← Sweat Equity
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- [00:00]
A
My question to you. Does your family have a coat of arms?
- [00:03]
B
I don't know, dude.
- [00:04]
A
It's about time you did.
- [00:06]
B
I'll give you a fun fact about me. My actual last name before my dad, I think changed it or something was Baltay.
- [00:12]
A
I'm not going to comment whatsoever on any of the dynamics of what you just said.
- [00:17]
B
Isn't that. That kind of goes hard.
- [00:19]
A
When did they switch it?
- [00:20]
B
I think when my dad King said. I have to ask him because I think when he came to America.
- [00:25]
A
Yeah, that's hype. That's honestly, Alex Baltay would be.
- [00:28]
B
I would, I would own that username.
- [00:29]
A
On IG for sure. I mean, I will say, like, that' so sick to be able to like, go to a new country and just whatever you want. It's up to you.
- [00:37]
B
Because now it's like my.
- [00:38]
A
Because they just trust whatever he said. They don't know at least Garcia or B.
- [00:43]
B
Because like, I. I think one of my cousins, like, she's Bay. The. His sister kept B. And that would have just been a. A more interesting last name versus, you know, Garcia, like Alice Garcia. Like, there's a reason I had to have underscore atx, right?
- [00:59]
A
There's.
- [01:00]
B
There's a few others trying to get Alex Garcia's is.
- [01:04]
A
No, I get it. You were trying to like, level up the power ranking like in South Texas. Alex Garcia, I bet you you got like a good spot. I don't know if you're guaranteed number one, but you probably got a good spot. Yeah, potentially. Reason I ask is this brand heritage ring is doing an excellent job with their top of funnel content. And something that I feel like I see with a lot of our listeners brands and a lot of just brands in general is they're not doing a good enough job of unlocking their viral potential. And what does that mean? It's your videos are packaged in a way that they can't even reach a lot of people. So going viral means getting a million views, right? So to reach a million people, you have to have something that is interesting to a million people. If it's only interesting to 100,000 people, then you're probably not going to be able to reach a million. It's pretty simple math. What these guys have done, which I think is really interesting, is they create content that you know it's about a ring, right? A signet ring. Like, I've never even heard of a signet ring before I saw this brand, but now that I see it, I kind of want one. It's basically a ring with a coat of arms for your family. And you know, it's, it's part like flex, part functional, you name it. But what they were able to do so effectively is package their content in a way that it would apply to anyone, right? If you are someone who has a family, if you're someone who, you know, just simply cares about like true crime, right? Like, there's so many different ways that they were able to package their content to appeal to a wide range of people. So because of that, broke down a simple five step framework people can use to unlock their brand storytelling potential. And so number one is you gotta identify the core desire, right? So what is this deep human motivation that your product is tapping into? So with heritage ring, like the biggest thing that they did was legacy, right? It's like legacy, it's family pride, a sense of belonging. Like we all kind of have these different things now. Again, this is a ring, dude. Like think about like two Js. All these other jewelry brands, like, they're just selling based on swag. These guys knew that's because I got a 2J's channel. Yeah. Tell them who put you on. I bought you all. Huh?
- [03:14]
B
I put you on.
- [03:15]
A
No, I know. Oh my God.
- [03:16]
B
Went to your real shirt.
- [03:18]
A
That was.
- [03:19]
B
Didn't forget.
- [03:19]
A
We almost had to cut the episode. But so what they do so effectively is they're going beneath the function of the product, which is a ring, to the feeling that it's giving you, right? It's status, tradition and identity. So, you know, ask yourself, like, what is the core desire of my products? Like, if you're a fragrance brand, like, it's not just to like smell like peaches, you know what I'm saying? It's to. Don't know what does anyone want to smell like peaches? It's to, you know, like receive a compliment, right? Like, it's more of a baseline human desire, like receive a compliment or be perceived in a better way. And so like, that's one way to kind of think about identifying the core desire behind like, what is my product? So next is, you know, you want to expand the surface of the story. So something that they do that I think is really, really cool is they're like, why do mobsters, aristocrats and billionaires all have a coat of arms? Like, why do they all wear signet rings? That question in itself, you just expanded your entire story to appeal to people who like true crime, people who like tech news, people who like to study like old money content, like all of a Sudden you've created a story that's going to be interesting to a wide range of groups and they're going to be curious about what you're going to say with the rest of that story. Now why is it like that sounds kind of crazy, right? Like, why would you want to even appeal to those people? Because what you're doing is just getting more eyeballs on your brand and your product, right? Like all of a sudden, you know, if someone who is just fascinated with John Gotti and, you know, they probably think, like, if only I could be as cool as this dude, you know, without the murder, pretty much. And so this is now a way for them to potentially participate in their fandom of him. It's like John Gotti had this coat of arms. He put it on a signet ring that was something that he used to symbolize his family. You know, it was worn for generations. All of a sudden, if I'm someone who's a fan of that true crime story, you know, I'm thinking like, damn, maybe I want to have my own signet ring. Like, start this legacy, start this situation. So it's, you know, how do you take it? It's like, not necessarily who is a fit for my product, but, you know, who else could care about this desire even if they don't care about the product? So that's not just ring buyers, that's anyone with family history, tradition and desire for legacy for these guys takes you from product focused content to cultural content. Right? Because again, we're just trying to create entertainment stuff like that. The biggest thing that, you know, I think they do. Next. So number one was obviously identifying the core desire. Number two is expanding the story surface. Number three is they package it for relevance. So this is really where I think your hooks come into play. So, like, you know, the question I asked at the beginning of this was, does your family have a coat of arms? Right. That is a.
- [06:07]
B
It's a great hook, even for a video.
- [06:09]
A
It's a hook that will work with any single piece of content because it applies to every single human being on earth. Like, they all would at least know what you're talking about with the coat of arms. And they would all probably. I mean, theoretically, if you're a human being, you have a family, whether that family is like, you know, in a different situation or not. And so what they do is they package it for relevance. So it's like they take the bigger story and they wrap their content within it. So this is. You're using formats that people already Want to share. So it's like a history or heritage lesson, a fun fact or a did you know type of hook, emotional storytelling, like these type of things. The package is about your audience. You know, it's not about you. Right. This is kind of the biggest shift that we are always preaching about on this podcast is like, do not make the content about you and your product and your brand. Make it entertaining, educational, or inspiring for the person watching that piece of content. What I think is so cool about this brand is like, pretty much all of their content is what I'll call like, Trojan horse content. This is something I'm trying to like, really create the keyword for.
- [07:12]
B
That's tagline.
- [07:12]
A
Yeah. And the reason it's Trojan horse content is because by the time you're 30 to 45 seconds into the video, you don't even think about, do I need this thing? You're already pre sold. And that's when they can introduce a CTA that's going to be very effective. So for them, you know, this is subtly connecting it back after you said, do you have a coat of arms? You know, signet rings used to be used to sign letters when they were, you know, clay molds to actually, like, seal a letter, to seal an envelope, basically. So, you know, I think that appeals to a lot of people who have a sense of nostalgia, who want something functional, to use something cool to, you know, preserve their legacy and identity. So what they say is, you know, signet rings, the original use of a signet ring was to seal this envelope. And, you know, this was done for generations by kings, aristocrats, whatever. It was a sense of pride, legacy. And then by the time you're like, okay, I kind of want one of these, they say, send us your last name and we'll look you up in our database and we'll identify if you have a coat of arms. Great cta. Because it's like, now there's a soft action. I don't have to create a hard action to go purchase. It's like a. It's like a lead magnet, if you.
- [08:22]
B
Will, and break that down real quick. Like the difference even between a soft action versus a hard action. So people understand, like, you can have something like that where you're asking somebody to. To do something that isn't as action oriented as purchasing.
- [08:37]
A
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's the central. You know, it's just lead gen. At the end of the day, it's like, how do you. Kind of a simple way to look at it would be if A brand had multiple flavors of a product. You would take a quiz.
- [08:50]
B
You should tag it. Sorry to disrupt. You should tag it. Soft motion versus hard motion.
- [08:55]
A
Soft motion versus hard motion.
- [08:57]
B
Okay, that's actually. That's you right there.
- [08:59]
A
Yeah, just blending. Blending the. All my favorite things. But so, you know, a hard action would be obviously pushing for a sale. It's like, come buy our signet ring. But a soft action would say, you know, send us your name, and we'll look up if you even have a coat of arms. And that obviously takes them from, you know, aware to interested. And you have a better chance of getting your message across to them versus, like, trying to spam them and get in front of them with ads, which, you know, this other brand, Guildshore, I think they're doing a really good job with this, and it's a little more simple on their side. They basically are just creating all of this, like, business legacy content, basically. So I'll be like, you know, Will Thorndike is the most respected mind in private equity. Like, this guy made billions doing the exact opposite of what every other private equity guy does. And then goes through his model, right? Talks about exactly what he does, and it says, you know, go to our link in the bio to download the free guide to potentially replicate this success. Like, that's a soft action, right?
- [10:02]
B
What is this business? Is it like an acquire.com situation or.
- [10:05]
A
It's a very similar to acquisition.com, or acquisitions. Yeah, so they do like M and A advisory and stuff like that. But that's an example of, like, you know, this is not like, soft actions are not limited to, you know, physical product or like, something like you can collect information so that leads are hotter through any sort of different business. And I think it's a really good thing to tie to this overall content strategy. And then the last piece, you know, is how do you systematize? Like, after you bridge back to the, you know, product at step four? Like, how do you bridge back to the product, subtly reference it and say, you know, here's our cta. How do you systematize it and scale it? You turn these insights into repeatable content themes, right? So an example would be education. It's like the history of different symbols, different traditions and rituals around the heritage ring. You know, similarly, like, so that's your education piece, right? Like, you can educate on the use case of it. Educate on different symbols, traditions. The culture piece is exactly what I was talking about earlier. Mobsters, aristocrats, like, big families, like sports dynasties, like, there's all sorts of different ways to tie it back to that. And then the emotional tie in as well would be a third bucket. Right. So you now have three different buckets you can pull from where it's like, okay, I say I'm scoping out 30 pieces of content. I have these three buckets. Emotional, cultural, or educational. Right. For all 10 of my educational ones, I'm going to come up with packaging that has exactly each of the first four steps where it's like, this is something that would tap into a core human desire, not necessarily talk about my product, and then, you know, has the ability to, like, appeal to anyone rather than just my target demo. And yeah, that's, that's the framework.
- [11:49]
B
What? I love the framework. I think two brands still don't understand top of funnel content, what it really means. Right before we got in here, I was filming just like a short form piece of content, and it literally was about the content funnel. And I spent like for an hour trying to put it into an analogy for people so that they can actually understand it for. For brands. And so what I, what I got to was, let's go go fishing with me for a second. Right? All right.
- [12:14]
A
You love fishing, bro.
- [12:15]
B
I do, yeah. I do.
- [12:17]
A
But the crazy thing is I've never seen you. I never seen you fishing. It's a whole lot of crap. On this podcast, fishing knowledge.
- [12:24]
B
My car's not here, but in the truck of my car, there's a fly fishing rod. I started to learn. I bought it last week. I'm starting to learn.
- [12:29]
A
I got no bodies of water out there.
- [12:31]
B
No. Yeah, right around my crib. When you, when you drive in, there's a, There's a nice little pond as.
- [12:35]
A
I'm sorry, I just thought that lake was. I thought that pond was inhabitable.
- [12:39]
B
No, the amount of people that fish there is crazy.
- [12:42]
A
That's how you're meeting the other dads in the neighborhood.
- [12:44]
B
I'm over here.
- [12:45]
A
Just got four of y' all next.
- [12:48]
B
To each other casting. Okay. But go fishing with me for a second. So there's top of funnel content, middle funnel content, bottom of the funnel content. If you ever listen to this podcast, you know, Brian and I stress that and talk about that a lot. Now, the difference is if we want to think about top of funnel content, we think about it through fishing. You need to be a commercial fisherman, meaning you are using a thousand foot net that is 40ft wide. And the singular goal is as many fish as possible. Right. Like that is the goal of commercial fishing. They're not going specifically just for like a red snapper because that's not, you're not going to get that with that big ass net. You were trying to put as big of a net in the water and get as many people as possible. Because like being specific is not the goal. Volume is the goal. Right. That's top of funnel content. Middle of the funnel content in this case is I just got, I went to Ace Hardware, I picked up a cast net. It's probably 4 to 12ft. I'm walking the shoreline, I see a school of fish. I get ready, I cat or I throw it out there, I catch fish, I could still get a good amount of fish. But it's not the same as commercial fishing. Right. It's a little bit more specific. Yeah. And then bottom of the funnel fishing is like I'm going to Bass Pro. I'm getting a rod and reel combo. I need a specific fish, I need to go to specific time at a specific place. I'm trying to get a specific result. Like that is then bottom of final content. And so when we're thinking about top of funnel content, I think one of the more important things to understand in like what you were just discussing with a lot of these brands is associations like the bigger play there, right. Like you don't need to be talking completely about the product or your brand or any of those things. If you're an endurance brand, you could be talking about for example the history of endurance training. Right. And that, that level of association of talking about how the first marathon was created to then the first actual Olympic Games, etc, like it still correlates to who your brand is and what you do.
- [14:38]
A
That's a great example. I think the, the buckets that I used at the end, I hope people can really lock in on as a way, as a place to draw inspiration. Because you just talked about endurance. Right. So we have education, culture and emotion. Those are the three things you can tie into. So education could potentially be like, when did we literally discover how to like who was the first endurance athlete?
- [15:01]
B
Exactly right.
- [15:01]
A
Or like who was the first person to understand modern marathon training? Like that's going to be interesting to pretty much anybody that's ever ran.
- [15:09]
B
We have something cooking on that. That's why I should have said that example. But we giving away the game, something crazy cooking on.
- [15:16]
A
And then, you know, culture could be anything from like why, you know, the guy who won the New York marathon this year, run it, won it. And like what his background and what his story was and like finding A unique insight there all the way down to just like, you know, an unlikely guy who could run a marathon. Right. Like a dude who woke up hungover and said, you know, I'm just going to do it today. No training, emotional tie in is like, you know, that mama mentality stuff like.
- [15:42]
B
Or it could be like that, that lady that was the first she was told not to run a marathon.
- [15:46]
A
She ran, right. And that one, you're going to try and appeal to people. So like that's kind of how you can systematize it through the buckets is, you know, I think packaging starts a lot of times at the hook level. More so than anything is how you can make that hook. A statement that ties back to, you know, that core desire that ties back to these content buckets, but is going to be so ridiculously simple. Right. That anyone can understand it and actually be entertained by that piece of content.
- [16:13]
B
So there's an account, this is actually a, a YouTube video that I'm filming right now, so I won't go like too crazy into it, but the NBA started a purely top of funnel account. I don't know if you saw.
- [16:24]
A
I saw.
- [16:25]
B
Yeah, it's called NBA.
- [16:28]
A
Yeah, it's like MBA Research and Development.
- [16:30]
B
Yeah, sorry, I had to pull up NBA Research and Development department, the official unofficial testing lab for the NBA. Right. And it's all purely top of funnel content. They're trying to go mass market because honestly like the viewership for the NBA is down and specifically down among Gen Z and younger generations. And so they have a bunch of content that is like, how does Mercury RX affect the Phoenix Mercury? What's the best basketball accessory? How many Oreos or how many Oreos does it take to be as tall as like wy. All these different things that have are really not. It's more about again, the association to basketball, to the NBA versus you. Trying to see highlights of LeBron. If you're not watching the NBA, you don't care about highlights from LeBron or Tatum or whoever. You want to see these interesting things that are then going to eventually pull you into totally.
- [17:18]
A
Like how many Oreos does it take to get as tall as Victor Wembanyama is interesting. Like I don't care because I'm, I like watching basketball. But for like the 10 closest friends of mine, I could see that being a water cooler thing that they would talk about 100, you know what I mean? Like they go into the office, clock in, don't do shit for two hours and then it's lunchtime. What are you going to talk about, bro? Did you know that WEMBY is 365 oreos tall? It's like, that's actually a pretty smart way for the NBA to get people talking about their marquee superstars.
- [17:57]
B
It's great, dude. It's great.
- [17:58]
A
And no shot at the W2s, by the way. That was. That was maybe a little harsh. I take it back. That's an honest living, you know, I don't want to.
- [18:10]
B
Yeah, but it's a perfect example of, like, association is a very, very top, powerful top of funnel tool. Right? If you're not. If you're worried about everything needing to have your product and you're not worried about the eyeballs, then it's just an easy comparison of like, would you rather have 250,000 people watch something or 2,000. Well, other people watch.
- [18:29]
A
We also talked a little bit about the brand lifecycle, which is something that I want to start touching on more for people so they understand where they're at in the brand lifecycle. Because brand and product lifecycle is something that most people are probably just like, all right, I invented something. It's going to sell unlimited quantities for five years. You know, like, when you launch a brand, that's kind of like how you think about it. And you know, for different stages of the brand lifecycle, you need to have different content initiatives. And this ties into the overall theme of something been talking about, which is like, content has eaten the marketing function. So, like, you no longer have like display ads and press ads and like these different places to tell your story. Like, you need to be telling it on social and you need to tie it into where your brand is at the life cycle. You know, I know a lot of brands that have reached around like 30 million in revenue and they're struggling to develop the muscle of storytelling. Right. Like, they're not really sure how to continue to tell that story. And a couple of the brands that I'm about to talk about on IG are so native to brand storytelling that as they continue to reach the brand life cycle maturity phase, which is once you're distributed in retail, people know who you are. They're able to continue building upon the previous story that they told. So just something interesting. I mean, I talk about my boys over at Salud all the time, but, like, they are doing an excellent job of this where like every stage is a new level up. It's like first they launched like into retail, and then they launched into more community events, and now they're like, the official hydration of the Mexican national team. And like they're like just continuously like doing more sick brand marketing initiatives. And most people would be like totally terrified to spend the money that they do on brand marketing and they're literally taking over. Right. And it's the ultimate, you know, chicken and the egg problem of like, well, I'm scared to like put my nuts on the chopping block and spend that money. It's like, all right, well six months from now, all of the baseline revenue indicators for you of organic search followers, SMS numbers collected, people just aware of you will have a lag. And you were trying to push promotional stuff on people for six months and then that's exhausted until six months later. What do you have?
- [20:47]
B
You know, this was a conversation. I'm not going to name the brand that we had with one of our clients.
- [20:50]
A
We're like expose them.
- [20:51]
B
No, because we still work with them. But we are on a call.
- [20:55]
A
I'm about to get on full.
- [20:56]
B
I'm.
- [20:57]
A
I'm exposing everybody.
- [20:58]
B
You going all out.
- [20:59]
A
I'm captain.
- [21:00]
B
Yeah, I know you are. There's no chance that cuts contracts cuz I like everything. You got to hit an earning, you know. You know you, you're keeping it cool for the next few months, bro.
- [21:09]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Level I. I've been getting spicy on Twitter every now and then. I had a bad one. I had like a like I could get sued level tweet because I said that. I don't. Well, I'll say it in, I'll say it on equity. I just said like, you know I'm only hiring. No, it's deleted. I said I'm only hiring if you're on your parents insurance. Oh, but that's age discrimination.
- [21:34]
B
I didn't see that tweet.
- [21:35]
A
I was down, down within 15 minutes. You know why? Because that had 11 likes and I was like, oh, this is about to get a pop.
- [21:42]
B
Is that funny that now on Twitter 11 likes is like in 10 minutes.
- [21:45]
A
Is, is they kind of have the similar lag that a lot of the other platforms have. Like a couple of my recent stuff that's actually done okay like gotten like 130 likes happen like later. It, it happens like maybe like 8 to 10 hours after tweet in the morning. It's kind of interesting.
- [22:03]
B
I have, yeah. I had one thing recently that did okay right. Like a hundred likes and there was a lag it like performed while it popped for a second. I was like okay, it's probably going to do well. But it didn't do well until I went to bed and I woke up the next.
- [22:14]
A
You know, it's a crazy feeling and it.
- [22:17]
B
I hope the fact that I just said 100 likes is great and I used to get 5,000.
- [22:21]
A
Yeah, well, the fact that 5,000 is like not even that sick on Instagram either.
- [22:25]
B
Well, no, I'm not Twitter. That was a Twitter.
- [22:26]
A
I know. I'm just economies. Yeah, but it's like you'll post something and I'll. I'll like it within like seven minutes now. I never have any idea how I did. Yeah, like, some of them will go crazy later, some of them not. You know, I'm just bored and bro. So, yeah, I mean, that's the framework to me. Like, I, I think more brands need to unlock their storytelling potential and it happens through packaging. So, you know, hopefully that was a helpful exercise. I mean, let us know in the comments any questions that you have. This is part one of a two parter, because on our next part, we're going to be doing this exercise live for some brands that submitted on Instagram. Awesome. Stick around. We'll see you all next week.