How James Smith Makes $1M+ Per Month From Social Media

25:23James Smith:There's another thing as well. The more people pay, the better they do. And I know this is like a cliche kind of thing. Since I've doubled my prices, we've had half the refund rate. Since I've doubled my prices, people have done better. Now there are some people in my network, even personal trainers I used to work with that I felt bad. There was one guy in particular, I gave him free access to the mentorship. And imagine this in 2017, January, I'm in fitness first. There are four coaches that I'm working with. And I'm saying to them, guys, put out some content, please. I was like, I've hit 4 ,000 followers.

25:57James Smith:This fucking works. I've got 4 ,000 Facebook followers. And I'm saying to them, And I just woke up with a client that I've never spoken to that paid me. And I was so adamant about this. I was holding the camera for these people. I was like, give me a phone. Let's go over to that. Teach me how that works. Cool. Six years, seven years later, they're still in Fitness First. So I messaged one of them. I go, hey, mate, let me give you this. So I give him access to the course. He goes, thank you, mate. I'm going to make it up to you, whatever. I go, hey, bro, do you know what? You're going to do so well from being in this mentorship.

26:29James Smith:You're going to be sending me business. a year later he pops up in the discord and asks a question and i was like you fucking prick you haven't even watched the modules from the question he asked i know you've not watched any of the material i go i gave you this for free and you just you couldn't even watch it because it was free whereas there's someone out there that's probably got 4k in savings just spent 2k on it on the fucking mentorship and not to say that you should spend your half your net worth on it it's not worth it no i'm joking so like then i those people are like if i don't make this back i'm fucked low ticket for a lot of people they think is the excuse to release a shit product i don't think that's how it should be and high ticket if you have the ability to charge people more money on the premise that it gets them better results or you have the ability to charge more money because so many people want to use your services then it's not high ticket it's just how much you charge.

27:21And for me, the scale of when I put my rates up is purely just how busy

27:26James Smith:the discord is. So let's say we get five, six people join in a few days. I'm like, fuck, this is busy. I'll go to the team, put the prices up. Why? I'm too busy. Same with personal training. Every time my diary got full, put prices up. Why? I'm too busy. So the scale of how much you charge should be correlated to how busy you are and how much demand you have. And if you can scale a business, it may mean the costs come down, but I don't like the division of high ticket, low ticket. It's just a guise for people to have shit product, good product. What about your content creation process? Like if someone, how many followers have you got now on all the different platforms?

27:59Probably about 4 million. Two Instagram accounts, two YouTube accounts.

28:04James Smith:1.4 million on the main Insta. Then I've got about 50 ,000 on the business Insta. Then I've got 47 ,000 on the podcast Insta. Then I've got podcast, business, main YouTube. 1.8 million on TikTok. 1.1 million on Facebook. 25 ,000 LinkedIn I'm tired that's why my voice is going from just chatting shit for all these years however it's been interesting right I not to chat shit about followers but the big Facebook big TikTok big Insta you know I said that I just started making content to get followers I did for a long time and then sometimes you get sucked out in a rip in the ocean you're just paddling out there you're having a surf you go into the rip and the rip just fucking takes you with it and you don't even notice when you're in a rip in the ocean you don't realize how far it's taken you until you're like, hold on, I'm really far away from where I started.

28:53James Smith:That happened to me in my content creation journey, probably in 2021. And it would have been purely status. When you have loads of followers, you don't get more money in the bank account, but you do get more status. So restaurants are coming for a free meal. You know, celebrities might follow you or stuff like that. And it feels good. And I got caught up in that. And then what happened was I pivoted from trying to get more clients to trying to get more followers. And I'm probably the only person in the world that grew by a million followers on a single platform, but my Stripe account stayed the same.

29:25James Smith:Because what I had done is put together a subprime audience, you know, in the big short where they've got like the Jenga set. So I succumbed into that. So what's interesting for people out there listening, two years ago, I decided I'm going to go back to optimizing for clients. So if you look at my Instagram, it's pretty much stagnated for about a year, but my income has probably doubled or nearly tripled. Because I even know this where when we were going to launch the podcast again, someone was like, oh, but his followers haven't even grown. You know, he's still at 1.4 million. He's been at 1.4 million for like a year and a half.

30:03James Smith:And from the outside, if you're just looking at followers, that's right. But the businesses, the email list, the revenue that have been attributed have all grown. So sometimes if you just use followers as a metric, it's like just because someone comes off Love island doesn't mean that their brand is particularly doing better. The follower metric isn't as important or relative to success as people think. It's almost a bit of a shame that because I get caught up in an episode with other people but I've got loads of people in mind with big followers who are broke or they're unhappy. I've met some very famous YouTubers who are miserable.

30:33James Smith:I can't watch their videos anymore because I've met them in real life and not that money on the same side is also the be all and end all like I said before after a certain point it's all just bullshit but it is incredibly easy to get caught up in vanity metrics. I mean, let's look at Stephen Bartlett. I very much admire what he's done with Diary of a CEO. There is no way that anyone can dispute that what started as a way to get insights into what CEOs are thinking became a view trap where the only reason you'd have two or three people on within a month that heavily contradict each other is for views and you get audience captured.

31:09James Smith:And the reason that they will like views is that those views equate to AdSense, to growth, to product placement, to paid ads, to endorsements, to whatever it is. So in this content world, your machine is very easy to get hijacked. You think of like an asteroid floating through space. You go past a solar system with very big objects of mass, you're gonna get sucked in. And even if you don't get sucked in, you go within the vicinity of a black hole, it's gonna change your trajectory. so for a lot of people myself included you're on this journey you think you're going in a straight line but then suddenly your straight line gets curved around a big object through space time cool let's get into it bit of space science talk and you see it everywhere and Dario of CEO a big example of that where after a while you just get hijacked because that allure of status someone in that office would have gone rather than making the podcast better let's get to 5 million subscribers because then when we get to 10 million, we'll get a diamond play button.

32:08James Smith:And then you're changing everything that you started about just to get that diamond play button. Then when it comes, you feel nothing. It's numb. And you're like, cool, we did that for what? So the content creation side of things, to answer your point, it should really revolve around solving problems. But it comes a point where solving problems can only get you so far. And that illustrious allure of status. status is the thing that hijacks everything that you want to do it's followers it's likes it's you saying something you know if you're enjoying all of james's approaches and frameworks for creating content i'm going to put a full breakdown of them and also how he launched each of his businesses in my next newsletter you can get a copy for free at the link in the description so if you want a copy of all of his frameworks so you can implement some of them for yourself you can get a copy for free at the link in the description.

33:01Now let's get back into this week's episode.

33:04James Smith:Look at, do you know who Eddie Abu is? Yeah, I know Eddie, yeah. Eddie used to be quite sensible back in the day, but then suddenly he shouted at a loaf of bread and everyone's like, yeah. And the next thing you know, he's become this like evil villain character screaming at a bag of potatoes in the supermarket. Audience captures real. And the reason he does it is because he loves the attention and that's not really going to benefit his business long term but other people equally as mental as him will come up and fist bump him in the street and be like mate you're a fucking legend and that feels better than money because so imagine this 2021 i'm growing massively on social media i'm making good money but i'm not making fuck you money i'm kind of looking at the businesses that have made loads of money going fuck i wouldn't mind a bit of that but then i know loads of people that are rich as fuck that no one knows their name and they're looking at me going I want a bit of that so a lot of people get wealth when they want status a lot of people get status when they want wealth when I went up to people on the gym floor in the gym and they told me to fuck off and then two years later I come into the gym and someone asks for a selfie I had the exact same amount of personal training experience if anything I had less because I'd stopped PTing at this point the only thing that changed was the level of status and the reason that I'd been able to get that was through the amount of content I'd put out it's every piece of content you put out isn't just to solve a problem.

34:24James Smith:It's to also establish yourself as an authority and being good at things. And being good at content, being good on a podcast, being good at explaining a problem climbs you up the hierarchy. And when people spend a lot of time with you, and they can see people resonating with your message, again, that benefits the whole equation. So it's like a very complex ecosystem of psychology, business, wealth, status, all of these things. And I think there are probably a lot of people out there in the content creation space that might be listening to this and go, oh, that's actually why I am doing this. Even yourself, there might be part of you that's listening to that and going, when I was growing up, I didn't get the recognition I wanted.

35:03James Smith:So even for me, it might be that I never got picked to play football at primary school, that I never played at rugby at a high enough level or I was never that good enough. You go through life and you kind of see other people with status and you're always looking for your path of least resistance to get it. So you are looking for someone in a couple of years time to go, mate, your podcast changed my life. and when they do that your money in your bank account doesn't change but you get that hip status and you go it's all worth it because I think human beings have a more hardwired driven need to be recognized for doing good things than they do to earn money.

35:35How has it changed how you make content though like if you've course corrected now like what are the differences?

35:40James Smith:When I say to people show me your best post they'll show me the one that got the most views they'll go cool show me the video that got you the most clients it's never the same video. I started using tracking links in my YouTube this year and there's almost an inverse correlation between the videos that make me the most money and the videos that get me the most views. So now I'm trying to optimize for conversions rather than views. Sometimes I'll see a YouTube video and I know other people are doing this and they'll be like, oh, that video only got 4 ,000 views. I'm like, yeah, but it made me $18 ,000, you know?

36:10James Smith:So, and the video took me an hour to put together and it's only two months old. I've got videos now that after four months, flatline, four months later, started taking off. Some of my biggest grossing videos where people are buying from them are like a year old. And they trickle through more revenue now than they did six months ago. So as I add to that ecosystem, people out there that put on the glasses of, you know, purely views or metrics or his channel has only grown by 10K in the last year, they can't see what's going on behind it. So again, when I was studying that YouTube course, I saw someone who made$33 ,000 from a video.

36:46James Smith:I clicked on it. It had 800 views. And it's because out of those 800 views, he was able to convert. And making viral content is very difficult. It's very exhausting as well. Sometimes, I had Ed on my podcast a few weeks ago. He goes, it's easier to make 10 grand from a video than it is to get a million views on it. And that's what's changed for me. I actually came to realize, this is probably a lie of I'm feeding myself, but I'd like to believe this lie. I'd like to think there's a level of wealth I could get to where I could just be done on social media, where I delete it from my phone and fuck off.

37:21James Smith:I'm probably too mental for that day to ever occur, but I would like to think that. So I was like, what do I really want to do over the next 10 years? Do I want to make as much money as possible or do I want to make as much viral content and get a bigger following as possible? I was like, it'll probably be the money thing. Now, the reason I can openly say I want to make more money so easily is because I know that everything I sell benefits someone and I feel like everyone's getting a good deal. Even though Nutonic is quite expensive, it's cheaper than a cup of Costa Coffee. And Costa Coffee, in my opinion, tastes like fucking dog shit.

37:53James Smith:Cafe Nero, how it's still going, I don't know. So Nutonic products work, although they are expensive, whatever. The online coaching, I think they're getting great workouts for the cost they're paying. For the business mentorship, to be perfectly honest with you, if any of them truly said to me, after three months in an email, hey, James, I did everything you asked me to. It didn't work. This is proof. I'd refund them. So every single aspect of my life, I feel like people are getting a good deal. So if I'm making money, other people are doing well as a byproduct of it. So there's an element of me that before I would think, oh, yeah, I just want to get as many followers as possible.

38:31James Smith:But also there's almost like a nice zone, right? Where you can build a prison for yourself getting too well known online. What do they say? 4 % of the world are psychopaths, right? Like sociopaths, psychopaths, all of those, the above. When you get to a million, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, there's a very small cohort of people that are incredibly weird. I had a guy send me a parcel once. I said, oh, how'd you get my address? He said, it only took me seven hours. And he showed me step by step of how he did it. And I was like, mate, and he wanted to start a business together. I go, bro, I hope you appreciate why I couldn't go into business with someone that spent seven hours to find my home address.

39:11James Smith:He's like, yeah, I thought that might be the case. I was very fortunate to find my fiance. And she literally just reacted to one of my stories that I messaged her because she had a blue tick before he could buy him. She was an athlete. It got to a point, I'd go on dates with girls and I knew that we had chatted on Instagram six months before. And they'd be like, oh, so what do you do? And I'm like, what do I do? So we spoke six months ago. there were times that I met girls on nights out in LA and they had unfollowed us when they met us so that later on one of the girls was like oh I heard that on your podcast I was like my podcast you said you didn't follow us she was like oh fuck she was like oh yeah we unfollowed you when you met you so there's like deceit there's dishonesty there's weirdness there's people that know so much about you there's also a big amount of privacy that you have to give up to be successful online so if you just want to be famous if you get to 10 million followers and you haven't got enough money to go live in a compound.

40:08James Smith:I mean, look at Taylor Swift, right? To so many women, she is the dream boss. But she now can only really backdoor it into the most elite hotels beyond private jets. And that's it, her life. I sometimes miss just go, how old are you? 34. Okay, cool. Still young. You can still drop a little pinger, maybe. You know, a little wireless festival in London, you know, stuff like that. so that I remember back in the day before I had any anything that I have now there was sometimes nothing better than going SW4 in Clapham just dropping a pill in the middle of the field and the only interactions I would have with people were do you have any water you know do you have any water yeah I've got a spare bottle in my bum bag don't you worry and then yeah got to a point where I couldn't go to festivals anymore in the UK because someone would be like mate I watch your stuff oh yeah cool love that video i'm like yeah cool cool and then i can't even like enjoy a festival anymore so with the content side of things there's probably a great amount of exposure that you can have to your business your brand where you can still get the odd fist bump from someone in the supermarket but you can still go out in in public like i've still i'm at that stage where sometimes people are like i've seen you from somewhere before i'm like yeah probably chatting shit on facebook or something that's the one they're like keep it up they don't even know my name but if you get to like rogan sphere elon even chris williamson for for some point at his current trajectory his life could very easily become unlivable so these are always considerations that people need to make when they are aspiring to join the content game it's not all just positives yeah you almost want to be you want to be like twitter twitter famous like famous for your thoughts but not your face kind of mate 100 100 yeah if you go too far so for i had my first selfie at 27 which was perfect because i then had 10 years as an adult still through the pandemic didn't live alone in like a nice house i lived in a shithole of a house with three of my best mates loved it so when my net worth probably hit like a good amount my rent was 200 pound a week so i was 800 pound a month i just had my second book deal i was living very very comfortably sometimes I'd say to my housemates I was like I'll get paid tomorrow let's just go out let's just spend some money I was like I'll put away what I need to to save this is money that I've allocated myself for spending I was like let's just go somewhere for dinner my housemates would be like you're a dickhead we don't want you to take us out or whatever there are some people out there that like that Elliot Buick the podcaster right he's young isn't he like 19?

42:42Yeah

42:43James Smith:let's say his current trajectory he could become mega famous and he won't have any time as an adult incognito uh then again almost seems like the later that people become super well known the the less it affects their life rickard gervais was like in his 30s when the office kicked off so many actors who maybe didn't even get their first gig till later on in life so there is like a double-edged sword to it i just hope that too many people don't go too far through trying to be famous to the fact that they they they really struggle with those other parts of their life that they kind of need, probably from a developmental side of things.

43:20If you're enjoying this episode with James and you think it would be valuable to someone in your network, I'm going to ask you to share. It's one of the few things I ask you to do. Please get out your phone. And if you think this episode would help someone that you know in your network, send them a link on WhatsApp or just pop it in your company Slack channel or Teams channel. It really helps me grow the show and help more people get more value from the episodes. So if you're enjoying the show, make sure you share it with someone

43:45James Smith:you know i really appreciate it now let's get back into this week's episode that kind of brings us nicely on to one of the reasons i think people love you and that you cut through is your strong like strong point of views and your strong opinions and you're like prepared to like call things out i'm interested like has how has that developed because when i was saying i was talking to you earlier like that's what someone said like i love that he he tells it as it is and he like calls people out is that just like naturally who you are or have you like developed that because you've realized that that tends to cut through yeah i think i've definitely i think it probably comes from a place of impulsivity i've got really bad impulsivity to the point that probably the reason that me and my fiance are so good is when she sees an idea come to my head she's like you gotta let him go so we'll be doing something together i'll have an idea for a video she's like go film it she's like go film it we'll be late you know once something's in my head I have to get it out.

44:40So I think because of that, when I disagree with someone,

44:44James Smith:swallowing that disagreement would send me insane. I'd rather burn the fucking house down and walk away saying what I wanted to say. This goes back all the way to even, I remember doing a personal training consult with someone. I was explaining to someone why he needed to eat a high protein diet. And we were getting to a point where we're having a bit of a disagreement. He was with his wife as well. And I literally, I could sense that maybe I wasn't going to win him over as a client and I was like with all due respect mate you fucking tried it your way and look at you you're sat here asking me to help you with this I was like so what you want to keep doing it your way I never took him on as a client but I walked away from that feeling great imagine sitting there being like oh yeah cool yeah yeah I think I would just much rather say what I want to say and have people hate me for it because you get to sift people out very easily same reason that I use inappropriate language, reference everything, it's like sex analogies or talk about drugs openly.

45:39James Smith:Because even the fact, some of your audience might've just heard me there nonchalantly talk about taking a pill at SW4. Oh my God, I can't believe that James Smith is advocating drugs that killed young people. But at the same time, I'm being honest. And by pushing that small segment of people away, someone else that's done a pill at SW4 goes, fucking hell, that's refreshing. That's refreshing. I've listened to every podcast, Calum's done. And not one person is actually resonating me in that way. Even my manager started working with me because I saw a video where I said, as someone who smashed anabolic steroids, snorted coke and done MDMA, sorry, mum, I've got this point to make.

46:15James Smith:I've always definitely been like this. I remember even about 15 years ago doing pre-season at my rugby club. And it was just a shit session. New coach, shit session. I emailed him afterwards and told him why it was shit. And I did that from a place of love. And I'll tell you why this is good as well. It splits people, but the people that resonate with you come tighter. And the people that don't like you, we're going to find out eventually anyway. So even if I lied to you about doing pills at festivals, eventually my demeanor would come out and someone would go, I actually don't like this guy. Then there's another kind of double pronged part to the question you asked.

46:50James Smith:You said that people love you. And I would say this is a really interesting thing. If you were to remove, because we spoke about the real element of content creation being solve problems. Every piece of content I like to think I put out solve problems. Even this podcast, I hope, will solve a lot of problems. Say you were to find my number one fan that's in your audience. Let's say that her name is Sarah. You bring Sarah in, go, here's James, meet him for the first time. Cool. We now go back to 2018 when she started following me and we take out every single piece of content that I made that helped Sarah.

47:25James Smith:So it might have been an understanding calorie deficit, it might have been sunk cost file scene in a book might have been this might have been that and we just go through that timeline taking out all of those pieces of content that I've helped Sarah in some way you put us together I'm just a dickhead with a nice car I'm no longer someone that Sarah likes I actually could be the type of person Sarah really dislikes in her life but then we go back and we put through all those instances of me helping her through solving her problems and then you could say that she loves me so human interaction especially with characters online isn't your demeanor, personality, ethos, whatever.

47:59James Smith:I would argue it's the way that that person has solved problems for you. So let's take someone into example that could even counter-inturatively do this. Everyone loves Jeremy Clarkson, or at least they should. Now, people go, what problems has he solved? Actually, he solved lots of problems, especially ones around 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening back in the day. Also, the problems of you not knowing what to watch on TV. There would have been a problem where you would have been on Amazon going, fuck what are we going to watch tonight you put Clarkson's farm on he doesn't just solve your problem he solves it in a way of incredible storytelling and dramatization and all of these things to the point that you go I fucking love Jeremy Clarkson you go yeah but you've never met him he's just solved your problems so it's a weird world we live in but I like to remind people that you don't just randomly like some people and not like others it all boils down to the amount of problems that you solve, even your podcast, not to be disrespectful to the act of podcast hosting.

48:55James Smith:But the reason that people would resonate with your podcast and your brand so much is that you've taken it upon yourself to solve problems for them. They've got to commute, they go to work, they've got nothing to listen to. You've taken that and gone, hey, do you know what? I'm going to start a podcast, I'm going to get good thumbnails, good titles, I'm going to upload. Even right now, it's fucking 10 past 10 in the evening for you. You're here disrupting your circadian rhythm on the premise of trying to benefit your audience you are falling on the sword having to put up with all the shit that i'm chatting for your audience so everything always comes full circle for people where if they want to get people to have a connection with them it's from solving problems i think there's definitely one side is the problem solving but also there's like the level of trust you build when you're prepared to call people out is really like that that is the moments where you cut through for me I like when you do the creatine exposure videos because yeah you you come you come at it at that position of like calling someone on their bullshit and calling them out and then like you actually did the work scientifically to prove that they didn't have the content in that they had also I quite like the downfall of podcast video because again like you're prepared to say what maybe other people are not prepared to say what's your process when you're making those is that again just because you've got like a bee in your body and you want to get it off your chest or like is there a deeper level of thought on like we're gonna release a creatine product so to solve this problem and a good way to build trust would be to expose like other companies who are doing a bad job of this when just before i released both creatine gummy videos, I kind of had this like feeling of dread because overload, I'm not sure if they knew whether or not they had creatine in, we'd gone through the due diligence phase or whatever.

50:45James Smith:The fact that we'd gone to them so many times, please stop putting us in content. And I'm talking like me, Luke and the man and the owner of the company are in a group chat together. We've been on a private jet to Ibiza together. Like at that point, once you've been in high toilets, you would think there's a level of camaraderie to the point that we even offered him like a contracts like sign this we will never talk about you you never talk about us let's put it behind us and it was the moment that he kind of just was like fuck off that i'm pretty sure i might have got a message from luke and it just said bury him you know bury him it's time so for that one fine like i say that was a video i actually didn't want to make but i sat back and i thought people are at this point we didn't even have anything that we were in the stages of producing i thought but you know what?

51:33James Smith:There are people that deserve to know better. And I actually thought I was going to get a big lawsuit. I spoke to Luke about it and he was like, this could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was like, is it worth it? And again, we kind of sat back and we're like, this could be really good for reputation. And if we do go to court, we could be public with how much it's costing us. And we could YouTube the whole thing, make like a series out of it. And we were like, fuck it, let's do it. But then the second one, Pushgummies. So although Pushgummies definitely didn't do their due diligence at all with their batch numbers, This is actually one of the bags.

52:04James Smith:So I had to keep these in case they came for me with legal. So I've got the batch numbers on here. So if they were to dispute that, we could have gone to court and I could have taken these as evidence as unsealed bags. So I've got so many of these. It's a joke. I could ask for my money back, but I don't think I'm going to do that. The day that we were about to launch that video, I messaged Luke and I was like, someone's going to wake up today and we're going to ruin their life. and I was like I was like mate this is bad like last week so it was on like a Monday I think I said last Monday this person's woken up they've got their business, they've got their future they've got their livelihood, they've got their passion project they've got 100 sponsored athletes they've got headquarters, they've got an office I was like when we launch this video that all goes away and calling people out is one thing being cheeky, whatever if I have a pop at Joe Wicks he's still a multi-millionaire you know, with the Push Gummies one, I literally was experiencing dread.

53:04James Smith:I was like, by releasing this video, mate, I'm going to ruin someone's life for a long time, even if they bounce back and do a video or whatever. This is hard for me. It was a really bad day. I wasn't excited to release it. It was, you know, some, I think the owner is a lady in New Zealand. And I thought about the anxiety, the heartbreak, people would turn on her. And then Luke just kind of had to remind me that this isn't about that person. It's about the thousands of people that are wasting their money. The thousands of people that are paying for something that isn't true. He was like, what are you going to do?

53:39James Smith:Are you going to let her continue to rip people off? Are you going to let her to continue to get away with this? And I was like, okay, fair play. I just kind of needed to reframe it because it's easy to imagine the owner of the business having a meltdown, but it's difficult to imagine thousands of people who are kind of being sold the dream you know defrauded so it's not always like a positive for that i actually gave them an opportunity the first video if they came out and just admitted wrongdoing fine but i was like if they double down we're gonna we're gonna fucking sink them and they doubled down and i saw a comment online that they put out going that youtuber doesn't know what he's on about and that's when i had to release that i tested their exact batches with the exact same place and got them signed off by the exact same person i'm pretty sure that luke again would have messaged me saying bury them you know so even my pocket ace the the the pocket ace we kept off and if they came out we could have come out and gone look didn't do their due diligence this is what's happening we could have blamed china but the the second they started putting it back on me i was like sorry you're dead you're gone now made it a lot easier but for me then it just becomes about the people it becomes about the people getting ripped off because these products aren't cheap and people don't have that much money and you know it is almost it's fraud pretty much you know if you if your dealer sold your bag of creatine as a bag of cocaine you wouldn't be too happy on a thirsty thursday night in london so we we kind I had to do it.

55:12I'm not sure how many people out there would be able or willing to destroy another business. In terms of like your weekly content creation, what does that look like? What's your process?

55:25James Smith:Chaos. Chaos. Notes. Little thing. I'll send WhatsApp messages to my videographer of what I want to film, but there'll be no explanations, no documents, just like two words. Film this, VSL for this, do this. I'll send him reels that I want to emulate. a lot of the time Declan my videographer will show up to work and I'll go we've got nothing let's ideate, let's whiteboard, let's do this a lot of stuff's off the fly Is that like five days a week he shows up? No I'm lucky if I see him once or twice and I'll often say to him I need you tomorrow so when I hired him I go I'm going to be half the best and half the worst boss you're ever going to have so some weeks he's like what have you got for me?

56:06James Smith:I'm like nothing other times I'm like I need you to edit this and he'll edit till three in the morning then I'll get the editor at three in the morning. I'll go, don't reply to my messages for two days. Then I'll be like, what are you doing next Thursday? Oh, nothing. We're going to Vegas. So he gets to live good. He's been working with me for just over a year. We've done Vegas, LA, Texas, two trips to London and Dubai. So the kid lives good, but he knows that it's just pure chaos. So the content side of things is a lot more chaotic than anyone could ever believe. Because I did all my own editing up until probably two years ago, I know how to edit in Premiere Pro he's teaching me in DaVinci about lighting audio setup pacing hooks all of that and because I spend four hours a day with small businesses critiquing their content it made me almost develop a little bit of a mental illness to you know before I was like fuck my hair light's not on it wouldn't really matter but to me if I forgot to put that on that would ruin my day I would have gone home be like fucking hair light should have put that on whatever So the schedule side of things, yeah, pretty chaotic.

57:12James Smith:But one thing I've definitely moved into recently is I've hit a bit of exhaustion with short-form content. And this is where me and Luke argue quite a lot. He's like, oh, short-form content, bought your house, sold your book, sold out the Hammersmith Polo. I don't know if it's me spotting a trend with social media or whether or not it's just me putting in half an hour for one minute versus podcasting, right? it's got to be some of the easiest youtube content in the world you put in an hour you get an hour you put in two hours you get two hours that creatine gummy video took like three weeks then we had to pause it for 30 days so it was like for a fucking 14 minute video it was hours and hours and hours i think that was our seventh iteration so the amount of times i'd watch that fucking video by the time it went out i couldn't watch it again so yeah for me i do love long form content.

58:02James Smith:I actually, yes, no, Monday did a two and a half hour live stream. And I cannot believe how well it's performing on YouTube. We're getting a huge average view duration. We're getting loads of sales from it. So I think that I'm actually thinking and ideating more to going to super long form content and moving away from short. I don't think you can clip up long form content that well. Chris is a master of it because he is almost creating short form content clips within a podcast he knows exactly what he's doing i think now i would much rather spend a whole day doing a 20 minute video than i would a whole day making five reels you don't have like a goal of like one youtube a video a week three reels a week one carousel a week you're just like purely doing off vibes or yeah yeah and even uh yesterday uh lad that i've hired kind of part-time he goes can you do me a post on this i go yeah cool i'll take the dog for a walk go do a little carousel.

58:59James Smith:I need to be prodded a lot of time. If you give me five things to do, none will get done. If you give me one thing to do, I can do it very well. I do think I've got really bad ADHD, maybe a little bit of autism as well in there as well. So I need to be bossed around. I've said to every employee, they can talk to me however they want. If Declan was to say to me, my videographer, you know, mate, you didn't turn up today, you were shitting that. I'd be like, fair play, let's do it again tomorrow i say to them as well like if i don't do what you've asked me to call me a fucking prick or you fucking prick where's my video because i need those i need those messages i need to be told it's just chaos sometimes you'd be better off if you said i need it by next week it's not happening if you're like i need it by tonight i'll do it straight away so people around me have to learn how to manage me because otherwise things just don't get don't get done what would be your process for like a youtube video would you literally come up with the idea yourself film it make the thumbnail same day and post it or like do you are you like more calculated in that you track outliers and you've got like a idea board or so like some people love using notion and stuff like that i'm like just put it in a google doc mate what we're doing it with all these fancy logins and stupid shit so i do always look for outliers i do love seeing a good thumbnail going like oh that's good dude i'll just send it to declan or whoever i have one member of staff who just finds me good ideas and if he gives me a good title and thumbnail i can run with it yesterday's video that's going to go out I made it I came up with when we got into the studio then I was thinking about titles then I'd thought of a thumbnail that I wanted but then during the video I was whiteboarding and I was like mate this is the thumbnail this was the bit that didn't fucking record but anyway it'd be cool because the thumbnail won't match the video but then during the video I then show people how I critique people's channels and the lady whose channel I was critiquing had an amazing title so I stole her title whilst recording the video so the title of the video is is like inception and I say to people whilst I'm there I'm actually showing them how the sausage is made so we do obsess a lot about packaging 100 % so for that creatine gummy video we had that thumbnail shot before we hit record and Declan and I spent about an hour taking that photo and we were like we're gonna have a close-up of this we're gonna have this we can have that.

1:01:17James Smith:I drove home to get another packet of gummies so I could come back because I knew that that was make or break. Sometimes spending an hour on your title and thumbnail versus packaging at the end can be the difference between 10 ,000 views and a million. People, they just underestimate that and overlook it. Then often what I'll do is I'll spend five minutes in a Google Doc and I will just rift off all the things I want to talk about. I will look at the order and go, that's fine. I'll actually show you now. So he'll be sat in that room and I'll be sending him WhatsApps because WhatsApp just happens to be the place that I like to send videos.

1:01:55James Smith:Here we go. So for the video that we were filming, that's literally the notes for it there. So I literally just do some bullet points and wherever I've done a line break, that is where we change locations, go downstairs, upstairs, whatever. So it's one page document and then my titles at the top and we shoot some thumbnails. For instance, when people do video sales letters on their landing page, they script it. And I go, well, if you can't fucking talk about what it is you do in three minutes off the cuff, then fuck off back to recruitment. Because you should be able to very easily say to people, this is this, this is what I do, this is how I help people, whatever.

1:02:32James Smith:I know that scripting some videos can have some major benefit. And I think for courses, you should 100 % script. But YouTube for me, I just feels like it's a bit better where I'm just talking about something because for me creatively things come into my head while I'm explaining something for our live events which we'll bring back I would have like a structure to the show and then I'll just go off on these tangents and I remember coming in from a live event and I made up this hypothetical bird called Becky I was talking about a concept called utility of deprivation where if you remove things from your life it can get better and one of those things was removing wanking before going on a first date and i'm explaining to the audience how many dudes have flaked on you because they had a wank that day and i was saying that basically ladies the dude's probably excited for the day it's 3 p.m he's maybe had a little nap and he thought i'm just gonna have a little bash one out and then the lad in his mind is thinking well then i get to go on the date with an unloaded gun and i'll be better and i won't try and sleep with her and i'll come across so much better but then what happens is at 3 30 he goes oh i don't want to go on a date tonight i could just watch tv or play call of duty and he's flaked on you so we're going through this like big big story and then i'm talking about the factors why another thing to deprive yourself of is alcohol because every time you go on a date and meet someone that's not that attractive and this goes both ways male and female you look at them and you go oh this this ain't the one she sat there thinking i don't vibe this guy he sat there thinking i don't vibe her but you have a drink to be social then after one drink you know i might as well have one more then before you know you've had four drinks each and you're both looking at each other going oh you know she's not so bad i shouldn't have been so quick to judge so i'm telling this like real long story but i kind of fabricated this character called becky and when i come off stage at the end luke's like becky needs to stay i'm like what do you mean he's like she wasn't in any of the last shows she has to be in all the next shows so then suddenly i had to you know add these little parts of the show that only came out through doing it similar to like a stand-up comedian will just have like an off-the-cuff part of their bit and then they get the audience response and they put it in.

1:04:31James Smith:I get that when I'm recording. Another one was a creatine video I did. I was trying to think of a concept to explain why some people might need more than five grams of creatine. And the comments from that video were, oh my God, the big boy comment, subscribe in. It was an off the cuff statement I made whilst just having fun. That was the difference between someone subscribing to the channel and not subscribing. If you script too much, you can get some magic in the script. But then again, I think there's magic to both sides. Scripting, you get to go in with confidence and you know you're not going to miss anything out.

1:05:05James Smith:But sometimes planning and rifting can have its benefits too. Because then if you're rifting, even as I'm explaining this to you, sometimes I'll break eye contact as I'm cognitively thinking of the next thing I'm going to say. And I think that that can be quite an attractive feature when people are listening to someone. Like even Jordan Peterson very good at taking a breath and a thought to answer his question ask him a question he'll go okay what I think is people don't mind they like the fact that he's not got a soundbite they like the fact that he's not going well the funny thing you say there is that actually back in 1422 there was a I think there's an element to both sides of it so it breaks down to the type of person you are.

1:05:49James Smith:If it's chaos like me, try unscripting. Or actually, here's what I would tell you to do. This is what I tell my clients to do. Do some video scripted, do some unscripted. Which one makes you more money? Which ones get you more sales? Which ones get you more leads? Which ones get more clicks through to your lead magnet? And I would say there is, holds the way you should go. Or you have that, but then you also have enjoyability. So for instance, if I'm going to increase my frequency of YouTube videos to three a week, the idea of scripting three videos a week makes me not want to do it therefore i'd be better off putting out three videos that i enjoy doing that are fun that don't feel too laborsome than i am trying to force it into a process that i don't like because we've seen this for years in fitness you give someone a workout program they don't really like they're not really going to do it are there any other things you do with the long form do you do like you know i always start with a problem or i always have these like things i say i'm going to get into later what your takes there is there any other anything else that's like 80 20 of youtube there's some things that people use and i think there's a dunning kruger effect to this i think at the beginning you just fucking get it out there people love it then you get to this midpoint when you're like hmm i need an introduction then there has to be a problem then we need a to raise the stakes and then we need to introduce the b story then we also need to do the dangle and the dangle is yeah you have three points you do point one you talk about point three then you go to point two just before and then you get to the end of the dunning kruger effect and you go back to let's just enjoy this and get it out there and if we miss something it doesn't really matter so yes and no because i think that some people now fucking hate it where you're like and stay along to the end and we'll find out and they're like fuck fuck off mate like some people's content that i critique one guy yesterday was showing me a bit of chicken he goes people think this is 100 grams of protein but this chicken actually weighs 300 grams of protein and he goes and if you want to know more about fat loss advice make sure you give me a follow i was like bro you've given me no value you've told me how much fucking chicken weighs and you're asking me to follow you off of that i was like you fucking you dumb as fuck mate i was like we have the hook we have the setup we have the payoff i was like just before the payoff you could maybe ask you'd be better off doing it after the payoff because they'd have the emotive connection to it so when people on youtube they could do dumb shit where they're like, hi, my name's James.

1:08:06James Smith:Welcome to the channel. Make sure you like and subscribe and make sure you hit that thumbs up button. Today we're going to be, and people are like, mate, you're a fucking Norse. Piss off. You will never hear me in any video, not even YouTube, ask for a like or like for, ask for a subscribe. I actually like to do the ante of that. I like to say to people at the end, like, if you didn't like that video, fuck off and never watch one again. And that I think is more likely to make someone go, I want to see more of this guy. I don't particularly like the notion of begging people even the end cards I go you can watch that if you want I'm not your fucking dad I'm not going to tell you what to do if you don't want to watch that what the fuck am I going to do and then you know I've even finished a YouTube video going all right fuck off and then moving on to the next one just doing something that could be like just funny you know like you might be with your mate right and he's leaving he's chatting to you in the car park and then you're like all right mate fuck off and get in your own car and leave and he would have found it funny and he would have and that's why we're friends.

1:09:00James Smith:There is one thing that's in that, I suppose. So I've always been curious to like human behavior and human psychology and rapport building is an interesting one. So you've got things like mirroring where, you know, someone crossed their arms, you cross your arms, whatever. I was looking into this when I was being a PT and one of which was very early in a relationship asking someone to do a favor for you. So what I would do in a first PT session, I would do like the first 10 minutes of the PT session. We would often move from the functional training room to the squat rack. And I would always leave my phone and my water bottle in the corner.

1:09:34James Smith:And I'd say to whoever, because they're a bit nervous. They come into a PT session, they're a bit stiff, whatever. I'd be like, Dave, can you just grab my water bottle and my phone and bring it through? Cheers, just do that. Because that's how I would talk to my friends. So what I don't want to do is be overly professional and feel super disconnected with this person. I would also make a point of, if I cracked a joke, I'd give him a little punch on the shoulder or I'd give him like a little shove. Like, come on, mate, don't be a fucking pussy. Get on with it. because someone they've just met isn't going to ask them to carry their water bottle and isn't going to nudge them with their elbow or they're not going to take the piss out of their trainers.

1:10:06James Smith:But these are three things that I would do with my friends. Or I'd be like, great squat, mate, really good. You're impressing me with this. By the way, did you lose a bet with those trainers? And they were like, oh, fuck off, mate. If I could get that response from someone in a PT session, even in the trial session, I knew that my clothes would be a lot easier. So therefore in content, I'm like, how can I talk to someone as if they're my mate? Even if I could just be, sometimes I'll try and belittle someone a bit. I'm like, yeah, you could be on holiday to, you know, going to Spain or in your case, Bognor Regis or Benidorm and move on to something or saying that people from Essex don't understand big words or whatever it is.

1:10:40James Smith:Because like, if I was to meet someone today and they go, I'm from Essex, I wouldn't hold it against you. And if I used a big word, I would explain it to them and they'd be like, oh, for fuck's sake, you know? So in content, I think you're better off sometimes treating your audience like your friends because that's really what you want from this. James was just telling me before we went live that he actually blew a load of money with a really bad podcast production company who promised the world and couldn't deliver. This podcast is actually produced by my own podcast agency, 7x Content. We're one of the best in the world at creating social first podcasts and we work with incredible brands and incredible creators.

1:11:15So if you don't want to make the same mistake as James with your podcast, you can check us out at the link in the description,

1:11:22James Smith:7xcontent.com. I'd love to hear from you. What about Instagram? How is that different to YouTube? And which platform is more valuable, do you think? I'd rather keep YouTube in the place that I'm at now, not to shit on Instagram. Instagram is a big vanity platform. It's how people keep track of how well you're doing, but I don't think it converts that much. Why do you do it? It's an interesting one, right? If you want to, let's say we get Nutonic to 100 million valuation, that first post is going on Instagram because there's a flex it's for the double taps people just go oh my god you know but you make that as a video no one really cares so it's a weird dichotomy if I did a video about how we got to 100 million dollar valuation now people care because they can learn something from that stories are quite good on Instagram it's kind of like the part of Snapchat that never died I do like doing stories and having fun but I can't help but feel and this is only mirrored on my own user behavior.

1:12:17James Smith:I now only go to Instagram for dopamine. I only go for quick hits of brain numbing stuff. Last night, I was watching someone build a log cabin in Finland on my Instagram reels. Then I was looking at brutalist architecture. Then I was looking at people slipping on ice. I don't go there to raise the IQ. In fact, I don't look at Instagram unless I'm walking my dog because then I can waste time because I'm doing it whilst doing something else. I often get on the sofa at 6pm, chuck my legs up and go, let's scroll some shit. Now, unfortunately, there are a lot of people that are suckered into scrolling shit.

1:12:57James Smith:But then there is another cohort of people that when they're on YouTube, they're looking for entertainment, but they're also looking to learn, they're looking to level up. So for instance, someone might be commuting into work just before they get on the train, they download five, six videos and on the train they are fully connected the phone's there they're in and out of tunnels that's why i'd rather communicate with someone where i can have a motive connection someone's probably listening to us right now driving in their car and they only listen to podcasts while driving car and the only thing that we've got to compete with you know they're indicators and not hit another traffic so when it comes to the modalities well if i've got a really important thing to say do i want to get it across in those like brain rot places it's why my most recent reels have all been skits.

1:13:36James Smith:I've actually now tried to go back to just delivering a laugh on Instagram, because trying to go through the fucking Krebs cycle, or unless I'm calling someone out where people are like, oh, yeah, dopamine, something's going down. For me, it just doesn't seem like the right kind of platform. So for instance, I'm on TRT at the moment. And once every two weeks, I need to do all my needles. So I need to pre fill all my syringes and get the right dosages or whatever. So I'll go on YouTube, and I'll just find an interesting video. It might be about stock market it might be about crypto, might be about, you know, whatever it is, something where I go, that's interesting.

1:14:09James Smith:I'll put it on. And for eight minutes, I'm just listening whilst doing my syringes. I was getting everything, make sure all the alcohol swabs are in places. I'm fully connected to that video. What I'm not going to do is swipe whilst I'm doing something that's quite important to me. You know, I'm just not going to do that. So the user behavior element of things is where can I capture someone where I get their full attention? The next thing as well is I'm becoming pilled towards the seven hour rule. I know Daniel Priestley talks about it. I'm becoming an even bigger believer. Right now, someone will have got, give or take, up to two hours of both of us.

1:14:43James Smith:They're going to get to know us pretty well. For you, your audience have listened to you for fucking hours, days even. For me, someone's got an hour and a half. Now, if my average reel is one minute and they watch it to the end, and we've spoken for 96 minutes if i put out a one reel every day and they watched it every day that's 96 days so it would have taken me over three months to acquire the same amount of volume than it would from one podcast so no no one will watch the whole minute no one will watch it every day so potentially someone could learn more about me what i'm good at what i'm bad at my brand my honesty my ethos my position all of these things from one podcast than they could from a year of following me on instagram so i also think that youtube long-form content is better for a binge effect someone gets to the end of this podcast goes i want to hear more they can put my name into youtube watch my stuff watch my podcast watch any podcast i've ever put out then go listen to me in 2017 and see if i've changed my tune or not so or instagram you can't really go search an old post so i'm not chatting shit about instagram because it's done many things for me in my life including getting me laid a lot what about rest of the team setup i can't so do you do you do you post everything and schedule everything or do you have someone who does that like what what are the other people you've got you've got like an ideas guy who just sends you ideas videographer who shows up and films and edits yes we've got lucas manager boss me my fitness business business partner that's a completely separate ecosystem so then within my creative team got declan 24 year old videographer he'll be here in about an hour gonna help me record some stuff then uh to the side of that there was a lad called Ollie who messaged me and he cold emailed me and showed me that he got three and a half thousand emails from one YouTube video and I just said you're hired you understand why I'm on YouTube now he'll go find me titles and thumbnails I will put a podcast episode up and he will give me other variations of the title and thumbnail and on top of that there have been some video concepts where if I'm slammed and really busy I'll say to him hey mate can you start mapping that out for me and he's watched so much of my content now you know the little lines that we had before he will just say James talk about this James talk about this James talk about this James talk about this and then I'll do it then also actually what I got him to do this month was he speaks fluent YouTube I want to build a massive YouTube course I go Ollie I need you to spend the next month mapping out every single module you need me to film and he's done it and he's built the whole thing so Ollie's great there's another lad who I'm not going to mention his name because I want to keep his privacy.

1:17:10James Smith:But he's in my mentorship. He's a young lad. And he's got a personal situation at home where I just could tell that he would do anything for a bit more money. So I said, hey, mate, I'm going to give you enough money that you don't need to work at the gym anymore, because he was doing shifts for the gym. So I said straight away, I'm paying for that. And that saves you 12 hours a week. I want those 12 hours weeks. So I go, no matter if you do no work for me, you're already better off. I go in those 12 hours, not only do I want you to work on your own business. I just want you to manage the DMs in my Instagram.

1:17:43James Smith:Make sure I haven't missed anything on my business account. If you've got any questions, send them to me. I'll answer them, send them back. But really, I've kind of trained him on all the responses. I've given him the ability to give people discounts. And if he gives someone a discount, I also give him 10 % of the sale. So he, some months, is making three, four thousand US dollars on top of the money that I'm paying him, on top of running his own business. And for me, I love that because I know him. He's only, I think he's 19 or 20. He's living at home. And for me, I just know the value that's given him and I'm setting him up.

1:18:19James Smith:He's earning way more than I ever did at that age. But he turns up to all the calls. He listens. He gives me ideas. He's proactive. He's everything I could ever want from an employee. So I've got him. I've got Ollie. I've got Declan. We've just hired a guy to help with trailers and reels for the pod. So he's now contracted to do that. And this week as well, or last week, we just hired one person for the pod. Because I'm sure you know what it's like. We needed one person to make sure that all the edits were done, all the trailers were done, everything's done. So just hired a guy there, he's doing that.

1:18:47James Smith:So we've got, that's it, the whole team. So we've got some crossover between content and podcast, but the podcast is content. Managers up there, pretty tight team. And all the people that are higher are young dudes in their 20s. One guy is in his 30s. But I enjoy it because it sounds weird. And Declan, I'll say to him, you don't understand car finance, do you? He's like, no. And I'll spend an hour with him explaining to him why he should probably get a car in finance, how it will work for insurance. Spent a bit of time with the boys explaining to them about dating. Like one of the lads broke up with his missus, spoke to him half an hour, explained to him why it was a good thing.

1:19:23James Smith:I like having them because they're where I was 10 years ago. And for me, I enjoy that side of things. I enjoy that I can take them out for dinner. They're super appreciative. I know I can wind them up as well. but also they've all got big ambitions themselves and I've said to them in four years they should all want to leave and they should all be using what we've achieved together as leverage to either get more money out of me or to go build something themselves and I've said to them that maybe within three four years I'm going to get them to build an agency where in that agency I'm one of their clients and I pay their agency I say look lads at this point four years in I don't care if you do it or you get your guys to do it I just want it done and you'll know the level that needs to be done and I said then also what I would do is if anyone comes to me for help and I can't help them I'll pass them on to the agency so I copyright this I want to call the agency the boys right just an idea because they're all boys and in my head some of them they can't even get facial hair some of them so like that that's it as far as a team super lean hire fast fire fast that's what I say if someone impresses us on LinkedIn we'll hire them and if they're shit we should let them go and even if they don't get much done fine whatever the last bit of that is like do so do you still post yourself everything so like uh even i'll say give me the link i want to review it i want to put it in just in case the captions just a bit off i say to them like look for me to post that reel is like 60 seconds then i get to watch it go off it'll fuck me off if they use the wrong thumbnail still or like i don't think thumbnails are important on insta but the freeze frame if the freeze frame's a little bit off i'm like fuck i should have i should have just fucking done that myself so there are times that posting myself to me but same with youtube i'll go in i'll make sure all tracking links are right i'll make sure that there's an end card on it i'll make sure that that bit i like to remain hands-on although uh although i could have someone doing that for me i still like to remain very very much involved in the process like to the same point i'd be 9 p.m just about to go to bed i'm like babe gotta go put an end card on a video run downstairs and go do it and also like the level of involvement i need is like okay we need a j cut on this clip we need to move this even daniel priestly came on my pod i messaged him the next day i go hey bro i've watched one of your videos tell your editor that he needs to run this through a phonic and i would also suggest you do this do this do this like i don't think there are many people doing what i do that are that involved in it even now i'll get i'll be proofing a video and i'll be like hold on that's not that's not been treated for audio or we got into the studio to record the podcast and i I was like, where are the MKH416s?

1:21:55James Smith:And they were like, how did you spot that? I was like, that's not the right audio. They were like, yeah, for this pod, we were loaning the microphones. We don't have them. I'm like, mate, me and Declan have got them. Like me and Declan both got FX3s, both got the mics, both got everything. So we're on it when it comes to that side of things. We still remain very much hands-on. And if that limits our growth, fine. If the team can't survive in a WhatsApp group chat, we've got too big. And we've got too big. I don't want to be that big. let's bring it back boys let's bring it back let's rein it in let's just touch on newtonic like what are your goals of newtonic and why launch a physical product okay newtonic's an interesting one people ask us like oh what's your exit strategy how much do you want to make i was like you have to ask luke if luke facetimes me we're getting sued or we've done really well it's either a really good or really bad thing if he facetimes me so my heart's pounding i remember 2019 he's like you're writing a book i go wow okay he goes harper collins getting 100 grand 100 grand how'd you get that he goes well penguin offered you 20 so i went straight to harper collins then i went back to penguin then i went to harper collins and then i got them to fight off against each other and the only time i'd found about found out about it was he'd already agreed it so he's got carte blanche he can talk on my behalf he'll be like james mate you're getting 150 grand for a weekend.

1:23:17James Smith:I'm like, who have I got to suck off? He's like, no one, you're doing a talk over two days, whatever it is. So he will accept things on my behalf. I think I'm going to Abu Dhabi for a talk in February. I don't know anything about it, but I think he signed the contract. So he always does it on my behalf. 2023, maybe 2022, he's like, we're going to London. We're going to have an interesting discussion with someone. And I was like, what's it about? He goes, you'll find out when we get there. And it was a company that had for a long time wanted to do physical products like supplements we're like nah creatine we're like nah lifting belts nah and then we go in and there was a pitch on there with a quadrant of all energy drinks but then it was another quadrant that said productivity drinks and it was called something different called something very different we were trying to ideate some different things oh yeah it could work could bring it out your own drink looking into it we actually had just started exploring the idea of doing like a beer in Australia.

1:24:11And we were looking at maybe like a caffeine beer, a low

1:24:14James Smith:calorie caffeine beer and put caffeine in a beer. So people are less likely to do bags. Then we were thinking about like maybe an electrolyte beer where you can have a beer that rehydrates you. We're going through all these different things. And we're like, you know what, a productivity drink would be a lot better. Then the next thing that we were considering was, you know, how would this look? How would we launch? What would it be like? And you might have noticed i don't know if maybe you remember or not but there was uh this was around the same time that matt does fitness even launched his own energy drink called morcia energy so there was like a little phase of different creators at the time launching their own stuff we didn't really realize how big it would be and at this point chris williamson had about 100 000 instagram followers i knew him we'd be on each other's pods luke and him know each other from their club promoting days and luke says to me he's like we're gonna get chris involved on this and he goes Chris is the perfect person for us to go into business with.

1:25:06James Smith:So we introduced Chris, the team, everyone kind of meets, whatever. And it begins from there. Now, we saw an opportunity in the market where, if I'm honest, whenever I did these live talks, Hammersmith Polo, three and a half thousand people. I walked down to a corner shop. I look at all the energy drinks. I got cans of Ghost. And the reason I got Ghost is because they had Alpha GPC in. So I wanted energy drinks that had more than just caffeine. I went back to the Hammersmith Polo. I got two cans. There was a champagne fridge. I hid them at the back of the champagne fridge. Because if I'm just about to go talk to three and a half thousand people and there's only a can of like Red Bull, I'm like, oh, where's my fucking ghost?

1:25:42James Smith:Who's had my ghost? You fucking bastards. Who's had it? So I was already the avatar of this business where I would, before a speaking event, specifically ask for certain types of drinks to optimize myself to talk. So I was like, it'd be so cool that if we can create something that I would use anyway. And before I sit down and do an edit, before we do a podcast, I was like, it would be nice because the reality is I've been in business mentorships. I've used coaching apps, but I couldn't say I live and breathe it every day. But when you talk about energy drinks, I was like, yes. I had multi-packs of Monster come into my house every month because I just love locking in, priming myself.

1:26:17James Smith:Oh, I'm a trainer now. Let's get it down. It was almost like the perfect thing to market. Started off with the drinks, went down really well. UK, USA, we think we've done nearly 5 million cans. We've moved into other products, which we're a big component of, of creatine having its cognitive benefits. Ideally, of course, we would love to grow it to like a billion dollar business. Keep diluting, keep growing, exit at some point, maybe down the line, live on a farm somewhere, delete Instagram, get hundreds of rescue dogs. That would be the dream. But at the same time, even just growing this, I'm learning a lot about business, learning a lot about the trade, but I've never really had a crazy scalable business that could be a very big player for my brand.

1:27:01James Smith:If we were to exit for like, say, let's say we exit for 500 million and I get a nice payslip and I get to pay off everyone's mortgages, all my friends and my family, everyone's mortgages get paid off. That'd be really cool. But then I think there'd be something quite cool to the fact that I was winning before that anyway. That makes sense. I knew how to run a business. But I say to people, either I'm one of the luckiest people ever or I'm actually quite good at marketing. It's one of the two. Now, not many personal trainers, make it seven figures, managed to do that. Not many authors make it to number one bestseller, done it three times.

1:27:34James Smith:Not many creators bring out a product that can scale to millions. So either it's just luck or either there's some marketing now behind it. So for me, every stage and scale we grow the business is just me adding another notch to that tally of proof that maybe I'm quite good at what I do. So for me, it's more about that than anything else. Like I say, it's more about the status than it is the wealth. I even want people that fucking hate me and to think I'm an absolute bellend and a prick to go, fair play, this drink's doing well though. And that to me is the meta play. It's the one where people go, do you know what?

1:28:11James Smith:I think you're a bit of a prick, but I like new tonic. So that's the ultimate play for me. It's cool though, yeah. I definitely think because like at some point you cap out on the content creation on like the business mentorships and all the rest of it. But like on a physical product like that, you actually, like as you say, the sky's the limit like it can it can be so much bigger than you it's also opening some other doors for me to um make other investments so uh the reason that we got so tight with uh overload is we wanted to invest and blow the business up and we wanted to blow the business up towards an exit luke is very well connected my manager to the point it sounds really wanky to say it if he needed five million pounds today i know exactly who he would call and i know exactly how the phone call would go.

1:28:56James Smith:And the guy would be like, yeah, sounds exciting. I'll send it to you tomorrow. At first, I thought it would be really bad to come along and buy a third of someone's business. But if you can come along and say, look, we're going to take a third of your business, but we're going to quadruple it in the next three years. Their shares are smaller, but their value is a lot higher. And also what I want is for people to see the amount of raw time, energy, and effort that I've spent into building businesses and brands so that if we can approach them and say hey love what you do we want in we want to help market this they go brilliant let's do it so there's definitely a big play for us to uh leverage the growth of newtonic into being able to get into other avenues there's a strategic investment this week we just keep wanting to add those strings to the bow so oh drinks done it app done it books done it uh whatever it is done it and uh yeah it's about i think hormosey he says a lot of shit but one thing is like you just keep collecting proof or evidence uh as you go along and that's how you prove to people awesome man i'm so excited to see uh where you take it and um thanks so much for coming on it's been like so so so good and um i think yeah thanks thanks for letting me talk so much you know like i felt like someone else is like 10 15 minutes long if the audience enjoy it we'll run it back again and we'll talk about other stuff i'd love to talk again and get like deeper into the new tonic stuff and the product stuff and like the design and productivity drink and all that but um let's save that for another time i'll come with all the information i'll get someone in the team to bring all the information together if you enjoyed this episode i think you're really gonna like my episode with marissa poster she has an energy drink brand matcha brand called perfect ted and it's just this incredible master class in creating a physical product and how she thought about creating that the marketing behind it it's one of my favorite episodes and i think if you enjoyed this episode with james you'll probably like the one with marissa so make sure you're subscribed and queue that up next to listen to i think you're going to enjoy it