Dialing Down the Noise: A Guide To Strategic Content Creation

0:00Honestly, I turned off Alex's channels, my subscriptions, because it was too much stuff. all the time. It was, he was in my feed too much and it was seldom relevant to anything that I cared about. So, you know, I'm not looking for, you know, how to have, you know, an inexpensive Chipotle protein meal for under$5 and stuff like that. I mean, just, I don't care. And I, I think what happens is that, um, if you, you know, it's, it's quality versus quantity. If you're chasing everybody, then you're going to maybe even turn off your core audience because I'm certainly, I think, an audience that Alex would want to reach.

0:41But I just was like, pretty much none of this is of interest to me.

0:49Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Business Launch Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Roland Frazier, and my wonderful co-host and business partner, Ryan Dice is also with us. Ryan, what are you up to today? I'm excited to have a normal week. You know what I did this weekend? What did you do this weekend? I did absolutely nothing. Me too. How did that manifest itself? What nothingness did you do? So for the past month, I have had, I mean, you know this. I've got a senior in high school. He's graduating and it's the end of the school year. and any parent of school-age children knows that there is not a worse time of your life than the end of April and the first part of May because it's all the final projects.

1:34It's all the, you know, banquets and awards. Everybody's throwing parties, all the last, it's like everything all culminates all at once. And when you got four kids like I do, it's just, it's absolutely miserable. And on top of that, we also have two of my kids' birthdays are middle to end of April. So it's just nuts, like just absolutely insane. But Emily and I, my wife and I, we were talking at the end of last week. We're like, what do we have this weekend? She's like, I don't really have anything. I was like, huh, like, well, maybe I'll go take the boy and go play golf. She's like, yeah, that'd be nice.

2:09But then it just poured down rain. So, dude, I'm not exaggerating on Saturday. I woke up like at 6 a.m. like I always do. But we just sat in bed until noon. and I read and I wrote, I wrote a 46 page report this weekend because I just had the time. That sounds like business though. So you businessed. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I can't literally sit there and do nothing, but I got to do something that was important, non-urgent. And so it was great. It was beautiful. That's, that's what I did. What about, what about you? So you haven't been as busy either? I didn't have, no, I, I, I irresponsibly have decided that I'm not going to work on the weekend so much anymore.

2:50So that's, I say irresponsible, but you know, that you really shouldn't have to do that all the time. And my wife, as you know, just had surgery. And so she's still recovering. So she can't really do much of anything. It was also here kind of just a really mopey, gloomy kind of weekend weather-wise. It was gray and drizzly. It was like, it was a day that was cold. for sitting in bed and doing nothing. Yeah. So, so, uh, I also, uh, can't help but the, but get up early and everything, but then, um, I just worked on, uh, I've, I've got some projects that I'm doing around here, you know, musically with my studio and stuff like that.

3:30So I just kind of worked on plotting all that stuff out. I watched a whole bunch of YouTube videos. We did, uh, went through, uh, a complete, uh, mini series of something on television in between all of that. And so it was just very, very chill, but that's actually nice. And I was, it was good. It's, it's, it definitely puts you coming into this week with like feeling a bit refreshed, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's been a grind. It's been a grind to play. And I get it. Like, you know, all this is a privilege to be able to do it. But I did like, you know, I do enjoy the work and I enjoy reading and I enjoy doing, I enjoy writing.

4:07It was so to me, it didn't feel like work. But yeah, now that I'm, as I hear myself say it out loud, it's like, I, that probably was a lot of work, but it was fun work. So that's not great. The good news is that you like what you do and you didn't even realize it was work, right? Bingo. Exactly. So anyway, what's on the docket today? What's going on in your world? You said you were reading something about the creators and their opinions on content and things like that, I think. Oh, yeah. Okay, so a couple things. One, our mutual buddy, Alex Hormozzi, who we've known since forever, but obviously in the last few years, He's a name that's probably known to most of our listeners because dude's just blown up on all kinds of channels.

4:50He made the decision. He was going all in, going pro during COVID. And he really used that time to just go nuts and blow up on TikTok and on Instagram Reels and his YouTube channel. And, you know, just has done really, really, really well. And so it's been interesting, though, because, you know, again, we're buddies and we'll chat back and forth. and he put out this piece, this video that kind of has gone a little bit, I don't want to say viral, but it definitely has got a lot of people talking in the business world and in the influencer space because he essentially said, I'm going to stop doing entertainment style videos.

5:33I'm just going to shift all of my focus back to education in an effort to grow his audience, which most people who are out there on the different social channels want to do. He's shifted from talking almost exclusively about business to I'm going to talk about cooking and I'm going to talk about health. And I'm going to talk about, you know, how to you know what to do when you're in college. And he broadened this message for the sake of getting a lot of views and for the sake of getting more followers, which worked. but Alex is a data guy. And so when he went back and analyzed, he found that, you know, people who are watching videos on cooking, they don't necessarily ascend to then wanting to watch my business stuff.

6:15Um, they just want to watch more cooking stuff. So he was essentially able to validate and he broke this down this video that, um, not all views are created equal. Uh, and that the grind of going out there and producing tons and tons of content just to grow the audience. If you're doing this as a business owner, not as a celebrity, not as an entertainer, if you're doing this to grow your business brand, it just wasn't worth it. And he tested the strategy, found that it wasn't worth it, is pivoting back. And so that happened. At the same time, I read this article in Vox titled, Everyone is a Sellout Now.

6:52And it's basically this article where they're interviewing all these creators who are lamenting the fact that they don't really have time to create anymore. They have time to do their art. They have to always, always, always produce for, you know, the TikTok, the Instagram and the YouTube algorithms, because if they stop, they're going to disappear. And if they disappear, they don't make any money. So one person said, um, you're becoming worse at your art, but you're becoming a great marketer for a product, which is getting increasingly, uh, less and less good because you're focusing and all this other stuff.

7:27So I just wonder if we're not going to start seeing a shift away from the, I need to be everywhere all at once strategy to, you know what, maybe we shouldn't be chasing views. Maybe we should be talking to, you know, less, and maybe we should get okay with that. And I'm just curious as someone who's invested a lot more in the, you know, social creator side of things than I have, what your take is on that. Yeah. I, on the Alex thing, I think it's just common sense. I mean, it honestly, I turned off Alex's channels, my subscriptions, because it was too much stuff all the time. It was, he was in my feed too much and it was seldom relevant to anything that I cared about.

8:09So, you know, I'm not looking for, you know, how to have, you know, an inexpensive Chipotle protein meal for under$5 and stuff like that. I mean, just, I don't care. And I think what happens is that if you, you know, it's, it's quality versus quantity. If you're chasing everybody, then, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna maybe even turn off your core audience because I'm certainly, I think an audience that Alex would want to reach. But I just was like, pretty much none of this is of interest to me. It's funny. He said, so I'm not sorry to interrupt, but he said one of the catalyst that led him to start looking at the data and make this change is a good friend of his.

8:54He didn't name the person, but probably somebody that we know who he really respected and who is his ideal client. You know, cause Alex is like us. Alex wants to do deals. He wants to buy companies. You know, he wants to be a part of like bigger things. So his, he's like my ideal client said exactly what you said. Yeah. Pretty much, you know, love you. I've just pretty much stopped watching your stuff cause it doesn't apply to me anymore. Um, yeah, sorry. Too much. And also for, for, for me, having somebody in my feed where I see their face 82 times and very little else is also too much. So, you know, but, but look what Grant Cardone did, you know, Cardone, uh, who is one of Alex's mentors on that kind of stuff said, you know, I think a long time ago, he pulled up his thing and said, you want to be known?

9:43Look at my feed. Look, I'm everywhere all the time. You know, look at yours. I post 10 times as much as you do. If you want to get, you know, the kind of audience I've got, do that. But what I don't see Cardone doing is I don't see him posting a bunch of things that aren't relevant. He's either posting lifestyle stuff, which is basically aspirational, or he's posting content. So I think that's the key is like, like all this artificially created clickbait kind of content, 10 ways to save money on your, you know, that, that stuff, particularly not appealing to your, you know, not that, that is not directly targeted to appeal to your ideal audience, to get them to do the ideal thing you want them to do.

10:27It's just a waste of your time. And it ultimately just annoys people and causes them to turn you off. So, and then you also attract, I mean, do you really want the person that needs to know how to have a$5 Chipotle meal? I mean, is that, is that who you want? And what are you going to sell to them? Like they're going to send and sell you their a hundred million dollar business? Unlikely. Okay. So because I now have a track pad and my, uh, and my mouse was directly over the record button, which I clicked to start recording our episode. When I put my hand down while, while being excited about something, I hit the track pad and stopped the recording.

11:04So, you guys may have a small gap in what we were talking about, but we were talking about Alex Hermosi and Grant Cardone and how Cardone told Hermosi, you know, you've got to be everywhere all at once. And he told our friend Frank Kern that, and he's told us that. And it's obviously worked for him, but sometimes it turns people off. And then you were saying something when I think I Yeah. So let's talk about Grant. Because I do think if we can get both Alex and Grant in the title of this podcast, we're going to, this thing's going to go to the moon. We can have our own little, we'll go virile.

11:40We'll go virile. Yeah. Right now. So let's, let's talk about Grant. The, and say what you will about him and his style and all that kind of stuff. His strategy, he's looking to raise money from unaccredited investors. Right. Like now, again, you could say whether that's a good strategy or, you know, a bad strategy. I personally would not want to raise a bunch of money from a bunch of unaccredited investors, but let's set that aside. His ideal client, do you want? I said it works for him. Yeah, yeah, it works for him. And so his ideal client, his ICP, ideal client profile, is kind of anybody with any money who wants to invest with Grant.

12:21Actually, I would go beyond and say, if you look at what his content is, it's not a sophisticated investor at all. So it's basically somebody that's got a lot of money, you know, even look at some of the video titles that are designed to capture rappers, football players, you know, like really, literally people who are not sophisticated investors that have high incomes that, that also aspire to kind of a flashy wealth lifestyle, right? That like, I want more so that I can get private planes and all that kind of stuff. So that like, I would say that's, and to me, that's not critical at all. It's just like, That's what I see him targeting.

13:01And it kind of makes sense because sophisticated investors will be repelled by that, which is good because he gets to polarize. And then he can talk about all the fancy toys and stuff. And everybody's like, yeah, I want that. If I want that, I got to be invested in the kind of stuff he invests in. You know, I can't get that in my 6 % risk-free, you know, money market funds. So let me invest with Grant. It's a pretty smart strategy. And all of that content is appealing to them, nobody else, as far as I'm concerned. And that's the key, right? And I think that's the first thing that you got to acknowledge is, number one, getting clear on who is your audience and then making stuff for that audience.

13:45and if you want to change your audience, that's fine. Just be intentional about it. I've got a friend of mine who was a touring musician, like not like world famous or anything like that, but definitely was out there, you know, playing in shows and stuff like that. Okay. It's Sting, guys. It's Sting. Okay, fine. It's Sting. Yeah, it's Sting. Gentleman by the name of Eric Clapton. No, not a name that anybody would know. And honestly, I can't even remember the name of his band. So if I could, and this was like 10 years ago anyway. So what he said was an interesting observation because we were talking about sellouts and like artists, quote unquote, you know, selling out.

14:24And he said, I can tell you when you make the decision to go from playing in clubs and bars to playing in like an arena and not like not that you necessarily make the decision when you're able to do that your music fundamentally changes like the the style of music that would fill a bar you know or a small club will not fill an arena right and so you need to change your music both to accommodate the space but also to accommodate the fact that you got more people who maybe you know don't just want the bar club music and so you'll see bands will make a big change now when they move to stadiums like you look at Taylor Swift, if you want to capture a stadium level audience, you have to produce fundamentally different music.

15:09And yet there are some artists, musicians who say, you know what, I'm fine always playing in bars and smaller venues. I think about like, you know, a Neil Young or Pearl Jam or something like that. Not that they play in like tiny venues or anything like that, but they're basically like, we're okay. We're totally fine. Only playing to our audience. And if that means that it doesn't grow dramatically, then we're okay with that. But we're going to talk to our people. I think the mistake that people make is they just say, I want a bigger audience. And they either don't adjust their content accordingly.

15:45So their audience doesn't get bigger or they do. And they find that, well, I don't want this bigger audience. I just wanted a larger audience of the people that I already have. Well, that's not how it works. And so I think the thing that Grant does that is smart is he is intentional about who he has and he produces the kind of content that'll attract him. I think a lot of people who are trying to mimic what Grant and some of these other big folks are doing, like Mr. Beast, who's his audience? Humans, freaking everybody. If you're mimicking him for your YouTube strategy and you're selling a niche product or a B2B kind of thing, I'm not saying you can't learn things from him, but it's foolish to assume that that kind of strategy is going to work.

16:22Yeah, I agree 100%. And I think that's it. So to me, the message in that first thing with Alex that we're talking about is that if you want to reach more of your ideal target market, you've got to create messaging and content that is targeted to appeal to that market. And that going broad is a mistake because your goal isn't to get fans. Your goal is to get followers. And what you mentioned about Damon John, who's one of our business partners, I think is the same thing. We did a mastermind with Damon and we were all excited about it because we're really good at masterminds and Damon has a huge audience of millions of people on social.

17:06and we were unable, despite significant marketing efforts to his audience, we were unable to get as many people from that audience to join the mastermind as we were to get from our own significantly smaller audience. Orders of magnitude smaller. Yeah, I would guess 4 % maybe of his audience is what we've got. but what we've got is we've got people who follow us to consume the information that we you know put out there and to benefit from it and that's really what our messaging is about and his is his is too i'm not saying his isn't to benefit but his is a much broader let me get you started let me help you find money because of shark tank that's that's what really he He drives people who are fans of the show, fans of him and the other sharks.

18:03And really, a good bit of them that are interested in actually doing anything want him to invest in their stuff. That's not what we were trying to do. We were trying to get the people who already had businesses, who respected somebody who's been as successful as Damon has, coupled with, you know, hopefully the good stuff we could add, too, to, you know, to put just a couple hundred people in a high-end mastermind and were unable to do it from his audience, we basically had to use our audience because I think out of all the people we got, we got what, maybe one, two, I think two tops. I want to say it's one person from his audience because it's not the right message that's going out to those people to attract the people that have$10 million in larger businesses.

18:52And so I think that's a really good example. And Damon's got a great relationship with that audience. He provides them with tremendous benefit. He's got heavy engagement. And he is popular. He is popular. He has true celebrity general, what I would call general celebrity. right and so that that isn't enough even though his celebrity is also niched to people who are interested in you know getting money if you try to put a different thing into there it's very very difficult to identify the people in that market if they even exist who want to do the other thing you know who have the thing that you're not marketing to so i think that's the big lesson there as you know yeah and i you know and and whenever i get that kind of content that is irrelevant from somebody i follow it's not long before i don't pay attention to them anymore i'll mute them i'll unfollow them you know usually if it's somebody that is a friend i'll mute them just so you know they don't feel like i unfollow them they don't see but but but that's not what you want right i i think like i want i so so then you have to say well if i want to grow my audience how do i do that and then we can get to the second because to me this is a two-part conversation we're having.

20:03Part one is what's your messaging that you should be putting out there to get the audience that you want. It's got to be know your audience first and just give them more of what they want and don't try to appeal to everybody else because you're going to ultimately drive away the people that you want. So I think that's takeaway one. Then we get to the content treadmill. So how do you want to start into that? I got lots of thoughts on it, but I know you do too. Yeah, well, I mean, I think don't, well, why don't you go? Because I mean, you having been on said treadmill before, I think you have more specific direct insight.

20:42Yeah. So I had the benefit of being absolutely nobody and coming into your world and staying behind the scenes for the longest time and then saying, you know, hey, you know, as you and Perry one time were having a fight, both saying, well, we can just go do our own thing. And I'm like, well, that kind of screws me as one of your business partners because you guys have your own brand. So, yes, you can. And then, huh, glad I invested in this a week ago. But I remember that conversation. It was really funny. So I was like, well, I got to it's going to be good for me to go get a brand. How do I do that?

21:20I've got to you know, I've got to do it. I decided, you know, to do a podcast to start a podcast to pay attention to my socials. and, you know, and, and that initially was just kind of putting up anything. Then it was putting up stuff that I thought people would like, but then I, I, you know, looking at Cardone and listening to him and other people, it's like, well, you've got to have a regular content schedule. And Chris Krohn, um, who, uh, who kind of helped me understand that as well. And, um, and so I got on, okay, well, every Monday I'm going to do content for four hours. I'm going to create, you know, all this content.

21:57And then it's going to be, we're going to research the week before the team's going to research it and we're going to post it up and, you know, slice and dice it and put it out on native format to all the different places. And it worked. Um, but I hated it. It just, I truly hated it. Like, I, and I hired, um, you know, I hired people who had helped all the people that we know, um, do great things. And, and if I was willing to be a slave to the content wheel, that would have, I'm sure worked, but I really, really didn't like it. And so what I've kind of, you know, and I, so, so to comment to the people that say my core art or thing is getting worse because I don't have the time to devote to it because I have to devote so much time to content.

22:44If you are on the content wheel and you decide that you've got to release that much content to get what you want, then yeah, that's, that's going to happen. And it's, it's really hard, but that's, that's a, you know, too bad. That's the job you chose. You know, I chose, I chose to be an investment banker and I hate investment banking. I chose to be, you know, a musician and I hate playing the songs that were my hits over and over and over. I mean, you get to decide. So now beyond that, I would say you don't have to be on that content wheel because what I have at least found and seen with other people who have much bigger audiences than I do, if you produce great content, I've got a friend of one of my sons who's a giant, giant YouTuber.

23:33I mean, like millions and millions of subscribers. And he only produces like a video a month. And it's an amazing, he works tirelessly on it, Like probably more than any of the people that are producing the daily stuff that I've seen. Like he obsesses over it and then everybody waits and it's like a drop. You know, when his thing comes out, everybody's like, oh, it's the new video. You know, got to go see that. There are several people that I follow that have, you know, 400 ,000 to a million plus subscribers who release maybe one to two videos a month. And so they're really good though. like they're really good and so they get to work on that art and even even like if you talk to them they're like man it's a lot of work to to to do two videos that are really good a month takes a lot of time and effort and um and they're not um they're mostly youtube they're on um and have decent followings on instagram but uh and tiktok but not really like youtube's their primary thing but I think that the key is that if you produce great content, then your audience will tell other people about it and people will find you.

24:51And if you advertise that content, people will come. For me, the adjustment that I have made, which has been really hard because I had to let a lot of the people that we hired go that were content wheel people because they didn't understand this or didn't agree with it. But if you create content anyway, and your content can be incidental to what you're already doing, then to me, that's the ultimate. So for me, I do a coaching call once a week for AI that is a passion of mine. And I do a coaching call once a week for business acquisitions, sales and growth. And on each of those roughly hour and a half calls, there's one to four 10 minute plus segments where I'm detailed helping somebody breaking down on a whiteboard, maybe having a conversation about live deals.

25:49And so I told the content team, I said, look, Between that, speaking at our multiple masterminds, which we have at least 12 of combined a year, and our big events, which we have two of a year, there's more than enough content to get 24 or so pieces of 10-minute-plus high-quality content out of what I do without even intending for it to be done for any of the social media channels. So if you can take that. Well, last I checked, we also do a podcast a couple times a week. Just throwing that out there. What's the name of it? I forget. Okay. All right. I forgot about her. Yeah, exactly. Right? So there's all this great, but in fairness, this gets released on its own YouTube channel and everything.

26:35So it's not as good. But I mean, it could be good for shorts. It's not as Roland-y. Yeah. It could be good for shorts. But anyway, so if you've got anything that you're doing, and my son who works with me can take B-roll of, because he's with us for pretty much anything that would be aspirational we're doing. We went on a, you know, a trip, he's there, he can shoot, you know, some of that stuff. So between that, I don't really have to do that four hour every Monday, I'm going to sit down and, you know, figure out what to talk about this week kind of thing. And it works really, really well. So that, I think that's something to think about is, can you have content that you create in fulfilling the things that you do out there in the world that you enjoy so that it can take the place of having to have a scheduled, fabricated, artificial kind of content creation obligation.

27:32Yeah. It strikes me that there's always and has only ever been two models in the content entertainment game, show business, whatever you want to call it. And that is you have to either be everywhere all at once or you have to be missed when you're gone. Yeah. Like so you're either just always there all day, every day on the grind and it's a part of what you're doing or you put out work that is so impactful that after people have experienced it, they want more of it and it's not there. And so they'll patiently wait for it and then just gobble it up once it's there. And you see this with like a list type celebrities where, you know, they're not on TV every single week.

28:08But, you know, you get Tom Hanks or Brad Pitt, you know, one of these people comes out and they put out a new movie. And there are people who are just going to go and see it because they're in it. They haven't been there for a while. Certain directors, same thing. But it, you know, it strikes me that most people on TV want to do movies. Why? Because you do a movie for a period of time and then you get a break, whereas TV is a grind. Most of the people who are doing movies, they want to be directors. Why? Because they don't want to have to be the people in front of the camera, you know, waking up early to do hair and makeup to get out there and memorize their lines, right?