What the Man Behind 3 Billion Organic Impressions Actually Thinks About Virality w/ Caleb Ralston Ep. 31

25:15That's where I started. So I started in bodybuilding. And then I started working at a software company. Okay. Logos Bible Software, actually. I know it's not good at software. Yeah. So I worked there. for a couple of years. And then I did freelance for about a year, year and a half, where I worked with the two, like some of the first I-502 cannabis, like legal cannabis brands in Washington State. Yeah. Did that. That was fascinating. It is. We literally ran meta ads for a cannabis brand. That was difficult. Yeah. Had some creative ways of getting around it. That was fun. And then I went out and worked at PureWow.

25:49Okay. Did that for nine months. And after nine months, they pulled me on to Team Gary, which was crazy.

25:56Chris Cruz:Why did you think they pulled you on? What was the reason they pulled you off? What did you reflect on that? So there's a meeting that I actually posted on my Instagram, my first meeting with Gary. It's a five-minute meeting. He's famous for having these literally like five minutes on the calendar. And man, it feels like a lot more than five minutes, though. You get a lot of value in five minutes. And he invited me to hang out upstairs with the Team Gary crew. He was like, I know you're at PureWow. And Team Gary is, what is Team Gary? His personal brand. Okay, personal brand. Media team. Yep, great question.

26:27Thank you. And he invited me to hang out with them and work on content after hours. He was like, you do your PureWow thing 9 to 5, and then 5 to 10, you can come hang out here, do whatever. And I was like, oh, my God, this is like a dream. I was watching the DailyVee episodes. My sister and I would be watching them in my apartment in Bellingham. Yeah, dude. And now he's inviting me to hang out. This is crazy. But then on the subway ride home, I was thinking through. I was like, there's this principle that I was taught as a kid. I think it's in the Bible. And it's to be a good steward with what you're given.

26:59And the thing that I realized was I was tasked with making content for PureWow. And so if I'm going to take time to work on additional content that isn't a passion project of mine, because I had to do those to keep my sanity. But if I wasn't doing that, I want to deploy those extra working hours towards PureWow, the opportunity I was given, right? And kill that. And I had this theory that if I do an incredible job there, the leadership will talk. They know I'm a huge Gary fan. It'll get mentioned and brought up. And maybe something will come of that. And what's crazy is actually at the same time, there was another character that started at PureWow.

27:36He also loved Team Gary, loved Gary, wanted to work on the team. And he spent every little bit of extra time he had with Team Gary. Not necessarily focused on PureWow content. There's so much here people want to understand.

27:47Chris Cruz:There's so much you're unpacking right now that is the unspoken undercurrent of how people thrive in organizations. I mean, it's like a lot of people that I talk to have really incredible opportunities in the in-house role that they're in right now. And they're like, Caleb, I want to do this consulting. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. All this stuff. Go crush that thing. And that's my thing. I keep coming back. I'm like, I get, like, I took side gigs when I needed money. Yeah. But other than that, my God, I tried to focus on the opportunity at hand because I always believe that that is going to give you greater returns and a better foundation to build and catapult off of.

28:22And so I just did that. I focused really hard, but I did meet with David. So I was meeting with David Rock, D-Rock, like probably once a month just to update him. I would ask him his feedback on what I was doing. I never was asking like, hey, could I? But then eventually I think, I want to say it was probably like May or June 2017 I think, I was invited, maybe 2018, invited to film a Daily V that Gary was doing. He was like meeting with Vitor Belfort, who's a UFC fighter that I was a huge fan of at the time. And the first time I'm filming with G, it's crazy. We're like at this like fancy dinner, they're eating.

29:02And I assumed that they would just interact and I didn't exist. And within minutes, this is just how cool G is. He turns to me, he goes, have you ever had oysters? And I was like, nah, you know, never had oysters. And he grabs the camera out of my hand. He's like, all right, well, on today's episode of Daily V, Caleb's trying oysters for the first time. And it was just, it was such an insane moment of going from just literally a year ago. Like, yeah, I was watching this guy on my TV and now I'm the guy filming him. It was absolutely insane.

29:34Chris Cruz:Yeah, I feel a little bit of that. Even I know that you're like, I'm nobody in my industry. I feel a little bit of that sitting with you and like going like, oh, a year ago, I was watching the six hour course of how to do this thing. And like, now I'm sitting in the same exact room with him, talking to him about this stuff. So I feel a little bit of that. But what you're saying, here's what's fascinating to me, which is probably overlooked in a side note in so many people's minds, is there was something inside of you, I don't know what it is, and you may be able to articulate it. There was something inside of you that believed that you didn't have the scarcity mindset that if you gave up this opportunity, it would never come your way again.

30:07Chris Cruz:Because there was something that somebody is like, hey, if I got this, I'm going Team Gary and PureWell is going to get the scraps because the best opportunity is over here. You're like, no, there's just something about if I do this well, this will come. Do you think about like that often? Like, is that even how you take clients? Is that even how you think about like, I don't know. It's just a different mindset than most would have. Most would go, Gary called me, we're dropping everything and we're going doing that. You were like, yeah, I love that. Freaking awesome. That's a hell of a deal. I want to be a part of that.

30:40Chris Cruz:but I got commitments that I'm up here well and I got to do these well. Yeah. I think, I think it's just that I had previously had situations in my life that supported that way of thinking. Like I just said, yeah, yeah. I had just made bets, stayed focused. And when I didn't, and I started doing a bunch of different things and spreading myself really thin across different projects, I noticed that everything suffered. And so I think I just had a really strong belief that gary would if he ever even heard about it yeah and i didn't assume that he would but if he did he would respect that i was this is a company that he had just recently bought you know and and he was wanting to have them focus more on social at the time they had traditionally been they were still on social and they were doing a good job but they had been more focused on their website and pushing people to consume content there and gary was like no we We don't want to try and bring them here.

31:38We want to live where they are and put the content out. And so I viewed it as like, this is something that would be honoring to the man who has given me so much already is if I can have any little part in helping this transition and everything and be a part of it. Also, the other thing is I fucking loved those people up here. Like Nadia, my manager, the best. Mary Kate. Oh my God. She was the shit. Ryan love him. Right? Like everybody that I worked with there and worked for were awesome humans that I never could have just like dipped. You know, even when I went to Team Gary, I still did my best to go downstairs and still do projects when I could or help them however I could.

32:20Because I love that crew.

32:21Chris Cruz:Bro, you think, I think so much like that with you and that. Like there's, I can point to so many moments where that's like part of where I'm at right now with building what I've been entrusted to build is because of that. sitting in a back corner working on a project that someone said can you go work on that and be like cool i know i'm getting dragged in other spots but i know the success of this is going to speak way more than my exhaustion of that yes so like let me just go crush this thing and i know it's going to speak so i i resonate so much um it's kind of what we do actually with my youtube channel okay everybody is putting out high volumes of content and i think that's the right move But for me right now, I'm putting more effort and focusing on one piece at a time rather than mass volume.

33:04And I think it's kind of a similar way of operating. I believe that the long-term benefit of that, of putting a ton of effort into these videos, knowing that they're going to continue to reap the benefits. Like, you know, we're a year in, like you said. And that course is now getting still like a thousand views a day.

33:22Chris Cruz:Okay, so let me ask you a question. because when you started saying that, the thing that T-boned me in my brain is some of the other rhetoric. Even Gary going like, grip 30 things a day, 40 things a day. Just like you're not posting enough. How do you fight off what your mentor even says about that? Well, I know it's correct. Right? It's correct. Just like when I was getting into powerlifting. That's awesome. I'd watch Andy Bolton or Ronnie Coleman or any of these characters, Stan Efferding, and what they were doing was correct. Yes. But it was not sustainable or possible for me at that moment.

34:02Chris Cruz:Oh, so you're drawing the line, the connection between correct for an individual, where they are and where they're at, to what you are, what you're capable of, and stretching yourself with that in mind. Jeff Bezos, I think, is the one that talks about how he doesn't make any decisions before 10 a.m. and after like noon or something i'm butchering but he has a window where he makes decisions that's great for jeff if i do that in my first year of business i'm fucked i think that's the difference between tactics and like understanding principles like that's the difference between being going all right that worked that worked that worked but it's not and there's guys who are exhausted i had to i don't want to put names or anything on podcasts but it's like i had to turn their podcasts off i just was like hey i gotta unsubscribe because you're exhausting me with tactics.

34:49Chris Cruz:I feel drained at the idea of like what you told me to do last week, I did. And now you're telling me to do something else. And I can't, I just can't keep up. It's killing me. It's a hundred percent correct. And we need to do high volume. And as AI is ticking up and there's more shit just being made like crazy fast, you will need volume. But I still believe, and this may change. But to this day, I have never wavered on this. If you make a really, really powerful piece of content and you put a lot of effort into it, just like a product, it will market itself and it will stand out against volume.

35:28Right? The problem is, is eventually I am going to have to uptick that volume. But if I tried to do a weekly YouTube video for my first year,

35:37Chris Cruz:I wouldn't have made it past month two. And so for me, it's back to this long-term mindset, right? It's like, I know the way that I'm going to be building this. And I know what I aspire to get to. I'm not going to go, if I want to bench 500, I'm not going into the gym tomorrow and loading four, five plates, you know, like I would get crushed. Exactly. And so people, I think need to understand that you need to take what they're saying and understand that the main reason why they're saying it is because everyone in their audience isn't doing shit. And so if I say 30 posts a day, then there's a chance that you might do one.

36:13Yes. And that's one big reason why these characters use those big numbers.

36:17Chris Cruz:They're going to go, okay, understanding the fact that you're going to trim everything I say down. Yeah. I'm going to overshoot this. You're not even going to do it. And so the one or two of you that are listening, they're going to actually take my advice and do a 20th of what I say. Cool. Now you get a post up every day. Yeah. But knowing that that is something that we should be working towards, but that doesn't mean that you need to work towards it in the next three days, three weeks, three months, three years even. It needs to be on your own timeline. Comma, you need to understand then that that limits your upside.

36:47Chris Cruz:Oh, let's go. Like own that, own it. Let's talk about it, please. Like I would be, we're around 91 ,000 subscribers on YouTube right now. It's been a little over a year. It's a year and one month of posting. So 13 months. If we posted once every week at the same quality, not duration, but quality or perceived quality, we would probably be 200 ,000 subscribers, maybe 300 ,000. We'd be a lot bigger. But I know what I am optimizing for, which is longevity. And so at the expense, I need to know that there's a cost to that. Everything in life is a trade-off, right? Everything is a trade-off. And so if I am going to say, okay, I'm optimizing for longevity.

37:36Well, then I'm not optimizing for rapid immediate growth. Right? And so understanding what you're optimizing for in the season that you're in is one of the most important things that nobody thinks about with their personal brand. No, they don't. Not at all.

37:52Chris Cruz:So, okay. But here's my, my quick, cause I, I respect that so deeply because even when we started all of our YouTube stuff, we had time to flesh out content ideas. some stuff stayed some stuff died we're just like it's just not sustainable we can't keep creating that we're going to cut it it's gone it's wasting time it's that we can't do it but then the question that i have with what you're saying like when you know that you're not going to get rapid growth which i love we share in a lot on the building for trust over virality like that is the name of the game for me because i'm like i i like that i'd rather go deep with a few people than be shallow with a lot of people.

38:28Chris Cruz:Like, I love thinking like that. But then when people are like, but I can't, my business isn't growing. Like, I'm not making money. Are you, and I'm not, I don't know the metrics on how you make revenue. But my question is like, are you able to think like that because the money's coming in and you're able to go, cool, I've got safety because I've got revenue and that's good. I can take the long game versus someone's like, I got to make money tomorrow. Such a good question. Yes, yeah. I'm in a fortunate position that, you know, I've talked about how I had a conversation with Gary where like I could build my business without ever making content because I have enough goodwill from what I've done that like I can just through referrals, I'd be able to build.

39:12Chris Cruz:Across the paper you go, Gary V, Alex Hermose, Layla Hermose. Cool. Where's my, where's my job? Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Like we could have done that. Yeah. I had other goals in addition to just building my business that I wanted to accomplish and things that I wanted to do and provide to people to help them. And I wouldn't have been able to do that without content. But, oh, God, did I just leave the question? So the question was about revenue and the fact that you have that. Yes. So I didn't need to make money off of my audience in the first year. Right. And going into year two, we don't need to do that either.

39:48Chris Cruz:Because you already had stuff in motion? Yeah, we have clients that we've gotten and everything like that. that we're doing really well with that are fucking awesome. That's awesome. Awesome clients. And I'm so grateful to be in that position. Yeah. There are people that it's like, yo, I got bills to pay, mouths to feed right now. And I can't wait. Like tomorrow, I got like the amount of people that we interact with when they come to us to work on brand for them. And when content comes in the conversation, it's always, it's got to make me money. Yeah. And this is the wrong solution. Let's go. That's the big one.

40:18Chris Cruz:Is everyone thinks, okay, cool. I'm going to start making content to make money tomorrow. Yeah. No, no, no. What you're going to build is a brand that is going into the ground. Because it's like if you meet somebody for the first time and you just immediately make a big ask of them. It's fucking weird. Yeah, no, it is. Like that's not how humans work. You got to build some rapport. It's off-putting. You got to give, right? And so I believe that the best version of this is if you've identified, I need cash now. Yeah. Don't focus on making content right now. focus on another means, right? There's other ways.

40:54And I'm not the business expert. I'm not going to teach you what to do.

40:56Chris Cruz:People need to hear that though. Because they're fed the idea that this is going to change the game tomorrow for them. And they're like, no, it's not going to change the game tomorrow for you. This is going to take time to get into their minds. And then when their decision-making comes in, that you're hoping your content is in that spot when they come to decision-making. Not right now. It's just not there. Exactly. That's encouraging percent. So there's that. The other thing that I want to hit on though, is I think some people use what I say about not optimizing for virality and optimizing for trust as an excuse.

41:28They make shit content. They get no views and they're like, I'm optimizing for trust, motherfuckers. Like, no, no, you're just not good. And that's okay. You can get good, right? Just because we're not good right now doesn't mean we can't get good. But the thing that I I could do it myself.

41:44Chris Cruz:Like we will measure and we have to have honest conversations. We did a whole podcast, just our team. Yeah. Because we were like, okay, if we measured our success based off of what we are seeing numbers wise, we would be a failure. In the eyes of many people that are social media gurus. Yep. Who are, have podcast, all this stuff that will say, you're not doing good enough because you're not getting 60 ,000 on each thing. You don't have people mining your content and bots and then groups, then cutting your stuff and putting those groups to work to send 10 ,000 clips. You're not doing that. But then what we said was when we looked at it, honestly, we said, but are we getting the revenue we're projecting to get that we set for ourselves?

42:23Yeah.

42:23Chris Cruz:We're like, yeah. We exceeded our Q1 goal this year. That's incredible. But are we getting crazy virality? No. Is our podcast optimizing in a way that gets us converted? No. But almost every client we talk to that we landed, they'll say something like, somebody shared something with me. Or I saw this thing you did. They don't even follow us. They don't even comment. The best clients don't. They're silent. But then at the end of the day, when I don't have those big views, I will reflect back and go, oh, I'm optimizing for trust. But I'm like, wait, Chris, you are. don't let that ego thing step in and mess with you and cause you to get off your horse and change why you're doing this because like that stuff creeps in fast oh yeah phil jackson uh coach at the lakers of the chicago bulls right he coached michael jordan he coached kobe bryant and shaquille o 'neal fantastic coach oh remarkable highly recommend anyone who is into leadership study him and the way that he i think his book's 11 rings 11 rings it's an incredible book i've read it twice now.

43:27And one thing he talks about is they didn't optimize for championships. They didn't optimize for winning. They optimized for brotherhood. And brotherhood took care of championships. If you optimize for trust, actually, what is trust? You set an expectation of a problem that your ideal customer has, and you help them solve it. And if you do that over and over, that's actually building trust. And if you truly do that, and you optimize for that, virality will take care of itself yeah my course i did not design look at it it's six and a half hours there's no like there's no social proof on it it's not like there's photos of people i've

44:05Chris Cruz:worked for statistics and case studies in the middle of it what most people would do they go here's the 10 people i've helped to validate my point yeah i didn't do shit about that right it's a photo of me smiling it says six hours it's like the barrier to entry is high it's like yo I highly suggest not watching, you know, but it is our most quote unquote viral piece of content. Yeah. I believe that when people say, man, I got such good shit, nobody's watching it. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that good? Yeah. Oh yeah. Because I've seen a lot of creators that start or film with their phone or a webcam and it's dog shit.

44:43It's not edited or anything, but what they're saying, that's the value. And so if it's truly valuable, there will be people who consume it. I do believe that. Now this is not an excuse though, to not care about your packaging, your rafting. You do need to increase the odds that more people are going to watch it. You just want more people in your niche, more of your target customer to watch it, not just random jokes.

45:08Chris Cruz:And I think about it that often as like insurance, where I'm like, do you not want to put insurance on your house like like why would you not choose to do this when you could like oh unless it's like i can't do it at all so there's no way i'm like okay cool you can't then you you're you're you're buying a house without flood insurance in a high flood zone they're probably going to charge you a lot more but if you could do it you would yeah and that like try your best to include this if you can and like we were talking to somebody who wanted um content and they were we're like i don't think content is going to move the needle for you what's probably going to move the needle more is the fact that your customer service person has a air pod in their ear when they're talking i was at a really well-known establishment and the person's talking to me with two air pods in and they're talking to me and i'm not talking back and they're like and i was like oh you're you're talking to me and they're like yes i was like oh i just assumed because your air pods were in both of your ears that you were listening and talking out loud on a phone call that you weren't talking to me yeah and they're like oh i'm so sorry i didn't realize i had them in i'm like i i'm that's going to cost you more in this exchange than content ever will yeah and so that i think that's people get lost on contents the only way i'm going to win in this even though i it's a great great advantage there's other ways to win it's a long-term game yeah i always tell people if you go into this expecting no good outcomes or results for 36 months you'll win the problem is everybody wants it in like three to six weeks but that's not how it works.

46:38Chris Cruz:There are outliers. There are people that pop in a month, sure. But if you have the wrong expectation, then you get discouraged and you give up so fast. That's why I like the 36 months. Yeah. If you were to look at where you are now and your whole trajectory and what you're doing, what would you look back and say you're most proud of?

47:03Hmm. Out of everything?

47:07Chris Cruz:You could pick, I don't mind what direction you want to take with it. Just when you're like, if I looked at this. The last in-house team that I built because of the humans. I love each and every person that was on that team. I love them to death. I try to be in contact with all of them as much as possible. And what I'm proud of is that they came into the team as gangsters. I love that you picked the team. That's your thing you're proud of. I love that you picked. I love that so much. It's core to who I am. Yeah. um they came in as gangsters but they left with skills and tools in their tool belt and their super belt or superhero belt that they did not have before that were ancillary to the creative work they were doing i had one editor she worked for um i love her to death i'll i won't mention her name just in case i don't want to you know i've never asked her if i can but out of respect But we brought her on and she was incredibly talented, not super organized and not necessarily the best with communication.

48:08And she had been working with this YouTube channel, really big YouTube channel before. And she worked for our team for I think like a year and a half, two years. And then she went out on her own and started doing more freelance work. And that original client reached out and hired her. I met with that client maybe two or three months after they started working together again. And he mentioned to me, he was like, yo, there is a massive difference in her communication and organization. And I like that.

48:39Chris Cruz:That's the greatest thing that I could hear. Yeah. Right. I'm seeing a lot of these characters have gone on to be the editors or leads for all these like very big brands that you are watching. Yeah. And it's just so cool to see. I think that a job of a leader is, and a sign of a good leader, is if somebody comes into your organization or your team and they leave more valuable in the marketplace. Yes. And you invest in them to be more valuable in the marketplace knowing that they're going to leave. That's a different paradigm than most people have. Most people are going, I need you to be able to do a job well and just do that job.

49:16Chris Cruz:But we've talked about it on our team often, the idea that like me as a leader of this, one of my goals is not that we're going to be the biggest agency in the world. Like that's not one of my goals. One of my goals is that this company in and of itself makes your life so much better. I love that. Like so much better that you come here working with us on every part of your life. You feel it flourish. There's an old painting. It's called Rage Transference. And it's a man at a job. It's an old painting. It's a guy, a boss yelling at his employee. That employee then goes back and yells at his wife.

49:52Chris Cruz:And then in yelling at his wife, she yells at their kid. The kid then yells at the dog. And you see the anger didn't start in the home. It actually anger started because he was mistreated at work. And there's this idea that work is this place that we like to separate, but should lead to human flourishing. Should lead to you feeling like you light up in every other area because of what you're getting invested in here. You shouldn't feel like a slave here. Yeah. So I love that you picked out a team and what they did and what they went out after. What's next on your horizon? Like you've cut your teeth on a lot of stuff.

50:26Chris Cruz:You've worked with big people. What can you talk about as far as like, hey, this is what I'm thinking about next? There's one personal brand that we're working with this year that I'm really fucking stoked about. Let's go. I think he's going to be huge. I think he is one of, if not like the next guy in the business space. I think he's going to be really big. So that's going to be a very fun one. What are you doing? I know you can't go into detail, but what are you doing to feel that level of confidence? I know that you have the talent is there. You're like, you're looking at the player. You're like, okay, I got that player scouted in.

50:58Chris Cruz:They're great. What's the thing you're doing? They check all the boxes to sound super analytical here. They check all the boxes that a lot of the top dogs in the business creator space have had the difference is is the business that they have uh behind them okay um it's a physical business like a cbg brand okay versus you know a lot of people in this space have been more in the info world and there's nothing wrong with that but there's something different for people to watch your instagram video and then be holding it's not cadence but to be holding yeah your can't arcade not a sponsor of the show at all we just got that we like them that's cool like that is a different presence that you can have.

51:40And so I think, and the other thing is, is most of these characters have started building their personal brand after they exit a company and they're talking about things after the fact, which is good and wonderful, but we all know that memory is a crazy thing that we evolve in our favor.

51:58Chris Cruz:This character is still in the business. And so what he's sharing is real time strategies being used that are great. And so I see him having a different position in the market. So that's cool. Very excited about that. We have a couple of fun projects that we're working on. We have something that we, Trevor actually did an incredible job, my content director. We put together this curriculum that we're launching within this thing called Ralston Select. And it is a four part curriculum, pre-production, production, post-production platform strategy all through the lens of educational content but the best part of it is it's not just me it's trevor oh trevor and i teach it together and we had i think it was 11 or 12 days in the studio eight hour days this was his first video yeah and he's filming for eight hours on camera it was crazy so that's another thing that i'm really proud of that i'm excited about that's going to be launching April 14th.

52:56And then a couple little secret YouTube things that we're working on for maybe the back half of the year.

53:02Chris Cruz:Okay, so when you're thinking about like this, your content, like if we understand, like I'm selfishly, I don't care about anybody else on the podcast listening. I'm sorry for everybody else. You can listen to the rest of the conversation and get a ton of meat out of it. This one, this little section's for me. When you're going through your content plan for how you want to do your stuff, I know you have your brand story framework, that stuff that you do, but like what's your way of developing your framework or developing your content? Like how are you, are you doing, I know you do long days where you shoot.

53:36Chris Cruz:How are you writing all that stuff in advance yourself? Do you have a team helping you think about hooks? Like what's the way that you're behind the curtain there that you're doing it? So it depends on the format that we're gonna do. We have, right now we kind of have, I would call it three formats, but really two of them are the same, just different versions. So Talking Head, where I do like a shorter one, like we released in February a video. It's a Talking Head video. I'm in the back of my pickup truck. That one was like, I think like 15 minutes or 20 minutes, something like that. Then we have the long form Talking Head where it's like six hours or three hours.

54:10Chris Cruz:Yeah, you should bring cereal back, by the way. Oh, I agree. I agree. Thank you. Yes, I do need to bring that back. And then the other one is, we call it like cinematic narratives. I don't know if you've heard of Adrian Purr. omgadrian on instagram okay i highly recommend following he's a gangster he's so creative and uh i got a lot of inspiration from his style of short form and so we try to sometimes replicate that with a little cinematic yeah like i've done two of them is that the motorcycle stuff yeah i'm riding on my harley and then there's another one where i'm walking around uh london and stuff and we're going to film another one here uh soon in new york city so you have the formats and all that but what about the actual content?

54:50Are you just getting queued up by questions live? So it depends. For the cinematic narratives, I'm actually writing a script and a shot list. So it's like word for word script. Like it's not me off the cuff. Yes, I write it. And then Trevor and I do the shot list together. I just enjoy it. I like being part of that. I also like training him on those things and how I think about it and how I go about doing it. So we do that together. Those videos are really fun. They're very - I've got to pause you.

55:19Chris Cruz:I've got to pause you. Yeah. You said, I like to teach him how to do this stuff. All right. Walk me through just a little bit of how you're teaching him in the script, Steph. We do it together. So he watches me do it. Then I start asking him, what do you think I'm about to do, say? What do you think I'm going to cut? What do I not like? So I start quizzing him so that he can start to gain his predictive power. Yeah, you're not telling him stuff. You're asking him questions. Exactly. After a couple months of telling him and showing him, right? I want him to be able to predict how I think, how I operate.

55:50Then once we get to that point where he is predicting it, then I start having him do stuff. So like he'll do the shot list. I'll watch him do it. And then I'll give him feedback. But then eventually he's doing it completely. We're almost to the point where he'll do those shot lists completely. And he could tomorrow. I'm very particular because I'm the asshole who was behind the camera.

56:13Chris Cruz:Yeah, you're not insulting his ability to do things. No. Some people can think that and go, I don't need this micromanagement. Exactly. He just knows I'm very particular. I have a very specific way of wanting this shot. I'm a big Richard Linklater fan, and I love the way that he has done his films, and that influences kind of how we approach those. Then on the other side, when you have the, let's call it, the five-hour course we released in January, that one, i start writing the first version of bullets and then him and i spend at least a full day like a 10 to 12 hour day straight beating it up people need to hear that because they're thinking i could just go off the cuff and go like you're like no that six hour course was a whole day of revisions to what i've already spent time doing oh the six hour course i wrote every evening for two weeks straight i probably spent between him and i we probably did a combined 120 hours this wasn't a prompt you put in and got out the course like fuck no no that's what i'm saying though like that short route versus the long game of like no i spent time oh i could go hard on this go it's infuriating to me that people think that they can uh put no effort into content post a video on youtube and think they're going to get results these same motherfuckers say how stupid that mindset is with business, with their health, right?

57:39With their marriage, with their finances, whatever niche that they preach about, it's ludicrous. There's hundreds of thousands of hours of content being uploaded to YouTube every fucking day. And we think that us putting 30 minutes into writing a video is going to be enough to stand out. The answer is no. And that's why I put so much effort into my content. I don't think I'm anybody. Nobody has to listen to me.

58:03Chris Cruz:They don't have they don't have to listen to you no exactly like oh my gosh that statement itself they don't have to listen to you like i think i'm like they're not i'm entitled to anybody's eyeballs no not at all i have to earn it yeah i have to earn it and the way that i earn it is by putting the effort into what i'm going to say and then making sure that it passes the three question test which is is it simple to understand are they going to get it quickly then is it valid in three different scenarios. If it's not, then I need to label it a tactic. Otherwise, if it's valid in three or more scenarios, then it's a principle.

58:38My definition of trust is valid in every scenario, whether it's for a human or for a car or a dog or the weather.

58:45Chris Cruz:That's great. So I can say that is a principle-based definition, not a tactical-based definition. Those are really cool, those first two. And if you just answer those, you're going to sound really smart. but a lot of smart shit isn't useful so the third question is is it useful and the amount of shit that i write because my ego says i want to sound smart and then trevor and i sit down and we're like what do people do with that do they act off of it and if they don't why are we including it yeah and so if you if you were to and i'm not saying anybody should do this but if you were to go study the content we're putting out, I believe if you compare it to the average video on YouTube, you would find we use the term value per second or value per minute.

59:31Okay. It has a much higher value per minute than the majority of content, meaning the majority of the statements I make are statements you could act on. You could change your behavior based on it. Yeah. Love that. And that is what actual educational content is. All right.

59:47Chris Cruz:Here's one of my last questions for you. If not, we'll see where we go with it. this is me watching your content thinking like i love the talking head because it leans towards more my skill set podcasting on like even you're asking like in your stuff what's the format that leads more to your skill set versus yes so video audio that leads more to my skill set writing is probably second but i hear everywhere talking head is dead talking head is dead talking head is dead people can get value anywhere anywhere what do you do with that with what you're building right now i i think uh the people that say that are selling some shit to try and make some money off of you and that's why they're saying it it's it's dumb honestly like i you mentioned it i think off camera yeah something that i do that hurts the performance of my content is i add a lot of nuance.

1:00:42I add qualifiers and I, I don't speak in sometimes. You speak in absolute sometimes, but a lot of times you respect it. Yeah. Rarely because I don't, I don't think it's black and white. Like you're not dogmatic like that. Talking head isn't, isn't the greatest thing. It's not dead. Like nothing. Like, I don't know. It's, it's insane because the real, real is what a lot. And this is why I I'm so annoyed with the industry is it's people that have been doing this for two or three years and talking about it, but they've never seen how the trends play out. Because what you actually learn is if you've been in the game for more than a decade, you realize that what is cycling on YouTube follows the same cycles that television and radio went through and newspaper, right?

1:01:32Like reality television. Well, that's a vlog. Yeah. Game shows. that's mr beast yeah like and so all of these things they go up they go down and then they come back up right like talking head will not die it will always be there it will adapt and it'll evolve the way that people have their creative spin on it sure like we do one with

1:01:55Chris Cruz:sandwiches where i make i we tried to make sandwiches it was incredibly hard to sustain and so we stopped now i just order a sandwich and truth be told i'll tell him in live this is fun because I get to say it. Sandwiches came to me as an idea for our social show because of cereal. Oh, really? Because I was like, I saw Caleb eat cereal and talk to somebody and I enjoyed it. I'm going to make a sandwich or eat a sandwich and talk about stuff because I think that's fun. That's cool. And like, that was why I did it. I was like, there's no like, all right, where's the like logic behind sandwiches?

1:02:29Chris Cruz:I'm like, no, I saw somebody eat cereal. What can I replace with cereal? I'm like, wow, I really like sandwiches. and I'm going to eat sandwiches. And so I do say, and the show is getting back up because we took it off because it was not sustainable. But that's what I love is that there's nuance to the talking head. It's not just going away. Yeah. Yeah. You just got to figure out the way to adapt it. You know, like people had done travel shows on TV for a long time. And then Anthony Bourdain came around and was like, I'm going to take this and make it a little bit different. You know, like you can compare and contrast him and Guy Fieri.

1:03:02Yep. Wildly different. Same exact idea. I'm going to travel around understanding culture and food.

1:03:08Chris Cruz:And there's like eight of those. Right. You could put like a piece of, but they're all different, but they're all same. Exactly. Exactly. And there's 8 million of them that are just trying to do a duplicate of what Anthony Bourdain does. And they're not putting their own spin. So talking head isn't dead. It's just you need to put you into the talking head. Bro. I mean, like that's it right there. That is the end of it. Bro, thank you for coming on. It was so good for me. I love this. So thank you for coming on, man. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.