The Courage to Be Disliked: How Adley Kinsman Built a Billion-View Empire

21:04Adley Kinsman:So how did that go? The hardest part for me was the systems. I couldn't get organized and I wanted to always be an agent. I couldn't shift from it. Like, I want to sell. I don't want to teach to sell. I want to sell. I want that feeling. That was probably the hardest. I want to do it versus trying to teach other people how to do it. That was hard for me. Yeah. I like the teaching. Yeah.

21:50Yes.

21:50Adley Kinsman:I love, I love what you're saying. Yes. A hundred percent. There's no way it's like, yes, exactly. I don't have time. I don't even know what KPI means. I don't know. I don't really know what ROI is. I just know that we got a business. We got to run it. And now everybody else is depending on me, but I'm not smart enough to do all this. So I hired for, I mean, thank God my husband, he knows all this. So we just threw my husband in there who, who doesn't really like people that much. And he runs the backend of everything because the, the really of what it is, is you hire for what you're not good at.

22:19Adley Kinsman:And that, that's what it was for me, at least as I brought people in that were better than me at systems organization, anything that was tech related, anything that, you know, that I couldn't do. And then I just stayed facing and a forward facing to the people. That's what I like. I like people. So that was the easiest part for me. Yes. And that's like, the more you can stay in your zone of genius. And for me, it's staying in that zone of genius and then being able to toss it over the line to a company that can operate efficiently with people who love their jobs and are dedicated to the mission of serving as many people as possible to give them that confidence in how they're showing up online so that they can spend less on ads so that they can, I mean, we're living in a world of the free advertising.

23:01If you can do social media appropriately, you can get millions and millions and millions of free eyeballs to whatever the heck you want. Are you kidding me? Like, this is the best gift I feel like I could give anybody is to learn how to do this efficiently. And so, um, but yeah, scaling the business side has been the hardest part. And I feel like I'm as a creator for the last two, two and a half years, I feel like I talked myself into a desk job being out of my zone of genius, trying to just wrangle this machine I'm fortunate to have, but also how to make it be a machine and not something that I'm having to drive solely down the highway.

23:36Absolutely.

23:37Adley Kinsman:It's definitely a different role as a, like in its entirety, because you like to be with the people and then you're trying to figure out, you know, everything else behind it. And then with AI, AI is a huge component. And what were you, like that's like a whole other world over here, the AI thing. I mean, that's just like a world and a world and, you know, you just go down the rabbit hole with the AI. So that's a whole other thing. But what would you say is the formula or is there a formula to going viral? I think that's what every content creator wants to do. They want to go viral, but what does that even mean?

24:08Adley Kinsman:And how do you do that?

24:12There's several ways to approach this question. First of all, when it comes to actual video structure. Like we're not talking about the theme. We're not talking about your personality, your magnetism, your presence, faceless or not. The hook and the reason you're going to hear people beat you up about it is because if you don't master that first three to six seconds, literally nothing else that we talked about matters. Your product doesn't matter. Your charisma doesn't matter. Nothing matters if you don't know how to get the attention and compel them to stop with a hook and then sustain them. And so our golden rule, it doesn't matter how long your video is.

24:52Your first three seconds have to create an itch that you do not scratch until the last three seconds. So that is two things. You have to cause an emotion, like a visceral reaction in the viewer that has a curiosity gap. And then whatever you make them curious about, do not let your foot off that gas pedal until the end of your video. And that's not me making this up. This is age old storytelling. You look at, look at any sitcom you love, look at any movie you love. If Ross and Rachel stayed together in season two, would we have had 10 seasons? No. Yes. So if you are paying off, like giving the whole solution to the whole point of your video in the beginning, in the middle and not at the end, there's no reason to keep watching it.

25:35And what that signals through the algorithm is not valuable. If you have a high swipe rate in your first three seconds. If you have low retention, meaning most people aren't watching to the end of your video, you're going to signal to the algorithm that your content is not valuable to the people it shows it to. And so the quickest way to solve your retention issue is by creating tension in that video by the structure of its design. Yeah, that makes sense.

25:58Adley Kinsman:No, that makes sense. Cause I think that's what everybody's trying to do. They want to go viral. So they're coming up with all this is something that I struggle with as a creator, I'm always trying to figure out what's going to work, even with the podcast, what's a good intro, what's not, you know, is it the, is, do you have to have a famous guest? Is it the storyline? Like, what is it, what is going on that people will stop and watch what you have? I think a lot of people really struggle with this in its entirety and then they give up. Do you think that most people give up before they even like go somewhere with this?

26:30Yeah, because I don't think they're looking at it from the market's perspective. Like, think about it. When we scroll across something on Instagram, we certainly don't want to be sold something. We have to be compelled to watch something we didn't know that we're going to be interested in. And subconsciously, when you come across a piece of content, the viewer is thinking, is this the best thing I could possibly be watching right now? If not, they're scrolling. So you have to compete, not just against every other video in your demographic or in your industry, against every other video on the internet.

27:03And not just every other video on the internet, you're competing against the kid tugging at their leg. You're competing against their email inbox. You're competing against anything else they're thinking about. So that is why that hook matters so much. That's what you're up against. So whether it's a podcast clip or whatever it is, the text you put on screen, the first words out of your mouth determine the value in the viewer's mind. So shock them, have that curiosity gap, press on a sensibility. they didn't know that they had. What are you saying? Like when you look at the most widely viewed podcast clips, that hook said something that made you interested enough to watch.

27:40So get to the point, like start in the action, in the meat of it. And you have to be interesting enough. Like people look at my content and they're like, I don't want to be silly because I'm silly. And I'm like, you don't have to be silly, but you do have to be interesting. You do have to make people think that this is the best video I could possibly be watching right now or they'll screw.

28:01Adley Kinsman:Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. We, it's the same term. We knew it's not that people aren't interested. It's that you're not interesting. And that's a hard pill to swallow when you're trying to make content. And I think another big misconception, at least for myself, is are you ever, are you at a point where you're too old to make content? You know, like I always say, I don't want to get on Tik TOK. I'm not dancing. I'm in my forties. I'm not doing it. Like, is there, can you be a content creator at any age? 1 ,000%. We coach somebody, her handle something like Swifty over 50. And so Taylor Swift focused for people over 50 who love Taylor Swift and applies life lessons that can be learned through Taylor Swift songs.

28:44Like there's something for everybody. I mean, you can look at some of the, look at Mel Robbins, look at Tony Robbins, look at Gary V. Like they've just got something to say and they make it interesting to consume to the masses. So even if you're a B2B brick and mortar, low TAM business, low total addressable market, meaning a lot of not you don't need a lot of customers. You don't you're not as big as the biggest name. That's OK. You guys, the Milwaukee Public Library, I've referenced them earlier. They have over a quarter million followers as a localized business. that is a library. No one cares about the Milwaukee Public Library, but they make fun and entertaining content.

29:24And now they're a tourist attraction. Judy's Pancakes. I know Judy's Pancakes. Judy's Pancakes.

29:30Adley Kinsman:This small town in Chicago, some small thing. I thought she was in Florida, but I could be wrong. I know what you're talking about though. My husband made me watch this. He's like, you got to watch this video. This is incredible off of pancakes. Maybe it is in Florida. I don't know, but it's somewhere. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't care if you're a local hairdresser, anything like if you can be culturally relevant, you will be contextually relevant by default. Right. So aim bigger. Like if you most people just aspire to be the hair salon people think of when they're in Georgia, the pizza parlor they think of in Chicago.

30:05Think bigger than that. Think cultural moments. Everybody likes pizza. And so what do people like pizza? What do they also like? Is it community? Is it laughter? Is it dad jokes? Is it family, friends? Is it beer? Like have your content speak to all these things. So you're going to widen the amount of people who are aware of you. You have to become aware of somebody before you can buy from them. And so that's what really the difference in what Wireless teaches. We're going to teach you to not talk directly to your core customer all of the time. We're going to teach you to go bigger, fish with a bigger net, because you have a much better chance of finding your dream client when other people know about you and they can send your stuff.

30:41And you're just fun and relatable. And as a brand, people actually enjoy consuming your content. You've won the advertising game. You're going to make so much money. Because when you are making, when you are getting millions and millions of views consistently and predictably, it's hard to not make sales. It's hard to not make sales. And that's the difference in what we teach. It is a numbers game. So if we can get you top of funnel numbers for cheap, you're going to save so much money on ads. You're going to save so much money on traditional advertising of any mechanism or mean. And so that is our goal is to just have mass awareness for people as much as possible.

31:18And what we do is teach you how to package yourself so you are more interesting, so you even have a shot.

31:24Adley Kinsman:Because you have to entertain people and earn the right to educate them. And if you can do that, you can earn the right to educate them on whatever you want. What about niching down? I know that's a big thing that people use. You have to niche down. I mean, I'm kind of mixed on the niching down thing only because I feel like it, but I'm not, I'm not a content creator like you are. I just think the niching down thing kind of boxes you in and limits your audience. You know, like I had Akon on and if I niche down, you know, to women entrepreneurs, right, I'd never be able to fit. How would Akon fit in?

31:57Adley Kinsman:You know what I mean? So is, do you have to niche down? Does it make you more marketable? Does the algorithm like you better, but you hear that so much niche down. I don't know if you could tell on my last little rant there. I don't believe in that. Um, I believe we teach people in your content specifically to get 90 % retention in your first six seconds, because one, if you can achieve 90 % retention in your first six seconds, you'll be in the top 1 % of content served up to the algorithm, less than 1%. And so how can you be widely appealing off the bat rather than saying, if you're trying to recover from bicep surgery, here's three moves to help you heal faster.

32:38I'm scrolling. You're scrolling. Everybody who's not immediately recovering from bicep surgery is gone. And if you do that long enough, you will have a suppressed page. You just will versus talk to a baseball players. If that's season, like right now, get people out there. There's an amazing guy who does this. I think it's at snotdocnc. Is he growing over 300 ,000 followers talking about sinus surgery, snot, snot education? No, because we don't care. We're not on TikTok to learn about sinus surgery. But what he does is he uses other things that are widely interesting people. For him, it's his faith.

33:20And so he's in his full Dr. Garb with the headlight on his head about to do surgery in the OR. And he says, good morning, let's pray. And he just starts praying. And whether you're a person of faith or not, oh, it will compel you. If you are a person of faith, you are, which is a lot of people that is a very wide, total addressable market. And now I don't have a deviated septum, but guess what? I know two people who do, and I sent them his profile and I said, this guy looks like an amazing surgeon and you're going to get prayed over until he really cares about his job. He's not educating me about snot, about deviated septums.

33:58He's going wider, talking to a wider group, not niching down, but you can tell what he does, but he's appealing to the larger group of people. And now his business is doing just fine.

34:07Adley Kinsman:That's incredible. What about your, what is your take on, do you focus on one platform if you're trying to be a content creator, or do you think that you should be across every platform from Twitter to, to threads, to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok? What's your theory on that? What we say is be present on all optimized for one, if you can, and you can scale into this, but for us, it was always, believe it or not, optimizing for Facebook because that was who paid us the most. That's who paid us the most. And that was our breakthrough point for some people it's LinkedIn. That's their primary, but then they'll take their LinkedIn and then repurpose it for threads.

34:47Repurpose that LinkedIn theme for an Instagram carousel, you know, repurpose that for a Tik Tok, whatever, but where is your audience hanging out? What, what's going to make the most sense for you to have your breakthrough? Where's your audience? And then do that, but be everywhere. We had somebody who was fighting us on this and they're like, I don't want to do, I don't want to do YouTube. It's stupid. it. It's a lot of work. I don't understand it. And we were like, Brittany, you already made all the content. You're posting it on Instagram and TikTok, post it to YouTube. You've already done the hard part.

35:18Just put it up there. Guess what is her biggest platform now? YouTube. And she just didn't want to do it because she was like, my audience isn't there. How do you know? How do you know? Just throw it up there. If you've already made the content, the hard part is done.

35:33Adley Kinsman:I love everything that you're saying. I think the biggest fear is people don't like rejection. That's what it comes down to. They don't like rejection and they don't like what other people have to say. They're more worried about what everybody else thinks than what's really, what the reality is. And what future you thinks, then they're not made for entrepreneurship. I'm feeling really blunt today. I love that. No, it's true. What did I say at the very beginning of this? The courage to be disliked. That is step number one. And it takes a minute. It took me a minute because I love to make people happy and generally did.

36:08But when we started going wider and getting more attention, you're going to get into weird parts of the algorithm. You're going to command people to say crazy stuff to you and you have to get over it. You have to be more attached to the outcome that you want for your life than somebody you're never going to meet's opinion of you. Yeah, absolutely.

36:23Adley Kinsman:And I also think that people don't realize how important social media is. We actually use it in our business a lot, believe it or not, with insurance. and it's really helped scale our business because we get more recruits, we get more leads from it and it's really helped our business in tremendous, who would think insurance? Like who would ever, you know, ever in a million years but it's a constantly evolving business and I feel like if businesses in general don't get on the bandwagon, not necessarily of content creation but understanding the importance of it and how to use it to monetize their business, their business is going to go stagnant and I try to preach this to my agents all the time.

37:02Adley Kinsman:I'm like, if you don't have a professional Facebook page, LinkedIn page, you know, something, because what do people look to right now? Social proof for anything. You know, I'm going to Japan. What's the first thing I looked at to try to get some kind of recommendations? I went on TikTok. That's where I went. I didn't go to Google. I went right to TikTok to see, you know, what the masses are talking about. So it's all about social proof right now. And it's really so smart that you started this so many years ago because you're ahead of, I mean, you're way ahead of the game right now, way ahead.

37:31I appreciate that. And now I just want to be here for the person that I once was, you know, there was, I didn't know what I was doing. And I had a guy who was several steps ahead of me, I guess compressing my time to figuring it out by myself, because I believe social media is the, it is the most important advertising vehicle. It is the most important vehicle for relevance. And the fact that most people are trying to figure it out by themselves alone when it's so vulnerable, is people are like showing us their videos and it's like they're naked. They're scared. Like the best thing we can do is encourage them and tweak them a little bit to help them master the number one growth engine for their business.

38:08Adley Kinsman:That's incredible. Talk about what you have coming up. I know you have something big coming up right now. So what do you have coming up in the next month? Yeah. Right now, you guys, we're going into a five-day challenge model because we've tested all these different ways to help and be effective for as many people as possible. And when we can help people have a massive transformation in a short amount of time, that's the goal. And so I've tried a bunch of different mechanisms to do that. But right now, what's working really well is these five-day challenges where we help people double their reach in just five days.

38:41And we can give them unlocks and then they can take that and sustain it far past the five days. But we do it live five days teaching them. And they walk away actually with an AI agent employee, like a creative director. and they just get that with their ticket price at any ticket level. And so I'm very excited about that one. Our next one is June 22nd, and then we're going to have another one in August.

39:02Adley Kinsman:Oh, I love that for you. I love that. All right. Let's have a little fun with some rapid fire. All right. Consistency. So true or false. Okay. Consistency matters more than quality when building a social media following from scratch. Oh, true. Because you don't know what quality is until you've been consistent long enough. So in the beginning, we say everybody's got 100 bad videos and then they just got to get out. And if you are just consistent though, you will plateau. It is consistency plus experimentation, plus innovation. And so in the beginning, just be consistent, get that muscle going and you'll learn what quality is over time because quality is subjective.

39:45Adley Kinsman:I love that. The algorithm rewards authenticity. Brands that try to game it always lose or brands that try to fake it always lose eventually. True. These are not true or false questions though. These all comes with asterisks. And if you guys are like thinking authenticity is a buzzword, fair. So reframe it as transparency. Like if I'm an interior designer and I'm showing the inside of a house that I just designed, show me what it costs as an interior designer. Here's how much this chair costs. And here is the more expensive one, but here's where I find my dupes. And here's how I, here's this wallpaper, like breakdown transparency of your industry.

40:25It's a really quick way to grab quick trust.

40:27Adley Kinsman:I feel like the more vulnerable I've become on social media, the better, like the more likes I get and the more, like you can see that more people before it was always like very prim and proper, very curated. But the more that I've let my guard down and let people into my life, it's become, my social media has really become a lot more active. I believe that. I'm not shocked by that in the slightest because people feel like they're attached to your story. They're not just watching the highlight reel. They're invested in the storytelling. It's a journey. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Most brains that go viral were not prepared for it and it hurt them more than it helped them.

41:04Disagree. I think all press is good press at the end of the day. And I've got a lot of evidence to back that up, but it is what you do with it. So even if you're not prepared for it, I wasn't prepared for my first viral. I left a lot of opportunity on the table. I didn't have another viral again for a long time because I didn't understand why that went viral. Once you start reverse engineering it, you're going to be able to do it again and again and again. So don't think about it as a one and done. Let's show you how and why that went viral and teach you how to do it sustainably and repeatedly.

41:34Adley Kinsman:Anyone can go viral with the right strategy. Talent is optional. One thousand percent. Does talent give you an advantage? Sure. Does being tall in basketball help? Yeah, but it is not a requirement. We have taught some very untalented people how to be wildly successful. I love that. The brands with the biggest social media followings are not always the ones making the most money from social media. So true. Oh my gosh. One of the people in Viral is who just started. Less than 2 ,000 followers. Did a deal with the Four Seasons. Makes millions of dollars a year. Like you don't have to have a big audience.

42:12But does it help? If they're dedicated and you're building it the right way, absolutely. If I offered you one free billboard in Nashville or 100 free billboards in Nashville for your brand, which would you choose? 100. Because more awareness is going to lead to more attention, which is going to lead to more leads, which is going to lead to more sales. So if you have to choose, choose the bigger one.

42:37Adley Kinsman:Yeah, you want as much exposure as you possibly can get. I mean, this episode segment has been absolutely mind-blowing. I hope whoever is watching this really sat down with a pen and paper, voice recorder, whatever they do, and really listened to what, because your nuggets were incredible. Probably one of the most informative people I've ever, that really gave the secret sauce. A lot of people are weird about it. They don't really like to say what's going on or what they're doing. But I love how you laid it out, just the formula that anybody can utilize. So if people wanted, like if I wanted to come hang out with you and join your course, where would I find you?

43:12Adley Kinsman:And what would I do? Come over to Instagram. And then I think you can eventually, you can go to, you should be able to go to viralish forward slash challenge. But if you come over to my Instagram, you'll be able to find everything that you need and all the ways that we can serve you. And are you looking for anyone specific or anyone can be a part? It's mostly people who are already making content, any industry. You're already making content and it's quote unquote not working for you. You're in it, you're dedicated, you're doing it, but you're like exhausted by it and you don't know why it's not working and you need help being unlocked.

43:41Adley Kinsman:Hence the world viral-ish. I love it. It's like you're kind of there, but you're not really, you know, you're kind of trying to go viral. It started as an attempt at humility, to be honest with you. And then also if we, like not every video goes viral, like some flop. So we're like, we said viral-ish, not everything goes viral. I love that. Like there's no guarantee over here. Like we're going to help you, but we can't promise anything. So we're going to look you in the eyes and say every single video is crossing a million views. No, but I can say we will significantly increase your batting average.

44:14Adley Kinsman:How many brands have you had the opportunity of making go viral? Do you know? Roughly? Oh, roughly. Like the ones we do it for like the big brands? Just in general, overall. Oh, over 30 ,000. Wow. That's amazing. That is a proven. That's amazing. I might have to talk to you. We might have to talk after. Come on in, girl. I love this conversation. And I really appreciate you coming on and just being authentic and transparent. Transparent, not authentic. Transparent over here. And then you opened up your playbook. So many people won't do it. I've spoke to many content creators, spoken to many people in the industry, and they just won't say what's going on.

44:54Adley Kinsman:I love how you really just gave the secret sauce and you were open about it. and you know, I hope today's audience really gained a lot from you. I'm pretty sure they did. And I just want to thank you so much for hanging out with me for a little bit. It was incredible. Well, thanks for the invite, Mara. It's a pleasure. Pleasure is all mine. And yeah, I hope your audience gets out a lot of, a lot out of it as well. They will. And Instagram is where they're going to find you anywhere else. TikTok, YouTube. My name is Adley, A-D-L-E-Y, Adley Kinsman. If you type that in, you'll find me. I love that girl.

45:25Adley Kinsman:Well, thanks for coming on the build pod. I thoroughly enjoyed it.