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Built in Public
Simon Alexander Ong: The Personal Brand Playbook That Got Him 4 Million Views
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- [00:00]
Simon Alexander Ong
When you focus your energy on the thing that makes you feel alive, the thing that brings you joy, you start opening up doors into areas you had never imagined before, but you couldn't have. Because this is all unknown until you take the step forward.
- [00:12]
Courtney Johnson
You've really disrupted what is considered the top performing content on Instagram. When we think of Instagram, maybe we think of your reels have to be super edited and perfect and you do have great reels. But I just love this format that you have because I think it's something that anybody can take and implement right now, even if it's not the perfect Instagram format that you're supposed to use.
- [00:34]
Simon Alexander Ong
Spoken to a lot of friends of mine that have always said, I don't have the time. And when we've caught up and they've heard a new show on Netflix has come out, suddenly they've binge watched the whole season within a week. And I go back to them and I say, I thought you didn't have time. The life you want is built in the margins of the life you have. If something really matters to you, you will find the time.
- [00:52]
Courtney Johnson
Welcome to Built In Public. I am your host, Courtney Johnson. I've been a full time content creator and a personal brand strategist for seven years and really built my career. Sharing the process, not just the outcomes of personal brand. Built in Public is about what it actually looks like to build a brand, a business, and to build real leverage in the creator economy. We're talking strategy, systems, audience growth, monetization and that uncomfortable middle ground between. I have an idea and this is actually working. I'll be sharing what I'm testing, what's working, what's not, and I'm going to be bringing on people who are building their careers and companies out loud too. If you want honest conversations, practical insight and zero bs, you are in the right place. Let's build in public. Welcome Simon, to Built In Public.
- [01:36]
Simon Alexander Ong
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:38]
Courtney Johnson
I am so excited you're here because you have a personal brand that I really admire and you have a personal brand that's quite different than other people. You haven't necessarily followed the rules of personal brand or the guidelines of personal brand. You really share what's authentic to you and we're going to get into that in a bit. But first I want you to take us back to 2016. You had a really great job. You were going the traditional career path. What made you make a change?
- [02:13]
Simon Alexander Ong
I had grown up with this mistaken belief that to be successful, you had to own particular job titles. Be a banker, be a lawyer, be a doctor, or be an accountant. And that was compounded by being seduced by films such as Boiler Room and Wall street, which showed me that to get successful, you have to be in a job that earned a lot of money. But I started at the worst possible time. It was the middle of 2007, a year before the financial crisis. And I very quickly learned that just because something pays you well, it doesn't bring fulfillment. And the crisis was my moment to go inwards when all of this chaos was happening around me and I was made redundant. In my first job, which was at Lehman Brothers, went into bankruptcy September 2008, I embarked on what I describe as the longest journey that we as humans make. The inches from our heads to our hearts. Never an easy journey, but the most fulfilling that we will ever take. And that led me into a period of a few years where I just started to understand myself. You know, I say to people that true wisdom is, is knowing yourself. And I never really spent the time to understand myself. And once I did, I realized that my future lay somewhere else. And I was using this time outside of work. I was in and out of jobs between 2008-2016 to really begin building a better future. I say to people who tell me they don't have the time, is that the life you want is built in the margins of the life you have. And so I went about being smarter about how I used those margins. And that allowed me to eventually hand in my resignation in 2016 and begin on the path to where I am today. To coach some amazing performers in the field of leadership and entrepreneurship, to speak on stages around the world, to publish a book with Penguin, which I know we're both authors with, and to create content to help those achieve their own vision of a better future.
- [04:15]
Courtney Johnson
So at what point did you decide, I'm learning all of this for myself now. I want to share this with the world. I want to write or speak or start posting.
- [04:25]
Simon Alexander Ong
So on the side of my full time job, I got curious about coaching. I was always fascinated about human psychology and behavior, but to me, I thought it was, well, just being a good friend to give a listening ear to, to guide someone was just what a good friend was. And then my girlfriend, now wife said to me, I've just seen something on my feed that you should check out. It didn't cost anything financially, it would just cost my time. So I went along to this two day weekend event with an open mind. And by the end of it. I said to my girlfriend, I think I'm going to sign up to this course and learn about the skill of coaching. And once I completed that course, which took me around two, two and a half years, I said to myself, well, since I spent all of this time an investment into this course, I should do something with this. And so I started testing this. I started sharing on my social media, saying, hey, you know, I'm looking to build my experience as a coach. If you're interested, then let's have a conversation. And so it got to this point where I was going into work managing this day job of being in finance and on the side, I was working with free paying clients. But there was a point where I got to where I couldn't have any more clients because if I did, my day job would suffer. And so I was presented with a choice, really. On the one hand, I could stick to just having free pain clients and continue this double act of going to my day job in the day and doing this coaching on the side on weekends, or I could quit my day job and see what I could do with this. How far could I make this work? Let's go deeper down the rabbit hole. And I was toying with this. It wasn't a straightforward decision. I was toying with this decision for probably four to six months of should I quit? Should I not quit? Because I knew that once I handed in my notice, I could never go back again. This would be the beginning of a completely different life. And so I decided to hand in my resignation was actually Christmas 2016, because I thought to myself that would be kind of a nice time to do it. And everyone is in a joyful mood and they probably wouldn't take it too badly and it would just give me some time to think about my next steps after that. So that's how it occurred. It wasn't a straightforward, I'm going to take the leap. It was should I do this or shouldn't I? And just weighing up the risks in my head of going through it or just kind of balancing the two.
- [06:41]
Courtney Johnson
And you had established income coming in from your coaching.
- [06:45]
Simon Alexander Ong
It wasn't a full replacement because I was only working with three clients at the time. And because I couldn't take on the fourth, I knew that if I'm going to make this work, I have to drop something. You know, sometimes you get to this point where you have to let go of something to enter that new life. You have to say goodbye and grieve that old you and step into the new version of you. And so I had to discover and find that belief in myself that whatever happened, I could adapt to whatever the world would throw my way because we can't predict what's going to happen. You know, I had in my mind this wouldn't take too long to succeed. And my naive brain was saying, you know, if you work at this hard for the next two years, it will turn into something great. That journey ended up being a lot longer. And I actually said to myself when I quit, if I could build this into a thriving one to one coaching practice, I'm a happy guy. But of course, since then, it's evolved into lots of different things. And that's kind of, I think what happens is that when you focus your energy on the thing that makes you feel alive, the thing that brings you joy, you start opening up doors into areas you had never imagined before, but you couldn't have because this is all unknown until you take the step forward.
- [07:57]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. The staircase appears when you take a step. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because I think some people have it in their heads that when they leave their job or traditional career, it has to be done in this big dramatic crescendo where I'm leaving it all and I'm making this big leap. But you actually had a little bit of a bridge, a bridge in your preparing your mind, a bridge in preparing some of your income, a bridge and preparing the plan of what you were going to do. I think that's a really great takeaway for.
- [08:30]
Simon Alexander Ong
That's important as well because I grew up, you know, I'm Malaysian, Chinese background, so I grew up in a family that was very risk averse.
- [08:37]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah.
- [08:37]
Simon Alexander Ong
And I had seen people in entrepreneurship where you could sense their desperation for sale. And I didn't want to be in that position where I would be desperate for the sale. Because people can feel the energy. When you come into a sales conversation with desperation, it can put people off. But when you come into it with that so called with or without you energy, great. If you work with me, I'm still fine. If you don't, when you're ready, you can come back to me. There's a big difference in how you approach those conversations. And I didn't want to be in the format, I didn't want to be going into conversations desperate for money. So that's why that transition for me was so important. So I knew that when I transitioned to working for myself, I, I had some income coming in already and I had built a buffer that if I didn't get any new client for the next 12 to 18 months, I would still be okay with the basic expenses. So that gave me the confidence to go out, experiment, be curious and just try stuff. And if it went wrong, doesn't matter, It's a lesson. And I just kept focusing. What could I improve? What could I tweak to improve that process of learning?
- [09:42]
Courtney Johnson
Yes. Speaking of risk, you've said not all risk takers will be winners, but all winners are risk takers.
- [09:48]
Simon Alexander Ong
Absolutely.
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Courtney Johnson
Tell me more.
- [09:49]
Simon Alexander Ong
You've got to take some risk. I mean, I grew up and I think a lot of us can relate to this fact that we grew up where parents and society tell you, get a safe job, get a good income, and follow this linear route to success. But what you discover quickly is there's no such thing as a linear route because your plans don't always work out the way you expect. There's always going to be curveballs such as redundancy, restructuring, economic crises, pandemics, and so on. And so what's more important is this ability to take risks to build resilience. So when these big shocks happen, you're immune to it. You're not experiencing the same setbacks as most people because you're like, hey, I've gone through this before. I've just got to take a few different risks in order to navigate and overcome this. And so going through the financial crisis taught me the resilience to navigate the pandemic. When the world shut down and I had to adapt my business and my wife gave birth to our daughter. And so lots of things on your plate, but going previous experiences gives you the insight and knowledge on how to navigate these things. And that's why risk taking, and when I talk about risk taking is always about calculated risk, because you want to stretch yourself with risk, but you don't want to throw yourself in the panic zone. Because what happens is when you free yourself into the panic zone, you quickly retreat back to your comfort zone, never wanting to leave again. But if you're stretching yourself, you're showing what is possible for you. You're starting to understand what you're truly capable of. But you don't know that if you don't stretch yourself. And that's why risk taken has to be a part of success. As you take more risk, not only do you know more about yourself, but you start to tell yourself what else could be possible.
- [11:30]
Courtney Johnson
How have you taken risks in your personal brand?
- [11:34]
Simon Alexander Ong
So in my personal brand, it's through experimentation. You know, YouTube, text posts on Instagram, we Spoke about earlier video content. Putting myself out there offline, trying stuff that I have no idea if it's going to work, but I'm going to try anyway. These are the risks I'm constantly taking. So a great example is when my book came out, I didn't want to go on social media and as with many authors, just say, hey, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book. In every single piece of content. I wanted to make the content quite cutting edge in the sense that when people saw it, it wasn't just about the book, it was something else, but it gave them a reason to then want to find out about the book. So to give an example, I did a collaboration with a bar here in London, the Connaught Hotel, where they created a cocktail after my book. So it was called Energize. And so if you walked into this bar within the first few weeks of the book's publication, this cocktail would be mixed in front of you and then presented on the signed copy of my book. And so this was an amazing piece of collaboration because when this bartender I knew shared it on his social media, suddenly people were asking, who's Simon? What's this book about? And when I shared it on my social media, people who had never been to this bar before now wanted to go and order the cocktail just for the experience. And then we did one of the world's first book launches in the metaverse. We did a collaboration with a celebrity chef where we had 20 diners over two nights, six courses, each course inspired by a message from my book. And so these became very experiential, me just experimenting and following my curiosities. And it got people talking about it. People talked about experience and the book, and in effect, it turned my followers and my audience into my marketing team. So they were paying for the experience, but at the same time they were sharing it. And so this is what I mean by taking risks. I have no idea where this is going to lead to. I don't know how it's going to work out, but I'm going to take a risk and try it, because at the minimum, people will talk about it because it's original. You're taking two different strands of insight, two different thought creators from different industries, bringing them together and just creating something genuinely original.
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Courtney Johnson
You also talk about seeking failure. Tell me more about that.
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Simon Alexander Ong
So seeking failure came from an article I read years ago, early in my journey of entrepreneurship. And it was from a conversation between an interviewer and Sarah Blakely. And Sarah Blakely was talking about the Experience of her childhood, her teenage years, specifically, where her father would ask at the end of each week, sarah, what did you fail at? And initially, Sarah would come home and share her accomplishments. She would be like, I made the cheerleading team. I aced the maths test today. But the father wouldn't be happy. But when Sarah had something to share that she failed at, her father would high five her and congratulate her. And she didn't really understand why her father was doing this until she started her journey of entrepreneurship. And what she realized at that point was that looking back, her father was trying to redefine the definition of failure. For her, the failure was never an outcome. It merely meant you didn't try. And so when I think about seeking failure, what it means is I'm seeking to do something I've never done before, and. And then seek the lesson if I fail from that. Because when you do something you never done before, sometimes you'll succeed, sometimes you won't succeed, but you're going to learn more from your failures than your successes. So when something doesn't go well, instead of dwelling on it, I just ask myself two simple questions. What went well? Which keeps it focused on the positive, and what could be better next time? Which is focused on something I can control, which is that improvement each time I do something, how am I going to improve?
- [15:26]
Courtney Johnson
Are you going to implement that failure question with your own child?
- [15:29]
Simon Alexander Ong
Well, I've kind of been doing it, not explicitly asking the question, but I've always been challenging her when she's curious about something. Well, let's give it a try, because we don't know if we don't try. And so we saw the London Marathon recently, and we were chairing the runners in the marathon. And I remember she turned to me, she just turned 6 recently, and she said, dad, this looks fun. Look at all these runners. They're so inspiring. And she says, I'd love to try one. And so I left that Fort Dwell for the rest of the day. And in the evening, I said to her, well, if you're still keen to run a marathon, I'm happy to sign you up to a kid's marathon and run alongside you if you want. And she said yes. And so I signed her up, and she did this. And just to show you the power of seeking failure, after the first couple hundred meters, which is probably the longest she's ever run, she started to say to me, dad, I feel a bit tired. And I said, well, slow the pace down. We still have quite a few kilometers to Go yet. And if you need to up the pace, let me know. I'll up my pace, and I'll just run alongside you. And by the end of it, this was 4 km later, she said, was that it? Is there more? Because that process of running 4.2 km showed her one, not only can she do a lot more than she thought she could, but two, well, there's far more deeper within us. After that first couple hundred meters, when she started to feel tired, she said, okay, just another couple hundred meters more. Another couple hundred meters more. And then she started building momentum. She was thinking, I've got halfway. I might as well finish it. And then the final part was a steep hill. She ran up the steep hill, had a few pauses along the way. And then when she went through that finish line, there was that thrill of finishing something, but it was almost like, well, is that it? And then she says to me after, I want to do 7k next. And so that seeking failure is really pushing you out of your comfort zone. And that makes you present, you know, that makes you purely present. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day when we host an event together. I know you follow a guy called Simon Squib.
- [17:29]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah.
- [17:30]
Simon Alexander Ong
And he was talking about how he had this partnership with Richard Branson. And when they first met in New York, Branson said to Simon, can I. Can I borrow your mic and have a go? Asking people in the street what their dream is. And so Simon gave him a tip. He said, well, when you go and ask people what their dream is, don't bother with the formalities. Just go straight into the question, what's your dream? But Branson went to people in the street. Oh, hello, excuse me. Can I ask you a question? And by that point, everyone's moved on. Everyone's walked away. And he kept getting rejected. Sometimes Branson got barged out of the way from people commuting to work. And Simon said. Branson said to him, that feels amazing. You know, I haven't felt rejected in years. And that sort of seeking failure is where the learning happens. Because in Branson is doing something he's never done before, and now he's learning in real time what Simon does in his work. And he's starting to think, well, how do I get them to answer the question, Man, I'm getting rejected. What do I have to do different next time? He was in this very microcosm experience of learning to do something and be better because of it.
- [18:33]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. So get excited about it. Yeah. Our audience, you know, some people in our audience that are building a personal brand, maybe they reach out to a brand to work with, they get rejected, they have a video or a post completely flop. Right. And I think it can be hard because you can get sucked into that individual failure rather than seeing the big picture of your growth over the last year, the opportunities. So how can we as creators stay focused on the positive rather than getting sucked into individual failures?
- [19:01]
Simon Alexander Ong
Sure. What the first part is, is to reframe your experience with the negative. So, for example, rejection has a big negative association. If I get rejected from a job, if I go rejected from a brand, if I get rejected from a deal, then I must, I've done something wrong, or maybe I'm not the right person. And so you end up dwelling about every rejection instead of focusing what you can do next. So one of the ways to reframe that experience is to challenge yourself to get as many rejections as you can, because then you're gamifying the journey. So when I was early on in building my coaching practice, I would challenge myself to get 90 rejections in 90 days. Because what happens is I don't have time to dwell on the last rejection. I've got to go out and seek the next rejection. And then I'm like, okay, third one done. Where's my fourth one going to come from? Where's my fifth one going to come from? And if you play this game well, when you get to the 15th rejection, maybe that 16th one becomes a yes. And they're like, great, I've got my first yes. Now to my next rejection. And so what's happening is you're not dwelling on the rejections now. You're focusing on the learning. You're going into the next rejection, but you're going in with experience. And that's something you wouldn't have had in that very first rejection. And then the second part, which you touch on that, that bigger picture, and it's, I want to look at my YouTube. But when I started with new subscribers, it took me a few videos to get a video going above 100,000 views. And then it drops again to, I don't know, next video is only 20,000 views or 10,000 views. But I realized that every shot you take is never going to be a home run. You're going to have periods where videos do okay and not as good as the one that broke through 100,000 views on the platform. But that's okay. Because what I've come to realize is you just need a few to really break out. That really Drives the growth of your channel. I mean, in that first year I started YouTube, we had one video, it was called I'm 40. If you're in your 20s or 30s, watch this. Which was published on my 40th birthday. And that has now amassed over 4.1 million views. And that drove, I think, nearly 80,000 new subscribers to the Channel One video. But I wouldn't have got to that video if it wasn't for all of the videos that came before it, the videos that didn't do well. Because for each video you put out, each piece of content you put out, you're learning. You're learning from what resonates. You're learning from the comments that people leave. You're learning from the data. That's the best we can do. You can tweak it, of course, but then take the lesson, move on to the next one and see it as just another tick in the process. Don't magnify or weaken that tick. Just say, tick done. Next one tick. Next one tick. And don't make that tick bigger than it is.
- [21:46]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, that's so beautiful. Same for me. I mean, when I get a spike in followers, it's one out of every 50 videos will get me new followers. But that one video will get, you know, 5, 10, 15,000 followers in one day. And these spikes come from the outliers, right? Pareto's principles. 20% of the effort is 80% of the results.
- [22:08]
Simon Alexander Ong
Absolutely. So. So this is why I've always been a geek when it comes to, I call it mechanics. So when I was going from coaching to speakers, I still coach, but I also do a lot of speaking now. I would go to a lot of events where you had incredible speakers on stage, but while most of the audience were sitting there absorbing the content, writing on the content in their notepads, I was there purely for mechanics because I could see a lot of the content online. I didn't have to go to an in person thing for, for the content. So what I mean by mechanics is I would sit there and I would write down my thoughts to questions like how did they enter the stage? How did they begin? How was the story delivered? What was the pacing like? How many stories did they tell? How did they finish the talk? How did they excite the audience throughout and keep their attention? For me, those became mechanics. And if you take that to the world of content, it's the same thing. If you see someone in your, in your niche doing really well and they've had a viral success on a particular post, or content, then reverse engineer the mechanics. What made that post do really well? You know, what was the hook like? What was the video length? What was the content structure or format? What were the things people commenting the most about? And then you take that as your data collection, learn from that and see what you can test or apply for for your own.
- [23:27]
Courtney Johnson
So we're posting content, we're seeking failure, we're doing a ton of reps, Then we're seeing what the outliers are, we're analyzing what the different elements that made them an outlier, and we're able to apply that to future content.
- [23:40]
Simon Alexander Ong
Absolutely. It's so key, like If I use YouTube as an example, it's also being smart with how you use the tools available. So YouTube, for example, I would be researching a particular topic and I'll notice there's a template for videos doing really well. For example, last year, one I saw do really well and we tested it, it did really well for us as well. I think we had over 400,000 views for one video is the template. Give me X minutes and I would do Y. So it could be give me 12 minutes and I will eliminate your self doubt forever. Something along that template. So that template became what I saw doing really well. I would take that and think, well, how can I fit that in a bit of content that I want to talk about? And then I would look at what made particular content do well. What was the hook in the first 10 seconds? How many stories were shared? How were open loops created? I mean, open loops are ways of raising a question with the audience, but not actually answering it until later in the video. And then how did they finish so that you wanted to basically watch the next video, so you wanted to end up binge watching the rest of the video collection. So it was just breaking down all of these mechanics and then saying, well, how do I fit my content into that to increase the probability it does well.
- [24:53]
Courtney Johnson
So speaking of content types, there's obviously a bajillion content formats if you desire to build a personal brand and create content. You can speak, you can write articles, you can publish a book, you can make videos, you can make a podcast. You can do so many things. And one of my favorite formats that you do is these mini essays almost like just one paragraph on Instagram. And I want to call that out because I think a lot of our audience maybe thinks that there is a certain way they have to do a TikTok or they have to post on LinkedIn and you've really disrupted what is considered the top performing content on, on. On Instagram. When we think of Instagram, maybe we think of your reels have to be super edited and perfect, and you do have great reels. But I just love this format that you have because I think it's something that anybody can take and implement right now, even if it's not the perfect Instagram format that you're supposed to use. Right. There's not a right answer. You followed what medium resonated with you the most. Absolutely.
- [25:54]
Simon Alexander Ong
And I think that's key is you. For each of us, we're going to test what medium works. And when you think of communication, there's no one medium. Communication can be done through video, through audio, through podcasts, through writing, through articles, through stylistic content, educational or through animation or illustration. There's a lot of different ways you can communicate an idea. And the key is working out what ideas work best for you. What of those mediums lean into your strengths? So I tested some of that text content on LinkedIn. Doesn't work so well. LinkedIn tends to prefer storytelling and some visual images and a video from time to time. But we tested it on Instagram and it worked really well. And I think it's because if it gets people to stop the scroll and they end up reading it and it resonates one, it tells your algorithm, this is valuable content. People want to actually read what's in there and then they end up saving it or sharing it. And that adds more points to the algorithm and so it pushes your content out further. And we were testing it in a period where we were trying out some videos, we were doing some text posts, we were doing text on an animation and illustration. And for whatever reason, that text post started to do really well. And so we just end up leaning more into that once we saw that people were really engaging with it.
- [27:08]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, I just love it that it's so simple and it's something that any beginner can do. Maybe you don't have video editing skills or you are unsure how to make a carousel. Anybody can write a paragraph and post a screenshot of it. And I love how it's so simp simple with my content. One of my top performing content types is just screenshots from my notes app. So simple, so, so easy. So content creation takes a lot of creative energy. How do you think about energy management in content creation?
- [27:39]
Simon Alexander Ong
Well, I, I mean, the essence of my book is that energy management, not time management, is the key to productivity. Because if a process feels like a chore, it is going to Drain you of energy. But if a process feels fun, then what happens is it just gives you energy, it gets you excited, it gets you thinking. I've got to shoot that video. I've got to get that out on my next. The next time I put content out there, it gets you thinking and worrying up here. So for me, it's part of it is capture. We have a lot of ideas all the time. You know, you're consuming content, you're seeing what other creators are doing. You're like, I really like what he or she does. This could work well for our next bit of content. First it's just capture all of that.
- [28:18]
Courtney Johnson
That.
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Simon Alexander Ong
Because if you don't capture it, then the next time you come to sit down and plan out your content, you're like, well, what was that video we saw? What was that bit of content that really resonated with me? You quickly forget it.
- [28:28]
Courtney Johnson
And how do you capture it? Do you have a folder or like
- [28:30]
Simon Alexander Ong
a. Yeah, so I just, I've got a notion sort of system, I guess. And I've also got a WhatsApp group with just myself where I can just use it to drop in links, to drop in posts that I've seen each day. And then so when I go to my research, part of the process. So viral ideas, template ideas I can use, I would just drag and drop it into my workflow and then I would just start to add ideas and bullet points. And then when I next shoot or when I next come to writing content, I would then kind of draw on that. But it just allows me a system to capture all of that and then to kind of experiment with that when I come to putting content out there.
- [29:06]
Courtney Johnson
So for our audience, you can, as you're. This is kind of making scrolling productive as you're maybe consuming social media or maybe even things out in the world or books that you're reading, you're capturing snippets of things that inspire you, whether that be a template or a topic or a quote or the way somebody's communicating something, you're aggregating it into a database. So when you sit down to create content, you're not starting from blank. So you don't have to come up with that energy. You're already getting creative inspiration.
- [29:36]
Simon Alexander Ong
But here's another way to conserve energy because you can use the social media algorithm for you instead of being against you. So here's what I mean. So if I take Instagram and YouTube as an example, so with Instagram, you're probably looking at different creators content you're following maybe a sport account or different types of content. Your algorithms can be quite mixed up in terms of content. It pushes you away. But if you create a second Instagram account and you only follow particular creators who have viable pieces of content that you like, you are telling the algorithm to show more of that viral content on your feed. The same with YouTube. If you find a great performing video. So videos got 2 million views, but the user only has 10,000 subscribers. You take the link to that video, but you watch it from your second account and you only watch outlive videos on your second account. You're training the algorithm for that second account to curate viral content on your homepage of YouTube. So when you go into the YouTube homepage, you're like, oh, that's a great title. It's a great title. It's a great title. The algorithm's helping you almost like a research assistant, because it isn't diluted by other stuff that you're searching for. Whereas my primary YouTube channel, I'm looking at stuff for my child, I'm looking at maybe a film trailer, maybe some sport content as well. And so that algorithm is quite diluted. But the second account is purely for research. And you can do that with Instagram, you can do that with YouTube. You're just helping the content through the algorithm. The algorithm is helping you to find better pieces of content.
- [31:07]
Courtney Johnson
Oh, that's genius. So we're all going to make burner accounts where we just stalk the most unique viral curated things that's untouched by the news and family and kids. Oh, that's so genius. I love it. That is such a, that is such a good, solid cheat code. So that's also a source of your inspiration.
- [31:27]
Simon Alexander Ong
Absolutely. And then saves me energy because otherwise I would have to be consuming all of that myself. You know, I can just use that as almost like having an assistant next to me and I go, oh, log into the account. Oh, that's a nice title. Let me take that title, put the link here and I'll check that out later. And then what I can do is I can, you know, there's a website where you can extract the script from that, from that YouTube video and then you can get AI to analyze it. What made that script really well? Can you create a template based on that and explain to me in simple language why this script did so well. So then it tells you what a hook did, these mechanics. So the body of the video focus on this. This is how they told a story, this is how they finished. And so you're learning again through the mechanics. You're learning the mechanics of what made the great video, what made the script do so well, and that becomes part of your system.
- [32:14]
Courtney Johnson
What do you think the balance is between the intuitive or artistic side of personal brand and content creation and the science side? Because what I'm hearing is that you're using AI to help you extrapolate why this perform well, what the different pieces are. And also there's this inspiration, writing, artistic side of things. So how do you bring the two together?
- [32:38]
Simon Alexander Ong
So for me, the AI side is always a starting point. It gives you almost like the framework that the kind of the outline of what you can do. The artistic side is finding the title that works and then the visual thumbnail. Because what I found is AI is not perfect when it comes to that. Some of the stuff it told me I should put on my thumbnail, I've done something different and it's performed much better. So AI doesn't have that ability to spot patterns or kind of see what other users are doing. But if I do manual searches myself, I can kind of spot things intuitively and say, actually I think this text on the thumbnail should match my video title. That's what I'm going to go for. And often when I shared the stats with AI, they said, oh, you've proven me wrong and noted for the next one that this outperformed. And so the artistic part always comes from us. We have the ability to see and spot things that AI can't always do.
- [33:33]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, that's really, really interesting. What's your primary AI tool that you use for that?
- [33:40]
Simon Alexander Ong
AI tool I use for that.
- [33:41]
Courtney Johnson
Do you use Claude or.
- [33:42]
Simon Alexander Ong
I use Claude now I still use GPT from time to time, but I've found like I've moved 80% of what I do onto, onto Claude. Now it seems to be the one that everyone's using because I think it just thinks different. It kind of feeds you back a lot sharper information and I just like what the interactions I have with it.
- [34:00]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, so you've said before that I don't have time is code for this is not a priority for me. What would you say to somebody who really wants to start a personal brand but they don't have the time?
- [34:14]
Simon Alexander Ong
Exactly that. First of all, I would say you do have the time. The question is, do you have your priorities in order? Because I've spoken to a lot of friends of mine, I've always said I don't have the time. And when we've caught up and they've heard a new, I don't know, new show on Netflix has come out. Suddenly they've binge watched the whole season within a week. And I go back to them and I say, I thought you didn't have time. So for me, it's never about time. We always have time. The question is, do you have clarity on what your priorities are? Like, even when I was in a financial services job, long hours, very stressful. But if the vision of what I want to manifest is clear, I will make the time. It's like what I said earlier, the life you want is built in the margins of the life you have. If something really matters to you, you will find the time. And so for me, before even thinking about whether you have time or not is to say, are you actually building your days and weeks around what you say matters most to you?
- [35:12]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. Your calendar doesn't lie. Your calendar shows your priorities.
- [35:15]
Simon Alexander Ong
It doesn't lie. Or put another way, if someone followed you around for four weeks, what would they say your priorities are if they couldn't hear you speak?
- [35:23]
Courtney Johnson
Wow. Yeah.
- [35:24]
Simon Alexander Ong
And I think that gets people reflecting.
- [35:26]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. Something else I love to do with my clients is when they tell me they don't have time to post, I'm like, pull up your screen time right now. Like, how many hours do you spend on Netflix? I want to see.
- [35:37]
Simon Alexander Ong
We all have time. And the thing is, we often overthink it. I think that's also part of what holds people back. As we overthink it, we think, well, people actually resonate with this or actually get any engagement. The truth is, some of the posts or content I've put out that I thought would do well didn't do well. And some of the piece of content I put out, which I didn't think would do well, actually did far better than I ever imagined. The real feedback is by putting out there, it's how people react and respond. You don't know, you can't predict human behavior. Or you can do is put a bit of content out, learn from it, tweak it the next time. Otherwise you're never going to learn from not putting anything out there.
- [36:14]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah.
- [36:15]
Simon Alexander Ong
And especially when it comes. If you're building a business, branding is an important piece to the journey. You've got to run two things parallel. On the one side, you got to build awareness. Other people don't know about you. You might have the best product or service, but nobody knows about it. And then the other side is the systems for your business to make money. Now, these two, these Two things matter. As the brand and awareness grows, you can charge more, you can push out more products and services. And as the money grows from the business side, it helps to invest into the content side. So these two pieces of the puzzle are so important to run together.
- [36:52]
Courtney Johnson
I want to understand how our audience can manufacture their own luck.
- [36:57]
Simon Alexander Ong
So I love this idea because I've always said to people that the law of action is this. When you make moves towards what you want, what you want makes moves towards you. And to manufacture our own luck is by putting ourselves into situations where things happen. So I'll give you an example. In January this year, I was in Dubai for 1 billion followers summit. I mean, you had some of the biggest creators on the planet there. Samir from Colin. Samir, the YouTube channel was there, Mr. Beast was there, Simon Squibb was there, Will Smith was there. And so I had a lot of people that were following me on Instagram when they saw my stories of me landing in Dubai saying, hey, we should, we should catch up for coffee, I'd love to grab tea with you. And I would respond and say, would love to, but can you come to the lobby of this hotel? And I did all of my meetings in the lobby of the hotel where all of the speakers stayed at, because I knew that if I did it in a lobby, at some point all the speakers would be passing through the lobby because they have to go from their room to the next event. They come back to the room, they're all coming through the lobby. So that was me putting myself in close proximity to things happening. So I would have a 9:30 coffee meeting and then somebody would spot me in the lobby and say, oh, hey Simon, didn't know you in Dubai as well. I said, well, come and join us. So now there's three of us there and then say, have you met my friend who's also in Dubai? And then they bring that person in and next thing I know it, I'm thinking about lunch at 4 o' clock in the afternoon because I'm just colliding and bumping into people from all over the world. And then opportunities get created. Somebody says, you know, you should come speak on my event in Estonia or you should come speak at my event in the us. We should keep chatting. I'm going to be back in London next month. And so you are becoming now a magnet for opportunity and luck.
- [38:45]
Courtney Johnson
How can personal brand amplify your luck?
- [38:49]
Simon Alexander Ong
Personal brand amplifies a lot because we are, we are all playing or we are all in what I call the perception game, you know, if I, if I reach out and I say, hey, I'd love to do something together, the first thing you are going to do is check out my social media. You're going to look at my Instagram, you can look at my LinkedIn on my YouTube to get a sense of who I am. And so if you have new content on any platform and you're not visible, what do you think people would think when they look for you?
- [39:15]
Courtney Johnson
They're like, I don't know who this person is.
- [39:17]
Simon Alexander Ong
Why would I do anything with this person? Right. And so that's kind of what happened when I got the book deal. So when I was thinking about writing a book, I would, I was building relationships with editors at publishing houses and I would add them onto LinkedIn. And the reason I would add them on LinkedIn is so they could start seeing my content. And this is where content is powerful, because when I did an interview with Sky News, I shared that content on LinkedIn and that nudged a lot of people to say, hey, actually we should have a chat. I think we can do something together. So what branding does is it allows you to create a perception of the value that you can deliver. When they see how you speak on video, when they see the value that you bring through your posts, when they see how you can inspire an audience or maybe do something with them personally that pre sells your product or service before you've even had a conversation, they follow your work and they're like, we got to do something together. I don't know what it is, but we've got to do something together.
- [40:14]
Courtney Johnson
I did the same thing on LinkedIn. I mean, 10 years ago, I started adding publishers and editors as connections. And eight years later I got a brand deal, a book deal. And I think that's great. Yeah. I've had so many people reach out, being like, I want to work with you. Even people being like, can I come on your podcast? Or I would love to offer you this service. And I click on their Instagram or LinkedIn and there's nothing. And I'm like, why would I even give you the time of day? I'm not going to. There's no information about you online.
- [40:45]
Simon Alexander Ong
Absolutely.
- [40:46]
Courtney Johnson
No. This is immediate rejection, like, why should I care? It's so important. Even if you're not a full blown influencer and you have a team and a process, just posting once a month to give people context of who you are and what you do can help
- [41:01]
Simon Alexander Ong
because all of this is simply a value exchange.
- [41:03]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah.
- [41:03]
Simon Alexander Ong
You know A great mental mind. Bob Burke once said to me that money is an echo of value. The more value that you bring into people's lives, the more money chases you. And so when someone looks at your profile, your content, and they think, well, if we do something together, if I interview this person, I have belief that there's going to be so much value that we can create. Now if they believe that there's going to be more likelihood something's going to happen. But if they can't see an obvious value exchange, well, why would any business come out of it? Why would any sort of connection or let's have a catch up over a zoom call, why would any of that happen? So there's got to be an understanding that, yes, both of us can win out of this relationship.
- [41:41]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, win, win. Absolutely beautiful. If you were going to start your personal brand over from scratch, what would be the first thing you would do?
- [41:50]
Simon Alexander Ong
First thing in hindsight now, after all these years of doing content, is start a YouTube channel earlier. For a couple of reasons. I think YouTube has a high friction. What I mean by that is with Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, you could just write a post and put it out there. You could take a selfie or a video and upload it. But with YouTube, there's a lot more steps. You've got to find what you're going to put together, script the thing, edit it, distribute it, market it. There's a lot more steps. Secondly, when the content does well, from my awareness, it's the only channel that can pay you significant sums. If the content does really well once, obviously your channel monetizes so you can earn significant revenue from the ad revenue stream. And then third for me is one of the fastest ways to build personal brand because as a YouTube video does well, I've seen book sales do extremely well. So. So when my videos end up getting a couple hundred thousand views, the book and the Amazon ranks just shoot up. So it's the ability to build trust at scale. Because when you see a quick view or piece of content on other platforms, you're probably scrolling through lots of different content in one go. Somebody watches a YouTube video of yours, let's say it's 10 minutes long, they watch five of those videos in a row, they've just spent nearly an hour with you. That's a lot of time when you think about the relationship building here.
- [43:10]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. Also YouTube, the life cycle of a post is much longer. On Instagram, you post a reel, it's, it's gone. And over in 24 hours and people aren't going to see it again on YouTube. The longevity of a, of a video can be years where it's still circulating and people are still watching it.
- [43:29]
Simon Alexander Ong
Yeah. So that's the first thing I do. But also I would think about the experience you give people, because if you give people good experiences, memorable experiences, then they can't help but talk about it with other people. And that's what you want. You want word of mouth. If people are talking about their experience of working with you, speaking with you, hearing you on stage, interacting with your content, then that's also what creates the brand. It's the feeling of what it's like to engage with you.
- [43:54]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. What feeling do you hope to inspire in people that engage with you?
- [43:57]
Simon Alexander Ong
I hope that the experience I give people is one that they feel heard and listened to. So, for example, every time I do a talk, I always stay until the end. So I say, don't worry for the back of the queue. I'm going to be here until the last person gets a question answered. So they already know that since they've paid or they turned up for a few hours, they will get an opportunity to have a short conversation in my content. As much as I can, I would try to respond to comments when I connect with people on LinkedIn. I'm pretty sure 9 out of 10 people I connect with will get a voice note for me. And so all of this stuff creates an experience of what it's like to engage with you online or offline.
- [44:35]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. I think that's a really great cheat code that our audience can implement right now too, is as you're getting comments or new followers, can you at least take 10% of those, or even just five people today and go send them a message, a personalized something, thank them, bring them into your audience. That's really great. I'm going to do that. All right.
- [44:56]
Simon Alexander Ong
Because then this is what you're doing. This is what social media is. You're building a relationship with the people who have supported you, whether it's for like or comment or follow. And over time, they will champion your content. And so if they feel like they have a personal relationship with you, then they're going to more likely talk about your content than other people. And you can use social media in your advantage. For example, LinkedIn, if you go to catch up on your network, it would tell you when it's people's birthdays. So if there's particular people you want to wish happy birthday to and it pops up on your catch ups, drop them a voice note wishing happy birthday. Unique. It's personal and they feel heard and that creates relationship equity.
- [45:37]
Courtney Johnson
That's so good. Yeah, I love the cheat codes. So helpful. I love little hacks. Amazing. Well, how can people work with you? Are you still doing one on one coaching? I know you have programs and other things that you're offering, but somebody's listening to this conversation, they're like, oh my gosh, we need to work together right now.
- [45:55]
Simon Alexander Ong
Absolutely.
- [45:56]
Courtney Johnson
What's the next step?
- [45:57]
Simon Alexander Ong
So I do coaching and mentoring now. Not as much as I used to because I'm doing a lot, a lot of different things now. So for the coaching, mentoring, you can just go to my website, simonalexanderong.com fill in the form and then we just jump on a call, have a conversation to see if you are a good fit. Outside of that, I'm doing a lot more speaking here in the UK and also internationally, investing in a couple of companies, advise them as well, which is quite exciting. Very eclectic industries I'm exposed to and content. Just seeing where the YouTube channel goes and testing ideas to help build out a bigger. A bigger audience.
- [46:30]
Courtney Johnson
Amazing. And what's your mission? What do you hope to inspire with your content?
- [46:36]
Simon Alexander Ong
I think in essence the mission is to help people live a better story. I've gone through a lot of challenges in life. Whether it's from losing my mom at 17 to failing a year at college to the financial services going through this crisis of a few years post 2008. And what I realized is that many of us are exhausted. Not because we are doing too much, but because we're doing too little of the things that bring us joy and make us feel alive. So if we can focus on living a better story by becoming that person today, that's how we look back and realize we lived something that gave us fulfillment and that gives us purpose to. To live each day and contribute something to the world.
- [47:18]
Courtney Johnson
That's so beautiful. That's a beautiful mission. Well, we'll put all of your links in the show notes for everyone to connect with you and follow you. And thank you so much for coming on. This was such a great conversation. I learned so much.
- [47:28]
Simon Alexander Ong
Thank you so much for having me.
- [47:30]
Courtney Johnson
I do have an ask for you guys before we go. If this podcast has benefited you in any way, if you have gotten a tip that you've really loved and you've implemented it, if it's given you some sort of inspiration, if it's given you some sort of motivation, or clarity. My ask is that you leave a five star review. I would appreciate it so much. It helps spread the message. It really helps the show grow and it helps more people get access to this information. My deepest desire is on gatekeeping. Shit. I want to un gatekeep information. So anybody that desires to build a personal brand, to build a business, to create this success in their life and to live their dream, I want them to have all of the information. And I don't hold shit back on the show. Okay, we are not holding shit back. So in order to get this message to more people, in order to get these resources and tips to more people, your reviews go a long way. I appreciate you so much. Thank you.