The 22 Immutable Laws Of Content (Don't Break These)

Summary

Sweat Equity – “The 22 Immutable Laws of Content (Don't Break These)”

Podcast: Sweat Equity
Host: Marketing Examined (Alex Garcia and Brian Blum)
Date: December 2, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this powerhouse brainstorming session, Alex Garcia and Brian Blum unpack the “22 Immutable Laws of Content,” sharing a playbook of rules and mindsets that will continue shaping content and marketing well into 2026 and beyond. This episode focuses on the first 11 laws, revealing strategies, real-world examples, and hard-earned insights into what makes content genuinely perform in today’s saturated, attention-starved environment. The duo’s chemistry keeps the discussion sharp, relatable, and loaded with actionable gems for any marketer or creator looking to refine their content strategy and build unforgettable brands.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rise of Content as Marketing’s Core

• Content is now central — not just another tactic, but the nucleus for all marketing decisions and brand-building.
• Social media’s evolution has made content the primary battleground for consumer attention, brand perception, and decision-making.

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2. The Laws of Content (Part One: 1-11)

Law 1: The Law of Hooks [04:18]

• Three types of hooks: Visual (what they see first), Title (what they read), and Verbal (what they hear in the first 1-2 seconds).
  • “Focus like the majority of your time on the visual hook and the title hook. Because most people are consuming the content without the sound on.” – Alex [04:43]
• Familiarity amplifies hooks: Repeated themes, visuals, and formats prime the audience to know what to expect in the first seconds.
  • Drawing from Tim Ferriss (A/B testing book titles) and Noah Kagan (testing covers).

Law 2: The Law of Familiarity [05:42]

• Consistency breeds loyalty and stickiness:
  • “It’s not enough to just set an expectation and then not meet that expectation... you have to meet that expectation over and over again.” – Alex [06:57]
• Example: Viral formats like street interviews become familiar, instantly setting expectations.
  • “There is a creator doing that in every major city in America... once it shows up on your feed, my familiarity with the format is saying, oh, this is going to be pretty entertaining.” – Brian [10:11]

Law 3: The Law of Differentiation [12:31]

• Stand out by uniquely owning a repeatable format (“unique and repeatable”).
  • “You do something new and you do it very, very often until you own it.” – Alex [12:37]
• Your story and POV are irreplicable – “one of none.”
• Example: Brands turning their content into serialized reality-TV style narratives.

Law 4: The Law of Perception [13:56]

• Your content crafts your brand’s public image, regardless of actual size:
  • “You can create whatever perception you want to create.” – Alex [14:07]
• Example: Woodgrain Golf’s luxury/classic positioning versus trendier brands.
• Timelessness & quality signals: Why some brands charge huge markups, and how the perception of exclusivity/longevity plays into customer psychology.

Law 5: The Law of the Funnel [17:24]

• Not all content serves the same purpose:
  • Top of funnel (followers/attention)
  • Middle (engagement/service for audience)
  • Bottom (deepening love or prompting action)
• Align content formats/messaging with specific funnel stages.

Law 6: The Law of Buckets [18:41]

• Segmenting content by customer persona or intent is modern targeting:
  • “If you have multiple customer personas, then those customer personas require different content pillars.” – Alex [18:47]
• Match evaluation metrics to bucket: A small, focused piece can be valuable even if it gets low engagement—if it hits the right target (e.g., landing a major contract off a video with “only” 12,000 views).
  • “The CMO found it and we are now working together and it’s like, so it’s a total flop of a video. But it just like generates 50 to 100 grand.” – Brian [20:10]

Law 7: The Law of Narrative [20:58]

• Consistent repetition forms a dominant story/idea in the consumer’s mind:
  • “All of their content is to amplify that idea. They’re not going to go do a bunch of random shit that doesn’t amplify that idea.” – Alex (re: BPN & “Go One More”) [21:18]
• Losing focus in your narrative weakens your brand.

Law 8: The Law of Testing [22:46]

• Iteration is everything. Spend most of your time refining/scaling, but dedicate 20% to new tests:
  • “The majority of your time should go into refining, iterating and scaling content. The other 20% of your time should go into testing.” – Alex [22:46]
  • “Cannot run from the flop, bro. At all. The flop is… it’s coming whether you like it or not.” – Brian [23:08]
• Failing/“flopping” is necessary; it reveals what doesn’t work and enables precise improvements (metrics matter!).
• Alex’s “True Classic” example: Multiple iterations and tweaking hooks/titles led to breakout success after initial underperformance. [24:07–26:04]

Law 9: The Law of Visuals [26:52]

• Retain attention with three visual levers:
  1. Action (doing something in-frame)
  2. Aesthetics (pleasing environments, branding, or simply being “the aesthetic”)
  3. Angles (fresh camera work and perspective shifts)

Law 10: The Law of World-Building [28:10]

• Content = The core of your universe, touching more people more often than any other channel:
  • “If you truly want to build a world, then you need to make content the core of it. You need to make it the nucleus of all other decisions and touch points.” – Alex [29:07]
• Use content to connect and enrich every other touchpoint (email, SMS, community, etc.).

Law 11: The Law of Data [29:40]

• Treat content as a data mine: what works in one channel will often work (when adapted) in others.
  • “What works on social is going to work elsewhere. It’s going to work in email, it’s going to work in sms.” – Alex [29:47]
  • “Don’t reinvent the wheel. Rinse and repeat elsewhere and then package it differently.” – Alex [30:32]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On content saturation:
  “Content is extremely saturated. Everybody wants your attention. The number one thing that you can do… is build familiarity.” – Alex [05:42]
• On audience expectations:
  “The one that I for sure is going to get my attention is the one that I… know what to expect from it and therefore I just consume it.” – Alex [08:03]
• On street interview virality:
  “There is a creator doing that in every major city in America… it takes street interviews as an example… my familiarity with the format is saying, oh, this is going to be pretty entertaining.” – Brian [10:11]
• On owning your format:
  “Differentiation occurs at the intersection of unique and repeatable. You do something new and you do it very, very often until you own it.” – Alex [12:34]
• On the necessity of flopping:
  “Cannot run from the flop, bro. At all. The flop is… it’s coming whether you like it or not.” – Brian [23:08]
• On why metrics matter:
  “If Instagram is giving you specific metrics to look at, they’re giving them to you for a reason.” – Alex [26:21]
• On touchpoint strategy:
  “If you truly want to build a world, then you need to make content the core of it. You need to make it the nucleus of all other decisions and touch points.” – Alex [29:07]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [04:18] – Law of Hooks
• [05:42] – Law of Familiarity
• [12:31] – Law of Differentiation
• [13:56] – Law of Perception
• [17:24] – Law of the Funnel
• [18:41] – Law of Buckets
• [20:58] – Law of Narrative
• [22:46] – Law of Testing + Alex’s viral testing stories [24:07–26:04]
• [26:52] – Law of Visuals
• [28:10] – Law of World Building
• [29:40] – Law of Data

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The Creative Brainstorm: Real-Life Applications & Closing Thoughts

• Alex describes building his own content "flywheel"—integrating newsletter, YouTube, and social clips for both efficiency and output, giving a behind-the-scenes on current workflow experiments. [33:13–34:57]

  • “The newsletter is going to be my outline for YouTube, so I'm a write the newsletter... and then each one of those, they're breaking down into segments. And then I'll make those segments specific to social.” – Alex [34:03]

• Brian floats the idea for a new series—“Boomer versus Zoomer”—to compare generational content approaches. [33:32]

• The hosts joke about future creator community names: “Taste Makers” vs. “Hit Factory,” offering a fun incentive for listener engagement. [36:02]

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Tone & Style

Gutsy, energetic, and always practical—Alex and Brian deftly blend theory, tactical insights, and real industry anecdotes. The banter keeps things light, but the knowledge density is high, making every segment feel like a curated “mini-masterclass.” Their empathy for creators, obsession with innovation, and distaste for fluffy marketing advice is evident throughout.

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Summary Takeaways

• The 11 laws presented form a mindset shift more than just a tactical checklist—they’re about adopting a rigorous, repeatable, and highly responsive approach to content that is format-agnostic.
• Familiarity, differentiation, narrative, and data are the core pillars driving standout branded content in an overwhelming digital environment.
• Testing, iterating, and embracing “flops” are required for long-term success; metrics-driven learning unlocks outlier results.

Whether you’re a solo creator or helming a large brand team, plastering these laws on your wall might be the most actionable way to future-proof your content strategy for 2026 and beyond.

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For more play-by-play detail, tune into the next episode for laws 12–22!

Transcript

[A]

All right, guys, welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity. In this episode, I'm going to be Talking about the 22 immutable laws of content. These are the rules and the laws of content that are not going to change going into 2026. And I don't even see changing in the next five years. Social has changed how we approach content, how we approach marketing, and has truly changed how we approach marketing. Is eaten marketing's lunch. And so therefore, we need to start determining the laws of content, how to approach content, and look at content as the data center and the area for decision making for all of your marketing. So in today's episode, I'm going to cover the 11 laws. In another episode, I'm going to cover the other 11 laws of content. What do you got?

[B]

I'm just excited to get educated. You called me illiterate before the episode because I didn't read this book. And I'm sensitive to that comment because I really don't read, you know, and so you got me questioning if I am illiterate.

[A]

I've been listening to so many more entrepreneurs who talk about the importance of reading, and I always feel bad that I don't read enough straight up. So I'm going to do the whole audible, you know, audible kick.

[B]

And it's also becoming cool to write a book amongst our friends. We got it. We got Tommy Clark, recent podcast guests, Ryan's from Fiction, Nathan. Nathan's writing a book. Nathan's gonna be huge with that book. I'm excited for him.

[A]

He dropped a. He was at you. He came over for lunch, I don't know, two weeks ago. And like the first thing he said to me, you know, I was like, what's up, man? Like, how's, how's everything with the.

[B]

I know what you're saying.

[A]

And he was like, yeah, man. Like, I just shipped it off to James Clear.

[B]

Yeah. And I was like, he's so casual with it, Barney. Like, what a fun little marketing experiment he did. I think the audience will enjoy is. So he's running Facebook ads to see what has the best click through rate to determine his book cover.

[A]

Okay, you know where that word who's from Bartlett.

[B]

Who does that with his thumbnails, right?

[A]

No, Tim Ferriss. That's how he got the Four Hour Work Week. That's how he got the title.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

He ran the Four Hour Workweek as a title to then see which one got clicked the most. And then he came up with Four Hour Work Week. So Noah Kagan did that for, I think it's like Million Dollar Weekend, his book. Like, yeah, he tried that for I think the, the green, the green cover. And then I think another thing he did was like, he went to call it like Books a Million and he, he put like his cover in like the shelf to see if I can stand out.

[B]

I mean, look, it's super smart and I probably, I feel like that's a really good idea that I'm not even leveraging with some of my new products I'm trying to come out with, which I do have a question for the audience at the end of this one. I'm trying to come up with a name for my creator community.

[A]

And are you finally going to info?

[B]

Uh, yeah, I have to. I mean, I have to build a creator supply. All this budget that's coming through, like, we're, we're processing like multi million dollars worth of creator incentives every month and I need to give it to somebody. Yeah, I don't. If you're a creator watching this podcast, please, I'm trying to get you paid because, like, we got over $1 million in Q4 committed from brands that are in Target. Yeah. And you know, creators are like, oh, I want a $500 retainer for 10 videos. And I'm like, Bro, you could make one video and make five racks. Yeah, like, just figure it out. Anyways, we'll get into that after the 11 loss.

[A]

It is so funny though, to. To think about how early you and I were talking about content competitions, like six, nine months ago probably for sure. And now it's like the. One of the bigger waves in, in retail.

[B]

Dude, I just, I just met with Target buyers from the snacks beverage category, which, dude, retail so crazy, like the way that they, like, structure everything is so insane. But these people in the room were responsible for $17 billion worth of product buying at Target on their shelves. $17 billion, crazy number. So when you think about how retail works, they have budgets that are committed to promote the products in store. Right. They're promoting the products across, like all sorts of different initiatives, like some more effective than others, end caps, you know, influencer shop, marketing, whatever. And you know, you should have seen the light bulb moments that some of them are having, showing some of the impact that creators can have on a brand's sort of demand and attention on store shelves. And 2026 is going to get brazy. That's all I'm going to say. If you think $17 billion, where the product doesn't have a big budget to throw towards some creator incentives, then you Know, I don't know what to tell you, but let's get into the power. Power loss or.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

New laws of content.

[A]

The 11 immutable laws of content, part one. So the first one is the law of hooks. There's two ways to build and leverage hooks. The first one is the three way intersection that we talk about often. You have to have a visual hook, which is the thing that somebody sees. The title hook, which is what somebody reads. And then the third is the verbal hook. And this is what you say to start in the first minute or sorry, first, second, second and a half. Focus like the majority of your time on the visual hook and the title hook. Because most people are consuming the content without the sound on. Then the verbal hook comes into play. Now, the second way to build and leverage a hook that, no, I don't think enough people talk about is familiarity. And this is the recognizable themes, the visuals, the language, or the patterns that the art, the audience already knows, they expect and they understand. And therefore that familiarity built into the hook actually sets the context for what the video is going to be about without them having to even go past the first three seconds. Right. Those are the two ways to build the hooks.

[B]

That is backed by science. Yes. Like literally, monkey brain. Science is, if we see something mildly familiar, it hooks your attention just a little bit more. Like it keeps you around a little bit more, which again, you got to go first. Principles. What's the purpose of the hook? Yes. It's just to catch the attention. Yeah. Obviously you need to set the table for what the video is going to be about. But that familiarity is just like a little micro tactic to be able to get someone to say, oh, I know what this is, let me. And then you got to keep them obviously 100%.

[A]

Which goes into the second law, the law of familiarity. Content is extremely saturated. Everybody wants your attention. The number one thing that you can do to leverage and not have to always fight for someone's attention is build familiarity. Right. Create familiarity with the audience. You gain it, only you gain it after doing two things. The first is you do have to get someone's attention. Even if you've built something like this that is like a set that we're going to use over and over, we still have to get someone's attention. But once you get someone's attention, you have to plant an expectation. Right. And that expectation is the thing that is either the theme of the content, it's what you're going to be doing over and over and over again to the point where There is familiarity because I've watched the thing over and over again. So you have to plant the expectation. Then the third aspect of is you have to meet that expectation over and over again the second time that they consume the content. So it's not enough to just set an expectation and then not meet that expectation. Essentially the second time you have to set an expectation like, hey, this is like the reason I built this set is because we're going to do X thing, but we're not just doing X thing once, we're going to do X things a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And so that is then how you're going to create the expectation setting which then forms a familiarity. And like there's, there's brands doing a very good job of this now. Like, I don't know if you've seen Bull Dates. Have you seen Bull Mates? Have you seen that? They started a whole nother channel that's like, it's literally just a dating show centered around Kaba.

[B]

And like you see built did this. Yeah. Something similar as well. Built out of social show.

[A]

Yeah. With roomies. Like they've done a phenomenal job of it. And so like there's all of these elements that, that play into familiarity and especially because like basically what you just said, right, like if $17 billion is getting or you're saying like there's $17 billion of buying powered target and there's a million allocated just in Q4, there's going to be 5 million allocated in Q1. There's going to be. Right. And like those numbers are just going to keep increasing. That is saying that there's only going to be more and more and more content. Right. Like the feed is going to continue to get saturated and saturated and it's not like we're grown as a population to a degree that like it's like we're just consuming more content.

[B]

You're doing your part though. Young father got a kid. I am, yeah.

[A]

But the majority don't want more, want kids.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

That's true. At least in Austin.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so therefore, like you, we do have to think about it through that lens of man. If today I consume a hundred pieces of content, the one that I for sure is going to get my, my attention is the one that I'm. I know what to expect from it. It's so familiar that I know what to expect from it and therefore I just consume it. I have it. Right. Yeah, totally. Career ladder, all those like any, any.

[B]

Idea like that I Mean, this is kind of the rationale behind. I think one of the most cracked formats right now is street interviews. It just seems like maybe I'm just in this content matrix, but all I'm. All I'm getting is just street interviews. I feel like. And I don't know if IG knows that I love I I watching them more or if they actually are becoming so saturated, but there's something about when a video that is a street interview does make it to your feed, that expectation, that familiarity you have is, this is going to be an extremely captivating take from somebody or this is going to be a hot take or controversial or whatever it is. Like, and you're seeing so many different creators. You know, even in Dallas, like, there's this girl that I have seen, she basically takes like a little red solo cup mike and goes to Katie Trail, which is in Dallas and interviews bros. And she's just like, how's your dating life? And it's so interesting, like, how repeatable her format is. And like, it's not really doing crazy numbers, but it's doing like maybe 40, 50k views a time. And, bro, this is like, there is a creator doing that in every major city in America. There's someone. There's like 20 doing it in New York. There's like five in Charleston. Like, pretty much every major market is seeing that. You know, even School of Hard Knocks, who we've talked about probably too much. He thinks we're necking him hard at this point. But, like, he's. He's got little copycats that are running around and like, dude, this one kid that's doing it in Miami, I forget his name, like Braden Z. Something like that. He's like, actually really effective at doing this. And it's like, you would. He's just ripping, you know, school Hard Knocks format. Like, walks up to someone whether to be famous or successful, and ask him a bunch of questions. It's literally printing views. Like, he's doing millions of views. Yeah, he's ripping the format. So that's the familiarity thing is, like, once it shows up on your feed, it takes street interviews as an example. My familiarity with the format is saying, oh, this is going to be pretty entertaining. This is going to be watchable because it made it to my feed 100%.

[A]

Did you by any chance, did you see the. The one of me, like, the street style where it's from a listener from the pod. You've.

[B]

You had a street interview recently?

[A]

Not street interview is I'm going to send you the link.

[B]

No, I didn't know street interviews could go out to rural farms. You're too far out. They reached your house.

[A]

I was on Congress.

[B]

You're on a dirt road. What were they doing?

[A]

I was on Congress, bros.

[B]

Riding his cattle.

[A]

Riding his. So this has 200,000 views and he's a listener of the pod. 200,000 views and 10,000 likes.

[B]

No way. When is this?

[A]

And it plugs. Sweat equity.

[B]

You texted me?

[A]

Yeah, I just texted it to you.

[B]

Hold up, bro.

[A]

So it's Kurt's cookies. Oh, yeah, yeah. Or Curtis cookies. Sorry. Curtis cookies. Two twin brothers do the best cookies in Austin, hands down.

[B]

Like, you texted this to me.

[A]

Unless I just sent it to some bro. I texted it to myself.

[B]

It's a Monday morning, by the way, guys, we are. We are in here at 10am Monday.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Filming this.

[A]

Peep this out. Check this out. 200,000 views, bro. I think it might get 500. It was at, like, 120 yesterday.

[B]

Oh, this just. Dude. Yeah. You're killing it, bro.

[A]

Isn't it? So this so cool. I was crazy. I geeked out when I saw it because I'm like, that's so sick.

[B]

That's incredible. This is like a. Okay, to prove our point, though, like, this guy has 4,000 followers and the video is viral right now. Right? Like, because he just hit that format, like, the POV style. That's crazy. I'm going to have to watch this later. I shouldn't w. I'm not going to watch this later.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because then I'm. I'm almost necking you. I'm. I'm going to be smiling in my car and.

[A]

No, bro, watch. Made me smile, bro. Like, it made me smile. That one. I'm like. I'm glad. I. I like, my interaction was great, though.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. You nailed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so high risk. Like.

[A]

Yeah, very.

[B]

One of my biggest fears, actually, is.

[A]

Like, I didn't know he was recording.

[B]

Him catching me on the wrong day. Yeah. You know, and I'm just like.

[A]

I mean, I wasn't going to be a dick regardless, but, like, never going.

[B]

To be a dick. It's just like, you got to. Or farm a little bit. Like, you got to come off a little, dude.

[A]

So he. He wants to bring us some cookies to, like, have on the pod when Next time we do, like, the brainstorm session.

[B]

Yeah. We got to pay for his gas and.

[A]

Yeah. Here we go. All right, so the third one, the law of differentiation. So there's two ways to really do this. So the first one, if we're building off of familiarity, again, it is to build off of familiarity. And the reason that happens is because differentiation occurs at the intersection of unique and repeatable. You do something new and you do it very, very often until you own it. I'll use myself as an example of I leveraged a format and a set by this guy Joshua Neal. He had done it enough and it was very unique that people were like, did Joshua Neal approve this video? Right, right. Like that law works perfectly here and I broke it. You know what I'm saying? The second is one of none. So the only thing that is one of none is your story and your pov, right? Only your story is your story. There's a company called I think Softies Burgers. Have you seen this? No, I'll have to send it to you. They're doing an amazing job of like turning their content literally into a reality TV show where there's like an episode in this episode, like this is the theme. So it's not just like random vlog, it's like, like this episode, hey, here's how we invested 10k cash and I'm gonna be making up that episode. But just like that is how they're doing it and they're doing it from like this reality TV format. It's very, very good. The fourth, the law of perception. Content is about forming a perception. So how you want someone to see you is dependent on the content they actually see. And what I'm. And what's powerful about that is you can be a hundred million dollar brand or you could be a five hundred thousand dollar brand, it doesn't matter. You can create whatever perception you want to create. I don't know how big wood grain golf is, but think about how they're like the perception they're creating around their brand.

[B]

I'm so excited for him to blow up.

[A]

Oh yeah, me too.

[B]

It's, it's like coming and it's going to be pretty sick.

[A]

Very, very. Like think about how again the perception that they're, they're currently forming is we are a classic, timeless and luxury brand.

[B]

It's extremely clear.

[A]

Yeah, it's extremely. And we're posed against all of the kind of like modern day golf brands. Probably not the, the Malvins, et cetera.

[B]

But even Melbourne, I mean, I think Melbourne uses a lot of synthetic polyester type of stuff. Like Melbourne is also just like getting, you know, I mean, I'm a big fan of the team, so don't take this the wrong way. But I mean, they, they're charging 850 for a quarter sip. Yeah, it's like, it's a lot, you know? Yeah, we got that from China.

[A]

Yeah, I'm not going to name the brand, but dude, we were. I was in a manufacturer in LA and the jacket sells for like 5, 600, right? I asked the dude, I was at the manufacturer, I'm like, how much does it cost to like make this? It's like $12. Yeah, I was like, that is. And that's made in the U.S. yeah. $12.

[B]

Have you. Have you. Do you have a nice bag? Have you been dealing? Have you been looking into, like, nice bags?

[A]

Yeah, well, backpacks are like bags that I'm like.

[B]

Like a duffel.

[A]

Yeah, travel duffel. So was.

[B]

What's. What's your motion?

[A]

So sweet hat. I think it's called sweetheart. Let me, let me pull it up.

[B]

Damn, you're going off the grid. I was talking about like Goya. I was talking about like some rapper shit. Goyard, Bottega. Let me see if it's to play into the point though, I think like those, those bags that I was looking at, I just can't get over knowing that they're like making them at a sweatshop for 30 bucks. You know, one thing that I want to delve into at some point with, with our. With our pod is like the ability to create something timeless, you know? Like, I think when I look at that bag, it just reminds me of so many things that I've bought over the years where in the moment I thought it was sick and then two years later I'm shopping for a new bag. Versus if you get a Bottega bag, like that is lasting like 60 years.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

And I mean, Louis V. Luggage and stuff, whatever. I don't know. I haven't flushed out the idea, but let's get back into your in. Your loss.

[A]

How about one thing from Louis V? This bracelet, bro. They tell you about that?

[B]

How do you feel about it? Great. Okay. Trust corner.

[A]

But it was. It was crazy going to Louis V in Paris. Like the one that's.

[B]

Oh, right, yeah, I remember, bro.

[A]

And like the amount of bread people are spending in one day. There was this girl that walked out. She had like legitimately 15 bats.

[B]

Was she like a crazy rich Asian?

[A]

No, that's a great movie. I don't. Have you ever watched that movie?

[B]

Best airplane movie of all.

[A]

Hard Agree. Like full sand.

[B]

You could throw that on and be mildly entertained with zero distraction.

[A]

That's so funny, cuz. That's the first time I watched that was on the airplane.

[B]

Yeah, Airplane movie Hall of fame would probably be a good piece of content if anyone wants to. I mean if you're a travel influencer, shout out. Rachel Tires started, started doing content in the personal finance niche. She just like tells you how to hack credit card points.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Picked up like 200000 followers three months.

[A]

Really?

[B]

But she's going crazy. Some of your posts like three days of.

[A]

Three times a day.

[B]

Three times a day. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. The, the fifth law, the law of the funnel. Not all content is created equal and it shouldn't be. There's content to get followers. That's top of funnel. There's content for your followers. That's middle funnel. Then there's content to get your followers to love you or take action. That's bottom of the funnel. 6. The law of buckets Content is a new targeting. I think you and I probably know that better than just about anyone. Where if you have multiple customer Personas then those customer Personas require different content pillars. They require different content formats and types. Right. Like there's a lot of people that probably won't consume a one shot video with text on screen that's just like seven seconds. And those same people might be consuming nothing but carousels. Yeah, right. And so you have to understand that and you have to understand like if you have a specific customer Persona or ICP and you want to know or you have to then create content pillars based on who they are and what they consume. So if I'm a supplement company and I have the Ironman individual and then I have like bodybuilders and I have why I need to be able to create content for X, Y, Z. You know what I'm saying? And, and you can do that and it will get in front of that individual. If you also have customer Personas, it's like hey, I have this six year old that's like this and this 40 year olds like this. You can make content that literally targets the 60 year old and will get in front of the 60 year old. Yeah, right. And you can do the same thing for the 40 year old. And so you have to understand content buckets. Like if we're looking at the hierarchy of a narrative, buckets, pillars, it's like right in the middle. I have to understand the idea, I want to amplify which we'll get into, which goes into next law. And then we have to have our buckets. Our buckets are the different customer Persona. So we're not making Random for random people.

[B]

Yeah, I, I, I couldn't agree more. And I also think you have to have different evaluation criteria by Bucket as well because when you think about making these decisions internally, it's always going to be a, you know, how can we get buy in from somebody to fund this initiative? Right. And so if you're making something that's for a bucket that is very narrow. Yeah. Right. Then you have to set the expectation that this is not going to get 3,000 likes. It might get 300.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But that's still good. Right. Like I look at my own content strategy and something I've kind of been scheming on for longtime listeners, you might remember, like I was always trying to like get in touch with, I always, I try and get in touch with brands that I want to work with by mentioning them on my content and I'm like, this is what I would do if I were them. And so I made a video about Wander recently that I said this is what I would do for their content strategy. For me it was a big flop. Like 12,000 views, like 285 likes, like didn't really do well ultimately I think I just didn't have a great visual hook. But that is what it is and the CMO found it and we are now working together and it's like, so it's a total flop of a video.

[A]

But it just like generates 50 to 100 grand. Right.

[B]

Like that's a, it's going to be a lucrative contract. And also, you know, it's something that I've been wanting for a while. And so the evaluation criteria, like yeah, I mean it didn't perform that well mass market, but it did specifically like, you know, arrow on the target. Yeah, found them. So, and, and that's the biggest thing with a lot of these things is like, you know, if you're gonna go super, super top of funnel too, you gotta be comfortable with like this is really gonna be, you know, just a view through type of situation. Right. Like the products, like a lot of these retail focused campaigns, like someone's just making a 45 second video, the product's in five seconds of it. Yeah. And that's an impression, I guess. And how do you weigh that versus other things in the bucket?

[A]

One thing I mentioned on, like when we do the content buckets, very similar, like we want to rank them. You want to rank them based on either A, these are our top customers or B, who do we want to dive into that has the most potential, like an untapped market that we have it like we know we want to own, but you fully haven't gone into yet. The seventh is the law of the narrative. So this is. People build narratives in your head or in their head based on the content that they repeatedly consume from your brand. Right? So you need to be very, very selective about what you put in front of them. And that narrative is the idea. And like the per, like the, the central idea someone has around your brand and what you stand for. You know, we use BPN as an example because it's a very easy and clear example of like their narrative is go one more. Therefore all of their content is to amplify that idea. They're not going to go do a bunch of random shit that doesn't amplify that idea. Because then you're forming the wrong narrative. Right. The more you amplify it, the bigger that narrative gets. The less you amplify it, the less it gets. But it's the most central thing and most important thing that somebody or somebody that's, that's publishing, investing a significant amount of content, should think about and create. Like we were on an onboarding call two weeks ago and we were asking this question and they were like, we actually have no idea. Like that's a question we really need to think about because we scale the brand based off meta. But like if we turned off meta tomorrow, we'd be kind of fucked. Right. And it's because we haven't spent that time brain building. We haven't spent that time building a perception in somebody's head. The eighth is the law of testing. And the reality is like the majority of your time should go into refining, iterating and scaling content. Right. The other 20% of your time should go into testing, testing new ideas, formats, content types, characters, delivery settings, etc, like, because to grow you must test. I don't think like enough people test on social.

[B]

No. And they, they just. Because they're scared of the flop. Yeah, exactly. Cannot run from the flop, bro. At all. The flop is it's coming whether you like it or not. And the worst part, you gotta chill. I hope, I hope that was on camera, but that is a good visual hook. Look. What? He's dead to me. Pause. But it works, bro. I think the law, you cannot avoid the flop.

[A]

No.

[B]

Even when you think you're going to have a good idea, you're going to flop. And so you got to get comfortable with it in that it's, it's So a lot of this stuff is actually ideology driven because you have to Believe in certain truths to invest properly in today's day and age. This is as I talk to more teams. There are obviously teams that get in, there are teams that don't. And, and I think a lot of that education component is understanding that a flop is actually a good thing because you learn from it. Right. Like you learned that that idea did not work. And when you really have good foundational knowledge of the platform, you can dig into the analytics and know why. Yeah. Was your 3 second stop right bad? Did it not get enough shares? Was the watch time not good? Like if you, if you know those things then you can just iterate and then actually improve on the next one.

[A]

So this, we talked about this probably one of the early episodes, maybe top first 20, 30 episodes where we talked about one of my videos. My first viral video got 3 or 400,000 views. It flopped twice before it got 300,000.

[B]

Which one was that?

[A]

I talked about true classic. Oh, right, right. And it started off and this is going back to like really understanding the metrics. I tested it in idea. I look at the metrics and I'm like, okay, this is promising. I, I had a TH000 2,000 followers at the time. And I'm like, this video has 3,000 views, but it had 100 likes and 100 shares. Okay, there's something there. But if my average watch times asked, which it was, it was like eight seconds, you know, 10 seconds in that range. Then it's like there's something there. Just didn't package it right. So I packaged it a second time, I tested it again. I probably published it within 24, 48 hours of the first time. It got roughly 5,000 views. Right. It got a little better. But the same thing, I looked at the ratio and this, they didn't have 3 second view rate at the time. But like I looked at the ratio of likes to shares and it was again, it was like one to one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'm like, okay, there's something here. I'm just still not packaging this. Right. I'm not structuring it or delivering it. Right. That then is how I came up with this. Is this brand's content play or marketing playbook, right. 100 something million dollar marketing playbook. Because the first one was about landing pages. But if I have 2000 followers, building something or creating a piece of content around landing pages is too narrow. Yeah. And, and then it was like their story and I'm like, okay. And like I was trying to weave in pockets of, of marketing, you know, like knowledge and advice in there. And again, it performed a little better, but it was like maybe a little too general where it wasn't like captivating.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it didn't speak to anyone because it's like, maybe there's a select group of people actually care about True Classic Story. But then the third was like, this is this brand's $150 million marketing playbook. Okay. Now it has a tight, like it has a very good title where you. We're leveraging a number. Right. $150 million. Then we have True Classic, which is a pretty recognizable name. Yeah. Then we have Marketing Playbook, which it gives you enough context to understand what the video is going to be about. And then it also creates curiosity because you're like, well, what is that marketing?

[B]

Yeah. What do they do? Like reveal it for me. Yeah.

[A]

And so that video then is the first one to, to pop and get, you know, 300,000. That only happened because of testing. And so you do have to understand a lot of, a lot of the important metrics. I say this in cut 30 often. Like if Instagram is giving you specific metrics to look at, they're giving them to you for a reason.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

You know what I'm saying? Like if 3 second view rate is there and added, it's for a specific reason.

[B]

It definitely has weight in how it evaluates your video.

[A]

And when a video perform is, performs well, it typically will give you like this little message like this is one of your best hooks. So encourage bro, like, yeah, right. Like understand that. Why are they saying that?

[B]

There's a lot of reasons getting shared more than usual. You should try making more content like this. And I'm like, maybe if your AI could spit out something that wasn't, you know, below a 3 third grade level, I mean it's just crazy. Work on that.

[A]

So that's the law of testing. The ninth law is the law of visuals. After you get someone's attention, you need to retain it. So when we're talking about visuals specifically, there's three layers that people need to understand to be able to create visuals to retain someone's attention. And those three are the action. Always try to be doing something in your content, whether that's the model, whether that's you yourself, because you're in the content, whether that's an object. Don't just be flat in unless you're like super hot.

[B]

Like in which you know, well, that nine goes into the sweat equity audience. Like I don't know what we got going on in the Audience. But yeah, that's fair. A lot of people who are just bad as hell just lean into the camera. You're good. You know, it's fair.

[A]

That's fair. That's a different game. We're not playing that game.

[B]

I'm not playing that game.

[A]

We're not playing that game. So first is the action. If you are very good looking, then that goes into aesthetics. You are the aesthetic. The third is the actual aesthetic.

[B]

Yeah, you are. The aesthetic is a crazy flex.

[A]

Crazy. If you look at, like what we're going to try to build here, we are going to build a specific aesthetic. We want to maybe, let's say we want to build like a brutalist but classic aesthetic. Awesome. We can do that.

[B]

Brutalist, yeah.

[A]

You like that?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I just didn't know you were into the Soviet Union like that. That's not your. Actually from Cuba. Don't sleep.

[A]

We're here now, though.

[B]

Don't sleep.

[A]

We're here now. There's a reason we're here now.

[B]

Totally, totally.

[A]

But the aesthetic, right, like having. Having a beautiful visual background, having a set that is very visually, visually appealing, like, that all plays into the aesthetic that you want to build to get to retain someone's attention. The third is the angle, right? We can shoot this. You can shoot top down, you can shoot. You shoot so many different ways that you're changing the angle so that it continues to get somebody consuming your content. The 10th is the law of world building, all right? Content is the core of the world you build. Therefore, it needs to set the tone on how else you show up across other channels. What I mean by that is like, I hate that people don't invest more and more into content because content is where you have the most touch points. If I really want to, I could. I could have endless touch points today, right? I could post a piece of content every minute for the rest of the day and a story for the rest of the day. And I could get in front of.

[B]

60,000 people, probably minimum. Like, minimum.

[A]

Yeah. Like, I could get in front of so many people just by the end of the day and there. And therefore if I'm doing that and I'm getting out a piece of content every single day, which most brands force a piece of content every day. Those are the majority of your touch points. Even if you compare it to email and SMS, it's like, cool. You send 15 emails a day, or, sorry, a month. Like, think about how much content you published, right? And think about how much more time they're spending on a piece of content than they are on an email. Right. So the law is more so if you truly want to build a world, then you need to make content the core of it. You need to make it the nucleus of all other decisions and touch points. Which plays into the 11th law and the final law for today, which is the law of data. Content is a data mining center. Right. What works on social is going to work elsewhere. It's going to work in email, it's going to work in sms. And like I've tested this over the last nine months. Like an ungodly amount. We've tested, hey, this is the idea here. How do we take this idea in Maverick, like tier Maverick Campaign was a great example of that, where every story that we told on social, we retold an email and it performed very, very well. Right. And so what works on social will work elsewhere. You just have to then make it platform specific. Right. Like the same way you format or you created on social isn't how you recreate it for email.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the idea here is don't reinvent the wheel. Rinse and repeat elsewhere and then package it differently. Right. Package it for the platform that or the channel that it's going on and then continuously do that again. So Those are the 11 immutable laws of content. For now, we'll, we'll hit another 11. But anything else you want to add.

[B]

To that, super, super valuable. I think all of it is, you know, I'm excited for the PDF because I mean, a lot of these need to just be plastered on every brand marketing team's, you know, office, like up on a whiteboard. You know, it's like you can't forget any of these things. And I think what's really helped both of us build very successful businesses in very short amounts of time is the fact that we adhere to these laws at an extreme level, you know, like, and so it's, it's about modernizing your, your, your thought processes and your ideology. To me, like a lot of these are more so belief systems that you have to adopt rather than even necessarily like a tactic or a strategy. So I, I think it's super, super valuable to anyone. Oh yeah, that was, that was dope.

[A]

I've been spending a lot of time on like, okay, what is my content flywheel going to be? Because right now there's a lot of moving parts that we have. So I'll be like, McCoy, let's go shoot this, let's go shoot that. But there's not like a, you know, and Then the newsletter's coming back and YouTube's coming. I'm like, I'm scripting so many different things that it feels like sometimes I don't get to any of it because it's like, I'll do 25% of this, and then I'll do 15% of that, and then 50% of that, and then you really don't feel like you get.

[B]

Anywhere or like you're becoming the craftsman that you used to be. I feel like sometimes I'll be like, I'll be riding a hook. I'm like, oh, just put that, like, last 30 effort into making this actually really, really good. And it's so funny. I was kind of reviewing my old content, and, like, my best recent video was I did a Ralph Lauren video. And, like, I was actually not very confident in that concept, but I packaged it so well because I just. I, like, did it back and forth with ChatGPT, where I was like, is this hook good? Like, I'm trying to do a, you know, a high contrast with a big number, like, kind of irritate some people. So I eventually arrived at, like, you know, most boomer brands suck at content, but Ralph Lauren just did this. Here's their strategy. And it's like that zigzag format worked really well versus I could have just been like, Ralph Lauren. Like, a usual hook I could have done would be like, ralph Lauren just got 40 million views in the last month. Here's their content playbook, right? And it's like, by simply putting in that last 20% of effort, it was an outlier video, and it's hard when your flywheel is not dialed in to, you know, put that last bit of effort in 100.

[A]

So I'll tell you what the flywheel, I think is. Is going to be. And then you also just gave me a phenomenal series.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Boomer versus Millennial brand. Boomer versus Gen Z brand. Gen Z versus Millennial brands, like, based on their content.

[B]

I'll give a deal.

[A]

What. I came up with it. You just said the word Boomer and it happened. Yeah. Yeah, it happened. I'm just kidding.

[B]

No, no, no. I got a. I got a better one. Boomer versus Zoomer.

[A]

It rhymes. It sounds great.

[B]

This is Boomer versus Zoomer. All right. It.

[A]

But what I'm the way. I'm going to be doing the flywheel, and McCoy will be happy to hear this, just because it's going to be, like, gonna make our content more efficient. The newsletter is going to be my outline for YouTube, so I'm a write the newsletter. And the newsletter are very, very like the way we're writing them now. They're actually like letters, which goes into the full idea of our rebrand. Right. So it's going to be like volume one, volume two, etc. There's going to have a theme for all of them. The newsletter is putting it on, like.

[B]

Digital parchment, like, with the branding. Like, are you, like, right.

[A]

A bit. It feels like hotel stationary.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Yeah. So it looks pretty cool. I'll have to show it to you. I think you.

[B]

You'll dig it.

[A]

That is then going to be the outline and actually like the. Basically the script for YouTube. And then each one of those, they're breaking down into segments. And then I'll make those segments specific to social. So, like, yeah, I have. We have a YouTube that we recorded a week ago, a week and a half ago that is now it's an. It's a newsletter piece. But that newsletter piece is going to be a few. A few additions. Then the second variation of. Is there is the YouTube and then there's going to be like 12 to 15 pieces of content that come out from it. And then we'll build a set for it. And, like, should be able to do it like that. You know, this is theory. Theory land right now, but I think it has potential to be good.

[B]

I love it. I mean, it's. It's gonna work. I'm, like, fully confident. I. I was really bullish on your YouTube when I saw the set stuff. You posted something recently about was it the lab coat set or the. Was it.

[A]

No, there was like, the tv.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was just like, damn, that's about to crank.

[A]

Yeah, I think you'll do well.

[B]

You do that. I'll be yachting. I'm gonna be in the Mediterranean incognito, you know, trying to get off the grid. Q3.

[A]

I'll be there, bro.

[B]

That pulled up on me. All right, cool. If you enjoyed the episode, please, like, subscribe. Leave a comment if you're still paying attention. I got a little Easter egg for you, so if you leave a comment. Helping me decide which name to use for my creator community, which I'm going to give you the two options right now, then I will personally venmo you. 25. End of the episode. I'm trying to go.

[A]

Venmo. More than 25 bucks, bro.

[B]

Fifty.

[A]

A hundred.

[B]

What if people start going crazy? I think there's like, at least 200 people still listening to the end of.

[A]

This, but somebody has to you're. You're Venmoing the person that comes up with a good name.

[B]

No, I'm just. If you comment literally, which name you think I should do for my creator community, which. Drumroll, please. Taste Makers or Hit Factory? Those are the two options. Comment which one you think is better, regardless of your which one you think is better. I'm a venmo you$25. If you're still listening and you comment which one you like. Hit Factory or Toast Maker?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

You don't like either?

[A]

I'm in the middle.

[B]

Stay tuned to next week and we'll decide. See ya.