Decoding the Future of Influence with Gideon Shalwick

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. And today we'll be breaking down the future of influence. To drop these value bombs, I brought Gideon Shalwick into EO Fire Studios. The way we influence, lead, and grow is changing fast, especially now with AI. And Gideon is here to decode it. He is the founder of Vubli.ai. They help creators and thought leaders simplify how they show up with short form video consistently and effortlessly. He loves sharing insights on scaling your message, automating your content workflow, and staying human while building real influence.

0:39John Lee Dumas:And we'll talk about what creators must do to stay relevant. We'll also talk about the new superpower for modern creators, the creator bottleneck, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Gideon and our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire.

1:17John Lee Dumas:Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies, build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Gideon, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:48Gideon Shalwick:Hey, what's up, Fire Nation? amazing to be on the show again John just wanted to say that you know that question is such a cool question I've thought about it a lot and the answer I want to give you is an answer that the people my peers will agree with but people who are not quite on that part of the curve yet won't agree with and that is today to be successful in business is going to come down to distribution. And what do I mean by that? Well, today with AI in the game, it's no longer your product or your ability to innovate that's going to help you win. I call it your last moat and that is the distribution.

2:43Gideon Shalwick:And when I say distribution, I mean access to an audience and a relationship to that audience. So maybe in the past, you're able to create a product and spend a few million dollars on it and then go to market and be a success. And you'll have this big moat because you've spent a lot of money or a lot of time on building a team and all the resources. And then you get to market and everybody wants it and loves it. nowadays with AI, that moat is gone. It's completely gone. And the only one that's remaining is you and access to an audience who trusts you. And that's now become the most important thing.

3:29Gideon Shalwick:And that's why I'm so passionate about what I'm doing right now as well. And in fact, what I've been doing for the last 18 years, it's actually fitting in really, really well with what we're going to talk about today.

3:38John Lee Dumas:Yeah, me for the last 13 years. I mean, I could not agree more about building that audience that knows, that likes, that trusts you. And Gideon and I go way back. I mean, we've spoken at countless conferences together. He's been on the show multiple times. And he's just a good guy who's just always keeping his finger on the pulse. And he's also decoding the future of influence. So Gideon, you believe that short form video is actually reshaping influence. So tell us why and what creators must do to stay relevant.

4:12Gideon Shalwick:Yeah, so I think that the game has really changed for being able to get access to the market or like we call in the software world, going to market. You know, in the past, we had, I guess what we call today, long form video, which was anything, you know, beyond, you know, one or three minutes. We call that long form video or landscape video, I guess what people call it. But then with the introduction of TikTok, that completely changed the game. and we went from you know people watching videos because they might have been subscribed to a channel or they might have known someone to now where you're watching videos because you're getting served a certain video because of a video that you've watched previously so it's now based on interest as opposed to on you know what people might have called the social graph in the past where you got served content based on your social connections, etc.

5:11Gideon Shalwick:So the game's completely changed now when it comes to video. Short form has come on the scene. It's been here now for quite a while. But TikTok really drove that home at the beginning and so many other platforms have followed suit and we call it the TikTokification of everything. And that's changed the game. And what it means for us as entrepreneurs now is that if you want to make a difference, you've got to get on short form. You've got to have a short form strategy. You know, still do the long form. I'm a big believer in long form. They have different purposes. But when it comes to short form, that's an amazing ticket to help you attract new audiences today.

5:56John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, true words coming from somebody who is actually in the arena doing the thing and experiencing something that we call creator bottleneck. Maybe not firsthand, but he's seeing it with other individuals. Now, that's what I want to move on into next, Gideon, is why do most creators struggle to post daily? And how the heck can we fix that?

6:18Gideon Shalwick:Oh my gosh, the bottleneck thing is such an annoying thing. And, you know, I started 18 years ago with this game of having a business online. 18 years ago, me and my wife, we packed our bags. We lived in New Zealand. We packed our bags, quit our jobs. We quit our jobs first and then packed our bags and immigrated to Australia. And that's when I started my business. And very quickly, I got into the video game and it was already a pain in the neck back then. And I thought it would become easier with technology and cameras and stuff getting better and better, internet getting better yes to a big degree it has but the the qualifications have increased since then so back then you were able to just pop something up and you'd be ready to rock you know with your with your handycam or whatever and nowadays you can still do that to a certain degree but the game has changed in terms of both quality and quantity and especially with a short form game.

7:29Gideon Shalwick:You know, a lot of people used to say that quality is more important than quantity. And that game has changed now with short form. With short form, quantity is actually more important now than quality. And it's a weird thing because you think, oh, should I create something rubbish and put it out there and the answer is no there's still a threshold of quality that you need so i didn't say that quality is not important i just said that quantity is more important than quality and why do i say that well when it comes to short form like i said earlier it comes down to interest and and the algorithms that serve interest-based content so basically as a user now or as a viewer you're getting shown stuff that you've based on your previous interests the algorithm looks at you know everything else you've done previously up to this point and then decides what should this person get and then they serve you something based on that now for you as the creator to be able to get your content served means you've got to be out there you have to have your content out there to be able to be found, to be able to be served, I should say, by these algorithms.

8:52Gideon Shalwick:And here's the trouble. You don't always know which of your videos will be interesting to others. And so by creating more videos, it allows you to figure out the landscape of interest within the industry. and it allows you to figure out which of your videos are the ones that people are interested in now compare this with the situation where you're maybe posting once a week to once a day to maybe twice or three times a day which one of those three options do you think will get you more data much faster. When I say data, I mean data, like you'd say in America, data. Which one of those three options would give you data faster so that you can learn faster?

9:48Gideon Shalwick:That's really the key, like learning faster. The faster you can increase that feedback loop or the quicker you can make the feedback loop, in other words, the more often you can go from idea to recording the video to getting it edited and publishing it in multiple places that's that's like one loop right the more you can have of those in a certain amount of time the faster you're going to learn so so what that means is that if quantity is the key indicator here the key success factor it creates a bottleneck for you as the creator because it means you've got to you've got to be in front of the camera more or more often.

10:36Gideon Shalwick:And that creates a dilemma because, you know, we're all busy. Maybe not all of us are full-time creators. Like in my case, I consider myself more a founder than a creator. You know, I don't just create videos all day long. I don't have time for that. I don't publish videos all day long. I don't have time for that. You know, I've got a team. I've got to think about the market. I've got to do market research. I've got to talk to customers to make sure I've got the finger on the pulse. There's administrative sort of stuff. There's thinking about the finances, you know, funding, you know, working with mentors.

11:13Gideon Shalwick:There's a whole range of things that I've got to do every day and think about to make the business run and grow. And so it means I don't have all that much time to create content. So then as a content creator or as a founder who creates content, I should say, and you can take the word founder and replace it with whatever you call yourself. Maybe you're a creator creating content or a lawyer creating content or an accountant creating content or whatever you want to call yourself. Someone who's creating content, you're going to become a bottleneck. and because of that you've got to figure out ways to streamline absolutely everything absolutely everything if there's any friction points in your process going from right back at the beginning of idea creation for your content for your video content to getting ready for recording to having the right equipment for recording to then actually recording as well then the whole post-production thing where there's file management stuff, there's the editing stuff, there's the exporting stuff, there's getting it ready to publish or schedule stuff, there's thumbnails, there's titles, descriptions, tags, captions, you name it, there's a whole bunch of things.

12:47Gideon Shalwick:And then there's the promotion of your content as well. you know so there's a lot of things you've got to do and what i really encourage you do is figure out what is that process for you and analyze it and ask yourself where are the sticking points

13:01John Lee Dumas:i'm going to cut in here gideon because there's something important that i really think you're missing that i think you should kind of add to this spiel that a lot of people will connect with because i found this out early when i was thinking about doing a daily show starting back in 2012. I'm like, here's the reality. If I shoot for quality and I'm only doing one show per week, that's four per month, that's 50 per year. I'm not going to be doing that many shows. Like, how do I get good at something by not doing that thing very often? So by opting for quantity first, you're actually also increasing your quality because every single time you do it, you're getting better at that thing.

13:38John Lee Dumas:I'm speaking in front of camera, your workflow, your systems, your processes, everything that you're doing, you're getting better at doing that thing because you're putting in the reps and it's always about putting in the reps, Fire Nation. So that's why quantity, in my opinion, always wins because you get both in the end. You get the quality because you get better so fast. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

14:03Gideon Shalwick:Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how

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15:16John Lee Dumas:That's highlevelfire.com, where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High Level, join the revolution. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee.

15:51John Lee Dumas:Yes, it's month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13 point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly. See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, today at ThriveTimeShow.com slash EOFire. Become the next success story.

16:23John Lee Dumas:Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at Clay Clark's next business conference today at ThriveTimeShow.com slash EOFire. V-O-F-I-E. Gideon, we're back and you're kind of getting into this a little bit, but I want to dive deeper into the actual workflow because you believe that's the new superpower for modern creators. I mean, I can tell you without a doubt, I've found that to be the case. I launched a new show about eight months ago now. It's a daily show and my workflow was trash at the beginning and it took me hours to do each show.

16:55John Lee Dumas:It's a daily show, seven days a week. Then I improved the workflow, it took me two hours. Then I tweaked it. It took me an hour. And now I have it down. I don't think I can tweak it anymore, but it is a 41 minute workflow for a 15 minute show, seven days a week. That includes research, recording, editing, publishing, and promoting. I do it all in 41 minutes now, every single day. I can't get faster than that. I don't really want to because like that works. Like I've really got the workflow down to the bare bones where I love and want it. Why is that the new superpower for modern creators?

17:29Gideon Shalwick:Well, I think like you said before, it helps you put in more reps. And so if you can figure out that process and just completely nail it, like remove any friction points, it's going to allow you to get those reps in much easier. And the thing is, oftentimes people start putting in the reps and they go, yes, I'll do quantity, but then they get stuck. They get stuck on the tech or they get stuck on the script writing or they get stuck on the ideas or whatever else and then they stop they stop

17:58John Lee Dumas:and they don't continue and they don't you know they don't keep learning and so i think i'd really

18:03Gideon Shalwick:encourage you to sort of you know look at that process and your workflow and and figure out where are the sticking points and do everything in your power to remove those sticking points and what i love doing is looking at what is the biggest sticking point in the process and honing in just on that at any one time and fixing that. It's like the management of bottlenecks. So if you can do that, that'll help you increase those reps. And when you increase the reps, you learn faster, like you say, and when you learn faster, you're going to improve faster and get results faster. That's just what it comes down to.

18:34Gideon Shalwick:And then, like you say, as you improve those reps or increase those reps, automatically your quality increases as well.

18:40John Lee Dumas:Now you believe in the psychology of daily content. I mean, we've just been talking around the psychology about how you just are naturally getting better by putting in those reps. But let's just break it down for our audience in the grand finale here. How do we get out of our own way and just flipping publish?

18:59Gideon Shalwick:I think you really have to get out of your own head and into your audience's head. That's one thing. And think about what it is that they're really interested in. And you figure that out through doing, you figure that out through getting into the stream, so to speak. Like a lot of people struggle with clarity and they think they've got to think to get clarity they've got to think more about the issue and think it through and map it out and blah blah blah and talk to other people blah blah blah and they don't end up getting clarity and where the secret is to getting clarity is to jump into the river of flow so to speak when you compare this to do a uh a dam or a puddle of water so to speak it's it's it might be quite um messy and you can't see it you can't see through it and as soon as you start applying flow to that little dam of water clarity comes the thing starts flowing and it starts becoming clear and it's the same for us when we get into it we get into this flow clarity comes so clarity comes from jumping in and getting into flow, doing this stuff.

20:14Gideon Shalwick:And at the beginning, it's not going to be that clear. And it doesn't matter because the market's going to show you. The market's going to show you what they want through those reps. Through those reps, you're going to learn. You're going to learn what people want. You're going to get that feedback loop coming straight from your audience, straight from the audiences. Give you an example. When I did this for my new company, Vubli, it was a brand new situation where we had zero influence, zero subscribers on our channels. And I started publishing every day and I thought, shall I publish everywhere or just, you know, oh, screw it.

20:52Gideon Shalwick:I'm going to publish everywhere, everywhere I can. So I published five or six different platforms. And I remember it was Christmas and I was, I had this special video on Christmas and I got a whopping eight views. Eight, not 8 ,000, eight views for that video. I thought this thing sucks. I'm going to give up. I really felt like giving up. I thought, you know what? Let me just try one more time. Let me try one more time. I created another video after Christmas and that video got over 100 ,000 views. and it's like wow what if i gave up on on that day you know on christmas when i thought things weren't working and this was you know still the beginning of the experiment but that showed me that you know hey wow that was amazing and that allowed me to look back like i had a video every day that allowed me to look back and go you know where was i out of flow where where did things not go well and where did things start doing well i mean it was amazing just having that one video okay what was it about that video that made it take off and i never would have known if i didn't publish every day and i also never would have known if i didn't publish it in different places that's the other thing a lot of people say just focus on one channel and it's like yes there's wisdom to that but that's older wisdom i still think you well at the moment i think you're better off publishing content in as many different places as possible however focus on and pick pick one hero platform that you focus most of your attention on but still publish everywhere and the thing is that video that went viral the hundred thousand video hundred thousand view video it went viral on the platform that i didn't expect it went viral on on tiktok now i was going for youtube and then all of a sudden this video didn't go viral anywhere else.

22:47Gideon Shalwick:It just went viral on TikTok. And if I didn't publish it, I never would have learned that information. So yeah, I think it's about getting into it and just realizing that you don't need to know all the facts to get started and to get clarity. The clarity comes as you get into it and then you get that feedback loop from your audience.

23:08John Lee Dumas:Clarity comes, Fire Nation, as you get into it. I love that. And Gideon, if Fire Nation's really clicking with what you're saying, they want to learn more, they want to connect with you, they want to learn from you. What is your call to action for our listeners today?

23:21Gideon Shalwick:I think if you want to get publishing with videos and you want to improve that flow and remove all friction, we have just the thing for you. I've created a new business. I kind of actually created it for myself. It's software that automates the whole flow of scheduling and posting your short form videos. and what it does is you upload your video once to this one place and then we transcribe it automatically for you we've got ai doing all that work it creates all your titles descriptions and tags and you know for each platform in your own voice and optimized for seo all that sort of stuff all the stuff that you don't really want to do but you have to do and then you click one button and it posts your video everywhere to all the different platforms that we've got available.

24:14Gideon Shalwick:There's six platforms available, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X. Did I miss one? I think there's six there. Anyway, post it out to all the different places. And currently we've got a free version of Vubli. It's a free trial depending on when you're going there. So the software is called Vubli, V-U-B-L-I dot A-I. So if you want to get there and try it out for free. just check it out at vubli.ai, V-U-B-L-I dot AI.

24:43John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with GS and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Gideon in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Gideon, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side.

25:06Gideon Shalwick:Thank you so much.