← School of Hard Knocks Podcast
School of Hard Knocks Podcast
Adley Kinsman | How She Went From Broke Creator to Running One of the Internet’s Biggest Media Machines
01:19:17
Adley Kinsman is one of the most influential creators on the planet, generating over 1.3 billion views every month and proving that virality isn’t luck—it’s a formula. After going bankrupt and starting from scratch, she built an eight-figure media com...
Loading summary
Transcript191 lines
- [00:00]
A
Adley, how many views are you doing a month right now?
- [00:02]
B
1.3 billion. And that's a little conservative.
- [00:06]
C
That's unreal.
- [00:07]
B
You can literally engineer virality. We never make a video without knowing exactly what we want this comment section to look like.
- [00:12]
C
So what you're saying is, for everyone watching, it's not luck. There's a formula.
- [00:16]
B
1,000%.
- [00:17]
D
They always like to say, oh, I'm shadow banned.
- [00:19]
B
It's not the content. Never the content. People have been sold a lie that is keeping them small.
- [00:24]
C
There's someone out there, they want to be a creator, but they just don't necessarily know how to get started, what's the playbook?
- [00:31]
B
So we tell them to start with a method, and if you. You will never have an issue getting views.
- [00:37]
A
Sometimes the smallest things in your video can be the difference between 1 million views and 10 million views.
- [00:41]
B
And so if you can plant those things intentionally, that's what we teach people how to do. Why would you not put them in every video?
- [00:47]
A
Adley, if me and you died tomorrow and you had one more guiding principle to leave with the younger generation, what would that be? What's going on, everyone? And welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James, and I'm here with Jack and Josh, and we are out at, for the first time ever in Nashville, Tennessee, with an incredible guest for you guys today, one of the most viewed content creators on planet Earth, Adley Kinsman. Adley, how many views are you doing a month right now?
- [01:16]
B
About 1.3 billion. And that's a little conservative.
- [01:22]
C
That's unreal.
- [01:23]
A
She said 1.3 billion views a month.
- [01:26]
D
With a B.
- [01:27]
A
With a B.
- [01:27]
B
Which organically.
- [01:29]
A
Which is incredible. Important part. But the fascinating part, though, is, you know, you're a creator, but most content creators are broke. You're making a lot of money while you're doing it as well. Which. Which is fascinating. Guys, Adley's making millions of dollars. She's built an incredible brand, and we're going to be diving into all of it today. Where I want to start things out is I want to go back to when you're 23 years old and, you know, for those that don't know, Ad, that you started out in the music industry.
- [01:53]
B
I did.
- [01:53]
A
You're coming off the Voice, you signed a bad record deal and you went bankrupt. What was your mindset like when you're like, man, I gotta. I'm gonna flip the switch. I'm not gonna let this be my end all.
- [02:05]
D
Be all.
- [02:06]
B
I think it was having Real confidence in my own abilities to entertain people. You know, when you know deep down that you have a gift and that you're good at something or something comes naturally to you. I think one of the biggest things we all have to protect is that belief in ourselves. Because the world, everybody around us, our friends or jealousy, whatever it is, and even situations and circumstances that are gonna happen, like signing a bad record deal, are gonna give you all these reasons to make you more fearful and try to give you all these reasons of why you can't. And I think for a long time, we have to have enough fortitude to be our own biggest cheerleaders and to pull ourselves up and bootstrap it every single morning and get up and just say, I do believe in myself. I do believe in myself. Even on days you don't feel like it. I think if you get delusional enough and kind of tell yourself, we're gonna make it, we're gonna do this thing, then you have to have a little bit of delusion, I think, to be an entrepreneur. Because for a long time, in many, many days, you guys know this. It can feel really bleak sometimes, and it's like you just get kicked in the face over and over again. But then eventually, I think you just have to be your own biggest cheerleader, and then eventually other people will catch on.
- [03:14]
C
Where did that self belief come from? Was that from your parents that kind of instilled in you growing up, or was it more or less? I seen how hard I work on my craft, and that's where the confidence comes from.
- [03:25]
B
I do think both. I think I was getting the validation like we all are as kids. We're like, oh, you're so good at this. Whether it's soccer or school plays or whatever, you get validation and know that you're kind of good at something. And then if you really enjoy it too, you're going to be able to withstand that. But I do think so, probably partly validation of being told that you're decent at something enough to where you. You believe it too, and you think you can make a difference in that way. I think that's probably the biggest one, to be honest. And then recognizing that mindset is so malleable and I'm in, like, I can be influenced easier than I would like. And so I'm very particular about my inputs and controlling my inputs and what I listen to, the people that I'm around and making sure those are edifying conversations. Otherwise you can start to believe the lies pretty quickly.
- [04:10]
D
You. You started in the Music space. What was that experience like? Like, what got you into music in the first place? And what was that process of you wanting to go on the show the Voice? I know we know what things happen fast forwarding later, but kind of walk us through that. What was, you know, what inspired you to first get into music in the first place? And what was that experience? Not many people get the experience to go on a show like that.
- [04:32]
B
That's so true. You know, I say I started playing guitar when I was 10, but I didn't get any better. I haven't gotten any better since I was 11. I wasn't a great musician, but I loved music. I loved how it allowed me to understand people and circumstances outside of my current experiences. And so I was just always fascinated with writing lyrics and then entertaining people with that. But I wasn't really a singer, and I didn't really try that. I was just interested in music and always loved music. But when I went to college, there was karaoke in Stillwater, Oklahoma. There wasn't much else to do in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State. So I would do karaoke on Wednesdays, but that was really, like, the extent of it. And until my sorority sisters dared me to audition for this, like, karaoke show, which was the Voice, and this was season one or two, kind of bridge there. And so ended up drove through the night chugging energy drinks to do this dare because I was the kind of friend who, like, wouldn't say no to much. And I was like, that sounds like a great time. I'll do it. I've always wanted to go to Nashville. I love music. So, sure, I'll go audition for this show and take you up on the dare. In a nutshell, end up on the show. And my life had just changed. I wanted to go work for a nonprofit that called to write Love on our Arms. And they help people struggling with depression, addiction, self injury, and suicide. Because my dad was struggling with all of those things, and I was trying to learn empathy instead of anger for what he was going through. And so I wanted to go speak and encourage and inspire people working for this nonprofit. And little did I know God would show me that a voice that I didn't know I have and put a microphone in my hand on a much bigger stage.
- [06:05]
A
And you had a lot of success on the show. And eventually to the point where, you know, you gotta. You got a contract, you sign a record deal. And I think this is. This is really important for all the creatives out there. Let's talk to the creatives the athletes, the entrepreneurs, One of the most important decisions that they make is ultimately whether they want to sign with an agency, sign a contract, a record deal, whatever it may be. You kind of were gotten to a situation where it was. It was not working out in your favor. What are some things that you can advise to those young creators out there when they're in those stages? Because big companies, they can take advantage of people. Because especially if you don't have that business prowess, you know, behind you, like maybe you didn't have it at the time. What are some things, some red flags that, looking back on that, that were kind of there that you could instill in people when they're in those stages. They're coming up, they're getting approached by big talent agencies, you know, whatever it.
- [06:57]
B
May be, I would say. So I signed this. Let's put record deals in heirs quotes. Because it was really just an investor. Okay. And he had a record label. Anybody could just have a record label, right. And he just had money to fund it. And when he knew I was going to be on the show somewhere in the interim, we signed this deal and then the show gave me some leverage. Right, but how did they approach you? He was a friend of my mom's from college. And so it was a family thing. Seemed like it would be great. Good Christian guy. And I had signed. I didn't have anything else going for me at the time that I signed this deal. Right. I wanted to go work in this cubicle helping people with depression. And now I look at this deal and I'm like. Seems pretty bad. I sign away commercial rights to my name for life. It's an imperpit. I mean, it's a bad deal. I own nothing and I don't have a real shot to ever own anything. And the deal would have been thrown out in court. It was pretty unconscionable to do to a human. But I didn't have any other leverage at the time that I understood. I didn't know anything about the industry. It was an opportunity to move to Nashville. And I thought, how bad could it be? Turns out real bad once you do get a little leverage. And I couldn't then I couldn't go to meetings without this person. And this person was not a nice people didn't like to be around him, let's say that. And so I realized, oh my gosh, my entire future is predicated on my relationship with this family. And I really am trapped here unless I do something. So my advice would be if to honestly whether it's management, whether it's an agency. Partnerships are very, very, very difficult and very few genuinely work out. Even when you're best friends with somebody, it's kind of why they say don't live with your best friend. You know, like these other sides come out. And so I would say now I regret nothing because it made me scrappy real fast and it taught me what business actually is. After I was bankrupt, I realized if you want to solve your own problems, all businesses is solving other people's problems. And if you solve other people's problems, you solve your own by default. So I would hold out as long as possible. If you are doing good and you see a path, I would hold out on partnership, on signing management, on signing agency for as long as you can. And then I would still not do an all in deal. I would have fair outs and I would bet on yourself for as long as you can.
- [09:15]
A
I, I, I think there's so much value to be said in that because I mean the, like the three of us, we've been approached by countless agencies, some of the biggest ones in the, in the world, to kind of, you know, come in there and it's like, it's like you said, it's, it's a tough decision to kind of want to give up that ownership and give decision rights to other people and everything flows through somebody else when, if things are going well, things are going well.
- [09:38]
B
Yeah. And I'm sure that feels awesome, like, right, the attention, the validation of these big agencies being like, we want you, we want to add value to what you guys are doing in the world and thinking of what that amplification could, could lead to. But at the end of the day, when you're just starting out still, like you've got so much Runway still ahead of you. It's like you kind of want to see what you're made of first without having to take that outside decision making control.
- [09:59]
C
The worst decision you can make is an emotional one, you know, especially when you're getting that first attention or maybe you're, you're starting at that gratification of all the hardware that's finally coming in. And there's also a saying that I love is that everything I'm not makes me everything that I am. And we talk about like our journey and just like all the hardships we've gone through and we talk about like, man, what advice would I have given, you know, younger James, younger Jack, younger Josh, on what we would have done differently on the building of Hard Knocks. But when we really look at it probably would have changed nothing because all of those hardships and all those lessons, good or bad, you learn along the way makes you the company and the people that you are today.
- [10:38]
B
Even the mistakes, all the mistakes we make along the way, those are very valuable lessons. Like, you can't pay for those lessons. You have to go through it. Right? And so we can all probably look, in hindsight, we wouldn't change much because those were either the beatings we needed to take to learn something the hard way, which is the best teacher. And it is. It is just very necessary to figure it out through failure.
- [10:59]
D
They can't teach that in college. I remember that when we did our first interview with you, you know, James had asked you what were your thoughts on college? And you kept pointing to. You were like, sorry, Mom. Like, like. But I don't think that college is, like, necessary in today's world. And it's so true is for the fact of. It's just like, hey, you could go to business school and they could tell you, oh, this is how you run a company or be a manager and stuff like that. But you really don't know. The guy or girl that dropped out of school and is trying to do it day in, day out. They're probably learning way more than somebody just sitting in a classroom at university somewhere.
- [11:38]
B
Yeah, I totally agree. I think I went to college, right. It was nice for the bridge between living with your parents and being fully, fully in the real world. They're still like somewhat of an incubator where you get your feet wet and not, like, ruin your life or end up under a bridge. So it was better in the social aspect, I felt. But how expensive is that to just, like, have a training ground for social behavior? You know, like being a pseudo adult.
- [12:02]
A
Where did you go to school?
- [12:03]
B
Oklahoma State.
- [12:03]
A
Oklahoma State.
- [12:04]
D
Stillwater.
- [12:05]
A
Stillwater.
- [12:05]
B
Stillwater, Oklahoma.
- [12:07]
A
So if I. Let me ask you this, then, right? Because, you know, probably. Probably going. The Stillwater is not a great example. But I always tell people, I think what's way more important than the college you go to, you can go to the best school in the world. But if it. I think it's the location of where you go to school. I think it's that city. Go to a place like Nashville where it's moving. Go to a place like Austin where it's, like, moving. You know, we. We went to the University of Texas, and it's like getting out to, like, a city like that where there's proximity with people that are doing things they're moving. It's like that's. That's more valuable, in my opinion, than going to get a degree somewhere.
- [12:35]
B
Yeah. Because nobody knows what you want to do at 18. You don't know what you want to do at 23. You have an idea of it. But very few people are going to be doing the same thing at 18, 19 that they are at 25. Very few. You know, and most people, I have friends in just the most painful debt that they cannot get out of. We've helped several people pay off their student loans. I'm like, we would have no way out of this unless you make triple your salary, which is not up to you if you're working for somebody else, you know. So encouraging people to be entrepreneurs. Let me ask you guys this. Do you think it can be taught or do you think people are naturally born entrepreneurs of all the interviews you've done?
- [13:14]
D
I think there's some people that have that initial, that innate drive, and they just have those. Those characteristics were probably instilled in them early on and experiences that they went through. But there's definitely some people at some point that I feel that they can, they can, they can experience like a mindset shift where they go. And it's not a lot of people, but it's very few people to where it's just like, they're like, man, like, I need to make a change in my life. And then they go all in. And as long as they take action, they be consistent with it and they learn from the mistakes and they make the necessary pivots, they can become successful.
- [13:47]
A
And I'll add on to that. I think once you are exposed to that little bit of, you know, entrepreneurial freedom, and I talk about this a lot. I think most entrepreneurs take that for granted. I mean, think about it. Athlete. Like, we have the ability to really travel whenever we want. We can work from wherever we want. Do you know how much of a blessing and a gift that is? I feel like not a lot of entrepreneurs, like, really talk about that. And we have the conversation. And I hate to say it this way, but, like, if we had to go back and like, work a job and kind of like, you know, go up in a cubicle and be locked in there, I don't know how long I could last without.
- [14:24]
B
There's no going back for anybody on this couch. No one's going back. It's not an option once you taste the fruits. But it takes. I mean, for me, it took a very. It took a long time. I've been Eight different people before I'm the person that I am sitting in this chair today. Eight different versions of myself, Completely different versions. But entrepreneurialism I can see now. It's funny how you can only connect the dots in hindsight, but now it was always the umbrella of creating my own opportunity. And that I think you can kind of teach. I think a lot of people do have the ability to spot opportunity more naturally than others, but once you start to see opportunity in everything and be a student of that, like, treat it like a craft, what's the opportunity today? What's the opportunity in everything that I'm doing? Then you get better, just like any other muscle.
- [15:09]
A
So I want to talk about seizing that opportunity because, you know, I think. I think for everybody that has done something substantial in the creator economy, at least, you know, if you go back to like, a couple years ago, in your case, you've been in the game for a while now, you know, what was your. You said, how long?
- [15:26]
B
I think 10, 10 years. 10 years.
- [15:28]
A
What was your moment of realization where it's like, there is a real massive opportunity in the creator economy, right? Because we talk about, you know, when. When we were building Hard Knocks, it's like, hey, there's a big latch of a big lack of, you know, financial education. It's not taught well in school. And, you know, at. At the same time, it's like the crater economy. You know, I think in 2020, it was like a $250 billion industry. So we're like, let's put the two of those together. What was your realization when you just saw the real power and opportunity in their. In the Crater kind of exposure to that? And were you like, I was gonna.
- [15:59]
B
Go all in when I went viral, I put some chickens in a bathtub and grew 100,000 followers overnight. And so I was still a musician at that time. So attention to my album, attention to everything. That was Adley at the time. Even as a country musician.
- [16:13]
A
What platform was that on?
- [16:14]
B
Facebook.
- [16:15]
A
Facebook.
- [16:15]
B
Facebook. Still our bread and butter creators sleep on Facebook.
- [16:18]
C
You gotta tell that story, though. So what happened here? 100,000 followers overnight.
- [16:22]
D
Like, you weren't just trying to go viral for viral's sake. You were trying to do it to market your music, kind of.
- [16:28]
B
I said, this was during bankruptcy, and I A meme network here in town. So I used to have an office. You could throw a rock and hit it right here on Music Grow. And so it's fun to be back down here. We're sitting on Music Grow currently, but I Guy who runs Be Viral, Jonathan Burden, still a very, very dear friend. He goes, I think you're funny. And I understand your frustration with not wanting to wait for a suit behind a desk to give you permission to be successful. And that was my frustration with the music industry is you sit around, you wait for a publisher or label. This was pre TikTok for somebody to notice you and say, you're good enough. Now I'll give you a shot, and I'll determine if you can be successful. But that doesn't sit well when you know that you're good at it and you know you're meant to do it. So I started making videos, and I started doing it for this meme network. And when I first started making videos, I was learning how to do this. Cause I'd never made videos, never done comedy, never done anything like that. So I started looking at vine and I started just copying, trying to get my muscle memory and do what everybody else was doing and try to figure out how to do it. Well, everything was tanking because it came across so inauthentic, because it was because I was just copying. And so nothing's doing well. And I had to have a new video turned around by 6am every morning. And so it's one in the morning, I'm exhausted. I put my little SD card in from the GoPro that I was filming on. He gave me a GoPro to film on. So I put the SD card in, and all the footage is corrupt, all of it. And I have to turn something in in five hours. And I just spent all day making this bid. And so I'm crying. And my boyfriend at the time, we were very country, and he goes, ad, why don't you just go get those chickens in the backyard and do something with them? They make you happy. And I was like, okay, I have no better idea. So I went in the backyard and I got Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Henfrey, Chick Norris, Shakira, Chakira. They look alike. I got Bruce Henner, thought it was a hen, turned out to be a rooster. Got Bruce Henner, got all my chickens, and I put them in the bathtub and just improv'd this bit. And so my boyfriend just walks in on me, and I'm curling Bruce Henner's hair. And then I reveal all the chickens in the bathtub. Pretty silly, pretty basic. I turned it in. The meme company was like, what is this? I'm like, I'm sorry. All my footage was gone, and I kind of thought it was funny. Though. And so I put it on my Facebook page overnight. It did 19 million views overnight.
- [18:46]
A
I didn't know Facebook had an algorithm back then.
- [18:48]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [18:49]
A
Facebook had the algo back then.
- [18:50]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [18:51]
C
Oh, my.
- [18:52]
B
So 19 million views overnight and over a hundred thousand followers. And I hate that my back had to be against the wall. I had to be that desperate for me to just be my dang self. And when I was myself and I did what I thought was funny and I did something funny with my chickens, that is what resonated with people. So that is been my guiding.
- [19:10]
A
Did that kind of have a, you know, that realization that, like, from now on, I'm going to kind of just lean on myself a little bit more here. I'm not going to kind of abide by what other people want me to do and lean into their guidelines. Like, was that kind of that profound viral moment that you had? That realization where it's like, I know what I'm doing here?
- [19:25]
B
That was huge for me. It still is. I still get chills every time I think about that story. Because anytime I start to lose my way or be like, maybe I should do something more like this, or I start comparing myself, I just go back to that. And when I stick to my guns and my blue ocean, that is when things work, because everybody else has already. They already got their thing. And I'm just gonna be a knockoff version of that. Where's the fire in that? Where's the novelty there? So the more we can create our own lanes, the more you can create your own lanes, the better off you're gonna be. And I think a lot of creators right now are caring a lot more about optics over ethics. Right? Everybody's just trying to make a quick win quick, but. And so puck buck, just try to make a quick buck. So people are just copying other people and creating slop out there instead of really taking the time to learn a craft. And they're wanting to just go from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top rung of the ladder. Because the creators, they look up to make it look easy. You guys make it look easy. You look at my videos that make it look easy and simple, but this is 10 years of refinement. It's like writing a good song. It takes a lot of work to make a complex emotion sound that simple and write it in a way that it is. And this craft of entertainment, of getting attention is the same thing. And so I would just encourage everybody to not prioritize optics over ethics.
- [20:42]
D
They see the Interview with Tom Brady and the Shack. They don't see the hours of going downtown day in, day out trying to interview a bunch of people. I want to talk about Facebook for a second because your viral video came on Facebook and I feel like most people that create content today, they sleep on Facebook. They think it's like it's outdated, like there's not enough and like the three of us, like we even like we caught our first like big monetization break on Facebook that allowed us to like for several months, like pioneer and build our business because of like them trying to compete with TikTok. And so like I want, I want to hear this from you. Like, like, how important is Facebook for creators? Like, like and I'm saying this because I think so many people sleep on.
- [21:18]
A
It and just add in there. Four days ago, we just had a four minute long video. This like 8 million views right now. Yeah, you can't get your head though.
- [21:26]
B
I'm just, that's what, that's what it is. Facebook all day. I'm the most viewed as, as of last I was told, the most viewed female producer in Facebook and or meta in Snapchat history.
- [21:36]
D
Wow.
- [21:37]
B
My face and everything. But we commission, we direct it and we have a network of things that we've created over the last seven years that are still just in circulation. You know.
- [21:45]
C
Congratulations. Seriously.
- [21:46]
B
Thank you. But a single video, like I can, I can show you a screenshot from our Facebook business manager of a single video doing over a quarter million bucks that took us less than an hour to make. And at our height, we were making 18 Facebook videos a day, 15 actors on full time staff.
- [22:03]
A
So you made, you made 250 racks off of one video, off of one.
- [22:06]
B
Video, off of a Facebook video, off of a Facebook video. And it was all, that was all on Facebook. I know that's earned more because that's just the screenshot from one post of it. We've posted it 40 plus times. It's been all over Snapchat. It's been everywhere and it's still earning money, you know, but that's just one screenshot. So it takes, it does take one video to change your life. But that one video I think changes your life in the way of showing you what's possible. It shows you that confidence of, oh my gosh, I can do this. Because you still have to show up and you have to be consistent with it day over day and over time. That's what's going to change your life. But it takes one video to get that jumpstart.
- [22:40]
C
So I'm curious if someone out there is, you know, they want to be a creator but they just don't necessarily know how to get started. What's the playbook of like, hey, if you want to get to your first 10k followers, do this.
- [22:54]
B
You have to go from. It has to be something you genuinely want to do because it is not going to be easy at first and you will just get discouraged. We like to say everybody has at least 100 bad videos in them that they have to get out. So don't make stuff that you hate and isn't going to make you jump out of bed in the morning. And most of us are multi passionate people, right? And so where we watch in the viralish community, a lot of people get stuck is do I make content about law? Or I'm a doctor but I'm really interested in baskets. Like what they don't know what to make content about and they, they get stuck and they spin for months and months, sometimes years. And so we tell them to start with an SRS model or sorry, 5, 6, 30 method. I would tell any creator who doesn't know where to start to do the 5, 6:30 method, which is pick five of the things that you're interested in that you could want to make content about and make six videos in each of those five buckets and you're going to post for 30 days, 100 unattached to the outcome. Do not delete anything, do not even look at the videos, don't look at the data until the end. Just bank those 30 videos and then post one a day, six videos in each of the five styles. And at the end of 30 days you have thoughts about what you created, right? Maybe you were really excited about bucket number one and you now realize that's unsustainable for my lifestyle. And holy crap, that was hard and I don't want to do that anymore. Or maybe buckets three and four, which you thought were like okay, but that took off and you actually did really like doing it. So then take buckets three and four and focus on month two, doubling down on those. You have to just get into action and then look at the data and let that decide.
- [24:27]
D
The point that I want to point out there it's the action piece of it. It wasn't that like so many people, they get into analysis paralysis where they're like, they're trying to make this one perfect video. They don't like how they look and it's just like you don't even Know if the type of video you're going to make is going to hit with the audience, they might want, they like, you might think like, oh, let me do this, like this is going to be good. But they might want to. The audience wants a completely different piece of content from you. You just have to figure that out what that is. And you can't do that unless you experiment with a bunch of different ideas. Interviews was not our first piece of content. We didn't, we didn't go out there and be like, oh, we're going to be a business interview channel. No, we just were passionate about business media, like, we just were passionate about business. So we, we made like 30 different video ideas in the business space over and over and over again until we went out and did an interview and it got, the first one got a hundred thousand views and we're like, okay, we should do more that interview thing. And then eventually we're like, guys, it's a no brainer. The audience is telling us they like, they don't want to hear from the 20 year olds about business. They want, they like when we go and talk to people that have actually played the game and that's when we made the pivot. But you don't get to that point unless you follow a method like that where it's like you're taking action, making a bunch of different types of content.
- [25:35]
B
Yeah.
- [25:35]
D
And it gives you the data back and you just can't get discouraged if it's not working out. You just keep reiterating and you have to.
- [25:42]
B
And that's the part that people don't want to do is the action piece is the failure piece. That is the only way through. That is the rite of passage. That is what allows you to play is the failing forward and looking at the data and being dedicated to the outcome, knowing that you're going to win, you're going to figure this out. And if you already know the outcome is that you win, then it's just how many failed videos does it take? It will happen eventually. But that's why we say to everybody, you have at least 100 bad videos in there. So we don't know. You could hit on video 17, you could hit on video 76, you could hit on video 712. You never know when you're gonna hit. But if you keep yourself in this game and surround yourself with community and other people who can say what they see in you on days you forget it, you're gonna be all right.
- [26:27]
A
There's so much gold to unpack Here, I gotta touch on, you know, two things here. First of all, you brought up having those 100 bad videos. We'll go back to our, you know, first couple YouTube videos and it's a tough watch. Yeah, it's a little unbearable.
- [26:41]
C
Sometimes you're like, look, don't go, if you're watching this right now, don't go watch that.
- [26:46]
D
We look unkempt. It's insane.
- [26:50]
A
And there's a lot of truth to that. But it just goes to show, and that's why I'm such an advocate that, look, quantity breeds quality. The more you post, the more data you're gonna get to figure out, hey, like you said, you double down on this, you 10x that. You take that idea behind the bar and you shoot it and you don't touch it again, you know?
- [27:06]
B
Yes.
- [27:07]
A
So I think there's, I think there's so much truth to that. And then the other thing I want to touch on is again, you, you just have to, you have to stay in the game. Because for some people it is their hundredth video. The amount of successful creators that I've talked to where I like to ask them, I'm curious, how many videos did you post before you had one that went really viral? And oftentimes it's, it took them 50th, hundredth, 200th. I tell everybody, Adley, when we had, we have 7.3 million followers on Instagram now. When we had, we posted 400 times on Instagram and had less than 50 followers.
- [27:40]
B
Wow.
- [27:41]
A
But that, that's the thing. Now granted, before I started the school of hard knocks, I had grown a personal channel from 2019 to 2020 on TikTok to about 800,000 followers in 10 months. So I knew the capability of short form content and how to go viral. Now that was having that with Hard Knocks and understanding that. It's like I learned the fact that if you're just consistent, if you're feeding stuff to the algorithm, something can pop as long as you're diligent about making pivots, trying different things. Where I wanted to kind of ask you was you're hearing that in today's world, the two biggest opportunities for people are AI and building personal brands. In terms of somebody wanting to build that personal brand, when, when you're kind of advising people, right. How much of a focus, you know, and I know that you touched on this a little bit, but I wanted to kind of just really get your thought process on this. People are like, should I make just content about, you know, I'm a real estate investor. Should I just make real estate content or are you more of the advocate of them making throwing videos in about having different content pillars like about family and faith and real estate and money and talking about their bad investments. Like are you, what is your thought process on building a real good personal brand?
- [28:44]
B
We are all multi dimensional people and I'll give you a case study. Actually one of our clients was Brian Mark at Thereal. Brian Mark. He was doing about $6 million a year as a business coach to fitness trainers. Pretty niche thing and pretty saturated actually of business coaches for fitness trainers online. And he understood the power of organic. 95% of his sales were probably coming from his Instagram and he was stuck at 6 million a year and he couldn't get any more growth. And what his content was was just very one dimensional. Yelling aggressively at the camera all the time. That's the only dimension of Brian that we saw. And I was like, Brian, you are a hilarious person. You are so dang funny. You have an amazing relationship with your wife, you have a tight sales system. All you need is more attention. And we're going to get you more attention by not being just the aggressive yelling business coach all the time. Because if I'm somebody who's scrolling and I don't like being screamed at, I'm gone. That's attracting a very small group of people when you are a dynamic human. So all we did for him, so talk to him one hour a week. And my whole goal was tweaking one thing, one thing. And that was his top of funnel content to show these other parts of his personality, these other parts of his life, his relationship, his humor, the back end of his finances, all of these different dynamic pillars that we're going to talk to. Tangential themes around his core avatar and just broaden his message. In less than six months we doubled his following and took him from 6 million a year to 10 million a year. Tweaking one thing, making him more dynamic than just being the guy who yells at the camera all the time.
- [30:22]
C
Well, it just goes to show you, we love the saying where attention goes, revenue flows.
- [30:27]
B
Amen. And you asked earlier where I first like was like the creator economy is it is that when we, when Covid happened and everybody is on their phones like this, we went from averaging 20 million views a week, which I was already stoked with, to over 200 million views a week. And we've been at over a billion views a month ever since. Cause then it was just building systems to get as much attention as possible. And this was coming from a mentor. When he told me, adley, I was trying to niche down. And he goes, do not. Do not. He goes, go as wide as you possibly can. And then you can niche down and do whatever the heck you want.
- [31:02]
A
Who's your content mentor?
- [31:04]
B
Oh, I have several. I got started from a guy named Rick Lacks who owns a pretty big network on Facebook. And he's a magician by trade. And he taught me how, as a magician, how to hold attention, how to say, hey, everybody, look at this crazy thing while you're doing sleight of hand over here, which are retention tactics and engagement tactics and all the things that we teach in viralish. But he, as a magician has a really strong skill set for getting people.
- [31:28]
A
I love what you said about the retention tactics. One thing that we preach and to kind of relate it to our interviews is sometimes the smallest things in your video can be the difference between 1 million views and 10 million views. For example, somebody has a, you know, a dog in the video and it's going crazy in the background. Somebody walks by and they're. And it's like the littlest things, like you said, waving the hand, somebody doing something crazy in the background, it makes the littlest difference sometimes.
- [31:55]
B
And so if you can plant those things intentionally, that's what we teach people how to do. Because you can literally engineer virality by taking another step to think and about it and design your comment section in reverse. We never make a video without knowing exactly what we want this comment section to look like. And once you know that those are the little things that take you from a million views to 10 million views, why would you not put them in every video?
- [32:15]
C
So what you're saying is for everyone watching that, it's not luck. There's a formula.
- [32:19]
B
1,000%. When we looked at all of our most viral videos, videos that have done over 300 million views on a single video, all of our videos that are over 100 million views, we have over 50 million. Or sorry, we have over 50 videos. I'm sorry, we have over 75 videos that have over 100 million views. Bless you. On a single video. Right? And so when you look at all the best performing videos, it becomes very clear, the formula becomes very clear of the cream of the crop. And you're like, oh my gosh, all of these top performing videos have the same things in common. So our formula revealed itself to us and then we had to just curriculum it and be like, okay, what we so innately know about how to make videos go viral. Just like you guys so innately know it. Now how do you teach that to other people? Cause you just know it. And you don't know why. But that's been the hardest part, is to articulate this formula. But now we've done it and we have a community of the most viral business owners and entrepreneurs on social media.
- [33:17]
A
Let's talk about that psychology of a viral video. Right? Because you know, I know that just like you, like, we obsess over this stuff right here. You know, you've got your first couple seconds, you want a good pattern, interrupt, curiosity. What is your real psychology and formula for that viral video? Video, regardless of the niche that somebody's in?
- [33:36]
B
Well, you nailed it. That this is so everybody's like, oh, of course, the hook. They're gonna say the hook. It is all that matters. Not all that matters, but it is the first thing that matters. We could sit here and dissect videos till the cows come home and none of it will matter if nobody sees it. Like, we'll teach anchoring tactics and we'll teach all these things to people. And so this girl Erin came up to me last month. She was like, ad I tried the anchoring tactic and you know, it did well.
- [33:58]
A
What do you mean by that? The anchoring tactic?
- [34:01]
B
An anchor would be something that you show in the first few seconds. That is an anchor to what is going to be revealed later.
- [34:09]
A
With like retention almost to like get people to want to watch from start to finish.
- [34:12]
B
Yes.
- [34:13]
C
You know who's the master of that? Mr. Beast.
- [34:16]
B
Yes, he is. Yes, he is. So there's these same principles, like we're not reinventing the wheel here. This is age old storytelling. This is before biblical times of what makes a good story. Look at every movie you like, every sitcom. If Ross and Rachel go stayed together in season two, would we have 10 seasons of Friends? No. If Liam Neeson rescued his daughter from sex slavery halfway through the movie, would we keep watching? No. You have to have a hook, a curiosity, an emotion that happened here. And you do not scratch that itch until the very end. We're just all taking that and putting it in a format for social media. But it's the same principles. You know, it just shows up in different ways.
- [34:56]
A
I love the analogy. And I'm taking that one about the movies, right? You don't, you don't put the ending of Taken in the middle. And you have to have that same mindset even with the short form video. But one of the things that you said was you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And I think that what keeps so many content creators just stuck and prevents them from creating is they think they have to invent this new idea and whatever niche that they're in. I talk about this all the time. Street interviews have been around for 20 years. Every single major news corporation, television has been utilizing those for their companies. I didn't invent it, I became an innovator within the niche.
- [35:31]
B
Yes.
- [35:31]
A
But I want to ask you, how much are you? We talk about this a lot. You know, when I was building my personal brand on TikTok and went from 0 to 800k, I would spend an hour plus a day and people say doom scrolling where you're just scrolling but like finding like great videos that people were doing to try and, you know, get some inspiration from them. And how could I add my own creativity to this type of video? Do you still spend time like consuming other people's contents and studying other viral videos to see what they're doing to kind of come up with ideas for your own content that you're creating or maybe other clients that you know, you're working with. How much time do you spend diligently kind of scrolling and consuming other people's content to come up with those ideas?
- [36:15]
B
About an hour a day. You are always a student. What worked six months ago, what worked four months ago, doesn't work today. And so especially if you want to innovate, you, you can't break the rules unless you know what they are. So it's very important to know what's going on right now. It's very important to know the age old rules, the current rules, and then take it and twist it and put your own spin on it For. When we first started making videos, it was mostly couples prank type stuff. And so what we would do there is get really good at taking ordinary moments, really relatable things and then just 10 x ing them, making them feel extraordinary. For example, if I wanted a dog and my husband didn't want a dog, very common relationship thing, very common relationship argument. So I would turn our apartment into a barnyard for the day to show how much I would just take everything and 10 exit. If we couldn't go on vacation, I would put a hot tub in our living room. And so these are things that people feel innately, like, oh my God, that she's so me and the husband is that's so me. So the shareability was high, the association with us is high because they see themselves in us, but it's just exaggerated. So it's more viral, it's bigger, it's on a different scale.
- [37:22]
C
Something you just said there is actually what I also believe builds the best personal brand is a sense of relatability. Because oftentimes when people I start to. I used to say, see success, they become out of reach, and they start to elevate themselves and their lifestyle, and they forget, like, who their core audience is and who they're motivating, who they're actually speaking to. But you always have to remember, it doesn't matter. Even though you're hitting new levels within your business or just even new stages within life, you can't forget who that core customer, who that core viewer is, because if you lose the relatability, you're going to lose your audience.
- [37:56]
D
It was like the guy that used to make the content for, like, there was a guy that basically, he used to make content where he would, like, do his day in the life of, like, going to, like, a corporate job, basically. And then he was like, he got this big following. He's like, all right, well, I want to quit my corporate job now and go make content, like, trying to make money on my own. And his audience just shit on him, like, completely. And it probably wasn't just because he, like, we, you know, was doing something better for his life. It was just sort of the way that he went about it. It was like he completely just. He's like, well, hey, y' all got me here, so now I'm gonna do whatever I want. And he just completely abandoned his audience of people that would watch his videos because they were. They were working, they were in the corporate community. And so they watched this guy, and it's just very interesting to see, like, it's like, hey, like, you can't, like, you know, abandon the audience that got you to where you are.
- [38:44]
B
It's so true. How you get somebody is how you have to keep them. I heard that once for dating, but it's, I think, even more true in business and relationship with an audience. And that's not to say you can't grow, you can't evolve, but you have to take them with you if you want them to stick around. They look at Taylor Swift. She's a wonderful example of this. And she could sell you a water bottle, she could sell you her spit right now because she's taken her audience with them. Everywhere she goes, she feels like, and I'm not a swiftie.
- [39:10]
D
You're not wrong. Somebody would buy that.
- [39:12]
B
For sure they would.
- [39:13]
C
That's A cult following right there. I've never seen anything like that.
- [39:15]
D
No.
- [39:15]
B
But she put in the work early to love on her fans and involve them in the experiment. She leaves little Easter eggs for them everywhere. She feels like one of us who made it. And so they're excited for her because she hasn't made them feel forgotten. And then I think the creators that are trying to make themselves bigger than life right now and unapproachable and unrelatable, like they're too cool for school, is not going to last. Even what worked for the Paul brothers, I don't think is gonna work now. Like you're in Big Beast. It's almost too big to feel like one of us who made it because there wasn't this fandom along the way. And now the creators who you see winning are really close with their audiences. On TikTok, you have what's her nuts that just ended up on SNL or her TikTok following. Like these are the new stars of the future and there's people who are connecting with their audience and their audience helps them get there and they feel like a true extension of their, the brand that they helped create feels like an extension of them. They have buy in. And so to cut that, to make that divide, to cut that off, it is. You're asking for career suicide.
- [40:19]
A
It's such a good reminder because as like now with the channel that we built, you know, the access that we've gotten to certain people has like grown tremendously. But as we started to kind of do a little bit more like the A listers, well, we'll get dms of people going. We didn't follow you for this, we didn't follow you for that. They, they, they, they like the, the off the street, the random person that nobody knows. And so, but you have to listen to that part of the audience. And that's why I always tell people that it's like, hey, I'm going to continue to take advantage of like the access that we've been granted. But you can't forget that reason why people followed you. Otherwise you're going to lose that core base and the people that were with you from the beginning and you don't want to lose that part of the audience.
- [40:57]
B
How do you find the balance between letting the comments and letting other people dictate your business direction and still giving them a voice, still listening to them, but not letting them solely decide where you go? In essence, letting the haters drive.
- [41:13]
C
I think, I think that's a, it's really Interesting question. Because I think it really depends on, like, the context. For example, right? Like, you're always, no matter what you do, there's going to be a subset of the community or just viewers who are just like, not gonna like the direction you go. But I think if you get an over, like a resounding voice from the comments, like, hey, don't really like where you're taking this direction, don't really like this type of feature, whatever it may be, or just maybe this style of video that is a symptom of like, okay, maybe I can try it maybe once, maybe twice more. But hey, this may not be where I'm gonna take my brand in the future. But I'll also say that, like, I mean, we'll even see like, with our videos, like, there's like, certain parts of our videos where people are like, oh, like, I don't actually like the fact that maybe you mentioned money, for example. Well, it's like, well, money is actually a core pillar of our, of our, you know, our brand and like, kind of what makes our videos what they are. So I really feel like there is no perfect balance of, like, you know, a lot of, like, I don't know. I don't really feel like there's a perfect balance. What would you say, James, like, is there, like, when you, when you see comments on our videos, how do you kind of take that into consideration for, like, future videos that you make in the future?
- [42:26]
A
Well, I mean, I'm always, I'm always a big advocate of, like, bad engagements. Better than no engagement in most cases. But at the same time, I think, yeah, like, if it's, if there's like something like, resounding there where it's like, you know, general consensus is people don't like that, then you should probably, like, shift away for that. But again, especially when you get to a certain scale at mass, there's always going to be people that find something to kind of like, hate on and, and say something about, and you just, you just can't let it get you to. You just have to keep on creating great content and keep on innovating, you know what I mean?
- [42:53]
D
As long as you keep it authentic. I wanted to ask for people that have, like, gotten some traction on their videos and then out of nowhere, like, it's just not really hitting anymore. They kind of hit a plateau. Like, for example, we had a point in our journey where we were stuck at like, 150k on Instagram for like, three months and we, we made small pivots to Our videos to help us get out of that.
- [43:16]
B
That.
- [43:17]
D
But for people that kind of go through that, like, plateau, like, they always like to say, oh, I'm shadow banned. Yeah.
- [43:22]
B
Or it's not the content. Never the concept.
- [43:28]
D
The algorithm changed, the algorithms changed, and now my content doesn't hit. It's like it's, it's anything but. The content sucks.
- [43:34]
B
Anything but their fault.
- [43:35]
C
I'll just say this, the best comments to read and it's this. I'm off. It's awful. I'm saying, this is the head of Instagram. If you read his comments, it's always like, why are my videos getting new? No views or anything? You go check out the videos of their profile.
- [43:47]
D
I'm just like, well, 300 view jail.
- [43:49]
C
Have you looked at the content you're making? Like it honestly makes sense.
- [43:52]
B
And they, but the thing is, they think the content is good. They are precious with it. But if you want unlimited access to distribution, you don't make what you want to watch. You don't make what you want to watch. You make what they want to watch. And if you make what other people want to watch, you will never have an issue getting views. You think I wanted to make the cringiest videos on Facebook for three and a half years and get death threats and people waste three minutes of their life creating rage bait, creating food dump videos, creating all this stuff? I would never watch that. I'm not that interested in it. But the data showed us that is what people wanted to watch. So who am I to say no? You're going to be entertained by the same thing I'm entertained by. And I think the courage to be disliked in this process of creating is also a rite of passage. You have to have your own convictions. And I'm not saying make stuff you hate. You have to also like it. You have to know people are also going to poo poo you all the way up. Especially the bigger that you go. That is just a part of it.
- [44:51]
A
But that's so important because I think some of the best, you know, content creation advice that I've ever heard is you want to make your content as if, if, if a complete stranger were to see your content, would they be inclined to save or share that video? Yes, if you can do that and remove your emotional attachment. Oh, I look so good here, you know, and get out of that mindset. It's like you were going to be so much better off. You have, you have to think about, if a random person saw this, would they care? You know, we Work with a lot of top entrepreneurs and helping them grow their personal brands. And I'm going to cuss here, I'm sorry, but I'm just going to say one of the, one of the best things that I can tell anybody is stop making the assumption that people know who the fuck you are. No one knows. No one knows you even now with.
- [45:37]
D
Yeah, well, as you guys know.
- [45:39]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. As you guys know, I closed my last deal and it's like, dude, you've got a thousand. You got 5,000 followers. Yeah, it's crazy. I say, look, even now with, with, you know, 17 million followers, I'm still making this as if people have never seen. That's why I'm always, it's always a walk up or who am I here with today? And it's like I'm always trying to, like, I always have that mentality that you want to make it as if they never have seen you before and you, you get them in, you know.
- [46:05]
B
Because you're a pro. And we don't know that in the beginning, like, we would use our names like, hey, Blake, come over here. No, nobody knows who Blake is. Nobody knows who's your neighbor is. Nobody knows who Adley is. Like, you have to make it as if it's brand new. Every single video is a hero video. There's no. Last week my boyfriend did xyz, so this week I'm going to. Nobody saw that. Now I already feel like I'm missing out on something. Do I? What did I miss? I got to go back and watch. Ah. Too much, too much effort. Don't make it any effort for them to pick up and be in the story immediately.
- [46:33]
D
Society has the attention span of a goldfish today probably, probably in part because of social media. And so like, like, people don't understand that. It's like it takes, it could take a. There's a thousand different reasons for somebody to scroll past your video.
- [46:48]
B
All we're trying to do, all of us, is prevent that half a second of disinterest. And that is why suspense is so freaking powerful. Look at all of the viral videos. Look at the most viral video that you could think of that you love. Now watch it as a student and look at what was at stake and how high the suspense was. And that will be why you watch that video. And that will also be the reason it went so viral.
- [47:09]
A
I have to give you your flowers as well because you did a call in our entrepreneur community that we had.
- [47:15]
B
Oh, yes.
- [47:16]
A
And you know, there was one that just came to mind. But even just throughout the entire call, like I'm the same way as like I'm such a student. That's why I love this conversation. And when you meet people that have just had so much success and in content, it's like you want to be a sponge to them and what they're doing and what they've learned about it. And I remember, I think it was a lady, Celia, she's got like a seven figure security company and she was asking, you know, hey, I've got a security company. How would you make content? And you just had ideas that came off like that for her. And I was like, damn, that's, that's a really good idea, you know. So I think your ability to kind of take very boring businesses and concepts and make them very fun is like a skill and something that like I just have to say, like it's fascinating that you have that.
- [47:59]
B
Oh, thank you. And that's reps that's doing it all day, every day looking at so much content. Being a student, I've broken down Yalls videos shot by shot. What is the first opening frame? Is it blurry? Is it to your back? Is your face in the front? Like everything. Because all these little details matter. That's why it looks so simple to do. But you realize that people try to copy videos beat for beat. Like I'm going to do that exact same video and they don't realize how off they are because it is the nuance, the little bitty things that are the difference between good and great. If I had a nickel for every retention graph I've analyzed and then gone back and fixed the video based off the retention graph, I would be richer. Sounded bad but like that would be where all the money comes from is the amount of studying that I've done. If I got paid for as much as I study would be more than I actually create.
- [48:47]
A
So curious to get your thoughts on this. You know, I'm the same way about content in a lot of ways that I'm very analytical and I'm always curious about. Like everybody's always going to have a kind of a different answer, right? And obviously you mentioned the Instagram CEO. You know, he's been pretty transparent about like, hey, what drives performance in content? You know, from my understanding is I always think of the most important metric on social media is watch time and completion rate. They the platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. At the end of the day they're competing against each other. They're going to reward the creators that are keeping people on their, on their platform watching content longer. What are some other metrics that you think are, you know, up there? If we know that, hey, watch time is probably the most important thing, would you agree with that 1000%? What are some, maybe some other metrics that you're always kind of thinking about? That's kind of like up there within, with the importance of watch time when you're trying to determine metrics for a viral video.
- [49:37]
B
I mean, he really stole the golden goose. It is watch time. That's why we made these videos that wasted three minutes of people's life. We were making so much more money every second we held you on the platform. So if you want to optimize for anything, watch time and people, you can get there in a few different ways for your channel. Some people get there and have and heat up their page by doing one banger a week. Like right now I'm not in a place to do a ton of volume, so I'm making sure what I actually post is hot, is gonna be good to keep my page hot and healthy. But other people, so say I got 52 million views this week. Somebody else may get 52 million views by doing four posts a day. Right? And so they're getting their watch time by volume, which you should do in the beginning to get your reps in to learn what you're doing and then double down on what's working. But I could get there the same way, but with quantity. But you only, to your point, you only know what quantity is once you've done enough quality.
- [50:33]
A
Right, but and that's the other thing as well is one of the biggest debates, is it quantity or quality? Quantity or quality? I tell people all the time, for us, like the last video that we've posted on Instagram that has under a million views was April 2024. So almost a year and a half ago was the last time we posted on Instagram and got under a million views. And when we post now 1 to 3 million views on a video, we don't really gain followers off that. So now it went from like when we were starting the channel. You have to tell her, Jack. The kind of the rule of thumb that we had about the three posts a day.
- [51:05]
D
Oh yeah. Well, like I said when we were starting out, like we weren't doing interviews initially. And so we used to have this.
- [51:11]
A
Trade off company rule.
- [51:12]
D
We had a company rule. There was like, okay, well like day one and you know, it was Jack day two, James day three, Josh. And on that Day you had to get your three posts up that were all different unique ideas to help us experiment and figure out, like, what, you know, what help us get closer to finding what content people are gonna want to see from us. And if you didn't get your posts up that day, like all you had to get all three. If you didn't get all three posts up, you had to venmo the other guys 25 bucks each. So it was like that because we wanted to breed that consistency. And it wasn't that like all three videos were necessarily bangers by any sense, but it was that repetition of like, let me try to come up with as many concepts as possible. And you'd. We would have stuff that would like get a hundred thousand views here or there, but when we, you know, it wouldn't. Wasn't as consistent as when we saw the interviews. It was every single one we posted people.
- [51:59]
A
But as you grow and you get that core audience, then it's like, okay, let's get away from the quota posting, oh, I got my two posts up and let's. And now it's like, you know, I post, you know, I like to say every other day, maybe three to four times a week. But you know, there's three to four times a week. I mean, we generate off of the channel 250 million views a month across all platforms. So again, it does come down to where I think at a certain point, great content is always going to perform and you want to just optimize for like the content that is guaranteed that, you know, can get a lot of.
- [52:31]
B
Views and you let the data tell you what's great. Like if somebody's like, I am posting great content and it's not working. That's why Viralish exists, is to be that creative bridge to say, here's actually how to make it great. From a data perspective, we can't be precious about it. This is not art. This is social media. And there's. It's kind of. It can be an art form, meaning there's a craft and there's a science to what makes it work. But it was really a marriage of art and science. It's the science of the art of bringing something into the world. But data tells us whether it's good or not. And I even say that with a grain of salt because we have made so many videos that are good from a data or an earning perspective. They have hundreds of millions of views, but they are. It's not a good video. It's not like making the world a Better place.
- [53:16]
A
So I want to shift a little bit more now because we went from, you know, talked about how you had that first big viral moment On Facebook, the 19 million views and then we went all in on the psychology, virality, everything. I want to talk about the business side of things now though because. And I feel like you would probably like this one. One of our favorite sayings is, is that great businessmen are terrible content creators and great content creators are terrible businessmen. I mean most influencers are broke. Yeah, a lot of them are. And it's because they don't understand the business side of media. What was your evolution in building your media company to the eight figure, you know, branded company that is today? Like you've worked with some of the biggest companies in the world. What has kind of been your journey and building the media company out, you know, to the point where it is today.
- [54:04]
B
What's made me developing being in like I've developed into a good businesswoman. I didn't start that way. I was good at sales, I was good at people and I was only good at sales because I was good with people. But I was good with people because I'm entertainer first.
- [54:18]
A
Right.
- [54:18]
B
And so I think when you have enough belief and skillset and you found your zone of genius, that's where you resonate and then it becomes easy to do business with you and then you can be a good business person if you serve people well, you protect your reputation and, and you offer high value and you deliver on what you say you're going to do. Now there's more to it obviously than that, but that's the foundation of it is solving other people's problems, even if it was just entertaining people. We solve people's problems by. You guys do by many ways. But on your top of funnel you close the gap of showing other people what's possible. You bring the most aspirational people in the world down to bite size, accessibility that somebody can they get a little bit closer by watching your page they get a little bit more educated. When we started we were making videos that entertained people mostly during COVID we made their them smile more. So people come to my page and they knew what to expect. They knew they were going to laugh or they were going to feel seen or a little bit less crazy because I do a lot of self deprecating humor. Right. So you're solving a problem for them whether it's business problem or on the emotional spectrum somewhere. And then I think even as a content creator I've now I was just telling James and you guys, before we started, I've talked myself into. Into a desk job and building out the business because it is harder than just making videos. But if you make great content, and that is your front end, building the business becomes a lot easier if you're great at one thing first.
- [55:38]
C
I think it's really interesting when we talk about, you know, turning attention into actual revenue, because we had our own fault and literally hard knock within this journey of. One of the first things that we did is, I'd say about a year, a year and a half in is we created, you know, a canvas store, a motivational canvas store. Look, people watch our videos because they want to feel inspired, they want to feel motivated. And so we just assumed that our audience would like a product of motivational canvas art. And so we put probably, you know, $20,000 into this, you know, venture and sold only a few canvases. And we're like, man, why did this not work? And this is the biggest lesson that I think we've learned and also learned from just working with some of the biggest brands in the world, is that the biggest problem that a person can make or a creator can make is assuming what their audience wants. You can never assume what your audience actually wants. You have to ask. And so within our new ventures, like, let's just say our community, for example, where we bridge our audience that millionaires and billionaires that we interview and connect them, is we asked them, we did polls, questions. Is because I look like a fitness trainer, for example, is maybe you're a successful fitness creator, and, you know, people follow you, you have some guides, you show your workouts, and you start to sell your workout plan. And, you know, maybe it's getting a couple sales, but it's just not really going the way that you want. You're like, man, why is this not really working as well as I thought it was gonna be? It's because you never asked. And what they really wanted was your diet plans, and you're selling them the wrong thing. And so for you, you know, working with some of the biggest brands and biggest people in the world, at what point, you know, their attention, they're generating. Excuse me. They're making videos to generate attention. How do you balance making videos for attention but also making videos to generate revenue for their product or service?
- [57:43]
B
Great question. And we like to say more attention equals more leads. More leads equals more sales.
- [57:50]
C
Right?
- [57:50]
B
Nobody can buy from you if they don't know you exist. So you guys, even before you started monetizing, you were just doing this for like free value before the community, before you had anything to sell. Right. And I think that is the most important part is to build an audience and then there's niches inside of even an audience. Right. So I would say build like a lot of people. Like, I'm not going to start social media until I have something to sell. I think that's horrible idea.
- [58:16]
A
This is so good. Keep going.
- [58:18]
B
They're like, well, I'm not going to start my Instagram yet because I got to figure out how I'm going to monetize it. No, because now you're doing it backwards of what you just said, where you're going to say, I'm creating this thing and then I'm going to go market this. You don't know if that's what people want. Building. Do you have that friend that's ever like joined an MLM or something? No. Knock on MLMs, but every time you're around them, they're just trying to sell you on something.
- [58:36]
A
You can knock on them if you want.
- [58:39]
B
But Andy, for time, we've all had those friends always trying to get you in on something, trying to sell you something. We don't like that friend in real life. So why are you going to be that person online where every time you're making a video, you're online. You're just trying to sell people stuff? No. You can build a world in which your product exists seamlessly and then it will be effortless flow. You're not going to deal with pitch fatigue. Hot Ones is a great example of that. One of my favorites. They sell buffalo sauce and they just exited for $86.5 million.
- [59:09]
A
Why do you think they sold for that much?
- [59:11]
B
They created a world around the product. They never had to pitch that buffalo sauce. They created what we call an srs, a simple, repeatable, scalable format that you eat these. It's an interview style format and the questions get harder as the wings get hotter. Simple, easy, repeatable. And so you learn the buffalo sauce just by way of how the format is going. And you know by the time Jennifer Garner gets to blazon, but that the question's gonna be fire, you know, like. And so is her mouth, you know, like, that's just. It's. You don't have to explain it. It happens. And so now people just learn the sauces because they created a world around it that is entertaining first. And if you entertain people, you can earn the right to educate them and eventually sell them on whatever you want.
- [59:58]
A
I think that is so Smart. And I was. You know, me and Nolan were just in Beverly Hills the other day, and there was a young gentleman that had, you know, came up to us. They loved the content, and they were like, man, I've got, you know, 4,000 followers right now. You know how. He was asking me this question about, how do I monetize? What should I bring? What should I build? And it's like, for a second, I thought about. It's like, this is the content you're making. How do you monetize? And I said, you got. You got to build a brand. Like, you got 4,000 followers. That's not an audience. Double down on building a brand. Now, in our case, we didn't launch, like, something until we did have millions of followers. And I'm not saying you have to wait until then, but, like, get some raving fans, like, build that brand. It's gonna. It may take a couple years, but media's a long game. Accept that. You know, I mean, come up with some other ways to make money off the content in the meantime. But when it comes to, like, really selling or building a product out, if you got a couple thousand followers, you know, audiences, it's hard to convert off of just that many people. You want to build a big brand first. That needs to be the emphasis.
- [61:01]
B
I agree. And there are the people who will die on the other hill, but. But I think we can all agree that most people have been sold a lie that is keeping them small. And there are those people who can. I talked to a girl two weeks ago. She made 40 grand last month off of 2000 followers. She's doing great, and she's talking to her core audience all the time. But she probably has one of the largest tams ever. Most people that aren't going to do that, you would have better luck by building an audience first and going bigger. There is a difference between cultural relevance and contextual relevance. Jefferson Fisher is a great example of this and one of my favorites. Where most people. He's a trial lawyer from Texas. Okay, go look him up. Great example of this trial lawyer from Texas. You think he has 6 million followers on Instagram because he's talking about law. No, he's talking about what litigation actually is, which is miscommunication. And so he teaches people. He macroed out and teaches people how to have a better next conversation. So his content looks like, here's what to say next time somebody's gaslighting you. Here's what to say. Or if your wife ever says this, here's what to do. And it's something every wife ever has. Like said, he's talking about something that is relatable to literally everyone, but it's macroed from the basis of what he's learned in his expertise. So his funnel is natural, right? With audience and then niche. And now he's what, a New York Times number one bestseller. And his law practice is doing excellent because more people know about him, know that he exists. So when Realtors especially, it's always the realtors, and they're like, I only want followers who are gonna buy from me. Like, okay, Tammy, you want 12 followers for the houses you're gonna sell this year? No. Build a brand so when I'm ready.
- [62:49]
D
So that customer is gonna purchase from you once a decade, basically, if that maybe not.
- [62:55]
B
Becky, go bigger. Be a realtor. So when I'm ready to buy a house, you're who I think of. Or my friend's looking to buy a house, so I send her your profile. You have to be more known. You don't have to be. But I would say attention is an arms race right now. And your competitor is using AI. They are mass clipping. They are incentivized clipping. They are using synthetic content to go be more known. Because if I offered you one billboard in Nashville or 100 billboards in Nashville and they're free, which social media is which one are you going to take? 100 billboards, because that's the person who has more attention. So they're most likely going to get the business when the time is right.
- [63:33]
D
I want to touch on the realtor example because I think it's a good one, because it piggybacks off your point about total addressable market. Most Realtors, when they make content, this can go for anybody that makes content for a local market. Like, most Realtors, they just. They want to make content to target people. Everyone's like, well, how do you target someone if it's organic? They want to make content that's specifically targeting people in their local market that could buy homes from them. Well, they're just like, oh, I'm just going to do this, like, house tour real quick, and people are going to see the nice homes. It's like, who? Like, how many people are going to, like, like, could be your potential customer are going to see that content and want to buy from you. It's like, maybe when they're in the mood to go buy a house, maybe. But what if. Who is your total addressable market? It's all the people. In the age of people that can buy homes in your, in the, in that area or people that might be wanting to move there, what content do they consume? Well, that's families, that's, that's husbands, that's wives, that's mothers, that's fathers. They want to go do fun things in the local area. So why aren't you not making like you can like some of your content needs to touch on the real estate stuff. But like go make content about, you know, the best restaurants in town, go make content about the best activities in town, what are fun things to do, what are some memes about the city. And all those ideas can captivate your entire total addressable market. So now when you know somebody that followed you three years ago is in the mood to buy a house because they followed you for, because you found the best fajitas in town, well, you post a video with a nice house, you know, three, three, four bedroom house, and now like they're your customer. Now it never would have been if you would have never made the fajitas video.
- [65:11]
B
And that is one of the hardest things to get people to do. When we teach people how to make viral videos and top funnel content, that's really where we over index. Because most people, they're good at being the expert, they're good about talking about their thing, but they're staying too small. They're so focused on conversions, they're missing the bigger picture, which is we are in the greatest wave of free advertising that the world has ever seen. So go a little bit wider and do yourself the largest favor ever of becoming known.
- [65:38]
A
One of the things, one of the things that I wanted to ask is, you know, we're kind of talking a little bit, a little bit here about turning content creation, you know, into like the business side of things. But to that let's kind of talk to that person that they're wanting to pursue content creation as a full time job or eventually build it into a business. In those early years, early months per se, it is hard to monetize at the beginning. Especially like, you know, I would tell that person with 4,000 followers to not worry about building a product or service to sell yet and rather double down on building the brand and the content. But one of the biggest mistakes that we all see, you know, creators when they're starting out make, especially as they're coming up, because it is hard to monetize, is they dilute their brands. They start to kind of do some bs, little, you know, brand deals or promos or sponsorships for certain people and it's like, I just don't think that's the way to go outside of. And maybe this is the answer a little bit. Ad revenue, right? And, you know, we were fortunate we got invited into, you know, this Facebook Reels bonus program. It was invite only and we were making 30-35k a month because we were maxing it out during like the 2021 era for a couple months before we had that realization that, hey, you can't build a business off of just ad revenue. What are some ways that you think creators should be looking to monetize? Are you a fan of going out and trying to get sponsorships? Are you a fan of affiliate? Like, what are some to that beginning entrepreneur, before they build the media company, they build that big thing for their audience. They don't have hundreds of thousands of followers yet to monetize. What are some ways, some actionable ways that you think people should monetize when they're, when they're kind of in those beginning stages?
- [67:13]
B
I think two things. The future of private communities, which we're all doing, right, Private communities and owning your audience and giving them literally whatever they want and what you're able to give them serve the younger you, somebody who's two steps behind you. I teach people how to make viral videos because that is what I know like the back of my eyelids, right? So whatever you're first, becoming an expert in something, be really good, have some value to offer and build, you can build a private community. The second prediction, I can guess, I guess, sorry. The second prediction I guess I would have is really the future of UGC where your followers don't matter, but you're good at creating content, right? And so you're going to make this content for a company. AI is getting really good at making UGC really, really good. And so unless you're really great and doing something AI can't really replicate, which is maybe 10% of UGC creators are that good, then I think there's going to be a huge change up there. And I would advise creators to go work, to go become the face of a company. I Viral is just full of business owners and entrepreneurs who are not the best fit to be the face of the brand. And we know that brands have to start acting more like content creators and less like companies online. And they need a face. They need somebody to go do the man in the streets. They need somebody to do this simple, repeatable thing and create the world, right? So as a creator right now, find something you're passionate about. If it's sports betting. Go make content in sports betting and do high stakes viral style videos in sports betting and then do it as the face of a company who's gonna give you a lot of leverage, who's gonna give you the money and the support to lift your personal brand. Now you have leverage. You can go do this for multiple companies. Right. And that is gonna be a more solid foundation for you financially than hoping to get a UGC deal here or here or here. I would go be the face of a company because all of these companies that I'm talking to want to bring a creator in house. So you're gonna make a lot more money right away and you're not going to have to work as hard. You're still going to work really hard, but you're going to know where your paycheck's coming from while you're putting in the time to get the skills.
- [69:22]
A
I wanted to ask, there's a gentleman, I would consider him to be one of the greatest Internet marketers of our generation. I don't know. Have you heard of Neil Patel? Yes, Neil Patel, incredible Internet marketer. He's worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. And I saw on a, on a call that we were actually on with him where he was asked what do you see as the future of content creation? And he mentioned that it was, he thought it was the globalization of content. And I, I think that, you know, to touch on that for a second, you know, he's, he's true. Not only is it doing, you know, sub channels and sub languages and doing that.
- [70:01]
D
Right.
- [70:01]
A
Mr. Beast has done that. A lot of other big companies have started doing tons of foreign channels which, which is very smart. And even like another thing that we've done and that I've noticed is like when we went to go do interviews in Dubai, we, our content was being pushed to millions of people in the Middle east and you just happen an even wider audience. It's like you really, you don't, you can't stop growing if you're like going to do that. And so a big focus is me is like I want to go do international content in a whole bunch of countries. I'm curious for you, are there any other things that you're thinking about in the next three to five, 10 years? I mean, I know that you've definitely touched on some of the points about AI and the clipp. What do you see next? Five to 10 years are going to be huge opportunities for content creators. Things that are going to change in the creator economies and new opportunities, new opportunities that will arise for people creators.
- [70:50]
B
Creating their own products different than we've seen with, with prime and things like that. But I think it's going to the rise of like the micro creator in these small subsets of communities, in private communities like you can build something to sell even the smallest niche and make fantastic money. The most of the creators that we work with are making what people would get for a salary from their degree. We're talking multiple six figures and seven figures a year after just a few years of getting really, really good at content creation and they're picking what they're naturally great at or they're becoming the face of a company and crushing it. Right. So I do think you don't have to grow to millions and millions of followers. I think you need to focus on building true authenticity in relationship with a group of people and pick something with a larger total addressable market. Why not? Why pick something so, so small? Right. But what is the bigger version of that small niche that you're an expert in? How can you go a little bit bigger so that you can have more opportunities? Because what you sell your first year in business is not going to be what you're probably selling year four. You will have to change and adapt at the time. So your relationship with that buying audience is more important than anything. And then I had another one, but I think I lost it. Globalization, verticalization. Verticalization and a multi channel strategies. You know, like we have multi channel strategies now but we haven't done it necessarily for Adley brand. Outside of Adley and Espanol we have a, we have a creator competition reality show that we're building right now that's going to be a different version of it. Then we have Adley Reels, you have Adley Longform education Adley, you know, but I think you're going to find if you are again a multi passionate person, you can have these subsets of audiences. That way you don't have everything all in one channel. Which is going to confuse the algorithm. It's going to confuse you and confuse people. Don't buy anything.
- [72:39]
A
I'm curious, do you think that we're going to continue to kind of see this trend of, of these, you know, media companies like, you know, you brought up Hot Ones I think was a great example where you know, essentially what was sold was they built the word around the product. But that that audience is what is what they bought for 80 million. You know, I don't know if you know, Daquan was like the meme pages that sold Warner Bros. For 84 million.
- [73:04]
B
Yes.
- [73:04]
A
Barstool sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you think that there's going to kind of continue to be a trend and you know, private equity companies are these big, you know, media holding companies continuing to buy a lot of these creators, especially as you bring up, you know, you own the audience, you have that private community, maybe there's other businesses around. Do you think that there's going to kind of continue to be a trend in that space?
- [73:23]
B
1,000%.
- [73:24]
A
Why that's.
- [73:25]
B
We're flying to Madrid tomorrow to talk about it with one of the biggest music and entertainment companies in the world. It is a meeting of the mind of entertainment executives and creators coming together to have this very same conversation. And they're like, listen, we have a ton of money, literally limitless budget. Where do we put it? People with a lot of attention, right? And they're looking at brick and mortar. They're building out hotel groups and bridging entertainment with creators. One of these hotels that Universal is building in Sao Paulo, Brazil is backing up to the soccer stadium and all the rooms on this side are box suites and they are filled with items and limited drops and things from Universal music groups, artists and things. You can only get an experience in this hotel. And then how can we incentivize creators to hey, I'm Justin Bieber, I'm doing a pop up show here and how can we get 25,000 creators to this hotel in the next 24 hours? It is going to be a very interesting mix of data, interests, interest based marketing, ad networks based on interest in engagement, algorithms to mobilize people and not have the Biebers of the world feel so far away. But I now feel like I'm attached to this artist. I have a piece of. I got in on this limited drop. I was at this event in chosen. I feel closer to Universal. I feel closer to Eminem, to the artists that I love. And that is the bridge that we're trying to build where people feel a part of a world now more than just looking up to this artist in the sky the way that it's historically been, I think the bridge between artists and fans is going to get closer and closer. And so if you're an artist or a musician and you want to be above all that, I think your time of relevancy is very limited. Well, I think it's also just a.
- [75:13]
C
Testament of how people are buying and consuming nowadays more than anything. Like traditional media is dying like you look at, like, just like, the traditional news outlets, newspaper, all of that. Like, how people are consuming content is completely different. You know, people are getting their news from Twitter and Instagram now. People are buying products not because the product itself has amazing marketing. It's because they're using, you know, an influencer creator that you love to sell the product. With all the changes that have kind of been, you know, made within media in the past couple years, where do you see that going in the future? Do you feel like people are going to continue to buy more from creators itself? Or where do you kind of see the future of media kind of going?
- [75:51]
B
The future of media is shoppable media. It is QR codes. It is Google lens of what you're seeing on the screen. Miranda's wearing this thing. What is that? Oh, my gosh, I have a dupe of it. Or I see where to get the real thing. And we're gonna be shopping with meta glasses. We're gonna be shopping all of the time. And if my eyes. If I'm wearing meta glasses and my eyes gaze at this thing a little too long, I'm like, oh, James, sweater vest thing. And it can measure my dopamine. Are you kidding? Like, we are gonna get so algorithmically honed in. It's scary to think about where the future is. Although my husband loves it and he's like, everything on my algorithm is exactly what I would wear. I don't have to spend any time shopping. And it is. It is wild. But as you measure people's social engagements, what they linger a little bit too long on? You guys know how scary the shoppable algorithm is. Expect that to 10x.
- [76:41]
A
We like to end these podcasts off by asking our guests two questions. And I'll start off, and then, Jack, you'll ask the second one. Adley, if. If me and you died tomorrow and you had one more guiding principle to leave with the younger generation, what would that be?
- [76:57]
B
It is not how good you are today sitting in this chair, laying in your bed, wherever you're watching this video right now, it is 100% how good you want to be. You have to have a vision to see past your current circumstances. And I do think my mom taught me that early on. In times where my circumstances have not been great, to know and believe deeply that that is temporary and that you have to have vision and make it up if you have to. But tell yourself that your vision is huge and who you are today has no indication on who you're going to be in the future if you change and your actions will align because you will resonate. And that's where people I think get Law of Attraction wrong. It is first becoming it, then you resonate it and then you attract it into your life. So have vision to see past your current circumstances and know that it is not about how good you are today. Those skills do not pre or those skills do not disqualify you from the future that you desire. It is very, very possible for you.
- [77:51]
D
And Adley, if today everything was all said and done, what legacy would you want to leave behind? How do you want to be remembered?
- [78:00]
B
I hope that when people either consume my content or were around me that I made them feel more confident. Whether it was confident in their silliness and their the things that make you unique. That me and the way that I live my life could be representation of what is possible and everything that God can do in a life. When you don't take yourself too seriously and you just trust the path and stay committed to your own authenticity and ability. And that I was somebody who paved a path for them.
- [78:27]
A
I love that incredible advice. Just an insanely, insanely valuable conversation athlete. Thank you so much.
- [78:34]
B
Thank you friends.
- [78:35]
A
We appreciate you. For everybody watching right now, be sure to like and subscribe for amazing content because every week we're bringing you guys the best and most fascinating business owners, content creators, entrepreneurs in the world to give you guys the secrets on how to become successful in today's world. We're going to put the link down to Adley's content and her channels for you guys to go check her out. And as well guys, we're going to put a link down in the description to become a member of the number one most powerful entrepreneur, community and network in the entire world, the School of Mentors. We've got over 6,000 members in there. They get to hop on live calls every week with the millionaires and the billionaires that we interview where you ask your questions to them on how to become successful and how to build your first million dollar business. So we can't wait to see on the inside. With that being said, we'll see you in the next episode.