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- [00:00]
A
Your first three seconds have to create an itch that you do not scratch until the last three seconds. We've sustained over one billion organic views. Not paid nothing. Over a billion a month since 2020.
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B
I've come up with this theory feelings and go with the algorithm.
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A
Hey, would you make this cringy video for three minutes? If you could make 60 grand, anyone
- [00:20]
B
can go viral with the right strategy. Talent is optional.
- [00:24]
A
1000%. You cannot be a people pleaser and build anything meaningful.
- [00:30]
B
Here's something every great leader eventually learns. You cannot grow if you're trying to do everything yourself. This episode is sponsored by Sintra AI. One of the reasons I've been enjoying Sintra is because every AI helper is built to support a different part of your business. For content, I use Sochi to help brainstorm ideas, write captions, and keep my content pipeline moving when I'm preparing for interviews or researching new topics. So Scouty helps me find information faster. Need help writing? That's where Pen comes in. And Cassie, well, she helps me manage customer communication, so I'm not spending my day answering the same questions over and over and over. Think of it like having a specialized assistant working behind the scenes. This isn't about replacing people. It's about removing the bottlenecks. You still bring the vision. You still make the decisions. Sintra Sintra simply helps you execute more efficiently. If you're building a business, growing a brand, or just looking for a smarter way to work, go to Sintra AI backslash BILF. Use code BILF B I L F for 72 off all plans. They also offer 14 day money back guarantees so you can try it with confidence again. Sintra AI Backslash BILF CODE BILF B I L F. Let's get into today's episode. Welcome back to the build pod where authenticity trumps authority. Here at the Bildpod, we love to highlight bosses in their own right. But I especially love when bad bitches come on. I love it. And if you listen, if you have ever scrolled through saw funny memes, you just couldn't stop scrolling. Well, you have to meet today's guest because this chick is unbelievable. CEO of Viralish. I. I mean, I always say I'm like Jewish, but I love the viral lish. I'm. I love it. Welcome to the show, Ms. Adley Kinsman. Woo, girl. Yes.
- [02:23]
A
What's up, Mara? I'm so stoked to be here.
- [02:25]
B
I'm excited for you. But first we have to. We have to just address the fact that you were on the voice we have to talk about that.
- [02:32]
A
Oh, okay. Every time, you guys, if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, please, for the love of God, don't go. Look it up. It's. It was a dare for my sorority sisters, Mara. So it was my first time ever on a stage, like, with a real stage and a microphone. I was blacked out. I don't remember any of it. I was so scared and nervous. But apparently they told me Blake and Christina turned around. I ended up on Team Blake, and that was my introduction to the entertainment industry. But I knew even then, like, that's where I was. I wasn't going to stay in music. I knew it was my gateway to entertainment and entrepreneurship.
- [03:04]
B
I love it, though, but that, you know what, Whatever. But really what's intriguing. So I went on. I had to stalk you a little bit because before the guests come on, I always like to see, like, just what they're doing and a little bit about their content and. And what's funny is, for me, I wouldn't say I'm a content creator. I'm just getting into this whole, you know, viral and trying to get, you know, get my content out there. And I think a lot. I don't think. I know a lot of people are going in this direction where they're becoming content creators. So it is just ironic how you are a CEO. You're. You're thriving. You have over a million followers, and I think the biggest thing that people want to know is like, where do you begin? You know, and what is a content creator? What does that really consist of?
- [03:45]
A
I think step number one, and people arrive here at different times, but ultimately, if you look at anybody that you really look up to and you admire, they have to have the courage to be disliked because you cannot be a people pleaser and build anything meaningful. And I watched that hold me back for a long time. And then now, as I do interviews and things like that, I. I distilled it all down to. I think the difference in. When my business took a quantum leap was putting what I thought about myself over what other people thought about me, because I can't control what they think about me anyways. And I would, especially you guys when it comes to content creation. And we coach thousands and thousands of business owners and solopreneurs and creators now, and I swear, half of our coaching is coaching them emotionally, mentally, and being okay, putting themselves out there and the. The failure that comes along with all the flops.
- [04:39]
B
Yeah.
- [04:39]
A
You know, figuring it out. And you can't Let that fear and that paralyzation that happens in the figuring it out stop you from just going ham and believing in your own future more than you believe in the power of what some stupid comment might say about.
- [04:56]
B
Yeah, I mean, I don't really care about the comments, but you know, content creation and just social media in general, as well as AI, if you don't know about that, you're definitely going to be left behind going forward. So what I'm. How did you even like, make that quantum leap to be like, all right, this is the direction I'm going to go in. And not only am I going to go in, we can talk about the CEO. But when did you really realize, like, what year did you realize that this is where we should be, we should be heading?
- [05:24]
A
So I was in the music industry and I was in like, coming off the Voice. I was in music for about eight years. I knew my future was entertainment. And as you in the music industry, at least historically, you wait for permission from a suit behind a desk to tell you when, where, how, if you're going to be successful, if you're going to be able to entertain people. And it's just full of gatekeepers. And I. That didn't sit too well. And I was like, man, I'm writing, I've got piles of songs and then it's right place, right time. I could wait for a meeting with this big publisher or agent or label for two years and. And then they had Cheerios instead of oatmeal that morning or fought with their wife and a song they would have otherwise loved if they heard it on the lake versus in their stuffy office. That's going to determine the future of my life. No. And so I started making videos and I was really bad at it for a long time. I had a lot of flops, a lot of failures, but I knew that the outcome was I was going to figure this out and I was going to win. And God gives you a lamp to your feet, not a flashlight. So we don't know how long it's going to take, but for me, it was deciding the outcome and committing to whatever it took to get there. And how. I didn't know if that was eight videos or 18,000, but in 26, 17 is when I really. Things really started turning a corner because I got a mentor who had the visibility I wanted. And when I got that mentorship and someone who just showed me what to do. Oh my gosh. Press years into months before, I was in a different stratosphere.
- [06:56]
B
I Mean, I think two key things that you said, number one, you talked about the outcome, which a lot of people, they don't talk about the outcome. So you reverse engineered it, you had the outcome, you know how you were going to get there. But a lot of people have a blueprint not realizing what their outcome is going to be. So that's really important to know. And it's kind of relentless. That relentless, you know, mind frame where I don't give a shit how I'm going to get there, I'm going to get there. And then getting a mentor and a coach because sometimes our egos, myself included, like, I think I, you know, I think I'm funny, I think I know it, I think I, but I, I've come up with this theory, like fuck your feelings and go with the algorithm. That's like my new thing right now, which is so important. I, I, I love that you talked about that, not to mention starting in 2016 because nobody, I wasn't involved with that. I was just posting, you know, for family and friends.
- [07:46]
A
Totally, totally. And I was thankful that I got the introduction to entertainment because it all comes down to you. You had fans, you know, in your music back then and you have a community and people that follow you. So I was having to make content. The difference was it was very self serving. It was like, hey guys, I got a new single out. Please buy it, please stream it, please tell all your friends, nobody cares, nobody cares that you are selling real estate or have a coaching program or whatever you're doing Instagram or TikTok or YouTube to tell people about. And when I started not making my content about me, but making it about them. And that was also help by the help of my mentor. Game changer, absolute game changer. But where you're saying forget your mood, like follow the algorithm for me in defining your future. Do I know exactly where I'm going to end up? No, I have, I knew I was going to entertain on a really wide scale. That was my goal. And I said you've got to be like stubborn in the goal but flexible in the methods. Which is exactly what you said. Like I knew that was my only thing was I want to entertain on my own terms, really, really broadly. And I didn't know what that would look like. Was it going to be a podcast? Was it going to be, am I still going to be on stage? Am I, is it going to be viral videos? I don't care as long as I'm owning my own future and I'm not waiting for permission from some suit behind the desk.
- [09:02]
B
I love that. That you didn't shrink yourself. Basically, you didn't shrink yourself and you said, I'm going to go for it. So where did you begin? You said you made a lot of videos. They flopped. So that's good that I have. I definitely have some kind of. You're making me feel better. Um, you know, it's testing the content, trying to figure out what's working. But for someone that's not a content creator, that's a really hard pill to swallow, especially if you come from an industry that you're successful in. So what do you do? You just. You just do content. Like, where are you getting your content ideas? Like, give us your secret sauce a little bit. Not all of it.
- [09:35]
A
Yes. Now it's 10 years of getting my reps in and I'm. I'm not a systems and Ops person. I'm 10 out of 10 creative. So the ideas for me aren't the hard part. But your algorithm, if you trained it appropriately, like, they. There's endless ideas. Go to the for you page. Look at other people and what's working, but strip the niche off it. Like, you and I could both learn just as much from watching a viral plumbing company or the Milwaukee Public Library as we do from somebody in our niche. Because the mechanics of what make a video work are just the psychology of attention.
- [10:10]
B
Yeah.
- [10:11]
A
And so we've been able to kind of reverse engineer that in. I mean, we've definitely reverse engineered that into a science. We've sustained over 1 billion organic views just from social media, not paid nothing, over a billion a month since 2020. That's not luck. That's. That's structure. That's a framework that allows us to do that so consistently and predictably.
- [10:31]
B
Yeah.
- [10:32]
A
But then once you learn the mechanics of how people consume, you can't really unsee it. And then it's just a reps game. It's just getting your hundreds of bad videos out of the way.
- [10:43]
B
Yeah. And then implementing it. I saw, I went on your. I saw your content and you talk about specific things. You talk about the hook, which I didn't even understood what that meant until, like a few months ago. No, I. I knew. And then the framing, like, when you come in and what you're doing, and I. I think people miss the boat on that. Like, what's appealing visually. And then what you're saying, you know, with, you know, with audio, which is really important. So is that like, is that where you started? Like, how do you even Know that. How do you know where to come into a frame? How do you know what's appealing to the. Where does all this technique come from?
- [11:16]
A
It came from trial and error, and now we've been able to kind of distill it down into a very specific framework that almost you can use as a, as a checklist. Because you nailed the three. There's 10 hook points that we'll teach on. And those are the psychological triggers. A great video has 8 out of 10. And so if you can know those 10 hook points and you can look at any video, you can see how high are the stakes, how relatable was it the polarization level? Like there's all these things that you can think about. And if you're only hitting 2, 2 of the 10 hook points, go back and rework your video and I guarantee you you're going to see more success. Then it's the marriage of topic is, does the market care? How did you pre frame it? What's your text on screen? Do you need text on screen? Is it universally understood? Because then it's going to go wider. Can it appeal to 90% of the population in the first six seconds? Algorithm's really going to open up to you. And so we kind of just have made this checklist, this framework, we call it the billion view formula. And so people can know it and have the head knowledge all day long of this checklist or this framework that we teach them, but where they get caught up is the implementation of it. Yeah, people will do it and then come to our coaching calls and be like, but it flopped. And we're like, now we're just coaching you on the execution of it and tightening that execution. You can know how to swim, but are you any good at it?
- [12:35]
B
Yeah.
- [12:35]
A
And you're like technically doing the right arm motions, but you're not going very fast. Then it's just coaching against the execution. And content is no different.
- [12:43]
B
Okay, so when you, so you switched gears, you go into content creation and then when did you turn it into a business? Because you're, you're CEO of your business. So when did you realize like, oh, shit, I can monetize off of this?
- [12:54]
A
Yeah, it was, this was crazy, dude. So in 2019, end of 2019, Facebook turned on monetization. And then in 2020, I was really getting the hang of it. Like, we're starting to make some money in 2019. And then the world shut down in 2020 and oh my gosh, we went from averaging 20 million views a week, which I was Already stoked with to over 200 million views a week. Over, like it was bonkers because everyone's just on their phones. And we were creating prank videos. This was just me and my husband pranking each other at that time. And then all of our friends are losing their jobs also in the music industry, which got hit really hard. And we're raking it in, Mara. And so I was like, the world's in turmoil, but we're having the time of our lives. And so you can't be very vocal about that. But as our friends were kind of catching on, we told them, like, we can teach you how to make these silly video videos. Like, we're just entertaining the masses while everyone's super sad and we're just making them smile, making them laugh. And so we started teaching our friends. That led into a management division. Then we can't scale. Like a business is going really well now, but I can't tell my little brother or my best friend make more videos because our company can scale. So we ended up hiring actors and we had up to 15 actors on staff at one point making 18 videos a day. And we started all these different channels just entertaining people. Karen's on airplanes, Karen's in parking lots. People love Karen's during COVID like cringe bait, rage bait. Because that like the crazier and really honestly dumber the videos got, the better they would do. And we were getting paid in direct correlation to the views and the watch time. So if we could do a video that did 50 million views, I mean, that's a down payment on a house. Like it was. It's bonkers. And so we were making as many of these as we could. But the marketer in me, in the mission minded, like heart led person that I am and aspire to be was like, I. It's not soul fulfilling to make cringy rage bait videos, but oh my gosh, like, I'm able to put people through college, help my family adopt kids, and like anybody would have done it, you know, like, it was like the adult version of like, I'm from Oklahoma. So it was like when we were kids, hey, would you eat this cockroach for $5 or eat this bug for $5? Now it became the adult version of that where it's like, hey, would you make this cringy video for three minutes if you. You could make 60 grand? Yeah. Yes, I will go in the backyard and make this dumb video for three minutes. And so we just did that at scale. But the marketer in me Knew, okay, why are the bad videos getting so many views? And if I can crack the psychology of like, why this is working, I can probably get attention on better content, like on people's mission, message, product and service. And so I was like the, like a martyr for marketing in my own mind. Like, I'm going to crack this and then I'm going to make all these cringy videos, but I'm going to reverse engineer why they are getting all the attention and then I'm going to go figure out how to get attention on anything. And then we started teaching people how to do that just online so I could train viraless creators from anywhere because more people were laid off than just in Nashville. And that ended up being the spawn of our education division, where now we, we do it for some of the biggest brands in the world. We've done it for Land Rover, Charmin, hp, Airhead, drumstick, raising canes, a bunch of celebrities. But because not everybody can afford that, that's why we started viralish as most people know it, which is where we take those same skill sets that the big brands pay us six figures for.
- [16:33]
B
Right?
- [16:33]
A
And we teach you how to go do it for yourself so you can own your own future.
- [16:37]
B
What, What I love is that the, you know, it says have fun, make videos and don't take yourself too seriously. I absolutely love that. You know, it's like live love and be loved and have. I just, I love that. I love the whole concept behind it, you know? You know, we're in a world right now where everybody is. So I don't know what happened to this world, but if you can't make fun of yourself, right? And you. And you can't have fun with it, like, what are we doing in life? And. And right. Like, and everybody's so PC and everybody is so afraid to say, you know, the way I grew up is like, we made fun of each other and it was fun. Like, it was fun, it was funny. And now you have to be careful of everything that you say and the premise. It's seems like your premise of where all this started is like, let's have fun. It's a shitty time right now. During COVID everybody was depressed, for lack of better words, unless you live in Florida. Because we didn't think it was a real thing. No, we didn't shut down.
- [17:36]
A
Tennessee was right behind you guys. But not as carefree as Florida.
- [17:39]
B
Yeah, we were pretty carefree. We shut down for like a week. But. But it was, it was a sad. It was a terrible Time for a lot of people, depression. And here you come with like these cringy videos that are actually funny and just having fun with it. And from there, you know, you took a passion and turned it into a whole company, into a mission. I mean, that says a lot about you. And you should really, I mean, you should really be so proud of what you're doing.
- [18:03]
A
Thank you so much. That means, that means a ton. Because that's. You see exactly how that transpired. And a lot of people missed that. They think we just were rage baiting people. I don't know why, but it wasn't necessarily just rage bait. You'll be surprised by. We weren't trying to enrage anybody. You'll be surprised by Internet people. Like, we can make a really thoughtful video and people find a reason to get upset.
- [18:22]
B
That's just because people are so salty these days. They'll. They have the most ridiculous reasons. Like, I can't even understand if they don't like what you have to say. Why would you even take the time to write the comment? Just scroll.
- [18:34]
A
Why would you write the.
- [18:35]
B
Who does that? People go on other people's pages and write nasty comments. Who has the time to do this? It's ridiculous.
- [18:42]
A
But then that stops people and then they read the comments and then they let that determine their own self worth. It breaks my heart. And that's a huge mission behind this is to help give people confidence in their own authenticity and ability. And don't let a gatekeeper or a random Internet keyboard warrior dim your light. And like, exactly what you said to me at the very beginning of this podcast, like, can you imagine walking down the aisle at Target and just being like, I hate what's offered here on the shelf. I'm going to write a mean comment to Target. Like scroll past the video.
- [19:15]
B
I wouldn't do that. I don't have time for that.
- [19:18]
A
The same way you wouldn't. It's just an offering. You don't have to watch it.
- [19:21]
B
Yeah, just. Goodbye, scroll. I mean, it's so easy. Scroll off. It makes no sense. So now you're running this company. But did you know? I did see, I was watching something. What were you on? What's the guy's knee? Hard school. Hard knocks.
- [19:35]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [19:36]
B
He came and he talked to you. So you do have a college degree. Is this what you went to school for?
- [19:42]
A
Not strategic communication. I think was my technical degree. It was in marketing. Pr. It was in some type. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I kind of wanted to Go work for a non profit. At the time before the voice happened,
- [19:55]
B
I was just riding the wave. I have a degree in criminal justice. It was easy. All the football players were in there. I said, okay, I'm going. I'm going in criminal justice. That's where I'm going.
- [20:06]
A
That's so funny.
- [20:07]
B
It's so true, though. But. But obviously your marketing degree has helped you out immensely with a huge company that you're running right now. How many employees do you have in your company?
- [20:17]
A
It. It fluctuates, actually, because we have a lot of contractors and it kind of fluctuates. Are we running an event? Are we not? But I'd say full time.
- [20:24]
B
We're.
- [20:25]
A
We're pretty lean. I think we oscillate between like 8 to 20.
- [20:30]
B
Okay. All right.
- [20:32]
A
Depending on what season we're in.
- [20:33]
B
Yeah, but there's a big shift. No. Because you went from being a content creator to becoming a CEO. So what was that like for somebody? Because you were saying, like, you're not systems. I'm not systems. I. I'm not organized. I have no systems. And I'm really not techie. Like, I can tell you the vision. I don't know that I can implement. I could tell you what's going on. But becoming like for me, because I do my. My full time job is I'm an insurance agent. So going from being an agent to running 11 offices, that was a hard shift for me.
- [21:01]
A
Oh, my.
- [21:02]
B
Yeah, that's a hard shift. So. So how does that. The hardest part for me was the systems. I couldn't get organized and I wanted to always be an agent. I couldn't shift from it. Like, I'm like, I want to sell. I don't want to teach to sell. I want to sell. I want that feeling. That was probably the hardest. I want to do it versus trying to teach other people how to do it. That was hard for me.
- [21:24]
A
Yeah, I like the teaching.
- [21:50]
B
Yes. I love. I love what you're. Yes, 100%. There's no way. It's like, yes, exactly. I don't have time. I don't even know what KPI means. I don't know. I don't really know what ROI is. I just know that we got a business, we got to run it, and now everybody else is depending on me. But I'm not smart enough to do all of this. So I hired for. I mean, thank God my husband, he knows all this. So we just threw my husband in there, who. Who doesn't really like people that much. And he runs the back end of everything. Because the really what it is is you hire for what you're not good at. And that, that's what it was for me at least is I brought people in that were better than me at systems organization. Anything that was tech related, anything that, you know, that I couldn't do, and then I just stayed facing, you know, forward facing to the people. That's what I like. I like people. So that was the easiest part for me.
- [22:37]
A
Yes. And that's like the more you can stay in your zone of genius. And for me it's staying in that zone of genius and then being able to toss it over to the line, to a company that can operate efficiently with people who love their jobs and are dedicated to the mission of serving as many people as possible to give them that confidence in how they're showing up online so that they can spend less on ads, so that they can. I mean, we're living in a world of the free advertising. If you can do social media appropriately, you can get millions and millions and millions of free eyeballs to whatever the heck you want. Are you kidding me? Like, this is the best gift I feel like I could give anybody is to learn how to do this efficiently. And so. But yeah, scaling the business side has been the hardest part. And I feel like as a creator for the last two, two and a half years, I feel like I talked myself into a desk job being out of my zone of genius, trying to just wrangle this machine. I'm fortunate to, but also how to make it be a machine and not something that I'm having to drive solely down the highway.
- [23:37]
B
Absolutely. It's definitely a different role as a, like in its entirety because you like to be with the people and then you're trying to figure out, you know, everything else behind it. And then with AI is a huge component in what we're like, that's like a whole other world over here. The AI thing, I mean, that's just like a world and a world and you know, you just go down the rabbit hole with the AI. So that's a whole other thing. But what would you say is the formula or is there a formula to going viral? I think that's what every content creator wants to do. They want to go viral. But what does that even mean? And how do you do that?
- [24:11]
A
I. There's several ways to approach this, this question. First of all, when it comes to actual video structure, like, we're not talking about the theme, we're not talking about your personality, your Magnetism, your presence, faceless or not, the. The hook. And the reason you're going to hear people beat you up about it is because if you don't master that first three to six seconds, literally nothing else that we talk about matters. Your product doesn't matter. Your charisma doesn't matter. Nothing matters if you don't know how to get the attention and compel them to stop with a hook and then sustain them. And so our golden rule, it doesn't matter how long your video is. Your first three seconds have to create an itch that you do not scratch until the last three seconds. So that is two things. You have to have a cause, an emotion, like a visceral reaction in the viewer that has a curiosity gap. And then whatever you make them curious about, do not let your foot off that gas pedal until the end of your video. And that's not me making this up. This is age old storytelling. You look at, look at any sitcom you love, look at any movie you love. Any. If Ross and Rachel stayed together in season two, would we have had 10 seasons? No tension. Yes. So if you are paying off, like giving the whole solution to the whole point of your video in the beginning, in the middle, and not at the end, there's no reason to keep watching it. And what that signals through the algorithm is not valuable if you have a high swipe rate in your first three seconds. If you have low retention, meaning most people aren't watching to the end of your video, you're going to signal to the algorithm that your content is not valuable to the people it shows it to. And so the quickest way to solve your retention issue is by creating tension in that video by the structure of its design.
- [25:57]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. No, that makes sense because I think that's what everybody's trying to do. They want to go viral, so they're coming up with all. This is something that I struggle with as a creator. I'm always trying to figure out what's going to work, even with the podcast, what's a good intro, what's not, you know, is it the. Is. Do you have to have a famous guest? Is it the storyline? Like, what is it? What is going on that people will stop and watch what you have? I think a lot of people, people really struggle with this in its entirety and then they give up. Do you think that most people give up before they even, like, go somewhere with this?
- [26:31]
A
Yeah, because I don't think they're looking at it from the market's perspective. Like, think about it every. When we scroll across something on Instagram, we certainly don't want to be sold something we have to be compelled to watch, something we didn't know that we were going to be interested in. And subconsciously, when you come across a piece of content, you, the viewer is thinking, is this the best thing I could possibly be watching right now? If not, they're scrolling. So you have to compete not just against every other video in your, like, demographic or in your industry, against every other video on the Internet, and not just every other video on the Internet. You're competing against the kid tugging at their leg. You're competing against their email inbox. You're competing against anything else they're thinking about. So that is why that hook matters so much. That's what you're up against. So whether it's a podcast clip or whatever it is, the text you put on screen, the first words out of your mouth determine the value in the viewer's mind. So shock them. Have that curiosity gap, press on a sensibility they didn't know that they had. What are you saying? Like, when you look at the most. The most widely viewed podcast clips, that hook said something that made you interested enough to watch. So get to the point. Like, start in the action, in the meat of it, and you have to be interesting enough. Like, people look at my content and they're like, I don't want to be silly because I'm silly. And, like, you don't have to be silly, but you do have to be interesting. You do have to make people think that this is the best video I could possibly be watching right now, or they'll screw.
- [28:02]
B
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. We. It's the same term. We. You know, it's not that people aren't interested. It's that you're not interesting. And that's a hard pill to say, swallow when you're trying to make content. And I think another big misconception, at least for myself, is are you ever. Are you at a point where you're too old to make content? You know, like I always say, I don't want to get on TikTok. I'm not dancing. I'm in my 40s. I'm not doing it. Like, is there. Can you be a content creator at any age?
- [28:29]
A
1,000%. We coach somebody. Her handles something like Swifty over 50. And so she's Taylor Swift focused for people over 50 who love Taylor Swift and applies life lessons that can be learned through Taylor Swift songs. Like, there's something for everybody. I Mean, you can look at some of the. Look at Mel Robbins, look at Tony Robbins, look at Gary Vee. Like they just got something to say and they make it interesting to consume to the masses. So even if you're a B2B brick and mortar, low TAM business, low total addressable market, meaning a lot of. Not. You don't need a lot of customers. You don't. You're not as big as the biggest name. That's okay, you guys. The Milwaukee Public Library. I've referenced them earlier. They have over a quarter million followers as a localized business that is a library.
- [29:20]
B
Wow.
- [29:21]
A
No one cares about the Milwaukee Public Library, but they make fun and entertaining content and now they're a tourist attraction. Yeah, Judy's Pancakes.
- [29:29]
B
I know Judy's Pancakes. This small town and where is like a Chicago, like some. Right. Some small thing that.
- [29:36]
A
I thought she was in Florida, but I could be wrong.
- [29:38]
B
Maybe. I, I know what you're talking about, though. My husband made me watch this. He was like, you gotta watch this video. This is incredible. Off of Pancakes. Maybe it is in Florida. I don't know, but it's somewhere. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.
- [29:48]
A
I don't care if you're a local hairdresser, anything. Like, if you can be culturally relevant, you'll be contextually relevant by default. Right? So aim bigger. Like if you. Most people just aspire to be. The hair salon people think of when they're in Georgia, the pizza parlor they think of in Chicago. Think bigger than that. Think cultural moments. Everybody likes pizza. And so what do people like pizza? What do they also like? What is it community? Is it laughter? Is it dad jokes? Is it family, friends? Is it beer? Like, have your content speak to all these things. So you're going to widen the amount of people who are aware of you. You have to become aware of somebody before you can buy from them. And so that's what really the difference in what Viralist teaches. We're going to teach you to not talk directly to your core customer all of the time. We're going to teach you to go bigger fish with a bigger net because you have a much better chance finding your dream client when other people know about you and they can send your stuff and you're just fun and relatable. And as a brand, people actually enjoy consuming your content. You've won the advertising game. You're going to make so much money because when you are making. When you are getting millions and millions of views consistently and predictably, it's hard to not make sales. It's hard to not make sales. And that's the difference in what we teach. It is a numbers game. So if we can get you top of funnel numbers for cheap, you're going to save so much money on ads. You're going to save so much money on traditional advertising of any mechanism or mean you're good. And so that is our goal is to just have mass awareness for people as much as possible. And what we do is teach you how to package yourself so you are more interesting, so you even have a shot. Because you have to entertain people.
- [31:26]
B
Yeah.
- [31:27]
A
And earn the right to educate them. And if you can do that, you can earn the right to educate them on whatever you want.
- [31:33]
B
What about. What about niching down? I know that's a big thing that people use. You have to niche down. I mean, I'm kind of mixed on the niching down thing only because I feel like it, but I'm not. I'm not a content creator like you are. I just think the niching down thing kind of boxes you in and limits your audience. You know, like I had a con on and if I niche down no to women entrepreneurs. Right. I'd never be able to fit. How would a con fit in? You know what I mean? So is, do you have to niche down? Does it make you more marketable? Does the algorithm like you better? But you hear that so much niche down.
- [32:06]
A
I don't know. But if you could tell on my last little rant there, I don't believe in that. I believe we teach people in your content specifically to get 90 retention in your first six seconds. Because one, if you can achieve 90 retention in your first six seconds, you'll be in the top 1% of content served up to the algorithm. Less than 1%. And so how can you be widely appealing off the bat rather than saying, if you're trying to recover from bicep surgery, here's three moves to help you heal faster. I'm scrolling. You're scrolling. Everybody who's not immediately recovering from bicep surgery is gone. And if you do that long enough, you will have a suppressed page. You just will versus talk to baseball players. If that's season. Like right now. Get people out there. There's an amazing guy who does this. I think it's @snotdoc NC. Is he growing over 300000 followers talking about sinus surgery? Snot. It's not education. No, because we don't care. We're not on tick tock to learn about sinus surgery. But what he does is he uses other things that are widely interesting people. For him, it's his faith. And so he's is in his full doctor garb with the headlight on his head, about to do surgery in the or and he says, good morning, let's pray. And he just starts praying. And whether you're a person of faith or not. Oh, it, it will compel you. If you are a person of faith, you are, which is a lot of people. That is a very wide, total addressable market. And now I don't have a deviated septum, but guess what? I know two people who do. And I sent them his profile and I said, this guy looks like an amazing surgeon and you're going to get prayed over until he really cares about his job. He's not educating me about snot, about deviated septums. He's going wider, talking a wider group, not niching down, but you can tell what he does. But he's appealing to the larger group of people and now his business is doing just fine.
- [34:08]
B
That's incredible. What about your, the, what is your take on, do you focus on one platform if you're trying to be a content creator or do you think that you should be across every platform from Twitter to, to threads, to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. What's your theory on that?
- [34:24]
A
We say is be present on all. Optimize for one if you can and you can scale into this. But for us it was always, believe it or not, optimizing for Facebook because that was who paid us the most. That's who paid us the most. And that was our breakthrough point. For some people it's LinkedIn that's their primary, but then they'll take their LinkedIn and then repurpose it for threads. Repurpose that LinkedIn theme for an Instagram carousel, you know, repurpose that for a TikTok, whatever. But where is your audience hanging out? What, what's going to make the most sense for you to have your breakthrough, where's your audience? And then do that, but be everywhere. We had somebody who was fighting us on this and they're like, I don't want to do, I don't want to do YouTube. It's stupid. It's a lot of work and I don't understand it. And we were like, Britney, you already made all the content. You're posting it on Instagram and tick tock, post it to YouTube. You've already done the hard part, just put it up there. Guess what is her biggest platform now? YouTube. She just didn't want to do it because she, like my audience isn't there. How do you know? How do you know? Just throw it up there. If you've already made the content, the hard part is done.
- [35:33]
B
I. I love everything that you're saying. I think the biggest fear is people don't like rejection. That's what it comes down to. They don't like rejection and they don't like what other people have to say. They're more worried about what everybody else thinks than what's really what the reality is.
- [35:49]
A
Then what future you thinks, then they're not made for entrepreneurship. I'm feeling really blunt today, but I love that.
- [35:55]
B
No, it's true.
- [35:56]
A
What did I say at the very beginning of this? The courage to be disliked. That is step number one. And it takes a minute. It took me a minute because I love to make people happy and generally did. But when we started going wider and getting more attention, you're gonna get into weird parts of the algorithm. You're gonna command people to say crazy stuff to you, and you have to get over it. You have to be more attached to the outcome that you want for your life than somebody you're never going to meet's opinion of you.
- [36:23]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I also think that people don't realize how important social media is. We actually use it in our business a lot, believe it or not, with insurance, and it's really helped scale our business because we get more recruits, we get more, you know, we get more leads from it, and it's really helped our business in tremendous. Who would think insurance, like, who would ever, you know, ever in a million years? But it's a constantly evolving business, and I feel like if businesses in general don't get on the bandwagon, not necessarily of content creation, but understanding the importance of it and how to use it to monetize their business, their business is going to go stagnant. And I try to preach this to my agents all the time. I'm like, if you don't have a professional Facebook page, LinkedIn page, you know something. Because what do people look to right now? Social proof for anything. You know, I'm going to Japan. What's the first thing I looked at to try to get some kind of recommendations? I went on TikTok. That's where I went. I didn't go to Google. I went right on. I went right to TikTok to see, you know, what the masses are talking about. So it's all about social proof right now. And it's really so smart that you started this so many years ago because you're ahead of. I mean, you're way ahead of the game right now. Way ahead.
- [37:32]
A
I appreciate that. And now I just want to be here for the person that I once was, you know, there was, or I didn't know what I was doing. I had a guy who was several steps ahead of me, guess compressing my time to figuring it out by myself because I believe social media is the. It is the most important advertising vehicle. It is the most important vehicle for relevance and the fact that most people are trying to figure it out by themselves alone when it's so vulnerable. People are like showing us their videos and it's like they're. They're naked, they're scared. Like, the best thing we can do is encourage them and tweak them a little bit to help them master the number one growth engine for their business.
- [38:08]
B
That's incredible. Talk about what you have coming up. I know you have something big coming up right now. So what do you have coming up in the next month?
- [38:15]
A
Yeah, right now, you guys, we're going into a five day challenge model. As we've tested all these different ways to help and be effective for as many people as possible and when we can help people have a massive transformation in a short amount of time. That's the goal. And so I've tried a bunch of different mechanisms to do that, but right now what's working really well is these five day challenges where we help people double their reach in just five days and we can give them unlocks and then they can take that and sustain it far past the five days. But we do it live five days teaching them, and they walk away actually with an AI agent employee, like a creative director, and they just get that with their ticket price at any ticket level. And so I'm very excited about that one. Our next one is June 22nd, and then we're gonna have another one in Aug.
- [39:03]
B
I love that for you. I love that. All right, let's have a little fun with some rapid fire. All right. Consistent. So true or false. Okay. Consistency matters more than quality when building a social media following from scratch.
- [39:17]
A
Oh, true. Because you don't know what quality is until you've been consistent long enough. So in the beginning we say everybody's got 100 bad videos and then they just got to get out. And if you are just consistent, though, you will plateau. It is consistency plus experimentation plus innovation. And so in the beginning, just be consistent, get that muscle going, and you'll learn what quality is over time? Because quality is subjective.
- [39:46]
B
I love that the algorithm rewards authenticity. Brands that try to game it always lose. Or brands that try to fake it always lose eventually.
- [39:56]
A
True. These are not true or false questions though. These all comes with asterisks. And if you guys are like thinking authenticity is a buzzword, fair. So reframe it as transparency. Like if I'm an interior designer and I'm showing the inside of a house that I just designed, show me what it costs as an interior designer. Here's how much this chair costs and here is the more expensive one. But here's where I find my dupes and here's how I. Here's this wallpaper, like break down transparency of your industry. It's a really quick way to grab quick trust.
- [40:28]
B
I feel like the more vulnerable I've become on social media, the better. Like the more likes I get and the more like you can see that more people. Before it was always like very prim and proper, very curated. But the more that I've let my guard down and let people into my life, it's become. My social media has really become a lot more active.
- [40:48]
A
I believe that. I'm not shocked by that in the slightest because people feel like they're attached to your story. They're not just watching the highlight reel, they're invested in the. It's storytelling, it's a journey.
- [40:57]
B
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Most brains that go viral were not prepared for it and it hurt them more than it helped them.
- [41:04]
A
Disagree. I think all press is good press at the end of the day and I've got a lot of evidence to back that up. But it is what you do with it. So even if you're not prepared for it. I wasn't prepared for my first viral. I left a lot of opportunity on the table. I didn't have another viral again for a long time because I didn't understand why that went viral. Once you start reverse engineering it, you're going to be able to do it again and again and again. So you're don't think about it as a one and done. Let's show you how and why that went viral and teach you how to do it sustainably and repeatedly.
- [41:34]
B
Anyone can go viral with the right strategy. Talent is optional.
- [41:40]
A
1000%. Does talent give you an advantage? Sure. Does being tall in basketball help? Yeah, but it is not a requirement. We have taught some very untalented people how to be wildly successful.
- [41:51]
B
I don't love that the brands with the biggest social media followings are not always the ones making the most money from social media.
- [41:59]
A
So true. Oh my gosh. One of my. The people in viral as you just started to less than 2,000 followers, did a deal with the Four Seasons, makes millions of dollars a year. Like, you don't have to have a big audience, but does it help if they're dedicated and you're building it the right way? Absolutely. If I offered you one free billboard in Nashville or 100 free billboards in Nashville for your brand, which would you choose? 100. Because more awareness is going to lead to more attention, which is going to lead to more leads, which is going to lead to more sales. So if you have to choose, choose the bigger one.
- [42:37]
B
Yeah, you want as much exposure as you possibly can get. I mean, this, this episode segment has been absolutely mind blowing. I hope whoever is watching this really sat down with a pen and paper, voice recorder, whatever they do, and really listened to what. Cause your nuggets were incredible. Probably one of the most informative people I've ever. That really gave the secret sauce. A lot of people are weird about it. They don't really like to say what's going on or what they're doing. But I love how you laid it out. Just the formula that anybody can utilize. So if people wanted, like, if I wanted to come hang out with you and join your course, where would I
- [43:12]
A
find you and what would come over to Instagram. And then I think you can eventually you can go to. You should be able to go to viralish forward slash challenge. But if you come over to my Instagram, you'll be able to find everything that you need in all the ways that we can serve you.
- [43:24]
B
And are you looking for anyone specific or. Anyone can be a part.
- [43:27]
A
It's mostly so people who are already making content. Any industry, you're already making content and it's quote, unquote, not working for you. You're in it, you're dedicated, you're doing it, but you're like exhausted by it and you don't know why it's not working. And you need help being unlocked.
- [43:42]
B
Hence the world. Viral. Ish. I love it. It's like you're. You're kind of there, but you're not really, you know, you're kind of trying to go viral.
- [43:50]
A
It started as an attempt at humility, to be honest with you. And then also if we like, not every video goes viral, like some flop. So we're like, we said viral. Ish. Not every.
- [44:00]
B
I love that there's no guarantee over here. Like we're going to. We're going to help you, but we can't promise anything.
- [44:06]
A
So we're going to look you in the eyes and say every single video is crossing a million views. No. But I can say we will significantly increase your batting average.
- [44:14]
B
How many brands have you had the opportunity of making go viral, do you know? Roughly?
- [44:19]
A
Oh, roughly. If, like the ones we do it for, like the big brands just in general, overall, oh, over 30,000.
- [44:27]
B
Wow. That's amazing. That is a proven. That's amazing. I might have to talk to you. We might have to talk after.
- [44:34]
A
Come on in, girl.
- [44:35]
B
Strategies. I love this conversation and I really appreciate you coming on and just being authentic and transparent. Transparent. Not authentic. Transparent over here. And just you opened up your playbook. So many people won't do it. I've spoke to many content creators, spoken to many people in the industry, and they just won't say what's going on. I love how you really just gave the secret sauce and you were open about it and, you know, I hope today's audience really gained a lot from you. I'm pretty sure they did. And I just want to thank you so much for hanging out with me for a little bit. It was incredible.
- [45:08]
A
Well, thanks for the invite, Mara. It's a pleasure. Pleasure is all mine. And yeah, I hope your audience gets out a lot of. A lot out of it as well.
- [45:15]
B
They will. And Instagram is where they're gonna find you anywhere else.
- [45:18]
A
TikTok, YouTube. My name is Adley. A D L E Y Adley Kinsman. If you type that in, you'll find me.
- [45:24]
B
I love that girl. Well, thanks for coming on the build pod. I thoroughly enjoyed it.