0:00 Right now, you're on one of two paths. Path one is the forgettable brand. You post content randomly, hoping that something's going to stick. People have no idea who you are or what you do, so they do not engage, and they definitely don't buy. Now, path number two is the intentional brand. This is where you own what people associate with you, and your content builds trust and moves people toward a decision. If you're on path number one right now, this course is going to get you onto path number two and save you years and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of mistakes. And if you have identified that you're on path number two, odds are you've probably hit a ceiling that you have not been able to break through. This course is going to help you smash through that ceiling and actually hit the scale that you've been wanting. This course is not
0:46 just theory. It's built from real execution and my 16 years of experience in building brands online. So, here's what we're going to cover. Section one is branding. Section number two is going to be content strategy. Section number three is going to be building your team. And finally, in section four, we're going to talk about monetizing your brand. So, the first section is branding. And I think that we should start off with some definitions here so that we are on the same page and everything that we discuss moving forward is from the same understanding. I define branding as a pairing of things. I define good branding as an intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently and what you get from that is the byproduct which is brand. Brand is when the audience inherently associates those things together. Let's use the most classic example known to
1:32 man. Nike and Michael Jordan. Nike entered the basketball market and they wanted to have their audience or customers associate them with athletic greatness. specifically within the basketball industry. So, what did they do? They intentionally paired themselves with greatness in basketball. Michael Jordan. I I can't think of another name that's more synonymous with victory, with winning, with greatness. Or take Gary Vaynerchuk in content. The man literally wrote a book called Crush It. I don't even remember when it came out. I think 2009. And he was talking about how people are going to make money talking about the Smurfs on YouTube. The man is synonymous with content and over time his actions done repetitively have
2:20 led us to draw that association. He has intentionally paired himself with content among many other things. Or my absolute favorite that I always have to inject at any chance I get, Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson for many years in their marketing has intentionally paired themselves with freedom. And so what is the association that the customer base draws upon when they think of Harley-Davidson? Freedom. The open road, tearing off their suit and going out and hitting the road. And so ultimately what we are trying to do is think of what are the associations that we want our audience to inherently draw when they think of our name. And the beauty of this is it actually makes it operational for you. All you have to do is deliberately and intentionally
3:06 pair yourself with the association that you want your audience to make. It takes all of the woo woo fluffy magic out of what brand is and it makes it something that you can actually do. Now, real quick, my team and I put a lot of effort into building out this course and a lot of accompanying worksheets and playbooks. So, please take advantage of them. What you're going to notice is at the bottom of the screen here, we're going to have little icons that tell you what sheet and how you can download it. I would highly encourage you, please download these sheets and follow along. Now that we know what brand and branding are, we need to define what your brand is. Now, your brand actually exists whether you define it or not. Your audience might be defining it for you. I
3:51 would rather we be intentional and take control. The first step in defining your brand is defining your desired outcome. I like to work from the end goal and reverse engineer our way backwards. And so here is how I actually reverse engineer our desired outcome to today. It is called the brand journey framework. And it's just four simple questions, but I can't tell you how many people have told me how impactful this was and gave them the exact road map of how to go about building their brand. So question number one, again, like I said, we're starting from the end in mind and working our way back. So what is our desired outcome? What do we want to have happen? Question number two is, what do I have to be known for in order for that to happen? Question number three is,
4:38 what do I have to do in order to be known for that? Unfortunately, building a brand isn't just about things that we say, it's about our actions. And so if we want to be known for something, in order to be known for it, we got to do the to be known for it. And then finally, the last question takes us to right now. What do I have to learn in order to do that? So if I'm going to do things in order to be known for something to then get my desired outcome, well, right now, I might not know how to do those things. And so this gives you day one exactly what to do. You need to learn these specific items and then you need to do those things and then you will become known for those things and then eventually the desired outcome occurs. If you have clarity on
5:24 your outcome, this ensures that every decision you make along the way lines up with what you want to have happen. The majority of people that are building their brand online that are posting content, I promise you 99.9% of them have no idea what they're trying to accomplish with their content, with their brand. And so what they're doing is they're wandering aimlessly. There's an amazing example that I I love to share from Alice in Wonderland. There's a moment where Alice comes to a fork in the road. There's two different directions she can go. And the cat, Chester the cat, I believe is his name. And he's sitting in the tree and she says, "Which way should I go?" And he goes, "Well, where are you trying to end up?" And she says, "I don't know." And the cat responds with something so powerful. He says, "Well, then either way, we'll take you there. If you do not
6:11 have a desired outcome that you are making your decisions off of, you're going to go somewhere, but it might not be the place that you want to be. Now, after you define your desired outcome, I would argue probably the most important part of defining your brand is defining your associations or the associations that you desire to have. Ask yourself, what do I want to be associated with? What do I want the audience to think of when they hear my name? Here's an example. Do you want your name to be tied to business, trustworthiness, or mental well-being? Everything you create should reinforce those associations. This is where intentionality in branding starts. Everything you create should reinforce those associations. This right here is where intentionality in branding starts. So, a very meta example here is
6:57 that I am creating this course and the content that we're going to be putting out to intentionally pair Rston, my consulting firm, with value, with scaling brands, with understanding attention, with building brands that not only scale, but last and build trustworthiness within their community. This is literally what I'm doing. I'm putting together a massive course right now that is going to outline all of this and consistently pair myself with those attributes that I want you to draw upon when you hear about Rston Consulting. So, we're going to continue to create content like this talking about scaling your brand. We are intentionally pairing ourselves with the relevant thing scaling brands and we're going to do
7:43 that consistently through our content. Now, we just went over what you want to be associated with. I would argue this next part is far more important and something that 99.9% of people completely ignore, which is what do you not want to be associated with? A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that brand is only about what you want to have happen. But a lot of what building a brand and a successful brand is, especially in today's saturated market where there's so many people online talking about the same subject matter as you, you can stand out by what you choose not to associate with. This is ultimately how you protect your brand. This is how you keep it from deliluding and being misinterpreted. Think of how many people you see online whose reputation probably has nothing to do
8:29 with what they wanted or what their desire was. often times that is a byproduct of not being intentional with what they are not going to associate with. If you don't actively shape your associations, your audience is going to do it for you. Now, this next little example and explanation here is going to get a little technical. So, I'm actually going to read off of the screen to the right of the camera right now um so that I don't mess this up because I think it's really important and I want to make sure that we go through this exactly how I meant to. If we believe that branding is a pairing of things and that good branding is an intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently and that that then creates brand which is when the audience inherently associates those things together then we're on the same page of what brand and branding is.
9:15 But what you'll notice is intentional is not a good or bad statement. Intentional doesn't mean right or good. Meaning, you could be intentional with pairing your brand, but with the wrong things done consistently. Unfortunately, what this ends up leading to is the audience drawing the association between your brand and those wrong things. Here's an example that I have to give a qualifier for. I have some pretty strong views and opinions on some of the online creators in the business education space. All love and respect to everyone. Everyone can do their own thing. This is Caleb Rston's individual opinion. Strongly believed, loosely held. There are some very scammy, sketchy in
10:01 the online education space. They are untrustworthy and they make content trying to ladder up to selling some course online. If you choose to consistently appear in content with them, whether it's them inviting you on their podcast or you guys doing a collab video together, if you do that consistently, aka you intentionally pair yourself with the scam artist online, the untrustworthy character, the snake oil salesman, guess what happens if you do that consistently? Your audience will start to inherently associate you with that crowd. Is that good for trust? No, not at all. In fact, this is some of the biggest problems that you see with a lot
10:46 of creators in the business education space right now. There are a lot of individuals that actually have a lot of value and a lot of good to add into the world and education and able to literally show people a whole new way to approach their business, their career. But the problem is is they go on all these podcasts with these individuals that I cannot trust. And by doing that enough times, I no longer feel that I can trust that individual. So, as much as you want to pair yourself with the right things, please, please be diligent about what you choose not to associate with. If you get a bad feeling in your gut, if you don't think that it's the right move, it's not worth the exposure. I'm going to open up the kimono here for a second. I have people right now, not a lot
11:33 because I'm not that interesting, but I have a couple of people that have been asking me to come on to their podcast. And so far, I've said yes to everyone, but there are some individuals out there that I know will probably eventually reach out and ask me to come on the show. Now, if they have that kind of a brand, I will choose to not go on the show, even if it's the biggest audience that I could get in front of because ultimately awareness is not worth the trade. What are those people going to be aware of? They're going to be aware of you in light of that association. All right, we've defined our brand. So now we need to position it. Now your goal isn't to just blend in. You actually want to find what is missing in your industry and own that gap. So it might
12:19 be the information that you have. It might be the philosophy you have around a certain subject matter like branding for example. Or it might be your personality and your unique take on the same information. You might just be able to reach a whole different audience that wasn't able to connect with some of the other creators in that space. Ultimately, what you are looking for is the gap of what is missing and then you fill it. Now, how do you go about finding out what is missing or how do you own that gap? Well, ask yourself these two questions. What are the people that are currently creating content in the space that I'm wanting to occupy? What are they saying that I disagree with? How can I take what has been taught for years or shared for years and bring a fresh perspective to the table?
13:05 Here's a really good example. If everyone in your industry is focusing on going viral and getting lots of views and and always doing that, maybe leaning into building a long-term trustbuilt brand will stand out. That's what I'm trying to do here, right? A lot of my counterparts who I love and respect, they emphasize virality and getting views and there's a lot of benefit to that. But where I'm coming in and kind of filling the gap is there's not a lot of people online talking, especially in the form of free content like this in a way that shares with you how to build a brand that lasts. If you just emphasize views, for example, the moment the algorithm changes, nobody's going and searching for your name. On the flip side, if you build a brand that has trustworthiness and deposits a lot of
13:51 goodwill into the marketplace, the moment the algorithm changes, your audience will be searching for you. And so that is a prime example of me contrasting myself with the others in the industry. That's me noticing a gap where nobody's talking about this or very few, and me wanting to fill it, not only with my unique perspectives and philosophies, my experience doing this for 16 years, but also maybe a unique and quirky personality that some people will really hate and then a tiny few of you might actually resonate with. Now, the other way to bring a fresh perspective is to share your story. So, what I would encourage you to look at is what is different about your story than everybody else's. Now the the obvious answer is everybody's story is different, right? But what is it that makes you uniquely you? That you can
14:38 present all of your information, your beliefs through that lens. Ultimately, your story is your brand's secret weapon. This is what makes you unique and makes you stand out from everybody else in the crowd. Nobody else has the same come-up story or origin story that you do. An exercise to help you do this is actually to list out pivotal moments in your story, in your life, challenges you've overcome, turning points in your career, that moment where you got laid off at your job, and then all of a sudden ended up finding the next gig, and it's the greatest thing ever. And any unique experiences that have shaped your perspective. For me, working with Gary Vaynerchuk completely changed my perspective. I I had a completely different understanding of what it meant
15:24 to create content online with your audience in mind first rather than making to make you look good. Share that in your content. And ultimately like stories resonate way more with people than you saying typical tropes and attributes like hardworking or innovative or hustling. Nobody gives a about that. They want to hear the story behind the hard work. For example, instead of me being like, I'm a hard worker, I would tell the story of when I was editing Gary Ve's trash talk series and how I would come in on Sunday, and start editing 12 to 14 hours a day, Sunday through Thursday, and then I would arrive in the office at 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, and I would not leave the office until 2:00 p.m. on Friday. I'm not going to do the math for you right now, but I believe that's about 32 hours straight. the story and if I went more
16:11 into detail would be far more compelling than me just telling you about working hard or how I work hard. Another example is instead of Jeff Bezos talking about how resourceful he is, tell the story about how he used a door as his desk. Nothing will say resourceful more than telling that story. Share your stories. That is what your audience is going to resonate with. Now, for those of you who have made content online, the thing that you're probably very aware of is there's a lot of skepticism. There are a lot of objections that the audience has towards your content, especially if you are in the education space. Legitimately, the majority of people watching your content are thinking the entire time, why would I trust this? Does this actually work? Okay, cool. That worked for you, but does it work for me? How would it work
16:57 in this scenario? Have you done this in multiple different industries? They are constantly thinking of their objections to what you have to say. And often times those objections and that skepticism appears in the comments. Here's what I would like you to do. Instead of allowing that to take place in your comments, start looking at your comment section, getting a greater understanding of the skepticism and objections that commonly occur within your audience and start addressing them in the content. Just like a great VSSL overcomes objections before a prospect hops on a sales call, treat your content the same way. Why would you not try to overcome the objections that your audience is going to have? If ultimately your goal is to educate and change the actions of
17:43 your audience after they consume your content, why would you make it harder for them to do that? Let's make it easier by overcoming any objection or skepticism they're going to have about what you're saying in the content itself. If you address the skepticism and the objections proactively in your content, what you do is you build more trust and credibility. When you answer the questions before they're even asked, you remove friction, and then it makes it easier for your audience to actually change their actions and be educated. All right, the next one is don't be a robot. This is something that a lot of people making content online really struggle with, and I completely understand why. There's this weird object that you're talking into called a
18:29 camera and a lens. And it's like this very freaky ordeal, right? Even right now, I am doing my best to be a human, not a robot, right? And bring my personality into this content rather than just monotone giving the information that I want to. And part of being a human is sharing not only the wins, but also the losses. Share the failures that you've had along the way and the lessons that you learned from those failures. Think about it. The friend that you have that's always sharing how great everything is and how they just keep winning eventually, one, they just become kind of annoying, right? But two, do you really believe that? Do you really believe that life is so perfect and that everything
19:14 is going exactly their way? No. Imagine not knowing this individual. So from afar, your audience is going to be even more skeptical of you if all you're doing is sharing all your W's. On the flip side, if you are vulnerable and you share your losses, what you will find is a lot more people will trust you and connect with you and relate with you. I actually think that losses are more relatable than wins. And we can learn a lot more from losses than maybe we can learn from wins. And ultimately, if you share your losses and the lessons learned from them, you help your audience potentially, if they choose to take action, avoid making those same mistakes. A really good example of this is someone that I worked for uh several
20:01 years ago. When I started with her, her whole audience thought that she was a robot and viewed her as not human. She just came across as like an information, you know, overload. and she was just sharing her knowledge which was a lot but it had no substance or personality to it. And so when I started working with her it was my number one goal to show her human side to take it from just information just d to like show personality right and and this individual she had an amazing personality. She was hilarious so funny quirky everything. But you would never know that just watching the content. In fact, a lot of people would meet her in real life and be like, "You're so much
20:48 nicer and funnier and than I expected you to be. I actually kind of expected you to be a jerk." But like, in no way was that the case, but you wouldn't know it from the content she was making. And so, I really encourage you to do your best to bring your true self, bring your whole self into your content. Seriously, it will make you stand out. There's nobody else that's actually like you. An example for sharing your failures is in my first YouTube video, I share a failure. I share the story of how one of my main clients cut my monthly compensation in half and I had to go and fire my friends that I had hired. That was a real shot to my ego and isn't my favorite thing to share necessarily, but I think one there's a big lesson that I
21:35 shared that is accompanied with that failure. But also, I think that you guys watching it probably, if you did see that video, felt a little bit closer to me because I appeared more human. That transparency ultimately builds trust way faster than somebody who is just constantly posturing and trying to show you how great they are. This next one is actually uh really tough for a lot of people to do. And I completely understand why. The point is to listen to your audience. The hard part or the difficulty in this is there's a lot of people that make content that get a decent amount of hate in their comments. They get a lot of people that are just frankly being And what I would encourage you to do is do your
22:22 best to ignore those individuals. And real quick, just like an anecdote on this is if you ignore the praise, you can ignore the hate. If you get really high off of the praise when people applaud you in the comments, you're going to be very vulnerable to being very depressed when you see the hateful comments that are tearing you down. But aside from the hateful comments, the other comments that you have in your posts are actually incredible insights into how you should go about navigating your brand and the content that you create. Especially in the early days, I would encourage you to look at the individuals that know you, your friends, co-workers, and any audience that you may already have. What are they associating you with? What do they praise you for? What do they applaud you
23:08 for? What do they admire in you and what keeps them wanting to either continue hanging out with you, talking to you, what keeps them coming back? What you want to do is use this feedback to refine your positioning and ultimately know what you can double down on. A really big example for me is, and this will sound weird coming out of my mouth, but please take this with like a humble tone that I hope I have here. Something very interesting that I've noticed is when I hop on Zoom calls with potential clients or with clients, like 90% of the calls end with one or more of the members on the other team mentioning how much they love my energy and personality. Again, it feels really weird for me to say this, so please hear it correctly, but I started noticing that and I realized, man, to my point earlier, I should really make sure that
23:55 I bring that same personality and energy into the content that I make cuz it's who I am. It's how I actually roll. Like I I'll make a statement and then I do a little side comment on. I do that with all my friends or my family all the time. I do it on client calls, on discovery calls, anything. And so if that is something that people are resonating with and liking and giving me real time feedback on that they like that and enjoy it, why the would I not involve that in my content? And so this is using my audience and technically I wouldn't even call them my audience, but essentially they are. and using their feedback to refine how I present myself in the content, which ultimately the way I'm going to present myself is being fully me. Now, another example is if your audience really
24:41 values your practical advice, your no BS, nononsense, straight to the point advice, I would really encourage you to lean into it. If you start seeing a trend emerging where people are, you know, adding more filler fluff and, you know, comfort creators, that's great, but that's not you. Don't follow a trend just because it's a trend. Stay true to who you are and what your audience appreciates most about what you are putting out. Another example of listening to your audience and actually making a very good change is there was another client that I had worked with uh a while back and they fell into this pattern of honestly getting way too intense in their content and only
25:27 talking about really one subject matter. They didn't really diversify and they were just hammering one message over and over and over that the audience wasn't resonating with. It wasn't like, you know, you have your haters that are that are speaking out and stuff, but ultimately you're telling your truth. No, like the majority of the audience was giving a lot of push back. And so what this individual did is they listened to the audience. And by listening to the audience, they started to add more context. They didn't change their belief. They didn't change what they were saying. They rounded out what they were saying and gave more context as to why they were pushing this message so much. So again, listen to your audience and let it shape how you present your ideas, philosophies, and beliefs. Don't have it change your
26:14 beliefs. Don't cater what you're saying just to the audience. Nobody likes that. That's what we call a politician. Nobody wants that. And now the longanticipated brand story framework. Your brand story isn't just a before and after transformation. It's a series of intentional decisions that shape how people see you. Now, I tend to believe that most story frameworks are a little too rigid to actually be practically used, especially for many different use cases. I think that what they end up doing is they assume that every brand has some dramatic aha moment, right? Some big problem that they have to solve. They assume that the founder story is the most important one. They assume that a brand's identity will never evolve. But great brands aren't built on a singular moment. They're
27:00 built on consistency, distinction, and connecting with the right audience over time. So here's a storytelling framework that I believe works in all cases. Forget the problem transformation outcome framework. Okay, I believe that that is too narrow. Instead, here is the threepart brand story framework. Number one is the catalyst. This is why your brand exists. Every brand, I believe, starts because something needed to change. This isn't necessarily always a struggle. It might be an opportunity or a gap in the market. For example, and I don't know this for sure, but I can make some pretty good assumptions here. I don't think Phil Knight started Nike just to be rich. If he did, there's plenty of other businesses he could have started that had a higher likelihood of
27:46 success. I believe he saw that no other companies were fulfilling the demand and meeting the needs that the market had. In order to determine what your catalyst is, I would ask yourself these three questions. What needs to change? What do you see that others don't? What's that opportunity that you see so clearly that nobody else can see? And why do you feel the need to act on it? If you answer these three questions, this is your catalyst for your brand. This is why your brand exists. Number two is the core truth. This is what makes you or your company different than everybody else in your space. A strong brand stands out. It doesn't blend in. Blending in ultimately leads to you being forgotten. A lot of people misunderstand this and there's a lot of
28:32 them online right now. It doesn't mean that it's controversy for controversial sake. That's where you just get the annoyingly loud people on the internet that nobody likes. That is not what I'm saying here. What I am saying is it means having a core conviction that is different than everyone else in the market and not only having that core conviction but sharing it publicly with the world. A great example of this is actually an artist by the name of Russ. Uh Russ has some very unique views on how musicians should go about navigating their career. He is very very strong about how artists should remain independent and own the rights to their music. He believes that this allows them to have creative control but to also
29:19 profit more off of their hard work. What does he do with that? He shares those beliefs in the form of his music. He literally talks about it in his music, but then also when he does interviews on podcasts or various news networks, he reinforces this and shares it heavily. So to determine your core truth, ask yourself these three questions. What do I believe that others do not? What is it about my personality that stands out? And think about this. We we talked about it earlier, but what do people compliment you on that you can lean into, that you can double down on? The example I gave earlier was that people on Zoom calls, client calls and stuff like that would mention that they love
30:04 my energy and my personality. So what am I doing in my content in building my brand? Leaning into that and really trying to highlight and bring my somewhat quirky and weird personality into the content. And number three, why would the audience care about this? How does this impact them? What value does it bring for them? If you answer these three questions, you'll have your core truth. And number three, the proof. This is how you reinforce your identity over and over and over. I believe that your brand is not what you say, it's what you do and prove over and over again. Strong brands don't just have one past success story. They have an ongoing pattern of credibility. Another Gary example is
30:50 that he doesn't just talk about volume of content and the importance of it. He's proved it for like 15 plus years. And he reinforces the credibility of this statement by talking about what he's done not only for his personal brand, but all the brands that Vayner Media works with for the Super Bowl campaigns, for example. The majority of their Super Bowl campaigns are determined off of high volume social content that they do throughout the year to test learnings, see what the audience resonates with, and that's what they run with on the Super Bowl. And he shares those stories. So, he is reinforcing the credibility over and over and over. So, three questions to ask yourself are, how does every piece of content I make reinforce the associations I want people
31:37 to make with me? What case studies or examples can I share that establish my credibility? And number three, if someone hears your name, what's the first thing that they think of? So, here's a fun example using myself, the catalyst. I saw brands trying to scale via just views and impressions, but struggling to actually build trust with their audience. It wasn't that the problem was the content. The problem was they were lacking clarity on the big picture strategy and what they wanted to have happen with their brand. The core truth is that I believe that a strong brand is built by the intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently, not just getting virality
32:23 and getting a ton of views and impressions. And the proof is that I've built many different brands that scale businesses to millions and millions of dollars in revenue. And I show you how to do it completely for free via my content. So you can build your brand story in three very simple steps. It's not rocket science. It's not the complicated that a lot of my counterparts make it to be so that they can sell you some course. The catalyst. What do you see that others do not? The core truth. What do you believe that others might not believe? And the proof. How do you continually reinforce that identity every single day? Not only through what you're saying, but through your actions. If you nail these, your brand won't just have a story. Your brand will have loyalty. All right. Now,
33:10 for something that a lot of people struggle with, which is picking your topic. Like, what are we going to talk about here? And this is a question that I get from many people. I've gotten this question hundreds, if not thousands of times over the last couple of years. And there's a lot of different opinions online about what or how you go about picking your topics. I have kind of a nuanced uh belief on this and view on it and it's one that changes and evolves over time. I encourage you to start narrow. I personally believe that early trust is built off of being great at one specific thing and talking about that same specific thing. We all have that friend who is the best at everything.
33:56 And we know that they're not good at any of it. By them talking all about how great they are at all these different subjects and all these different skills. We pretty much assume that they're not good at any of them. Contrary to that is the friend who only talks about woodworking and how they love carving this beautiful chair or putting together this amazing desk for their parents or whatever. The person who is obsessed around one thing and speaks about that at nauseium is the individual who we believe has credibility and is actually good at what they're talking about. They have expertise. A great example of this is that when Gary started making content online forever ago, I mean, he was super early. I think 2006, 2007 on
34:42 YouTube, he was the wine guy. He made content around wine. That's what he knew super well. Now, at the time, he also understood business and marketing, but he didn't talk about that. He built his base and credibility off of a subject matter that he was worldclass at. Over time, he began to expand that, right? He began to speak to the different business practices and marketing techniques that he used to build his dad's wine and liquor store. But in the beginning, all of his content for the first several years on YouTube was wine library TV where he was tasting and giving reviews on various wines. And then what you started to see is he would start to pop up at South by Southwest and start talking more about marketing. And then
35:29 one day all of a sudden this amazing speech gets dropped on YouTube accompanied with a book called Crush It where he informed everyone of his beliefs on marketing and utilizing this new crazy thing called social media. And so what you see there is Gary started very narrow and as his experience and knowledge expanded, so did the subject matter that he covered in his content. Again, if you try to talk about everything in the beginning, you will dilute the power of what you're speaking to. So what you're going to notice is I'm not going to sit here talking about business tactics. I'm not going to talk about sales techniques. You're not going to hear me referencing customer success
36:16 techniques and strategies cuz that's not my wheelhouse. That's not my expertise. My expertise is on scaling brands and using organic content strategy to accomplish that. And so that's what you're going to hear me talk about. But what may happen is over the next couple of years as I gain more experience in other areas, you might watch my brand and my subject matter and topics evolve. Now, the natural question that I imagine is coming up for you right now is, well, how do I know when it is the right time to expand? I feel like maybe right now I'm at that point. Or on the flip side, I'm so far from ever expanding. Like, I want to only talk about this subject matter for the rest of my life. One, you should actually know what you're talking about before you talk about it. So, if
37:02 you haven't actually gotten to a point of excellence and world class, then I don't know that I would talk about this new subject matter. I don't I don't think I would bring it into the table because what value are you going to be providing the audience by sharing something that you don't really know much about? Now, another thing that you can look at is once you're known for a specific topic and you get consistent engagement and positive feedback from the audience on that, then you can consider to start to expand. I would encourage you to take on adjacent topics, not something that is completely different. For example, I'm not going to be talking about brand strategy and organic content strategy and then next week start talking about breath work.
37:47 that would be completely offthe-wall and make no sense, right? So, there would be too much of a jump for my audience to trust me on this new subject matter because there's nothing about what I've been talking about right now that would give me credibility for this new subject matter. to use Gary as the same example when he was talking about wine and building the brand and the company online. By him doing that and gaining success with the company, it gave him credibility to speak into marketing and to share those strategies because he had demonstrated them in actual use. He put those strategies that he shared with us to practice to build his business and that gave him credibility to jump into the next section or the next topic in
38:34 his career. Another one is look at your audience and what they're asking for. If you start noticing that they're asking for additional information on something that you don't really cover that much, but you've maybe hinted at or or has been displayed in a minor way in your content, well, maybe that is time for you to start speaking to that subject matter. For example, if all of you watching this started asking me a ton about my Harley-Davidson and all the little uh intricacies of all the upgrades that I've made and the performance and the handling and how I go on long road trips, I would gladly answer those questions. Now, when thinking about expanding, uh I would encourage you to do it strategically. So, let's walk through what that looks like. A great example of a company that went about expanding their product line
39:19 is Amazon. Amazon started by selling books, right? And now they sell obviously a lot more than just books. I mean, if we look at what I'm wearing right now, about 3/4 of everything I have on was purchased off of Amazon. But ultimately, even though Amazon has expanded to all these various different products, they haven't lost their core identity with books. And I would argue them acquiring Audible was actually a big step in re-engaging that audience. They now have what I probably believe is the biggest audiobook platform out there. And so they returned or reinforced rather than returned, they reinforced their roots by doing that. So in expanding, never lose sight of your
40:05 core identity and where you started. For another example, to keep running with the Gary Vee example, that man continues to this day to bring back Wine Library TV on occasions. He still brings wine into his content here and there. He pays ode and homage to the OG Gary Vee. Another great example, similar to Amazon and Gary of returning to your roots is Crayola. As of February 2025, when we're filming this, Crayola announced that they're bringing back eight discontinued colors that they had uh taken off the market. Some of them, you know, as most recently as 2017, some of them go back to like 1990. one, bringing it back is a nostalgic play and that's obviously going to resonate with a lot of the uh audience, a lot of the parents honestly
40:50 that have kids now like we grew up I grew up with Crayola and my generation is of the age we're like we have kids now and so uh there's definitely a good play there. But I think what this shows is a company and a brand can evolve and and add new product lines, add new things in and change over time. But I do believe there is a lot of power in always holding to your core, to your root. And that doesn't necessarily mean that every year, every day, every month, you have to do that. But it is good and I think it means a lot to the day one and OG members or audience or customers of yours for you to return to that. Uh, another example actually that that I'll generalize because a lot of creators do this is if you're a creator or a
41:36 musician, the content or music you were making day one in the early days, that's what a lot of your day one fans fell in love with. And like brands, a lot of musicians and artists and creators evolve and they evolve what they create, right? We all know, I mean, I'm really big into hardcore music as an example. And I can't tell you actually a prime example of this, just thought of right now, is Knock Loose. In the hardcore space, Knocked Loose started as a hardcore band. They had that like grungy local basement sound, but Knock Loose has blown the up. And as they continue to get bigger, they have haters that call them sellouts and all this stuff. Well, the cool thing that Knock Loose does at their shows is they still play their original tracks. They still
42:24 play the gospel and that slaps every single time. And it allows for us Day One fans to have that nostalgic feeling and make sure that we still feel attached to not only what the band has evolved into, but where the band came from. So, a takeaway here for those of you that have a more established brand is maybe consider bringing back like a nostalgic play, like return to your roots a little bit. If you had a different content format style that you used to do, or like the musician example, if you had an earlier, more raw sound, maybe consider releasing a project that taps into that nostalgic play. Nostalgia is a very big winner amongst humans. A pro tip on this is to
43:10 expand in layers, not leaps. So don't do anything massive. Every jump, every new topic you add should really feel natural to your audience. Again, like the example I gave earlier, it shouldn't feel like talking about brand and organic content strategy and then going to breath work. Like it should be if I wanted to get to breath work, I should probably inch my way over to that point rather than having just a complete black and white change. Now, based on the niche you're in and your desired associations, that's what's going to inform the topics that you want to explore and expand on. Now, a key reminder in this, and this is where a lot of you are potentially going to get hung up, so this is why I'm saying this, don't think of it as a rule when you're
43:56 picking these topics. These are guidelines that you can follow that make it easier for you to create content, but don't make it an absolute rule. As much as I was saying that it'd be weird for me to make content around brand organic content strategy and then immediately jump to breath work. Sure, that might be really abrupt and kind of like gnarly for the audience, but ultimately our goal is to do this for a long time. And so if that is something that you do want to talk about, it. Just jump and do it. By no means are these rules to follow. These are guidelines to help you and make this easier for you. Not something that you have to overthink 24/7. In fact, I'm going to double down on this real quick because I think a lot of people sit down with a brand strategist or whatever and they build out these content pillars and then they
44:41 always say, "Well, if it doesn't fall within the content pillar, we can't talk about it." But here's the thing. When Trevor and I sat down and identified what we were going to be talking about in our content, we didn't necessarily say Harley-Davidson's, but as you can probably tell if you're at this point in the video, I reference Harley a lot. and I want to make content around my Harleyies as well. Is it one of my content pillars? No, it's not. But if I want to make a video about my Harley, I'm going to do it because I enjoy it. And I think that what it does do is it rounds out my brand and makes me more interesting. I'm not just somebody who cares about brand and organic content. I also love my motorcycle and love to travel on it. I love to customize it. This is what will make you interesting and will cause you
45:28 to actually stand out from your competitors. So the key here is don't be rigid. Stay flexible. So if you're trying to figure this out, here's three questions that might help you. First question is, what am I genuinely passionate about discussing? If you can't tell by now, I'm very passionate about brand strategy. It probably comes through in my tone here. That's what you want to talk about. You want to talk about something that you're going to want to talk about because when you do that passion comes through and people will connect with it and they will probably feel like you are more convicted about what you are saying and believe you more and actually take action on what you are saying rather than just sitting and listening. Number two is what will resonate with my audience most right now. So for me, for
46:16 example, when I talk about brand strategy, something that is definitely a need in the audience that I have is organic content strategy. I'm going to talk far less over the next year about my paid media strategy because that's something that a lot of people that I have spoken to over the last 5 years need less help on. They have more experience in that. On the contrary, a lot of people look at organic content on social as like this like blackbox magical mysterious thing that they do not understand. And so that's why a lot of the content that we're going to put out this year is going to be around organic content strategy. And I would argue number three is the most important of the three questions. What will cause my audience to change their actions the most? Like I've said multiple times in this video, what you don't want when
47:01 you're making educational content is for people to just be passively consuming and do nothing about it. You want them to take action. So, what can I speak to and how can I speak about it in a way that makes it easy for my audience to then listen and take action on what I am saying. So to make sure that we're not getting confused here, I just want to real quick emphasize. I'm not saying talk about one thing. I don't want you to talk about just one thing. I want you to emphasize your one thing. So if we're looking at a pie, 80% of the pie should be that one main thing you want to be known for. But use the other 20% to round yourself out, to round your company out, and be more human.
47:47 This is how other people will relate to you. Here's an example. Look at your significant other or a friend of yours, right? If you talk about one thing to them all the time, 24/7, guess what? They're probably going to hate you. They're going to get bored of you. And even more so, you are probably going to hate you and get bored of yourself. Sure, it's totally okay to spend 80% of your time talking about that one thing. 80% of what I'm talking about here is brand strategy and I'm going to continue doing that. But the other 20 I am going to utilize to round me out and make me more human. I like to call this interest stacking. Here's a really good example. All of us probably at one point in our life started at a normal job and day one the only thing we have in common with
48:34 our co-workers is that we work for this organization. But as you start to get more comfortable, you probably tend to reveal a few more things about yourself, interests you have. Let's say, for example, uh you reveal the fact that you're a huge Kendrick Lamar fan, and this is during the great Kendrick and Drake beef. And somebody else on your team, Sarah, also is like, I love Kendrick as well. Suddenly, you go from having one thing in common, we both work for this company, to having two things in common. We work for this company and we both love Kendrick Lamar. What ends up happening there is you become work homies, work friends, right? It becomes more than just co-workers. And as you start to learn more things that you have in common with each other, you may go from being work friends to friends. Even
49:21 to the point where once you move on from the organization, you're still friends. I think of the same exact principle in building your brand online. The more interests and things that you find interesting that you talk about in your content, you give your audience more at bats to connect with you because they're like, I also like that thing. And how unique that there's this intersection of somebody who loves human optimization and making their body healthier, but they're also a complete computer science nerd. That is a very interesting intersection. So, what you want to do is actually give your audience more at bats. So again, spend 80% of your time talking about the core subject, the core topic. Ideally, this is something that is in line with your offers that you
50:07 have and drives revenue and profitability for yourself or your company. And then the other 20% talk about your interests. Give your audience at bats to connect with you. An example that I love to use for this, whether we love him or we hate him, is Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan does an incredible job about talking about all the different interests that he has, right? conspiracy theories, politics, human optimization, hunting, UFC, comedy. I mean, the list goes on and on. And so, if you're interested in one of those things, you might be interested in his podcast. If you're interested in two, three, or four of those things, you're probably a super fan. The only way people would know that they are a super fan or become a super fan though is if he talks about those things. If he just stuck to MMA and comedy, there'd be
50:54 far less at bats for his audience to become obsessed. All right, we are on to content. So, we've covered branding and what brand is and we've gone pretty in-depth on that. And that is laying the groundwork and giving us the direction that we are now going to take with our content. I like to think of it as we've established our brand and now content is what we will do to amplify the brand. And one thing I want to give you as kind of a qualifier or a statement upfront that will influence everything that we talk about from here on out is that I like to build a content strategy in the same way that a great personal trainer
51:39 designs a great training program for their clients. A great example is right now I am gonna start getting back into lifting and if I were to go into the gym and immediately start working on Ronnie Coleman's training routine, well, I'd be I would probably injure myself and I definitely wouldn't stick with it. And so, every good personal trainer knows that the best fitness routine or best training routine is one that you are going to stick with for a long time. We get the most results the longer we stick with it. Content is the exact same way. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to do what Mr. Beast does or what Gary Vee does or what all these different creators online that you see are doing. Some of them go really high volume. Some of them go extremely high production. That is a great goal to
52:26 aspire to, but do not start off that way. You will burn out quick and you won't stick with it. And so everything that we design and we talk about, I want you to take and determine what do I feel like I can actually consistently stick with so that I get the results I'm looking for. So with that in mind, we are now going to start by choosing our content medium. This is the type of content, the style of content that you are going to emphasize. Now, I want to be very clear before we go into it. I think you should do all of these, but what I want you to determine is what is going to be your 80%. What are you going to lean into the most? Picking the right content medium is about playing to your strengths while
53:11 ensuring long-term sustainability. You want to be able to do this for a very long time, like I said at the top. So, we have four different mediums that we're going to be discussing here. We have written content, we have video content, audio content, and graphic/design content. And so, we're going to start with written content first. Now, written typically is best for LinkedIn, uh, Twitter X, whatever you want to call it, Facebook, email, newsletters, ebooks, articles, those kinds of things. Honestly, the the best version of this is somebody who feels they are capable of taking high value information, maybe even really dense information and concepts and being able to articulate it in a written format that is concise and high value per sentence. When I'm thinking about video content, I'm thinking about value per
53:56 second. I would like to think about value per word or value per sentence. When it's coming to written, it's February 2025 when we're filming this. Right now, LinkedIn is, in my opinion, the hottest platform to be on. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a creator, a musician, an artist, whatever you are, LinkedIn is actually the platform that is super underrated because everyone assumes it's just business people talking about their careers, but it's not. We're at the point now where the homie is posting a photo of him and his family in the minivan going on a road trip and then the next post is some career update. And so we're actually at the point now where LinkedIn is no longer just a resume and job status update psych. It is a social media platform, however you want to call it,
54:43 interest media, social media, whatever. it is now getting to the point where it has matured and so people are behaving the way that they used to on Facebook back in like 2013 2014 and the beauty of it is right now if you comment on somebody's post all of their connections see it and so it's actually got true virality and I'm emphasizing this right now we'll touch on LinkedIn a lot more later but written content is murdering on LinkedIn if you understand how to package and format your written post if you get the hook Right? It's incredible right now. And so, uh, if you feel you have the skill set to do written, well, this is a great moment in time for you. Now, if you're wondering if this is going to be a good medium for you to pick, well, here's a couple of
55:29 questions that you can ask yourself. Do you enjoy sitting down and writing or even journaling? Are you already doing this? Right? Like, do you have a habit of every morning or every night before you go to bed, you're already journaling? Well, you might already have maybe 70% of the skills required and also you might have 100% of the interest in the medium required to do it. A really crucial question that I think a lot of people don't ask themselves and never evaluate the written content off of is, can you write this down, this concept, and have it make sense without saying it out loud? Some of the worst LinkedIn posts, you can tell they're bad because the person who wrote it has to explain what they're saying in the written. If you have to explain it or add commentary, it is not a good post and you should throw it in the trash. And then once you have a post written or
56:16 an article written, do you like the idea of refining it, editing it, reviewing it? I'll tell you, when I work on a LinkedIn post, I probably do about 10 different versions minimum of it where I reread it, write it. I mean, I just go back and forth, back and forth on it. And so I think something very similar to what we'll talk about here in uh video content as an editor, you have to be comfortable watching the same moment hundreds of times, right? Every editor watching heard that big time. Well, it's the same with editing written content. And so you need to be comfortable with doing that. That's how you can evaluate whether or not written content is going to be a good medium for you to emphasize. The next one is video content. Video content is the highest leverage medium that you can engage in.
57:03 With video, you get the main video that you filmed. Let's say it's a long form like this. Well, we can also pull short form clips from it. We can also extract the audio and make that a podcast. We can also take the transcript and then take little quotes out of the transcript that were punchy or piffy and put those out on threads, Twitter, uh, Facebook status update as an image with the copy on it. There's a lot you can do. You can then take the transcript and use it as your starting point to write LinkedIn posts if you want or articles or a newsletter. So video is the highest leverage because you put the effort of filming this and then you're able to redistribute or repurpose that content for so many different mediums for so many different platforms. But like I said at the top, if you right now
57:49 watching this shudder at the idea of being on camera and it sounds like awful, well, I would encourage you don't do it yet. Again, we want to be doing this for a very, very long time. And so, we want to create a system that we enjoy and we look forward to, not something that we dread and get anxiety when we see it on the calendar. Now, video content includes everything, right? This is YouTube long form, YouTube short form, Tik Tok, Instagram, LinkedIn video tab, Facebook reels, Spotify video. Now, like everything is pretty much pushing video these days. And so again, not only are you able to repurpose it in so many ways, but you're able to feed so many different platforms the type of content or the medium of content that they are asking for. Now, if you're wondering who is video best
58:35 for, well, honestly, it's really if you feel comfortable being in front of the camera, if you feel like you have the ability to articulate fairly clearly, I mean, look at me. I'm not necessarily the best on camera or anything, but like that's what we're doing here. So, if you feel that or you're not feeling like you're an absolute natural at it, but you're willing to improve and work on it in real time in public like myself, then okay, cool. I would highly encourage you to take on video, you get so much more out of it. One thing that I left out is you can also extract stills from the video. So, you can also use those for social posts. I mean, the amount that you can get for the amount you put in is limitless. Couple of questions that you can ask yourself when evaluating if video is your medium are,
59:23 are you comfortable on camera or are you at least willing to try and improve in public over time? Can you handle uh negative feedback from people calling out your lack of abilities to articulate or uh be entertaining on camera? If so, do it. Do you get excited about visuals and grabbing attention? Okay, video is probably a good one for you. If not, maybe it's down the road. And the last question is, can you speak concisely without rambling? Or again, if you can't, but you're comfortable learning on the job, learning in public, then okay, cool. Let's tackle it. Let's do it. The reason why we have this last question is because one of the things that I've noticed in a lot of talent that I filmed with over the years is that when you are extremely knowledgeable on a subject matter,
1:00:10 something happens when you start talking about it. I call it bunny brain. I get it all the time. I start saying something and then my brain fires off this next idea and it's like this little rabbit trail that I end up following and it can cause you to ramble and it can cause you to veer off topic. And if you find yourself doing that, that is not necessarily a reason to not do video content. That just means you need to have a better editor that can help make sure that the content stays focused. Now, the next one is audio content. And this is mainly podcast. That's really what I would want you to think about when you're thinking about audio content. And really, it's exactly the same as video except for you remove the discomfort of staring into this lens, this eternal black abyss that you just have no idea what the reaction is on the
1:00:56 other side. Because the majority of you don't have an amazing cameraman behind it like Trevor who is nodding and giving me affirmation that what I'm saying is good. So, it is freaky to sit in front of a camera, stare into the lens, and talk. It's a lot easier to just have a mic in front of you and just riff. And so I would recommend if the idea of video is exciting and terrifying at the same time, maybe consider for a period of time starting with a podcast. And what I have found is when people do this, they very quickly realize, oh, I might be able to do this video thing. It's not that bad making content after all. And so it allows you to see yourself in a very similar scenario and recognize that it's not that terrifying,
1:01:42 not that freaky, it's actually very high reward. Maybe I could do the same thing with video. So if video was something
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