Brendan Kane: Dominate Social Media with Actionable Tips & Storytelling Mastery

0:00Brendan Kane:It's through what we call storytelling formats. And these are kind of structures that help us convey our message, our genius out there. And the fascinating thing is people look at social media as it's like this brand new thing. It's this mystery black box and it's like playing the lottery. We can't figure it out. But in reality, it's just another storytelling medium.

0:27Mick:Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership, and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just hard-hitting truths, unstoppable strategies, and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go.

0:54Mick:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mick Unplugged. And if you think you are an influencer, this is the episode for you. From pioneering YouTube influence campaigns and building digital platforms for Taylor Swift and Rihanna, to generating 1 million views and follows in just 30 days. He's the visionary who cracked the code on instant attention in our three-second world Get ready for the dynamic, the daring, the disruptive My guy, Mr. Brendan Cain Brendan, how you doing today, brother?

1:27Brendan Kane:It's a pleasure to connect with you and everybody that's tuning in for this

1:31Mick:Absolutely, honored to connect with you, man Like, there's so much that I want to talk to you about, Brendan Because I feel like, and I hate using the term guru and expert but I feel like you are that in the social media space. And I want to talk about your books. But my first question for you, Brendan, is what's your because, man? Like, what's that thing that keeps you doing what you do? That thing that's deeper than your why? Like, if I were to say Brendan Cain, brother, what's your because? What would that be? I think I'm fascinated with what it takes to stand out at the highest levels.

2:07Brendan Kane:And that, you know, starts as like most people does in childhood. Like, why do we do most of the things we do is because of the experiences that we have in childhood. And, you know, for me, there was a lot of instances of being bullied or, you know, trying to make friends or things of that nature that, you know, oftentimes you struggle with and I struggled with. and through that experience i just for some reason i just kind of laughed on well how do you connect with other people how do you connect with the people that you truly want to connect with whether it's a friend group a teacher um as you get into the workforce you know in my instance it was in the movie studio how do you how do you connect with a movie producer or an actor things of that nature but i've always been fascinated with how you can stand out at the highest levels and in the work that I do today, I just firmly believe that there's people all over the world that have the ability to transform it in a positive way.

3:04Brendan Kane:They just need that helping hand, those tools, that knowledge to get their message heard. And that's what really drives me every day.

3:15Mick:I love that, dude. I love that so much. I told you offline, I've been a huge follower, believer, subscriber to all the things that you do. And one of the things that you're very clear about, and it's why I love you, is you don't have to be a celebrity or a big name to connect with people that want to connect with you, right? I think there's always this big misconception that people believe, oh, you need a billion followers. You need 60 billion views to gain credibility. But your message to people is always the first step is authentically you have to be you and you have to know who you are to connect with others.

3:53Mick:Why is that so important for people to grasp and understand?

3:57Brendan Kane:Because especially in the world today where we consume so much content, we are seeded so much content, like we're all professionals at consuming content, whether it's mostly on our phone through all the social media content. But even if you think about all the streaming services that we have at our disposal today, because we are so accustomed to all of this, people can see through that inauthenticity super quick. And it may not even be happening on a conscious level. It may be happening on an unconscious level. So the minute that you're trying to be something that you're not, people can see through that and you just won't have the impact that you're looking for.

4:41Mick:I dig that. I usually do tips and tricks later, but I have the great Brendan Cain on here, right? So what's a tip for the listener or viewer to discover that first step that you're talking about? What's something that they can do to truly understand their true authenticity?

4:59Brendan Kane:So the way that I look at the world of social media and all of the work that we do is it's through what we call storytelling formats. And these are kind of structures that help us convey our message, our genius out there. And the fascinating thing is people look at social media as it's like this brand new thing. It's this mystery black box and it's like playing the lottery. We can't figure it out. But in reality, it's just another storytelling medium. And the people that rise to the top are the best storytellers. So it's survival of the fittest, but in this case, survival of the fittest are the best storytellers.

5:42Brendan Kane:So what we do is we analyze these different formats or structures. Now, a format that everybody knows outside of social media is movies. So I started my career in the movies. And every movie over the past 100 years has used the same three-act structure. That is their format. Whether it's Steven Spielberg making Jaws or Quentin Tarantino making Pulp fiction, whatever your favorite movie is, it's following that same format. Now, as it applies to social media, there are hundreds, if not thousands of these formats. So our team has done about 10 ,000 hours of research analyzing over 450 formats. And the reason we go to that level is we want to make sure that we can find the authentic format to the individual.

6:30Brendan Kane:So to give you an example. One format that people most likely seen is called man on the street, where you approach a random stranger on the street and you engage and unfold. Now that format, that structure is used for many different industries and many different subject matters. So I have a friend slash client, Alex Stemp, who's a photographer who amassed an audience of 20 million people approaching random strangers on the street and offering them professional photo shoots. Then you have people like School of Hard Knocks that ask people, how did you make your first million dollars or body by mark.

7:03Brendan Kane:He asked people what they do for their fitness workout. The reason I say that is one of the first places to start in finding how you can show up as authentic is make this shift in your mindset from a passive experience when you're on social media of just scrolling through, scrolling through, scrolling through and make it an active approach. When you find something that's working, immediately just think to yourself, could I see myself doing that? Could I share my message through that? If not, don't do it. Because there's so much to choose from. And I hate when people kind of give this advice or feel that they have to do something or show up in a certain way if it doesn't feel authentic to them.

7:48Brendan Kane:Because there's so much opportunity. So the first place to start is really become a student and start identifying, well, what structures or what content creators are doing something in a way that you could see yourself sharing your message in that same way.

8:04Mick:I love that, dude. And I parallel that same thing in speaking, right? Like I do keynote speaking and I tell, and I coach other speakers and I tell them, you have to find your voice, right? Because I'm me personally, I'm not someone that yells and screams and does a lot of voice inflection on stage. That works for some people. When I try that, it's awful because I hate it. It's not who I am. And I tell people the same thing. You have to find your voice. And I think you're saying that same thing with social. You have to find who you are. And I wanted to ask you this question more for me personally, because I know you test everything.

8:41Mick:You just talked about what your team does. You write about, you know, you're an over tester, right? Like you're not just an overachiever, you're over tester, but you want to, you want to have the right data for your clients and then also for you. So my question is, can you have multiple templates? Is that a thing that you can do in social, right? Can you be person on the streets? Can you be masterclass type? Can you be the, Hey, here are five tips and tricks to help you do whatever. Like, can someone have multiple templates in social? And then two should be.

9:13Brendan Kane:Great question. The answer is yes, you can. What I typically recommend is start with one and master the process of one because you're going to learn a tremendous amount. So like the analogy I give is like, let's just say that we're going to learn a musical instrument. You know, when you learn a musical instrument, you don't want to shift the goalpost each week. Like you start with the drums week one and then move to the violin week two and then the flute week three and keep switching it up. No, you want to spend, let's just say we're going to spend the next few months mastering the piano. And through that process, you can do it.

9:50Brendan Kane:Or if you think about learning a language, you don't learn five languages at the same time. You learn one, but that process of learning one language is applicable to learning the next one. So yes, you can diversify, but what I always tell people is, you know, try and find, you can do a little bit of experimentation in the beginning to see which one you like because obviously you need to enjoy this like this needs to be fun for you um but then kind of once you found that just try and stick to one if not one i wouldn't go more than two until you've actually gone through the process of mastering one and then you can diversify diversify out from there yeah that's so i need that and i'm

10:30Mick:writing that down for me personally because i feel like i've mastered one but i have folks who are like, oh, well, you know, you should do like a masterclass look. And I'm like, well, I don't know if that's really me. Like, I feel like it's me, but I don't know. And so I'm going to take some of your principles and I'm going to test. I'm going to start testing out some formats and templates that actually are truly authentic to me now that I feel like I've mastered one style. Brendan, another question that I have for you before we get into your book. for the listener the viewer that's out there that's like i'm on social but i don't know if it's relevant for my business or for me and my brand to be on social or you know they're out there but they haven't put the energy into i'm not even gonna say try growing their followers but just putting out content what's some advice that you have for that person and roger sitkins I'm talking to you on this.

11:26Brendan Kane:So I always like to start with why aren't you doing it? Because there's different reasons. Some people will say, I hate social media. I don't want to be on social media. And my follow up question is why? Like, is it you don't feel comfortable on camera? Is there something about it that's holding you back? And oftentimes, it really has nothing to do with social media has to do something with themselves that they haven't just really worked through. is it a time restraint? Is it a resource restraint? What is holding you back? Because one of the other reasons that we do so much work on our end to really analyze all these formats is I want people to be able to start with the resources that they have available.

12:11Brendan Kane:Literally with this thing here, a phone in our pocket, with this and a great story, you can reach millions of people. You don't have to have a massive team. You don't have to have fancy equipment. Now there are formats that lend itself to that. And if you want to do that, that's great. But where people are starting today is I want them to just be able to start with the resources they have. So there's nothing holding them back. Another thing people will say that holds them back is, you know what? My business isn't interesting enough. I'm a dentist. I'm a tax accountant. I'm a lawyer. That's not going to work on social media.

12:49Brendan Kane:But the reality is anything can work on social media. We made a dentist go viral, got 21 million views on a single video. Any subject matter, if it's packaged in the right way, can go viral, can gain traction to grow your business. Now, obviously, social media is not the only way to grow a business. And I'm not going to say it's the only way because there's multiple facets that you can grow businesses. But if you're looking to really scale your audience, having that impact and beating out any competition that you have, if you master this skill set, it will put you light years ahead of anybody else and will continue to scale to whatever level that you want to scale to.

13:35Mick:Freaking genius. That's why you were.

13:38Brendan Kane:Well, the other interesting thing that I'll say to this is people always ask me, and I hear this question a lot, is like, what is the true ROI of social media? And the fascinating thing to that is the answer is, well, it's as big as your vision. Like I know people that make$0 off of social media. I've known people that have leveraged social media to build billion dollar businesses. Like somebody I know, Michelle Phan was one of the original YouTube influencers. She took her audience and founded a company called Ipsy. Within three years, it was doing$120 million a year in revenue. At one point, it was valued at over$800 million.

14:15Brendan Kane:Literally, this platform, the tool that we have at our disposal, in our hand, in our pocket, can achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. And that doesn't mean you have to create a billion-dollar company. Maybe you just want to put enough food on the table, put your kids through college. Whatever your dream is, social media is a tool that can help you get there in a faster, more scalable and predictable way than anything else that we've seen in history.

14:46Mick:Totally agree. Totally agree. You know, Brendan, a lot of times people get overwhelmed by the different social platforms, right? Because the content on YouTube might be different than the content you put on LinkedIn, which might be different than the content you put on Instagram and Facebook. How can people get over that feeling of overwhelm? And like for me, I started out just focusing on one platform and then I added in Instagram. And I told you, I still haven't figured out YouTube like that, but like I didn't allow myself to get overwhelmed. I knew who my audience, my audiences are on the various platforms.

15:28Mick:Right. And I learned that from you through testing. like mick the content that you put on instagram might not work on linkedin but some of the content you put on linkedin might work on instagram like how can you help people not be overwhelmed by the multiple platforms and thinking that they need a ton of content on various platforms so

15:48Brendan Kane:the first place that i like just everything should be everything should start with what is the format that is the right fit for you and that format will then dictate the platform um so there's certain formats that work better on certain platforms. With that in mind, the other thing that I really advise people is start with the platform that you love the most. What is the platform that you use every day? Because that is, because again, we have to be students of the game. We have to be able to go in there and understand not just how our content's performing, but how other people are performing? What are they doing differently than me?

16:28Brendan Kane:So the first piece of advice is choose the format and the format will dictate the platform. And the second piece is like, go with the platform that you use the most and then just focus on that. You can, what I say, again, like when we're talking about choosing the format, we want to pick one thing and get really good at and master it. The more we spread our attention, the less we become a master of anything. So with social media, as I say, choose one platform, master that platform. Now that doesn't mean you can't take that same content and post it on other platforms, but don't expect a lot from it.

17:02Brendan Kane:Don't get upset if it doesn't perform. Just focus on the one you can still distribute to others, but it does create a lot of anxiety and it does burn people out when they think about, oh my God, I've got to create 20 pieces of content a day across all these platforms and things of that nature. So the reality is each one of these platforms has close to 2 billion people on it. The major ones, like your audience is there in scale. If you master any, any one of these platforms, you're going to have more business than you know what to do with. So start with, so just simplify it, start with one, master it.

17:35Brendan Kane:And if you still want to syndicate that same content out to others, you can. Yeah.

17:41Mick:So you kind of hit on it a little bit with the billions of people that are on the various platforms. Your latest book, 1 million followers, how I build a massive social following in 30 days. Dude, so one, thank you to your team for sending me a copy of this. And I'm going to order copies because I have clients that need this because I've read this in two weeks. I've literally have read this twice. That's how amazing the book is and how much insights are there one i want to know what was your reason for saying i need to put this book

18:20Brendan Kane:out so it was so i started my career in the entertainment industry i worked for movie studios and then i did several partnerships with mtv and viacom that allowed me to work with a lot of you know mainstream celebrities and musicians and things of that nature and as we were talking about earlier, a lot of people will think that social media is just reserved for the celebrity. It's reserved for the rock star. It's reserved for the corporation. And I just doing this for 20 years. I know that's not the case. Like the power of what we have in our pocket and the mobile device has changed the world for all of us.

19:03Brendan Kane:And what do I mean by that? If we think about 20 years ago, pre-social media or just 25 years ago where there's no social media. Literally, how did we reach the masses? How did we reach millions of people with our message? 99 % of us couldn't. We had to go through a television station. We had to have a publicist. We had to have massive marketing budgets. But literally today, with the phone in our pocket, we can pull it out, record something, and if it's a great story, we can reach the masses. So it's democratized communication to millions of people for everyone. So what I wanted to really show with that book is when I was writing that and did that experiment, yes, I worked in the entertainment industry, but I wasn't in front of the camera.

19:51Brendan Kane:I wasn't on television shows or in movies or on posters or any of those things. I wanted to demonstrate for people that you yourself can build a massive audience. So you yourself can achieve your dreams or whatever your vision is with these platforms that we have available, that's available to all of us today.

20:15Mick:You know what my favorite part of your book is, Brendan? When you address your haters. So for those, and again, definitely go get the book, 1 Million Followers, How I Built a Massive Social Following in 30 Days. But I think it's like preface two when you're like, if you're a hater, this section is for you. Right. And I love it because you address all the questions that I'm not going to call them haters. I'm going to call them doubters would have. Right. Like, wait, did you do this organically? Did you use bots? Are your followers real? Is it true engagement? and you answer it precisely and succinctly.

20:57And I love that because I love all humans,

21:02Mick:but I also feel like there's a group of people whose natural instinct it is to doubt everything or to hate on everyone else's success. And you do a beautiful job of addressing that. And I love the fact that you're very direct. Like, hey, I test everything. You talk about in the book, I test everything. Like this doesn't just happen. There's work that goes into what people see as the end result. And I don't think people understand or appreciate enough of the work that you actually do before you ever talk about it.