sam Godette who is the creative director for Dan Martell How do you get Dan Martell to perform on camera my job is to put Dan in containers where he has a really positive high energy that I can capture Every single video that we create has a certain formula How many videos do you guys post a week 50 to 100 You don't even know what quality is until you do quantity The number one mistake that I see most content creators make is they don't pay attention to the numbers Pay attention to the numbers cuz that will tell you what videos perform or not You see like an artist You're trying to make it better Is there someone that you've noticed that took some of Dan's stuff and made it better you No Shut up How much does Dan make from content direct revenue We make over 24 million a year How many times have you flown on a private jet a lot How many billionaires have you met a lot What makes a billionaire different billionaires have this unique ability to All right everybody Welcome back to For Your Own Good I'm Cassidy Warren and I am live and in person with an audience of elite members and beautiful people Beautiful people my boy Sam Goddette who is the what's your official title creative director Creative director for Dan Martell You are essentially the reason behind all of Dan Martell's success right not uh I wouldn't say that but yeah I'd say social media growth for sure Yeah Part of it And so when how old were you when you first started working with Dan so I mean compliant with all child labor laws in Canada I'm kidding Um I started working for Dan I was 16 years old Um he hired me and he was he looked at me I remember the first interview He was like "You're young." And I was like "Is that going to be a problem?" And he was like "All right let's do it." That's right So I started with him Yeah About 7 years ago Okay And you were just editing or what were you doing for Dan i was everything Started off as a videographer video editor and yeah I was a shell of of the company that we are back then today So just started video editing and trying to make content Back then Tik Tok Instagram reals weren't a thing and yeah we decided to essentially build it out two years ago and that's what kind of took it off after What gave you the confidence though like so when did Dan come to you and what was that like when he's like we're turning pro yeah So I'll give context for everybody in the room and everybody listening Like so for four years we played amateur I'd say five years actually And you know we were doing the reps doing the thing Uh Dan was getting better at content And we were slowly growing but no like hockey stick growth or household name yet And I had a team of small editors you know I managed a team kind of like was building it as an agency And yeah 3 years ago he called me or two years ago now called me and he said "Hey dude Um I'm thinking about doing this thing The book just came out I'm seeing a lot of opportunity on the back end of getting people to read this book get value from it and I need to build a media company I want you to be involved." The only caveat was that I had to move 5,000 kilometers 3,000 miles west uh of Canada And he told me um that he wanted to build it in person And I'm like "All right let's do it." So 48 hours later I hopped in a car with my buddy Matise which was my first hire in person and we drove in my Golf GTI 5,000 mi 56 hours straight And uh yeah cuz we we're were hard-headed like that We didn't want to stop I'm like I could stop Oh yeah I could keep going And we just kept going for 56 hours straight Took shifts sleeping Um made it here And then I mean I don't know how deep you want to go in but yeah we started in Dan's basement Um Renee Dan's wife was like "How long are they going to be here?" Dan was like a week We stayed there two months And yeah eventually got a studio started building it out It was me uh Matise and Jay are our revenue guy and now we're a team of 25 people and crushing it How much has Dan's book been an anchor in the content and the growth i think like the book was the reason So I think a lot of people think that oh did Dan blow up because of the book i 100% I think so But I don't think it's the reason that most people think I think people think that oh the book did well and it pushed a lot of people to his accounts I think the book did decently well really well We sold 25 20,000 copies in the first week Um but then after that it's like we had a reason to go all in on on content because we had something that because before then we had SAS Academy SAS Academy wasn't broad appeal It was very specific solved one problem for software founders And when we had the book we had something that we could market give value to broad entrepreneurs We we could we were able to start making content for that like specific target audience Yeah that's that's a recent connection It seems so obvious right oh he's got the book But I think out of any influencer out there any content creator out there Dan has above anybody else use the book as the leverage to go create content go become the buyback your time guy but then go talk about everything else that he actually wants to talk about 100% Yeah And that's a like Dan wrote a good book That's what a lot of people don't like they forget They forget that he wrote a good book And it's hard to write a good book takes time takes effort takes humility because he wrote essentially I remember he told me he wrote a university textbook equivalent of a book because he just wanted to put everything out there and he presented it to his team his his publishing team and they're like hey Dan we got to sit down and talk and he's like about what about the difference from a university textbook and a bestselling book right so he had to strip down 60% of the book put his ego aside and he wrote a great book people love that book they they share it and yeah it's 100% a reason why we've been able to extract all the resources from that book make content about it um and blow up essentially So tell me about Turning Pro Cuz I've seen Dan's old videos the SAS Academy stuff right and it's like has anyone gone and watched his old SES Academy you should watch it It's embarrassing It Yeah it's like for me not for Dan man It's standing in a room like this with a a button-up silk t-shirt and a tie and he's just talking like nerdy stuff There's some valuable stuff in there But yeah when you talk about oh he wrote a textbook back then I'm not surprised because if you go back and look and so then what what was it like when he turned pro and you're with him to change to now like you talked about the hockey stick right yeah there's a lot of small things I will say number one he told me "Hey dude you got unlimited budget Spend money As long as we make an an ROI in the next 12 months you can spend as much money as you want." Obviously he he said that cuz he knew I was a efficient guy I was a skimpy guy Like I needed to hear that for me to go hire the people that I needed to But the first thing I did is is I went and hired the best consultants and the smartest people I knew in those industries and I got around them and not necessarily had to like pay them in some circumstances Sometimes I just went to an event to ask them one question but I just surrounded myself with these these killers in the social media space and asked them questions And I remember the first consultant I hired I didn't even ask Dan to like spend the money I just he uh he I messaged him on Instagram like "Hey dude how much for uh six months of consulting with you?" He was like "20 grand." I was like done personally paid it with my own money because I knew the value that he was going to create in my life And through that he taught me a lot about simplifying language what actually works on Instagram um building brands that actually hold true and value in the in the marketplace how to copy how to steal like an artist essentially and not like copy blatantly what people do And uh yeah that's been the the the start of like oh [ __ ] there's actually a game that you can play and be successful and it's not just like throwing [ __ ] at the wall and see what sticks And so how do you get Dan to go viral without it feeling formulaic yeah that's a good question Um I think every single video that we create has a certain formula and I I always you know drill this in the team's head is problem story teach right and you need a really clear problem what the video is about One problem not 10 That's a a problem that most content creators face when they start making content They try try to talk about seven different things at the same time Um one clear problem one story And then the next level of this and I'm going to talk about this at Social Signing Summit tomorrow is instead of a story sometimes we use analogies because analogies you know stories are long they're personal um and they help connect They do the same job as the analogy but the analogy is shorter it's more memorable and it's repeatable So let's say you tell a story about I don't know Dan um growing up in uh foster homes and was around a lot of chaos right and then finally found code and that was his level of structure and built some structure in his life That's a longer story and it's not repeatable because you have I have to say it in the second p in the second um third person I have to talk about Dan right but if I'm like it's kind of like if you were in a airport and there was no uh zones for boarding and everybody just boarded at the same time or if there were zones from I wish airlines did this but from back to front Yeah Right that structure So you guys visualize that right it's an analogy I connect it to something that's very familiar because you guys all took planes to get here Um and that's that's like the next level which is analogies right and um it's like really clear problem story or analogy and then the teach And the teach has to be really structured It's either a model or framework or a few steps And it has to be really clear And sometimes most of the time in short form content which I think is what a lot of you guys are working on right now it just has to be one thing It's not two it's not three it's not four YouTube videos we give ourselves the freedom to be go more in depth But um if you're making a short form piece of content it's one problem one story or analogy and then one teach and it's one singular thing that people can walk away and it's the payoff and it's what people can implement in their business today or their life today that's going to get 10x outcomes Right So you've switched more more from the storytelling to the analogy I think stories are still important I just think that a lot of people forget that there's a faster better way and more repeatable way to to get there Do you think it's as effective i'd say it's not as effective for building brand and we can talk about that too on uh on this pod but it's it's more effective to connect with the viewer and have them do what's called VWAM viral word of mouth and repeat what you said And that's big for us Yeah it's really interesting because I I joined like I said I joined Elite two years ago when Dan had like 50,000 followers Yeah And now he's at 1.1 on Instagram right which is Zoo Sam I mean it's a team We both team but yeah you you run the team And I wasn't so sure And actually Dan told me one time he's like "You're unsure about this." And then I was living my life in the world out in all these different circles all these different people And I kept experiencing Dan in all these rooms all these circles He existed in everyone's language everyone's stories everyone's like the way they talked about the book right and I saw literally Dan's influence in all of the circles that I ran in all the in the world in content in how people approach life how they change their businesses and I was like "Wow this is like the real deal." Honestly seeing him do this real time and then hearing him and seeing him in the real world is like really what inspired me to kind of go all in and turn content Hell yeah Yeah Good [ __ ] man Yeah that's right So I'll uh I don't want to talk too much about Dan but let me ask like let's talk about Dan Yeah How how do you I'm talking about Dan behind his back Yeah Good things He's here So real friends real friends will talk good [ __ ] behind your back Yeah And so how do you get Dan Martell to perform on camera yeah it's good Really good question Um what's unique about Dan and some people in the room might resonate some people are like I'm the complete opposite but he has this unique ability to channel energy right and as long as the energy is positive in the room he'll perform And that's why well I'll talk about this tomorrow too about containers but I my job is to put Dan in containers where he has a really positive high energy that I can capture with our cameras and put out there to the world The worst thing I can do for Dan is put in front of a teleprompter yawn and tell him to perform right um he'll do it I mean he's he's done it Um but the best thing that that that you we can do as I can do as a creative director is to create the container for Dan to be comfortable in in sharing his ideas his his stories but be in a a positive environment and for people to like feel connected to him and he loves that [ __ ] Like we did King's Club on Friday two two days ago You guys were there and King's Club is the ultimate container right cuz there's 100 kids in a room We had 112 this time and they're hungry to learn and they want to learn and they're asking questions and they're curious and that's like the ultimate container that I can put Dan in where he's vibrating at a such a high frequency that I can ask him any question and he's fired up to answer right um so that's like how we get energy out of Dan and and he has this unique ability to be able to riff on any subject So I ask him a question he can talk for five minutes Other people have to have a script word for word So even our in our YouTube videos a lot of people are like "Oh it's scripted." I just give him an outline I just give him a couple lines of of uh of text about kind of what I want him to talk about And he riffs And um sometimes you know kind of like when you're bowling or when you're racing horses I have to put the blinders on and be like "All right let's let's focus in on this focus in on that." But most of the time I'm just guiding him in what direction I need him to go And that's more on the content side than the energy But yeah that's how I get the best energy out of him I just put him in a container where he's happy and I ask him really cool questions I was at King's Club the other night and and I was watching him with those kids in front of the cars a lineup of people asking him questions And that's exactly what I was like this is Dan's element like you put him here and he'll do it And so how do I find or how does everyone in this room find their best container for themselves yeah Because a lot of people Yeah So biggest problem I hear and it's it's what we're going to talk about tomorrow is people are people don't know how to create content And I don't think they should create content I think they should just be content and then have it captured And I think that's what Dan's mastered because he was so successful and because his time was worth so much when I started because people forget like Dan was really successful when I started with him We just didn't have a social media presence And it's only when I started with him and I realized like holy [ __ ] his hour is worth x amount of money I have to make it really efficient So how how do I inject myself in parts of his life that he already does that we can pull content from for example founders hikes right we he hikes up a mountain he talks to people people ask him questions How can we film that hike while he's talking to people and get content from it so we do it once How many clips did we get from it the first time zero right zero Yeah So then we look at the footage we're like what could we do to make this better right And so then we're like all right let's produce a little bit We we go up there and Nick one of my videographers um lead editor Nick goes uh hey today we're going to be shooting uh content for Instagram Just talking to the people at the hike If you have a question for Dan make it short and just line up behind him 10 people 10 first people get XYZ outcome right um u spend time with Dan at Top of Mountain And then after that we got probably around five clips right from just doing a little bit of pre-production at the start Dan Dan's life doesn't change right he still is hiking up a mountain talking to people But because we injected ourselves into that part of his life and figured out how how to make it content without it feeling weird Like that's that's another thing You don't want to overproduce right we've over produced a ton of times in our life Um but you want to put a little bit of pre-production at the start and then it feels it still feels organic but at the same time we're getting what we need which is a really clear concise question And then Dan can go off and riff however he wants So I would I would invite you guys as content um not well you guys are content creators but I want you to capture your content I want you to be content I want you to be someone that you know somebody could turn a camera on and you just talk and you know that that's going to turn into content You don't have to be the one that's accountable for like oh I need the hook I need the the the story I need to teach right and when we started doing that is when our our content started doing really well And that was because people feel that authentic energy Dan's just not look he's not looking down the barrel of a camera and saying these are the five ways you can grow your business One two three four Right Well he does it on YouTube though Yeah Which is a different beast and we can talk about that too Yeah And so I think a lot of people hear Dan talk about you know find your Sam right and we're we're a lot of us are out there investing or trying to invest or like what but how do we how do we know what to talk about or even how to turn on and and you know I we've talked about this before pillars avatars Yeah Right Like how do I know that what I'm saying is interesting or relevant and how do I know that my Sam is guiding me properly in in doing this i mean Dan's constantly pushing me to to find stuff that works I wouldn't say like I'm I'm the mastermind behind the scenes trying to like figure out what how what works but I'm accountable for it You know what I mean he's still sending me suggestions all the time Um I just know So there's two problems Do you want to talk about uh the topic like topic selection which is one or we could talk about like how to to work with your Sam or how to find a Sam let's talk about like I think what do I talk about how do I know what's important to me and what's going to be important to my audience and then effectively talk about it that's that's that's exactly what I want to talk about Um everybody's like "How can I find my Sam?" I'm like I don't know Yeah Um uh you can either buy it or build it You either spend six years or you hire somebody that's already working at somebody's personal brand company That's what I tell people right on topic selection cuz I'm assuming everybody in this room is building a personal brand right you guys aren't here to build a a business brand And I can make the argument for why you want to build a personal brand but a personal brand is what it it's personal right and it's personal to you So I would just sit down just like Dan did and write out everything that makes you unique And we call this unique perspectives right so Dan likes intensity adventure um really deep conversation deep meaningful conversations He he [ __ ] hates small talk right um he loves his family He loves to spend time with his kids He loves um spending time with entrepreneurs He loves spending time with young entrepreneurs right he loves peanut butter That's his kryptonite right but you have to put like put all this out on a piece of paper and ask yourself like h how can I craft this into because a personal brand isn't like it's it's not a list of things It's a mosaic right it's you're you're crafting an image and a blend of different ta that's uh different tastes and touch that's unique to you It's unique to you It's a personal brand It's very very personal Um and then from there we can talk about uh what you guys work on in elite which is your offer which is what are you what's the number one thing that you know that you can crush for other people and you can 10x their business personal life etc dating life right like Kavita that is your your unique u that's like your number one thing for Dan it's business right and then segment that into a thousand different pieces right and for us we have four major ones right which is mindset business fitness relationships And although business is our number one and we make most our content about business we know that if we talk about mindset relationships and fitness even our business clients are going to get attracted to us because of that Because there's a lot of billionaires out there that had shitty family situations right elon Musk has how many kids 12 I don't know has a bunch of kids with a bunch of different like I'm not taking relationship advice from him right But Dan has a beautiful family and and he's been married for how whatever how many years and we used to not shine light on that Like he used to be the the sass guy and we never showed his kids We never showed his wife right and he got ripped like jacked and we never showed that I was confused like and then we looked at we looked at our like how do we want to perceive like like how do we want Dan to be perceived in in the marketplace and it's 100% those four things mindset fitness relationships and business and as long as we hit those four and I I'll tell you guys this is how you create a content engine that doesn't suck because a lot of people when they find those four they constrain their themselves to make like 25% of content has to be this 25% has to be this 25 you know what I mean and it's like it feels feels heavy It feels like it it's restricting your creative process So what we do is we only track backwards and then we adjust So I'll we'll never hit like we have a ratio that we need to hit We'll never hit it exactly but we're very very close because I'm constantly looking at the week before and I'm like "Hey you know this last week we did 65% business content we're supposed we're supposed to make 60 or we did 70% business content we're supposed to make 60 Um let's dial back on the on the business content a little bit and just do more relationship content And then we we hit it like almost to the dot most of the time but I'm never like restricting my my creatives or my editors to like oh you need to like every individual person has to make like 3% fitness content 5% relationship content 10% business content because then it's not it's not fun anymore right um and same thing for Dan right i won't let's say we sit down to shoot reels I'll maybe you know do a couple business questions do a couple fit mindset questions do a couple relationship questions and I know like I'm going to double click on whatever he feels most passionate about in that moment regardless of my content plan And I think that's what a lot of people have to double click on So find find your zone like and double down and keep going and create the containers So then how like for me sometimes I'm like not even aware of what like is interesting about me right or like what other people might find interesting about me Yeah Right And so like I don't know if that's a common problem for people but there's that and then there's also the like I've been sober for seven years right and Dan tells his story about that but there's still like this disconnect of like how do I connect that to what I'm Yeah Yeah How do I connect my sobriety to buying hotels exactly How do I do that Sam that's a deep deep meaningful question Um I think people like I grew up in addiction right not a lot of people know that I was a drug addict Got sober in 2019 I was uh 18 at the time and that's two years like I was working for Dan while being in you know what I mean m and Dan's 100% a reason why I like did that for myself And it's because he shared his story publicly that I was able to overcome that addiction right and I'd say like for you those people your team your clients even your clients team are going to gravitate towards you the more you share of yourself Yeah How do you connect sobriety to buying hotels yeah I mean tra I was talking to Travis earlier like right when we uh break and he had a really good point is you don't right and I believe that like you don't have to it it and and the truth is is the more you do the reps and you start creating and you just share of yourself the dots will connect they only connect backwards and that's what I've what I've realized with Dan too is is um like we do all this work we get all these results And it doesn't make sense in the moment It's like why did this happen why did that happen why did this person call us at this point and we look back and we're like oh my god that experience led to this experience led me to hire Nick which led to us getting a million views on YouTube because he's a [ __ ] killer editor which got us a a fitness like a person in the fitness program which got us an opportunity to go on a catamaran in the BBIS right which we met a person that so it only connects backwards So I'd say just show share more of yourself and and and as you share you know your sobriety and your journey that will connect with those people that are in the hotel industry and you'll meet somebody that you would have never met met if you'd held that back Right Yeah And actually I think back to when I I remember when I started following Dan uh I was burned out You know the classic elite entrepreneur story right we're all We're all burned out We're all stuck Whatever But it was the video of him on the sidewalk talking about when his fiance left him The story of him coming home late and her putting the ring on the counter and and leaving right cuz I was overworked I didn't feel like I was doing a good job as a husband as a leader a provider like all that stuff And I remember that's when I that was the video that I started following Dan on It wasn't like yeah top five ways to make a bunch of money It was my fiance left me because I was working too much Pain Pain Yeah Pain Yeah Yeah And we I think I'm going to talk about this tomorrow too at the summit but if you if you can describe your ideal customer your or client's pain with more accuracy than they can describe it for themselves You've got them in a chokeold metaphorically right like they're they're there whatever you tell them And I know that for myself because when I hurt my back the first time like I just heard my back again but the first time I heard it I went on Instagram and I searched back pain right and I clicked on an account and it was this guy uh back ability guy or backability lower back ability Yeah And he says "You just tore your your uh you just had a bulging disc because you're tight here cuz you're weak here Cuz you're tight here and you're weak here." And I went like this Holy [ __ ] I bought his course like within five minutes and I've gotten a ton of value from from his program And it's because he could describe my pain more accurately than I like I didn't know I was weak here but if when I test it I I feel I'm weak there Like I literally feel it So for you when Dan said that and shared that story he was talking about your pain Maybe it was a fear of of what you saw could happen in the future if you kept going down this path more accurately than you could even explain it for yourself So then how do we describe that while still feeling authentic to ourselves yeah I mean I believe like you just have to walk the walk Like I wouldn't be speaking on on a podcast about anything that I didn't know anything about If I didn't have seven years in in the field of doing the thing I wouldn't be qualified to talk about this right and I'm not saying you need x amount of years but at least you need the reps right so for people like what what problem do you help people with buying those hotels like is it Yeah basically for investors it's they don't have any time to go invest their money in real estate They're too tied up in their careers their families their travel whatever it is I talk about that Yeah like I used to have zero time to invest and I would just spend all this time working and I had all this cash sitting in my bank account just getting ripped up by inflation and Trump's tariffs and and I I never I was never able to invest and make money Like just talk about that pain and they'll you'll connect Yeah Yeah And then there's also the benefits of the specific asset of hotels and the also the it's a it's a pretty thing to to buy right a boutique hotel versus a industrial plant or something So yeah maybe it's that maybe like did you buy industrial plants before or you know No I just know that like if you're if you're someone with money and you're wanting to invest you're looking at all these different commercial assets and why would you go boutique hotel versus Airbnb versus storage versus Yeah So So I met this guy bought a bunch of storage units and he was bored out of his out of his mind You know what I mean because he just had a bunch of storage units and he could never like stay in it show people like "Hey I've got these a thousand storage units in Milwaukee You want to come see him?" Hell no Yeah I mean yeah The other thing I learned when talking to people like as a like talk to more people with money they want a trophy asset too They want something that they can point to and say "I own that." Yeah Right And so I think boutique hotels hotels and different types of assets are are that as well Yeah Cuz you can show them to your friends Yeah That's right Very very physical Yeah Go get the whale So heck yeah Yeah Uh how many videos do you guys post a week i mean you make me do math A lot I'd say a week probably over 50 to 100 I don't know Depending on if we count all platforms Yeah And so how do we as regular people compete with the damn Martell and the Sams of the world you don't you scale slowly Like when we started I don't even think we posted on on Facebook and and um No we definitely posted on Tik Tok We didn't post on on Facebook except for like odd videos here and there But you don't you just pick one platform And that's what I recommend most people do And that's the biggest pain that when I talk to people that want to start making content they're like "What should I start doing youtube videos short form content." I'll just share what we did We just went all in on Instagram res and we we use Tik Tok to test right you guys know this the split test AB we changed the hook a little bit Whatever performs best on Tik Tok we just throw it on Instagram and most of the time it performs really well And I'd say you just start there Just pick your testing platform which is could be your Twitter could be your Tik Tok could be whatever whatever doesn't punish volume because like YouTube 100% punishes volume Um Instagram kind of Tik Tok doesn't Twitter doesn't You can post [ __ ] I've seen people post 100 tweets in a day Doesn't impact performance right you just want to find a platform that you can test on and then find a plat your primary platform which I'm I recommend Instagram It's got the best me messaging platform especially when you want to monetize and you just pick that one platform and go all in So let's talk about monetization and selling and making money because we're at the social selling summit right it's not just creating the content it's monetizing it Yeah And so how much does Dan make on content from content yeah I mean direct revenue we make over 24 million a year but that's discounting the value of building the brand We could make zero dollars and still do this [ __ ] Like we'll still do this You know what I mean we made zero dollars for a long time Yeah We still did it Okay Okay So why though i mean I'm I can sit here and try to sell a personal brand but on the other side of you building your personal brand there there will be 100% of the time opportunities that show up in your life that weren't there before People that want to collaborate with you people want people talk about you right and what I've seen show up in Dan's life over the past 24 months just from building this personal brand asset right because it is an asset just like buying a hotel has been not even something that somebody could buy right things that money can't buy Getting invites to opportunities or events and collaborations with people going on people's podcasts that you can't even pay to get on those podcasts but they invite you to be there And I think that's the most valuable like people want what do they want they want recognition and money right and most of you guys in this room have figured out the money side personal brand is recognition and you can scale it as high as you want Okay And so then how do you tie the sales side to the content side because I don't I've seen some of the inner workings of stuff and really like this is Dan's a sales engine Like what you guys do is really a sales engine Yeah 100% Um yeah and we're very blessed to be able to make a lot of money on social media I don't I think it's something that's very unique and to people in Dan's world and Dan himself because we figured out a way to do it that doesn't diminish a brand which is add value first right and Gary talked about this jab jab right hook like we're jabbing people all day long 15 20 jabs in a row and then we do the right hook and even when we do the right hook you guys have got this message right like are you here for the content or are you here for the vids or want to grow your business right and if they say the vids we just send them more vids right we just support them Um so even in your right hooks you have to be very jabby and be like "Here's here's some more value." Cuz at the end of the day like we're our marketing will help more people than our product ever will cuz not everyone can afford to work with Dan That's just the truth right and I think a lot of you guys should strive for that where you make marketing content that's so good that people don't even have to pay you a dollar but you have you've had massive upside impact in their life So how do you how do you build that sales engine it it starts from the content And we talked about those four buckets but our business content most of it is 100% positioning content for our programs And people like they'll say like "Oh so you're not giving value." No we're 100% giving the best value but it's positioning content positioning Dan as a unique expert in the business field so that when they think about working with Dan it's already sold right we're pre like our sales people are just taking orders They're not selling right they call them sales like they call them revenue team They're they're taking orders essentially because we've all the marketing all all the work's been done on the front end of nurturing these leads where they come in and they're like I already know all of Dan's story and what he believes and how he scales businesses and the replacement ladder the buyback loop everything in the book I just need some help imple implementing right i just need the implementation right um so that's been the biggest biggest thing for us is just doing all the work on the front end make your content great and help more people than your product ever will And if they want to lean in and buy your product they get more value And so what are some of the things that like if someone's at a,000 2,000 followers maybe they have a podcast that they're maybe they're looking at you What would you what would you recommend they do to to grow their account to 50 100,000 followers yeah I think Caleb Relson uh somebody that you guys probably know he's worked on you know Gary Ve's brand the Hormosis brands Um he's somebody that I respect a lot in the game and he's helped me a lot with with content He talks about quality and quantity and he is he's famous for saying you don't even know what quality is until you do quantity right and I I resonate with that because I thought we were like "Oh we're doing less but more like we're doing less volume but we're doing better quality." But I don't even know what better quality means until I do volume So I would recommend if you're at 2,000 followers and you're sitting right in front of me and looking at me is to do volume first and try to increase quality as you do volume So have a quota if it's one a day or two a day that you commit to and all you do is make every single video better because this is the number one mistake that I see most content creators make is they don't pay attention to the numbers Every I can tell you maybe not today cuz I didn't check Every single day I check Dan's Instagram reels and I can tell you how many followers came from every single reel because I care that much I'm in the weeds and I bet I bet you Dan does the same Pay attention to the numbers because that will tell you what videos perform or not We have a spreadsheet 500 how many posts how many reels have we posted historically 12 12 1200 maybe 1300 1,200 reels in a spreadsheet right views followers from the real because they can track it now And we sort it We don't sort it by views You sort it by followers from the real cuz that means that people got value from your content and they wanted to hear more So all the videos at the top of that spreadsheet are telling us people love like just like that that uh video that you watched about the fiance leaving you resonated with Dan's content You clicked follow because you resonate with Dan's content All those videos are telling us hey when people watch these videos they want more of Dan's content right so I would do that for you I would post every day get a quota one a day two a day whatever it is Make better content every day Pay attention to the numbers After seven days have your assistant or whatever Pull those videos metrics with the follower amount Put it in a spreadsheet sort it by followers After 6 months you'll have enough data to make decisions And it's I would only create those videos at the top You can obviously and we call this the and this is another Caleb Relson framework but we call this the 702010 70% of your content should be the content that performs that you know is going to hit because we're in a world of performance We're not here to make art right and I I I [ __ ] love my artist friends Sometimes I hire them Sometimes I regret hiring them Sometimes they they uh sometimes they adapt Most like sometimes they were like "Oh I I I like winning too." So they do stuff that actually performs Um so 70% of your content should be [ __ ] that actually works right that you know works that is tested true that you know is going to perform 20% You look at the 70% You make an assumption Oh I think because Dan talked about his fiance in this way and he started this story this way I think that's the reason it performed Try to take that principle Maybe it's emotional connection right and apply it to another piece of content That's your 20% Right and you're taking those shots on goal A lot of our 20% content is content that eventually performs because it's a principle that we've extracted from the content right and what that so I'm not good at math but I think that's 90 um that 90% what the problem with that 90% is it's it's only going to hit whatever's in your box of thinking right your brand box which is like this is what our constraints are the missing 10% which is what I tell every one of my editors to do on a Friday when they've got maximum creativity is do [ __ ] that I've never seen before try stuff right and I don't care if it doesn't perform I just want us to try And Dan pushes me in this realm the most He's like I want to try new [ __ ] I want to try new shots on goal Because it's only those 10% shots on goal that you get outside that box of thinking that you're like hey what if we took a tweet and you guys you're getting uh first view at this What if we took a tweet and we put it on a video of Dan talking about the tweet but he's not reading it It's just there right so we did that We'll see if it performs But that 10% is is has been for us in the last like three months game changer because it it makes my and this is the biggest problem with most creative people and you guys are going to face that when you when you start hiring a lot of video editors is is burnout right it's it's lack of drive or excitement for the job That 10% lights up creativity in my editors because they know they have no boundaries I'm not going to tell them that they oh we have to do this because it performs No dude have fun And I think that 702010 rule is going to be what if you want to make your content perform at scale you have to do that Okay So then we have businesses to run Sam How do we how do we do this and run our business yeah I mean yeah if I'm assuming you guys have a successful business where you could hire somebody that could take some of this these responsibilities off of you and um and that's what Dan did Like Dan never no he never Dan never edited a video ever Like never right he always had someone doing it and it's because he saw the value in it So I definitely think you have to go find a partner somebody you can build with that you can build somebody into a person and offload most of those responsibilities right like I'm not even for me I'm not putting those numbers in the spreadsheet right my assistant is Um and I think as you scale you just have to do what Dan teaches which is buy back your time right yeah It's a buyback principle right yeah And so how much time of Dan is spent on content versus yeah business versus other you guys are getting first look here too because historically he's only spent three hours a week and recently we sat down and we looked at all the opportunities in in what we have and he's committing to spending more time on content I don't know what that number is yet but like we went from three hours a week to last week we probably did over six hours of content and we 100% think that it's a good bet And yeah I think if you're starting in content and you're seeing some success I would double down Yeah cuz like this is if I have to sell you guys even more on content creation I'd just share this The first wave was the operating systems right microsoft Apple Google they all got rich Why' they get rich because they they brought billions of users to their their operating systems to start using them right and they made trillions of dollars and Silicon Valley started right that's how it started Then we get the apps platforms Facebook Tik Tok Instagram Snapchat and th those were trillions of dollars worth of enterprise value created from nothing right off the back of these operating systems And what I see happening today and Chimoth talks about this the uh ex um employee of Facebook is that now we're seeing creators be that next atomic unit So if like operating systems was an atomic unit and then platforms or apps was an atomic unit creators are the next one because they're bringing billions and billions of users and billions and trillions of revenue to those platforms to those apps If you take like Mr Beast let's say we take all the influencers together how many users do you think they're bringing to those apps and platforms just like the apps and platforms are bringing users to those operating systems Spotify paid Joe Rogan a hundred million dollars to switch apps Like cut all your other ties with and and it sits then switch But like they see the value in it before anybody else did So if I was somebody that you know was starting in content creation today I would double down on being a creator And like I don't think it needs to be sold even more because everybody's going in right now Yeah And then even in my business in the hotel business there's this idea and will likely be true that you will book your hotels through Instagram Yeah that's people already do People already do That's the primary booking channel You're not going to go to Expedia you're not going to go uh to Google Travel what you're not going to search on Google anymore either If you go talk to Gen Z this is for everyone in the audience If you go talk to Gen Z and even some millennials when they search for travel for anything they go to Tik Tok first 100% 100% We went to Bali My girlfriend's like "I want to find cool stuff to do in Bali." She searched uh Changangu on Tik Tok You just watch Tik Toks for like 20 minutes try to figure out what to do Yeah And you find you see the dish and all that It's it's how people communicate consume learn all of it It's it's normal And so then I think this is true for me and I think it's true for a lot of people How do we get over the fear and the discomfort of being on camera Yeah I mean I struggle with it I'm not a natural I'm an introvert right i sit there I edit videos I don't like being on camera I like being behind it I'd say just do the reps Like I I I remember I was sitting there in an airport with one of Dan's uh really close friends Malta and he's a internet personality in the French world and um he was talking to me um in French so I'll translate for you guys but he was he said something like um like "Why don't you share more of yourself?" And I'm like "Oh I don't know I don't know if I'm I'm I don't know if I'm interesting enough yet Like come on yet You know what I mean like I don't know if I'm successful enough yet And he said "Do you think you'll create content in the future?" I'm like "100%." He's like "Why don't you start recording yourself now so you can actually get good at being on camera?" And I'm like "Well you know I'm not." And he's like "You don't have to post it You just keep it on your camera roll I've never like I never thought about that I never thought that I could just talk to my camera and never post it Mhm And I'm saying I'm not saying you should you guys should do that You guys should all post But at my Yeah At my This was four years ago in that situ like in in my personal situation in my life I didn't feel comfortable posting So I every day I picked up my phone and I recorded myself and you I can go on my camera roll today and I'll find a year and a half of me talking to my phone and I [ __ ] sucked at the start and after a year and a half I got a lot better at articulating myself And guess what through that was able to be better in meetings with teams Through that was able to talk to clients better Through that was able to um like tomorrow I'll be speaking on stage Never in my life would I have [ __ ] hopped on a stage mumbling my words without doing that work So I'd say like just do the reps Yeah Yeah I've seen an improvement honestly Like we all loved you before but I can see it even now Yeah And I like the thing that changed for me honestly was the three stories a day from Dan's daily non-negotiables The three stories a day are what changed everything because you just talk you face the camera you say what you need to say you have to think like "Oh yeah what am I trying to say?" And then you say it you can do a minute you can do 30 seconds whatever That was the first step that really changed my ability to speak to the camera And then when I decided to do the podcast I've told this story before but when I decided to do the podcast I bought all this equipment I spent a bunch of money And even that is a little bit of an excuse to fail or to not succeed is oh I need the equipment I need all this stuff But I did want to go pro and I wanted it But I could have just used my phone I could have just bought the these little mics that sound good But I got all the equipment I had it set up My wife and I built the studio in our house And my wife was gone for the weekend I had everything set up Everything set up There was no more excuses And I spent two days agonizing Literally agonizing Laying on the floor like "Yeah it was bad It was real bad." And then I finally turned it on I sat and I just looked at the camera for like a minute and then I started talking and I got one episode out And then the next day I filmed five episodes Heck yeah Cuz I was so into it I loved it so much I feel great about doing this and I'm really excited about growing and so why don't we go to the audience now for some Q&A Um I have some from people but I think I'd love it if anyone wanted to start and I will give you whoever wants to ask a question I will give you a mic on there Here there you go Hey Saman great great interview So question that you mentioned and don't copy still like an artist and create content Can you expand on it yeah there's a great book about that Forget the author Um yeah Austin Okay thanks Um I think a lot of people blatantly copy and they don't try to innovate You steal like an artist you're trying to make it better You're not just taking what works And that's what I encourage my team to do and that's what I do myself If I see something a hook on a YouTube video or a thumbnail or even a short form piece of content a tweet and it worked It blew up right how can you take that and make it your own make it like make it better And I do that for Dan all the time where we see these in like because at the top it's it's very small There's five or six big influencers right and they're all copying each other And you can tell who's taking inspiration from other people What I want is when somebody else's team sees our [ __ ] and they see that it got inspired from their [ __ ] they're like "Oh they made it better with their own spin." So for me and I don't like the book talks about different ideas For me stealing like an artist is innovating It's making it better Because if if you're just blatantly copying what other other people are doing it's lazy and yeah it doesn't it leaves a bad taste Well and then you make it authentic to yourself is really what you want to do Is there is there someone that you've noticed that took some of Dan's stuff and made it better you No shut up No no no no I honestly not a ton Yeah not a ton Yeah Yeah Cool Millie Oh Oh Anony's got one Hey Zam Um so for creators that are on smaller scale a smaller audiences what do you think is one thing that we're missing that would help us scale and then what do you think people that are about to blow up are going to be doing like what's on the forefront So like what's what's lacking and and what's coming in small creators yeah In the creator specifically and it's conceptual I guess a little bit of an idea but you know we could give us a a practical Yeah Yeah I'll tell you what I did because like I think once you understand it once you see it you can't unsee it So I love that you guys are here You're going to get a ton of value in the next couple days I would I would invite you guys to double click and ask you know Nick all my everybody on my team specific questions about your situation and how you can make your content better because I I do think small tweaks get big outcomes especially at the top Um and if you're a small creator and you're struggling with like like what are you struggling with specifically is it topic ideas is it like how Yeah it's intact Like and I'm getting a lot of views on on some of our stuff Yeah But it's it's more like our satisfying reels and and so I don't know if we're just supposed to double down on X I don't know how to provide value or put that into monetization because it's not selling my service regionally or or coaching It's just you know material Yeah Are you reaching Are you reaching out to your followers that's probably something I'm lacking Yeah Yeah I'd say I'd say people focus too much like when we talk about the jab jab right hook especially small creators that are trying to monetize and build their team They focus too much on the vanity metrics which is like views followers I think you should f you should focus on followers added from certain pieces of content And then are you messaging those followers like are you talking to them i think that would go that you said earlier like the 70% and the quantity 10 Yeah So I think like that's a good guideline Oh 100% I would implement that in all aspects of your business not just content Like literally 10% of your stuff should be should be just cuz you want right and I think that that reignites the spark in a lot of creatives um where you're not just doing the same thing over and over again And that's the innovation that leads to change and and that kind of new process 100% Yeah And and like I'm we're rarely the first I mean sometimes we're the first people to a new trend but we're rarely the first people U but we're very very often the second And I'd rather be second place and and win the the the bigger war right we're second place in the battle but we're winning the war So yeah that's uh I'd say for small creators just focus on every single follower that comes in the door Because back in the day like when Cassidy first followed us we were adding maybe 50 followers a day Right now we're adding around 3 4,000 a day and we still paid attention to those 50 We messaged them We're we're nurturing them We're talking to them Right because they're people Um and I'd say what what bigger creators or people that are on the cusp of hockey stick growth have figured out is uh formats and repeatability So I'd say like and you guys see it on on our profile more than anybody else but we we we do a lot of research on what works but we also know we have our formats that already work So me asking Dan questions works because I know how to word the questions for it to go viral Me um or us uh having a kid ask Dan a question we know that works because people feel the the authentic interaction and we got a ton of those at Kings Club on Friday So I would try to find those formats that work for you and maybe that's what what you just shared They get a [ __ ] ton of views I would just double down on those And I'm not saying like do 100% that do do just 70% that like you mentioned and then that 20 and 10% can be your experimental and eventually you'll replace formats Like we have we used to have a a piece of content that performed really well Forget what it was Well just podcast interviews Like for Dan podcast interviews at the start when we first started were like our top performing reels Now unless we produce him a little bit up front or he's on a bigger podcast they tend to not perform as well right so we we always try to sunset formats where that 70% always is constantly changing It's never the same And that's how you you you scale because you see like falling off A lot of people talk about falling off It's just stagnation You're just doing the same thing over and over again Um so and so you should look at share saves and then how many followers you get from those Yeah I I honestly like share saves are vanity too I just look at followers from the from the real And shares and saves are great They're they're cool to look at Views are cool to look at But if I if we get a million views on a video we get 50,000 shares 40,000 comments Um but we only get two followers from it or 200 followers from it instead of the usual like I'd say a little bit under 1% conversion which is like I don't know on a million views that's what 10 10k Yeah If we don't get 10k followers that's that for me is like a not not a repeatable Yeah I definitely wouldn't post anything where I didn't get 10,000 followers Right Right Everybody All right Millie you had a question right yeah Okay So kind of on this note already about the views versus you know other metrics like you're you're saying followers is king Yeah So I've had this where I've gotten a lot of views on a lot of different reels but very low engagement no comments no follows whatever But then the ones that do get the high engagement they don't get a lot of reach So when I'm looking at those kind of metrics and trying to learn and iterate from that how will I go about doing that yeah really good question I I would try to find like I would build that spreadsheet and then rank by followers added and just see what are the three videos at the top What are the three videos that you posted in the last 6 months that got you the most followers and I would look at them and ask yourself because we do this and this is more advanced but you guys can steal this implement it as much as you want in your business Every Monday for both short form and our long form teams we have 30-minute meetings where we just sit down and we watch last week's videos and we ask ourselves why did they perform or why did they not perform and we 100% look at those follower metrics Cuz if I if we get a video that gets you know 150k views and we only get two followers from it I'm going to ask the team like "What do you guys think?" And we all make assumptions We write them down Then we talk about them And most of the time it's either like a lack of um delivery on on the promise So let's say you promise something that's outsized and then you don't actually deliver on it People aren't going to really resonate with it Sometimes it's controversial Sometimes those views aren't actually good because the worst thing you want to do and like I I'm glad that you guys are here and you're getting this ear as early as possible is you don't want to be known for the wrong thing And I see a lot of people making this mistake chasing views for sake of just chasing views and they're not actually building their brand And what you want to do is get good views that convert to followers and people that resonate with your message so that you can actually build a a positive brand Right Yeah Because the effect is they won't engage with your content right because then if you built up a following this happened to a buddy of mine He did a political thing and he doesn't do any mostly it's mostly politics and uh what's the other one religion Religion Yeah And so he he got he doubled his follower count and then his views all his metrics tanked afterwards because none of the new followers were engaging with this content and that just Instagram doesn't push anything right if no one's engaging with your content So yeah it's like and I mean luckily Dan's not a really he 100% believes in God He talks about religion often Um and we don't really talk about politics It's not really something we talk about But like just staying away from those two topics and just doubling down on creating value for your customers and only focusing on that or the people in your in your world I would just build that spreadsheet of like followers and Okay So on that when I've done that in the past and I've looked at the ones that have brought in the most engagement or followers and I'm going to guess you're going to tell me to detach from this but oftentimes those are the topics or things that I'm posting about that don't necessarily relate to what I'm what I'm an expert in Yeah What what do you sell what are you an expert in i'm a manifestation coach And what are the videos that get the most views most of the time storytelling Personal stuff Yeah Yeah Where I'm not teaching really I think that's fine I think I think people I think you you have the unique advantage of being able to get storytelling reels that actually perform because most of people have the opposite They can't even build their personal brand because most people just want to get value from them So I would just double down on that Maybe insert some of the manifestation stuff in your storytelling reels But I think people restrict themselves a lot by having to position themselves Like most of our positioning content never performs Dan talking about the buyback loop or the test first hiring method rarely gets a million views right but we still we still make them because for those followers that are die hard they're going to get a [ __ ] ton of value Most of the time we pin those types of videos at the top so that when people see our profile they click on it Um but yeah I would just know the purpose of a video before you post it For us on YouTube we have grow like 702010 we have growth videos and then we have value videos Like we know if a value video only gets 100k views on YouTube that's a win right because that turns into how many or how much revenue yeah we posted a scorecard video is like how to This is the only scorecard you need to build your business How many views did we get on that one 70k 80K The amount of leads that came from that video to Instagram is insane like the that's probably our best converting video ever that we've ever created and it only got 70k views for context like of a good performing YouTube video would be like 500k or 400k and it only got 70k views So I would I would just know the purpose of the content you're creating Not every not every piece of content needs to go viral and just know why you're creating it Could I just quickly follow up on that how do you track uh sorry how do you track those metrics like all these leads came from that video they're looking on Instagram yeah So we just use keywords So um and this is you guys steal this too So a lot of people have traditional marketing funnels where they're like there's a link for an opt-in page You put your email you get the resource That's great We didn't want to do that Too complicated [ __ ] breaks We're very caveman in our approach right and it it works for us I don't know if it's going to work for everyone but it it works really well for for us because we do a lot of work on the back end with automation and AI In a YouTube video Dan talks about the scorecard He's like "Hey you know if you" and at the end you know I'm going to share the how how you get this template At the end he's like "Hey you know uh glad you watched this video If you want access to the scorecard just message me scorecard YouTube on Instagram and I'll send it over." So I know every person that messages scorecard YouTube on Instagram is a person that watched that video got to that point in the video sent the message to get the scorecard and then they're able to get nurtured from there Um and that's been the best way And then you can track it on the back end with just like AI automation with um keyword search So on the back end we have a CRM for Instagram and we just like search we have a report every week with all the keywords and we can see like oh this week EA performed really well You guys have seen these Um yeah just that's what we do That's very caveman approach You could also just have a UTM link tracking I I like the caveman approach That makes more sense for me Yeah we're very Yeah it's faster You know what I mean like nobody wants to [ __ ] click on a link fill in the email check their email Like just send them message I'll send it over And guess what like we don't need an email If we can That's what a lot of people don't realize If we can message you on Instagram we have a way to contact you Mhm It's the new way of contacting you It's actually better People respond a lot faster on Instagram than they do than they do their email So I would just do that Awesome Thank you Kavita Kavita Yeah Okay Two questions Um just watch time like how much do you pay attention to watch time on videos on reals i'd say like I look at so personally all my team when we look at the the videos for the 30 minutes the videos that we look at we go very in-depth We look at all the metrics right when I look at high level if I was you guys I would just look at the lagging indicators which is how many followers came from this video How many subscribers came from this YouTube video i would just look at the lagging indicator Um if you want to analyze a video that performed really well or a video that performed really poorly I would look at all the metrics and figure out why it worked But if you're just looking at like blanket how is my videos performing I would just look at what are the conversions to followers from this video Okay does that make sense yeah because you were just saying like the payoff is important but I have my first very viral video happening right now Let's go Yes let's do it Let's go That's right Um but very viral meaning uh I have gotten over a,000 followers from it so far and I already have 5,000 followers Um but the watch time on it is only 20 seconds It's like a minute long video I'm just like why are people following and they're not getting the payoff which is at the end of video yeah How many views uh on that video right now there's like uh 2 uh 230,000 something Yeah I think a lot like some people get confused with metrics like that where they're like "Oh most people only watch 20 seconds." But to me that sounds like one out of five people watch the whole video Oh okay You know what I mean so like metrics are weird but let's say one out of five people watch the video That means 50,000 people watch the whole video One out of 50 clicked follow So that's super helpful I think that's a win Nice work Amazing And the other question is you said the may so important before you know how to ask Dan questions the right way to go viral So h I do that sometimes or I'll be like ask me these questions I'm right now in charge of both sides of that How do you craft the right question to get the best response yeah Uh I just use this like I just use these three words short concise and straight to the point Yeah So like I when I ask Dan a question it's not like "Hey you know I'm doing this thing blah blah." Like I just go if I'm making 100K should I hire an assistant you know what I mean and if you can find that person for you that that can simplify language and and that's what Caleb taught me a lot which is like how to speak caveman like one two you know what I mean um then you'll get videos that perform really well And it's not like you can I think a lot of people and I'm not talking about anybody in this room You guys are all great Some people out there out out there they're making content They use big words a lot of complicated language to hide behind inadequacies And I think the smartest people in the world can dilute complex topics into very very simple language And I think that's what um that person that you you partner with on the content side should do for you is like hey I know you said this and that's 100% what I do for Dan because he grew up in tech Silicon Valley right you have to you have to understand when I joined his team he talked to me about KPIs and OKRs and like he was just tech tech like if you didn't know about [ __ ] whatever you're not I can't even talk to you what's your IBIDA you know what I mean mhm Yeah And uh I'm just like no it's not IBIDO it's not cash flow it's like what's the val what's the profit of your company how much money do you make and I think the more you can simplify that language the better your videos are going to perform super helpful yeah actually I uh I've I read a lot now because of Dan right and I've been reading like Jodispens like a bunch of these big books and then I went back and I read buy back your time and he really made it simple like you could if you read Jodispens as like breaking the habit of being yourself or the gap in the gain and like these really heady like self-improvement books and then you go read Dan's book there is a big gap in the reading level right you could tell and it's and obviously buy back your time is an amazing book but you can tell it was really intentional that he made it very easy to understand 100% Yeah Yeah We had our worldclass copywriter Chris on our team go through the whole book and they went up to Big White here 45 minutes from here for a whole week and they just rewrote the whole book in copywriting sales page language which is very very simple And that's why a lot of people resonate with it Yeah Ryan great podcast guys This has been this has been a wild ton of takeaways One of the things I wanted to say really quick you were talking about uh earlier when you were filming your first you sat down Like I experienced that myself that exact same thing And for those of you who haven't decided to actually go pro and like legitimately do this thing for real expect that to happen Like I I sat there with my COO and he was like "Dude you can do this." He's like "Just make it simple Just speak." And I would I was just like I remember just insecurity all that stuff coming up Uh so just like push through it and recognize it's part of the process if you're not doing it already Um but my question for you I have two questions for you Sam One is what is your workflow or maybe your team's workflow from the moment you have like some kind of inspiration so like I'm in this right now where I'm walking around out in the world and I have some inspiration where I'm like "Oh that would be a cool video idea." Yeah Or I see someone else's video What is the workflow from going from that inspiration to an actual tangible idea to like sitting down and using it and filming it yeah that's By the way thanks for sharing your experience with uh shooting content I think that's really powerful Um look a couple strings we can pull on here The big idea and I I learned this from Beast Team So I was sitting down with this person on Mr his team and I asked him like what's if I should just showed him everything I gave him all the context I'm like this is us What do you think we should do and he's he looked at me kind of confused and he's like "Is the person shooting the videos the same person that comes up with the ideas?" And I was like "Yeah." And he's like "Don't do that." I'm like "Why?" He said "Because then you're just going to overindex for the easiest fastest way to do things." And sometimes these ideas that get 10x results aren't necessarily easy to implement and execute So the first thing I would do and I'm assuming you're doing this is separate ideation for production So whoever is producing the videos and I'm talking like the whole production like even shooting scripting etc and ideation are separate the person coming up with the ideas and pushing for these these ideas isn't the person writing them down and figuring out how we're going to make it work because I want the person in ideation and for us we have somebody external from the company that helps us with this is this person has free reign he's not thinking about how how it's going to work to figure that out as a production team and obviously we we have um you know fail stops and and ways for him to narrow down ideas so that it's still like on Dan's brand and talks about his unique perspectives Um but I would try to centralize ideiation into a department whether it's you or your production team that's isolated from the production That being said that's like I'd say the 90% of the ideas the other 10% of you like walking downtown and seeing like oh I think that could be a good great uh idea have a place where you can store it and you know it's going to get reviewed and this is the key rejected or accepted but you have to have a reason right because in our ideation boards and they're just canban boards simple style right like ideas scripts uh review just like simple workflow um you want to know that your team is going to review all your ideas and if they do reject one there's documented reason why and they don't like I don't have to present to Dan Let's say he's like hey uh we should do this and I'm like cool I'll add it and then we review it the next week and I rejected it I have in the notion board like this is the reason why we rejected it Is there a reason for as well yeah Yeah Yeah Like reason for accepting it Yeah Yeah Yeah Well like most of the time the reason for accepting is like it's Dan's unique perspectives It's going to perform It's part of the 70 70% Um but a lot of those 10% ideas come from from Dan where it's like "Oh we should we should do a reel of me uh going from board meeting to board on my wake surfing boat." Like we're going to do that this summer right and that's Yeah board to board meeting Yeah Board to board video I'll be there for that one Yeah Hey I'll be there Yeah Yeah So I just have a place that you can store it that you can get it out of your mind because Yeah that the the best thing that Dan ever did is just like trust the team to execute and have metrics like outcome measure coach leaders like transformational leadership in Dan's book This is the outcome I want to be top x% in business social media um personal brand and measure is like these are the metrics that I'm going to measure you against So we have a scorecard that we review every week as a team with all the metrics on all the platforms And it sounds super boring but it's very very powerful Manually input I have everybody that's accountable for a number on my team manually input that number It's not automated I want them to check the number to look at it make sure that's correct and it it could pull from u another software but you have to manually put it into this manual scorecard And it [ __ ] hurts when it's red I want it to hurt I want you to tell me why change or why it's not why it's red or why it's yellow or why it's green Um and then coach like outcome measure coach So outcome measure Yeah The score card And then coach if if at any point you know I fall off and I'm like "Hey you know I'm really struggling making this happen." And I bring it up Dan like he's like "Okay cool This is what we're going to do You're going to write down five people that you need to talk to in the next 24 hours and you're going to make those calls." And I just make those calls So cool deeper answer than your question but appreciate the question That's great Uh this is my last question is last week 15 years of my leaked history got deleted So they deleted my account permanently banned There's no way you get it back How do you think about rented versus owned audiences yeah Yeah I call this owned versus earned Um and I talk about this a lot and and uh so yeah people don't realize realize how heavily reliant we are on these apps right and I think for the creators that are leveraging the apps and even the operating systems like if Apple decided tomorrow to shut down like we're all [ __ ] Yeah You know what I mean and um and it's it's it's it's the name of the game Like as infrastructure scales like you're going to be relying on the first thing which is the internet which is cables in the bottom of the sea that are wrapped in [ __ ] Teflon and they're just like run across the sea right um if that breaks everybody's [ __ ] So I'm I'm not worried I'm just going to go live in the woods But for your LinkedIn specific situation well it's like LinkedIn or Instagram like even with Instagram I had I I bought Meta Business I bought like the the plus at the check and get access to support and all that Yeah And then they did something during the support call that actually caused me to lose access to that I don't have access anymore which means I just realized how fickle Yeah As as we've really started scaling how fickle it is And I'm like concerned that I mean you guys have a big team with a lot of people accessing this account and a lot of activity happening and it's like the checks and balances that would need to be in place in order for that like bad stuff to not happen seems like it would be pretty 100% Yeah we have one person on our team accountable for like everything that's security and it like as you scale you heard a certain point where you need that Um let's hit on own versus earn cuz or rented versus bought Like you have your owned audience which is the audience that you have in your email list and your SMS like if you have if you capture phone numbers right and that's like 100% of the time if you send an email or you send a text message people will get it because that's like infrastructure built You're skipping the the app you're going straight to OS right operating system um for the earn media Instagram LinkedIn all these places That's where most of the growth is happening right now And like I don't think you can build an email list just off like having an email list right you have to have somewhere where these people are coming in from but a lot of our traffic 100% of the time is going to that email list If people buy a copy of buyback your time they get added to the email list If people um watch a YouTube video we're promoting the email list If they if you listen to one of Dan's podcasts we're pro promoting the email list We know that the easiest fastest way to contact them is on Instagram so we just o overoptimize for that But we're being very very careful and we still monetize our email list of putting them in an owned media channel or even text message where we can contact them if ever in the future And it's happened before where we have like a 24-hour shutdown where that situation happens So I would just be as you scale be very careful and mindful of like hey if this happens we do this Are there any specific remediation strategies you guys have done where it's like because I felt like and I've talked to a ton of other founders where their accounts have had like restrictions or they're shut down Like we one story I've heard a lot is like people will go to boost a post or they'll go run advertising and they'll make one mistake one time and they lose access to their account or their ad account goes down or whatever it is Is there any fancy way of getting attention from Meta other than just getting in line talk to me after the podcast Yeah Yeah All right One one more qu is there any more questions one more question Yeah All right So a lot of us in here What's your name sir my name's Matt Nice to meet you on the internet Yes sir Uh a lot of us here running business doing some content a little bit of marketing a little bit of sales trying to work our way up the the replacement ladder and getting ready to go pro on social And so I I'm personally in a position where I could hire a video editor because I'm currently doing everything contentwide myself could hire a video editor could potentially drop six figures and hire a marketing lead creative director or you know like and I'm like what should I do first should I go like bottom task oriented or should I go higher level director style to kind of like help with that yeah So bottom up top down kind of thing Yeah I think it's different approaches I think top down is going to be a lot faster Um I know Dan did top down when we started the media company That's what I'd recommend But you can 100% do bottom up And that's how I built my team So if you if you segment it to the units it's like Dan's CEO he technically built top down from Sam but I went bottom up which is I was in the weeds I was editing I was doing this stuff And still today I'll go in like I'm And that's leadership styles right where I know like I'm still young I can afford to work 16 hour days and and kill myself doing it for now right but in the future I know I'm gonna have to go top down So I would just figure out what season of life are you in where are you able to go in those weeds Are you able and that's the 100% a leadership style I don't think there's a wrong way of doing it There's a faster way of doing it but both will get you that outcome Yeah Perfect Heck yeah I Thanks Matt I want to do a couple fun little questions here Rapid fire Yeah a little rapid fire Maybe these are the hooks I don't know Sure It's the same Problem Story Teach Let's do it Yeah What's the fastest way to gain 20 pounds of muscle fastest way to gain 20 pounds of muscle Let's do problem story teach Problem analogy teach So people come up to me they're like "Hey Sam you used to be skinny How can you actually gain muscle?" Because it's really hard when you're skinny Um that's the biggest problem that most people face when they're they're getting into lifting right and I remember I was 19 160 lbs really skinny Dan sat me down and he was like uh or we're driving back and I'm like hey dude like I'm really struggling with this anxiety thing And he's like have you been to the gym and I'm like no not really And he's like you should try that And I'm like cool So I started going to the gym and I started lifting but I wasn't getting any results right and I asked this older gentleman that was pretty [ __ ] jacked He was like 60 years old diced to the gills And I'm like "Hey you know I'm doing all these things and I'm not gaining any weight." And he's like "Are you tracking your macros?" Like "What's macros?" He's like "How much protein do you eat a day?" I'm like "What?" I don't know like 120% of my because on the labels it's like percent Oh no He's like that's [ __ ] I'm like what he's like get get on your phone download uh this is not an ad not promoting it My fitness pal download it start tracking your macros you'll see results And I'm like okay cool So he's like and then he gave me the percentages and everything The second I started tracking my macros I wasn't guessing anymore Right it's kind of like if you're throwing a dart analogy right if you're throwing a dart with your eyes closed you don't even know if you're hitting or not Right i was finally opening my eyes and seeing exactly where my dart was going which is exactly where my calories are going in my macros So from that I was able to gain 20 pounds of muscle pretty quickly because I was just eating a lot Yeah How many times have you flown on a private jet a lot Yeah Yeah It's a privilege though I love it Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah How many billionaires have you met a lot It's a privilege Um I've probably met over 15 yeah over 15 billionaires in my life What makes a billionaire different from me and you i think billionaires have this unique ability [Music] to double down on their strengths and ignore completely ignore their weaknesses And I've seen this time and time again from different types of billionaires where one is very very charismatic loves people He's always talking to people Another one I met was very introverted nerdy He was coding still as a billionaire right and building infrastructure for his his companies And I think the people that create because when you think about a billionaire they're people that create disproportionate value in the world Those people double triple quadruple down on their strengths and ignore everything else And I think it might not be healthy in certain cases but I think that's what I've noticed from all All right Sam This has been so great I thank you so much Seriously honored to have you here Seriously honored to have every single person in this room here This means a lot to me Uh two years ago was when I met Dan I flew out here on a whim Uh there's a picture of it I look like an absolute mess And you came to hike right i came here to hike Yeah And that was when the fires were going on So we blogged the town Dan invited me actually along um around town to a couple of Mets but you were there filming and I embarrassed myself quite a bit actually But really yeah I don't remember Uh good Good Uh I I manifested that moment actually where he helped take me around like to get to spend extra time with him two years ago And so speaking of manifestation and then to be here two years talking to you and being like just part of this whole social selling summit even though we kind of forced our way in here is uh and to be really genuinely wanting to add value Something I love about the podcast is that it's reciprocal like to be able to bring all you guys in here to hear this conversation with Sam uh and the genuine interest and connection and then to be able to promote promote my guy uh who's been here So uh thank you so much Where can people go to follow Instagram i'm going to message me I love I love answering I don't have a lot of time to answer everyone but you know once a month I go in there and I just clear everything out try to give as much value as I can Yeah Get to see the get to see the lifts too Yeah I do post a lot about the physical stuff Yeah So uh and as always everyone else out there listening and watching uh I appreciate you I love you This has been for your own good Peace Let's go Thank you [Music]