personal brand will be more valuable than Bitcoin by 2030 because Bitcoin may 100x but your personal brand can 1,000x your income, your influence, and your impact in the world. One of the world's leading viral video experts who has the real results. And so for people to not be taking advantage of that right now, they're going to fall behind to everybody else who is, it is an arms race. You revealed the number one way to grow on Instagram in 2025. Oh my gosh. What is it? Absolute hidden gem. If you What are they? How do they work? Oh my gosh. A goat. Imagine multiplying your video views 5x overnight. Not days from now, not weeks from now, not even months from now, but in the next 24 hours. In this video, I get to interview one of the world's leading viral video experts who has the real results. She's done it on multiple platforms. She's helped her clients do it. and she's going to be breaking down her sixpart framework that anyone can implement to start getting more reach, more impact, more views, and ultimately more leads and sales in your business on your very next piece of content. I'm super pumped because Adley is on the Think Media podcast, founder of Viralish. She's done so many cool things and right now she is crushing it on stages. We're in San Diego at Social Media Marketing World and uh I'm excited to uh have you on the podcast. How's it going? It's an honor to be here. I'm so excited for your speech tonight. So, I want to get into your story, do some other things as we as the conversation evolves, but let's get straight into the framework. What's number one? Yeah. Get into the value. Uh so, when I explain the sixstep formula, you're going to be at why do people pay millions of dollars for this? Because it sounds basic, but with each step, there's probably seven to eight different components that when combined make it just incredibly powerful. And I'll preface that we built this formula or it was shown to us after making literally thousands of viral videos. Viral being 5 million and up. And we just saw very clearly of all these videos, the formula appeared, wow, the ones that really rose have this all the same structure in common. So then when we started just using that and applying it to every single video, whether it was an ad for Land Rover or whether it was me pranking my husband or staging a Karen on an airplane, it I'm not going to look you in the eyes and say it works every single time, but I would say our batting average increased to seven out of 10 videos going viral every time we use this framework. I can't wait. What's number one? So number one is obviously it is the hook but what we aim for people to do is to get 90% retention in that first six seconds because if you can get 90% retention in your first 6 seconds according to our Tik Tok rep now confirmed based off our publishing on every single major discovery based platform it is true across all of them. So aiming to get 90% retention we just have different frameworks where we help you do that because if you don't stop the scroll in your first 3 seconds literally nothing else that we talk about matters. So when people harp on the hook, it's because of that fact. It is all that matters to get the attention because if you don't win that, nothing else that we do matters. So one of the ways that we get 90% retention is what we call the combo method, which is essentially just combining two things that don't normally go together, right? Uh those could be if you're doing talking head content, it could be opposite ideologies, right? pinning Democrats versus Republicans. Any type of conflicting ideology of combining things that you don't normally see that make you feel something one and have a curiosity gap to where they're going to stick around and you're going to create this itch that you do not scratch until the very end of your video. I'm not sure if it's the same for YouTube long form or if you bury the payoff somewhere in the middle, but uh for short form at least, you want to get those watch time minutes and the same way that you do in long form. But you just want to create the curiosity gap and the itch and then just don't don't pay it off and be a good storyteller throughout. But really, we have to set that framework up in the hook. That's so strong. Yeah. One of I think it's exactly right for YouTube long form and I think what's interesting in long form is it's doing that but then doing it multiple times. Any good storytelling will create some tension, create a curiosity gap, and then stakes will rise throughout the content and more tension and more curiosity gaps will be open because you're sort of multiplying that throughout the ultimate viral videos on YouTube over longer amount of minutes. But I'm curious, what's one of the other, you mentioned frameworks, maybe some other starters that could get us inspired for what we could do in the hook to get attention in our next p piece of content? Yeah, I would say if if you have it's for me it's a threshold of tolerance. Like I am like lean into funny content. I lead with humor because humor is relatable to the masses and we all have these shared common experiences and humor doesn't have to look like absurdest stuff like I used to do and still sometimes do. Like for me it would look like pouring tequila in the back of a coffee pot and you like why are you doing that? But then I show you how to make batch margaritas for a party. Yeah. You know, or I'm taking a rack of ribs and putting it on the engine of my car to show you how to cook a Thanksgiving meal real quick on your road trip to dinner with your family, you know, stuff like that. But if you don't have the tolerance for that, you can still do things that combine visuals that have a curiosity gap. So, say we have a holistic therapist. I might have a pink balloon that says your brain on it in Sharpie and I might be filling it with shaving cream, right? I'm just filling it up and then I'm putting sticky notes on it that say your family, your finances, your business, your health. And you're just like, where is she going with this? And then I have a pen and I'm about to pop the balloon that's full of shaving cream while I'm talking to you and driving my point home. But there's suspense and tension held in this visual. And then at the very end, maybe I do pop it and show how if you don't resolve your trauma, that crap gets everywhere and it's very, very messy. Wow. So, it's just combining visuals to show what you're talking about rather than just talking head talking about it the same way everybody else does. And is this some of the stuff I see is sometimes if someone's going to be doing talking head or explaining something, if if simply what they're doing is like making lunch or doing something else, maybe that's not enough to go viralish, but is it the same concept? Yes. One time we did a video where I didn't need to do a talking head style, but I was just like boiling tennis balls. Okay. Okay. And like boiling water and just lowering tennis balls into them and people are just like they're absorbing what I'm saying but there's an anchor of curiosity of why the heck is she boiling. Did you ever resolve why I didn't because I'm a buttthead. Uh but part two or something. Well that probably starts com people like what's and then it gets a whole comment engagement thing. Yes. And people jump to step number five. Witty about the comments like theories about the tennis balls and like debate about the tennis balls. And then the best part is when people like oh of course you should boiled tennis balls. you should always boiler your tennis balls and they go into being like to make it something and you had no clue. You're like, I don't know about that. Maybe it actually does mean something. That's that's fascinating. I also have heard such things as like this versus that viral video. If you're just talking head, it might fall flat. If you were like a real estate agent and walking through a neighborhood, why talking? Walking and talking and and like the more things you lay on, it could just be more engaging. Is there anything you could do to tweak that? Here's what I think that works. Just changing your location, it raises the stakes and it makes it feel a bit more real. Instead of sitting here in front of the camera with the perfect lighting and now you're going to do the influencer thing and you're set up to make a video, it looks like you're just set up to make a video versus same script, but you're just walking down the streets of San Diego delivering it. It makes it feel like this is so top of mind. I eat, sleep, breathe this. And I just I have to say this right now. told me pull up my camera and I just have to tell you this. Same script but different location and different vibe and I think it reads a little bit better. Wow. Okay. How about number two? Number two. So after your hook, if people make it through there, obviously we get into the body of it, the structure, the skeleton, and that is suspense. And suspense, in my opinion, is the difference between good creators and the best creators in the world is your ability to hold suspense. And look at I mean this isn't anything different than we're used to seeing in sitcoms or your favorite movie, right? I use this example a lot because I love the movie Taken and I think Liam Niss is a total kick butt guy, but he if he like rescued his daughter halfway through the movie, would we keep watching? No. If Ross and Rachel actually stayed together in season two, would it have gone on for 10 seasons? Probably not. Got to have tension the whole time. Tension equals retention. On and off. They get together but they break up. Yes, you have to have unresolved tension. So, how can you do that in whether you're making people problem aware or solution aware in any content pillar that you're doing? How can you invoke suspense? Not even just in the micro, not even in a single piece of content, which is very important, but how can you do it on the macro to where people just are invested in your business's story? They're invested in your story and what you're building. If you can evoke suspense and tension, that is sticky for people and that's going to keep them sticking around. So before you make your next video and as you're planning out your business and how you're storytelling yourself from the inside out, how can you evoke tension and suspense into your storytelling? So if somebody was like a a CPA or an accountant and they're thinking about like, okay, I'm trying to get into content to get leads and sales. How do I get unresolved tension in like somebody that's doing financial services? So it depends on how you want to storytell yourself. So immediately like man in the streets came to mind but not everybody wants to do man in the streets. Let's say that say we did that like a man in the streets like street interview style or challenges. So think in these content buckets. So say you had a challenge and the CPA was doing how to maximize a hundred bucks and you could talk about investing. You can talk about all these different things but give three people on the street a hundred bucks and go see who makes the most ROI out of it and then teach principles from that. But you're showing It's harder. It takes more effort, sure, but now you're going to have a simple, repeatable, and scalable format that you can do over and over again and be known for that guy who makes that wider, more entertaining, top offunnel video to teach your principles. And I think that's who's really going to stand out over the next three years is who builds that personal brand and learns how to storytell what they do in a way that's relatable to the most amount of people. Okay, what's number three? So then we move into the end, which is the end of the skeleton, which is the top three uh nuts there. That is the payoff. And the payoff is really where people decide how they feel about you, right? They decide if they're going to follow. They decide if they're going to unfollow. They decide if they trust you a little bit. Um they decide if they're going to share with a friend or drop a comment, you know? And so that's your opportunity to to win them over. And that's where you can make your call to action. But it's really the end of that itch I said I want you to scratch in the first three seconds. That's where you're going to scratch that itch and you can have them follow for part two or just keep them invested in the story. So that's just the end of the skeleton where people decide. Liam Niss does rescue his daughter and he does and that's the payoff. You did did you still deliver a payoff when you were boiling the tennis balls technically because you you you still kept a curiosity gap and tension going. But I mean were you just teaching something practical and still had like a final point? I think there's Yeah, I guess two aspects to the payoff. One is it's just the end of your video. Yeah. you know, and it's where you sign off or you just have a call to action. But I left that anchor unresolved. Yeah. I did not say why I was boing those tennis balls because I wanted to go into step number five, which is engagement tactics and designing your comment section. Okay. So then let's keep moving. What's number four, though? Number four, we've got uh why am I blinking? Uh raising the stakes. So raising the stakes determine why somebody cares. Stakes determine why people care and how you're going to get a majority of people to watch your video that otherwise wouldn't. So, there's four main ways that we raise the stakes. One is location, props, wardrobe, and casting. So, if you and I are going to do a video, maybe people care. Like, say it was a reuniting video and we're like, "Oh my god, Sean, I haven't seen you in two weeks. We're finally going to be reunited." Nobody cares. The stakes are low. But if it's a high school sweethearts who haven't seen each other in 50 years and they're old and adorable and going to be reunited casting just change out the cast, same format. When someone in the military comes back, they that's the headline and it's like they're coming back after five years and everybody watches wardrobe. Yeah. You know, wardrobe and what the reunited reunited from five years. So you see how you have suspense built in there. You see how you have high stakes built in there and these are just storytelling mechanisms that are age-old but we're just adapting them and how they show up for social. So location I think is the easiest for anybody to do just by changing the location. So for example we have like roofing people in our um in our communities and we say what are you doing on the ground behind a desk? Get on the roof. You're on a roof every day. I want you to count shingles like they're dollar bills. Like do something interesting that is visual and just change your location. do it from the truck. Like do just be more interesting. Get do it in the aisle at a supermarket instead of in your kitchen. Do it in the car. If you're going to make a meal and show an ingredient um how these ingredients make up this really simple recipe, don't show me in your kitchen. Show me that you're doing it in a car when you only have 10 minutes in a lunch break to show how simple and easy this is, right? And so just changing your location can make a world of difference when you are encouraging individuals. Like some of the objections that come up is like, okay, I actually can see this is practical, but I'm also kind of stressed because I'm busy and like I I'm trying to just sit behind my desk and create content and I can see the ROI here. Help me reconcile one, how quickly and efficiency or how much time I devote to this. And then two, um, the ROI because I mean the ROI of doubling your business and hiring help or the ROI of, uh, more revenue and that you can reinvest and and buying back your time. But, but help us understand that because, you know, it's it's one thing to even have a few minutes to just record a Zoom and then chop it up and put it online or sit at your desk, but let alone get out there, get creative, film, all of that stuff. Yeah. I think sometimes low effort leads to low results and sometimes it doesn't. It depends on you can have a really loweffort concept and it hit because you've combined you found how it resonates and it was really simple and you can make 30 in an hour and that's great. We have a format I'm working on where I'm just going to go look I'm just going to go look like I'm flashing people and get the shocked faces and then when I turn around it's positive messages exposing positivity. I get to do 30 of those in an afternoon. Yeah. But my video says like make compelling videos and so it's like yeah so it's a shot from behind and then a shot in front. So even and it's all the faces and you're like oh you think I just flashed but it follows see how that follows the formula perfectly but very low effort but novel in a sense. We haven't seen that before and it proves my point that you need to make more compelling videos. So that would be very easy. So if you're going to go loweffort find something that you can batshoot that has something that nobody's really seen before but it's still low effort. Um, so I think bat shooting is huge for a lot of people, but lately what I've been doing is just I have been posting less but having more effective posts because either I'm going to win you're either going to win by volume posting two three times a day for that type of omniresence and syndicating that content or you're going to have one awesome video a a week or every other week that's going to get same amount of time investment from people but that video is going to be more successful than all these other small ones combined. So I think you have to solve for your own constraints. For example, my husband has anxiety. He has billions of views under his belt personally and he does not like making videos. He just is an engineer mine and he can just see, oh, I do this and this and this and it works and he just thinks about it that black and white when he applies the formula. But he makes videos and he doesn't talk in any of them because he gets anxious on camera and gets tongue tied. So solve for your constraints and make your format fit something that you actually enjoy doing. Like if I had a hat, I would say make content fun again. That would be that would be my motto is make do something that you think that you can sustain and is fun for you. Otherwise, you are going to burn out. That's really good. And I'm curious too like share some of the numbers too of client results or the ROI of this because most listening have not experienced a million views, let alone multi-millions of views or even you're talking about the promise of this title is how to 5x your reach. So if we're normally getting 300 views and now we start getting a couple thousand or we get a hundred thousand it could be very significant. So what what people even implement this not even perfect because it's the goal where you know we'll hit number five doing the steps but if you just improve some of this stuff what can people expect? Oh my gosh sometime we had a guy it was his third video that he'd make made trying the formula first two were not executed the right way. The third one he posted and it was he was tie dying eggs or something for Easter and I watched this video and I'm like he didn't nail the hook and this is not gonna do well. But I saw seconds 12 to 14. I was like that's your hook. And I said Michael I don't even care if you take this down right now but you're going to repost this and I want you just put seconds 12 to 14 on on your first two seconds and repost it. That's it. You don't have to reshoot anything. Just restructure this video. And the first time it did 1,800 views and now that made it to 3.6 6 million I believe just by changing that little thing. Yeah. You know, just simple reit. Did you talk to um Pat Flynn? Do you know him well? No, I don't know him at all. So, so you know Pat Flynn is a legend. We just did a conversation here on the Think Media podcast. We'll link it up in the show notes. He started a dedicated YouTube shorts channel for Pokemon and uh he's got a Deep Pocket Monster channel, long form. Uh and this was new. He wasn't even into Pokemon. He got into it because of his kids. He has a whole smart passive income kind of typical education for online business owners and stuff and people getting started. But started a whole new project, grew a YouTube channel, a million subscribers, but wanted to start a different format and started a shorts channel, vertical video only. But what it made me think was you're talking about do something you can batch, do something that's sustainable. And I think it's uh do we open it or do we keep it sealed, which is do you open the pack of Pokemon cards or keep it sealed? and he had uh he kind of built it out. It's a show. It has a jingle in the beginning, jingle in the end, but he can shoot it by himself. No team, nobody else helping. He just film he batch shoots them. He uploads one a day. It's a routine for people. It's got kind of a few tweaks. He he hired a voice actor to just on wherever, Fiverr or something like that to do kind of, you know, oh no, the hack wasn't that good or oh, it was pretty good. All that to say is he's at two billion views. Wow. The channel grew. He got a gold play button in like 199 days. Wow. Grew his YouTube channel to a million subs. Made $126,000 in YouTube ad revenue from the shorts. Shorts. Yeah. Right around there. Um and but but he found a format. He found a sustainable format. Doesn't have to go outside, but like it it's a show. It's like a mini 60-minute show and in the dialed in the details. And of course, you know, content creation, I think it's like a skill. You get stronger with reps. And he wasn't starting at scratch. He's got a lot of experience under his belt. But I just hope that encourages listeners to just think about these principles are powerful. And it's probably not it may not be the first thing or the sixth thing you try, but by committing to this, you can build that strength. And and I mean, I you're one show away from a billion views. 1,000%. There was a kid of ours, he we used to pay him $2 per reel. Will Cullen official or official Will Cullen if you look him up and he was trying to figure out he was making viral videos for us and he got really really good at it and he was like but I'm a musician how do I marry the two and he was trying different formats and then the third one maybe it was even more than three but the third one that I watched him try popped and he grew three million followers in a matter of months over on TikTok just go taking his guitar going up to Pretty Girls in the park around V Vanderbilt and Belmont campuses and just being like hey what are you listening to do you mind if I cool do you mind if I sit and play it and the girls are like ah But he would just go around singing to pretty girls. Popped and just changed his life. Wow. You know, but he had tried so many other formats. So, I firmly believe that everybody has at least 100 bad videos in them. Sure. That you just have to get out. That is the right of passage. And maybe it's even more than that. I heard this stat that you would probably know if it's true more than me, but it was YouTube saying anybody with over a million subscribers, the average videos that they had posted was over a thousand videos before people got a million subscribers. Yeah, I think it was a stat a study done by uh TubeBuddy and it was crazy numbers like they they studied people that hit 100,000, people that hit 500,000, people that hit a million and it might have been over a thousand videos or even over 2,000 videos if they got to to a million subscribers, which again speaks to the amount of reps. I think we get so self-reflective and I I've heard that what you just said is called the rule of 100. The rule of post 100 videos where you're counting uploads, not views. Beautiful. Like, let's just count uploads, not views, as our measurement for success because this is our practice season. This is our find our voice season. This is our experiment and figure things out season. Yes. I love that. That's 1,000 tries, 100 tries and chances at bat. And you don't know if it's the 101st that could be the breakthrough. I have so many stories and times where I did not want to upload or did not want to shoot. Thought the video was trash. You already know where I'm going with this. It popped. It was the one. The one the video that you make when you are tired and you're exhausted and you just say, "One more. I'm just going to post it. Just do one more. I had $80,000 in my trash can once." Every day you want to start your YouTube channel is another day of missed opportunities and untapped potential. Here's the truth. YouTube reaches more 18 to 49year-olds than all the cable networks combined. 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And then at the end I just run and I'm like one two three and I just run and I just push them both in and they're close. That was it. But you could see my extensions $8,000 in the tracks. I'm getting there. Okay. I had I we did this video and I didn't want to post it because you could see my extensions and my hair and I was really insecure about that and it looked horrible. And even though that would have gotten a ton of comments, I'm sure I was like I I'm personally just embarrassed and I just made a vanity decision to like just trash it. And Blake was like, "Where's that footage?" I was like, "I deleted it. I looked terrible." and he got it out and he edited it, which does not happen and posted it that made $80,000 in two days. And you just you never know what video it's going to be. It's usually the one that you least expect is the one that's going to pop because you didn't care and you weren't trying so hard and somehow that resonated. Man, it's really great. Okay, we got to hit number five and number six in just a second. But this episode is fire. If you're getting value, uh, if you watch on YouTube, hit the like button, and if you listen to the podcast, it always means the world if you share, rate, review wherever you watch or listen. Number one, recapping, we have the hook. Number two, suspense. Number three, payoff. Number four, raising the stakes. What's number five, Adley? Number five is engagement tactics. So, this is how you would get somebody who would never normally leave a comment on anything and get them to comment. Um, and this also ranges your threshold of absurdity. Um, for example, uh, we did a video. These are friends of ours who did a video and they were doing some cooking style video, life hack thing, and she goes to get like ketchup out of the fridge and there's just a box of tampons in there. Don't call attention to it, but she just got the ketchup, never called attention to the tampons. The entire comment section was, "Are we supposed to be refrigerating our tampons? What is going on with that?" And then other people are like, "Yes, of course you're supposed to refrigerate your tampons." and we just forgot they were in there from a different bit. That video popped, made tens of thousands of dollars just because of that little Easter egg. I made a wine pie one time and my fly was undone, which I did do intentionally because I have no business making a pie and nobody has business watching me cook, but I needed to make this pie for something and I just had my zipper undone. 14 million views on me making a pie. But the thing is is that didn't take away from my credibility. Say you were a chef and you were doing something serious. Can you do can you do an engagement tactic for retention and for an anchor and for something just a little bit Easter eggy in your video that still feels authentic to you and doesn't steal your credibility? A lot of people don't want to mispronounce a name or spell something wrong because that can rob you of credibility, but could you just have one earring in maybe like a natural human mistake? Could you have a fly undone? Cuz people will be like, "Oh, girl, I'm so sorry. I feel for you. This video's popping." And you're caught in an embarrassing moment. like what can humanize you a little bit that you're comfortable with or that is just really unique to you. I think we put a safety pin in Blake's beard once or just like one little pink strip something just something to make people stop in their crazy brain and just be like what is that I've never seen that before or this person's unique. It's just stopping them and pattern interrupting long enough for them to actually realize wow this is really good content and then you'll notice that that'll just make your engagement go crazy. And so whatever that threat you live, wherever you live in that threshold, if you find something that's comfortable for you, I just urge you to think about it. Just try before you design your next video, what could I do to inspire a comment section and design it in reverse? Because even that forethought, even just a little bit of it is going to go so much farther than you would not thinking about it otherwise. I know at one point Meta Facebook announced that they were shifting their algorithm not just for comments but for conversation. So that posts would spread not only on the amount of comments but essentially debate when people start commenting the commentator you know and they go back and forth. And so to me, this is also very interesting because just things to get people talking, debating, questioning, and and on comments is certainly a factor on YouTube. It's a lot less. It's click-through rate, watch time, like period on YouTube. Likes, comments are some reinforcing metrics, viewer satisfaction. But you're an expert in all these different platforms. And it reminds me of somebody who was getting great results. And and let me know if this is kind of one of those engagement tactics with educational content, screen sharing and showing tutorials of like websites that are free and helpful to create content, but you know how you like bookmark pages and it's at the top of your Google Chrome. He made that a little bit bigger and he renamed one that was just right at the front and he he he renamed it like Hunter Biden's laptop leak and he and then he never addresses it and he just leaves it there. But what then what then also happened would people would get over 100% retention cuz they'd relet it play to be like is that say what I think it says and then they would be like does he know and then people would be debating in the comments and like oh he must be trolling like no that's legit no it's whatever then he tapped into politics this guy must be a whatever somebody else like no I can't believe you know the administration and and he was just like talking about you know free website software but did it absolutely intentional as an engagement tactic. What do you think? I love it. I think that's the best. You just see how it can be easy to just do something little that you never call attention to, but it makes you different and you're giving people talking points. Like this is a secret superpower if you're willing to do it. Find something that's comfortable for you cuz people always get weird when it's like baiting engagement, but it's just giving people a reason to stop. It's a pattern interrupt. You know what's funny is you just hit a concept. Have you talked a lot about talking points before? No. Talking points I was hearing in the in the music industry is an actual strategy everybody listening to this could benefit from. And talking points is something for example if you were marketing yourself or wanting to get your name out there as a musician. It's one thing of course you got to have good music maybe something you know you have a little a little bit of luck definitely tactics and how Spotify and things work and all those modern things but like a modern musician also needs to be like a world-class marketer. And they talked about talking points and you write your name in the middle or your brand in the middle, but then draw talking points around it. And they were talking about this like white rapper that's been blowing up, but they talked about his music video. Like one, there was a cybert truck in the music video. It is just a talking point, you know, like it's trending. It's whatever that but just one thing. Then it was the fact that he was surrounded actually by all all of his homies were black guys around the white guy in the center. And he was like, "Yeah, you know, say what you will that people are going to notice that and they're going to" and and he goes, "I'm not saying he manufactured it, but like it's authentic to him, but it's intentional. They shot that music video with with that thing. That's another talking point." He said, you know, Kanye West, if you think about it, this was a video I watched about talking points and musicians always has like he'll do stuff just for the talking. It's gets people talking. Yeah. Stuff that's kind of And of course, that's at the extreme of controversy. So like you say, what's your Yeah. What's your level? what's your tolerance for it? But I had never really thought about that like those are talking points because you're trying to get people talking and it could be your wardrobe. Um it could be he talked about opening lines. Some of the best rap songs might have an opening line that is offensive and polarizes people. If it's true to you, it might pull people to one side, but then it also might get people talking on the other side. And and the bottom line was that the best of the best, these are not accidents. Yeah, they're sitting down and thinking about what are our talking points. Thoughts? I I love it. And we're talking about the same thing. You realize all great storytellers and the people who break through all have talking points that are true to them like the white rapper with all of his guys around him that's real to him, but you know it's going to get attention because you know it's not the norm. So what is it about your business, your unique selling points that helps you stand out? Because just being good enough is not enough. Like just being good is not enough. So, how can you be good but also be different in a separator? Like, why would I buy your shoe over somebody else's shoe out there where everybody's making shoes? Why is your shoe different? I'm like, to take it off, your shoes off. If you're on audio, a shoe just came off. Feet are out. Socks are on the podcast. You know, you know what? That's that's interesting. I don't know if you've heard this one before, because you like just being good enough is not enough. Content is king, but marketing is queen. And she runs the household. Love that. You heard that one? No, but I think that's beautiful. I don't know. I I stole that from everywhere. I stole that, too. But I'll take credit. Uh you need talking points whether it's in your content or just in your business by design because if it's in your business by design, it just filters into your content. Even better if it the big and I've been thinking that we another conversation we're having. We're going to get to number six, y'all, but this is some good stuff. Uh we're going to go deeper on world building and universe building around brands. You heard of some of that? Yeah. And so that that starts being like what who are your characters? What are some of the themes? What are some of the looks? What are the values? It's but it's kind of more of an expansive. And you do think about the the visuals. And some of the best modern musicians are thinking about world building. It's not just about the song. It's about the whole experience on social. And so that would be true for content creators. And this is this is I think the new era stuff to your point. Did you have a quote about personal brand yesterday by 2020 by 2030? What was the quote? Yeah, it was a bold statement, but I think I believe it. I really do. I said, I think I really do. I think that personal brand will be more valuable than Bitcoin by 2030 because Bitcoin may 100x, but your personal brand can 1,000x your income, your influence, and your impact in the world. And we've just never been in a time like this where personal brand is scalable thanks to AI for the first time in history. If you're burnt out, cool. You can make AI videos with your voice. You can clone your body and you can clip it and put it on all and syndicate it across all these platforms and you don't actually have to show up if you have the flu for two weeks. Your content can still be out there with your voice and your face and you don't have to do anything. That is crazy. And so for people to not be taking advantage of that right now, they're going to fall behind to everybody else who is it is an arms race. How much Bitcoin do you have, Blake? How much Bitcoin do we have? Have you decided instead of buying Bitcoin to just invest in your brand? I'm doing both. I'm double fisting over here. Um, you didn't want us. So, uh, engagement tactics and raising the stakes. We got to get to number six. I love what you just pointed out though. I got to say that engagement tactics are just another word for talking points. They're just necessary. Like, why is represent different than any other hoodie? I can tell you. Okay. I mean represents like it's interesting. They they're actually a really good brand at brand building. I think they're going to do 80 million this year. They're about 10 years old. Uh very kind of like lifestyle aspirational brand started by two brothers. Um like runners, athletes, they have a 247 is their athletic brand. Um and all the mantras around it have a lot to do with just kind of ambitions. There's kind of an entrepreneurial edge on and it would be somewhat luxury street wear. So yeah, there's a whole thing and and it comes into their website, their social, they have a YouTube show. Um it there's it's it it's all interesting and you also I guess it's it steps to the game because they're over 10 years into it. Yeah. So I think some people listening to this are like do I got to build a world? I have to world build now. It's like it's not enough to just be good at music. You have to be a Tik Tocker now, too. But it's going to start with your first couple of videos and your first and and your first going viral and viralish and then and then reinvesting. But but yeah, there's there's I think a lot of talking points around that. And then it actually is interesting. I went to church on Sunday. I landed at Social Media Marketing World, randomly hopped in the car with Kenya Kelly. She's like, I got out. I didn't even know what I was going to do all Sunday. She's like, want to go to church? I was like, yeah, I guess. Uh so I like dropped my bags. We went to like Jesus Culture San Diego. And I walked in, but amongst anything else, we have a shared value. Much more important, like our faith. Yeah. Some guy came up to me, he had a represent hat on. And it's like, if you know, you know. And I was like, bro, nice hat. And I'm wearing this represent owners club hoodie. And And so community building, like connection, and like you also like know what it means. Yeah. And and so there's a lot of different elements that are are fascinating there. So, okay, raising the stakes, engagement tactics. What's number six? Split testing. M split testing was our lynch pin to success for four years since 2020. We split tested pretty much every video that we put out. But the split testing tools were not available back then. No one was even publicly talking about split testing your content. Like Gary Vee or Horoszi would say that they would just post every version of the video on TikTok and then hide the ones that didn't pop and split test that way. We weren't we were split testing before we were ever publishing. And how we would do it was run Facebook dark posts um f put $5 behind each version of your video. So, we would split test hooks, thumbnails, captions, the captions because they would pre-frame the way the audience views the video, you know, and we would just pin ideology ideologies and victims and who's the bad guy in these captions differently to see what would resonate. We would test different lengths. And so, we would split test and Facebook dark post on a page that wasn't attached to ours um to see which one would win. And after a,000 views, it spits you a retention line. So we would see, wo, seconds 12 through 20, we lose 45% of people. What happened there? And maybe somebody whip panned too bad or maybe there's an early payoff or but we could see why didn't people like that. And that gave us an opportunity to bring it back and edit it. And so we would just edit till everything had the metrics that we thought was the best that we could do at the time. And then that kept our page really hot because we were only posting bangers. That is uh wild. What advice would you give to somebody who's like, "I'm not at a point where I could start running Facebook dark posts on a separate page." Or would you say, "Suck it up, buttercup. It's only a few bucks a post." And like learn how to do it if you're just starting out. If there's a video you really care about, I would say take the $15 and and try it. At least try it to see if it is valuable to you. But now we're just running trial reels like crazy. We have 105 million views this month on just my Instagram alone from trial reels alone. I've posted to my feed embarrassingly, embarrassingly twice this month, maybe three times, but we have a hundred million views on Instagram alone from trial reels. We're posting all of our old banger content that we know attracts new people to what we believe in, what how we entertain people. And then I'm using it to test new formats because I'm in this bridge right now of I'm an entertainer first, but then also love sharing how we entertain and how we storytell. That's my way of just being a river and not a reservoir because I believe that every good thing that happens to us is not ours to keep. It's not for me to sit here and get to be on Sean's podcast and talk about how cool I am and figured something out. It's to share the knowledge. Our knowledge is only as good to the extent that we pay it forward and pass it along to people. And so, yeah, and that's what we do. And we just split test with trial reels now. and it's allowing us to test these different formats to figure out if you don't know if your audience is going to like it or you just are a little fearful. It's okay. And they're just rewarding that and you're getting that real-time feedback without the risk of posting it to your page. So, hang on, Adley. Yesterday in your talk, you just revealed what you just said. You revealed the number one way to grow on Instagram in 2025. Oh my gosh. What is it? Trial reels. Absolute hidden gem. If you What are they? How do they work? Oh my gosh. So go as if you're going to post a real if you have not seen this. Make sure your app is up to date and then go and you'll see right before you post there's a toggle on for trial. So that's going to publish only to nonfollowers. Boom. So it's just going to go find your audience to where you don't you can do something inconsistent with what you believe the algorithm in your page is known for now to test new concepts and new styles and it's not going to your followers, it's going to nonfollowers. So you're automatically in discover. This is amazing. With tools like this, we just don't know how long it's going to last. So, I am begging and pleading for everybody to take advantage of this tool while we still have it. Wow. And then practically, how could we implement reposting winners, experimenting with some new format formats? What should we do in the next couple of weeks or months to try out take action on this practically? I would say repost your best content. You can't schedule trial reels. So, that kind of sucks. It is a manual process. So either you or somebody on your team schedule at at bare minimum one trial reel a day of posting your old content and then this is a beautiful way to split test that cost you nothing. You don't have to run the dark posts and you can just say hey we had this podcast clip but I'm not sure what the stronger hook is. Do both. Post both to trial reels and let the data tell you which is stronger and then publish that one to your page. You can split test things seven eight different ways and it's not going to cost you anything. It is the most exciting time for free advertising that we've ever seen in the history of the world. I'm so passionate about this and people just going all in on personal brand. Like this is the time and we don't know how long it's going to last and you are just up against everybody else in your niche that is going to beat you with free tools, free ways to get as much attention as possible on your brand because attention equals leads equals sales and we're in the greatest time of history of ever for marketing. I have one more question for you, but before we get there, shout out your stuff. If people want to connect with you, it'll all be linked up in the show notes, but if people want to follow you, follow up, anything you want to offer our audience. Yeah. Instagram, I'm Adley, Ady. Um, Tik Tok, the Adley Show. Our website is Viralish. Viralish.com. YouTube's the Adley show, too. So, final question is, if we just if you gave us a simple action plan, this was a lot. This is a episode to rewatch. It's an episode to study, but there's also levels to the game. What is like just my next step this week to put the stuff into practice? Next step this week, if you actually want to go to my Instagram and comment the word BVF on literally any post or DM it to me, we'll send you the ebook for the formula for free. And then I really believe like there's so much information in here and in all of your shows that may people need the head knowledge because they need the exposure to new ideas because you never know which one's going to have a light bulb. But really I think the difference is implementation and people need to just be told what to do but then they still don't do it. So they need like the handholding. So the way that we position you like our mastermind or what Viralist does for people is we become like a fractional member of your team to where we're saying okay weekly accountability make the video. Make the video and then come with us on Thursdays and we'll review you and we'll say that's crap here. Increase suspense this way. Just re-edit. Make this go here. And we just work with you to apply this to help people become better storytellers. Adley, grateful for you. So much value today and Think Media Podcast. Like, rate, share, review wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Kel, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. And I cannot wait to connect with you in a future