162. How To Scale a Brand so Fast It Feels illegal w/ Caleb Ralston

25:13But what I will say, and I'm very confident in this, is right now we're in a period of time where I think we're getting to the peak of posturing online. And presenting this fake version of ourselves. Anyone who is doing that is doomed. Anyone who is afraid to share who they actually are as a human, doomed. Meaning, meaning that the only thing that will set you apart is your humanity. I believe that there is a very strong possibility that it won't be long before there is an AI agent or something that is just as good at what I do as me, if not better. But I do believe that there are humans that are going to want to work with humans.

26:01And so the more in my content right now that I put out who I am, my quirks, my isms, all of it, I think that is my competitive advantage. And I think that's what a lot of people's competitive advantage is. So as we're going through this time where I think people are starting to realize like, God damn, I've been fake as fuck online, it's time to really lean into the real you because that's not something that is going to be replicated. Yeah. And that's a way that you can build trust. You talk about that brands and people with personal brands should think about scaling trust. So can you go a little bit deeper into that and talk to us about how can someone scale trust and why is that so important?

26:40Trust is the currency that precedes the transaction. You need trust before a purchase is made. Now, trust, you know, looks different, right? Like you bought this liquid death because you trusted at some level that it'd be good, right? Like that, it just works that way across the board. If we're talking within the space of like educational creators, that's what I'll speak to in scaling trust here. What I like to do is a lot of people will say like, what do I make my content on? And what you want to do is you want to share W's that you've had with clients, customers, whatever. And what you do is you just share case studies, but in a modern way.

27:22The majority of the content that I've worked on for other people for the last five years, 99 % of it is just case studies. That's all it actually is. It's breaking down, we did this and got this result, whether it's for us or for a client or a company that we own. And so by doing that, what you do is you start to pair yourself with those success outcomes, thus creating the brand. And when that happens, your audience starts to trust you more. When your audience starts to trust you more, they stop just hearing you and they start taking action on what you say. When they take action, if you're good, they're going to get the good results.

28:02And then they go from associating you with success outcomes to associating you with their success outcomes. And their trust in what you have to say goes through the roof. They've seen time and time again that they get more back than what they invested with you. And so when you make them aware of an offer that you have, it's a no fucking bringer for them, Right. Like I would argue if you guys put out a really long form piece that everything that you guys teach behind a paywall, you put it out for free. You would have more people sign up, not less. I think you're 100 percent right, because we've seen it time and time again that giving away awesome free value people still won't implement.

28:51You could have you could have everything out there. You can ask one of the smartest people of our generation every question, but you still want the implementation. And I've paid for stuff just like that. I've known what I need to do, but I'm like, I really want to know how this guy would do it. Well, the, you know what I mean? The cohort that we've ran a few times, I would say 99 % of the people, they, they sign up when there's other people teaching similar stuff to us. They sign up because we've done 160 episodes of a podcast where we've given damn near everything we know away for free and talked about it.

29:26So like we've you've spent maybe three, three and a half years listening to us. We've built up that trust. And so it's like, of course, you can go learn the stuff maybe on ChatGPT or from somebody else. Like the information's out there, but you trust us to teach it to you because you've spent so much time with us. And we've like given it pretty much all away for free. And in those early days, I mean, the main, the very first inception of the show was people weren't like receptive to answering questions. So we're like, okay, we're going to be a space where if you have a question, we'll answer on the show.

29:59And so those original like first few episodes were DM based. People were sending us in questions like, and you're just answering every single thing that comes through the door. I still answer every fucking DM, every single one, every comment. I have to go back and get a few. I'm missing a few right now. You're making some bold claims. No, I do, bro. I literally answer every single DM. It's like, I think I have three requests right now, but I zero those things out while I still can. Cause I know even when we're talking to Gary, he's like, I'm about to blow the fuck up. And I'm going to have to hire somebody like Caleb.

30:28You can't do it. No, Gary's like, I get 10 ,000 days. Like it's just not even possible. And he still responds to DMs and it's him. That's the craziest part about it. Cause I remember, cause I were like, there's no way that Gary does it. Gary does all of his fucking DMs. That is insane. And it's also, I think just another level of, of realness that's behind that's behind that guy. Yeah. And he knows what that means. He's grateful for it. Yeah. I'm like a real level. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And I think it's like, it's crazy because you see, I mean, he's had such an impact on my life. He's had an impact on this table's life.

31:02It's crazy that, you know, he still takes the time to, you know, sit back and think about, wow, like I'm really impacting real people's lives from all around the world and from just a video or a book or whatever. If someone wants to build a great brand story, but they don't have those case studies yet and they're kind of starting from scratch, what advice do you have for them? Don't posture as an authority. Yeah, like there's nothing more disgusting than someone who has no reason to be speaking like they know what they're talking about when they don't. And you're entering a terrible competitive landscape if you do that, by the way, because you will get beat out by the people that actually know what they're talking about.

31:42Your competitive advantage when you are coming up is being a vessel for the learning to your audience. You're trial and erroring and sharing those things. I'm the proxy for you guys. Come on my journey. I'm going to spend the money and the time. I'm going to make the mistakes. I'm going to burn the bridges. I'm going to figure this shit out. And you're going to learn from me and avoid all of those things. That should be the frame if you're on your way up. Like don't be the fucking 23-year-old in the basement on TikTok. Not a good move. You see, dude, Miami breathed those guys. Yeah. They got a lot.

32:18Dude, if I had a dollar for every McLaren 19-year-old in a mansion. That's rented. That's rented. Yeah. God. I've been. You've been tempted. I've been tempted, dude. Rip a course. Yeah, dude. You're telling me I could make a million dollars tomorrow. Oh, wait. I got to tell you guys. This is a funny one. Yesterday, I got a DM and the guy, it started off with, dude, are you ready to make$200 million dollars and i was like i gotta fuck with this guy and i sent him back i go brother i've never been more ready where do i sign and he's like you know it gets better because you can tell it's copy and paste it from chat because the font's very bold it's like a bold font and just so many dashes and there's a lot yep a lot of dashes that i'm like brother i am like where do i send the card information to and then i sent him missing a few numbers of the card just to fuck with this guy and he goes hey uh mr b fig i think you're missing a few of the card numbers i'm like no i think they're they're really all there i go wait where's the google meet man i've been waiting for days on this you're really wasting my time you said 200 million like i'm ready to make the 200 million that's what you gotta do with those guys dude fucking let them have it if the biggest source of revenue is an info product i would question it i would genuinely like if if you're gonna teach me how to make a bunch of money and you made a bunch of money off of doing that?

33:38Sketchy. It's the classic guru. Yeah. And what's so funny is I actually didn't know about this world until about three or four years ago. I had, you know, I came up through Gary. And so like he really beats the shit out of that, right? Like he really talks about avoiding all of that. So I went the majority of my career having no idea that there was this section of the internet that even existed. They all sell to each other. It's wild, dude. And when you go talk to like normal people, they're like, what the fuck? Like, why would I? You believe that shit? Like, yeah, it's crazy. He made it very evident that he's on our episode with him.

34:15He's like, we did$365 million in revenue last night. He's like, I run a real fucking business. You wanted to make that very evident to us. Yeah, because there's a lot of people that are posturing and putting out numbers that don't have any backing to it. You said that you've put out over 5 ,000 videos, which is pretty insane. It's a lot of data to be able to gather. It's probably way more than that, but I always will do my best to round down. Oh, okay. Okay. So 70 ,000 videos. Yeah, that's definitely what it was. So you've put out 200 million videos. And I'm going to teach you guys how to make 200 million videos.

34:55What have you noticed from the stuff that you've put out personally and for these other brands that really does move the needle forward to them? because obviously not everything is to sell these brands. I think they maybe have mixing that up a bit where they're like, we just sell, sell, sell, sell. It's not all about sales. Like there's stuff that's just building brand. There's stuff that's for awareness. What have you noticed moves the needle on this stuff? Is it a combination of all these different things? Whoever provides the most value wins. It's just that. Talk to me about a brand though.

35:23That's like, let's use just a random drink brand. Like what is that? Like what is the value for someone like that? you have to reverse engineer your ideal customer. So Liquid Death, they have a very clear move here. They're providing, I would say, entertainment. There's no education there, right? And they are riffing on traditional best practices, right? I think, what's his name? Andy, I think is his name. Yeah, Andy Pearson. Yeah, he just put out a speech recently where he basically talks about completely ignoring all the best practices. And that's their whole strategy. So I think value, to come back to that, comes at different levels.

36:06But I think value just means usefulness. And so if you're in, I'm far more over-indexed on education than entertainment. But on an entertainment level, I think the value is escapism. It's helping me zone out from my stressful life. It's making me laugh when I watch a comedian. right it's making me cry when i watch like a really really good film or something like that so yeah i think it's just figuring that out someone like alex ramosi or gary they have massive teams they're putting out a shit load of content you brought it up earlier how you're like you can't compare yourself to them but you can create systems and processes to create more content and make it sustainable.

36:50So if someone wants to stay consistent and make it sustainable, what advice and tools do you have for them to do that? Once you start making content consistently, look at what your biggest bottleneck is in the process. Okay. So, and, and I, right now I'm going to refer to anybody who has the budget to even hire one person, even, even like a contractor or something, not full time. Yeah, maybe like a hybrid person. Totally, absolutely. What you want to do is instead of doing what everyone does and goes, I'm going to hire a videographer, you want to look at what is your limiting factor, what is your constraint in the process.

37:28For example, if you're making solo videos and you have no problem coming up with ideas, no problem filming them, but then the bottleneck is the editing. I got like 15 videos that are ready for posts, but I have not ripped through them. Cool, you're going to hire an editor. It's not looking like a lot of people when we talk to them in the discovery process of potentially becoming a client or a partner with us, a lot of them are like, what's your playbook on how you build a team? I'm like, I have to get to know you first. I don't have a playbook that I run for everybody. The framework is I look at what your skills, preferences, and deficits are, and then I build the team around that.

38:07Same with process. And so what you want to look at is where is the process falling apart? and then that's where you want to attack. Okay, so like in the editing example, cool, you're going to hire an editor. Another example is like instead of hiring the videographer, some people are just putting out written. Like Substack has made it like, there's a lot of people that are going ham right now with just written content and they will blow their brand up just via that, no video. You don't need a videographer then. So the classic kind of frame for how you build a team completely is thrown out the window.

38:40Yeah, that's so interesting. I think I like what you said, though, like not everything. You don't have a cookie cutter way that you work with every single brand. No. And another thing, too, is like if you want to be consistent with it and I'm going to sound, you know, maybe some people would say soft here, but like make it fucking enjoyable. Like quit trying to be a hard O that's just going to put your head down and grind through it. Like for every one of those, there's hundreds of people that give up very quickly. So like make the process enjoyable, meaning I, we made a video and talked about this.

39:14Like what we're doing is for some videos, we're booking a really cool Airbnb in a dope location. I look forward to that. Then my girlfriend and my dog get to come out. Right. I make it a whole experience that's additive. Right. Even simple things like Trevor does a really good job of on a film day. My favorite beverages, snacks are there. Right. Like we order a nice lunch, like all these little things. What's your rider looking like? What? What's your rider looking like? That's why I texted him. He's like, sugar-free Red Bull? He's like, dude, you told me. I would have got them for you. Only red M &Ms?

39:45Like, what do we got? I would have had like a six-pack ready for them in the fridge. Do you guys know Gorilla Mind? Gorilla Mind? I've seen that. Oh, you guys got to get on Gorilla Mind. That's the best energy drink out there, in my opinion. Gorilla Mind. I've seen them on TikTok. Where do I get it at around here? I don't know. Probably like a GNC or something like that. He hasn't stuffed within 100 feet of one of those. So I'll have to go. I'll probably be able to figure that out. That was good. I'm giving it to you. That was good. They are awesome. I fucking love them. They're delicious. They're amazing.

40:14Snacks wise, I like beef sticks. Chomps. Yeah, Chomps. Chomps is like my shit. I would love to someday have them be like a sponsor. I got another one for you, Kate. You got to try Sully. It's a fruit stick. Okay, listen, no other shit in it. It's literally just, it says it on it. It's literally just fruit. It's like a dried piece of mango with like, they have one that's like mango chili salt. You know that like Mexican candy? Yes, yes. Yes. without without without a lot of the other stuff in it it's just literally bullshit chili salt in the mango or they just have mango and guava i tried that one yesterday unbelievable and it's in like a little jerky stick kind of thing like chomps so do you what do you drink with that though because i feel like that's like one of those things that's like you have to drink some water with it yeah yeah you know what i mean like you can't be like down to that with an energy drink i don't like mixing flavors i like okay i just can't you you might have to just sit out about 10 minutes.

41:03Understood. Refresh the taste buds. And then we're going to have to cleanse the palate and everything. We'll get you a saltine cracker on the side. There we go. I'm not going to give you advice on what to pair your snacks and drinks. I'm not an expert on the pairing. I don't like to talk about things I don't know about. Where's your course on how to pair? It's coming soon. Good. $9.97 in the description. Okay, wait. Pairing. You say that's like the key to branding. Come on. What a transition. Let's talk about We've done this show twice. Let's talk about pairing and how it applies to branding and how a brand can pair themselves with something to be associated with how they want their brand to be.

41:38So I believe that pairing is the action you do. Association is what the audience does and brand is the byproduct. So branding, the action, is you pairing yourself with things, people, ideas, concepts. And then if you do that repetitively, that's when the audience starts to inherently associate the two things together and that's when you have the outcome, which is brand. You know, the classic example is Nike with Michael Jordan, right? In the very, very beginning when that happened, it wasn't like game one all of a sudden, cool, Nike is a basketball brand now. No, it took a long time and it took that deliberate pairing over and over and over.

42:21So I think what you want to do is if you've done your brand journey framework, you know what your outcome is, you know what you would need to be known for. Okay, cool. how do I pair myself with those things? Right. And so like for me, if I want to work with big name entrepreneurs, the smart move is to pair myself with big name entrepreneurs, right? And probably have a podcast talking to big name entrepreneurs, helping them with their content. Yeah. All the above. Absolutely. And so I think what we just described is what to do. And that's what the, I would say a select few think about that. The very, very important part that nobody thinks about is what not to pair yourself with.

43:01And this is where I think a lot of people, especially in the internet marketing world, get stuck is they think that all press is good press. They think that, you know, views for view's sake is the right move. We're talking about people that, you know, are making business content and then decide suddenly to start talking politics purely because it gets views and engagement, not because they're passionate around it. And I think these are poor choices that are short-term minded. For example, there are some podcasters out there that have asked me to be on their show and I don't know them as a human, so I am not making any judgments on that.

43:42How dare I? But what I can see publicly online from their brand, I don't want to associate, or what I should say is I don't want a pair and I don't want the audience to associate me with that crowd. You guys are cool. I'm down to be paired with y 'all. But there's some that it's like, there's some that I wouldn't want to. Because then what happens, there's nuance. And we all wish that humans apply nuance. But that's not how it works. They just see things that are similar and they say, you're that. So if I go on all of these scam kind of centric podcasts, I'm a scam. Don't clip that moment, anyone.

44:21one. No, but like, I'm a scam. Just repeat, repeat, repeat. But no, seriously, like that is something that, I mean, it, I believe, and of course this is my world. So I, I look at this at a very granular level, but like using that scam example, uh, there was someone I was working with a couple of years ago. And I remember when I started with them, there was a couple of thumbnails they had on their YouTube channel and across their head on one of the thumbnails, it said scam question mark and i was like why on earth and they're like well you know i quickly dispel like i share in the video that i'm not a scam i'm like you realize that 99 of people don't actually click on your video and watch they just see that they see scam and your face done and so i think that people need to be far more intentional with what they don't pair themselves with not just what they do.

45:15So like a strategic way to go about it, like, for example, if someone wanted to pair themselves with high level entrepreneurs, but they're not there yet where they don't have, you know, access to those people, like, is there a strategic way they can go about that? The next best version of it is to speak about, in this case, entrepreneurs that you admire and why you admire them. It's not going to have the same effect though. Yeah. It's, they're probably going gonna have to build a business and then be able to be on the same level of said entrepreneurs or work for them yes you know get access to them that way right yeah I think there's a million different ways and by the way I want to make sure it's super clear what I'm articulating is my views and values and my my frame or lens that I see this through based on those views and values It's not right.

46:06It's not right or wrong. It just is right and so I think everybody needs to define what their values are In order to know what they should and should not pair themselves with I think I mean probably one of the easier ways to is to just write down What are the things you don't want to be associated with and then you can start to figure out? Okay, great. We got now this con list of what we don't want to do Let's go really far away from all that stuff and start figuring out what this content is gonna look like who we want to associate with what we want to align ourselves with and what our values are.

46:36And then it probably becomes a hell of a lot easier to make content around that stuff. Yes. And I think the people, like, it's kind of interesting, the further up you go and people that are really intelligent when it comes to brand, you notice that they don't pair themselves with many people. They're very, very selective and very careful because the other thing is, is like, you don't know people, right you never know right uh you know off camera i can tell you some crazy stories fuck yeah and so like or on camera we can yeah yeah let's just name names uh just give us one oh man there's so many references there but no but yeah like i just i really think that people should be very intentional about this because what i can tell you is there are people that i've worked for that have done what I'm saying in the opposite direction and they don't like it now.

47:32They look back and like, ah, I would have done that differently. And so like for me, there are a couple of people in my inbox right now and I hope they don't see this, but if they do, I value you as a human. I don't know you, but the brand is not one that I would want to have people associate me with. And so I will not go on those shows. And they're huge. Massive, way bigger audiences than anything I've done so far. I think that just shows you, though, your moral compass. It's like you're not there to get as many views as you can because it doesn't matter. And like Kosta said this a minute ago, he was like, he got a brand deal, wasn't for a brand he wanted to work with, and he's like, not all money is good money.

48:09And I think it's the same thing with like your intention on the Internet. Like, dude, this stuff, it lives forever. Whatever shows you go on, if those characters go on and do ridiculously crazy things, you're so right. You're associated with them. And so you have to be very picky about the people who shows you go on the stuff that you decide to comment on or not to comment on. And I think, you know, it's very apparent. People just say they, I think it's a very common thing. People talk about shit. They just don't know a lot about. Oh, and that's probably a huge root of the problem. Dude. Also for the not accepting sponsors that like don't feel right or a partnership or whatever.

48:46It's super smart because if you go and co-sign this brand and it's dog shit and your whole audience or percentage goes out and buys the thing and they think it's dog shit guess what trust by proxy they think you're dog shit dude i was so tempted the bag was fat i was like brayden are you sure like i asked him i was like should i do this yes it was the right call yeah it was 100 % the right call like brayden i'm going to europe in a few months like i could use this i could use use the bag you text in the discord by the way just so you guys know i really am but that's a long-term decision. I was like, should I maybe just do like UGC?

49:26Like I don't post it. Just some AI generated videos. Like it's not even me. But I also think what's interesting is you could spend a decade building your brand and you're great. And then one bad decision, one bad pairing, everything kind of goes down the drain. I believe it was Gary that said you're only as good as your last at bat. A hundred percent. And I believe that. Can we talk about how long it takes to build a brand though? Because people might see that you put out this six and a half hour course and say, you got 200 ,000 views in a few months. It happens so quickly for you. But the only way you were able to put out that video is if you spend 16 years working with other people and learning brand.

50:10So can you talk about the process and how long it actually takes to build a successful brand? I can't give you a timeline because it's going to be very dependent on so many different factors. But what I do tell people, and this will probably sound kind of shocking, is I say enter this game not expecting any economic outcomes that you desire for the first 36 months. That's three years if you... Oh, dude. You guys are awesome. He's got a calculator right there. If you do that, you will have the proper expectations to stomach the ups and downs. Because what will happen for the majority of people here is they will get nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

50:52One thing will pop and then it'll again be nothing, nothing, nothing. And that's where people get fucked. Yeah. And so like if you go into it saying I'm going to do this for three years and I don't need anything from it. That's when you win. that's how we entered this i could never have imagined that we would have i think it's like 21 22 000 subscribers on youtube off of three videos and we released our last one a week ago so four videos the fourth one has only been up for a week like 22 000 like that's fucking absurd and i didn't go in with those expectations at all because i knew if i did i'd give up immediately I actually, I'll give you my move and you can borrow it if you like.

51:39I did this back when I competed in powerlifting. I do it in everything. I set my expectations ridiculously low. So like when we were doing the course, like I spent probably 16, 17 grand on putting that together. I was literally stoked if we would have gotten a thousand views in the first month. And I told Trevor, I told my girlfriend Kat, I told everybody in my life. I just want a thousand views. That's it. And I think that if you do that now the caveat is, is I'm a highly ambitious person. So I think that's the tension that you need. If you're lazy as fuck, that is a terrible way to approach it for sure.

52:19But if you are the ambitious person, I would argue sometimes potentially sandbagging your expectations can be very helpful. And it sets you up to win because it blows your expectations out of the water. If you're like, yeah, we're just going to do this. We're going to do this awesome thing. we're going to let the market decide and like not let it hurt your feelings. Because I think specifically when we're starting out in like a creative journeys, when you put so much time and effort into something and the market decides that it just didn't go off or for whatever reason you post the wrong time, your thumbnail sucked, your hook wasn't there.

52:50You're like, you get so down on yourself and it's so easy to let those thoughts creep in. Like, man, am I not good at this? What's the reason this thing isn't performing well? and when you lower those expectations something I need to practice more of because I get I get like very excited and it's easy because you're very fired up about the things that you do and you put your time into and you're like this time is so valuable now especially now that you run your own thing it becomes exponentially easier to flip that and say you know I put so much time and effort into this I've quit my job I'm doing this damn thing I know this information is solid why the fuck did this not get more than x and I think that's a really good way that you're looking at it it's not having the audacity to assume that people should listen to my shit i don't care how much effort i put into it effort means nothing to them that's the reality like it sounds impressive for a second but it's like who gives a fuck what my effort was right and so i always it like if that course would have gotten 200 views i would have been like okay cool i did not do a good job plain and simple now i wouldn't beat myself up for it the other thing that i would say to to add a little bit of a depth to it is do this strategically meaning we just released a video last friday two hours on how to lead a media team the tam is tiny the audience that is that is relevant to is like yeah zero right so i don't expect it to perform like the first three videos i wasn't gonna say zero i was saying smaller but i didn't think it was zero but smaller group for sure yeah you're like cmos at companies right yeah which is basically zero if you look at the population on youtube right like it's like it's so small and the likelihood that that's going to catch on is low so again what i like to do we're going really deep on this but i would set up other metrics or ways to define winning.

54:47So for us, when Trevor and I were releasing this video, I was like, I'm going to measure the success of this video based on the DMs that I get and the caliber of people that reach out to me. If I get a bunch of creative directors that are leading the teams for all these personal brands being like, dude, this was fucking fire, win. I don't care how many views. So I believe that typically, again, in the educational space, you're either playing a width or depth game with every piece you put out. I would argue the reason why most people are not successful is because they try to do both. Define which one you're trying to accomplish and then measure against that.

55:23If it's a depth play, don't look at the ranking. Don't look at the views. That's not the game you were playing on that. The amount of times Bryn has come out, we don't live together anymore, but when we did, he'd be like, do you want your ticket to the moon now or later? Did you want to buy it? and then I'd check in on him next day and be like, how'd you do? He's like, ah, dude, we'll get next time. The rocket ship kind of blew up on the way up. It was like an altitude thing. Open the balcony, dude. I'm fucking jumping off. It's all good. You put out so many awesome pieces of content. You've also helped a lot of these brands figure out the frameworks for posting consistently.

55:59Is there a tool that you use? Is it like a Google Doc or a Notion to keep all this stuff organized? And so you can see all these different ideas that people are working on at once. Is there something that you could recommend to our group, our rocks? For the teams, you should have a project manager. Okay. And their output is the organization of the team. Too many of these media teams that I meet with don't prioritize structure, organization, and timelines. And that is how you scale. So for the teams, boom, that's the answer. For the individual, whatever system you find best, I would say. So like if you like, we use Google Docs, we use Notion.

56:45That was a good save, by the way. Thank you. We use Google Docs, we use Notion. So like right now we're in our first six months of business. So we are getting systems dialed up and in play. We've been in the fucking sprint mode because this has gone way different than I expected. So right now our process is I send a voice note to Trevor of like, hey, I had this idea. Or Trevor sends me a link or sends me a concept that he thinks that we could do and we go back and forth in Slack and then he adds it to a list of running ideas that we have. And those running ideas, by the way, are typically, there are backups.

57:20I believe the best version of content is whatever I'm most excited about in the moment. Whatever is top of mind is what is probably going to come through the best in the content. But if we have nothing and we want to put out a video every month, that's the cadence we're trying to hit right now, then cool, we have a running list of ideas that are back there. Where do you come up with your ideas? Is it shower? Or is it Monday morning, 9 a.m.? What's the shower reason? On rides, motorcycle rides. Really? Yeah, if I'm not on a ride. God, that's so sick. I'll show you how to drive one. You ride? He's got training wheels on his.

57:56I lived in Indonesia for a little bit, so I did have a little motorcycle. I learned how to drive the manual. It was fun. Oh, wow. Yeah. Drive manual. I almost fucked this up, dude. Okay. We were, it was like, they gave me a dirt bike the first time. Okay. First, cause you know, they got the mopeds. Yes, of course. It's automatic. Right. So I was like, I want to be cool and get the, we're going to get training wheels first, get the dirt bike and then get the sick motorcycle. Cause I found this guy, he goes, I'll trade you. You go filming stuff with this bike. You can have it for the month. I go, okay, done deal.

58:22So he gave me the practice motorcycle or practice dirt bike. We're kind of on a little bit of a hill. I used to drive a manual car. So like, I understand the concept of how this works, but I, It's like stop traffic, stop and go. And then I had to go and I was like, room. And I'm like wheeling for not trying to do this wheelie for like three seconds. And the guys are like, yeah. And I'm like, didn't mean to do that. Almost died. Terrifying. But I figured it out. I got it down now. Unintentional wheelies are our sketch. Oh, my God. Yeah. I was like, thank God I was wearing a helmet. It's terrifying.

58:51But I now have it down. Seriously. Should we get some in L.A.? No, I don't. We don't know. No, he's in Vegas. He's got wider streets around. there oh no vegas is way worse for riding than la la people are actually like you're taught here as a kid to look out for motorcycles the majority of the country like in there's no other place i've been to in the country where you're ripping down the road and people are moving out of your way in vegas they're like how dare you get by me i want you to be just as slow as me they'll cut in oh weird yeah it's fuck see i keep you know what i get a lot when i'm driving i get a lot of these from the motorcycle guys you know what i'm talking about i don't think you've ever gotten I got a lot of these.

59:30You got a lot of these? They go by and they go. I think it was more. Does it feel good? It feels great because I know I'm like helping you brother. Yeah. It wasn't one of these. No. One of these. A motorcycle did kick my mirror off. Not sure why. Dude, yeah. Story for another day. Never caught the guy. So frustrating. Just, dude, he could have died. I was driving, right? And I have the video footage. I'm in the fast lane for like three minutes. Now, nowhere, I just get speared with his foot and he kicked off my mirror. And I'm like, I think he was trying to get another guy. Yeah. Then he flipped me off and stayed there.

1:00:00I was like, dude, you could have died. What are you doing? It was crazy. Do you make your own merch? We'll get back to the conscious stuff, but that's fucking sick. What's the back of it look like? It's the same logo and it just says brand over everything. Just little limited things that I get to wear. That's the example. That's how you're making the money. Yes. You're not selling the info product. You're selling the merch. Yeah. Actually, here's a little thing for anybody who is exploring this. Make your content and wear any merch in it for like a year, two years, and never release it.

1:00:38And then what? That's it. And then release it? If you make content that people like, they will want it. Fuck yeah. And the more you pent up that demand, the better that it will go over. A lot of people, I think, try to release merch before anyone cares about them. Yeah. And that's just like an uphill battle. We did that. It was fun, dude. No, the best thing that you should do is don't weigh the hoodies and then pay for the shipping on the hoodies being twice as soon. Yeah, list the hoodies as like... and then make sure they're four and a half. That's the thing to do. If you want to run a clothing business, give me a call.

1:01:10So much great advice. You got the chance to obviously work with some massive media teams. But then when you leave, obviously we don't have hundreds of millions of dollars just yet, but we're going to. Never, no. What? You got to just DM Braden's guy. I'll teach you how to make 200 million. 200 million, that guy. I'll put you in contact with him. Please. What was the first person that you brought onto the team? And now, I know you just said you brought on a chief of staff. Like what is, what's this team look like now? Yeah, there is now three of us. First one was Trevor Odom, content director. I realized that I should eat my own dog food.

1:01:46I don't want to be the hairdresser with bad hair or the dentist with shitty teeth. I want to practice what I preach. And if I believe that content is as effective as I've been saying for years for all the people that I work for, well, then I should do the same thing. and uh trevor was a wild character and decided to make a bet on me i actually tried to convince him why i'm not the right person to do this for i have no idea i didn't know if i was going to stick with it i didn't know what it was going to be like putting out a video like we put out our first video and it was kind of like a crapshoot how is this going to go do i like it do i feel comfortable with it i've always been the guy behind the scenes sure i've done a podcast or two here and there but other than that, I had never made like a video where I'm sitting down and talking around my career or my beliefs on content brand and stuff.

1:02:36But I believe that that is one of the most important hires you can make. And so I wanted to put my money where my mouth was. Is there a mindset shift that had to happen? You going from making content and working with these individuals who obviously super comfortable on camera, you're, you're producing it for them, but now you're the one in front of the camera. What's cool is actually other than Gary, even back to my bodybuilding days where I was filming with bodybuilders and stuff, everyone I've ever worked with has gone through the process of becoming comfortable. So I've gotten to see that, whereas a lot of people have seen these people I've worked with and they assume that they're just like naturally like super into it from day one, but very few people are that way.

1:03:21It takes a while to get comfortable, especially if you're doing like any sort of vlogging style shit where it's just like you're actually existing as a human and there's this like fucking weird thing over here. Like that's weird. So I've gotten to see that. So I felt like I had permission to go through a process where I became more comfortable. Yeah, I think the biggest shift, I mean, honestly, I turned to Trevor day one. I was like, all right, I know exactly what I would do with any client we work with. But when it comes to me, what the fuck do we do, dude? Are we shooting photos? Do we need to start writing like a buy?

1:03:55Like, what are we doing? And so I just leaned on him, especially that first month. I was like, so overthinking everything. And so, yeah, he was and still is and will be a very critical hire. And I think that it's what a lot of people should do. Like, you know, I'm in my first year of business. I'm eating into profit that I could be taking to go on another trip or buy another motorcycle or whatever. but I think this is far more valuable and will produce greater results long term for our business than anything that I could do myself. Content is the number one most important thing by far. I think you're so right.

1:04:33Content? Yeah, 100%. Like practicing yourself, like you're practicing every time you put out a video, having an amazing person like Trevor in your corner that's helping you. It's like by far, the reason why I even think about the very beginning of the show, we invested in our gear. We had$15 ,000 of gear,$20 ,000 of shit. So even when we're not great at the show, we don't really know on a podcast yet. At least you came on and you're like, okay, there's three nice cameras pointing at me. There's two nice lights. I understand that these guys are like trying to do this damn thing. It's not like, oh yeah, we have the little camera and you're going to come to our place.

1:05:07You know what I mean? And you just really invest hard in it and try to put out the best possible thing. I think great results happen. We also started this show. You talk about bad practices. we had no like knowing what we know now oh my god we did everything incorrectly yeah i mean we would we would have the uh we wouldn't introduce the guest we would just like get right into it and we'd bs for like 20 minutes about random stuff so you click on this video being like oh this guy's the the concert photographer be like dude so tell me about your night out last night how did that go man how you feeling this morning what was it like today you're just random shit but i think that is important because you're going to get more comfortable creating the content, but then you're also going to become more comfortable like understanding and navigating the game.

1:05:54I feel like just a lot of people, it can feel very overwhelming and there's a lot of advice on the internet and everybody knows that content is important, but you're like, where do I start? How do I do it? And how do I become comfortable like putting myself out there, getting in front of the camera. And I think the key is just starting and understanding that you're probably going to suck at the beginning and allowing yourself to just try to get better 1 % each time you put out a new piece of content. Yes, and manufacture the environment to make it easier. Stop making your goals harder, right? Like I'm not David Goggins.

1:06:32I need shit to be easier, not harder. Like that's not me. They don't know me, son. Who's going to carry the boat? Yeah. I actually see him run by my house all the time. No way. Yeah, it's crazy. Really? Yeah, that dude runs all over Vegas, literally all over Vegas, at least the west side. But yeah, I don't know, man. I think that people make it too complicated. Like when I got to my all-time fattest, I wanted to get back into walking, for example. I promise this is going somewhere. And I had built up the habit of going to Starbucks in the morning and getting a yummy little latte and a little pastry.

1:07:11And I loved listening to a podcast on that drive. So what did I do? I started walking with a latte and a pastry and a podcast. And then that latte turned into an Americano and that pastry turned into a piece of fruit. And then it was just the Americano. And then it was just the walking. You brand these things by deliberately and intentionally pairing yourself with things that you like while doing the activity that maybe you don't. And you create a positive association, AKA you brand it, and then you're more likely to do it. Yeah. Because we're moving, we're getting home offices now. Dude, we're going to be home office guys.

1:07:51Oh my God. Yeah, we're huge. Huge for the team. I don't want to call my shot. If you want to buy your ticket to the moon now, you can. Don't know if it's going there. Stratosphere, here we come. But I'm saying And as great as this apartment was for like this podcast, it felt really difficult at times to create content for ourselves. I just don't think the space really allowed for it. And I'm really excited to have now an environment that's like decorated really well, have a home office where I'm like, I can go in here and I know that this is specifically for work. Tripod lights are set up. I can just go turn the camera on, hit record, and I'm good to go.

1:08:29there's way less friction i think that's important with the with the media teams that like let's talk real quick real quick take that a step further for a second if you like hiking yeah film your shorts not in a studio while you're hiking fuck yeah right like pair making content with things that you like make it fun and and i i was talking to a guy about this and gave that example and he was like well it wasn't very practical we brought like you know all the gear and everything and i was out of and i'm like okay sure you don't have to be doing like the fucking everest hike while you're doing that right like go on a little jaunt through the woods but pairing like we filmed a video a while ago over the course of a motorcycle trip am i riding like my normal thousand mile plus no we're just going around vegas but i love ripping around on my bike so it was fun you help build out these teams for these brands right i know you said like we need a project manager we need organization and there are a few other hires let's say they have nobody but they have budget right they have budget what are you trying to help them facilitate so this oiled machine actually works well yeah so once we establish what like the main bottlenecks are let's say it's editing and then it's filming well then the next thing is most likely when we're working with a brand where they're going to build out a team it's usually like a founder that wants to be as far removed from the content process as possible they don't even want to be in it usually yeah i mean they're you know, the best ones want their thumbprint on it.

1:09:55They want it to be their words, all of that, but they are busy running a business, not being a content creator. And so I believe that 90 % of the success of a video written post, anything online, I would argue it's more, but let's say 90 just to be conservative here is the idea, not how it was shot, not how it was edited, not how it was distributed. It's the concept. Concept wins over all. And so I think having an ideas person is a really good idea. And what you want though, this is the big kicker. If you're interviewing and your ideas person, when you ask them, how do you come up with your ideas?

1:10:39How do you come up with these concepts? And they say, oh, I go into a conference room with a hundred sticky notes and I write out all these ideas and then I pick the ones run the other way. You want somebody who is giving you ideas based on data, right? We all know oneoften.com. I think it's becoming very, very popular these days. This is a great tool to use. You want to look at content that has performed really well and then use that to inform what you make. And so you want the ideas person that's going to be thinking that way. I was about to go deep on that. We can touch that later. But that's a role that I think a lot of people don't realize is super necessary.

1:11:16A huge bottleneck, especially a year into making content is what the fuck do I talk about? Yeah. Now the reality is, is that your ideas person, what they need to be good at is coming up with packaging of the same concepts. Because if you're making educational content, you're going to get to a point, and this is a good thing where you're saying the same shit over and over and over. You need to come up with new scenarios and new creative ways to share that same shit. I also think we oftentimes feel like because we said it once, we can't say it again because everybody's already heard us talking about it.

1:11:53The fact of the matter is no one was probably fucking listening the first time you said it. And there's always a new set of eyes and new set of ears that hasn't seen you before. They haven't discovered you. And so each piece of content that you put out is a new opportunity for somebody new to find you. And to further your actual brand. Again, it is intentionally pairing things consistently. That is what creates the association and the byproduct is brand. And so if you say it one time, people won't associate that with you. Right? Like I am going to continue hammering the brand journey framework over and over and over and over in a million different ways.

1:12:33because I think it is the best way to find clarity for your brand. And I want people to associate me with that. 100%. The key, and this is why another little thing to be able to filter who you should listen to is the people that have retired and are just teaching the game that aren't in the game, they're the ones that are screwed because they're not constantly being presented new scenarios that they can share those principles through, right? Some of the best advice that I got when I left and started building my own thing from some very wise individuals was never, ever remove the tip of the spear.

1:13:13You need to always, if you do end up going into the world of doing a one-to-many offer, you need at least one client you're going deep with so that you can stay dangerous in the weeds. And in my content then, I'm always able to share the same principles through different tactics, different scenarios. And so for those of you that are listening, watching, if you feel like I'm saying the same shit over and over, good. Just figure out creative ways to say it differently. You also have talked about mining when it comes to content. Can we go into that? Can we go into mining as it is associated with content?

1:13:51Yeah. It is not the most effective way to make short form anymore. But I mean, that's a blanket statement that requires a lot of unpacking. for the most part up until the last, I would say two or three years, you could get away with having a long form piece of content and then just mining or clipping that. I call it mining, like mining for gold and finding these little moments. I believe that that still works for some for sure, but I don't think that it is necessarily the blueprint to blow up. It's the blueprint to get started and to have a sustainable process. But if you want to go to the next level, what you want to do is you want to make content contextual to each platform specifically, right?

1:14:39So like you guys tonight, go hang out with the boys and get beers. Tomorrow, you two with your partners, go and get brunch with your parents. And then tomorrow you go to some business networking event. You guys are you at all of those, but you're going to present differently. You're going to use different vocabulary, different examples, talk about different stories, say different things. Still you, but you're presenting yourself contextual to the environment you're in. Social is the same way. So the model of having that pillar piece of content and then mining from there, that's getting you to first base, but we want around home.

1:15:18And And so that's where you're going to see that baseball analogy there for you. Yeah, I got you. You play softball, not baseball. I do play baseball on Saturdays now. Okay. I'm playing actually a doubleheader tomorrow. Fuck yourself. I've hit a wiffle ball before, so we're on the same. I'll show you a video after. We'll talk about it more. You read Harley. Is this way cooler? I don't know about that. Harleys are not cool yet. That's a total another subject I have to talk about. But yeah, I would try to approach it that way. I would make sure that you don't take this approach and try to do it for nine different platforms though because you're not going to be able to stick with it.

1:15:58Again, a common theme that you're probably picking up on is sustainability, right? Like I'm not the kind of guy that's going to be like, go post 12 times a day on all of the different fucking platforms. I would argue that you should do the long form and then mining as phase one on three platforms. And then pick one of those three to start making intentional content for. That's how I would approach it. So I think mining's great. I think it's important. I think it's a strong skillset to have. And I think if you have a podcast, that's definitely the right move for sure, obviously. But for you guys, the higher likelihood of success for a short form clip is gonna be you guys creating something specifically for TikTok, specifically for LinkedIn, specifically for Instagram Reels.

1:16:43Yeah. You advocate for kind of splitting the day up into like maker and manager. I've heard Alex say this a ton of different times. Can you talk about that concept and like what you did to bring that kind of into what you're doing now? Yeah. Paul Graham for a while ago released an amazing maker manager article where he broke down how basically in the workplace, individuals fall into one of two categories, maker or manager. And the unfortunate reality of most corporate structures is they prioritize and build calendars and schedules around manager time. But we've all been an editor. We fucking hate meetings.

1:17:20It's the worst. Worst. Especially that random, if you start your day, let's say at 9 a.m., the 12.30 p.m. meeting is the fucking worst. Right in the middle of the day, you're editing for like three and a half hours, but you're anticipating that that's coming. You're checking. It's kind of like you don't sleep very well before an early flight because you're always like, oh shit, did I oversleep it? Like you don't want to be late to the meeting or whatever. And that's distracting you from getting into that, you know, almighty flow state that we all desire to be in. So I like to, the best version of this, in my opinion, is actually to be a psychopath and stack all your meetings on one or two days of the week.

1:17:58And then you have three or four days that are all for deep work. So, you know, now that I'm in a position where I don't have like a bunch of different departments that I'm having to meet with, I'm able and fortunate to be in a position where I can kind of build this a little bit more like I want. So it's more like Tuesday and Wednesday are my meeting days, Monday, Thursday, Friday, deep work completely. I think that's the best because then I'm able to be in that zone. I'm not distracted about what's coming next. but on the flip side if you are a producer or a manager of a team you move the needle forward by having meetings and so those are important i just prefer that they are carved out in a specific repeatable time frame that the team can predict and know and so for example when i've been in house typically i lean towards just making my mondays awful 8 a.m to 6 p.m just back to back oftentimes with no piss break, like just straight back to backs.

1:18:59But then the rest of my week is way better because I got those meetings out of the way all in one day. And I, and I think, you know, know thyself. I like batching when I'm in a certain headspace. I just want to fucking rip on that. Like after we film a video, for example, I'm shot. I'm not going to go do meetings or get into deep work, you know, even after a podcast, cause I'm still getting used to this. I'm new to this. Right. Like I'm having to like come up with answers on the spot. Like people don't realize like that's tiring when you're new to it. And so like I try to plan my days accordingly.

1:19:33You're doing pretty good though. I will say. Thanks man. I'm trying. How, how has it been going from working for other people for 16 plus years to now running your business and like what systems have you implemented into how you're running your business that um has has helped because i feel like it's kind of similar to uh you're in school for 12 to 15 years right or maybe even longer and then you have that structure of okay we start and then i have a break for winter break i have like first semester winter break or thanksgiving whatever winter break second semester spring break summer and like you're in that structure and then i remember for me it was like kind of weird getting out of school and being like all right i kind of have i can do kind of whatever but like if i don't plan stuff time just kind of goes so that's a long way or long-winded way of me asking like have there been things that you've been able to implement into running your own business that has helped you with the structure planning vacation ahead of time i've never done that before this is the first year that i really actually did that um and that was a wild concept and i went to a lot of friends and i was like guys there's this like crazy thing that you can do at the beginning of the year which is like plan trips and like pay for the ticket ahead of time and they're like yeah dude that's normal it's like holy shit i've never done that i always had my life revolve around my work.

1:21:14And that has gotten me where I am now. But what I'm realizing is now I'm in a different season. And now I'm solving big problems for multiple clients and I need more headspace. So my calendar and my way of operating needs to look differently. Like Fridays are the flex day for me. Sometimes I go in on a client. Sometimes I go in on our content. Sometimes I go in on new business. Sometimes I go for a motorcycle ride. And that's one thing that has been very weird to retrain myself on because I have always equated my value as a human to my hours worked and the grind that I put in. And again, nothing wrong with that.

1:22:08That was great for a season, long season. But that won't take me where I want to go. So I think it's re-looking at how I define my value, where I get my worth from. It's looking at how am I spending my time. But from a systems and processes thing, we're in Q2 right now. We got no systems or process. Chief of staff being hired to help build that out. We've been running so fast. Like I mentioned, like, I'm not proud of the fact that there's 250 people that I haven't responded to. I hate that. It sucks. So we're working on getting that in place. And I never want to pretend. I'll always be honest.

1:22:49You know, we're not dialed on that. That is getting dialed right now. I love that about you. Tell me what, what is a hackathon? What does that mean? I want to know all about hackathons and stuff. you would my dude um well it means many things to many different people i like to run content hackathons and this is a day typically the teams that i've been on or ran are performance oriented it's not like we're making creative for art's sake we're trying to make shit that converts what that means is there becomes a bias towards doing things that are data backed and that is good. I have what, there's this, it's not mine.

1:23:36There's the 70-20-10 framework. 70 % of the content you post should be shit you know is gonna work. 20 % should be iterations on that 70%. 10 % should be shit you have no idea and have never done. The content hackathon is at 10%. Sorry, we're good. Bottle just dropped in the background for anyone who's wondering. If you do that, you will be successful at innovating and being a creator that others copy and emulate. Most people get stuck on the 70%. A select few will do the 20. Very few do the 10. Because the 10 is ambiguous. There is no data to back it. But I believe that's where true innovation occurs.

1:24:14And so I like to carve out, again, high performance team, you can't do this like monthly probably. So I would run it quarterly. And this is a day, typically a Friday, where I carve the entire day out for everybody on the team to make something. Even the project manager, by the way, who never makes any creative, they are making on this day. I'm making on this day. I don't edit videos like ever. I don't, I made shit on that day. And the key is, is you make something that you do not do in your every day. So if you're a short form editor, you're not clipping a fucking podcast. Maybe you're making a short, but you're doing it fundamentally different.

1:24:54That thing that you've had in the back of your head, you're like i wonder if this would work i don't want to take my time to do that and have it flop this is your day for that we and then the real interesting thing is when i first started doing these the way because i like competition i would incentivize a winner we would post all of the posts and we would track the first 72 hours of performance and whoever got the most impressions won but what was i incentivizing safety doing something that's going to win data backed so what did the team do they fucking ripped on shit they were confident on right what i changed because i started to realize i'm i'm misaligning them is now i like to have the team at the end of the day there's like usually i'll just have like a google um slide deck and everybody will have a slide with their name on it and they put their content whatever they made in there and we spend an hour, hour and a half having everybody present what they did, play it, read it, whatever, so that everyone can consume it.

1:25:57And then at the very end, we do an anonymous live vote where I send out a link for everyone to vote. Who did the most innovative thing? This is the team that's with you every single day, putting this content out. No one's going to know what is more innovative for that team more than them. And so by doing that, you're actually aligning what the outcome is you desire with what people are going to want to do because they're incentivized to do it that way. I incentivized it completely incorrect for the first like year and a half of running these. And then I learned it was like, oh man, this is, there's a way better way to do this.

1:26:33And by doing that, that's how we came up, you know, the majority of them flopped when we would post it. But from every content hackathon, we would come away with one thing that we ended up running with long-term. I remember on one of them, I think this is when I did the tweet reels. And like years ago, and then we just started doing those. And then everybody started doing those. I believe that you have to create space where you inform the team it's okay to do something that's going to suck, that's not going to do well. That's the key. Let's go deeper on that because you say you love a flop. How do you instill that mindset into your team?

1:27:16First, you have to instill it in the creator you're working for. Whoever is in the content or making the decisions about whether or not you want to keep doing it or whatever, they need to be on board with that first. because if you, let's say it's a traditional setup and we have like CEO founder and you're the creative director and you're telling the team we love a good flop, but they're coming at the team when it does flop, that doesn't work. So you first have to build that relationship there and both agree with that. And so like, if they don't, well, then you can't use that frame. You really can't.

1:27:55It'll actually backfire even more because that's like the opposite of psychological safety that it creates. Right. And so what I'm always trying to do is create an environment that allows people to experiment and test. So once we have alignment with the person who's in the content, cool. Now it's not that we love a week of flops, that would be a problem. But what I believe is again, and you have to know thyself. That's why I love and hate doing content online because there's so much nuance to this. If your team is not a high performing team and absolutely fucking murdering it and getting lots of impressions and killing it there, this does not apply to you.

1:28:35But if you are one of those, then what you need to do is you need to create an environment where it's okay to fail because that's not what is consistently being done. You're not empowering bad behaviors. You're empowering good behaviors. and so by saying we love a good flop it takes all the fear away from an editor of like i'm trying this thing we're posting it and oh my god we average 150 000 views and this got 7 000 amazing we love a good flop we just got closer to knowing what the next thing that we're going to do is is that something you learned from gary or alex because i feel like gary in my mind he's like let's just fucking rip a bunch of content.

1:29:18I don't really care how well it does. Some might do better than others. And I also feel like Alex probably has a similar mindset as well. I would say I did it as a protection mechanism for me to not feel the pain of something not working. So back to what we were talking about earlier, how I sandbag my expectations. It's that, it's that I I'm, I'm I'm constantly trying to, and I'm realizing this more and more because I'm in a season where I'm able to reflect a little bit more. I'm constantly trying to balance and adjust my expectations or my view of the world or whatever to serve me in that moment, however I need.

1:30:02And so when, you know, I tend to be somebody who gets bored of shit very quickly. And so like on team Gary, for example, uh, I was always trying to move on to the next thing, probably too early. It was still working and we could have milked it. Right. But I had to have that frame of, we love a good flop in order to be willing to try crazy shit that Gary had never done before. I remember the first time that, uh, cause he had told me, he's like, I want to go hard on Tik TOK. Like if you see any trends that make sense for me, fucking run into my office and tell me what to do. I'll do it. And I had to go into that being like, this might not work.

1:30:46And I might be an idiot because up until that point, we had been doing a bunch of trash talk clips and I was going around the office celebrating, you know, 10 million views here, 20 million views here. Like it was crazy. And so when I went into a season of trying new shit, I just had to recalibrate my mindset so that I wouldn't end up, I guess, getting too in my head or give up because of it. Yeah. You also bring up like obviously how important ideas is and you harp on how important it is to like base them off of data. Is there ever a time where you can just have like a gut feeling about an idea and be and have the mindset of like, this is going to, I just know this is going to fucking eat just because I feel it without having it based off of data.

1:31:31And is there a way to kind of balance the two? What is a gut feeling? I would say a gut feeling is data. Okay. I've been here before. This feels familiar, right? When you meet somebody who just within seconds, you're like, something's off here, gut feeling. All that is, is your body recalling a previous moment where you felt that same feeling around somebody who wasn't good. So I would argue it's less data. It's more anecdotal, more subjective, but still a form of data? The answer is yes, a hundred percent. Again, that's why I like the 70, 20, 10. The 10 % gives you the space to be able to act on that and be able to operationalize that.

1:32:16So yes, I absolutely believe that. There are times where we're debating something and it'll come down to Trevor's like, ah, I just have a feeling this is going to work. I'm like, cool, I trust you. And here's the key. For any of you doing that, measure it. Calibrate your gut feelings. Have that gut feeling, put it on record, put it out, and then measure. Was I right? Did it do well? Cool. I'm going to be more confident in my gut feelings. Did it not do well? Where did I go wrong? How could I have predicted this correctly? Or how could I predict this correctly next time? You had the opportunity to be around some of the brightest minds.

1:32:58You got Layla, you got Alex, you got Gary. Is there something from the way that they led their teams and the organization that you want to take into what you're doing? Yes. Tell me. The best, one of the best things I got from Layla was being prepared for an employee when they start. So I remember there's never been an organization where I had this. I had a 30, 60, 90 day document sent to me days before my first day. From Layla. Layla, okay. Knowing what was expected of me for the first three months. How fucking incredible. Every other role I had been in, it's like first two weeks, you don't know what's expected.

1:33:36It's a fire drill. You're on a laptop. You're anxious as fuck because you're like, I don't know what's expected of me. I know I'm not doing much. Like, where do I stand? Bro, first day at the Lakers, I'm on YouTube. I'm just sitting there I'm like When is someone gonna tell me That's wild I swear to god That's fucking wild I literally am sitting there I'm like Is someone gonna say And I remember I remember like the Project manager Who I loved Was like Do you have Like Reich I'm like What is Reich What is Reich It's a Where you manage All the projects And I go I go No I have no idea And she goes Oh let's get you set up on there I'm like Oh my god And then I'm thinking Same thing I'm thinking like I'm not doing I'm not doing stuff right and then i'm afraid i'm like did i ask some person like i don't know i'm like okay i have no idea who to ask it's just it's stressful it's super stressful on an employee and it's momentum yes momentum in the wrong direction get you some w's right when you get in the door yeah or if you don't have clarity it's still momentum in the wrong direction yeah and like another thing that i got from her was like if you hire a players really not to fucking say but like actual gangsters that want to move the needle, you don't need to motivate them.

1:34:49You need to clear the way for them because when they come in, they're going to fucking steamroll. And your key is to not demotivate them, not slow them down. Clear the way, don't bog them down. So that's one. I'd say on how to lead a company. Gary, you guys met him. You saw, right? You know some people that have worked for him and stuff. The thing that he doesn't talk about as much is like, and I think this is so unique, is how willing he is to put people on knowing that they're going to leave and do something else. He's going to invest all of this brand equity, knowledge, time, money into people, and they're going to go off.

1:35:28And some of them are going to leverage it correctly. Some of them will over leverage it. And he just knows that. And he still does it. The fact that he is like unbelievably supportive of people after their time, like the man has been so supportive of me during the season. It's crazy. And I think that's something that I got to witness. He didn't say, Caleb, this is how I lead. I just had the fortunate position of being a videographer and watching him in the toughest scenarios and how he responded to that. And so I've tried to lead teams that way. And now I want to build my, I've tried to reference Trevor, for example, in this podcast and every piece of content that we make as much as fucking possible in a world where the majority of people that are making content want to keep their team hidden behind the scenes, just, you know, do not disclose, keep them under wraps.

1:36:25I want to do the exact opposite. My goal is for Trevor's brand to get way bigger this year than it ever did leading up to this point. And I want more people to be, and I know that like, he's a fucking savage. There's a lot of people. I'm sure even now there are people in his DMs trying to poach him right now. That's a risk. He's shaking his head over there. Like definitely he's a fucking savage. And I want more of those opportunities to come his way, not less. And then it's on me to be better every single week so that he wants to stay here, not go somewhere else rather like, Oh man, I could go on about that for a long time, But I think what it comes down to, the principle that I got from Gary is not leading from a place of insecurity.

1:37:08Okay, we got Layla. We got Gary. From Alex. Dude, a lot of things. But the biggest one that stands out the most is the level of effort into a single piece of work to make it great without having to market the hell out of it. I saw 19 versions of leads. he wrote the book leads 19 different times wow that's what i saw there may be more i don't know that's insane that's a different level of effort than 99.9 percent of people that write books put into their work and so i think for me it was recalibrating like oh wow i remember even as an editor it'd be like i never liked version one never liked version two version one i was always trying to get to right away so I could scrap it and start over.

1:37:56I never liked, but I would usually be pretty good around version five or six. And the level of effort that it takes to make something that stands the test of time, I just saw a new bar, a new level. You don't know what you don't know. And I feel like that also applies in the sense of like being around these high level individuals, it kind of just forces you to see a different level of things that you didn't know before even being around that. Like you're, you know, the classic example is like you're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And the more you can get around a certain caliber of people, the more your bar is going to be raised.

1:38:35I think that's fucking awesome that you've been able to have that experience and not only with just one, but like with multiple. Yeah, very blessed. And it's cool too, because everybody does things differently and you get to, you know, I'm glad you didn't ask this question, but I get asked, you know, who is better, blah, blah, blah. And for me, I never look at it from that frame. I look at like, what are they uniquely gifted at and how can I extract that and make that a part of me? They're also doing two different things. They're similar, but different. And so I don't think it'd be fair to say, oh, who is better?

1:39:09It's like, I agree. I feel like that question every time I'm asked is very unfair. What's something that you're trying to really focus on in these next six months in the business? Clients. Getting the pipeline. No. No. Serving our clients. Serving them. Yeah. I would have answered this differently probably three months ago before we had a crazy amount of inbound, but I don't need to focus on that. I am really carving out more and more time to deliver and over deliver for our clients. So we have scopes and everything. And right now I'm trying to step outside of scope. I I'm trying to over deliver and get as best results as I can, knowing that I'm not in the weeds on it.

1:39:59And, um, yeah, trying to, another big one is meeting and finding new talent. We recruit a lot. Half of our clients we're building their team out with them. And so I need to know a lot of creative directors, videographers, video editors. And so a lot of my time right now is going towards either interviewing for active roles or connecting with individuals that I know will hire for somebody six to 18 months down the road. But that's to build out in-house teams, correct? Correct. So our whole model flies at the face of the majority of our industry. The majority of the industry builds agencies that make the client dependent on the agency, and it becomes very difficult to offload.

1:40:40But I've spent the last 16 years in-house. I know what is best for these teams. It's not to be dependent on an agency. So what I try to do is come in and help recruit the right individuals, train them up, and then let them do their thing. If I do my job correctly, they know what to do. I've given them the principles, not the tactics. A lot of people in our space are giving tactics. but you guys know better than anyone those tactics change all the fucking time if you teach tactics you're making them need you forever if you teach principles then you're actually empowering them and helping them serving them more than serving myself but then you know you want to be smart about it so you build a business model around that gary always says put yourself out of business before anyone else does.

1:41:34And agencies do not think that way. And so what happens is one day their client says, we're done. When instead, I believe that they could be far more intentional and build a system, an offer, a plan that serves their clients and doesn't have them all of a sudden find out one day, oh, well, the relationship's over. They planned for it. What is your advice to your 18-year-old self You could go back, wouldn't change the journey. What would you say as you set out on the wild ride on the Harley?

1:42:12I think I would tell myself to keep rolling the way I am and make the decisions around what I want, not what I want people to think of me as. I spent many years being very insecure and getting any sort of value or worth out of my work ethic, which was awesome. And it led to a lot of good things. But I think if I look back, I wish I would have tempered it a little bit more and started learning other areas of life that I can get value out of and worth from. again I wouldn't I wouldn't change it I think I would just tell myself like hey getting worth out of like relationship with family and friends is also good and important and there will come a time where you're going to need it and you'll have wished that you had deposited more into that than just your career and again I'm here because of what I did but I'm also here because of what I did.

1:43:25And so there's certain relationships that I'm working on establishing better now because I didn't invest in those in the years where it was probably most critical. I love it. Caleb, thank you so much for coming on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a phenomenal episode. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button, drop us a comment, leave us a like, and we'll see you guys all next week. Peace.