Why the Fastest-Growing Businesses Are Becoming Media Companies

0:00Well, here's a statement that would have sounded ridiculous 20 years ago. every business is now a media company. Not some businesses, not online businesses, not influencers, every single business, your business, my business, the plumber, the dentist, the lawyer, the coach, the accountant, the manufacturing business that never thought they would ever have to do media is now a media company. I know 20 years ago, that would have sounded ridiculous that everyone had to be in the business of creating media, creating content around you. Whether you're a franchise, whether you're a standalone business, whether you're a big business, small business, because today the companies that win attention with customers and the companies that create content own the attention.

0:48I wished early in my career I was able to have a media company. We had to rely on the media, advertising with the media, getting PR with the media. And now you can be your own media company. The businesses that really understand this are growing faster than ever before. In fact, faster than everyone else. The businesses that don't are quickly becoming invisible. I see this as the biggest shift of the century from a marketing perspective, right? If you go back, and you're probably too young for this, but if you go back a few decades, if you wanted attention, you needed TV and newspapers and radio and magazines.

1:27Like you actually had to work for it. You actually had to convince the journalist to do a story on it. And you needed those gatekeepers. You needed the media companies. Today, you are the media company, okay? If you've literally in your pocket is your media company. Your cell phone makes it that way. I mean, when you have a cell phone and you have social media, you have AI, you have the ability to create video, the ability to create articles, the ability to post blogs, all of this stuff makes you a media company today. And now the challenge with that is obviously everyone's doing it. So it's become this mass media out there in the world.

2:10How do we stand out? How do we do that? How does our email get through? How do our podcasts get through when there's literally tens of thousands of podcasts today? You can reach millions. Let's be blunt about that. You can reach millions without even having to ask permission to reach them. And that's never happened before in human history. And I think that the TikTokification of media, taking it from sending stuff to your followers to, because obviously TikTok worked out something that it took Facebook a little longer to work out. Instagram worked it out before Facebook. Technically, your friends are boring.

2:49If you're on social media only to see your friends, you're on there for maybe five minutes a day. They want you on there for 45 minutes, two hours on there sort of thing. So attention matters. Why does it matter? I suppose is probably better the question. Before someone buys from you, they need to know you exist. And that, I mean, that seems obvious, right? Yet most businesses still operate as though attention magically appears. Oh, we'll get referrals. Oh, people will find us. It doesn't work that way. Attention is built. Attention's earned. Attention is distributed. If you think of it that way, the businesses that continually attract attention create more opportunities for themselves.

3:31I go back in my history and I know when I first started in business, I spent a ton of money on advertising. I traveled all the time delivering free seminars, getting in front of the right people, building relationships, building strategic partnerships. They had databases. I built a database. We had mailing machines. All this stuff just to keep in front of people, right? Today, it's different. Let's take the Mr. Beast example, right? If you look at Mr. Beast, people think he's a YouTuber and technically you would be correct, okay? But it's not really true anymore. He's a media company. You know, the videos are the products.

4:08The audience is an asset. The distribution system is the infrastructure. Once he built attention, he could sell whatever he wanted type thing. You know, historically, the movie business, they made a movie and they needed the infrastructure. They needed the movie theaters. They needed, they needed. Today, they need Netflix or Amazon. And now you see it. Those companies are media companies. they create their own movies rather than having to pay other people to make the movies. Then they own it. They own it forever. They get the royalty forever type thing. I mean, Mr. Beast, let's think about it.

4:42He sells chocolates, right? Burgers, merch, software, you name it. He's got sponsorships on every dang thing. The audience came first and everything else followed. What is it about a media first company? I mean, if you think of a business with a media first mentality type thing, And not every company needs to jump into the deep end of this, but everyone has to be at least in the shallow end of the pool on this. I think most businesses get it backwards. They build a product and try to find an audience. Modern companies, they build an audience first and then sell products to that companies. If you look at some of the famous people out there that have done this, the Conor McGregors, I mean, he went and built a fame and then built a whiskey company to go and sell proper number 12.

5:30We see this with so many celebrities out there in the marketplace. It's a massive shift, really. Attention has become the asset. The Kardashians are a brilliant example of how, you know, you create billionaires out of the makeup business because you've got the focus of people out there. I guess it's important for us to understand that content compounds, right? One advertisement might last a few days or even a few hours. One piece of content can last for years. Think about this podcast episode. I don't know when you're watching this. You might be watching this five years from now. Now, you might be a subscriber, so you got it immediately, but you never know when someone's listening in.

6:08The YouTube video, I remember being in touch with a prospect recently. They watched a YouTube video of us from 12 years ago, an article that goes on forever off of your blog, a book that you published, a webinar that you recorded and put out there into the marketplace. Those assets, I know they continue working for me, and they'll do the same for you. It's months later, years later. The statement of content compounds has to sink in at some point in time. Think about this, right? I'm on a pod. You're listening to this pod or watching this pod wherever you're at. One of the reasons podcasts are exploding is trust.

6:46People spend 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes with you repeatedly. And you start thinking about the familiarity that brings. You become familiar with someone whose podcast you watch. Joe Rogan has been an amazing example of that out there in the marketplace. And that familiarity creates trust. People trust him. Why do politicians go on Joe Rogan's podcast? Because the people who watch Joe Rogan trust Joe Rogan. Trust creates business. There's no two ways about it. The podcast is no longer just a marketing channel. It is a trust-building machine. And I personally think every CEO should have a podcast.

7:26not because pods make money most of them don't let's be blunt around that at least not directly the value comes though from the authority that it builds the relationships I know the number of pods where I've interviewed someone that I wanted to have a business relationship with that person and bringing them on the pod got the relationship happening I don't think I would have got the relationship if I didn't have a pod to do that with. So it's almost a form of networking, if that makes sense. But it's definitely positioning. It's definitely trust building. The pod gives you permission in many ways to speak with extraordinary people.

8:06And that's a huge advantage in today's marketplace. You know, I don't think Joe Rogan would have become friends with President Trump if he was still just the guy announcing at UFC events. Having the pod took him into a totally different realm of who he gets to speak with every week. Theo Vaughn, not a chance that Theo Vaughn got the relationship with all those people if he hadn't had a big pod. You know, that's the thing about it. So in this relationship economy, think about this. If I invite someone onto a podcast and I spend an hour with them or a half an hour with them, we have a conversation, We build rapport.

8:45We create a relationship. Now compare that to cold outreach, okay? Which one's easier? The podcast becomes a relationship infrastructure. In my books, I always think of it this way. If I was to meet someone I wanted to do business with, there's one or two things I can do. I can invite them to a coffee or I can invite them on my podcast. If I invite someone on my podcast, they're like, yeah, that'd be fine. I'd love to do that sort of thing. And it makes it so much easier. I think every CEO should have a pod, whether it's a strategic partner you're inviting on, whether it's a potential customer you're inviting on, whether it's an influencer in your marketplace.

9:23Video is the new website, if that makes sense. For years, websites were your first impression. Today, video, podcasts, YouTube, these are your first impression. Customers want to see who you are. They want to see how you think, what you believe. It's why I go on so many podcasts. I literally go on two podcasts a week so that people can get to know me. Video answers the questions almost instantly, I guess, of, you know, who am I? The businesses that master video right now, especially in pods and interviews and stuff, they're going to build trust faster. It's just the way it is. I mean, I guess the short form machine is exactly that.

10:04It's a short form machine and short form content change distribution. If we go all the way back to the short form video starting, and yes, it was made popular by Instagram, but Vines way back when. But one podcast episode can clearly become 20, 30, 50 clips. You know, one keynote speech becomes multiple LinkedIn posts, several reels, half a dozen shorts, emails to my customer base, blog articles. The content engine allows one idea to become dozens of assets. And I think that's sort of something that we need to take into account, that you can do one interview a week with a customer or a prospect, someone, and that can be your entire week's social media for the next week, seven videos or seven shorts, one long form, blog posts.

10:57All of that can come from one. It's the whole create it once and distribute it everywhere philosophy. And this may be one of the most important media principles of the last 5-10 years. Most businesses create content repeatedly. Elite businesses repurpose relentlessly. I know for me, I do an AI interview each day to write a blog article each day. The AI talks to me, interviews me, I film it. I have a camera filming me talking back to the AI. It usually asks me about 10 questions. So there's 10 short form answers that I have video on every single day. One idea becomes a pod, an article, a video, a social post, emails, presentations.

11:39The goal is leverage. Do the work once, get it going out there forever. It's not about constant creation day in, day out. It's about creating that flywheel, if that makes sense. The flywheel of content from this video, you may be watching this as the full pod. You may be listening to the pod. You may be watching one of the short form videos of it. See, here's how the flywheel works. You create the content. The content creates attention. Attention creates trust. Trust creates leads and leads become customers. And then here's the next part. Customers create stories. Stories create content and the cycle repeats.

12:17Every turn of the wheel gets easier. The more customers you have, the more stories you have, the more customers you interview on your podcast. And it just creates the flywheel effect of your content. And you've got to make sure that that's what you're building every week. And I think that even media companies have to understand, like the biggest media companies, they know who their target audience is and they become known for something. Okay. And if you're going to be a media company, become known for something. I think talking about everything is a mistake. Media companies that do a little bit of this and a little bit of that doesn't work.

12:52If you look at TV channels, they have a specific target audience they talk about one thing the best media companies own a category basically when people think business coaching they think action coach marketing hub spot funnels click funnels personal finance probably dave dave ramsey uh you know social media gary v the goal is category ownership not content volume and i think that's an important thing to keep going deeper into the rabbit hole of the subject you have rather than I talk about scaling a business I don't sit here and talk about oh let's talk about wine yeah I'm in my wine cell of a recording because it's the quietest place in my house with five kids you need a quiet place right and of course it has to have wine in your quiet place anyway it brings us to another idea behind this though is newsletter okay if you're a media company you're going to have the advantage of having your own newsletter and email remains one of the most powerful media assets.

13:52Why? Because you own the database. You own it. Social media platforms will change over time. Algorithms shift. Emails remain. Now, there will be some things about emails that they'll say, okay, now you're going into spam for that. You have to change and allow for those things. But your newsletter, whether it's a straight email or a newsletter, it becomes a direct relationship with your audience. It's one you control. It's one you own. And in my opinion, it should be daily. I think the daily newsletter, the daily email to your customers and yeah, the open rate on daily versus weekly. Weekly open rate is approximately double daily open rate.

14:30But the thing is, the daily open rate will hit twice as many people because even though its open rate is half, you're doing it seven days. There's different people every day opening that thing. So I believe every CEO should probably write a book as well. A book isn't a product. It's a media asset. Think about it. what does the book do? It creates authority, trust positioning, speaking opportunities, media opportunities. Books are one of the highest leverage media tools available today. And again, you can have an AI interview. You can literally take every interview you've ever done, put it into AI and say to it, hey, how would this be a book?

15:06What could I do with this? And boom, all of a sudden it's telling you, well, here's the structure of the book. And then you might interview, you might talk to it. Blows my mind the number of people that don't talk to their AI. It's like, it's called chat GPT. It's not called type GPT. Chat with it. It's Claude. Talk to Claude. You know, perplexity is the only one with a weird name. I don't know. That's a weird one, but I still love it. So AI content revolution. Let's think about this. AI has changed content creation forever. The AI can help with the research, scripting, editing, repurposing, planning, ideation, all of that sort of stuff.

15:42Now, I want to be clear on something. AI slop is still AI slop. All right. Just because you can do it with AI doesn't mean you should. We can do a lot of things in life doesn't mean we should do those things. Let's just leave it at that. But AI, the bottleneck is no longer the content creation. And it's no longer the strategic thinking because AI can help you with that sort of thing. So it's about the consistency of doing it today. So that media moat, one of the reasons media matters so much is it's difficult to replicate. A competitor can copy my pricing, my products, my services, but they can't easily copy my audience.

16:25They can't copy my content library. They can't copy my relationships, the trust I've built with my audiences. Media basically, if it's done right, creates a moat for you. It's a competitive advantage that no one can take, no one can copy, no one can steal from you. And I think that's an important reason to start it. Now, the problem with media is it's like investing. For the first year or two, it feels like nothing is happening, right? And then eventually it starts to move and eventually it just takes off. And that's the big part of it. So I guess that's why we say that attention becomes equity, if that makes sense.

17:04Think about the biggest modern companies. Many started by building attention. They turned attention into equity. Attention becomes customers. It becomes partnerships. It becomes acquisitions, opportunities. I know the number of times where I've sat down and because of the attention I could bring to something, they wanted me to be a part of that, right? My audience became my asset. the people I bought with me added value to that product in a way that it is. It's like with Action Coach, because we have 1 ,100 offices in 85 countries, you think of the number of people that are always calling on Brad, we'd like to get something in front of your Action Coach network.

17:44Great, you know, that's fantastic. What are you offering me type thing, you know, and that's a big part of it. So the future of business, in my opinion, belongs to companies that combine their expertise, their content, trust, distribution, their community. Those five elements really create a tremendous leverage for you and for your business. The media company becomes larger in some cases than the product itself. If the media business gets to a certain size, it can introduce new products, it can introduce new programs, it can introduce new things that makes it even bigger than the previous company that started the building of the media company.

18:24You know, every week I give you some questions to think about, some things to ask yourself. Am I creating content consistently would probably be the first one we need to think about today. Am I building an audience? Am I building authority, trust? All of those things that I've mentioned so far. Am I creating an asset? Not just an asset of my YouTube channel, but am I creating an asset in the video that I'm creating? It's like, I heard Daniel talk about this the other day. He said, Brad, you can go sponsor a seminar and there might be say 500 people at that seminar and you get in front of 500 people one time.

18:57You might even get the email list of it. Or you can go and create a video that gets in front of 500 people today and 500 people next month and 500 people the month after that. So don't simply create activity, create content that compounds. And that brings me back to some of the mistakes I see being made. If you treat your content as marketing, you won't have consistency, you won't have a distribution strategy or a repurposing strategy of your content okay it's you've got to build audience so no no audience building is a big mistake that i see people out there and that's where if you're talking about everything and you're only doing short form content you're not building that trust in those relationships remember the goal isn't content the goal is trust trust leads to conversations that lead to conversions content is simply the vehicle that gets you down that road.

19:51And yeah, it did take a while for my team to convince me. I know that I probably should have listened to them earlier. I probably should have said, yeah, okay, I'll start creating weekly content to the point where now I put aside Wednesdays to create content. Now, it's not the whole day. It's several hours of the day, but it's so valuable to do that sort of thing. So let me give you your action challenge for this week. Ask yourself this question. If I became a media company tomorrow, what would I talk about every week for the next 10 years? What's the subject I'm passionate about, that my customers are passionate about, my future customers are passionate about?

20:27That's probably your category. It's probably your market. It's probably your biggest opportunity. If you're going to interview 2 ,250 people for your pod, what is it that you'd want to talk about on that? So remember this, businesses that dominate this next decade won't just sell products. They'll own attention. They'll own audiences. They'll own trust. Every business is now a media company. The question is whether you're acting like one today.