co-creating. So, they're making stuff

co-creating. So, they're making stuff for us and we're making stuff for us.

And eventually, our stuff for us starts to be as good and eventually better than the stuff that they make for us. And it

should be because I'm only one client of many to them. And I'm basically renting them as fractional labor with expertise at a premium. Once your team has the same amount of expertise or more, they

should be better because one, they have more time because they're going to fully allocate their time to you. And

secondly, because they will always have more context on your brand than an agent will by having more time and more context. All we have to fill is the gap

context. All we have to fill is the gap of expertise. And so once we have the

of expertise. And so once we have the expertise gap, then the in-house team should be better than the advanced team.

And then at that point, you decouple and you let them go. You want to make sure that you have a clear deadline for when you want to make that transition. And

this is good for a couple reasons. One

is because it sets expectations with them. They can also see the LTV and you

them. They can also see the LTV and you can talk in terms of that. Let's say

it's $6,000 a month. I'm committing to $36,000. All right? So, like you're

$36,000. All right? So, like you're going to get that for me as long as you're not an idiot. But the real real is that your team also knows that you're like, "Hey, we're one month down. We got

to understand this stuff in 5 months.

Hey, we're two months down. We got to understand this stuff in four months."

And so, it drives you towards the outcome of getting your team up to speed faster. Now, you have that deadline, but

faster. Now, you have that deadline, but what if your team's not as good as theirs by the time the deadline comes?

Well, in my opinion, you either need to change the people or they're not teaching you everything that needs to happen. Because if they're low-skilled

happen. Because if they're low-skilled people are doing better than your team, some who is a problem, either them or you. Let's assume that the people are

you. Let's assume that the people are right and maybe it's just a more complex platform, whatever. I keep going until

platform, whatever. I keep going until our team matches theirs. Once our team matches theirs, then I drop it off. We

downgrade to a consulting agreement just for insurance. One or two months later,

for insurance. One or two months later, if we feel like we're not learning anything on the calls that we have from a consulting perspective, we cut it. And

we do so amicably because we set that as the expectation. That's how I grew my

the expectation. That's how I grew my YouTube. So now let's approach the same

YouTube. So now let's approach the same concept but on a different platform. I

didn't understand Tik Tok at all. I

didn't use it. I wasn't on it. I

actually had an agency reach out to me outbound uh which is not common for me to accept that. But they said listen you do no work. So from a value perspective the offer was we you already have enough content out there I can repurpose it and make shorts out of it. I was like okay

sure if you want to do all the work and involve me at nothing and just make content for me. Sounds good. And so

that's what they did and they started getting traction with the short videos and we're like okay this stuff works.

And then for me, my director of brand actually had a super deep history on short form content. And so, normally I would have had that second phase where I would go for that premium agency, but

that individual worked at a premium agency. And so, I actually bought the

agency. And so, I actually bought the SOPs automatically and we were able to massively scale our output on short content within six or so months of working with that original agency. And

again, we're on good terms with the person in the agency. If you set the expectation up front, which is I want to learn from you and I want to be transparent about my intentions and I want to eventually bring this in house because it's my belief that my team will be able to allocate more time to my

thing and understand my brand better and if they had your skills they will be able to do more output at higher quality than you could ever do. You have to make a margin. I don't. I'm going to cover

a margin. I don't. I'm going to cover cost and get five times more output.

This is what I believe has married the best parts of agency and the best part of building an enterprise and making a valuable business and avoided the agency traps that so many people fall into,

myself included. So the first agency

myself included. So the first agency experience I ever had was actually really good. I then worked with like 10

really good. I then worked with like 10 more agencies and all of them were terrible. And this is the exact process

terrible. And this is the exact process what happened. So reading directly from

what happened. So reading directly from $100 million leads, step one, they got me excited about all the new leads they would bring. Step two, I'd go through an

would bring. Step two, I'd go through an onboarding process that felt valuable and sometimes was. Step three, they assigned their best senior rep to my account. Step four, I saw some results.

account. Step four, I saw some results.

Step five, they moved my senior rep to the newest customer. Step six, a junior rep starts managing my account. My

results suffer. Step seven, I complain.

Step eight, the senior rep would come back once in a while to make me feel better. Step nine, the results still

better. Step nine, the results still never got back to where they were before, and I'd eventually cancel. Step

10, I'd search for another agency and repeat the cycle of insanity. Step 11,

for the zillionth time, start wondering why I wasn't getting results like the first time. So, how do you decide if

first time. So, how do you decide if using an agency is right for you? First

off, do you have more money or more time? If you don't have any money, then

time? If you don't have any money, then you got to learn it. And it's going to take time. And you know what? That's

take time. And you know what? That's

part of life. Usually, you master one platform, you get some success, you get a little bit of cash flow, and then you can more quickly pay to learn the other ones. You pay down your ignorance

ones. You pay down your ignorance faster. If you have the money, then for

faster. If you have the money, then for me, it's always worth paying down that debt. And that process is how we

debt. And that process is how we approach LinkedIn, how we approach podcast, how we approach paid ads, all of them. I run the same playbook. And

of them. I run the same playbook. And

when it comes to building a stronger personal brand, you need to build influence, not just have views. So,

here's how to do that. We got 32.7 million views on YouTube this month.

Here's how. So, I posted 35,000 pieces of content this year. We did a $100 million book launch for $100 million money in 72 hours. So, 3 days. We did

over $100 million in sales. The issue

that most people struggle with is that you're making not enough content. number

one and the types of content that you're making are not attracting the types of customers you want. The promise that I have for you today is that I will show you a framework that I have called SPCL like special if you want but it's how to build influence rather than how to get

as many views as possible or anything like that. All right, but it's a

like that. All right, but it's a four-part framework and I want to break down each of the four components for you so that you can think about how you want to approach making content. All right,

and building a brand in general. SPCL,

these are letters and hopefully overhead cam works. All right. So, S P C L. So,

cam works. All right. So, S P C L. So,

what do these actually stand for? All

right. So, number one is status. And

this is why you hear me talk about proof so much. But how do you define status

so much. But how do you define status from an operational perspective? For

those of you who are new to the channel, I like to operationalize things. Meaning

like I like to look at objective reality and describe how you would see with your eyes rather than try and put a whole bunch of like emotional words around stuff because these are the like that type of language is what confused me for a very long time when I was coming up.

And it was only after I started defining things by what I could see, what I could observe, did reality feel like sharper, more crisp to me. And my ability to predict what was going to happen next increased by a lot. And so this is why I

I talk in this way. So how do I find status? So status is someone who

status? So status is someone who controls reinforcers in a given environment. So that's a little bit

environment. So that's a little bit fancy word, but fundamentally if you control the good stuff that people want, then you will have status no matter what it is, right? Right? And so the simplest example I have is like if you go to a

bar and it's a busy bar and there's a bartender and you have to get the bartender attention in order to get a drink or booze, that guy in that moment has status. He controls a scarce

has status. He controls a scarce resource, right? But if that guy walks

resource, right? But if that guy walks out of the bar, no longer controlling that scarce resource. He does not have the same status or even close to it, right? Like outside of the bar, he's not

right? Like outside of the bar, he's not getting tips every every single 5 seconds when he like moves his hands a little bit and like says something nice.

People aren't waving money at him as he walks in the street. Of course not. It's

because he has status in one condition and he doesn't have another. Now, what's

interesting about all four of these elements I'm going to break down, they all can work independently, but the idea is that you want all four to be stacked together. And this is what gives you the

together. And this is what gives you the most influence, right? So, like any of these four on their own would give you influence. Like that bartender, if he

influence. Like that bartender, if he just says that, he would have some level of influence. And I'll give you a

of influence. And I'll give you a different example of this. If a kid inherits money, right, they're going to have uh status, right? Like if you just if you have money, even if you didn't earn it, even if you didn't anything, if

you have money, you will have some degree of status because you control something other people want. Period.

That's how it works. All right? But

would that kid who has money have the same status as a kid who has money who also gave you, you know, 10 different cryptocoin picks that all popped off,

right? Well, if he gave you 10 different

right? Well, if he gave you 10 different picks and you followed them and they all popped off, how much more influence would that person have over them saying, "Hey, you should put money in this or hey, you should, you know, give me money for XYZ or whatever it is." Obviously,

I'm talking money because I'm I'm a business person first, but like think about how much more influence version two would have with just two of those things versus version one. That's the

difference. But if you have all four, that's when you get you become super sad. So status is number one, so you

sad. So status is number one, so you control scarce resources. Power is

number two. I would say if I had to only pick one, I would pick power. And I'll

explain why.

Power comes from something in the behavioral dynamics world called say do correspondence. What that means is if I

correspondence. What that means is if I say something and then you do it and then a good thing occurs, a reinforcing event happens afterwards, you are more likely to comply with a following

request. Right? So said differently, I

request. Right? So said differently, I give you the example of the guy who says, "Hey, here's 10 stock picks." You

buy them and then a good thing happens.

The thing goes up. Great. So that person has status and power which is why they are more influential than the trust fund kid who just has money. And so to the same degree for many of you who are trying to make content one it's like

okay status I want to demonstrate that I control a scarce resource that some people might want right um and so what makes this a little bit more muddied is that sometimes one event can check

multiple boxes. And so I'll give you a

multiple boxes. And so I'll give you a simple example. When we launched the

simple example. When we launched the book we did 100 million plus in sales.

That in and of itself, me having money from the event gives me status. Me

saying, "Hey, you can launch stuff in this way gives me credibility, right?

Because I show that I have an event, I have something that has happened as a result of me doing it that gives me third party credibility. There's

something that you can observe with your eyes, right? The reason that my ads do

eyes, right? The reason that my ads do well when I have my, you know, $10 million building behind me is like, oh, well, that's hard to fake, right? And

so, you have credibility there. And so,

one event like selling a company can give you money. It can give you credibility. And then if I give people

credibility. And then if I give people directions on how they can do things that are similar and then good things happen, then all of a sudden you get power. And then the last is likeness. I

power. And then the last is likeness. I

know I'm skipping around, but hey, we're live. We're having a good time. All

live. We're having a good time. All

right. And so credibility is number three.

And I'm going to go in more detail on all these. All right. And then likeness.

all these. All right. And then likeness.

So what's likeness? So likeness is that you see some this is some people say relatability. This can be both uh

relatability. This can be both uh psychological in terms of you share similar values with this person. and you

like you like their vibe, whatever you want to say, right? You like their behavior set and it and that behavior set matches to people who have been positive in your life in the past. Or

they literally just look like you, right? So like Leila and I could talk

right? So like Leila and I could talk about the exact same stuff, but she's a girl and so she's going to have more chicks who follow her than me. And for

the for the few ladies who do follow me, I appreciate you. I really do. Uh but I have like an 89% male audience. And so

maybe it's it's because of the topic.

But I would think, you know, at my onset, I think, oh, it's because I talk about money and I talk about business, that's why I have a more male audience.

But Laya, I think, is like 54% female.

and she talks about almost exclusively money and business. Um obviously she talks about some mindset stuff too but I I say this to say okay if we have these four things and these are the things that create influence and I would define

influence as um high likelihood of compliance with requests. So what does that mean? So if I say hey you know grab

that mean? So if I say hey you know grab my new book or I say hey come to this webinar. Hey I'm going live like come

webinar. Hey I'm going live like come check it out or hey you should come to a workshop whatever it is right you make some sort of solicitation. It could be like or subscribe it doesn't matter like there's levels of how cool big of an ask something is. If anybody's played like a

something is. If anybody's played like a video game, it's like you have like a role for like Dungeons and Dragons and it like depends on how how charismatic, how much influence you have, how high of a role or how low of a role rather you'd

need in order to be successful with the request, right? And so if you want to

request, right? And so if you want to stack that stat for you, then if you want to minmax your influence, if you will, then you want to stack all four of these things. Okay, you're like, "Okay,

these things. Okay, you're like, "Okay, I think I'm I'm following with this." So

how does this relate to content? So

first off, starting from the back, likeness, I think so much more of it is just like just be you. There's zero ROI in trying to be or act in a way that is

different than who you are. It's it's a relatively trit message, but like most people are NPCs. Most people say pre-recorded scripts. They look at like

pre-recorded scripts. They look at like the four different outfit, you know, combinations that exist for different kind of mental stereotypes. It's like,

oh yeah, guy who loves barbecue and craft beers. Oh yeah, that's that that's

craft beers. Oh yeah, that's that that's that archetype. I'm just going to be

that archetype. I'm just going to be that archetype. Or you've got like

that archetype. Or you've got like hipster bro who likes hipster [ __ ] right? Or you've got uh you know like

right? Or you've got uh you know like just bro, right? You've got just like stir bro. And people somewhat put me in

stir bro. And people somewhat put me in that status, but I also like for a few years was wearing like sandals that look like really weird. And I wore those and I was not broy at all, but like I wore them because they were super comfortable and I didn't have to like wear socks,

which is a big thing for me. Anyways,

but point is is like I think what makes you unique if is if you actually lean into the the nuances that make you you and actually have a way to defend why you do what you do. Because most people don't even think about why they do what

they do. And if you do things and you

they do. And if you do things and you don't know why, it's not. It's because

you're following someone else's directions for your life rather than your own. Weird like real. And so so

your own. Weird like real. And so so much of us have been programmed by people earlier in our lives. And I say programmed as though we were like machines. But what person do you think

machines. But what person do you think in your life has super high max status, power, credibility, and likeness maxed out earlier on in your life? It's your

parents, right? It's your parents. So

think about all four of these elements.

Status. Do your parents control scarce resources, things you want? They've got

money and they've got toys that they can buy you. They've got food. They have act

buy you. They've got food. They have act like they control your shelter. Like

they have huge amounts of status in your life because they control all the scarcest resources, all the things you want. These are not binaries. So don't

want. These are not binaries. So don't

think like, oh, I have status. I don't

have status. It's to what degree do you have status? Right? Like if somebody's

have status? Right? Like if somebody's got more money than you, they might have some status. If you've got $1 and

some status. If you've got $1 and someone's got 10 grand, they got more status than you, right? But if someone's a billionaire, they have way more status than the guy who's 10,000, right? So

again, think not in binaries, yes or no, but think in continuums. So the next one is think about your parents power. How

many reinforcement cycles do you assume that your parents had from the time you were born? And when I say reinforcement

were born? And when I say reinforcement cycles, it means like they said do this, you did that thing, and then a good thing happened. Now, you might be like,

thing happened. Now, you might be like, I hate my dad or hate my mom or whatever your thing is. I don't really care. That

doesn't matter for this purpose. The

idea is that they probably said don't go in the street or don't do that. and you

avoided a bad thing or do this and then a good thing happened, right? You tied

your shoes the first time, you put the two bunny ears together, you tied your shoes, good thing happened, they you followed their directions. Think about

how many times a parent has given you directions, you followed them, and a bad thing was avoided or good thing happened. Many. And so it makes sense

happened. Many. And so it makes sense that not only do they have a lot of status, they have a lot of power. What

else do they have? Credibility. Now,

this is one where I think parents sometimes might lack compared to the other things. If you have a parent who

other things. If you have a parent who also has credibility in that specific, you know, realm of whatever it is that they're talking about, then you'd have even more influence on you. And then

finally, for parents, are they like you?

Yeah, they literally look like you, right? And often times they share

right? And often times they share similar values to you to a degree.

Obviously, some people just go polar opposite from their parents. That's

fine, but I'm talking in sweeping generalities for most people. This

should at least explain or break down like why do parents have so much power over us? How how do they have so much

over us? How how do they have so much influence over our behaviors? You might

not even want to listen to your parents.

You might even like your parents, but you can still feel that they you have to like resist their requests because you are so programmed based on these

elements of behavior to comply with their requests. All right? And so then

their requests. All right? And so then the idea is how do we take these four elements and then how do we reverse engineer these into the content that we have so that we can build up true

influence like and again we're defining influence as the likelihood of a compliance with the request right and that likelihood will depend on the nature of the request and how much your

SPCL is in relation to that thing right if I was giving out fashion tips I probably don't have a lot of credibility for fashion tips right I don't know if I control any scarce resources around fashion. I have no I have no fashion

fashion. I have no I have no fashion hookups. Um I probably haven't given

hookups. Um I probably haven't given anyone specific fashion tips. I have no third party anything for credibility for it. And you probably don't look like me.

it. And you probably don't look like me.

And so like I probably would have very low influence. To some degree they can

low influence. To some degree they can generalize as you go up and up and up.

But um you have more influence in domain specificity. If we know these are the

specificity. If we know these are the four things status, power, credibility, likeness. Then for each of these things

likeness. Then for each of these things in our videos, right, we want to demonstrate that we control scarce resources. And so for me, like at the

resources. And so for me, like at the very beginning, if you think about what the intro was, right? So I said we did, you know, 32.7 million views and we did overund, you know, 5 point something

million dollars in sales for the book launch in 72 hours. And so that's me demonstrating status. I have these

demonstrating status. I have these things, right? Then power. So what I'm

things, right? Then power. So what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to break down four things you can follow. And if you follow these things,

follow. And if you follow these things, you're going to be more likely to get people who going to comply with your future requests. And so that means that

future requests. And so that means that they're not just going to watch your video, but they're going to be more likely to one watch a next video. And if

you have any kind of call to action in the video, whatever level of call to action that is for you, whether it's subscribe or like or share or or, you know, buy something that's small or you know, set up or call or whatever it is

that you sell, then this is going to be second, right? Like uh that you'll

second, right? Like uh that you'll you'll have included that in your content. So then credibility is going to

content. So then credibility is going to be the third party stuff. So the reason that I had at my launch, for example, I had Guinness, I had to pay those judges uh to be on site was because I wanted to

validate that the the books that we did and the revenue that we generated was legit, right? So I had a a third party

legit, right? So I had a a third party that most people um respect as like a legitimate corporation that their entire business is based on trust that they validate and verify proof that these

records were broken. And so that gives credibility. The likeness piece, like I

credibility. The likeness piece, like I said earlier, is just you being you, right? And so that's why I'm actually

right? And so that's why I'm actually super pumped to do these live streams because this is like I honestly hate making YouTube videos. And what I mean that is like staring at a camera and having like, you know, prompts to, you

know, solicit me to say stuff. Like I

will do it because I have a relatively high pain tolerance and I'll do what is required to get what I want. But like

I'm I'm going all in on this. So if you guys are like, "What's Alex's kind of like media strategy for the future?" I'm

I'm I'm focusing on two words. You can

write this down. live interactive those are the two things that's that is describing the uh ACQ you know 3.0 or Mosy Media 3.0 vision for what's going forward like that is what I'm focusing

on and I'll tell you a story of why why I think this is so interesting so I had a conversation with a mega influencer I don't think you would mind um with Mr. released a few weeks ago and we were talking about kind of like the future of

media and content. One of the things that he was just talking about was um this soccer game that came up uh that they do like UK versus US. What ends up happening is that they have all these different celebrities or influencers

from different platforms, right? And so

starting from the lowest the lowest people on this little totem pole, they would walk out in the stadium and this became the kind of the def de facto like measuring stick for who had who had the most cool points, right? These are the

A-listers. And so this is your typical

A-listers. And so this is your typical kind of celebs from like movies and like 90s and the 2000s or whatever, right?

People like they recognize because they're celebs, but like they don't have like huge I guess they have some media presence, but it's more like traditional media. The level of applause for these

media. The level of applause for these guys was almost nothing. Barely anyone

cared. So then the next level that came up was the shorts, the shorts creators.

So this is your like only Tik Tockers or people who only make reals, but like only short videos. And so they had a little bit more applause on the applause meter compared to the A-listers. Then

the long form guys came out and this is when the audience got way rowdier. All

right, so this is your podcasters, your YouTubers, the people who make long form pieces of content. And I'm going to pause here for a second to kind of like highlight why I think this is. I don't

think there's anything wrong with shorts. We make tons of shorts. But I

shorts. We make tons of shorts. But I

see the purpose of shorts as many times a way to get someone to watch along, right? They watch a couple a couple

right? They watch a couple a couple shorts and then think, "Okay, this guy seems legit or this gal seems legit. I'm

going to risk my time because that's the risk. They're making an investment,

risk. They're making an investment, right? You're making an investment

right? You're making an investment today. I'm going risk I'm going to get a

today. I'm going risk I'm going to get a good return on this, right?" And so shorts then lead to longs. But let me show you the difference from an influence perspective. How many

influence perspective. How many reinforcing cycles do you think you can have in 30 seconds compared to 2 hours?

It's like not even close. And so if someone watched two 1-hour pieces of content for me, period, okay? two 1 hour pieces, 120 minutes for me to get that same level of exposure and kind of cycles of reinforcement with a prospect

and they were only consuming shorts, right? Let's say my average short, let's

right? Let's say my average short, let's say it's 15 seconds. So that means it's four shorts per minute. So if I have 120 minutes for longs, I have to do someone

would have to watch 480 shorts to have the same level of exposure as watching 2 hours with me. And think about how how important this is. What were the things that people said like this was the quote

podcast election? Trump went on and I

podcast election? Trump went on and I don't care about the politics behind it, but I do care about influence and persuasion. And so, like, why is it that

persuasion. And so, like, why is it that the two podcasts that I think really nudged this election, my opinion, is the Trump three-hour plus podcast that he did with Rogan like a week or whatever

it was, I think that was a huge influential event. I think Elon getting

influential event. I think Elon getting on uh Tucker Tucker Carlson and doing that interview. I think those two

that interview. I think those two interviews were some of the interviews that really nudged the election. And

again, I don't care who you voted for.

It doesn't matter to me. I think about this from marketing persuasion, okay?

And so because of that, audiences who were not sure got to spend three hours with a presidential candidate and as a result, it just nudged some of them in the direction to ultimately vote. Okay,

now back to our little story. A-listers

have almost no applause. Shorts have

slight applause. Longs have legit applause. Then

applause. Then the live streamers, when the live streamers came out, it was like the entire auditorium or stadium or arena erupted.

And when I heard that, it was such a visual example of I mean, we have this saying which is like butts and seats. If

you just make a bunch of like meme content, right, you demonstrate almost none of these things. Some of you guys are chasing views when what I think you want is you want to have prospects who are more likely to comply with a future

request. And so we need to change our

request. And so we need to change our behavior to maximize the likely that occurs. And so in in looking at this

occurs. And so in in looking at this thing, this is why I'm I'm telling you like showing my cards, I'm going to be doing more live streams. And I think it's also and this is me like outside of SPCL, but I think like meta themes

overall. I think that the internet will

overall. I think that the internet will always move towards truth. And so I think the A-listers, everything's super curated, everything's super polished, it's photoshopped, it's scripted, and as

you move closer this way, it's rawer.

Like you have a three-hour podcast, like they're not scripted, right? Or most of them aren't, right? Um streaming, it's like, yeah, we're live, right? I can't

do anything. Like we're live. This idea

of of how can we approximate the rawest reality of you us hanging out, right?

and actually going through this stuff. I

think that is what will unlock the most influence as long as you are still including these SPCL elements into it.

And I think that's the marriage. Do SPCL

and do it as many times as I possibly can. That's the idea. And so live

can. That's the idea. And so live streaming provides that that opportunity. Let's also think about this

opportunity. Let's also think about this from a context of volume. Whether you

like him or not, Rogan, tremendous influence, right? To the same degree.

influence, right? To the same degree.

PBD, tremendous influence. Uh Dave

Ramsey, tremendous influence. What is it that these guys have in common? They're

putting out hours of content every single day. So, I said earlier that we

single day. So, I said earlier that we had 35,000 pieces of content, right? I

hear plenty of times there's tons of, you know, $1 million businesses, $2 million businesses, things like that.

They put out one piece of content a day, right? And there's nothing wrong with

right? And there's nothing wrong with that. That's 365 pieces of content a

that. That's 365 pieces of content a year. And if you think about the size of

year. And if you think about the size of acquisition.com in terms of our revenue, right? compared to somebody who's doing

right? compared to somebody who's doing one or $2 million a year and they're doing 365 pieces of content, we're just quite literally doing a hundred times more. And as a result of that 100 times

more. And as a result of that 100 times the volume, what do you think is happening? We get a 100 times the

happening? We get a 100 times the prospect. And so people want to try and

prospect. And so people want to try and like outsmart themselves and thinking that they can like not do the work that's required, but it's actually far more linear than you would expect. So

like we just know that like one out of 10, you know, shorts is going to go, you know, is going to be a two or three outlier. We just know what that math

outlier. We just know what that math looks like. Same thing for longs. How do

looks like. Same thing for longs. How do

I just jam as much into that input output machine as I possibly can? And as

long as I'm checking these boxes like I'm making the right kind of content, then you're going to get the right kind of prospects. So, I'll give you one more

of prospects. So, I'll give you one more nugget like I said, which is that some of you guys may have heard this and it's a concept of social media

is now turning into interest media.

Okay, so what does this mean? Let's

unpack this for a second. If you make content and you judge it by views, I think that's dumb. And I'll explain why.

If I have a a grandma in public come and just do a running slap and just slaps me across the face, that video will probably get views. But does it get the grandma views? No. Does it get me any

grandma views? No. Does it get me any any more people who now believe more in my stuff? No. But what it will do is it

my stuff? No. But what it will do is it will show it to people who are interested in humor, which is a lot of people, right? But those might not be

people, right? But those might not be your customers, and they probably aren't. So assuming you're not an

aren't. So assuming you're not an entertainer and you are somebody who's a business person. If you sell services to

business person. If you sell services to anyone, you're likely going to be an educator, not an entertainer. Meaning

you're you're you're trying to provide value to people to change their behavior in some way and ideally change behavior that gets them to walk closer to you and buy stuff. Okay. So what do I mean by

buy stuff. Okay. So what do I mean by social versus interest? If you want to attract the right avatar, make content for that avatar. That sounds so obvious and simple and the thing is that no one

does it because here's the right or downer. The content is the targeting.

downer. The content is the targeting.

The algorithm is so good now. It knows

what you're talking about. It knows it can it can literally judge your your background. It judges what you're

background. It judges what you're wearing. It judges who you are and will

wearing. It judges who you are and will display it to the people that they know have a history of watching content that is similar to that that people find valuable. And so if you're making stuff

valuable. And so if you're making stuff about how to fix pianos because you're a piano repair guy, then you will have people who are trying to fix their pianos. But if you're making that type

pianos. But if you're making that type of content, you might be like, "Man, I'm only getting, you know, a,000 views a video." It's like, yeah, but the market

video." It's like, yeah, but the market of people who are buying pianos might be significantly smaller than the market of people who just want to be entertained or distracted. So, it's not fair to to

or distracted. So, it's not fair to to compare your views against Mr. Beasts.

It doesn't make any sense. If I were to think to myself like, I have a room of a thousand people that are going to watch this and all of them are only interested in fixing pianos. That's a hell of an opportunity. I care so much more about

opportunity. I care so much more about IRL responses. So, what I mean by that,

IRL responses. So, what I mean by that, if I make a video and then I get texts from business owners that I like and that I respect being like, "Yo, that was fire." then I'm like, "Okay, I'm on the

fire." then I'm like, "Okay, I'm on the right track." And so, some of you guys,

right track." And so, some of you guys, let me know in the comments you guys have seen um a format that we've talked about. We call cash cows, but basically

about. We call cash cows, but basically it's me, there's a business owner that presents a little bit about their business and they come to this side and we talk about how to like how to improve their business, right? So, let me know in the comments if you like that style.

And if you do, let me know if you're a business owner or not. Okay? So, uh like I like that style and I'm not a business owner. I like that style and I am a

owner. I like that style and I am a business owner. Or I don't like that

business owner. Or I don't like that style and I'm a business owner. Or I

don't like that style and I'm not a business owner. If you are a business

business owner. If you are a business owner, when I have people who are here in person, IRL, in real life in Vegas, right? Business owners who fly out, I

right? Business owners who fly out, I ask, I say, "What is your favorite type of content?" Dollars to donuts. That's

of content?" Dollars to donuts. That's

their favorite type of content. And so,

I make more of that. Even though, and it would make sense, like it would make sense that there's fewer of those people, right? Just think about math. If

people, right? Just think about math. If

you've got uh if you got the whole population here, let me I'll show you a little graph on this. So let's say that a 100% of people like this represents 100%. Uh let's just use USA because I

100%. Uh let's just use USA because I already know all the numbers for USA.

Okay, so let's say this is 100%. All

right, you get 100% of people are interested. Okay, well right now only 9%

interested. Okay, well right now only 9% of people even own a business. Like 9%.

So right off the bat, I'm going to have a huge percentage of people that aren't my ideal audience. Now, of course, I do have people who are business interested and that's why I'm a co-founder of school and we give people, you know, a

way to go uh start a business online in in in a lowcost way, right? Which you

can do. It's n bucks a month after 14-day trial. You guys can check it out.

14-day trial. You guys can check it out.

And there's a bunch of like training and community and all that good stuff. All

right? But you can go school.com, I think, for/orosi. I think it's below

think, for/orosi. I think it's below this video. Doesn't matter. Point big.

this video. Doesn't matter. Point big.

9% is what I'm competing for. Okay? Now,

that means that there's about 32 to 33 million uh business owners in the US.

Okay? 32 million. That's that's 100% of all business owners. Now, within that, 95% of that 9%

is below $1 million in revenue. 95%.

Then I've got 5% of that 9% that are over a million.

Now, if you want to get if you want to get weird with it, what percent do you think is over 10 million? 4%.

One in 250. And then a hundred million nine figures is I think one in roughly 3,000 depending on like your data source. One in three,000 businesses gets

source. One in three,000 businesses gets to 100 million a year.

This big and so it would make sense then that we've given these numbers right 9% is is 32 million. So out of 5% of that is only be a million and a half people.

There's only a million and a half people who are business owners doing over a million based on the math that they that that this is Census Bureau data. Maybe

theirs isn't correct but that's the math, right? And so if we're looking at

math, right? And so if we're looking at that's the market, then it would make sense that I'm not going to get all 100% of them to watch my video, right? If I

got one and a half million views and 100% of them were business owners, that would be insane, right? And so it would make sense that like if I get 100,000 views on a video that has that's really made for that level of business owner,

then I'm crushing it, right? And it

doesn't make sense to look at, you know, Mr. Beast's video with 100 million views and be like, "Oh man, I suck." It's

like, dude, we're going after we have different we have different games, right? And so I'd encourage you to

right? And so I'd encourage you to create accurate expectations of the size of the market that you're going after and also think about the translation of these numbers into IRL. I have two businesses that I looked at in the last year that were doing over a million

dollars a year with less than 5,000 followers. You absolutely can make

followers. You absolutely can make plenty of money with a very small following as long as you make content that's directly valuable for that following. All right, with that being

following. All right, with that being said, uh we just went over SPCL status power credibility and likeness. what you want to include in

likeness. what you want to include in videos, why I'm going all in on live stream, and why the whole point is you want to get as much time with your uh prospects as humanly possible. You want

to make the topics of your content based on the things that those people find interesting, not uh based on like being social, but being interesting. And if

you get if you make it interesting for them, they will keep watching it. And

then being realistic about your expectations on how many views you can get based on your size of market. So,

you've built a personal brand, here's how I would monetize an audience to make more money. In my second company,

more money. In my second company, Prestige Labs, I built up to over 5,000 affiliates that generated 20 plus million dollars a year in revenue. And

that business continues to this day. In

Allen, my software company, which was my third big company, we built up to over a thousand affiliates that were agencies white labeling that software. For my

book launch, for $100 million leads, we got 30,000 affiliates who promoted the actual book launch. I've also invested in companies that I've personally endorsed. And so I bring all these

endorsed. And so I bring all these things up because most people don't know how to quote monetize an audience. And

after talking to a lot of creators or celebrities and influencers and also business owners who want to do deals with those people, a lot of people don't share a construct in terms of thinking

through how to make those deals happen.

And so I wanted to make this video to outline the four ways that I see those deals happening and the combinations between them and what considerations you might have. Whether you're on the doing

might have. Whether you're on the doing the deal side of having an audience or being the person who wants to quote buy, license, rent the audience from an influencer or somebody who has those

eyeballs. All right, so four ways to

eyeballs. All right, so four ways to monetize an audience. Let's use a good marker that doesn't suck.

Step one, have good markers. Four ways

to monetize and audience.

All right. Now, right off the bat, number one, we've got affiliates, which is what I was saying earlier.

The second way that you can monetize an audience is through sponsorships. Some

people call these endorsements.

The third way that you can do this is through partnerships, which usually involve equity.

And the fourth way that we can do this through starting your own if you're the influencer in this instance.

All right. So we have affiliates which is where you are getting paid after you make sales for a business. Sponsorships where they pay you first to advertise on behalf of

the business and typically endorse it via your brand. Partnerships where you go into a business that already has a product, already has an infrastructure and you do one of these two things or a

combination of these two things for equity. And so the behaviors between

equity. And so the behaviors between affiliate sponsorships and partnerships are more or less the same.

The difference is simply how you get compensated. And then the fourth is

compensated. And then the fourth is where you just start your entirely own brand to then promote to your audience.

All right. So let's break down which of these and kind of where they sit on the continuum. And the reason I want to

continuum. And the reason I want to bring this up is because I'm having so many conversations with people who are like, I have this audience. I've built

it for four years. I just don't know what to do. And so I think of these four on a continuum. All right? And I can think of this continuum in terms of

difficulty and risk and value. All

right? And so on this side, you've got the affiliates. This is the fastest way

the affiliates. This is the fastest way that you could immediately make money.

Most businesses that have affiliate programs, you can sign up automatically.

They have predetermined uh terms that are associated with this agreement. And

as unless you do something that's really, you know, nefarious or weird, they're happy to have you sell their stuff.

So, one is this one's fastest. This is

low risk for kind of both parties because if you're an affiliate and you're promoting it, like they don't have to pay you until after you make a sale. Now, for you, you also don't get

sale. Now, for you, you also don't get capped. And so, if you can make a ton of

capped. And so, if you can make a ton of sales and you feel like you're being undervalued, then you just get to prove that you are actually good at promoting and that your audience is actually a good fit for whatever that product is.

But from a value perspective, so I'll call it exit value, affiliate revenue streams are not typically that valuable. So they will contribute to the sellability of a

company, but the majority of that value would come in the terms of a multiple of the cash flow that you're receiving as an affiliate multiplied or discounted by how reliable the business that you're

doing business with is. And so if I'm an affiliate of the US government, you know what I mean, and I recruit people for the military, then I probably can say that my business model is sound and the US government's not going to go away.

I'm not getting not notwithstanding, you know, theories and whatnot. All right?

But by and large, it's be a trustworthy third party. On the flip side, if I have

third party. On the flip side, if I have some, you know, info thing that is going to disappear tomorrow because there's some arbitrage opportunity that's your business opportunity, then this is going

to be basically have no value because that business that underlines that cash flow has no value. All right? And so

we're moving along here. So this is the lowest value probably middle work lowish risk for you. All right. The next is you've got sponsorships.

So sponsorships is where someone pays you first. All right? So you receive

you first. All right? So you receive cash and then you make the endorsement.

And so usually this is in two forms. You advertise to your audience.

And the reason I say advertise rather than hear it sell here. You only get paid after people buy. With

sponsorships, you get paid first. And so

that means that you are advertising.

You're a traffic source for the business. And so you will get paid as a

business. And so you will get paid as a traffic source typically based on CPMs, meaning cost per thousand impressions that you can have in terms of views to an audience. Now, these sponsorships

an audience. Now, these sponsorships come in the form of you posting stuff to your audience, which for them, they see this as free traffic. They're

technically paying for it, but you're monetizing the traffic that you have.

The other way, which is the more scalable way, is something called whitelisting, which is basically them taking whatever your posts are and then running them as

ads. And so, let's say I have a million

ads. And so, let's say I have a million person audience. I make a post and only,

person audience. I make a post and only, you know, 200,000 people see it. And as

most content creators would do, you wouldn't want to post over and over again about that thing because it would kind of be like, oh, this guy's just promoting this thing over and over again. It wouldn't feel good, right? And

again. It wouldn't feel good, right? And

so you might make a post or two every so often to not interrupt the value that you're providing to your audience too much. And so the way to solve this

much. And so the way to solve this really for both parties is you make an advertisement saying, "Hey, I just partnered with so- and so. Their thing

is awesome. I've actually been using it for years. Finally came to an agreement.

for years. Finally came to an agreement.

I think you guys might like it. Check it

out." Right? And so that whitelisting then allows them to blast it to people way outside of your audience. I like

this a lot as a win-win because the business pays money to advertise your brand. So, they make you bigger and

brand. So, they make you bigger and they're spending money to advertise you, but at the same time, they get higher conversion rate because you're probably better on camera, you're better spoken, and you already have a certain amount of warm audience that recognize you, at

least your face or your mannerisms. So, you convert at a higher percentage. So,

the business makes money, you grow your brand. This is a really nice

brand. This is a really nice partnership. Now these deals,

partnership. Now these deals, sponsorships are harder to come by than affiliate deals because most affiliate companies just have a program, an influencer program, an affiliate program, and you just sign up on the

standard terms. Sponsorships tend to be more allocart depending on the size of the influencer relative to the size of the company. And so for extreme

the company. And so for extreme examples, if you're a huge influencer and there's a tiny company, you'll be able to get an amazing sponsorship deal.

If it's a huge company like Nike and you're a small influencer, you might not get any deal and you still wear their stuff. And so it's really the balance

stuff. And so it's really the balance between who has how much leverage in the negotiation which brings us to the fourth one or sorry the third one which is

partnerships. All right. Now as we move

partnerships. All right. Now as we move along here sponsorships also don't have kind of like affiliates huge exit value. The only place that

sponsorships really become exitable valuable exitable value for a business is if you have a true media company.

Now, if you're a personal brand, it's really tough to exit your personal brand. But if I have an army of

brand. But if I have an army of influencers and I negotiate deals through my network and say, "Hey, uh, you know, Paps Blue Ribbon or, you know, Budweiser, whatever. I have a thousand

Budweiser, whatever. I have a thousand influencers that fit your ideal profile for customers and I'll negotiate an umbrella deal and then all of them are forced because the with them to promote your stuff." Now you have a media

your stuff." Now you have a media company which is very similar to a talent agency, slightly different but has a lot of similarities. And so then then that sponsorship revenue is really the main revenue of your business which

is that you sell traffic at a discount, right?

But for the for the influencer individually, these two things very hard to sell, not really sellable, not much.

Now, once we get into this side, these deals get harder and harder to do and you do fewer and fewer of them as you go down this line. So, a partnership can either be a minority deal or a majority

deal. Again, if you're going to go

deal. Again, if you're going to go partner with a company and you're huge and they're tiny, then it might be a majority deal. If they're huge and

majority deal. If they're huge and you're tiny relative to them, then it might be a minority deal, meaning you're not going to get all of the company. And

that can range from, you know, 0.01% 01% of the business all the way to you getting you know 99% of the business in terms of the range and so anything that you can imagine in terms of economics

here is going to be negotiable but one of the thing or some of the things that I would consider here is performance which is this is again for both parties you can have equity as the form of

compensation rather than necessarily cash and you say hey if I bring you an extra thousand customers I get you know 1% per thousand customers

that I bring you to the platform or whatever and then you put a cap on that at some point where you say up to to you know 10%. Great. And so that way it's a

know 10%. Great. And so that way it's a little bit balanced for you and for the business. Now one of the considerations

business. Now one of the considerations that you have to have if you were the uh content creator or the influencer is that the the the association that you make with their brand is permanent. As soon as you make

that public decoration, you transfer all of that goodwill. You transfer that association to them. And so if you are going to do a deal like this, my recommendation is that you want to have at least something upfront.

So no matter what for doing this deal, you get some amount of this equity up front and then some percentage that's based on performance. Now the one of the last components that I'll say and there's obviously a lot of ways that you

can do deals, but these are just the things that I think through is time. And

so somebody who's on the business owner side is like, well, I don't want you just make one association. I want you to keep doing this for a long period of time. And so they can take some of this

time. And so they can take some of this equity that they want to give you and say, "All right, I'm going to give you, you know, 25% of your equity upfront.

I'm going to give you uh 25% based on performance and I'm going to give you 50% over time. And so I want you to promote for the next four years. And if

for some reason something happens, then you're not going to get that vesting because we had some sort of breakup, right?" And so whenever I think through

right?" And so whenever I think through these terms, I just like to think of through all the W's, which is who, what, where, when, why, how, right? which is

okay I want you to post and if you're the content creator you should be asking that same thing which is how much do you want me to post right and about what and you have to take into consideration that you have to keep building your brand right and so you don't want to just be

like all of a sudden some shill like that's not good you want to tastefully be able to integrate that promotion into the content that you have and so you have to say okay well I think the best

way for us to do this is for me to you know put uh your links in my bio and I'll put it up for one week of the month and I will make one long- form thing

that it mentions it and you know five short form things via post or stories and then when you define that and the reason this is so important is that you define that stuff up front so that it's just very clear don't just say like I

will promote the business and whatnot because it just doesn't work as well and you might say I will also you know record ads once a month that you can then use for whitelisting and so all of these things and this is where this gets

more nuanced in dealm is you can be a partner and still have affiliate revenue you can be a partner and still get paid from a sponsorship perspective. And so

these things are not mutually exclusive, but like you might have a primarily sponsorship deal with some element of equity. But I will say on a personal

equity. But I will say on a personal level, the more money you have right now, the more you want to lean this way because the equity, the sponsorship cash that you choose to

take, you do at the expense of equity.

And if you believe in the product and you believe that the company is exitable in the future, then in my opinion, it makes sense to delay it for the little bit longer run. But this takes on more risk because here you get paid today no

matter what. Here you might not ever get

matter what. Here you might not ever get paid if the company doesn't sell. And so

by taking on more risk, you want to make sure that you're getting a disproportionate reward in the in the form of stock, shares, options, equity, and things like that. All right? And so

as we're walking through this and you're thinking, okay, how can I monetize my brand? It's like, okay, the first level

brand? It's like, okay, the first level I can do affiliates and just promote other people's stuff and get paid for it. The next level, I can be a media

it. The next level, I can be a media source for them. I can be traffic for them via sponsorship. Right? These are a little bit more nuanced deals.

taking another step. I can actually partner with the brand and say, "Hey, I want to own 1% 5% 10% 50% depending on how big you are and how big your

audience is." And then finally,

audience is." And then finally, you can start your own brand.

And when I say brand, I say that all inclusive in terms of products and brand. And when you do this, you can

brand. And when you do this, you can either white label, which means you go to somebody who manufactures stuff already and say, "Can you slap my logo on it, which is an option, and the other

option is that you do custom formulations, custom, I'll just say custom stuff." All right? And so if I

custom stuff." All right? And so if I were selling supplements, for example, I might go to a a company that already has a product that's done, and I just say, "Hey, I want to slap my label on it." On

the custom version of this, it's like, "Hey, I want this gram of this. We're

going to test out flavors together and we're going to put it together, make a custom product that no one else has.

Same things works with merchandise. So,

if you said, "Hey, I want to get a white t-shirt." And you just try six different

t-shirt." And you just try six different white t-shirts that people have off the shelf that are manufacturers. They say,

"Okay, just slap my logo on it and let's go." Or you say, "Hey, what are the

go." Or you say, "Hey, what are the different fabrics? What are the

different fabrics? What are the different materials that I can put together? These are the cuts that I want

together? These are the cuts that I want to look at. This is how I want it to fit." Right? That becomes more custom.

fit." Right? That becomes more custom.

And so white label is faster and easier from a speed perspective, but usually me personally, I prefer to do custom stuff because I don't like anyone else being able to sell something that's identical

to me and be able to have any kind of pricing power over what I have because it the moment that people find out that you just have a generic product that you slap the label on, it just does it's not a good look, right? And so again, I

don't think there's anything to like I want to be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing white label. I

just think that if we were to put this on this sphere, like white label would be here and custom would be here. But if

you're going to take the risk on of starting your own brand, I might as well get all the benefits of doing it. But

this costs more money. White label tends to cost less because you don't have to get custom templates, custom forms, and pay and incur all those costs because someone else their whole business is based around doing this for other

people. All right? Now, the difference

people. All right? Now, the difference here is that for all of these situations, you're going to promote stuff that already exists. Here, you're

starting the thing from ground zero, which means that you're on the other side of the table. Now, you start with 100% equity and then you start paying

people this way down the line. And so,

if you are an influencer, you have an audience or you're a business owner and you're trying to make deals with influencers, this is how I think through this. And I try and see there are

this. And I try and see there are elements that you can borrow from each of these kind of verticals to tweak the deal to make it right for everyone. And

so I think about it in terms of what's the exit value, what cash is going to be going in or out of the business, how much work is the person going to do, and then how much risk am I or are they

exposed to? And by balancing those four

exposed to? And by balancing those four things, you can usually navigate along this continuum to find the right part, the right deal that's right for you and the product.

>> As a bonus, I'm going to take you behind the scenes to what I've just learned with my personal brand so you can make more money and grow your business.

>> I made 35,000 posts over 40 months and grew a 7.8 million person audience. And

three weeks ago, I made six big shifts in my content. And I want to show you behind the scenes what we found from those six big shifts with screenshots of the data so that you can use this to

make more money in your business and whatever you promote. And so the first was we went from edutainment to education. So instead of being kind of

education. So instead of being kind of halfway through to all the way all in on education. Now that had downstream

education. Now that had downstream impacts in terms of how we packaged, how we title things, even the number of special effects we have. And the purpose of education as I see is to change behavior. And so my point is with this

behavior. And so my point is with this video once I show you the data of what's happened since that change since the we made these six shifts that hopefully or hopefully not we'll see what you decide to do but it will change how you make

content to make more money. So number

one is educa edutainment to education.

Number two is we went from for us to for you. Now when I say for us what ended up

you. Now when I say for us what ended up happening one of the mistakes I made was that I mean unknowingly was that I would be like team what do you guys think about content? And so they'd be like hey

about content? And so they'd be like hey we should make a video on this. Hey we

should make a video on this. And so what ended up happening is I started making videos for my team, not my ideal customer, a business owner. And so I actually had a friend come into town and say, "Hey, you know, it's weird. I

actually haven't been paying attention to your content." He does about 10 million bucks a year. And uh I was like, he's like, "Well, I guess I'm not really your avatar." And I was like, "Whoa,

your avatar." And I was like, "Whoa, whoa." I was like, "You are 100% my

whoa." I was like, "You are 100% my avatar. What's going on?" And so soon as

avatar. What's going on?" And so soon as I realized that, I was like, "Oh man."

He's like, "It just didn't feel as relevant to me." And so I was making stuff for my team rather than my avatar.

And so if you are somebody who makes content, something to be mindful of is your team might not be the type of people you're trying to make content for. So just something interesting for

for. So just something interesting for me. So went from for us, our team to for

me. So went from for us, our team to for you viewer, for business owners. Number

three, we went from wide to narrow. So

fitness, relationships, etc. Those are wider topics. More people are in

wider topics. More people are in relationship, more people eat food, more people trying to lose weight compared to only 9% of people are business owners.

And so we went much narrow on the topic of like I'm just talking about business because that's what I love talking about too as a side note. And so it turns out business owners like it more when I talk about business. and I like it more as a

about business. and I like it more as a business owner. So, everybody wins, at

business owner. So, everybody wins, at least for me. Number four is we went from views to revenue. Now, this was key. So, when you just have views as a

key. So, when you just have views as a metric, then you kind of do chase wider because it was the only real metric we were tracking and we didn't really have anything better at the time and that's what we focused on. Since then, we transition to ad revenue. And here's

why. Ad revenue takes into account views, but it has a second metric that's paired with it, which is RPMs, which is revenue per thousand eyeballs. So if you if YouTube pays lots of money for the

eyeball, then it means they're more valuable. And if they're more valuable

valuable. And if they're more valuable to advertiser, they're more valuable to me. And so my idea here is that I want

me. And so my idea here is that I want to make sure that we're showing our videos to the right people or rather that the right people are watching. Now

once we can control for that and we stay or keep our RPMs or the amount that advertisers are willing to pay for these eyeballs high, then we get as many views as we can. And as a total pro tip for business stuff in general, paired KPIs

works exceptionally well. So if you're at customer success, you want the speed of resolution, but you also want a quality metric. If you had a a company

quality metric. If you had a a company that did cleaning, it' be the same thing is you'd pair reviews from customers with the number of cleans per day. And

so you like to have both edges so that you can control for both sides. And you

should do that with any department you can. Now, so I said number four was

can. Now, so I said number four was views to ad revenue as our primary metric that we were optimizing for. So

we no longer cared, oh, this one had a lot of views. We don't care about that.

It's just do we have as many views with the right people. Number five is went from emphasizing shorts to emphasizing longs. We saw that longs got the best

longs. We saw that longs got the best people and short the whole thesis around shorts creates longs viewers. We

actually haven't seen any evidence that supports that. People watch shorts want

supports that. People watch shorts want more shorts. People want longs for

more shorts. People want longs for longs. Which doesn't necessarily mean

longs. Which doesn't necessarily mean that people from a different platform don't watch you on shorts on TikTok and then they're a long form YouTube watcher and then watch your stuff on YouTube

that long. But usually people who watch

that long. But usually people who watch long form stuff on YouTube watch long form stuff on YouTube. People who watch short form on YouTube watch short form.

Some people watch both. But most of the time people kind of have consumption preferences and they're not going to change their preferences for you. They

just might watch you in a different place where that consumption preference is what you make. And so we found that and we found that the longs are the things that actually drove the most applications for acquisition.com and the most book sales and the most optins. So

that's what we're making more of. And

number six was assuming more versus assuming nothing. meaning I made videos

assuming nothing. meaning I made videos like the Alex Herozi diet. I made uh the the Alex Herozi vlog, the Herozis, things like that. Those assume that

somebody who doesn't know me will want to care what whoever the hell Alex Herozi is, which I don't think is that reasonable. Like I don't think they

reasonable. Like I don't think they would want that because who cares about this random dude? And so it's assuming nothing. Now that has um changes in

nothing. Now that has um changes in terms of what we're making. So there's

no assumptions. So, for example, like we own acquisition.com, we have a portfolio of businesses. I introduced myself

of businesses. I introduced myself because if you don't know who I am, this might be the first video you see of me.

And so, if I stopped doing that for a while because I kind of went into this mindset that every everyone knew. Now,

obviously, that's dumb. Way more people don't know me than know me. But, you

kind of fall into this trap of assuming you're talking to your warm audience rather than what you're making the content for, which is people who've never met you before. And so keeping that top of mind which is that we want to make sure that we welcome everyone and that we don't have inside jokes that

only people who are on the inside feel it because then all it does is it excludes people that are new and like what you want to do is bring more people into your world anyways especially if they're business owners for me. And so

there are six changes that we made in our content and so we've gone allin on that concept and so we've done a lot of rapid iteration but let me tell you the data that's happened since. So, right

off the bat, RPMs, meaning the revenue per thousand viewers went up by 68%. So,

like when you think, man, I don't feel like I can like what my content is about, like it doesn't change anything.

Well, it sure as hell did for us. When I

talk about deep business stuff, when I talk about reducing churn, when I talk about increasing number of time, like ways to get someone to buy more times, when I talk about how we scaled a 40 person sales team and the all the steps that we did in order to do that in a real case study in a real business, when

I talk about how you can deconstruct and reconstruct a brand, these are deeper business concepts. And guess what?

business concepts. And guess what?

Business owners watch them. And guess

what? Those eyeballs are more valuable, 68%. And we're only going to get better

68%. And we're only going to get better at it. And so for us, boom, that meant

at it. And so for us, boom, that meant that us changing our topics got the right people to watch the videos.

Checkbox one. And so you can see by the video title when we had educational versus kind of wide or business education versus wider topics. The wider

topics in general had way lower RPMs. You can see that with the the light blue. Whereas the purple is more

blue. Whereas the purple is more money-m, more business, more sales, more more, you know, retention, real business tactics that grow companies. And those

unsurprisingly were way higher in average RPM, some of them even higher than that. So the next big change, and I

than that. So the next big change, and I see this as anecdotal, is that 25% more comments per view. And so I see that as an engagement metric that we had way more people saying, "Wow, this was good or this was great or I missed this style

of content." That's actually a really

of content." That's actually a really common thing. And I will say this, this

common thing. And I will say this, this is to my decrement. I should have seen that more business owners were telling us in the comments what they wanted. And

honestly, I just wasn't listening. Um,

and that's on me. I I was like, well, you're going to lose some people as you make more, you know, high production stuff. That's okay. But with the return

stuff. That's okay. But with the return to hardcore business education in terms of the content that we're making, the response has been overwhelming that so many people were like, I'm coming back to all your content. This has been

great. This is what I came here for. And

great. This is what I came here for. And

so, I'm stoked about that. And so, we got 25% more people who are uh doing that. We have more shares, negligible,

that. We have more shares, negligible, and slightly fewer likes, which again, whatever. But for me, I would say

whatever. But for me, I would say comment I would rate comments and shares as higher. And so overall, we had higher

as higher. And so overall, we had higher engagement from these videos even though they were narrower topics, which to me is more good for fewer people than a little bit of good for a lot of people, which is where I want to be in terms of

what I want to serve or who I want to serve. So the next big change is that

serve. So the next big change is that despite, and this is a key point, despite having fewer absolute views per long form video, we're actually getting more long- form views overall across the

channel. So, we're up 30 almost 30%

channel. So, we're up 30 almost 30% 29.56%.

Um, then our our 6 weeks average before that from these deeper educational videos. Now, realistically, that's a

videos. Now, realistically, that's a function of one main thing in my opinion. That's because the education

opinion. That's because the education stuff actually requires far less post editing and I can make more education stuff because this is what I do every day. And so, we can actually create more

day. And so, we can actually create more content, which I'm stoked about. And I

think the I think I mean hopefully business owners are too. Um, and so we actually get more overall views with the right people because we don't have nearly as much highfi post production whisbangs, which is what

most of my audience who was trying to learn stuff rather than be entertained was happy about. All right, this next one is very surprising to me at least.

So, our subscriber conversion increased by 24.6%.

And so that means that we've actually like even though again we had slightly lower lower absolute views, more long form views that we actually increased

the absolute number of subscribers per week since doing this. So like I mean I was very comfortable with all of these metrics tanking. Like that was I

metrics tanking. Like that was I honestly expected that because I was like all right well we're going to have way fewer views but it's going to be the right people. But because 25% more

right people. But because 25% more people who watch subscribe, even though we get fewer views, our actual subscriber growth has grown, which is crazy in an absolute metric way. So this

was this was an unexpected outcome for me and has just reinforced that this was the right decision for the audience that I want, which is business owners. The

next thing is like, okay, well, if you're getting fewer views, how is that going to translate to opt-ins? Because

I'm a business owner. Like that's what I care I care about people who are trying to uh to become portfolio companies, come to a workshop, whatever. And so it

turns out that we have 26% more optins per week since making this change. And so this is like both

change. And so this is like both incredibly surprising and also incredibly duh. And I say this because

incredibly duh. And I say this because like saying, "Hey, I'm going to make business owner stuff to get more business owners." Duh. But at the same

business owners." Duh. But at the same time, I will say this, just me kind of commenting on a lot of the educators that are in the space, they tend to start moving more and more broad, more and more wide, more and more entertainment e, more and more topics

that they don't necessarily have expertise on because they seek the views whether they say it or not. They don't

want to say they're like saying cashing, so they still kind of count their likes.

And so I think if you can just absolutely get your logic head on, which is tough because sometimes you it's it's tough to to go away from those vanity metrics, but I care about the bottom line. And so the right people were

line. And so the right people were seeing it and the right people were taking action. And so we in the the

taking action. And so we in the the business sense saw growth from this in a big way. And this is just like 3 weeks

big way. And this is just like 3 weeks in, four weeks into this kind of execution all in on the strategy. And

this will compound. And so for those who don't know, I have two bestselling books on Amazon. They're still like number one

on Amazon. They're still like number one and number two on marketing and sales and they've been there for like number one and number two for two years or three years or whatever how they've been out. So they're pretty strong. And so we

out. So they're pretty strong. And so we sell books every month no matter what.

But what was crazy to me was to see this jump in book sales that happened as like think about this. We're getting fewer views, but

more sales by a lot like 2x the sales.

Twice, not like 20%. Twice the sales of books that I have. And mind you, by the way, if you're like, "Hey, I'm poor. I

get it. My books are free, too. They're

by like you can go to acquisition.com and you get the video course, all my stuff for free. You don't have to opt in. and you can go uh on my podcast and

in. and you can go uh on my podcast and you can listen to the audiobook for free. All right? Like the stuff's free.

free. All right? Like the stuff's free.

This isn't how I make my money, but it's a really good leading indicator for me of the quality of traffic. Now, if you want to get a physical copy, yes, there's printing cost and there's shipping cost. So, yeah, you pay some

shipping cost. So, yeah, you pay some bucks. But if you're dead broke, poor,

bucks. But if you're dead broke, poor, you can use the free stuff. The point is is that this attracted the right people, people who want because if I make a fitness meals video, guess what? Those

people don't care about getting leads and making offers. Kind of sounds obvious when you think about it. When I

make a hey this is how I work with Ila my wife maybe you get somebody who's like what about the married entrepreneurs it's like well only 9% of people are business owners and then of that 9% how many of them are married to

their partner percentage or percentage versus just talking about business stuff business people want to get more leads make more offers make more money and so that's what my books are about and so lo

and behold more of those people bought now I want to be super clear I want to show these two these two keynotes here so there are some keynotes that will be both deep and wide. And as a content

creator, business owner slashinvestor slash husband slash human being boy big um sometimes you hit it out of the park and you actually get both. So

my highest revenue per revenue perview video also happens to be my most viewed video. And so it doesn't necessarily

video. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that if you have a lot of views the RPMs are low. No, not at all. you can

get a video that applies to all business owners and it will get a lot of views and the CPMs or the RPMs will be high.

The branding video is the same thing.

That one's that's very recent. It's new

and it continues to climb up. Um, and

there both of these are very conceptual business concepts that all business owners can benefit from. And so if I talk about leverage, almost all businesses need to understand strategy

and leverage. It applies, it's a huge

and leverage. It applies, it's a huge amount of value to business owners.

understanding brand tremendous value to any business. Now on the other hand, you

any business. Now on the other hand, you can also make and we have we call these keynotes but like longer form either whiteboard presentations or like a presentation that I put a lot of time into. Um some of them are going to be

into. Um some of them are going to be deeper and less wide and that's okay.

Like if I talk about scaling a 40 person sales team if you have an e-commerce store doesn't affect you but leverage and brand would affect you whether you had the 40 person sales team or the e-commerce company or a software company

or an app or whatever. And so again, the scaling for 40 person sales team still super valuable, but it's just going to be only, you know, valuable to onethird of the business owner audience that I might be able to, you know, who might

want to watch this. Same thing with um same thing with the video I made about 10xing your business overnight by using mega influencers. Basically showing how

mega influencers. Basically showing how to get a Mr. Beast, a Logan Paul, a Rock to partner with a Conor McGregor, a Huda Beauty, a Taylor Swift to partner with

to 10X your business. Now, if you're a business, like a local business, the likelihood that they're going to partner with you is really low, right? And so,

it doesn't really make sense for that particular business. Now, you could use

particular business. Now, you could use that on a micro scale, but it might just not have as much transference. If you

have an e-commerce brand that's national, might make a ton of sense. But

again, it's going to have a subsegment of already a 9% slice of the population that it would be deeply valuable to, though. And that's the thing is is that

though. And that's the thing is is that I have to think about like I'm okay with a video that gets 10,000 views instead of 400,000 views. If 10,000 of those people are $10 million plus business

owners, it's like here here's how I packed my company in order to sell it. I

have a video on my channel that walks through 46 minutes of the decision-making process I used to determine to sell my business. Guess who

that applies to? Basically no one.

Unless you actually have a lot of money and you already have a business asset that is $5 million in profit or more.

And so let's see, 9% of businesses, it's like 0.1% do $10 million a year of businesses. So there's like no one who

businesses. So there's like no one who that actually applies to except for those people are like, "This thing was amazing. This changed my life." And I

amazing. This changed my life." And I had a bunch of people after I posted that that I know that were big 20, 30, $40 million business owners who watch the video like, "This is insane. I can't

believe you gave this out." I'm like, "Believe it because guess what? No one

else is going to watch it." And so I will say this, this is me giving you like a little hat tip for consuming. If

you're a business owner, I would not gauge views as whether the whether the video is good or not. It just shows how relevant it is to how many people. And

so if you're an e-commerce person, I have some videos in here about how to use offers for e-commerce. That's just

already going to be a slice of a slice, but it'd be super applicable for you.

And so I'm okay with very small views as long as the quality gives value and provides a result in a clear way for the viewer. And so I define education as

viewer. And so I define education as change of behavior. So if I can help them change the behavior in a way that makes them more money, ideally they'll associate that money they made that value they made with us at

acquisition.com. And so that's the whole

acquisition.com. And so that's the whole goal of this stuff. And for the creators out there or those of you guys who are making content in order to promote your business, I'll give you this frame that I started out with that helped me a lot,

which is, you know, when I pushed my first you like I started at zero on every platform to be very clear here.

Like it wasn't like I was Taylor Swift and I came on TikTok. Yay. Right? It

wasn't like that. When I started on YouTube, I had no subscribers and the first videos I posted got like a hundred views, right? But I thought to myself, I

views, right? But I thought to myself, I was like, man, if I like I would probably go across town to speak to a 100 person audience for lunch and I'd have no problem with that. And so the idea that I had a hundred people, I was

like, that's not bad. Or even if there's 10 people, I'm like, well, I would talk to a 10 person. I mean, I used to do this for years. I would do a lunch and learn and uh see if I could sell some weight loss. You know what I mean? Like

weight loss. You know what I mean? Like

I was willing to do that anyways. And so

there's this it's it's literally just because of comparison that people feel bad about their social media content, not because inherently the numbers don't make sense. And the crazy thing about

make sense. And the crazy thing about this, and I just want to reemphasize, is it's free.

It's free. The platforms distribute your content for free. These are people that would never have found out about you, and they find out about you for free.

Like, take that in for a second. So, the

leverage on free distribution is infinite. And so, if you get a,000

infinite. And so, if you get a,000 people over a month who see your thing, it's a,000 people. It's not nothing. And

so I try to make sure that I focus on that concept of like, oh man, my average for the channel is 400,000 and we got a 50,000 view video. 50,000. My god, I

speak at conferences with a,000 people.

It's 50 times that. Not bad. And those

people I got to have a really really curated experience, increase the value per second, absolutely crush as much value as I possibly could in that in time period. And so I'll make one last

time period. And so I'll make one last note on uh on the deep versus wide content is that I get so many DMs and like Slack messages even from our

portfolio company founders who are like, "Dude, that last video was so sick." And

I hadn't had that in a minute for probably the the six months we went a little bit wider with our content. And

it became so reinforcing for me even though like what's the what's the number of people? I don't know, 50 people maybe

of people? I don't know, 50 people maybe messaged me being like, "Dude, that new cont like your new content style or going back like the new old content of more whiteboard, more deep business tactics. Like, it's so great. My team's

tactics. Like, it's so great. My team's

watching it again." That like fills me up because that's why I made this stuff to begin with was the stuff that I didn't have when I was coming up that I wish someone had taught me. And then I had to just find out through trial and error. And so that's why we make this

error. And so that's why we make this stuff. But the views weren't high. But

stuff. But the views weren't high. But

for me, like I'm here for business owners, and I already know there's only 9% of people are business owners, and that's okay. I'm for I'm here for you

that's okay. I'm for I'm here for you guys. All right. So, here's what we're

guys. All right. So, here's what we're doing next with this data. All right.

So, we had our hypothesis. We looked at the 35,000 posts. We made these six big shifts. And by and large, we have

shifts. And by and large, we have crushed the hypothesis. So, I'm actually like I was telling my team yesterday, I was like, we're kind of lucky that this worked out the first time because like I'm not really used to things working out the first time. more more like

realistically like, hey, we made this change and then like four of the six stats are bad and two of them are good.

And so we're like, all right, well, these ones are good, so let's try and keep this stuff the same and then we got to tweak all these other things. Our

view to subscriber ratio is higher, our absolute subscribers are higher, our optins are higher, our book sales are higher, our applications are higher and it's about stuff I like making. So, I'm

like I'm thrilled in tears. I'm stoked.

And I get to make this stuff about like we can do more content because I don't have to put as much post into it for you guys. So like you guys said it's more

guys. So like you guys said it's more distracting to have the whisbangs and the effects and we're like cool I'm happy to just talk business. So this is what we're doing now. So one big belief we have is volume negates luck. That's

in the sales team locker room. Same

thing in the media team is that we will we will create more and we will just basically have constraints on where like the direction of what we're creating, but we will keep we will keep making as

much as we can in different ways to find out works even better than our first whack at it. The second thing is don't get the same scar twice. We're super

happy to make mistakes. I mean, I I it's funny. I even I I I almost mean that

funny. I even I I I almost mean that like it's totally fine making mistakes because like they're not mistakes.

They're just lessons. What we don't want is get the same scar twice. And so if we find out or we know that I have to introduce myself, then I better keep

introducing myself. If we know that high

introducing myself. If we know that high h high-fi production doesn't do as well with business owners, then I better not do that, right? Unless there's a conclusion that we find that's wrong

about that. But for now, like that's

about that. But for now, like that's what we're not going to make the same mistake twice. And so I'm happy to make

mistake twice. And so I'm happy to make all the mistakes there are in a very narrow field. That's what makes an

narrow field. That's what makes an expert. um but I just don't want to make

expert. um but I just don't want to make it twice. A third one, this is super

it twice. A third one, this is super tactical, is that uh slides versus just me heavily prepping for a presentation hasn't made as much of a difference. So

I tried to approximate this by like my best videos that were most views and most businesscentric in terms of CPMs was me presenting at a conference. So I

have a stage in my headquarters. And so

I was like, "All right, I'm going to present on my stage, but it was to it was not to an empty room. It was to my to my team." But like a lot of comments were like, "Is this guy pretending to be on stage?" And so if you did see that,

on stage?" And so if you did see that, that's why it was uh that's why the the room was kind of empty. Um but I was like I was trying to approximate as much of that style of video. So that gives you maybe a little bit insight. I was

like, "Okay, well, what can I control? I

can do a stage. We can do the lighting.

We can have the seats. I can have slides. These are all things that I'm

slides. These are all things that I'm used to doing." Now it worked to a degree, but we got the same performance from me just talking direct camera like this and going over the slides without the stage. Uh or me just doing

the stage. Uh or me just doing whiteboard of walking through the concepts or the tactics to grow or solve a problem. Number four,

a problem. Number four, show what only you can show and say what only you can say. And so I have I have a few marketing isms that I have never heard anywhere else that are like very

real for me. One is state the facts and tell the truth. It's always that way because then you never get in trouble.

You don't have to have to worry about anything. You don't have to worry about

anything. You don't have to worry about claims. You just state the facts and tell the truth. Which also means that you have to go collect data. So you can state the truth. Um and so a second one underneath of that is say what only we can say and show what only we can show.

It's demonstration, right? And so if obviously I have accomplishments that I can say, hey, I know what I'm talking about. But there's also labor. And so I

about. But there's also labor. And so I could say, hey, I built uh 8 million personal audience. Listen to this stuff

personal audience. Listen to this stuff for content. Which by the way, you don't

for content. Which by the way, you don't have to listen to any of it. This just

work for me. Um or I could say, I made 35,000 posts independent of the outcome.

And so what I want to do is do more work than anyone else will do so that I can show what no one else can show and say what no one else can say. And so if you're starting out or you're you're you're at a different part in your

journey considering like okay well I can't outcome anyone yet because I'm early but you can outwork people. And so

I can just say like I made 35,000 post what I learned. I'm going to compress a lot of time for you. That's valuable no matter who you are. And number five is still doing wide shorts. So this is

interesting. So we thought about this

interesting. So we thought about this and we decided that for shorts we're willing to go a little bit wider. And

I'll tell you why. So, I run ads and Leila runs ads using our face and I actually see the main ROI from shorts as top ofunnel brand awareness. And when I say brand awareness, I really just mean

like facial recognition. People will see my face and remember that they got some sort of value from it. And in a short, it's more difficult to get into really deep business concepts, which is what

I'm um not to say it's impossible and maybe I just need to up my skills, which is totally totally fine. Um, but we're still maintaining a certain percentage of shorts that I would consider to be more like um a little bit wider because

I tend to like business philosophy too and I don't want to stop like what are the things I like talking about? I like

philosophy. I like wide business concepts. I like personal development

concepts. I like personal development [ __ ] in sort of in terms of like productivity which is tend kind of a wider topic but I'm not going to stop doing that because I do like making that stuff and so I'll probably keep having

shorts around that because the ROI is actually not from shorts turning into book sales or shorts turning into optins. It's actually the shorts getting

optins. It's actually the shorts getting retargeted later with an ad that does go to something but they're going to be more likely to recognize me and then take the next step in whatever whatever

the funnel is. whether we're saying hey if you're starting a business go check out school which by the way again wide someone trying to start a business then it makes sense for it to be a little bit wider for people who are trying to get into it and so then the school ads can

hit those people and it makes sense for them to use school right uh if it's a business owner I still think that from a business perspective we have a lot of business content in terms of our shorts

but I want to just address this in case you see it so you're not confused about it I still will have some wide content in short form um because of the reason I just And so those are the kind of like the

next steps. And if you guys find these

next steps. And if you guys find these kind of updates valuable with the metrics behind it, um the TLDDR of this whole video is that what we said worked.

And if you're an educator, toss out the views, focus on your customer, make stuff for them, because likes ain't cash, views ain't cash, cash is cash.

And so if you're trying to grow your business, make sure you're making the stuff for the people you actually want to make, not your ego.