Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Alex Hormozi And GaryVee | Caleb Ralston

23:41And then the video that'll come out in October, we were spending all day in London yesterday filming. We haven't reviewed the footage, so we don't know if it's good, but we'll see. But we're putting more effort. We're putting the focus back there. When you shift the eye, it is my opinion that the other platforms go on what I just call maintenance mode. This doesn't mean that you're not posting or not caring. It means that you're not putting the attention or resources towards innovation. You're doing what you know works, nothing more. because all of those resources towards innovation go towards that platform.

24:17I believe every single person minus maybe like five people listening or watching get more benefit out of that than omnipresence with mid content everywhere.

24:28Caleb Ralston:Quick one, if you're enjoying this episode and feel like you're getting value, I'd love it if you subscribed. It helps me improve the show and get bigger and better guests. So if you're enjoying this episode, make sure you're subscribed. And how do you convince someone that that's the right approach because I guess the fear is they see other people on all these different platforms. They're like, oh, so-and-so is killing it on LinkedIn and so-and-so is killing it on Instagram and on YouTube, someone else is killing it. And they feel like there's so much opportunity everywhere. What's the reality of spreading yourself and trying to get the content to land on all three or four at the same time?

25:06Well, the first thing that came to my mind

25:07Caleb Ralston:when you asked that is I'm not in the business of convincing. you know this better than most yeah if you bring on a client and you're having to convince them of that they're going to be a nightmare client right and anybody consuming my content it's like cool by all means do it the other way right so i just honestly i guess i just say look at the track record right because i think with a lot of creators that i've worked for or helped build we did the same approach just at a bigger scale yeah but it's like even the biggest dogs in the world do this they don't necessarily maybe they're not aware of it right they're not like keenly thinking about that or whatever but like that's the actual process that they are following right like all of these creators on the highest levels at different times have a platform that they prefer different seasons for every creator that we're all admiring right now, they have a season where they're texting or slacking their team about Instagram or YouTube or TikTok.

26:09Why is YouTube down? Right? Like they have a platform that they are focusing on. They say that they're doing, but they're not. I just think that a lot of people haven't reverse engineered that process slash a lot of people haven't been on those teams, you know, and a lot of people on those teams don't

26:26Caleb Ralston:share that stuff. But that's what I would encourage people to realize is like, they all did it brick by brick as well. We just see the fully built house. Yeah. And I want to get into what it, what it was like building those teams and how people can build those teams later on. Maybe the only thing that's worth touching on quickly is on those teams, when you see Hormozy and you see every channel seems to be flying, what's the scale there? Do you have specialists per platform? Yeah. Yeah. I believe the best version of this is you're making content contextual to the platform. And so again, even at the highest levels, you're going to pick your primary platforms and you're going to put your best creative resources to those platforms.

27:12I take it a step further. This is pretty unconventional. I actually like my creatives to also become my strategists. So I like the editor who's making Instagram content in the perfect world to run Instagram. Yeah. Like when Gary decided before everybody else that TikTok was going to be a big deal and he was like, we're putting resources towards this. when I went from, because originally there was a team of three of us that were working on Gary's TikTok and there was somebody else that was CMing, channel managing. And then I was editing and Avital was also editing. And then eventually that other individual started working on another project and I took over CMing.

27:55I was cutting like seven to eight clips a day, like shorts a day, and posting nine to 12 a day, right? Because there was another creator making more. and that was the biggest growth in my career because I've not only was I close to the data I was accountable for it like we would post a clip and back then it's not this way anymore but back then on TikTok you would know I knew within 60 seconds yeah if this was a million plus

28:24Caleb Ralston:or less I knew and I felt it every time that it wasn't you know I'm competitive too so that played into it, but I like the creatives to be very close to that and to know, because then you start creating individuals that don't go, Hey, the footage isn't working anymore. Our content doesn't work anymore. And you create people that go, Hey, this format or this topic that we're talking about is no longer resonating with our audience. Here's three other ideas that I want to test out over the next month. And I prefer the latter over the former all day. Yeah. It's so interesting. I was listening to uh founders the episode about elon musk it's an incredible podcast um incredible episode and that's what he does on the factory floor at uh tesla is he gets the designers and the engineers to like sit um you know within like shouting distance of each other so that the engineer can tell the designer that his design is crap wow um i think it's very much the same there is that if you can combine the two roles, it's just one person, then there is no like someone editing it, someone posting it.

29:34Caleb Ralston:It's that single responsibility. And again, they're just like so much closer to the data and the outcome. And when you post and it flops, you feel that viscerably. And so if you're a social media manager and then you then pass your feedback to the editor and you're relying on the editor to implement it and have that same feel for what's popping, I think it's really tough. So yeah, 100 % agree. if you can combine that role. I think I've seen the same. Like you'll have a lot more success. It's hard though. It is, but it also, the other really cool benefit that I feel like I probably haven't talked about enough when I share this is you invest heavily in that creative.

30:15You make them a fucking weapon, right? Now the vulnerability is then they're a weapon that could get pulled onto another team or go off and do their own thing. I think that's the best thing in the world, right? Like Trevor is leaps and bounds further than he was when he was just editing. The moment that he started running TikTok, running Instagram, not for me, but in previous roles, like he learned an insane amount and grew so much from that. And now when you have a conversation with him about content, he almost never talks about the get it. And that is a very interesting thing as an editor, right?

30:55Like he's talking about the concept, the hook, the packaging, how do you end it? Like all of these things. And I think that you start to create these like gangster ninjas. And if you are a great operator and you have a great opportunity, then you can continue to build something that excites them to be there. And so there's just more firepower on your team.

31:16Caleb Ralston:I think it's a really huge benefit. Let's go on to, is it creation that can start now? So we've chosen our platform. Yeah. How did you think about creating content when you started? I would say this is a moment where people should do what I say, not what I did. Okay. Here's why. Come October 2025, that will mark 17 years of doing this. like that is a long time considering my age and considering the age of like internet content right like youtube's 20 you know like it's not that far off and so in addition to that due to the amazing entrepreneurs that i've worked for i have spoken to a lot of early stage entrepreneurs.

32:10So I'm keenly aware of the problems that my ideal customer is facing. For a lot of people, they might know just a few. Most people think they know the problems, but they're not actually solving problems that your ideal customer cares about. But the point that I'm getting at is, in my opinion, rather than going to a hit list of viral content or looking at what all of your competitors have done and remaking their videos, I would go to the core and solve very narrow, painful problems for my ideal customer, which then reveals a bigger problem that a lead magnet that I have, for example, solves and then reveals the bigger problem that my offer solves.

33:02And as simple as that sounds, if you do that over and over and over, you're not going to be, you know, getting millions of views. You're not going to be the most followed creator. But I guarantee you will be making far more money in your business than the majority of people that are getting those crazy views that do have those massive followings. Because what they are, and by the way, not all of them. I'm making a blanket statement here that applies zero nuance, which I hate. But here I go. So those creators, they're optimizing around views, which means that they're not doing the things necessary intentionally to create trust.

33:41Some of them as an accidental byproduct of what they're doing are creating trust. Amazing. Mazel tov. But for most of them, they're not. They're just gaining attention, but there's not enough trust to the point that I made earlier that like you couldn't name them. There's like 15 creators faces that I'm seeing right now that I consume all the time on my feed, but I could not tell you who they are or what they do. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, that's why I like doing that and optimizing around trust. When we're starting to create content,

34:13Caleb Ralston:how should we think about that? That's making a list of all of the problems of my ideal customer and then starting to make videos around them. Yeah. And the cool thing is, is as long as you stay in the game, you'll always be presented usually the same problems, but in different scenarios. Like I guarantee you right now in your head, you're thinking with all my podcast clients, hmm, actually, yeah, it is like the same five problems. It takes place in different ways, but that's five different reoccurring pieces of content. And then every different version of it, the story, you know, uh, insecurity being the core, you know, this person was insecure about, you know, how they sounded.

34:55This person was insecure about what they had to say, how they look, blah, blah, blah. Those are all different stories that you can tell in ways that you can wear the Nikes every night, right? The way that you can consistently pair yourself with an idea over and over again, in order for the audience to inherently associate at you with that idea. Yeah. Right. So like optimizing around trust, I'm just going to hammer this until I die. Right. Well, unless I get new information that says that there's something better out there than trust, but I'm just going to tell that in a million different ways.

35:29And as long as I choose to stay in the game, I am going to be presented with many different versions of the same problems that I can help my audience solve.

35:41Caleb Ralston:And so when you get down to actually filming that and posting that how do you optimize that to land well do you advise people to think about hooks or titles or thumbnails all of those kind of things when they're when we're starting out or is it just like record and post um whatever is going to get you into the habit first is what I would say. My fear in answering this with like my ideal answer is that is a high barrier to entry and so most people won't enter. So just make. If you want to go a step further, I believe that if you're trying to optimize around trust, what you're trying to optimize around is giving people the actions necessary to get the outcome that you're promising in your content.

36:37And so every single thing that you do, the way you orient your hook, the way that you structure the video, the examples you use, and in post-production, the graphics that you do or do not use should all be answered by one question. Does this make it easier for the viewer to change what they do or take action after consuming this?

36:58Caleb Ralston:That's it. Because if you're an educational creator trying to grow your business, you want to build trust. And the way you build trust is by telling people what to do, they do it and they get their outcome. An example I like to use is I have a truck that I love. It's a push start. Every morning when I go out, I put my foot on the brake and I hit that button and it starts. I trust it. But if suddenly I go out there and three mornings in a row, it doesn't start, I suddenly have less trust. Very basic example. Same thing applies to content. There's almost this trust bar that we want to fill, where every time Caleb tells me something or I see one of his clips, I learn something and I implement it and it works.

37:43And the goal is if you do that over and over again, when you suddenly make your audience aware of an offer, they believe, oh, well, everything that Caleb's told me to do worked. So why would I not do this? I get more in return than what I invested with him. Why would it be any different now that he's charging me? If anything, it's going to be even better.

38:06Caleb Ralston:Yeah. That is the psychology or the thinking that you want to build in your audience. And the way you do that is just make it easy for them to take action, which is why I like telling stories. Because I do think that stories allow people to see something in a real life example. Ideally, they can relate to it. And suddenly, they can see themselves doing that thing. Yeah. again, another way, another tactic to get them to take action. It's why with the six hour plus course that we put out, we made a workbook to go with it. Like people that don't know me won't believe this, but I mean it fully. The goal was not like some crazy amount of email capture.

38:55I've gone on podcasts and told people how much, how many emails we've gotten, blah, blah, blah. The goal was just to make it easier for the people that actually watch it to do the things necessary to build their personal brand. Genuinely. For years, I've had people DM me asking, do you have any resources, blah, blah. And the answer has always been no. This was like, okay, this is the starting point to be able to have an answer to that question. Now, the beautiful byproduct of doing that and actually having the intention of serving your audience, not capturing emails, is we captured a lot of emails.

39:26We got like 28, 29 ,000 people on our email list. We haven't promoted it anywhere other than that video. The only way you get on right now is you watch that video, click the link in the bio or in the description, and then you enter your email and we email the workbook to you. That's it. And we got like 28, 29 ,000 people off of that. That's crazy. It's fucking nuts. That's crazy.

39:47Caleb Ralston:Yeah, and that was never the goal. Hey, I'm gonna break down all of Caleb's strategies and frameworks for brand building in my next newsletter. you can get a copy at the link in the description. So if you want to implement Caleb's approach, then check it out at the link in the description. But you posted a six hour video, which is basically like a course, right? You posted this to YouTube, which is how to build a brand. We, I'm getting smarter. And so I realized that how to build a brand was too general and 99 % of it was like personal brand. So it recently has been updated to how to build a personal brand.

40:22But yeah. and like Trevor and I joke about this all the time I think I told him maybe a thousand maybe five thousand I can't remember which one it is I kind of blend the two together but like either a thousand or five thousand views was my goal in the first year I was like man if like one or two people apply to work with us that'd be fucking awesome but my goal was for those thousand or five thousand people to watch it and be like holy shit I've never paid for anything that was this in-depth that made it this easy for me to build a personal brand, let alone the fact that it's free.

41:04Caleb Ralston:It seems that one of the big things here is giving and expecting nothing in return. How do you think like that? Because I imagine a lot of people out there are thinking, okay yeah I want to build a personal brand I want to make content and then after two weeks they're like damn I'm I'm paying I'm paying an editor I'm paying a social media manager when am I going to see some return and I guess that then starts to seep into the content and it's like buy buy buy that's the temptation right it's just start selling stuff or just be needy in what you're creating how do you think about that I think people got bills to pay so I'll never I'll never fault somebody for needing to cover their family, their payroll, whatever.

41:53That makes sense. But life is a sequence or series of trade-offs. And if you're in that position, then you must know

42:02Caleb Ralston:that you're making a big trade. I recommend to people that you be in a position, if you can, to not ask your audience for anything for like a year, two years, maybe even three. wow um think about it this way if you have a core established group of friends and then some new lady or guy joins and within a week of getting to know them they're like hey can you come help me uh change my oil on my car and hey do you think you can go pick up my mom from the airport she's flying it like they just start asking you for all these things hey could you loan me like you know 200 bucks or something i got this bill i get paid next week i'll pay you back.

42:43That's absurd. Yet we do that with our audience all the time. Wow. I think if people started thinking about developing an audience online, like building relationships, I think you would approach it wildly differently. You don't just go for big asks with people that you just met, you know, like, well, at least I don't, I should say. I don't want to speak for everyone listening or watching, but I don't do that. I like to give. And then if something comes back, amazing. Now, the next natural question that some people might have and you might be wanting to ask is like, well, if I'm not naturally that way, how do I become that way?

43:27I don't know. I am naturally that way. I always have been, and I've never spent the time trying to figure out how somebody could change on that. So if you are a transaction oriented person and you only think transactionally, I think the world's about to get a lot tougher because I think that the transactional relationship, like AI has got all that shit covered. I think, you know, not, not to jump topics real quick, but like, I think you being the most human version of yourself is the most important part in this time. And so, yeah, I think that's how you stand out.

44:03Caleb Ralston:One of the other things that people get hung up on, I'm sure, is quality, like setting the bar on what they put out. How do you think about that? I'm the best person to talk about it, the worst person doing it. Meaning, we have created this crazy high bar for ourselves in quality that we now subjectively hold ourselves to. Everything I just said was useless without this breakdown. I believe that quality is not determined by the creator, but by the consumer. The audience determines what quality is, not us. Yet we'll sit around all the time and say, this was such a high quality video. 213 views later, I don't know if that's true, right?

44:48The audience determines that. And so I believe that as a creator, you understand what your audience deems as quality by quantity. You put out more to get the information from your audience on what they're fucking with, and then you do more of that. Whenever somebody starts jumping into the quality conversation, my alarm goes off immediately. I believe that if anything, it's we are doing a really good job of solving this problem. That's about as far as I go. I also will say things like, for example, if we do a high quantity of content and we put out a lot and we're getting this information, some people would say, okay, cool.

45:36Now we can make quality content. What I would articulate is now we can put more effort into the content that our audience has signaled to us that they want more of and find out if they call that quality. Because ultimately, I mean, like, I think maybe, you know, Jimmy, Mr. Beast knows what his quality is. But for every one of him, there's like millions that don't. Like he is a very, very select few. But the majority of creators, I don't think actually know, you know, and I'm sure you see this with clients. Like there's people that will make a YouTube video that have millions of subscribers on YouTube.

46:13And they'll be like, that was a banger. Biggest flop of the fucking quarter. Right?

46:18Caleb Ralston:Because we don't know. One thing in your content that is really good though, is the quality of the execution is really high. And I can see how when we're thinking around brand, that's important, right? Because I'm assuming that Caleb has a premium offering. He works with kind of premium people and he's got a high bar in terms of the, certainly the visual output of what you create and your brand. It all looks really coherent and nice and it feels good. Thanks man. That means a lot. Thank you. We try really hard. So there are maybe subtle things like that, that are like, if there are kind of messages you're trying to position yourself a little bit, are they important?

46:58This is where I did not eat my own dog food. I actually don't think it matters that much. I think it does. Yeah. Right. Like, I think this was a moment where I let my subjective view of what I assumed the audience expected of me because of the caliber of people that I've worked for and what we've done on that scale. and by the way, never prioritizing production value over anything in those roles by any means. But I felt like in entering this new phase where I'm making content, I created this subjective prison, if you will, that I have to make stuff that is higher quality than maybe what I have done previously or other people in the space.

47:41And I like it, I have that preference. And so what Trevor and I talk about is like, I'm always optimizing for longevity, back to what we were talking about earlier. And so I'm going to stick with it longer if I'm proud of it. I'm not going to be proud of putting out a 1080p one camera angle shit video that the lighting's kind of dog shit on, right? I think most people don't have 16 years of being in production. So that is not a handicap that they have to overcome. So I would argue we could probably have similar success if we did things a little bit more scrappy, more handheld vlogging in the moment action.

48:25I think we could. I just have a preference. And again, like more than getting it exactly how I think is best, I'm going to do it in a way that I'm going to stick with the longest.

48:37Caleb Ralston:Right? Like here's another example. All my YouTube buddies were like, why put out a six hour and 22 minute video? Why not like 12 to 13 videos? That would have been better. Yeah. And arguably, this is where I'll add a little bit more nuance to why I did it. You could argue it would actually be easier to consume and take action on. The bigger reason behind the course was not only to help people, but also a brand positioning tool. Show me somebody else that's going to sit there for six hours and 22 minutes and talk about personal brand. Right? Like immediate differentiator. And I don't say that to like, that sounded like braggadocious.

49:16I don't mean it that way. I mean like anybody can do that. Like if you got it like that, fucking put that out there. That immediately separates you from the pack.

49:25Caleb Ralston:Yeah. And it's like writing a book. If I've heard someone's an author, if my accountant is an author, I'm not reading the book, but I just assume they're better than the other people. They must know their stuff. A million percent. Could not agree more. Could not, yeah. Side note, author is a wildly underrated, I believe, brand positioning tool. Yeah, 100%. For personal brands, yeah. The one thing I am hung up on here is how do you balance what all the gurus say, which is look in your niche, look at the top five videos, look for the outliers, look for the things that outperformed. Yeah. How do I marry up all that advice and industry advice and best practice with originality and delivering on solving problems for my ideal customer.

50:15So we're serving two different goals here. I'm not the guy to talk to if your goal is to get a lot of views. I'm not that guy. And so my approach is slow and steady. Yeah. So it's not a game of like which – it's a game of which one can you stomach more, right? But here's what I will tell you, and it's a little preview for those of you that are currently on the first journey.

50:43Caleb Ralston:Yeah. You optimize around views. You get that validation and that dopamine, and you think that you're operating off of signal. Mm-hmm. You're operating off of noise. Yeah. Unless your business model is just the content that you are creating, even then maybe. But most of you listening or watching, I'm assuming, your only business model is not monetizing the content directly. And if it is, build something in addition to that. It's a very tough, I mean, it depends on your goals. Again, nuance. I've had a lot of conversations with founders that are two years in that were optimizing around the views and the subscribers.

51:25and when I ask them, how's it going? Some of them will say like, not that great or whatever. Most of them will give a very painful response. I don't know.

51:35Caleb Ralston:Yeah. That's awful, right? You think that you have all this signal because the platform is telling you what you're making is good. And so you keep doing more of that. Yeah. But if you're a business owner and your goal here is to build your business, not your celebrity, your vanity metrics, Well, then why are you tracking those and optimizing around that? Why aren't we optimizing around the business and the outcomes and goals around the business? Right. And so a great example of this, actually, I'm so grateful that we have this on my channel. I'm going to compare two videos that we did. First video was, it's called something like, if you struggle with making content, please watch this.

52:16It's like 12 minutes long. It's me over the course of a motorcycle trip talking about the mindset shifts that I had to make in going from being the guy behind the camera to being in front of the camera.

52:26Caleb Ralston:Yeah. So that video went out. That has, I think, like 95 ,000 views right now, which, you know, for a lot of people, that's nothing. For some people, that's an insane amount. For us, it's our second most viewed video. Amazing. We then put out another video the next month on how to lead a media team. Yes. Not how to build one, but how to lead one that already exists. Yeah, I saw that. Okay. Thank you. that has less than 12 ,000 views. It's our lowest performing video and probably will be one of our lowest performing of all time. And if we just looked at that, we would stop making that video and we would just only make the former, the first video, right?

53:09But here's where it gets interesting. No clients reached out from the struggling with content video. Yeah. None. Some of them would mention like, how cool or whatever, like it was cinema, but none showed interest. The clients that we work with, their brand and creative directors all reached out. And a lot of personal brands that we aspire to work with, their teams reached out and asked a lot more questions. And most of them shared like pages of notes that they took from it. Wow. Wildly different. If we listen to what YouTube is telling us and by like the YouTube data is telling us, we would stop doing that and make the other.

54:00And we'd be burning my business to the ground because of it.

54:03Caleb Ralston:Yeah. This is what so many people that are listening and watching are doing right now. They're spending either a lot for them or a lot just in general on a content team. They're putting time in their precious week that could be used for building the business to make this content. And it's content that is bringing in audience that will never fucking buy from you. What a waste. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. Insane. Yeah. So, you know, listen to the gurus all you want. You're going to get results. Yeah. They're not wrong. By the way, everyone talking about going, they're not wrong. They're really fucking good at it.

54:47I just don't think that that is the thing to optimize around. Now, the 2.0 of this conversation that I never really share is like, cool, optimize around trust, then gain all the tactics from those viral gurus or whatever. Take the things that apply to what you're making and then get more awareness around the problems that you solve. but that's why I like to wow I just spat a lot that's why I like to optimize around trust

55:13Caleb Ralston:not views yeah I'm excited to share that this podcast is produced by my own content agency 7x content we make incredible podcasts for world-class brands creators and entrepreneurs and we've just released our flagship accelerator program where we coach podcasters on how they can unlock the next level of success for their shows so if you'd like to work with us you can apply at the link in the description. So what should we be tracking every week? I'm super interested in that. And then how do we judge the success of our content? Track conversions. Now, how you do this, I'm not the guy. Talk to a hardcore marketing individual.

55:56They're far more in-depth and aware of the current way of doing this.

56:02Caleb Ralston:But what I recommend is track conversions. Now, for some of you, you have like a full team and like a genius marketer that the moment you say that, oh yeah, boom, done. UTM links in place. We got this, all this shit in HubSpot or whatever the fuck you use. We can track the customer journey from YouTube video to purchase. Amazing. Most of us, myself included right now, do not have that system in place, right? And so you can get very, very basic with it. If you have some sort of application that people submit to work with you, ask them how they found out about you. Right. Uh, a question that I usually like to ask on a discovery call with somebody is not, how did you hear about me?

56:45Cause that's a little bit more basic. And I don't really care about that as much as I care about what was the piece of content that you watched that made you feel enough trust to want to work with us that like what convinced you? Yeah. What was the, I think it's Malcolm Gladwell's term. Like what was the tipping point for you, right? That's what I'm looking for. And so like, that is a very basic way to do it, but it's the way that I'm doing it right now. You know, you can set up all these different custom URLs, you know, yourwebsite.com slash YouTube or whatever. And that can be your link and buy it.

57:20Like there's other ways that you can do it. If you are in a place right now where you don't have an offer for the masses, a great way to see if you have a audience or you're growing an audience that will actually take action on what you say is have a lead magnet, right? And then track the conversions on the lead magnet. What percentage of the audience that's consuming the content is then going and taking action to download something, right? Because if that behavior is there, well then in the future, you can assume not at the same rate, but at a similar rate, you're probably going to have success with an offer that you make people aware of.

57:55Do you, let's say you're running a team or you're involved in a team.

58:02Caleb Ralston:Do you have a weekly call and you're looking at the content performance? What do you recommend people track in terms of views, AVD? How do they find out what's working and make more of it? if you're tracking stuff that isn't informing any sort of change, that is noise. And we've all looked at those dashboards with like 130 different metrics being tracked. And guess what we do? We get overwhelmed. Like some people are data nerds and they love that shit. Not me. Like I can't make a decision off of that. I need to see just a very few basic metrics. And then, and this is where, like, again, nuance, I like to do that.

58:49And then anything that interests me, then I'll go more specific on it, right? Then I will start to look under the hood, so to speak, to use a US term here. Like, that's what I really like to do. And so I would encourage people figure out what those things are for you, right? Like, I care deeply about average view duration on YouTube. I mean, what a novel thing for me to say, right? Like what everybody says, but I care about it honestly more than for like the performance of the YouTube video. I just want every person that decides to watch the content, like every minute in our content is there for a reason.

59:30I want you to get the outcome. And so I want you to be there longer. And so that's something that we want to track and see going up over time, right? I also believe that the more time that you spend with me, the more you're going to trust me. That might be an audacious assumption of mine. I don't know, but I tend to think that we are very, um, ruthless with what we decided to put out there. In August, we put out a two minute video where I apologized for that shit video that I was talking about that we didn't end up releasing. And I was like, we should just respect the audience's time. We should aim for a high value per minute, right?

1:00:08So that's what I would encourage you to do. The way I like to do it on a team meeting is if it's a smaller team and we don't have like a bunch of platform specific creators that are owning the individual platforms, we're still in the mode where we have a couple of people creating for everything. Then I'll do like one weekly meeting where we're reviewing those metrics. And then here's the key. 99, 100 % basically minus a few are not doing this. What are you going to do because of that? Most teams just look at the data and they're like, all right, cool. We're up this week. Oh, we're down this week.

1:00:44All right. We got to do better guys. That's not useful, right? So we need to figure out, okay, based on this information, what are we going to do differently? And I would argue that's the most important part of the meeting. And some people are going to hear this and they'll put the last five minutes of their meeting to be like, all right, we're going to give ownership to people. This should be like half the fucking meeting. And like it doesn't need to be reserved for when shit is not going well. When everything's up, what are we going to do more of? Right? What are we going to put more effort into, more resources towards?

1:01:22That's how I like to run it. If you have a really big team and then you have like, you know, a YouTube function over here, Instagram, TikTok, podcast, all of that, then cool. I do a top level review for like 30 minutes with the whole team because I do like everyone have context. It's really nice when the Instagram creator knows that like YouTube is doing well or not doing well.

1:01:43Caleb Ralston:I think it's really important. I think it's good. But anything granular, not necessary. So then I like to break it out into the core function. So like the Instagram team will meet and they will go wildly deep. And I encourage this to be like a 30, 60 minute meeting. And I know that's expensive. It's a very expensive meeting. But this is a very expensive investment you're making, right? Like, let's be thoughtful with it. So that's how I like to run those. From there, you can add brainstorm meetings and all of that. But you want to be very careful that you don't add too many meetings. A mistake that I made earlier on in running, this was a big mistake.

1:02:24I started adding way too many meetings throughout the week. and in the beginning, I didn't stack them all on like one or two days. And so my poor editors would have like a meeting on Thursday at 11 a.m., Wednesday at 3 p.m., like all throughout the day and it would break everything up for them. And it was like this weird moment where I just like completely lost touch with like the first 13, 14 years of my career where I was an editor. I hated meetings, right? They were awful. They took me off my game. So that would be one thing that I would add here is I know I just said for the bigger teams, have a full team and then breakout, but be careful that you don't add too many because you will slow down the momentum and end up discouraging your team.

1:03:06Caleb Ralston:What are the other fundamental things in the process that people should have? Which process? The content creation and review and continuous improvement. I'll give you one that's really wild. If you're the talent, get to a place as quick as possible where you're not reviewing the content. How do you do that? Well, one, it's an insane level of trust that you have to have, which means you have to have somebody on your team that you really trust. I'll give you insight. We're not at that point yet. And it's not due to me not trusting Trevor. It's me having been behind the scenes for 16 years and knowing all the tiny little things that could go wrong.

1:03:46And so I'm at a place where I don't trust myself enough yet. Um, and that's, but that is what we are aiming for massively. Yeah. Uh, what I will say is in my previous role, he was leading the shorts initiative and I got to a point where I didn't review any of the shorts. The talent that we were working for didn't review the shorts and I didn't either. I only reviewed long form content and that was it. And the efficiencies gained by that were massive because every single, and I know it's not a lot of people, but every single person listening right now that runs a creative team, you are the bottleneck.

1:04:24And that is the worst thing in the world. If your team is like, I can't do blank because so-and-so hasn't reviewed it yet, whoa, big problem, right? And so I try to remove that as much as possible, aka you as the talent should not be the friction

1:04:39Caleb Ralston:point. And is the key there to hire one person to build out your content team? I am so grateful you went here. A lot of you won't be able to do what I'm about to say. I'm going to give you the best version and then we can go back to more practicality. The best version is you do what I did and you hire the content director first that you believe in fully, trust fully, and want to build out your content team. That is Trevor for me. I trust that man with everything. I feel very confident in his abilities and the rate of progress that he is making in his career is like insane. And so I knew from day one, well, actually more like month two, because in full transparency day one, I was like, Trevor, we're going to try this out and see if I'm comfortable with making content.

1:05:30Right. So that's the real, real about like month two or month three. Then I was like, cool. I don't think we're just going to make little videos. You and I, I think we're going to build out a team. And every month that we make more content, it, that vision starts to grow more and more. And I can see, you know, more for that, but I won't be building the media team. He will. Right. And that's what every single person who is embarking on this journey, the best version of this is you hire somebody that can build it for you. You don't have to get in and learn all the technical terms and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:06:04You don't have to be up to date with everything all the time. They do. She does. He does. Right. And that's what you want to hire first. I believe in it the most. And I'll put my money where my mouth is. He was my first hire. The first month of me having my business, he joined the team. That was my first investment, not anything else. That is how important I think this is. The majority of people, this is where we're going now is the more practical, but the unfortunate version is most of you are building out functions and silos. So what you do is you hire some YouTube characters over here, some short form characters here, podcast person here, maybe a freelance copywriter.

1:06:51None of them are coordinated together. And it's just this wonderful shit show. And I mean at the highest levels of creators right now, this is happening. This is what we get hired to help with. And they have this wild thing that somehow they've gotten to millions of followers online. And it's just like chaos behind the scenes. And so the best version is you hire that person and they build it out. But then if you can't do that, then as quickly as possible, you want to hire that person to come in and clean up the mess. Because if you do this for five years, like some of the people, it is a very, very gnarly mess to untangle.

1:07:37Very, very difficult. Right. And then, you know, to get granular for a second, there's this like weird resentment that grows on the team because they're not being taken into account or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They don't, AKA, they don't have one person that is advocating for them. Right. They don't have somebody who is on their behalf, building an environment that allows them to do their best work, they're having to create that environment while also doing their best work. They're serving two functions. And 99.9 % of them are not good at that first one.

1:08:10Caleb Ralston:Let's talk about working with Alex and Layla Hormosey. Yeah. What are some of the biggest lessons you learned working with them? I'll start with Layla. There's a lot of really great things I learned from her. I think my favorite one that I always share is her level of preparation for new employees. I think because I've been in several different types of organizations, I can speak to this pretty confidently. Most orgs do not have clear expectations set for new employees. And your new employee then exists in this world of anxiety for two to four weeks. they don't know what is expected of them. I mean, hell, I've had two different roles that I started in the past where I didn't even have like a company computer or accounts for the first two weeks.

1:08:59Caleb Ralston:I'm like sitting there twiddling my thumbs being like, what the fuck do I do? And something that she said that I just, I will never forget is your biggest goal when hiring somebody is not to motivate them. It's actually to get the fuck out of the way and not demotivate them. You need to steamroll everything around them and clear the way for them to do their thing. Like we just brought on an amazing chief of staff, Kate. She's awesome. And my whole thing has been like, let me get out of your way and not slow you down. I don't need to motivate you. You're coming in motivated, right? Like if you're hiring correctly, they're coming in motivated.

1:09:38Your job is to not slow them down, not to be their bottleneck. I think that's, that is probably the biggest one. Like when I, I'd say two weeks before I even started, I knew what my first 90 days were going to look like.

1:09:51Caleb Ralston:That's insane, right? Because then you get to start planning, you hit the ground running, you're not slowed down in any way. On Alex's front, the level of effort to make something great, you know, again, I will say the same thing every time because it, I'll never be able to unsee it. The 19 versions of leads. It was insane. He wrote it 19 different times that I'm aware of. It might be more. But that was nuts to see. And it's no surprise that it's a product that then sells itself. Rather than building something meh and then marketing the hell out of it, put all the effort into the actual product and the product will market itself.

1:10:35And so I'm not anywhere near that right now. but when we're making a video and we're outlining, I'm really thinking about that. How can I push the envelope on making, like where would other people stop?

1:10:49Caleb Ralston:And I guess to sound corny, that's when I wanna start, you know? What's up guys? I have a lot of fun making this podcast and I'd love to hear from you. So if there's something you're particularly enjoying or someone you'd love to hear from, then let me know in the comments. And equally, if there's anything you don't like that we're doing, let me know in the comments and we will make this show bigger and better for you. With Alex and Layla, how often is someone like that sitting down and filming and looking at content and how involved are they? I can't speak to right now because I am not working with them.

1:11:22But at the time, I'd say Layla ebbed and flowed because she was running the business, right?

1:11:30Caleb Ralston:And I think that's an interesting thing on the behind the scenes that I give a lot of credit to the team for is being able to balance one month, having a little bit more time and access. And then another month where it's like, hey, we got bigger priorities right now on the business. And that's where the time is being allocated. So I would say that one, the constant was reverse engineering her schedule. And that was the framework, right? And I think that's a beautiful thing to be able to create an environment in that way. With Alex, he would spend a lot of time writing. Not a lot of time, I shouldn't say that, but a lot more time than I probably think a lot of people assume.

1:12:16And then they go off to make content, maybe prep for 20 minutes and think they're going to get the same results. but there's a lot more prep that goes into it. And actually something literally that's coming to me right now is I actually think individuals who write and who are authors and are constantly either writing a book, working on the next book or writing a presentation, they get very good at being able to crystallize ideas and thoughts. And so they are capable of forming those into a video outline, for example, fairly quickly. Because like what people might think is like, oh, there's an hour slot on the calendar to prep this concept.

1:13:01But what they don't realize is the years of refining that concept and honing that in. As far as how we would film typically every two weeks for either a half day or a full day. And typically a full day was like 10 hours. okay and yeah and um you know if if you can take any cues from the way that alex writes he also can film that way you know incredible stamina is how i will put it what's the longest you ever filmed for i don't know probably probably a 12 hour session 12 hour session with very minimal breaks though like 12 hours that look fundamentally different than most people's 12-hour filming session and walking away with a shitload of long form, short form, and podcast-centric content.

1:13:55Caleb Ralston:And with that content, is he writing it? Is he coming up with the ideas? Or are you guys coming up with them and presenting them to him? How does that work? Yeah. Again, I don't know how they're doing it right now, but basically our team would create more of a structured framework, the best content, and trust me, we're trying to solve this. I'm constantly thinking about this. But I think there's this level of desire that people have and kind of not your intention, but a lot of people's intention behind the question is like, how much can I have my team write the content for me? And the best content from the best creators is written by them.

1:14:40because if your team could articulate the same thoughts and concepts in the way that you could they'd be just as big and successful as you so why would you out it's the same problem i have right now with everybody having chadgbt write all their content like why are we outsourcing our thinking right and so i think a very useful thing that i like to do for anybody that we work with is like, let's get them to third base with the structure and the format, but then let's let them

1:15:10Caleb Ralston:input their thoughts and beliefs. Because the other thing I'm sure you've experienced this for yourself over time in creating content, your ideas and concepts evolve. It's not that they necessarily change, although that happens too, and that's perfectly fine. But a lot of times we get better at communicating them in a slightly different way. But your team can't know that. They can only create based on things that have been said previously, which is a great first step. And if that's all you can do right now with your team, cool, by all means do it. But the best version of this is going to be you putting your thoughts to paper.

1:15:51Caleb Ralston:So is the best version of that me saying, hey team, I want to do these five YouTube videos on these topics? The best version of it is you don't have to push, you're pulled. So you have a team who reaches out to you and says, hey Callum, can you send us a voice note or however you like to communicate? I don't like writing nearly as much, so I like voice notes more. What's top of mind? What's been interesting in the last week or two? What have you noticed in the space? What have been interesting conversations with employees, with contractors, with clients, any new learnings, any new thoughts. They're getting that from you on a biweekly or weekly basis.

1:16:30Yeah, nice. And then they're taking that and creating a structure around it, coming up with the packaging to be able to indicate like, hey, this is going to perform well. Ideally, data-backed packaging. And real quick, just so nobody thinks I'm contradicting, look at ideas outside of your niche. stop just taking the bigger creator in your space and fucking doing what they do. You'll never be number one that way. In my opinion, you will always at most be number two. So if you, and the other benefit to doing the top of mind thing that again, I'm all about longevity. You're going to be more excited about it.

1:17:10I don't know how you guys work on like with clients and stuff like that. But I know I've drafted outlines for videos for people. And a month later, we go to film it and they're no longer excited about it. They could give two shits about that topic. They've already moved on to something else. The best version of content, in my opinion, is going to be whatever you're most excited about and is top of mind in that moment. But you're only going to, or your team is only going to know that if they're pulling that information from you. And so like anybody who has a team that is listening or watching, tell your team to every week, pull that information from you.

1:17:48Caleb Ralston:Yeah. Now I'm all for, you know, you're in it. So if you're on YouTube and you see something and you're like, yo team, yeah, by all means share that. Like I always want that information. I always want those opinions. But I don't want to build a system where the talent who is most likely running a business has to be that person. I think it's on the team in an ideal scenario to be presenting, hey, we just noticed this new emerging format in this niche. We really want to experiment with it. Here's three different videos to show you previous success from other creators. Are you down to try this? And then you put the ball in their court to decide.

1:18:29It shouldn't be on them in an ideal world to be the one being like, hey, team, I have this idea, right? It should be in reverse. Unfortunately, the majority of you watching or listening, it is not that way. You are the one that is pushing. Now, you know, nuance. Gary, for example, is the one that pushes. Like, I think he, yeah, he is the only role that I've been in where we were not pushing the innovation in any way. Like, it was in any way. The team was pushing innovation. But Gary is, like, on another level with that shit. And so like, we weren't like, Hey, gee, TikTok might be a thing. Hey, gee, LinkedIn.

1:19:13Like he's the one driving that. He was the one like, again, you know, it gets misunderstood sometimes like, you know, guy running Gary's TikTok or whatever. To be very clear, Gary one day was sitting in his office, walked out of his office, opened the door and said, team, we are prioritizing TikTok. I don't care what we have to do. This is number one priority right now. This is going to be the biggest thing.

1:19:35Caleb Ralston:And this was like 2018, 2019, like crazy shit. Right. Um, so there's unique characters like that. I think in Trevor and I's dynamic, I would say Trevor brings more ideas to me, but I am going to bring ideas to him because I'm in this world, right? I can't escape it. It's literally what my brain does 24 seven. But for most people, they aren't, they don't have a background in content. They're running a, you know, plumbing business or a, you know, they have a marketing agency or a podcast agency and the best use of their time is focusing on the clients and so they need a team that can get them again to use that analogy to third base so then they can round it home yeah but equally one thing i found works really nicely is that as you say if they've got that communication channel whether it's whatsapp or slack and then they've just had the client call and they can just voice note or they can video and be like you know i come up with this every damn day, all these people have this exact same problem, or there's this one thing I just realized.

1:20:37Caleb Ralston:And if they can give it you in the, in the moment and you've got like an easy channel where they can, they can just dump these things. Um, as you say, like that, that's the way to capture it because, um, otherwise they probably just forget or it just becomes normal to them. One of the things I've heard you talk about. Dude, real quick. Yes. That is a huge one. if you are an expert you are cursed meaning you think everything that you're sharing is boring because it is to you yeah so on that point too the importance of having a team is like trevor will tell me when i say something that i'm like yeah he's like i've never heard you say that that was really good that was really interesting that was extremely useful so just you said that and like triggered something i just had to share that like that is another value that you get off of having the team.

1:21:25Caleb Ralston:Yeah. I've heard you talk about document don't create. I was just, yeah. And how Layla looked at that actually by, by looking back at her calendar, right? Is that another, another good tactic? Yeah. It's, it's just another interpretation of Gary V's document don't create. It doesn't necessarily mean having a videographer follow you around. It means articulating the lessons and challenges that you have gone through in the last week, month, year. So how would you do that with her? Well, she did it, not us. Yeah, she would just look at the conversations that she had throughout the week. What was interesting?

1:21:59What were interesting employee development conversations? Tough conversations. Something with, you know, one of the portfolio companies or, you know, a new learning in the workshops or whatever, right? And she would look at what happened and then we would document it. It didn't mean real-time documentation, though.

1:22:17Caleb Ralston:It can be post-game documentation. the best version is both that's interesting what the best version is both yeah because the the the thing that we're falling into right now i'm glad you double clicked on that the thing that we're falling into right now is i have less and less trust in just the average person making claims online than ever before yes meaning just telling won't you know what i mean like you gotta to show don't tell and so i think that is also again like this whole like creating content online thing is very new right like the thing that i always like to say is like back to youtube being 20 it can't drink in the u.s like it is brand new and gary has been doing this for a very long time And I think that it's very interesting that he has been showing you what, like he holds a different brand position than a lot of people in his space.

1:23:22A lot of people in his space have been blowing up over the last, you know, call it seven years, right? There's been a lot of different characters that come on in the space and done really well. But the majority of them have been doing more telling, not showing. Yeah. And I think that that shows up when Gary goes in public, for example. You know, we had the opportunity. He brought back all the OG videographers back in May to document this big collab he had for VFriends. And I think the thing that just to this day is always so wild to me is walking through an airport. First of all, the fact that, you know, walking through an airport with Gary is wild.

1:24:02but how many people will one come up and say hi thank you but even more than that i for whatever reason i pick up all the little things i hear so many people be like oh my god that's scary i don't want to bother him like he he looks like he's on a call or whatever like so many people and i think it's back to what we were talking about earlier where it's not just that people consume his content, they know his brand on a level of depth that, you know, and maybe people in the last couple of years that are more familiar with him don't have this as much as the more OG fans that were watching DailyVee, right?

1:24:42And all of that. But yeah, I think there is, you know, the ideal version is when you are telling, you're able to show an example.

1:24:51Caleb Ralston:How are you going to do that with UL? Are you going to do vlogs? Are you going to do, What are you going to do? Yes, we're going to, I don't want to spoil it, but basically every year my goal is to be more and more transparent with things on the back end. To share more on the wins, but more importantly, I would say the losses or mistakes that I'm making in building the business and making the content, right? I also think that like to the point that I just made of the losses, this is not necessarily the best example, but I'll give you one that just happened. I was just doing a podcast with another individual named Callum, actually.

1:25:30Callum Johnson, great guy. And he was walking through the brand story framework in the workbook that we released with the course for free on YouTube. and he identifies that I call out step one is you make a hook and then step two is the problem and I was like well that was stupid the hook and the problem should be the same thing I would redo that yeah and instead of doing what I see a lot of people do when when a moment like

1:26:06Caleb Ralston:that comes up trying to like reposition it and like I was just like yeah that was that was stupid like I'm getting better at articulating my thoughts, right? I've spent 16 years doing, not documenting my doing. And so I'm currently in the process of looking at like, what have I been doing naturally? And how do I then articulate this in a process that other people can do something that I kind of just intuitively do naturally, right? And so that was a moment where I shared that. And I think in doing that, a lot of people would ask for that to be cut. Or there's been a couple of times where due to a 12-hour flight and a 14-hour film day yesterday, right after flying into town, I have spaced and lost my train of thought on here.

1:27:04And I turned to your team and I don't know if we're going to end up having these included, but I was like, No need to cut those. Yeah. I like sharing that. And I want to do the same thing. We have to be respectful of our clients, of course. But I want to, at the level that we can, share as much as humanly possible. Now, I'm in the beginning stages. So I'm getting more and more comfortable with this. So every year, it will increase in transparency and vulnerability. Because again, I know what the best version would be. But if I did the best version year one, I'm going to be freaked the fuck out.

1:27:37Yeah. And I won't stick with it. No. Right? And so that's how I plan on doing it. You know, I am not at the level of any of those characters that I've worked for. And I do not aspire to be. I do not have that ambition in any way, shape, or form. And so I want to document my process in my own way and share that fact. I think there's a lot of people that are talking about these like wildly big ambitions. And I think it's awesome. I don't have that crazy. I have big ambitions compared to maybe the average, you know, Sarah or Joe, but like not at that level. And so I'm going to be documenting that because I think there's a lot of people that probably can relate to that.

1:28:18They feel this need to develop this crazy big ambition because the people they look up to do that. And I would like to show that like you can accomplish really big shit in your life without having this goal that you're just copying somebody else's goal. right like i saw it all the time with gary fans of like i want to buy the blank their favorite team i did this i had like six months in my life where i was like i want to buy the seattle seahawks because i i do love the seahawks not to the level that gary loves the jets but i do love them i don't want to buy the sea that's that's bullshit that's me just copying somebody else's goal right and so i think i want to be able to help people see that like you can have different goals and you can go about building these things in a different way than maybe has been modeled to date.

1:29:08And again, there's nothing wrong with what's being modeled. I think it's fucking awesome, right? Like I've gained a lot from that. I just, maybe I'm speaking to a different crowd.

1:29:17Caleb Ralston:No, but that is why I wanted to get you on because from the moment I got introduced to you and then the moment I saw you start posting, the one thing that just blew me away is how you stand out from the crowd and how confident you were in being more vulnerable, being more real, being more like quote unquote authentic. And yeah, that just stood out in a way that a lot of the other people in this space, I see them, but I don't watch them. I don't click on every video. Whereas with you, I really have done that. and um yeah because it just feels totally fresh as well so i think that that would that's kind of the the biggest lesson i've taken from today is like there's another way to do this versus what 95 of the advice out there is and um i think if people can use this approach and be confident in it um i think you're gonna have so much more success because you will you will stand out by a mile and uh yeah absolutely love this caleb uh thanks so much for coming on if if someone's listened to this and they're pumped to take the first step the next step what what would what would you tell them to do well first thanks for saying that man that means the world i i'm not just saying that like that really means a lot to me so thank you um because it's not easy you know it's hard and I have plenty of moments of second guessing you know wow I can't believe I just shared that wow I can't believe I'm walking you through what I literally walk our clients through on this podcast right like I have those moments so it's not like it just comes naturally you know but thank you where should they start start by going to the top of this podcast and do that brand journey framework we have things that can help with that but you don't need that fucking do it on your own you know like i i really believe that our goal is like in putting out the content that we put out i really want people to be able to do this without working with us and then there's going to be a select few people that it's like they realize how hard or in depth all of that is and they're like cool let's let's bring let's work with them kind of a thing but for the majority of people i just want them to take action.

1:31:45And really, honestly, if I can get a little intense for a second, I really want to see less bullshit out in the market. I think a lot of people are building personal brands that are making shit worse. I'll just say it that way. Not making it better. And I believe, one man's opinion, if the majority of people started changing what they optimized around, we'd be making things a lot better for people, not worse. These social platforms might add more good than maybe they are right now. And so that's a huge mission of mine. If you want more information on how I do that, just watch the course that's free on YouTube.

1:32:27Download the workbook if you want to take action, but you don't even need to do that because I don't need the email, you know, like, because I feel like every time people say that, then it's like pushing. I'm not. I like, I just want people to be able to take action on this for free. and so if that's a thing, cool and then if you do take action on it the one request that I have DM me and let me know how it went

1:32:48Caleb Ralston:Awesome, this was so much fun and yeah, I'm sure this won't be the last time that we meet so yeah, thanks so much for coming on and let's do an up one soon Thank you, Cal I really appreciate it and I appreciate the opportunity Great If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper on personal brand I recommend you listen to my episode with Daniel Priestley it's absolutely brilliant On YouTube, click the link here to watch it, or you can find it on the Creator Playbooks podcast feed, wherever you get your podcasts. Check it out and let me know what you think.