448: What's Working on Social Media Right Now? (14 Real Strategies)

Summary

The Think Media Podcast – Episode 448: What's Working on Social Media Right Now? (14 Real Strategies)

Date: September 26, 2025
Host: Sean Cannell (Think Media)
Guest: Caleb Raulston (Brand Strategist for Gary Vaynerchuk, Alex Hormozi, etc.)

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Overview

In this engaging episode, host Sean Cannell sits down with influential brand strategist Caleb Raulston to break down the rapidly evolving landscape of social media for creators and business owners. The discussion dives deep into practical frameworks, dispels common myths, and examines real strategies that are working right now in 2025 to build sustainable brands and loyal audiences on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

With rich anecdotes and actionable advice, the episode covers:

• How interest-based algorithms have changed social content
• The myth-busting of outdated best practices
• Essential strategies for both solo creators and business owners
• The debate on virality, omnipresence, long-form vs. short-form
• The power of unique worldviews and personal branding
• Detailed frameworks—including the “Brand Journey” and “Eye of Sauron” strategies

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Shift from Social Media to Interest Media

• Main Insight: The feed is now driven more by a user's interests than their follows/subscriptions.
• Quote:
  “The way people are consuming content is radically different...it’s not the crucial element for success that it once was. Your idea becomes far more important in a world where social platforms are serving interest-based content, not follow-based.”
  — Caleb Raulston [02:06]

Example:

• Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube prioritize content “around interests” rather than simply the people you follow.

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2. Modern Best Practices vs. Outdated Myths

• Debunked Myths:
  • Renaming video files for SEO boost is obsolete [05:05].
  • “Best Practices” are likely already saturated by the time you hear about them.
• Quote:
  “The moment people are saying it's a best practice, it's probably too late...you probably have a small window.”
  — Caleb Raulston [05:28]

Real Growth Levers:

• Brands that succeed define a contrarian worldview—they stand out not just via tactics, but unique thought leadership (Cody Sanchez and Gary Vee cited as examples) [07:43].

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3. Worldview as a Brand Differentiator

• Actionable Insight:
  Find your unique, even contrarian stance in your space.

• Quote:
  “They don’t pop because of titles, thumbnails, or hooks. They pop because they have a fundamentally different worldview than any of their counterparts.”
  — Caleb Raulston [06:56]

• Personal Example:
  Caleb’s channel breaks “rules” (e.g., six-hour free course in one video)—it works because he’s delivering a completely different value than others [09:09].

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4. Personal Branding: Authenticity Over Archetype

• Lean Into Disadvantages:
  Turn insecurities or quirks into relatable assets for your audience.

• Quote:
  “Whatever you identify right now as your disadvantage can be the very thing you lean into as your greatest advantage.”
  — Caleb Raulston [10:27]

• Visual Branding:
  Find combinations of your true interests (even polarizing ones) and showcase them.

• Quote:
  “The principle here is it doesn’t matter what the look is, as long as it’s such a great reflection of who you are.”
  — Caleb Raulston [15:13]

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5. Not Every Business Owner Should Create Content

• Challenging the ‘everyone must post’ myth:
  Some highly successful businesses don’t even have a social presence. Content creation should align with your business goals and life ambitions [15:42].
• Quote (Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice):
  “Make sure this is what you actually want, and this lines up with the life you want, the business you want…”
  — (as recalled by Caleb) [16:46]

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6. The Brand Journey Framework

A four-question process for intentional brand/content-building:

1. What do I want to have happen? (Goal)
2. Do I need to make content in order for that to occur?
3. What would I have to be known for in order for that to happen?
4. What do I need to learn in order to execute this? [18:03–19:04]

• Quote:
  “Do not let the simplicity make you ignore the impact.”
  — Caleb Raulston [18:03]

• Clarification:
  This framework aids both new and existing creators/businesses in aligning content to goals and avoiding wasted efforts.

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7. Documenting the Journey vs. Teaching as an Expert

• If you’re not the expert yet:
  Be transparent—document your journey, share wins and failures. Audiences appreciate “building in public.” [22:01]
• Quote:
  “If you are not the expert yet…what you are is a proxy or a guinea pig for your audience. You're taking us on the journey.”
  — Caleb Raulston [22:04]

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8. Five Major Lies Creators & Entrepreneurs Believe (and What to Do Instead)

1. All views are good views

• Some exposure is negative or attracts the wrong audience, which can hurt your brand.
• [23:36]
• “Not all views are good views.” — Caleb Raulston

2. I’ll figure it out as I go

• Action is key, but lack of intentionality leads to wasted years. Use the Brand Journey framework instead.
• [29:22]
• “You’re going to build a brand of some sort. I would just rather do it intentionally.” — Caleb Raulston [30:15]

3. If I keep posting, it will work eventually

• Focus on learning from top-performing content, not just volume for volume’s sake.
• [32:07]
• “You want to iterate from things you already have signal on.” — Caleb Raulston [32:50]
• Define what “winning” means for you (business results, not just vanity metrics).

4. I can’t make content for every platform

• It’s a lie that you have to be everywhere—dominate one platform, then scale.
• The “Eye of Sauron” method: focus intensity on one, keep others in maintenance mode, then rotate.
• [44:27]
• “If you’re a solo creator, pick one platform…and a secondary platform you repackage for.” — Caleb Raulston [44:27]

5. I need to go viral for my brand to grow

• Virality isn’t bad, but prioritizing trust over virality brings long-term business results.
• [50:31]
• “Trying to optimize around virality in an educational space is the wrong thing to optimize around. You want to optimize around trust…Trust is what precedes the transaction.” — Caleb Raulston [53:40]

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9. The Six-Hour Free YouTube Course Strategy

• Caleb’s Ultra Long-Form Playbook:

  • Created a 6-hour free masterclass on YouTube, breaking conventions and building massive authority [54:00].
  • Results:
    • Over 300k views
    • 20,000+ new email subscribers
    • Massive trust/brand boost
    • Tangible business growth

• Quote:
  “Show me another person in this space that will go on YouTube for free and talk about this shit for six and a half hours…It was a brand positioning statement.”
  — Caleb Raulston [56:25]

• Execution Tips:

  • Ultra-long-form only works if you deliver substantive, high-value content per minute (“VPM” or “Value Per Minute”).
  • Created a detailed, 50-page download/workbook as a lead magnet. Mentioned 4–6 times, top of description and pinned comment [68:12–69:09].
  • “Every decision—graphics, lead magnets, downloadables—if it makes it easier for them to change what they do, cool. That’s the only aim.”
    — Caleb Raulston [68:45]

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10. Quality vs. Quantity: Which Wins?

• Caleb advocates high effort, focused content (even just one video a month) over pumping out lots of low-impact posts—provided the effort matches your resources and your “audience’s pain points.”
• Accordion Method:
  • Start with more frequent content to get data/signals, then "contract" to fewer, higher-quality videos as you get clarity.
• “Pick an arbitrary amount of time—two, four, six weeks, and that's how often you increase your volume. But the key is, it's not so you show up everywhere, it's so that you acquire the data on what your audience is resonating with the most and then you can make more of it.”
  — Caleb Raulston [66:08]

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11. Team Structure & Platform Management

• Editors or creatives should also manage posting on platforms for best insights—don’t fully separate creative and scheduling [41:57].
• Repurpose content based on which format/asset works best on each platform.

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12. Closing Advice

• On momentum and serendipity:
  “Being in motion and in action creates incredible serendipity. The more you’re in action, the more strange things come your way.”
  — Caleb Raulston [74:00]

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• "What you identify as your disadvantage can be your greatest advantage."
  — Caleb Raulston [10:27]
• "Contrarian takes only work if you truly believe them."
  — Sean Cannell [26:33]
• "If you're a solo creator, don't try to be omnipresent—dominate one platform."
  — Caleb Raulston [44:27]
• "Trust is what precedes the transaction, not virality."
  — Caleb Raulston [53:40]
• "I posted a six hour course for free on YouTube—show me anyone else in the space doing that."
  — Caleb Raulston [56:25]

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Important Timestamps

• Interest vs. social media shift: [02:06]
• Outdated best practices mythbusting: [05:05–06:56]
• On developing a recognizable worldview: [07:43–09:25]
• Brand Journey Framework explained: [18:03–19:52]
• Five Lies (Rapid Fire): [23:36 onwards]
• Eye of Sauron content approach: [44:23–46:43]
• Long form vs. Shorts debate: [46:43–50:23]
• Six-hour course breakdown: [54:00–60:39]
• Email list & workbook CTA: [68:06–69:49]
• Final advice to younger self: [72:53–74:21]

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Final Takeaways

This episode drives home that intentionality, authenticity, and unique positioning are the engines of contemporary social media and business brand growth. Technical tactics are important—but who you are, what you believe, and how that sets you apart will have the most lasting impact in today's “interest media” era.

For creators feeling overwhelmed:

• You don’t have to be everywhere; just start intentionally, double down on your strengths, iterate from your best signals, and don’t chase vanity metrics.

Be sure to check out:

• Caleb’s six-hour free YouTube brand-building course and downloadable workbook (links in shownotes).

For part two and more, follow Think Media Podcast and connect with both Sean & Caleb on the recommended platforms.

Transcript

[Sean Cannell]

The economy is shifting fast. If you're an entrepreneur or creator serious about scaling with YouTube, this is your moment. October 2nd and 3rd in Las Vegas, we're hosting the Think Media Mastermind. It's exclusive, it's application only, and spots are almost gone. Apply now atthink media mastermind.com the way.

[Caleb Raulston]

That people are consuming content is radically different. Subscribers matter, followers matter, but it is not the crucial element for success.

[Sean Cannell]

Caleb Ralston. He's the brand strategist behind Gary Vaynerchuk, Alex Hermosi, and he's helped build brands that have reached over 30 million followers over the years.

[Caleb Raulston]

If you're a solo creator, I would argue that you're going to get the greatest returns, not from trying to be omnipresent, but dominating on one platform. So pick one. I don't believe anymore that everybody should make content. This is the trap that a lot of people in the entrepreneur space fall into. Everyone should start with the Brand Journey framework. It's four very simple questions. First question.

[Sean Cannell]

My guest today is Caleb Ralston, a brand strategist that's worked with Gary Vaynerchuk and Alex Hermosi, and he just grew his YouTube channel from 1,000 to over 37,000 subscribers in a few short months. And in this episode, he's going to be revealing a simple strategy that also grew his email list over 20,000 subscribers that anyone can steal. And today on the Fake Media podcast, we're going to be unpacking the exact brand building playbook that's working right now. Frameworks, strategies, and the mindset shift that are helping creators grow faster and business owners and entrepreneurs stand out in crowded markets and build something that lasts. Caleb Raulston, welcome to the show.

[Caleb Raulston]

Thanks for having me on. This is a wild moment.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, I'm excited. And we're really going to be doing two parts and getting into some of the backstory because we go back almost 20 years.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yes.

[Sean Cannell]

Which is insane. And I'm excited to get into some of that. But let's hit tactics, and let's start with what has actually changed in social media in the past 12 to 18 months that most people haven't caught yet.

[Caleb Raulston]

I think the majority of things have changed. I think the way that people are consuming content is radically different. I think, you know, you and I have been in the game for a very long time, and the majority of the time we've been in this, it's been, I follow a creator that I really like, and so I consume their content because I hit follow and it shows up in my feed and you've talked about this a lot recently. I think there was a video you guys just uploaded the other day where you were talking about Gary's been changing how he refers to it from social media to interest media. And I think that is the biggest change that has occurred. And I think a lot of people don't realize that subscribers matter, followers matter. Anybody who's going out there and saying otherwise, they're just trying to get your clicks. It does matter, but it is not the crucial element for success. Before when we were coming up, I remember The Sean Thinks YouTube channel like it, it took a while to get a hit in the beginning and now it's like you could have a hit at any point. And so I think the emphasis on your pre production needs to change because it's far less, it's not gone, but it's far less just about the individual creator and how you communicate. But it's also your ideas and thoughts that you're communicating. And so your idea in my opinion becomes far more important in. In a world where it is serving or social platforms are serving interest based content, not follow based content.

[Sean Cannell]

Can you give an example of the just people are watching this happen in their feeds, but what does that mean and how is that showing up tangibly with these vertical videos or even long form videos that are showing up, why is that happening?

[Caleb Raulston]

It's just showing up because you are watching more of that content. So anybody who complains about their feed, for example, the reason why your feed is the way it is is because you're engaging with that content. For all of us who are constantly seeing the pandas and gorillas vlogging in our feed right now, it's cause we're engaging with that content. And so I think it's a very simple thing. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all these platforms, their main goal is to keep you on the platform. And so what they realized is oh, if I just serve all kinds of content from all kinds of creators around this one or two interests that they have, they will stay far longer than if we base it just on what they've subscribed to or follow. Because I don't know if you remember this but like, and I haven't actually encountered this on my feed in a long time. It used to be that you would scroll and you get to a point where it was like, all right, you're all cut up. Yeah, there's nothing more. Yeah, I haven't had that in a while.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, it's not possible anymore. There's endless content and endless interest loop. Okay, so when it comes to this term, best practice, what's funny is if anyone's been creating content for a while, they maybe have some tattoos in their mind of what the best practices are. Sometimes these things can be huge myths that either never worked or are now outdated. One of those myths on YouTube is you need to rename the actual video file that you upload with the keywords.

[Caleb Raulston]

I forgot about that one.

[Sean Cannell]

That would re emphasize your title to help your video rank. And maybe a decade ago, it was a metadata signal back to YouTube. But that is such an outdated and untrue myth. I'm curious, what's a best practice that you hear people keep parenting, parroting around? That's just not true anymore.

[Caleb Raulston]

There's a lot of them. And something that kind of just immediately sparked in my head when you said, this is like the moment that people are saying it's a best practice, it's probably too late. Yeah, it's kind of like the moment that everyone's like, this is a really good investment. It's probably no longer a good investment. You know, when everybody knew that beachfront property in California was very valuable, it was too late. You know? And so I think, first of all, if you're hearing that, it means that you probably have a small window where you can take advantage of that. But what we're talking about is tactics, and I think those are really important. But those are constantly evolving, and I don't believe those are the biggest levers for your growth. I think what we have right now is a shitload of creators that are giving all of these little hacks, and they're these tiny little things that you're doing that will not move the needle the way you actually want. I think what people don't realize is the brands that really pop in the education space, specifically, they don't pop because of their titles, their thumbnails, their hooks. They pop because they have a fundamentally different worldview on their industry than any of their counterparts. And that's why their content works. Their content will work. It's why they even pop early on before they have a team that's packaging their content well, because it's not about the little tactics. Those are great. Those are awesome. And if you're not very interesting, that's where you got to start. But very quickly, you need to figure out, what do you believe differently than most people.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

Like Gary. We both came up learning from Gary, and he came onto the scene in a world where the majority of companies. And this is shocking for the majority of people listening because they don't remember this fortune 500s and 1- hundreds were spending all their money on. On TV, newspaper and billboards, mailers, not social media at all. And he came onto the scene and was like, hey, there's this crazy thing called Facebook. I think it's gonna be a big deal. And he was right. But the reason why he blew up wasn't because of the way he was packaging his content or his hooks. It was because of his fundamentally different worldview than everybody else. And then he optimized from there.

[Sean Cannell]

What do you. What, What's a concrete example in the present world of a brand or a personal brand whose worldview is really cutting through the noise?

[Caleb Raulston]

Another great example is Cody Sanchez. So around 2020, we were at the peak, really, I would say 2018 to like now even. We were at the peak of the only way you get rich is by being a founder of a tech company. That was it.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

Everyone was like, I got the Uber of blank, the Facebook of whatever.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

Like the Airbnb of such and such. And Cody came onto the scene and was like, hey, there's actually this like crazy thing. You could become rich being a plumber.

[Sean Cannell]

Boring businesses.

[Caleb Raulston]

Exactly. Wildly different than what everybody else in the market was saying. And it wasn't. I really do not believe it was her videos in general. It was the videos wrapping over and over and over. This fundamentally different worldview. Yeah, this was a recent, like, unlock for me that I had. And it sounds so obvious, but I've been doing this for almost 17 years now. And it just hit me the other day because I was looking at our clients, the clients that are getting the best results and the clients that are getting good results, but not as good as I would like. And I realized the ones that aren't getting as good of results, it's not that they're not doing the right things, it's that we haven't identified what their worldview is that is different than their peers. That is what will cut through everything else. Like, I am not the most articulate person. I am definitely not the best looking person. That is not any reason to watch my content.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

We are not titling and packaging our YouTube content with traditional best practices in mind. We're actually going the exact opposite. We're not doing the game of having. You know, I put out a six hour and 22 minute free course on YouTube. All my YouTube buddies are like, that's 13 videos, brother.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

We're doing everything contrary. But the reason why I think it's resonating is because I'm coming onto the scene in a world where the majority of people in my space are saying one thing. I'm saying something fundamentally different.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah. So the power of having a real contrarian approach. A couple challenges. What would you say, though? Because Cody has this worldview, but what would you say to the person who does say, well, I don't have the looks or I don't have the vibe. Because you look at someone like Cody and people make the excuse. You go, okay, attractive woman, good communicator, well dressed, well packaged.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

That's an advantage.

[Caleb Raulston]

I think what I would. Interesting. I'll share. I am not a life philosophy person, and nobody should take life advice for me. But my philosophy for life is. And I figured this out really early on because I have a lot of disadvantages. A lot of people would probably assume differently, but I have my disadvantages.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And I quickly learned that in jiu jitsu, there's this saying which is, you roll, then I roll. You roll, then I roll. Whatever you give me, I'm going to use as my advantage. Whatever you identify right now as your disadvantage can be the very thing you lean into as your greatest advantage. My massive, like, brutal level of insecurity of being in front of the camera right now like this, I decided to lean into that and making content. I'm gonna share that with everybody, and I'm gonna be very, like, anytime we're filming, I feel like I look fat on camera. Boom. I'm gonna call it out.

[Trevor]

Yeah, Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

Like, I'm going to lean into the thing that could be a disadvantage for me, and I'm going to turn it into my greatest asset. And one of the things that we're starting to notice is, like, people are resonating not only with the content we're putting out, but, like. And this sounds so weird to say about myself, so please hear this through a humble tone. But they're resonating with me, the human, totally, as, like, a good human that they can relate to.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And the comment that I'm getting a lot right now is, like, accessibility and relatability. And I think it's because I'm leaning into what could be viewed as a disadvantage.

[Sean Cannell]

So, I mean, I want to unpack personal branding, but I think this gets into some of these nuances. I mean, number one, you're like, I'm not the best looking. And I disagree. I think you're an incredibly handsome, you know, man.

[Caleb Raulston]

Thank you.

[Sean Cannell]

But. But. But I also think. But. But you Have a vibe. You have a. You have a look. How important is that? It's authentic to you. I've known you for a long time. You didn't make it up once you started to get on camera.

[Caleb Raulston]

It was not a phase. Mom, I've been wearing band tees since I can remember.

[Sean Cannell]

Band tees, tattoos, your love for motorcycle culture, all this different stuff. Your love for heavy metal.

[Caleb Raulston]

So.

[Sean Cannell]

But that actually help. I mean, that stuff connects. So some people. What would you say to the person who. Maybe. I guess my point is like, okay, Cody, is the objection and the excuse someone might make, which is just attractive female who have advantages on social media, there's no doubt.

[Caleb Raulston]

But then. Yes, but they also have it far more difficult than I do. I would argue. Everyone says that. Yeah, but like, women making content publicly have it way harder than any man. I will die on that hill. Like, so. Yes, I agree. But that's what everybody sees.

[Sean Cannell]

Why would you die on that hill?

[Caleb Raulston]

Because, I mean, the kind of comments that you get as a woman versus a man. Sure. I didn't do my makeup before this, and nobody's gonna mention that.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

You know, like, I haven't been able to make it to the barbershop in, like, three weeks, so my beard is looking a little scraggly.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

I don't care.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

Totally different as a woman.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

Because of the way that society engages with women publicly and the comments that are put on there. So. And I say that because it's like there's the. The assumption publicly of it being easier for her. Yeah, but. And I'm not on the back end. I don't know. But I can make some assumptions. So.

[Sean Cannell]

So then you. You've got a vibe, though. You got your own thing. It's a unique. And you actually, you have a standout look. Like there's. And I guess that's kind of what. Yeah, you have a standout look. Is that helpful in personal branding? What would you say? There's somebody listening to this right now. They work at Microsoft. They wear, you know, a blue button up, you know, dress shirt every single day. And that's just kind of the attire. And they're like, all right, I am Mr. Average. How do they. Personal brand.

[Caleb Raulston]

I bet that Mr. Average or Ms. Average has some secret obsessions that they're just insecure about bringing to light for whatever reason. We could go into this another day. Probably due to my insecurities, I bring out all my passions. And so, like, I don't hide the fact that I'm obsessed with Harley Davidsons. Does that turn some people off? Hell, yeah, it does. How much I talk about it.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

Metal turns people off for sure. Like, I would argue, the things that I'm really into are actually pretty polarizing for the average individual. Yeah. I think the unique part is the combination of them within one character. So I think for people listening, a big thing is, like, what are the things? Like, metal has nothing to do with content, strategy, or brand. I'm not intentionally. To your point of where I think you're going, like, I'm not intentionally crafting some image that I think is going to be better for. I'm just authentically me. And so, Gary, same way in a world where all businessmen and business women publicly would wear suits, comes out with a fucking hoodie and a, you know, a beanie and shit, right?

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And I would actually argue, if you're going into business, content right now, a way to stand out is to dress up.

[Sean Cannell]

Dress up.

[Caleb Raulston]

A lot of people followed Gary and wanted to look casual and stuff.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

But I think the principle here is it doesn't matter what the look is, as long as it is such a great reflection of who you are. And the more that you bring that out visually, the easier it is for the audience to identify things that they can either connect with or not connect with.

[Sean Cannell]

That's strong. I think we'll come back to some of those personal branding tips. But if a business owner came to you today and said, I want to grow my brand online, what would you tell them? What would you not tell them anymore?

[Caleb Raulston]

That you 100% should make content. I don't believe anymore that everybody should make content. I've gotten the opportunity over the last couple years to meet with a lot of business owners that have grown very successful businesses, and they've never made a social media account in their life.

[Sean Cannell]

Totally.

[Caleb Raulston]

And I think that's great. I think something that Gary asked me when I kind of was deciding whether or not I was gonna start making content, and I, you know, I'm unbelievably blessed to be able to, like, occasionally ask him these questions. And his response was so weird to me. I did not see it coming. He basically said, like, make sure this is what you actually want, and that this lines up with, like, the life that you want, the business that you want, all of that. And I was like, oh, my God. From the man that tells everybody to.

[Sean Cannell]

Make calls, you just thought he'd be like, bro, you go all in, man. Post it. You know, But. But that was not his response.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. And I think it caused me to sit back and go like, oh, yeah, there are ways that I could build out my consulting firm the way that I want to and never make content. But for me, what I decided is that the impact that I wanted to have for people that I know will never work with us would then not be there. And that's something that I've had ambitions around for a while now. And so I think that's why I chose it. But that would probably be the thing is I would sit down with the business owner and really find out, why are you doing this? What is the goal?

[Sean Cannell]

What are a couple questions you would ask? So someone's listening to this because people listening to this are already creating content. They want to learn your tips and frameworks, and we're going to get to those. Others are on the fence. They've been listening to the Think Media podcast. Maybe they're new here and they're like, they're trying to explore if they want to start. So this is a great question. And what is interesting is, I'm curious, you're really saying that, like out of that exploration, it could be a very interesting conclusion. It's like canceled plans. Like all of a sudden you're like, oh, great, I don't got to go to that anymore. And you might actually end up going down the road of, of a different approach, or maybe a different approach even to what creating content means. So what is just like a couple framework questions to try to tap into that self awareness.

[Caleb Raulston]

Everyone should start with the Brand Journey framework. If you're about to make content or considering it, you should do this. If you're already making content, you should do this so you have more clarity moving forward. It's four very simple questions. Do not let the simplicity make you ignore the impact. The first question starts at the end. What do I want to have happen? What's my goal?

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

And with the context that you're giving me here, I would add a little caveat to that. So it's what do I want to have happen? And do I need to make content in order for that to occur? The second question though, that I like to walk people through is, once we know what we want to have happen, what would we have to be known for in order for that to happen? Okay. And then the third question is, in order to be known for something, we got to do it. So what do I have to do in order to be known for that thing? That's three of them. But that doesn't take us to today. The fourth Question brings us to today, which is in order to do the things to be known for the thing to get the outcome I want, what do I need to learn?

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

If it's building a business, for example, that's what you need to do. Well, there's a lot that I need to learn. I need to learn everything within hr, finance, marketing, sales, recruitment, all these different things. And within all those buckets, there's all these tiny little things that you can chunk down. And so that gives you the exact path of where you're at today and where you want to be and how you get there. And then once you actually, and it's not a five minute process, that's like an hour easily, like really, really actually pressing on it. And once you figure that out, then the next question is the third question, what do I have to be known for? Do I have to make content to be known for this thing? And the answer is, for a lot of people, probably no. Now, will it accelerate it? Yes. Okay, cool.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, it's kind of like also at the end question is also at what scale? Because if you're also just known as like the greatest real estate agent locally, word of mouth might actually be pretty sufficient. But if you want to, you want to impact a bunch of people even with free information, was going to be pretty difficult to do that. If you don't put any free information out there and impact people across the.

[Caleb Raulston]

Nation, around the world 100%, or if you have ambitions of speaking or writing a book or anything like that, then it also makes sense. So I just like, you'll notice if you consume anything that I say on podcasts or content, I'm really big on being intentional. That's the big thing here. Why are we doing this? If we can answer that question, cool. If you can't, I would argue there's better things you could do with your time.

[Sean Cannell]

Your framework's kind of not just a brand framework, it's kind of a life framework. It's like a goal, accomplishment, achievement framework.

[Caleb Raulston]

I have not reached the point in my career where I can talk about life things. But sure, yeah, I think it would work very effectively because it's like, yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

It'S what's the goal and what would help help me reach the goal. Of course, you don't necessarily need to be known for something, but. But I, the reason I guess I bring that up is because, you know, Gary says, document, don't create or document. He said, that's the quote, right? Document, don't create. And you said, okay, if I'M gonna. I gotta learn the thing first, and then what do I gotta build the thing and then be known for? I guess. What point do you start creating content on that journey? And are you hitting pause too much? I would really. One of the most powerful things I've learned about content is, I think intuitively I've been using your framework and I've thought about certain things, like, especially because I've wanted to teach, but I've wanted to teach with integrity. So I've never. I've never wanted to be fake or teach out of a lie. So I'd always be like, shoot, if I'm going to have better stuff to teach, I should accomplish it first. So I need to up my own game, learn my own game and go do it. Which sort of puts a tension between what am I allowed to put out there and share today? Or how long do I wait? Because if I looked at your framework, then I might be like, well, shoot, okay, I need to study for five years before I get started versus do I document right now? And what's the tension of those two things? So you can document honestly, that, like, journey to a billion.

[Caleb Raulston]

Exactly.

[Sean Cannell]

And people go, oh, he's on a journey. I'm not saying that exactly.

[Caleb Raulston]

If you are not the expert yet, AKA you haven't accomplished the thing that you're talking about, then you're not an expert. Then what you are is you are a proxy or a guinea pig for your audience. You're taking us on the journey. You're making the mistakes, you're investing the money, the time, relational capital, all of it. And you're telling us this worked, this didn't. But you're never pretending like you are the expert because you're not.

[Sean Cannell]

You think the strategy still works?

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Building in public is the, like, one of the biggest trends on TikTok and YouTube in the entrepreneur space right now. The youngsters, especially Gen Z and whatever.

[Sean Cannell]

I'm seeing, like burrito shops, this is what we did. And then our staff, we had to get new staff. And then like, the order was crazy. And they're like local businesses doing this.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. And I think it's a phenomenal approach, what it's doing. Ultimately, we're seeing this every generation. Buyers prefer to know more about who's running the business. The CEO's views matter more today than ever before. And so think about that on a massive level. Sure. But then also on a small local business level, like, if I know who runs the coffee shop, I am far more likely to want to Go there. In fact, I know the owner of the coffee shop near our house, my girlfriend Kat and I, we hate the coffee, but we go there every day because we love the owner.

[Kat]

Yeah. Wow.

[Sean Cannell]

There's some big lies creators and business owners still believe about content. We could hit these rapid fire, but let me just feed them to you and expound on it. Number one, all views are good views.

[Caleb Raulston]

Excuse me, this is that whole excuse me but bullshit that people have been saying for years of all press is good press. But like the example I gave in a talk recently is Pepsi did a campaign back in 2018 where they were trying to pair themselves with social justice. This was during a time that was very sensitive in America and they chose to have their spokesperson be Kendall Jenner. And and anybody who wants to go watch it, they can watch it and form their opinions. I won't share mine. But what I will say is it had a lot of backlash. 1.6 million views later, Pepsi took it down. But the Internet is undefeated. People downloaded it and re uploaded it. It got over 60 million views. That was not good. Yeah, that was not. All views are good views.

[Trevor]

Right?

[Caleb Raulston]

There's been a lot of other campaigns over the last couple of years that have been referenced by a lot of people where brands went outside of their normal lane. They got a lot of viewership but their sales went down. And so I do not believe that all views are good views. I think this is the trap that a lot of people in the entrepreneur space fall into. It's the characters that in 2021 or whenever the vaccine came out, their main content was about their business and growing a business and they suddenly felt the need to make content about their opinion on getting vaccinated. And I would ask them why, like why you're not an expert on this. Nobody needs to hear your opinion. And they'd be like, but I know it's going to get views. It's like, oh, I really, I think that is such a, that is an error in so many ways.

[Sean Cannell]

But let's debate it because vaccines are very polarizing and you might actually really polarize a lot of people to you if you jump on these different bandwagons and if they're true to you. And so that's thing one, thing two is this actually debate is very interesting to me right now because I'm so big and have been and we do viral content like more curiosity based content. But I've been so big in search based content that attracts the right viewer that's like pre qualified because it's their exact intent. And it usually leads to a much better business result. There's a lot of people, even guests we've had on the podcast that are expert at just getting videos to go viral and just getting views because of broad appeal. And then the argument is, if I get that many views, not necessarily from any controversy, it may not be about vaccines, but it's like just general. If I just get a lot of views, then a percentage will go to my bio and it'll lift my business. And so is that true? And what's that tension between, you know, just the idea that you don't. I. I've been to trying carnivore diet. I've been getting jacked. I've been doing biohacking, I've been doing some other things. Now those are interest based. Are you just saying avoid stupidly controversial, polarizing stuff?

[Caleb Raulston]

Back to what we said and I'm glad we brought it back because I was going to say this. You said, you know, it's important to have that contrarian take if you actually believe it.

[Sean Cannell]

Oh, and the people that told you, they go, well, I knew it would get views.

[Caleb Raulston]

Exactly.

[Sean Cannell]

So it wasn't their actual like life mission. Yeah, like, no, I'm actually obsessed with this. I don't care if my business goes down. This is my conviction.

[Caleb Raulston]

Exactly. Sure.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

But I think, I'm not saying that going viral is going to be bad for your business.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

What I'm saying is if you make that your North Star all the time, you're going to make content that isn't relevant for your ideal customer and you're going to be attracting a whole lot of followers and audience that you think you're going in the right direction because you're getting more views and more subscribers. But I, for me, and this is anecdotal, and I want to call that out, by my observation, I've never seen it where that is happening. And sales are also going up.

[Sean Cannell]

Hey, we're about to get back into the podcast in just a second, but I have a question for you. Do you want to grow your personal brand this year? Do you need more leads and sales in your business? If the answer is yes, then right now is the best time to go all in on YouTube. Today's podcast is brought to you by thinkmasterclass.com where you can get on demand access to a one hour deep dive training revealing how to start and grow a profitable YouTube channel. This year. For a limited time, you can get access to this on demand class entirely for free. Where you will learn the three biggest mistakes that people make when starting a YouTube channel. The new rules and changes that have been happening on YouTube and how you can use them to create an unfair advantage. And the exact strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 350,000 organic views every single day. The data is clear. 70% of viewers claim that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands. So don't wait any longer to start growing your brand and business with YouTube. Just go to thinkmasterclass.com to get access to this. No fluff, highly tactical, free on demand training. That's thinkmasterclass.com if you're doing some viral stuff, some strategic stuff, maybe a whole funnel style of content, some stuff that's depth with, you're staying intentional. If you start just chasing, kind of like you get sucked into the viral loop. Not all views are good views.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. And like again it's very important to understand what you are trying to accomplish. If you're selling, you know, nine months ago you're selling LabuBoos. Okay. Yeah. You want just virality on TikTok. Sure.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

But if you're selling, you know, a business consultancy program or whatever, I just don't, I don't see the relevance in going viral for a toothbrush dance on TikTok.

[Kat]

Got it.

[Sean Cannell]

Lie number two, I'll figure it out as I go.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. I love the attitude and what people say online about just start and I, I don't want this to come across like I'm anti that because I had to do know eventually Trevor and were we were debating what was going to be the first content we put out. Eventually it was just like screw it, we gotta post it.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

But I think that I've spoken to a lot of business owners and something that is so unfortunately common is I'll hear them say things like I've been doing this for two or three years, I don't know if it's working or not. Like I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm kind of just like checking a box. And what it comes from is lack of intentionality. They haven't figured out where they're wanting to go. This is where the brand Journey framework comes in.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

The example I like to give a lot of times is the Alice in Wonderland moment.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

Alice comes up to this like fork in the road and Cheshire Cat. I've always called it Chester Cat but apparently it's Cheshire Cat. Cheshire Cat basically asks or she says, which way should I go? And the cat's like, well, where do you want to go? Where do you want to end up? She's like, I don't know. And he's like, okay, cool, then either way, we'll take you there. You're going to end up somewhere. You're going to build a brand of some sort. I would just rather do it intentionally. And that way you can define what working is. So then, you know, if it's worth your time to be filming all these videos and posting them on Instagram, or if, man, we're two years in and we're still getting 13 views on every video, maybe we need to figure out what we're actually trying to do here.

[Sean Cannell]

Then what is the opposite of I'll figure it out as I go? Is it. I need to figure it out before I start?

[Caleb Raulston]

That's a really good question. I think what it is, is it's. And I probably need to articulate it a little bit better. It's not a statement about your day one. It's a statement where I hear people say this a year in, I'll figure it out as I go. Like, well, you've been going for a while and you haven't figured it out. And so I think what it is. I love the question on that. And I'm actually probably going to literally tonight work on how do I say that differently? And articulate it in a way that it doesn't come across. Like, I'm discouraging people from, like. Because I'm not the guy that's like, you need to know all your content buckets. I hate content buckets. I think it's the dumbest thing that people like. It's all the different reasons to procrastinate. So, yes, I believe in starting right now, but very quickly figure out, why are you doing this? Where are you wanting to go? You don't need to do that Day one. But I would argue if you're six months in and you still haven't done it, yeah, you're wasting your time.

[Sean Cannell]

So these are some of the worst lies creators and business owners still believe about content. And you might be able to hit this one fast. But three is if I keep posting, it will work eventually.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. This is kind of like what we see at the grocery stores here in Vegas, which was shocking when I moved here. People sitting at lotto machines, or not lotto machines, slot machines, just, like, going for it.

[Sean Cannell]

You're right. Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

It's your average grocery store, and that's your average person on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, they're just uploading shit and hoping that it works.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And then the craziest thing is if they're a 2.0, they are looking at their content and trying to evolve off of it, but they're looking at all of their content and evolving off of all of it, rather than looking at the top performers and then evolving only off of that. Why would you want to evolve off of that? Isn't working.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

You want to iterate from things that you already have signal on. And so I think it's just that. Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

So if I keep posting, it will work eventually. One of the biggest questions we get, Sean, I've been on YouTube for one year. I've posted 50 times. Do I quit or pivot? 50 uploads, long form. Sean, I've been on YouTube three years, I've posted 300 videos. They're getting a few hundred views. But I'm wondering if this is sustainable. What's a framework for even measuring success and when to quit or when to pivot?

[Caleb Raulston]

Defining it. See, two steps ago, if you don't figure out what winning and success are, you'll never know if you hit it. And so for us, what we went for is instead of going for views and subscribers, things have gone a lot better than we expected. I told Trevor my goal was in year one, maybe five to 10,000 subscribers tops. Yeah, maybe one day. I don't even know if that was a year. I think that was like my all time goal on YouTube. Our thing that we were optimizing around is, and you know, we're in less than year one of business, so we don't have some complicated CRM system and everything like that. Lead flow. I measure the quality of inbound DMs, emails and text messages that I get when we put content out. And that I think is a good thing to do if you are a business owner and you're making content to grow your business. Really good thing to do in the early days when you're less likely to get good views.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

So like I told Trevor with the 6 hour and 22 minute course, if we got a thousand views and we had three clients come through, I would have lost my mind. That would have been a huge W. I needed nothing more from that. And so I think it's defining what winning is and then measuring correctly based on that. So many people say they want to grow their business with their personal brand and all they track is views and subscribers.

[Kat]

Okay.

[Caleb Raulston]

I know a lot of people that have less than 5,000 subscribers that are making millions totally Agree. You do too.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, and I'd be. And so now I'm fighting for really two audiences we have. And one is trying to go the creator path. And they, I mean they need to. That's why they listen to this podcast. They need to be thinking like a business owner. But they're trying to make it even as like a small creator brand, sponsorships that brands that will sponsor, you know, micro and nano influencers, a little bit of ad revenue. It's kind of feast or famine. And I think there see there seems to be some proven wisdom. It's like if it takes you're striking the ground at year five, you don't know if you're going to break through at year seven. I'm just curious in that maybe you redefine and you get an entirely different pivot. But it's just a huge question. I really want to serve that segment of our community that's like, yeah, do I pick a new niche? How do I triple down? And maybe it is just kind of rethinking everything. But you've heard the stories. I've certainly heard the stories. When Benji and I were interviewing all the people for our book and video influencers, you know, people are like, year seven and a half, it broke out for me. Like there was actually a lot of times extremely long time horizons for individuals. But people get stuck because it's a really frustrating place to be at year four. Couple hundred videos, some results, but also being like, man, I don't know, should I even be doing this? And so I don't know, maybe you're speaking to that person's heart and you've got the brand framework. But any other thoughts for them?

[Caleb Raulston]

It's hard. I'll give a couple of qualifiers. I don't typically work with people who are full time creators and that's all they make their money off of. So I spend less time thinking about that.

[Kat]

Yep.

[Caleb Raulston]

So I want to qualify that before I just talk out of my ass real quick here. But if I was sitting down with Sarah and Sarah is describing this dilemma, I would say, Sarah, what does winning look like? Is winning getting a million subs? Like, is it getting, you know, a hundred thousand subscribers and getting. It's the silver plaque that you get for that, right?

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

At 100,000 silver gold is a million subscribers.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. Like, is your goal one of the plaques?

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And if they say yes, then I would double press. Is it really? Okay, cool. Well then everything you're doing right now is not even close to what is.

[Sean Cannell]

Required from that not mapping towards that.

[Caleb Raulston]

Exactly.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

I think that so many people have their ambitions effed up. There we go. We're trying to be a little bit cleaner there. Like they have it messed up.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

They look at the top.01% of creators. It's the same thing with incomes in America.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

Everyone thinks that you gotta be a millionaire to be rich. And it's like, nah, dog, if you make 200k a year, you're filthy rich. Yeah, I just messed it up. Right? There we go. I'm just being me, y'. All. Yeah. I think that like the expectations is something that like I really press on with people.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

Like what are we really trying to do here? I'd say probably half of the people there, they have that ambition of getting to some certain number. But then it's like, why got it. Then what happens? And so I like to really, again, intentionality. I'm really pressing on these things because I'm doing this with myself right now.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

And I don't have, I genuinely have no subscriber or follower goal. I, I have a views goal per video. That's it. And that's just me because my goals happen to be around my business. Now one other real quick little thing that I would throw in there too is to your point of thinking like a business owner, stop going for brand deals, build your own brand and sponsor your own shit.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

If somebody's going to spend X amount for a 30 second spot, guess what it's worth 10 times that. Minimum. Minimum.

[Kat]

Yeah, I agree.

[Caleb Raulston]

No brand is going to spend money on a spot. They're not going to get a 10x return on minimum.

[Sean Cannell]

Think Media podcast listeners know that basically our brand deals on the podcast is us. It's our own. That's. Yes, that's it.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yes.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

You own it.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

Like you get all of it. Like what people don't realize is like these brand deals, you are getting underpaid for what you are providing the brand. It's gotten better. It's getting a little bit better. Well, actually what's happening is on the high end, it's getting better. On the low end, I actually think it's getting worse for people.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

From what I hear. And again, I'm not super in that world, but yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

And I think if you get, I mean, learning to negotiate, we can link in the show notes to Justin who's just dropped his book on, I think it's called Sponsor Magnet. To your point, what do I need to learn and who do I need? Like that would be a Whole skill set in and of itself to. To not let brands push you around, but really like think about the brand you're building to and how you negotiate with them. So if I keep posting, it'll work eventually. For if I make content for every platform, I can't make content for every platform because I don't have time. This is a 2026 quandary. There's this and the tension of the overplayed but very true. Top 1% of creators are making 300 pieces of content a week. They've got huge teams, they're everywhere. AI is having software like Opus clip, having people cut up their stuff and try to be everywhere. People are exhausted that you say this is a lie. I can't make content for every platform because I don't have the time, can they?

[Caleb Raulston]

So it's a lie in two ways. One, it's a lie believing that that's what you need to do. And two, I actually think that you could. Gary Vee came out in 2018 or 2017, I can't remember exactly when, with a project called 86 Pages of Insanity, where he outlined the content pyramid, right. The whole concept of you make pillar content, like we're doing right now, podcast, and then you clip different moments. You can absolutely do that now, you know, if you only have one person, then you probably need to change your expectations on the subjective quality of these individual pieces of content. But you absolutely could. It doesn't mean that's going to be the best strategy or most effective, but you can. One thing I'll real quick add on and then we'll go further on. That is the, I guess 2026 update that I would add to the content pyramid. And I guarantee Gary's operating this way. So like this is nothing that he isn't already doing. But what I like to do is I like to think of it like you're making your long form pillar content like we're doing right now. And then you go and mine for moments that are good. And the traditional version is you clip that and then post it. My version is you take that moment and you figure out what is the best way to present what just occurred given the platform I'm posting on. Meaning maybe it's not a reel, maybe it's a carousel on Instagram, maybe it's a written post, right? Like dialogue back and forth, but in copy form on LinkedIn.

[Sean Cannell]

How would you identify pre posting it? Or are you waiting till you post it and see like an audience retention curve and a spike?

[Caleb Raulston]

This is where this Will open up a whole nother can of worms. Just a warning, but this is why if you have a team, I like my editors to actually manage the platforms. I do not believe in a social media manager that posts for every platform. I want the creatives as close to the data as possible. In a world where traditional advertising has had creative and deployment in different cities, Gary came in and was like, hey, let's put them in the same building. That's what Vayner. That was like one of the biggest, craziest things about Vayner in the beginning that people don't realize is it was combining like paid and the people that were pressing the buttons and putting the content out there with the people that were making the content. Sounds obvious to a lot of people, but that was revolutionary. I want my editors posting on Instagram and seeing how it does. Like, when I look at my career, one of my biggest growth curves was when Gary was like, hey, let's take TikTok seriously. And I was not only editing for TikTok, but I was the one managing the platform. So I was making seven clips a day and posting 10.

[Sean Cannell]

And then. And so you're staring at the likes views. Why did that one and that? Just immersion is a feedback loop and it actually transforms your psychology, your brain, and makes you a better editor, which makes you even a better poster. Timing copy and just loops the whole thing. So it's just not an isolated editor, but they're in the platform.

[Caleb Raulston]

Correct. Which answers the question that you previously asked, which is how do they find the right moments? They've calibrated themselves to know what the right moments are based on audience insights.

[Sean Cannell]

So at the high level, what you would say is you would review a piece of content and then just say, oh, that moment was sick. Like, even here. And I stole your five lives from one of your talks. So I could already. I already know your five lives would do good as a carousel. And I could design that up in a carousel, put that on Instagram, and then have a call to action to the ManyChat trigger to this episode.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yes.

[Sean Cannell]

And that'll probably happen. And now someone's here listening to this episode, and they're like, that's actually how I ended up here.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yes. Welcome.

[Sean Cannell]

And so, yeah, thanks so much for being here. And so. Okay. And that would be from being in the game and even my pre research and knowing that you'd already crafted these five lies. Okay. So you can make content for every platform. It might not be the best strategy for you right now. Definitely isn't what's your resources? What's your team size? And then you could scale up.

[Caleb Raulston]

Last one, I can real quick on that. I can give you the framework to know how to choose.

[Sean Cannell]

Okay, go ahead.

[Caleb Raulston]

If you are a solo creator, pick one platform that you prioritize and a secondary platform that you repackage for.

[Sean Cannell]

Do you call this the Eye of Sauron method?

[Caleb Raulston]

I do, yeah. Yeah, good old Lord of the Rings.

[Sean Cannell]

So explain it.

[Caleb Raulston]

Basically, if you're a solo creator, I would argue that you're going to get the greatest returns not from trying to be omnipresent, but dominating on one platform. So pick one, let's call it YouTube.

[Trevor]

Alright?

[Caleb Raulston]

You're gonna make YouTube long form as your primary platform you're creating for. And then you pick a secondary one, let's call it YouTube shorts. You're staying on the same platform. The beauty of what I just articulated is that YouTube short that you cut, it doesn't take that much effort to then take the exact same clip, exact same caption and post on the other platforms. Is that the best version? No, we'll get to that in a little bit. But that's what you can do at this stage. That's what I would do if I was a solo creator. And then once you get to the point where you feel like, yeah, YouTube is dialed, I've got the process, like I'm ahead. And YouTube shorts is dialed, I got the process, I'm ahead. Cool. You can add in another one for the individuals who have teams. I expect far more out of you. Pick three platforms that you're going to prioritize. Yeah, for us what we did is we went with Instagram or YouTube. Instagram, LinkedIn. Those were our three. And the eye of Sauron comes into handy because we don't try to kill it on all three at the same time. We picked one. So is YouTube. So literally up until like four weeks ago, three or four weeks ago, all of our focus, all of our discussions on content was YouTube. That was it. We didn't give a shit about Instagram, LinkedIn. We weren't putting any effort there. That was catch all. Then we now feel like we're at a point where we've got a pretty good process, not at all where we want to be, but it's a good enough process that we can move the eye over to Instagram and LinkedIn.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

And so you get those, the others are on maintenance mode and then you shift over again. And I like to do it that way because I believe you get far greater returns Dominating on one platform than showing up on a bunch. Yeah, you can actually stand out versus just looking like every other character in your space.

[Sean Cannell]

How deep are you in the debate of YouTube long form versus YouTube shorts and how angry creators are?

[Caleb Raulston]

I'll put it this way. I have been hearing creators complain about new features that platforms release and saying how it's pointless and it's not going to work and then they become the biggest feature on the platform and they're suddenly all about it. Meaning like anytime that a platform does something new, it's going to be clunky and there's going to be problems. I remember everyone was saying YouTube shorts was a terrible thing to do and it will bomb your channel.

[Sean Cannell]

Well, and that's. Well, some people, whether the evidence is actually solid or not, is they're saying it did bomb their channel.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, it may have. I've seen a lot more channels that have gotten a lot of success off of YouTube shorts than not. And so yeah, I think the big thing to me is figuring out what does your audience prefer to consume, right. And you know, what level of depth are you trying to provide? Like there's only so much depth you can provide in two minutes.

[Sean Cannell]

You know, I think that, you know, one thing that we're seeing is we're seeing shorts only channels explode. People getting gold play buttons so fast. Then we're seeing those channels are like I should get into long form and they might be getting millions of views on a short and they'll post long form and get 300 views. So. So I think there's this interesting disconnection. My personal opinion is if you're especially for a video podcast like the Think Media podcast, it's, it's kind of just a no brainer because the content is aligned. Probably the best piece of advice I heard was if your shorts are just radically different and funny or they're. You're dancing to, you know, songs or following trends and then your other stuff doesn't. Even the look of it or the studio or the vibe like that dissonance can kind of mess the algorithm up. Two different kind of formats. You might do have long form, but it's clips. So for a video podcast it's like a no brainer. It doesn't hurt Think media, but the math will also tell us and this kind of ties into the big shorts channels. You also might not necessarily get crossover audience. You get two different audiences. Not necessarily a bad thing. You just kind of have a shorts audience, a longs audience and some crossover and you're Going to earn people in both directions, which is ultimately a win. My final thought is this. I look at my analytics, our long form, we got subscribers, we got views, we made revenue. And then I look at the YouTube shorts and we got views, we got subscribers and those people are satisfied as well. And it's a net net positive. And I actually think our shorts suck. They're just clips of sometimes they pop off, a lot of times they're just kind of average. But on a month it's all up. We met new people, got new views and so I'm like, I'm just looking at the data. So we made progress. I don't see the harm. But I would love to hear if people can comment on YouTube and if you're on audio, you know, leave a review, but you can't comment. But I am curious people's experience because it's an ongoing debate.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, I think something that is kind of an interesting strategy to put into place and I'm curious your opinion on this is if you think about your YouTube video the way that you think about your offers, which is having maximum clarity on what the outcome is that the viewer gets after consuming it. And then if you think of your shorts on YouTube as lead magnets that solve small problems and reveal a bigger one that your YouTube video long form solves.

[Sean Cannell]

Beautiful. The final lie, and we're talking about the five worst lies creators and business owners still believe about content, is I need to go viral for my brand to grow.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, super. Not the case again. I don't want this to come across like I am anti virality. Obviously that can be very, very good. What I am anti is having that be your North Star that you optimize around the people that I know that optimize around that. Actually, I'll give an example here. If you have a creator who has been going viral on their own content for a very long time and then they go into the world of educating people on how to go viral.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

It is my opinion that what got them the virality is not going to get them the trust. As an educator, if Billie Eilish tomorrow was like, caleb, I will teach you how to be an incredible musician. You gotta pay me X amount. I have zero belief that she's a good teacher. I think she's a great executor. But the difference between a great executor and a great teacher is like, or, sorry, massive. It's huge. And so what happens is in these instances, because you called it up at the top, there's a Ton of people that are doing this right now, they go viral and now they're teaching people. The problem a lot of them find themselves in is the content that is necessary to make and put out to build trust in them as an educator isn't going to go viral. They've set this bar now for themselves that they always have to hit that, but that's not going to convert. And so I think for a lot of people, I mean, I'm sure you have met plenty of these people that have one viral pop and now suddenly they're just trying to recreate that. And that is the completely wrong strategy.

[Trevor]

Right?

[Caleb Raulston]

Like, that is the worst thing that you can do. The best thing that you can do if you have your 15 seconds of fame is not keep trying to go wide, but actually go deep with the people that came in and earned their attention.

[Sean Cannell]

How would you do that?

[Caleb Raulston]

I mean, what, what niche are we in? Like, is it, you know, this is.

[Sean Cannell]

How you would follow up on a viral video? Which is a question that comes in. I had a breakout video. What do I do next?

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, what is your offer? I would start talking about that. I would just, I would just do what I'm doing. I would just give away all the game on how to do what your offer accomplishes without ever engaging with you. By doing this, you increase trust.

[Trevor]

Right?

[Caleb Raulston]

Like, you guys have an extremely trusted brand. I search for anything having to do with video and y' all are gonna show up whether it's on the main page or I click on a video. You guys are suggested like everywhere, right? You've built a lot of trust in that. So then I have a high likelihood of believing that your offer is gonna provide me even more value. And so that's what I would do if you have a viral video. But the thing is, is virality is not bad. Trying to optimize around virality in an educational space is the wrong thing to optimize around. You want to optimize around trust. It's not virality that'll convert, it's trust. Trust is what precedes the transaction.

[Sean Cannell]

Not virality that's strong. And you touched on one of the promises that I made during the hook of this episode, which is the strategy that anybody can do. That not only grew your channel, grew subscribers, grew a ton of trust, has led to business, but also grew your email list. Over 20,000 email list subscribers.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

And that is you posted a six hour long YouTube video which is a free course on brand building. This unpacks a multi. It's Just a wild strategy, ultra long form strategy. Moving the free line strategy. How would you even do that? Is it possible for a solo creator to pull this off? Or what might that look like for them? Let's start at the top. Unpack what happened here.

[Caleb Raulston]

I have for the last four years now been getting a fairly high amount of DMs from people. People with very small followings and people with insanely huge followings, asking me if I have any resources online sharing my thoughts and views on brand building and content strategy to support that, or if not, if there's anybody that I trust. And there I don't consume any content in this space. I don't watch anybody else. So I, all I saw was like the obnoxious, you know, hacky gurus showing up in my feed all the time. And so I would always tell people, no, I don't know anybody that's going to share anything with you that I think is good. What they're going to do is they're going to share with you tactics that are going to cause you to do things that then they have to, you have to pay them for their court, like all these things. And they're not actually giving any real true value. They're not doing what you guys do, which is putting out free content that actually is useful and valuable and builds trust. Yeah. And so I just eventually got to a point where I was like, man, I got a one day figure this out. I got to put something out there. And then when I started my own thing and Trevor came and joined, it was like, wow, this is perfect timing to do this project that I've had in the back of my head for a while now. And so, yeah, we put it out there because genuinely, and some people will believe this, some won't. That's okay. The goal was not to get clients. The goal was genuinely to help people and to have a resource that I could just point people to. Now, we knew we would get clients as a byproduct or we, I shouldn't say we knew. We hypothesized, we believed it, but we didn't know.

[Sean Cannell]

Did you know it was going to be six hours? Was it that mapped out or did it end up being that in the.

[Caleb Raulston]

Edit, every time we were doing the estimation, it was somewhere between five to seven hours. We ended up filming 14 hours of footage though.

[Sean Cannell]

And is there a reason you said, you know, YouTube experts told you it should have been multiple videos? Is there a reason you made it one instead of a series and put it in a Playlist.

[Caleb Raulston]

I have a lot of friends in the YouTube strategy space. I don't have a lot of friends in the brand positioning space. And what I quickly realized is nobody gets what I was trying to do. I was not going for views. I was not going for any of that shit. It was a brand positioning statement. Show me another person in this space that will go on YouTube for free and talk about this shit for six and a half hours.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And isn't concerned about it cannibalizing their business.

[Sean Cannell]

Have you heard the term talking points?

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

Like. Like talking points for musicians. Like a talking point could be like the cybertruck and their thing. The like the what they're wearing, their opening line. And the more of them you start, you. You stack is like. It's. It's something that could spread word of mouth. Bro, did you see that music video? Bro, did you see that? Like talking points.

[Caleb Raulston]

I was thinking talking points. Like. Like politically.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

So. So talking points being something remarkable, like Seth Godin would say. But almost something like. And. And you know, you articulating that, it's. You're right. Like in a world that's so noisy, to just have something. You just did something that was entirely different. That's a positioning move.

[Caleb Raulston]

And I would argue.

[Sean Cannell]

Talking point.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

He's the guy that did the six hour.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yes. And think about things that your competitors can't do. Or maybe. Maybe some could. But how many of them would.

[Sean Cannell]

How many would.

[Caleb Raulston]

Right. Because another thing that I was trying to show is like, you know, I'm working with actual clients. Not just. And there's nothing wrong with what I'm about to say, but compared to my peers, I'm not just selling digital products.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

I'm still in the weeds doing the damn thing. Which is why I'm comfortable putting out for free what all of you make your money off of.

[Sean Cannell]

So are you. How many hours went into it to plan out?

[Caleb Raulston]

I think 90 to 100 hours is what we calculated. Ish. I think.

[Sean Cannell]

And that's your guys's time combined.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

Okay.

[Caleb Raulston]

So I think it could have been.

[Sean Cannell]

It's.

[Caleb Raulston]

It was more than that.

[Sean Cannell]

It's over 300,000 views now.

[Caleb Raulston]

It was a lot more than that. Actually is correcting me. It was probably more like 100 and 140. Something like that. Yeah. We'll go with that.

[Sean Cannell]

And it's like 300,000 views. But it's also an asset. I don't see that thing slowing down.

[Caleb Raulston]

Here's what's wildly crazy. We have. I think around two months into it being live. From then till now, I've seen it dip below in the last 48 hours. Below 5,000 views.

[Sean Cannell]

Twice every 48 hours.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. So like, it. There was like twice where I've looked at it and it's been like 4700 or 45, but then it goes back up. And I checked it like this morning, it was at like 6,800 views and it just is cranky.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, that's sick. It's a ranked video that is, you know, continues to get views for weeks, months, and probably years to come.

[Caleb Raulston]

Oh, is it? You know what's so funny? I haven't even thought, like, literally it's a ranked video.

[Sean Cannell]

That's how we.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sean Cannell]

Well, and I mean, well, ranked video by our modern definition is if you search for the video, but also if you express intent. So once it's getting suggested, it's just simple definition. A video that continues to get views for weeks, months and years to come, how are those views happening? Either search or suggested. And it's being suggested to who? Someone who ultimately is searching. Their intent is searching. They have expressed to YouTube by what they watch that they would probably click on that. And then sure enough, they do. Okay, and so it's a ranked video.

[Caleb Raulston]

That's cool. That makes sense.

[Sean Cannell]

And do you have ads turned on in the video?

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Sean Cannell]

So how much ad revenue is that video earned so far?

[Caleb Raulston]

Five. What, 6,600.

[Sean Cannell]

$6,000. That's cool.

[Caleb Raulston]

And so it cost us 20 grand, not including, like salaries and stuff. That it was $20,000 of like.

[Sean Cannell]

And it's led to business. But actually fast forward in a year and maybe it's paid for itself for two years and you broke even and.

[Caleb Raulston]

Oh, it's already paid for itself.

[Sean Cannell]

Well, no, I know, I know it's paid for itself on the business back end, but the ad revenue.

[Caleb Raulston]

Oh, yes.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, the ad revenue might you just go. And eventually that asset actually broke even. But the business, the brand lift, everything else. Okay, so then just break down a few of the tactics, though.

[Caleb Raulston]

Here's another real quick thing, actually, just for. For everybody. So something that I'm starting to find is if you have a team, people are getting really freaking frustrated with their team drafting content on their behalf and them showing up and being like, what the hell is this? I would never say this a magical thing. If you put out six and a half hours of content is you've said everything you said a whole lot. Yeah. Trevor has a lot of source media to develop outlines off of.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, you, you, you said that's like a manifesto. It's like your, your thesis. It's like your. It's a foundation. That could be. You talk about pillar content. It's like a higher level than that.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah. I mean, not to get really like weird, sacrilegious for a second, but like, it's my bible.

[Kat]

Yes.

[Caleb Raulston]

And then I'm preaching off of my bible.

[Sean Cannell]

That's what I think. Manifesto. It's your whole. Yeah, it's your whole values, your whole blueprint all laid out.

[Caleb Raulston]

So then. Well, actually it's only like a third.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

But.

[Sean Cannell]

Yes, got you. Okay, so a couple of the tactics around it. So it leads to. Are you a big believer in ultra long form? Clearly. But I mean, you're seeing diary of a CEO 23 hour podcast. I mean, there's something about your average person maybe thinking about compilations and getting into just really long content.

[Caleb Raulston]

Mark Manson just started a series, I think like six to ten weeks ago, and his podcast episodes are like four hours long.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, it's extreme. I, I think that durations don't matter. I think value per second in shorts, value per minute in long form is actually what matters. So if you have a high VPN, cool. Go for 10 hours.

[Sean Cannell]

VPS. VPM.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yep.

[Sean Cannell]

Value per second, value per minute.

[Caleb Raulston]

That's my favorite way of thinking about. And is that actually quantifiable? No.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

Like, I mean, you can look at like comments and sentiment on feedback and you can come to a subjective determination. I just think about like, how do I jam the most amount of. And we're getting better at this. Like, I would argue that if we have a two hour video on how to lead a media team, not how to build, how to lead one that already exists super niche, it'll be our lowest viewed video ever. I would argue knowing what I know now because I've been doing this, you know, I've done two more videos since then, so I'm an expert at making my own videos. I could probably condense that down to 75 minutes and it'd be a way higher VPN.

[Kat]

Yep.

[Caleb Raulston]

And so we actually, this, this would be a really good moment and it'll be a vulnerable one for me. We sat down. What day was it? Last Friday. We sat down. We rented a studio to film a YouTube video. We had not respected the audience's time in our pre production process. And 10 minutes into filming it, I was getting irritated at myself because I was like, this is not a good video. We, we had built this out and it's going to be an hour, hour and a half and we'd be jamming it down the audience's throat. It should be a 20 minute video.

[Sean Cannell]

So you canned it.

[Caleb Raulston]

So we didn't film it. And we filmed a video about respecting the audience's time. That's like two minutes or something like that. And if I watch it and feel comfortable with putting it out, that'll be our video for August.

[Sean Cannell]

That's an interesting thing where I wanted to go that you just said, that'll be our video for August. Are you on a plan to make one video a month?

[Caleb Raulston]

That's the goal right now.

[Sean Cannell]

And this, that is. That's also contrarian. I think you're sitting here saying, you know, like at this point, of course, humbly and accurately new to the YouTube game. You know, I'm not a video Expert. However, over 30,000 subscribers off of just a few videos. That's the opposite of what most people think it takes and many people grinding. You've done how many total long form videos? So five. So five videos led to 30,000 subs. You also could stop uploading and you'll be at 50,000 subs just by a matter of time because they're so much higher quality. Huge debate. Quantity or quality? Your actions seem to say quality is what you think is working in 2026.

[Caleb Raulston]

Because I did my quantity for 16 years behind the scenes. I've spoken to thousands and thousands of business owners and that's my target market. So I know what they need. I met with 2000 of them alone in 2024. I have very clear understandings of the pain points that my desired audience has. So we had a. From the outside it looks like a leg up. But I've been doing the volume game for just a very long time. I would argue. I've been making YouTube videos for 16 years because I have you.

[Sean Cannell]

Absolutely.

[Caleb Raulston]

But not under my name.

[Kat]

Right.

[Sean Cannell]

So then, so then what is the application for someone listening to this if they're on a couple different paths?

[Caleb Raulston]

Like you need to do high volume in order to determine and high volume for you. If high volume for you is one. If one a month is high volume for you, it is for me right now. Like I'm building a business. I'm not a creator. Like I. And every month Trevor just pointed this out, like every month I've had way less time to allocate towards these videos because the business is taking off.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And that's my priority.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

And so the number one thing is figure out what high volume is. For you in a sustainable way. I recently hired a personal trainer and if DJ would have given me C Bum's routine on day one, I would die. I would not stick with it. And so figure out what you're going to do that is sustainable and then pick an arbitrary amount of time. Two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, and that is how often you increase your volume. Arbitrary. But the key is, and this is the key to volume, it's not so you show up everywhere, it's so that you acquire the data on what your audience is resonating with the most and then you can make more of it. I call it the accordion method. In the beginning, you expand the accordion and you do more volume so that you get insights on what your audience likes. Even if you're averaging 13 views a video, one of them is going to get 39. That's not a lot of signal, but it's a little bit. And so then you start doubling down on that. Eventually, once you have enough information, you contract the accordion and put the same amount of effort you were putting into, let's say four videos a month on YouTube into one. And you'll, in my opinion, get far more in return. What I have found is one video. I'm going to use big numbers here just to make it easy, but just move commas around to make it relatable for you. In a world where you could upload four videos and all of them get 250,000 views, that's a million total. Or you get one video a month that gets a million. I. There's probably some nuance to this, and I'm sure there's a channel out there that doesn't follow this rule. But for the most part, I've observed that if you get the million view video, it's a lot of new subscribers. And so I do value that more. Now, am I aiming for virality? No. What I'm doing, if you notice, is I'm not articulating outcome. I'm not saying higher quality, I'm saying more effort. I'm talking about the input that you put in the thing that you can control the output we can't control.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, hit the email list. So how did this six hour video grow your email list? 20,000 subscribers.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, so we created a workbook, 50 pages that goes along with the course. Because I believe that if you are making educational content your whole entire goal, the only thing you're trying to do is get people to take action on what you're saying and do things differently than they did before. They watched your video and so every decision you make, graphics, lead, magnets, downloadables, all those things, if it makes it easier for them to change what they do, cool. If it doesn't, you don't do it. A workbook is the ultimate version of that.

[Trevor]

Right.

[Caleb Raulston]

There's better versions, but it's the ultimate scalable version of it. And so we put together a workbook that you can download for free on my website. All you got to do is enter your email and then we email it to you. And it's. It is insane. The feedback, like, I, to be very blunt, did not expect people to think that the workbook was as good as they're saying it is.

[Sean Cannell]

How many times do you ask for it and when do you ask for, you know, educate people about it in the video?

[Caleb Raulston]

How many times do we mention it? Like maybe like four, I'm going to say four to six times in the video. It's the pinned comment on the YouTube video and it is the top line of the description. A lot of you are burying your links.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

Just like a good website has all the most important links to click top of fold, a good YouTube description has all or the most important link, not all, the one most important link up at the very top. And that's what we did. And that's it. That's the only place. There's nowhere else that we have pushed people to sign up for the email list.

[Sean Cannell]

By the way, did you get the website, the work. Did you get the workbook done before you filmed and teach from it at all or you did it after?

[Caleb Raulston]

I did it after because basically I took the transcript of everything that I said and I worked with ChatGPT back and forth on it. Hardcore.

[Sean Cannell]

Did you shoot the call to action later?

[Caleb Raulston]

No. You.

[Sean Cannell]

Because you knew it was.

[Caleb Raulston]

I knew I was going to make it.

[Sean Cannell]

You knew it was going to exist, but it wasn't done. You filmed the video, then took the transcript, then finished it.

[Caleb Raulston]

Yeah, because I knew, I knew what the exercises were. I didn't know how we were going to make it interactive.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

So I didn't know how that was going to function, but I knew what they were, so I was able to speak to it. Like, you know, when I'm talking about. Because it goes through Brand Content Team Monetize, and in the team section, I talk about job descriptions. It's super exhilarating, but it's actually like one of my favorite subjects.

[Kat]

Yeah.

[Caleb Raulston]

And I, I mentioned a job description that we actually built for a client who hired a director of brand for $245,000 a year. It's in there like a very high level job description is in that you can just duplicate and customize for yourself. Like I tried to give away everything that we could.

[Sean Cannell]

Yeah, that's amazing. And by the way, we'll link that up in the show notes because if you like, are already getting tactics and so much value in this episode for building your brand, building your channel, building your social media, but you want a cool resource that's free and it's here on YouTube. You have a six hour deep dive branding masterclass with Caleb Raulston. We'll link that up in the show notes.

[Caleb Raulston]

It's a long one, be careful.

[Sean Cannell]

Comes with a workbook that you could check out as well. And then I do have another question for you, but anything else other than that that you want to shout out?

[Caleb Raulston]

No, no, I think that's probably the most valuable thing to date that I've put out there. And so I think if people consume that, the request I would have is if anybody watches it and takes action, just DM me and let me know the results. That. That fires me up. It's my favorite thing in the world. I'm seeing a lot of people on LinkedIn talk about what they're doing, what they're taking, the results they're getting. I get a ton of DMs on Instagram about it and like that is the coolest thing in the world. It's crazy. And so that would be the only favor I ask.

[Sean Cannell]

So find Caleb, we'll link it up in the Instagram, we'll link it up in the show notes and find him on Instagram, we'll link up his account. And then one other question for you. And I want to encourage listeners to check out part two of our conversation because what people might not know is that we have known each other for almost 20 years. We've built a couple seven figure plus businesses and we come from the same small town an hour north of Seattle, Washington, which is weird, and have now traveled around America doing social media stuff. And that's strange. And so that could be an interesting conversation with a lot of the lessons. But one question for this episode, and we'll link that up or it'll come out in the future, is if you could give yourself advice 10 years ago, what would you say?

[Caleb Raulston]

It's funny. I get asked this question a couple of, I'm starting to do podcasts and I get this question and I think I answer it differently every time. So maybe one day we should just compile all the answers. I think you said 10 years ago and normally it's like your 16 year old or high school self. So 10 years ago I would have been 21 turning 22. And I think what I would tell myself because I was just about to realize this the hard way is being in motion and in action creates incredible serendipity. The biggest things that have happened in my career and my life have come when I have maybe in my what I've been given, not feeling satisfied aka my 9 to 5 and so I take action upon for myself and I pursue something outside of that and in doing that the action of it. I'm not a woo woo guy. I don't believe in any of that woo woo stuff. But this is about as close as I get. The more you're in action, the more strange things come your way. I don't know what it is, I'm not sure if it's a vibe that you exude or what, but I would tell myself to always be working on something that you are incredibly passionate around because the moments in your life where you've done that are when you have had the biggest outcomes.

[Sean Cannell]

Caleb Appreciate you adding so much value today and for more lessons like that, subscribe because for part two and this is the Think Media podcast. If you got value today like rate, share, review wherever you watch or listen, my name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and I will catch you in a future episode.