← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Why Great Businesses Still Struggle on Social Media with AJ Kumar
01:01:38
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- [00:00]
A
Art. You could get lucky here and there, but the science adds levels and layers of predictability and duplicatableness that helps you actually turn into something.
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B
Is YouTube still the gold standard when it comes to analytics to really tell if your content's any good?
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A
YouTube's been around for a long time. YouTube's also owned by Google, and it's also the second most visited site on the planet. So you have access to a lot of really valuable data. It's. It's not about being the best at what you do. It's about being the best at getting the right people to see it.
- [00:33]
B
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Unemployable podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you are known as the digital maestro, investing over 15 years, growing influencers. There's in Fortune 500 companies including Salesforce, Sony, Intuit, and Zillow. If you leverage that expertise to focus on explosive personal brand growth for founders, CEOs and experts via the limitless company. And are releasing your new book, Guru Inc. Great title. Build an iconic brand and become the go to authority in your niche. Your name can only be AJ Kumar. Welcome.
- [01:07]
A
Thank you for having me.
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B
Yeah. Is it all true?
- [01:16]
A
It's all true. So all there. It's in writing.
- [01:19]
B
We'll be the judge of that.
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A
All right, let's do it.
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B
Here's the opener, man. Is success creating an online personal brand. More art or more science?
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A
It's a blend of both. Okay. I think. I think you need both in anything. Like the art. The art aspect of it is fun. It's. It's interesting, it's exciting. There's a lot to do with it. But to keep things grounded and to move forward and grow, the science aspect is important for that art. You could get lucky here and there, but the science adds levels and layers of predictability and duplicatableness that helps you actually turn into something.
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B
I reviewed a lot of your content online, and one of the best pieces that I enjoyed was the. The piece you did on Emma Chamberlain. And I didn't know who it was. I'm not in that generation. But it was. It's a young. I mean, everybody else probably knows. So, you know, boomer alert. I don't know who Emma Chamberlain is, but, you know, she was a young girl, and she's watching YouTube videos, and her dad's like, you should make videos. So she just starts making these videos and what her. From what I could tell from your video, the secret sauce was in her editing. And it was kind of. She's sitting in history class. And she's zooming in, she's zooming out, she's editing in a certain way and it's non traditional and people just clicked with it. And she probably created her own little style of videos. And you know, she went on to move out to la where you're at, hook up with a bunch of other influencers, become very popular. And now if you look at her online, I mean she's, she one of the major influencers online there, but it was just somebody starting in their bedroom, just, you know, being bored watching YouTube videos and, and for somebody like me, which I really want to unpack during this podcast, I've tried really hard to build a personal brand online. I've spent a lot of money. We have this set, we've got people, we, we promote things and all of that. And it just didn't seem that easy for me. Like, so with, with her it seemed like the art of it was the driver and I mean, or did she get really good at the back end and the analytics and things like that?
- [03:37]
A
I think for a lot of, a lot of YouTubers, especially in the early days, especially someone like her, she, she had an amazing personality and she figured out a way to channel that through YouTube in a very unique way. I studied her a lot actually, especially during the, the early days of me starting my creative agency, the Limitless company, especially with that editing style, it's like, it's almost as if you have the subject, the actress or actor on screen that's communicating, but then you have this like additional layer where you have all of these elements on the screen. So as a viewer, you're not just watching the person, but you're getting an. It's almost like another entity talking to you at the same time. And she did a really fascinating job at how she did that. So the layers of what she was communicating just made it a really enjoyable experience. I think her and a lot of people, especially during that time, weren't as focused on the metrics more so than when she was pumping out videos. She would garner lots of views and lots of views. So to some degree you do start to pay attention to that and start to see. Especially because YouTube as a, as a social media platform had a lot of analytics that, that other platforms didn't necessarily have. So you could see views, you could see retention, you could see where people are dropping off, what people are clicking on. And YouTube's also just a different platform in general compared to a lot of other social media platforms. YouTube is a click and watch Platform, meaning that viewers are consciously choosing to watch you, whereas everything else on social media is essentially being delivered to you.
- [05:18]
B
Interesting. Is YouTube still the gold standard when it comes to analytics to really tell if your content's any good?
- [05:25]
A
YouTube gives you a lot of data. And YouTube's different in that long form videos and short form videos are a different game. And YouTube's been around for a long time. YouTube's also owned by Google and it's also the second most visited site on, on the planet. So you, you have access to a lot of really valuable data that other platforms like TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn is like really behind. Instagram has leveled up in the last two years. TikTok has leveled up drastically where you can see some of this data. But the viewing, the viewing behavior on short form is, is incredibly different than on long form. Right. On long form, people are staying for several minutes at a time. You're consciously making the decision to watch something and you could see, you could see, oh, this is going to be a 10 minute watch. So you're kind of going into it with that in mind. Whereas on short form platforms like TikTok are now like, I just had a meeting with one of my clients and, and this like director at TikTok and he was talking about how TikTok is rewarding videos that are over a minute. They want videos over a minute because they're trying to compete with YouTube. Right? A lot of platforms are. So it's, it's, it's different in that you're playing, you're just playing a different game.
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B
Let's say somebody walks into your business, they've been referred to you, they're 10 to $20 million a year, founder of a business, and they're like, hey, I've finally come to the realization that I need to have a personal brand. Maybe they're doing business in LA where you are, and is that a big enough company to have a personal brand to be important? Okay, all right, so this human walks in your door and what are some of the things you're having your first 30 minute meeting with this person, male, female, whatever. And what are some of the things that you're evaluating while you're having this meeting to see, like how you would advise them to build their personal brand?
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A
Well, I'm really specifically looking to see what this person's looking to.
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B
How much money they have, how much
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A
money they have, how much they want to invest. At the end of the day, how
- [07:46]
B
much, what kind of investment would I, yeah, would, would make, Would Be comfortable
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A
how much you have in your bank account right now.
- [07:52]
B
Yeah. After that. Okay, what's the, what's. How do you evaluate somebody to see like, okay, this person? Because you know what, dude, we grew up watching, you know, who's on our tv. Car dealers and their kids. And you watch these commercials and it's like, these people should never, ever be on television, but they're writing the check, so they're, they're on there.
- [08:13]
A
Right.
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B
Is it kind of the same way for you when you're evaluating whether somebody's going to be any good?
- [08:19]
A
Well, it's, it comes in different ways. There are people that are just generally really good on camera, and that makes my job a lot easier because then they don't need to be coached on that side of things. I've worked with, I work with TV stars before where I've seen somebody go from just like, you know, a civilian to all of a sudden just turning it on, and then all of a sudden they're, they're performing for the camera in this really fascinating, charismatic way. So I've seen that transition. And I do believe that people are essentially an instrument and that they could use their, their words, their tonality, their body language in ways that are like, very, like, alluring. And it, these are skills that people develop. So when people have that understanding, it's different than sometimes people are very successful in their business. Some founders are very successful in their businesses, but they're not necessarily ready to, you know, present themselves on camera. They might not have the ability to, like, pit, you know, think about facial expressions or how to, like, be enthusiastic. They need to learn that. So those are some of the things that, that, like, are considered into how they perform. But at the end of the day, if you want to do it, you can do it. It's just you got to think of it as skills that you got to develop and you got to be, you got to be committed. Like, I know, you know, you have an athletic background. I always talk about social media, content creation, being an audience centered sport. It's a sport. And just like any sport, you need to have that level of discipline and wanting to get better and getting the feedback on improving yourself.
- [09:57]
B
Dude, it's all about the reps. I mean, if, I don't know, we're sitting here the morning after the college football national championship. Kurt Signetti, Indiana Hoosiers beat Miami last night. You know, every, every time you interview them, it's about consistency and, you know, 150 plays and you play one play at a time. And you know, really getting in it, it getting on camera, you just have to get on camera till you're on it long enough, till you just don't care anymore. And you just. Because if you're thinking about what people are thinking about what you're saying, you're not going to do a good job. I will tell you, I've seen and met some actors that have been in small groups or panels and things like that and they're fantastic, successful, well known actors and they can't answer a question. It goes, you know, they're, they're so good scripted or teleprompted and, but when you get them into a conversation it, you know, they're not, they're, they're not as good. I don't think they would be as good on social media.
- [11:02]
A
They haven't had enough PR training. Right? Or media training. Yeah, there's media consultants that exist, especially in la, but now they're, now it's everywhere because Hollywood's no longer limited to just being in la. It's now just becoming something that's more commonplace everywhere. But yeah, not everybody gets that kind of media training. Some think that they don't need it and they don't care. But, and it's not just, it's like there's that saying that practice makes perfect, but it's beyond that. It's perfect, practice makes perfect. So there's lots of people that I see that do the reps, but it's like when you're going to the gym and you're lifting weights, if you're lifting it wrong every time, then you're just going to get better at lifting it wrong every time. You still, you still need somebody that is guiding you into performing in the way that is helping you become better.
- [11:54]
B
Right. So there's the performance aspect to it, that's definitely art. And now you've got somebody and you, you what, what's the next step? You pick a niche or you pick platforms. How do you, you know, how do you progress that conversation?
- [12:13]
A
Well, it all starts with, it starts with creating a strategy first. So even before the strategy conversation comes, it's understanding what is it that they're looking to accomplish. Because a lot of people that I work with want different things. Some people are very successful in what they do. They want to be, they want to be recognized for it. Some people want to grow their business, some people want to retain talent, recruit talent. Right. There's a variety of different things. So much so that I realized over, over my years that social media Organic, or even any type of organic content creation, there needs to be a different way that you're measuring the value for what it is that you're creating. Because it's not like it's not black and white in that, you know, you spend this much money, you get this much money back. Right? That's. The paid ads world is very much that. And that's, that's a, a big problem, especially for experienced business owners, because that's just what they expect. They want to know how much ROI they're going to get. And I immediately have this conversation from the get go because the expectations is the most important part. So over time, I've had a consultant help me develop this concept that we call roac. Return on Attention Created.
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B
Okay.
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A
And it's, it's about the idea that when you're creating organic content, there is a lot of value that gets created over time. And in order to measure that value, we needed a creative way to measure it. So we're basically looking at stories. You can look at the metrics, but the metrics are arbitrary until they have some kind of meaning attached to it. Right? Oh, you know, you're getting 10,000 views, 100,000 views, a million views, you could do that all day long. And then it starts to lose its meaning. Oh, I want 5 million views. But until it's like, to what end? So instead I'm basically looking for stories. So for example, I have this client that we started working with. She's a couple months in, didn't really have anything. And then all of a sudden an old client that she used to work with saw her videos and then reached out to her. And then that led to a proposal being sent that's worth $30,000. So that's an example of Rock Return on Attention created so that this, this person got reignited over time. A lot of things happen. So a big thing that also happens is how people perceive you. Because a lot of what you're doing online is you're changing the way people perceive you in real life. I've worked with clients that are like socialites and to them it was really important for them to be perceived in a certain way in their social circles to where, you know, they've been forgotten. Like people don't remember them. And then all of a sudden when they get like relatively famous again, all of a sudden the conversations change and they start to see this person differently.
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B
Right.
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A
So that becomes a part of it. And then the other thing is also the time horizon. It's like, what are you Expecting. Most people expect when they're, you know, getting into social media, that they're going to do something. And some things can happen month one, month two, month three. But the time horizon is also a different thing that needs to be looked at where it's not about just doing it for six months, it's about doing it for one year, two years, three years, four years, for life, ultimately. And once the time horizons start to shift, then it becomes a different conversation. Like, okay, you have a book deal. I've had a client that she was getting $50,000 for a book deal or $30,000 for a book deal. And then over a few years, as she had a bigger digital media presence, now all of a sudden, she's getting half a million dollars for a book deal. Got it. Now, that doesn't happen overnight. It happens through a lot of work by building this brand online.
- [16:03]
B
So there's a cumulative aspect to it. And so how do you connect the personal brand that somebody gets to commerce, or is it always important? It's what I found is it's one of the more difficult things to do. Right. So in my personal example, we've sold $30 million worth of new franchise fees over the last three years, three and a half years. Okay. Well, I've. The whole time, I've been doing a podcast, 250 episodes. And many of the candidates would say that they were on a car ride and they consumed eight hours of the podcast and they thought it was valuable information. By the way, that's eight hours that they're not listening, looking at somebody else's brand because we're always in competition with another brand. So now I'm getting their attention versus the other people getting their attention. And then if I have, you know, somebody like you, who's famous and other people on, you know, there's social proof and, and so you're getting. But it's like we've never been able to quantify it. So what percentage of that $30 million is attributed to the fact that these people went to my social media, consumed the podcast? They didn't find their way to us through that. But once they got connected with us, then we were able to get more of their attention than a competing brand, and we were able to get in relationship with those people and have the opportunity to win their business, win a relationship, and, you know, go do something very meaningful together. But I have not been able to justify it financially. It's very hard, you know, when you're, when you're helping a client build a personal brand. Do you have strategies to connect them more directly to commerce or is it always going to be this indirect it helped situation?
- [17:56]
A
I think it's both. Some. So to. To what you're saying, both things happen to where sometimes there are direct correlations of this happened, meaning that happened. Sometimes it's an accumulate accumulative effect where a lot of little things happen over time that's contributing to it. It's like it's, it's. It's a part of your business. It's people. Social media is at this place where people look at social media first and influences how people view one another in real life. So it's a part of it. Everyone needs to have it. Just like. Right, right. Like I almost say, it's like we're going to this reality where people are going to be wearing virtual reality glasses all the time. And, and that's like the physical manifestation of what I think already exists, where people already look at their phones for like, I don't know, like maybe it was eight hours a day, seven hours a day, whatever the number is. So almost as, almost as much as we sleep, we're already on their, on our phones. We're also thinking about things that are happening in the digital world all day long anyways. So our conscious mind is already in the digital space. It already exists there. So the fact that you have a platform like social media, a lot of people are hesitant to use it because, you know, I can't connect it to this. But at the end of the day, it's. It's contributing to it. It's one of the channels. You have social media, you have email, you have website, you have podcasts. These are all channels that are all contributing to you having this presence that lives in a world that has billions of people that are connected to it.
- [19:34]
B
Yeah.
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A
And it is hard. It's hard to just make that direct connection. The attribution of things is even hard in paid media, even with, like, when, you know, the iOS update happened seven, eight, nine years ago or so, and it made it hard for a person to track whether their Facebook ads were resulting in conversions. Right. Attribution in general is super hard, but that's why it's important to look out for the different stories that you could gather on whether this is contributing to that.
- [20:10]
B
What would be your thoughts around people allocating dollars that they used to spend with PR firms and allocating them to companies like limitless personal brand companies like yours?
- [20:21]
A
I think a lot more people are doing that. A lot more people are asking me that Question as well. Especially when they're like, like traditional successful CEOs that are now looking into building their personal brand for the first time. I think PR has good value to it in that they could get you placed in different publications and digital PR has a lot of value to it in that, that contributes to you being recommended on AI platforms now. I think it, it does, it does have that, like that nice value to it, but at the same time I think it's something that will enhance your efforts with building your personal brand through social media, through emails, through. I think you need, if, if you were to start with one, you start with building that personal brand first so that your PR efforts have a lot of value to it. Because if you just put energy and emphasis into PR and getting on certain publications, you may get one post out of it here that people might engage, might see, but then kind of dissipate from there. Whereas if you have a personal presence and you have value that you're, you're contributing and sharing online, then as people do see that they still see you and that connection become, that association becomes stronger.
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B
Yeah, is, is there any, is there any brand or any business that you say would be how small is too small? You know, if somebody's, you know, if somebody's got a $500,000 a year, million dollar a year painting business can, should they still build a personal brand?
- [22:05]
A
Here's. Okay, so here's one thing to note is that social media is the new television. So if you're a small business, you would have loved to have gotten a commercial because you know that would have resulted in people watching you and for you to grow your business.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Whether you're a small business and in, you know, in the low six figure range or, or higher, you still gotta advertise, you gotta market, you gotta publicize your, your value in some way, shape or form. Previously you were limited to television, newspaper, radio, et cetera, door knocking, phone calls, et cetera, et cetera. Your online presence allows you to do those things faster, more efficiently and it could be super cost efficient. Like, you don't necessarily need to hire a company like mine to do it. If, if you can't make that investment into it right now, you, that shouldn't stop you. You have all these tools, you have AI at your fingertips to, to give you whatever you, whatever it is you need to do it to where once you get to certain and higher levels, you can start delegating, which I think is just the natural progression of any business owner that wants to be successful. So Looking at social media beyond just, oh, it's, you know, a place where you should post, et cetera. Social media has evolved to something radically different. It's a lot of people think of social media as what it was before, where you have followers, where, you know, you're, you're seeing people from your school or your high school or college or, or you're following famous people to where it's completely based off of interest. People are getting content based off of what they care about. And it's essentially become this new modern television that's a lot more interactive, significantly more interactive. And when you look at it in that respect, you're not just posting content to say, hey, look at me, you're, you're post, you're sharing, you're essentially, you're essentially creating shows, right?
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B
Yeah, you're, you're a producer.
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A
Yeah, a producer, a showrunner, an actor, a writer. You're an artist, right?
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B
Yeah.
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A
The thing I realized over time is that a lot of artists fail because they don't have the other aspect of it. Right. The science aspect of it. So then you just, you create, you create, you create, you create. And then it's like, oh, I don't get why it's not working or why it's not because you're not even paying attention to it. But when you mix that art and science that we talked about earlier, that's when you start to learn and you get better from.
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B
Seems like what elicits a viral video is something that elicits an emotion. Something's funny, something's wacky, it's, it's unbelievable, or it's just, it has a certain amount of uniqueness to it. Do you find that difficult to accomplish for people that are there solely for a business related brand? I mean, it's, it's, you know, when you're doing something that you're off, you're out with your friends, you're out at night, you're, you're doing something crazy. You know, those are the types of things that are, you know, interesting, fun. They give you the dopamine hit. I can't believe that happens. And you're likely to like it or share it or send it to somebody on one of these platforms which feeds the algorithm for business stuff like it, it's, it seems to be that it would have to be somebody that's in business mode that's going to be interested in that, that's going to actually know somebody who might take advantage of that. Is that more challenging?
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A
The way I see. So I see it as a spectrum. It's like there's entertainers and then there's educators.
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B
Okay.
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A
So for somebody to be successful that's a business owner, a founder, an expert, you need to meet somewhere in the middle of edutainment. Because these social platforms are essentially Edgar Entertainment first platforms, and more and more comedians are becoming successful and discovered now because people usually go to social media as a way for escape and they want to feel good with whatever. Whatever it is that they're doing. That's why there's so much emphasis on, oh, you want to have a really good hook. It's about the first few seconds of the, of the video. It's about packaging. So a lot of. A lot of what you're seeing is there's a lot of attention that goes into packaging your content. What people see visually, what they hear, what they read, how your idea is actually, like packaged in a way where it's interesting and that that in itself requires so much, so much of your energy to. Where I've learned over time from different mentors and different ways that I practice in my own, in my own, with my own clients, that you spend more time on the idea and the packaging of it than the actual production of the rest of the content. Because if you. Most people spend too much time on the production of the content, like what you're actually getting within it, but if you can't make the packaging hit, then no one's going to actually get to that point.
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B
Can you tell us more what you mean by packaging, by packaging?
- [27:27]
A
So, for example, on YouTube, packaging is your thumbnail, it's your title, it's the idea. So it's like, it's. For example, I have a client named Neil Patel. He's like one of the top Internet marketers in the world. There was a video that we did with him a few months ago that was about how it was about Google's AI. And we packaged it as. Google's AI is going mainstream. And instead of just kind of being a boring, technical topic, it became a much more wider, appealing topic. And then it even resulted in Google executives seeing that because it got so much traction. So it's essentially like when you take these, when you come up with an idea, it's how are people gonna perceive it? Is it so niche that only a certain percentage of people are gonna see it? Or is it made or is it designed in a way where it has a wider appeal? So that's what it is on YouTube, on TikTok Instagram, you don't have thumbnails like you do with your, with the YouTube video. YouTube video again is click and watch people see the thumbnail first. And now YouTube even designed it where if you hover over a thumbnail, you'll see the first few seconds. So now even the first few seconds becomes part of how you package a video. That's why when you see podcasts like Diary of CEO Podcast, the first few seconds of that is really, really a lot of high energy. And then it starts to calm down. And then when it comes to like TikTok, Instagram, the short form platforms, you could think of the packaging as what they're seeing in the first few seconds of that video. The hook, the visual, the sound, paying more attention to that because that's what gets somebody actually curious to stay essentially. That's where how you're going to hold someone's attention to want to stay. Right.
- [29:19]
B
Observationally, there's education platforms and I think of Grant Cardone, I think of Dave Ramsey, Tony Robbins to a certain extent, maybe Gary Vee. These people are educators. They have education tools that they sell online. So behind the content is a powerful education platform that they get people to get educated about personal finance or retire all these things. Right. And then you, then you have people like Diary of a CEO. I'm not. It's a great show. I mean, I think he's a good interviewer, but is that, is that more entertainment than education or is that kind of a crossover to both? And he sells products. I don't think he sells classes, but he'll, he will, he will sell products.
- [30:09]
A
I think that does have, that does have an intersection of the both. It's essentially like, I would say it's, it's maximizing the entertainment with the educational value to it versus somebody like Alex Cooper, which is more so on the entertainment side. Right, right. So I think what, what he's doing and he's getting into that, he's getting more into that space of more business education. Even if you look at a guy like Alex Hormozi, he's like, he comes off as pure educational in what he's actually speaking about, but he' still entertaining in some way, shape or form.
- [30:46]
B
Right.
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A
He's, he's kind of like when you look at him, he's not just an average Joe looking guy, he's Jack dude wearing a tank top. So even if he's talking in a way that's just sounds purely educational, there's entertainment value all over what he's talking about.
- [31:00]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, and him and Dan Martell. But they, they have their academies, right? So they bring people in and you know, Hormozi's got what Acquisition.com and Dan's got SAS Academy. So, you know, they're, they're building a brand and then they're bringing people into their classes and then they're converting them into various different offerings or even up into investing in and buying their businesses. So it's just a.
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A
Even Cody Sanchez, right, she has her contrarian academy. And I just saw this video of her talking about this recently where, you know, in the beginning she wasn't sure why she was doing it, how to attract things. She was creating these videos and all of a sudden she realized that this is a huge opportunity for deal flow.
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B
Right?
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A
Right. So like I've had a, I've had a client that was, that was in commercial real estate and boring niche, but at the end of the day, it's not like he was like some videos did viral and we did some entertaining stuff, but he was getting deal flow out of it and it became really worth it for him. So again, that goes into that whole conversation of what is it that you want from social media, what is it that you want to publicize and what kind of value it is that you want. And then based off of that, then you can start building a strategy around that. Then you could start thinking about what are the different topics that I want to talk about. And then you could, then you could go into how to then package these topics to fit the format of what people are, are consuming on social media.
- [32:26]
B
Right.
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A
And it goes into that whole aspect of this is everyone's, this is essentially everyone's like show. It's a personal show. You're watching the Alex Hermosi show, the Gary Vaynerchuk show, the Cody Sanchez show. Right. And some people and some brands are full on creating social shows. And that is a huge thing that's happening in 2026 is more and more brands are starting to realize it. There was this, there's this credit card company that helps you pay your rent with the card called Built. And they launched a show called Roomies. And it's like essentially a. All these people that are going from apartments and having all these things that are happening in their lives became entertaining show that does really well and they don't even push the brand that hard. But it becomes part of what is subconsciously seen by, by people that watch it.
- [33:22]
B
So for business owners and business builders, is it more content? More content, more content? I mean, don't back off Keep your foot on the gas in 26.
- [33:31]
A
It's more so creating. It's more so creating content strategically, if it. And that's why I always talk about, think of it as you're a media company and media companies have shows. That's essentially what you're doing. So when you could start to think about how you could package it as shows, you could pilot shows, that's your experimentation process. When you have, when you have like some kind of constraint, like when you think about creativity, when you have anything and everything that you could do, it's really hard to be creative because you could go in all sorts of directions. You don't know what's right. It goes into that art aspect of things. But when you start having like containers and structures and frameworks that you could build on top of and test and experiment with, it makes the content creation process a lot easier. And you could look at other channels, at competitors, at adjacent niches to see what kind of things other brands or people are doing and see what kind of content is working for them. You'll find things called outliers, where they have a certain average number of views for most of their content. But then one content just really sticks out. Then that's an easy way for you to take that and steal like an artist and build something of your own with it.
- [34:45]
B
Nice. I'm interested in talking about timing of content and the first place I want to go is reusing or reconstituting stale content. So the algorithms. You launch something, you launch a piece of content into the world and then you watch and you see what happens. Are you getting the view time, how long, what's the duration, the click through rate, all of the things. Right. And you know, but you have all this content, particularly especially on YouTube, that's very good, but it just hasn't been released lately. Is there a strategy to incorporate your old content with your new content? Or is most of what you're doing all about what have we done lately?
- [35:35]
A
Are you talking about like repurposing old content that has been sitting in the past?
- [35:39]
B
Yeah. Or maybe people haven't seen it. It just, you know, you, I mean, we've got, we did 250 shows. I mean, we've got some incredible episodes that people, very few people saw back in the beginning. So would that be, you know, do you go and you relaunch those things once you have. I guess what I'm trying to get at is, is what is the. How can you harvest value from an inventory of content that you've done over years or is it all just about new creation? So, because I've got this vine account that I really think is going to take off,
- [36:22]
A
that could be fun. Yeah, that's coming back.
- [36:25]
B
Sure.
- [36:27]
A
So you could, ideally, when you're looking at old stuff, it's that you're looking at old stuff so that you could, you could ideate and come up with ways to repackage it into something new. If you're trying to get old content that you've already filmed and done before, what you could do is you could cut it up into shorts. Like if you're talking about podcasts, you could cut that up into shorts and you could get them edited in a much more entertaining way. Like you may have tried it where you had this kind of hook and then you want to change the hook. You could do things like that. Is it worth it? It depends. Is it actually going to go viral like that? Just. That just depends on the amount of effort that you're going to put into doing something like that. Because you could try different hooks, you could have different editing styles, and if you could experiment with it at a fairly high volume and post it on various different accounts, then that'll give you some good data. You might get something that sticks.
- [37:25]
B
Yeah. What's a. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
- [37:29]
A
I was going to say, because that's like. When you think about. A lot of brands are starting to do this too, where they have multiple channels. They have channels even dedicated to experimenting because you don't need a channel that has a lot of followers. It could be any channel. So, like, even Nike has an experiment account where they post content. Now brands are even having like unhinged level caliber channels where they're just doing like hardcore Gen Z crack editing. Like the Emma Chamberlain style that you were talking about earlier. Right. Like some of them are even starting to lean more into that and they're just doing it on these experimental channels and then from those channels they're getting data from it.
- [38:14]
B
Got it. In terms of trends and things that you see in 2026, are there any new platforms, any underutilized channels that you think you're focusing your clients on to get ahead of?
- [38:37]
A
Yeah, long form YouTube. And I'm not talking about podcasts, I'm talking more about like the talking head videos. I'm.
- [38:46]
B
What would be an example of that?
- [38:49]
A
Alex Fromo does a lot of it with my client, Neil Patel. We do a lot of it.
- [38:53]
B
Okay, so him sitting there for an hour.
- [38:56]
A
No, not for an hour. Like 10, 20 minutes.
- [38:59]
B
Okay.
- [39:00]
A
I have a client that's in the health and wellness space and we started doing videos and he's a, he's a leader on epigenetics and we take his really complex subject matter and make it a lot more interesting and simplified. And some of the videos are like 20 minutes long.
- [39:17]
B
Okay.
- [39:18]
A
Because a lot of what's happening now is YouTube is the primary watch streaming platform on television. There was a report by Nielsen that was done just last year that said it was leader in it now. Right. So more and more people are watching YouTube on their TV devices. It's something that everyone just kind of started focusing on short form and did a lot of that. But long form, it's a lot harder. It's not just like, hey, I'm just going to talk like you. You have to go back to what I was saying earlier, that you have to, you have to come up with big ideas, big concepts. Those are the kind of ideas that work really well. There's this strategy that I learned. It's called the CCN fit. So it's core, casual and new. So it's like when you're coming up with these ideas, you want to develop the ideas in a way where they're, they're designed for your core audience, but they'll also be interesting to people that are casual audience members, meaning that they drop in and out of your content and then as well as to brand new audience members. So when you have a CCN fit, then you have a much higher chance of your content getting a lot more traction.
- [40:27]
B
Yeah. Makes a lot of sense maybe. Is that why you. For me, so I have a 21 year old son, grew up in the YouTube generation. Anytime that he's home, YouTube is on our television. And once you start consuming YouTube on your television, it's almost difficult to go back to regular shows because you don't have the command of. Now I can only do so much Cletus McFarland.
- [40:57]
A
Right.
- [41:01]
B
I mean, honestly, my son will walk out of the room and I'll still watch it because they're putting a. But, but it's all fun, right? But there's a. They're putting a huge engine and a brand new race car and then they're going out and they're doing, they're driving it around real fast and doing the things. Interesting story on him. But you know, that's, I mean Those shows are 45 minutes, 30 or 45 minutes long. And then you'll find 13 to 15 minute clips out of a podcast that. But it's almost like a solo, like you're talking about. So you've got an expert on Rogan and he's talking about how the pyramids were really power plants. And he'll go into it and be talking, you know, and it's, it's, it's like really? That's fascinating. Right. So then as he's now, he didn't do that intentionally, but during the course of the conversation he just got on a roll, he was comfortable, he was just talking to Joe. But it ended up being one of these long form YouTube things which was almost like a solo with maybe Joe making one comment in here or there to you know, not his approval or prompt them along or say something that say, that's fascinating. So you know, I, I, you know, I, I'm, I, you know, for, for, for me trying to compete to get franchise candidates, franchise prospects, budding entrepreneurs, people who are interested in, you know, changing their life through business ownership. You know, I'm just like, what, you know, what is, how do I compete in this, I love the word edutainment community? How can I get people entertained enough but also educate them enough that they take us seriously?
- [42:50]
A
It's for most people, it's, it's for most experts. Oftentimes it's because when you're coming up with ideas, they end up being like too niche of ideas and it is the exercise of making it more broad. Right. And then this kind of goes back to that packaging conversation. Right. Cause even the idea is part of this packaging conversation. That's almost always what it is. So before we even like write the script for what it is that you do. And it's a lot of, a lot of what I'm doing with clients is it's very narrative driven, like I'm essentially a storyteller for them. It's like, how do I take this guy that talks about genes, like, you know, how, how your genes affect your life and your health and then create stories around that. You know, I use frameworks like the heroes, the Hero's journey, where you know, there's a, there's a departure, there's a climax, etc. Right. Like I have that kind of framework when I'm scripting the videos and whatnot and then just making it in a way where it's like a big interesting idea. A thumbnail is something that's really interesting. And going back to what I was saying, it's YouTube is a click and watch platform. So you put a lot more emphasis like out of the a hundred percent of the time that you're putting into creating these YouTube videos, you want to put like 60, 70% of your time on the big idea, and it makes the rest of the writing process a lot easier as well, is when you really hone in on what that big idea is, how you're going to package it, what kind of titles are you using, and there's tools that you could use. There's a really good tool that I recommend called Oneoften. Oneoften.com is a software tool that allows you to look at all the different, all these different YouTube channels, certain channels that you want to track, and it organizes all of it based off of what kind of videos are performing really well. Right. So those types of tools help and then it just allows you to see what are other formats that exist and then you being able to create like your own version of that format.
- [44:55]
B
Got it. Talk to me a little bit about Limitless. How do you get your clients? Who, who, who do you like to work with? I think I understand a little bit about the process, but tell us about the business.
- [45:07]
A
Yeah. So we are a social media studio. We primarily work with founder creators. So these are founders of successful businesses that want to now get into content creation. A lot of the times, most of the time these are people that don't have time because they're busy running their business and they have a particular specialized expertise in some field, in some way, shape or form that is very difficult for them to just get somebody to, to mirror. And I'm great at that. I could go into any subject matter with my clients, learn a lot of things about them, and then help essentially like ghostwriting for them in what kind of. With these big ideas that we're talking about. And I'm essentially helping them build their brand on social, whether it's through short form videos or it's through long form videos. So that we create essentially this media engine for them so that their content creation is firing on and then helping them and consulting them on how that connects to their commerce. I call it content in commerce. Content and commerce in concert. So it's creating content, connecting it to commerce, and then having like these different systems and processes to streamline it so that all works together.
- [46:25]
B
Do your clients need to be near you?
- [46:27]
A
No, some. Some clients fly us out to where they're at. Like we have creative directors on staff. That one. One of my creative directors was in the Hamptons just a few months ago. I was in Seattle just a few months ago with another client. Sometimes we're helping our clients Set up their own studios in house. Some clients come to my office here in Hollywood and they want to film at our location. So it varies. The filming aspect is the biggest variable and how they want to accomplish it. But the rest of it is essentially uh, we come up with the ideas with the clients, we come up with the strategy, we script it for them, they approve it, we come up with the packaging, we film it with them. Based off of that variable, we edit the videos, we publish the videos, we analyze the data and then based off of that, we continue to iterate and build a smart content creation engine for them.
- [47:20]
B
Are you doing mostly high production quality type pieces or you know, some of the best stuff is just holding up an iPhone, walking down the street, having a conversation. Do you incorporate both of those strategies?
- [47:32]
A
Yeah, we do both a lot. Everything that we film for short form vertical is almost always an iPhone. Almost always. With the YouTube videos we use more professional cameras. So it's a little bit different with that. But we're not aiming to make it so inauthentic. I mean what the idea is to make it feel as real as possible. So we, we do strategic editing when necessary. Sometimes we add more elements into our editing if it's going to be like a little bit more funny and entertaining. We do it a certain way. But you know, sometimes it fits. It's whatever's enhancing the experience for the viewer in a way that still feels native to the platform.
- [48:10]
B
Got it. And your book Guru Inc. Is coming out middle of February 26th. You can go to Amazon. I did and pre ordered the book so hot off the press. It'll show up when it shows up. But when I get the book, what can I expect to find in it?
- [48:27]
A
We're living in a time where people don't trust. Whether it's institutions or people. It's really interesting. I read this stat the other day that people trust influencers as much as they do politicians. And people don't trust politicians would think more so. It's kind of crazy and this is like damn near the, you know, the used car salesman and realtors. It's not to say that there aren't people that do well. And it's not to say that half of purchases that are made are made through people recommending items. Right? But we live in a place where you need to build authority. How people value you in real life is based off of how they perceive you online. And this book talks about the steps to being able to do that. It's to help you understand and see the big Picture for what. What is going on in our marketplace. And by doing so it'll allow you to navigate through your career or your business in a much more effective way.
- [49:27]
B
Now, do you work with Isabella Publishing? What's the name of the company?
- [49:31]
A
Ben Bella Holtz.
- [49:33]
B
Did you work with Ben Bella and Matt Holtz?
- [49:35]
A
Yeah.
- [49:35]
B
You enjoyed the process there?
- [49:37]
A
Amazing. Top tier. Yeah. The end product was. It's just, it's fascinating. I loved it.
- [49:42]
B
Yeah, I pitched him a book, didn't hear back. So just saying, damn you Matt. But they sent you over so, you know, maybe, maybe there's hope.
- [49:55]
A
There's hope.
- [49:56]
B
But is it going to be so working with them? I assume it's going to be kind of a long form book, 200 pages.
- [50:03]
A
Yeah, just about that. But it was a, it was a super smooth process. Even the, the COVID they design is freaking gorgeous.
- [50:12]
B
I heard they're awesome. I've worked with several people that have worked with them and they do incredible work. From what I, you know the books are great so I can't wait to get it. And now I'm exper with some content I'm experiencing with some shorter form content, like 40 to 60 page books. There are some statistics out there that I have a couple 200 page books out there that I've written over the last, oh gosh, almost nine years now. I think I did one in like 16 and I released another one in 19 so I'm due for another one. I guess I've been saving up but I'm, I'm on this journey of you know, shorter form, 40 to 60 page single topic books and then I can use those kind of as high value, low barrier, lead funnel type things.
- [50:59]
A
What's the book that you did?
- [51:01]
B
It's called. Yeah, Discernment.
- [51:03]
A
Yep, that was good. I went, I kind of flipped through it and kind of looked at a lot of different aspects of it. I loved, I loved the idea. I think that's so. It's such a powerful thing that I never really articulated. But it's so true that you do need to develop this level of discernment especially, especially for me in my field and creative endeavors. Yeah, it's like it's a hard thing to just tell somebody, oh, you know, this is what I want. Whereas you, the more you like pay attention to what it is that you're doing and then being able to teach that becomes so valuable in scaling a business.
- [51:38]
B
Yeah, it was really a reflection on 25 years of building businesses oftentimes poorly, but there's four or five inflection points in your life. And inflection points generally have three things with them. Number one, they've got people involved. It's either people that you care about, people that you're responsible for, maybe your family, people that you want to do something with, or oftentimes people that you want to get away from. And then there's an adventure or an opportunity to do something different, bigger, better, you know, be ambitious, create a bold future, step outside, take what you've learned, leverage it into a new opportunity. And then there's always a risk of loss because not every, anything can go to zero. Nothing's 100%. I mean, look at Enron, look at Arthur Anderson. I mean, these businesses were too big to fail. Certainly our little businesses could fail. So, so, and you know, business, they take investment, maybe money, but also your time, your energy, your opportunity costs. So, you know, it's, it's those three things. It's the people, it's the adventure, and then it's a risk of loss. And if you look back at your inflection points and if, if you could go back and use and look at the decisions that have either took you down a great path or down a negative path and you could apply some discipline filters to those, sometimes you wouldn't have made the same decision again. So what I did was I just looked back at how I, you know, I mean, dude, I was, you know, I don't deserve to be where I'm at. I mean, I, There would be no, there was, you know, there was no indicator of, of potential. There was, you know, this, if there was any signs of potential, they were deeply hidden in me, but somehow just kind of wandering, you know, working really hard and making certain decisions at certain times. So really what discernment was, is I went back and I, and I said, when I made my very best decisions in life, how did I make them? What was like, what, what, what was the, was it my values? Was it, was it, you know, was it my family? Was it, you know, what are the decisions? Was it the people? And now as an investor and a business builder, but also an investor, man, I don't even look at the business until I go deep on the people. I don't let myself fall in love with the business until I see who the people are. Because one of the things that I've learned, and this is a new model, it's not in the book, but it's certain I've got all these models that I'm developing is once you find out how people make their money, you know what to expect from them as a business partner. So, and without going into details, look, there's transactors, there's. There's independent, there's individual contributors, there's team players, there's wealth builders. There's different ways people make their money. And if you can look at the way people made their money, and I teach this to my kids, I'm like, before you go into business with somebody or even go to work for somebody, understand how they make their money, because you will be in that. You will be subject to that universe, or you will live inside of that universe. And if they're purely transactional, then your utility to them will be gone as soon as you are no longer viable inside of a transaction. And that might be fine, like, if you're a stockbroker or you're a deal guy or, you know, like, there's businesses where being a transactor is completely appropriate, but if you're looking to build something that's going to be hard and long term and whatever, then, you know, the first time the transaction doesn't work, then all the money's going to be gone. And, you know, so. So that's kind of the kind of stuff that's in discernment and. But, you know, I don't. Did the people you worked with ever say, hey, A.J. uh, this isn't a book of that. About everything. You know, about everything.
- [55:23]
A
Yeah.
- [55:24]
B
Right.
- [55:24]
A
That was definitely part of the. The development process of, like, I want this and I want to talk about this. I want to talk about that.
- [55:32]
B
No, like. No, that's. That's your next book.
- [55:35]
A
Yeah, it's hard.
- [55:37]
B
It's hard to cut it off.
- [55:38]
A
And it is.
- [55:39]
B
And I'm really intrigued. And I've got one. I've got two going right now, which are. The one is, like, how to start projects and not finish them. No, that's not it. But I've got two. Yeah, that's a short book, actually. I just. It's.
- [55:55]
A
If you go off after page one, it goes blank.
- [55:57]
B
Yeah, it goes blank. That actually would be a great coffee table book. You know, just like a big, thick, blank book.
- [56:05]
A
The first. The first chapter is just like. It just builds up to this anticipation. Then you flip the page and just blank.
- [56:11]
B
No, I would just. I would just. I would have this beautiful cover. It'd be hard. It'd be hardcover, and It'd be maybe 100 pages oversized, and it would just open up. The first page would say, like, this. That's it. So people would pay for that, yeah, I would pay for that. And gets a chuckle. Yeah, that breaks the ice with the new perspective in laws. But now these, these, you know, I think single topic books, there's, there is a statistic that, and I heard it and you know like 82% of statistics are made up but like people will read 90% of a 40 to 60 page book because, you know, and I have a lot of books. I get books in almost every week and I'm going to go through the one chapter, I'll go through the second chapter and then I'm going to start flipping and I'm going to highlight things and once I feel like I've got it, if I don't have time, I mean I may or may not get back to it, but if you gimme a nice little, you know, one airplane ride, airplane read. Yeah, yeah, I'll do it. I'll finish it.
- [57:15]
A
Yeah, the momentum's there when you, when you know it's short versus the other one where you kind of have to prepare and like I got a great time for it.
- [57:22]
B
Well then think about it. Like there's no, there's no words to waste. You're not trying to fill anything. It's like I, yeah, I think I'm done. It's just done.
- [57:30]
A
I got what I needed.
- [57:32]
B
Yeah, well, we'll see though. But you can't charge that much for those.
- [57:36]
A
Nah, different. I think it's a different game.
- [57:39]
B
Well, as long as people are reading, I'm happy to be honest with you. Put the phones down, pick up the book.
- [57:44]
A
Yeah, it's nice to read every once in a while. Bust out your Kindle. I do a lot of audiobooks or I do a lot of. I started doing Notebook LM a lot. I don't know if you ever used that. Have you used it? No, it's by Google. It's a Google product called Notebook lm. And you could just put a lot of text, like large sums of text. And it's an AI that'll help you do whatever you want with it. And then it even sources the spots on the book where it talks about those things. It creates mind maps, it creates presentations, flashcards. It's like it's a really great way to accelerate your learning.
- [58:23]
B
Piece of hardware?
- [58:24]
A
No, it's just, it's Notebook lm. It's a free software by Google.
- [58:29]
B
Okay.
- [58:30]
A
Yeah, it's totally worth it. You could put a bunch of books text about like if, especially if you're diving into just like one like a subject matter like, hey, I Want to learn? I want to learn everything. I want everything possible on social media. And you just get all sorts of books and texts and blogs and video transcripts. Throw it all in there and then you could start learning from it.
- [58:51]
B
Okay. All right. And you hit it with prompts.
- [58:55]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's just an AI that's built in.
- [58:57]
B
Nice, nice. Okay, well, I've got. And anything else about this? 1 of 10. I got 1 of 10.com. I got NotebookLM. These are little tasks for me to go to. Awesome. Well, hey, man, this has been great. I wish you the best of success with the book. I definitely am gonna get a copy of it. Maybe even, I don't know, talk to you about. We've been talking here about what to do with my socials, the podcast. I think we have it. We have videography, we have photography, we've got production. But strategy wise, you know, we get a little. I think sometimes we get out of our niche.
- [59:34]
A
Yeah, we could definitely chat about that.
- [59:36]
B
Yeah, that'd be great. Hey, if you're. I'm gonna tug on the reins here and nudge this podcast towards the barn. But before we go, why don't you tell people how to best get in touch with you?
- [59:48]
A
Best way to get in. Touch me, Instagram AJ the digital maestro, or shoot me an email.
- [59:52]
B
Ajkumar.com ajkumar k u m a r.com Got it. All right, curveball and a fastball. Here's the curveball. Gun to your head. You've got to start a business in the next 30 days, and it can't be something that you're currently doing. This is a statement or a question about where you see opportunities in the market right now to start a business.
- [60:16]
A
And it's not what I'm doing right
- [60:18]
B
now can't be something you're doing right now, something you've seen, something you've heard about, something that was interesting to you, maybe something somebody else is doing.
- [60:25]
A
I mean, I'd figure out a way to help small businesses locally with AI solutions. I think that's the. That's a pretty fast go to business that everybody needs right now.
- [60:37]
B
Yeah, no doubt. All right, last question. Fastball straight down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [60:50]
A
One sentence. It's. It's not about being the best at what you do. It's about being the best at getting the right people to see it.
- [61:18]
B
Perfectly said for your business. Aj this has been great, man.
- [61:26]
A
I'm back. Yeah, of course. Thank you.
- [61:28]
B
Yeah, I've really, really enjoyed it. Thanks for being on.
- [61:31]
A
Me, too. Me too. Thank you.
- [61:32]
B
All right, this is Jeff Duden with AJ Kumar, and we have been on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.