My Take on Elon Musk's First Principles Framework | Creating Content & Personal Branding

A couple things that that took me a long time to figure out. Um there's this very There's these two opposing forces of like make good [ __ ] and then make lots of [ __ ] That you have people on both sides. I tend to be on the make lots of [ __ ] category. Um but these are two apparent extremes that sit where the magic is in the middle. And so we've referred internally as this middle spot as qualium. Which is how do we create quality volume? And if you guys haven't read this book it recently I think it recently came out. It's called uh the algorithm. It's from Tesla's former president who kind of reimagined some of their stuff. And basically it's it's it's Elon's approach to manufacturing anything, right? And so if you think about what content creation is it's a manufacturing process. It's digital manufacturing but you're taking a raw input of just like recording some video and then there's an output which is going to be a post on social media or multiple posts on social media. They're going to get views, likes, shares, leads, etc., right? And so the five steps of algorithm and I'll walk you through them. Um I I made this mandatory for all the people who report to me because this is this is the process that I I've I first heard about this two years ago uh from some interview that Elon did and I was like, man this is really good. Uh they finally came out with a book on it. So let me just walk you through it and then we'll get into content questions, all right? So the first step is question the requirements and I'll give you an example. So I say, okay why does it take and the great the first great way to know that something is taking way too long is to say, how much actual time are you working on the thing? So whether this is client work uh or this is like you're on you know, you're doing home services and you're working on a project, whatever it is. Like there's a certain amount of work that um that has to be done, right? Now let's say the total time on task or total total time that the work is being done is say 10 hours, right? But all of a sudden you're like, but then why is it taking us a week to get this delivered, right? It should in a perfect world go from they sign and then 10 hours later they get, right? So everything that's outside of 10 hours is waste from a business perspective because it's basically uncaptured potential value. All right? And so the idea when we ask the first step is when we question the requirements is like, why must these things happen in this order? Why are we doing all these requirements? Why must it take this long, etc., right? And so with the questioning of the requirements, one of the things that came up I was like, okay, they're like, well, one of the things that we do in this these 10 hours, for example, is that we color grade, right? And I was like, okay, do we think color grading even [ __ ] matters? And if we look at some of the best videos that I have, they weren't color graded and there's some absolute bombs that are color graded. And I'm like, okay, so how much time is this? Uh and is it a requirement? Who decided that we must color grade everything? What what what god on the throne of of YouTube and Instagram said that color grading was super important? The answer is there wasn't really one, right? And so we're like, okay, um do I look like I'm super [ __ ] twisted? Let me see if I can get this a little little more uh little more straight up for you guys. I think I'm getting a little dizzy just watching it. All right, let's see here. And so anyways, while we were doing this, uh unlock, here we go. Let's see if that works. Unlock. This is why we can't have nice things. All right, there we go. This should look a little less screwy. All right, there we go. Rock and roll. Okay, so um anyways, so we remove color grading uh from our from our process step. And it's like, what else can we cut, right? And so the idea is once you figure out all the requirements that exist, we have to question the requirements and I'll give you the three-step questions that I ask. This is not Elon's, which is what does that mean? How do you know that? So what? Right? So we have to color grade. Okay, what does that mean? It means we have to do all the [ __ ] in the video. Okay, now that you say that, so what? Do we have any evidence, right? That that this is going to do anything to the video? No, we have no evidence. All right, so why should I care? There isn't. And so when I question the requirements, I ask ask these three questions: What does that mean? Uh how do you know that? And so what? Right? Once we have that, it's like boom, that's the first thing. When you have the answers to all those questions in the requirements, then you say, "Okay, well, let's just delete a shitload of stuff." And one of uh Elon's rules of thumb is we should delete so much that we have to add stuff back, which is a great uh litmus test because everyone's always afraid of deletion, cuz everyone's afraid of like messing something up, but you can always add stuff back. It's very unlikely that in a process, especially when you're building something, that um it's an irreversible door. You know what I mean? It's not like you're going to blow up a machine you have or you're going to like, you know, one of your editors is going to disappear from the planet. No, it's like the step the step in the process that we can we can add back if we want to. Let's just see what happens. And so, when I first started doing this, you might have seen this video that I posted on YouTube, which was um it was like, "If you're broke, watch this." or something like that. Um which I guess that's every [ __ ] video on YouTube, but whatever. I won't rant on that. Whatever, I'll let that go. But, it was me on a plane, and I did it with an iPhone. And I did it that way cuz I was so angry, be honest. I was I was a little peeved at the team because they were like, "We have to do it on these things." And thankfully, uh almost all that team is is not with us anymore. So, [laughter and gasps] and so, when we did the video, right? And we posted it, it became a Mando one out of 10 video, because the thing that mattered is the stuff in the [ __ ] video, right? And so, everyone wants to to major in the minors, right? Which is part of the reason that I'm doing these raw videos like this, cuz like it was never about the [ __ ] production, right? And some of you guys are worried about your makeup if for the girls, right? Or the lighting or to be fair, this is an epic background, so this is probably a little off. But, like most of the time, my background looks absolute dog [ __ ] and it's either, you know, blurry in my Death Star of a production center, which I also hate, but um or it's in my office, which looks horrible, right? And so, my point is this is that like the thing that matters is the stuff inside. It's the stuff inside of the content. The content is the container, right? The stuff inside is what matters. And so, if you don't have the stuff, like focus on the stuff. That's where the quality comes from. The volume is like how much stuff I'm going to put out. All right. So, number one, what are the question requirements? Here's our big list of [ __ ] Number two, we delete the stuff that doesn't matter. We should delete so much that we have to add stuff back later. Three is simplify. Another way of saying that is optimize. What do we get the most for the least? So, even though something um might give us a return, let's say color grading gives us a return. I'll just make it up. Um and let's say we can prove that, which we can't. But let's say we can prove it. Okay. Um if we can prove it, is it worth it? Right? Which is a separate question. Is it worth it? So, we can get um Let's say Let's say the total thing takes 10 hours. Okay. Let's say four of those hours are color grading. All right. Is it 40% of the quality of the output? No. Is it 5%? Maybe. Is it worth 40% of the costs? My argument, no. I would rather, cuz we have to put the opportunity cost, if I had If my team had nothing else to edit, then it would make sense to take the extra time. But they have so much other stuff to edit, and it would make more sense for us to do two videos or one and a half videos at 95% than one video at 100. All right. So, hear me out on that. After simplifying or optimizing, most for the least, then you go to step four, which is accelerate. How do you pull up timelines? I'll give you my my version of doing this when I'm in a meeting. So, anybody who's worked with me knows that I like to finish meetings with who, what, when. And so, it's my very simple manage an algorithm. It's about uh everything else you can learn from Leila, but these three, this is what I do. And so, at the end of our meeting, I'm like, who, what, when? Right? Who is going to do what by when? Very, very simple, right? And here's where if you want to go to the 201 level, whenever someone tells you the by when, you actually ask the question I started with, which is okay, uh today's Monday, and you want to do this by next meeting next Monday, how much actual time is this going to take? Time on task. And so, people will be like, "Uh I think it'll take me 4 hours." It's like, "Okay, what are you doing in the next 4 hours that is more important than this?" A lot of times the answer is nothing. In which case, great. Do it Do it by end of day. And let me know. And so if you ever want to speed up the movement of a team, increase communication cycles. So that means instead of going end of week, go end of day. It's 7x the speed of a team. You will be amazed at how much more you get done. So who, what, when? So who's going to do what by when? And then when they tell you when, you ask, "Why can't you do it earlier?" Now to be clear, if someone says, "I got this other [ __ ] that's going on that you told me to do." Right? You're like, "Oh yeah, I did tell you to do that." Then it's like, "Great. We'll do that after that." Right? And then that way that constant accountability just drives the whole thing forward. And so I promise you if you want a project to go faster, ask for updates every day, twice a day, five times a day, every hour. I'm telling you. Like I've done this with vendors, too. So if I'm like, "Hey, uh hey, I need this thing." And they're like, "Okay, cool. We'll get it to you tomorrow." I'll just call them in an hour and be like, "Hey, what's our progress update on that?" And they're like, "I I said I'll get it to you." I'm like, "This is very important to me. Like can we can we please get this done sooner?" And then you call them again in an hour. They're like, "Dude, I'll [ __ ] get it done." It's like, "Right." So I will force the accountability on a vendor if I need to pull [ __ ] forward. And so that's fourth step is how do we pull up cycles? How do we How do we take what the expected timeline is and then reduce it? And then, and this is the big this is the big one which AI has destroyed for everyone. Step five is automate. Which is okay, how do we get the machines to do it? Now here's the here's the here's the magic behind this. Because the access to AI has become so prevalent and so easy for everyone, everyone thinks in the first step the last step first. They try and automate [ __ ] that should not be done to begin with. With like cuz the only thing that is more efficient than automation is elimination. It's choosing not to do something is more efficient than automating it because it wasn't worth to do it to begin with. And so the easiest lemon test for many of you people uh, you people for many of you, is though I'm using AI, are we getting more views? Though I'm using AI, are we getting more leads? Though I'm using AI, am I making more money? And so, it is the very easy litmus test to tell you whether or not this is actually makes sense. And so, I will promise you that Claude or, you know, Anthropic or, you know, OpenAI, etc. Claude and Anthropic are the same company, but, you know, companies doing the billing, right? Um, Gemini, whatever. If they're billing you, they're billing you whether what you built was useful or not. And so, if you're noticing your tokens costs going up month over month over month, but your money's not going up month over month over month, maybe you should consider that you're actually just blowing money on [ __ ] that doesn't matter. And so, you maybe should start start with that process of the algorithm. All right? Question the requirements. Delete all stupid requirements. Simplify, aka optimize, get the most with the least. Speed up cycles. How do we do it faster? And then finally, then and only then, do we bring up automation. Because then you're you're automating something that has already been maximized for effectiveness, and now you're just getting the last bit of effectiveness out of it, which is getting the robots to do it for you. All right. Um, with that being said, uh, we've we've worked on our content a lot. This is the year of the trust economy. Um, I think I called this at the end of last year, and I feel like I'm more right. I think it aged like a fine wine. Um, we're in we're in the we're in the show-me times, not the tell-me times. All right? And so, that means that we need to you need to demonstrate expertise in as many varied conditions as possible with as many diverse avatars, or rather the avatars that represent most broadly, uh, the types of customers that you serve, solving the specific problems that they have in the way that you want to solve them that gets them the outcome they're looking for. All right? That is content from an education perspective that drives commerce. That is content that drives commerce. That is views that turn into cash. Right? If you're just getting you're like doing memes or doing entertainment, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that you're just a media business and eventually you're going to sell eyeballs to an advertiser. Right? But if you want to sell from your own [ __ ] right? Sell your own [ __ ] You want to sell community on school, you want to sell you want to sell fencing services, you want to sell you want to sell home design, you want to sell solar, whatever the hell you're selling, education is the door. Right? That is how you gain influence. That is how you gain authority is that you give people instructions that they can follow and get [ __ ] happens for them. Now, in order for them to follow your instructions, there's a couple things that have to have to happen. Number one, the instructions have to be easy to follow, right? Which means you got to talk in the in words that other people understand. All right? Number two, they have to believe you that they that they are worth following. So, if we decrease the comprehension, we decrease the cost of at least understanding what to do, right? Then we have to increase conviction that they're going to get the payoff, which makes the risk or the gamble of taking those actions worth it. Right? And so, this is why the proof in this trust economy world is not in the pudding, but it is the [ __ ] pudding. Right? The reason that proof is what matters more than anything is because tell me how you're going to grow my e-commerce store except you've never run an e-commerce store. Right? Tell me how you're going to teach me how to sell except you've never sold anything. Tell me how you're going to help me make content but you don't have a personal brand. Right? Like it's just the big obvious [ __ ] and I get these questions all the time like how do I build a personal brand? It's like just do [ __ ] You you will get a bigger personal brand by doing [ __ ] in reality for 5 years and then starting your personal brand. Now, to be clear, I think if you want to document along the way, as long as you state the facts and tell the truth, you're good you're good in my book. Right? But what happens is people are like how do I how do I do I counter imposter syndrome? I'm like, bro, imposter syndrome is you feeling ashamed for lying. Oops, there we go. Is you feeling ashamed for lying because you are misrepresenting the truth. Sorry, I'm trying to adjust this thing so it's not [ __ ] up. Here we go. Um is you misrepresenting the truth, Jesus. This is why we can't have nice things. Hold on. Yeah? Yeah? Uh, [ __ ] good enough. See if that works. All right. Um, And so, I'll give you an example of this whole imposter syndrome thing that you probably just abolish from your your mental, whatever. Here it is. So, I had a guy who came up to me uh at at one of our workshops in Vegas and he was like, "Hey, man. Um, how do you deal with imposter syndrome?" I was like, "All right, what do you what do you sell, man?" He said, "I help agency owners uh get booked appointments." And I was like, "Okay. Uh, how do you do it?" And he's like, "We run outbound teams." I was like, "Okay. That makes sense. I get it." I was like, "So, what are you dealing with imposter syndrome for?" And he's like, "Well, you know, I had an agency, but the agency didn't really work that that well. Uh, I didn't really make any money with it uh because I knew how to get customers, but I I couldn't really keep them." I was like, "Okay." Still trying to figure out where the imposter syndrome coming from. And he was like, "Well," I was like, "Are you pretending like you're good at running an agency?" And he was like, "Kind of." And I was like, "Yeah, bro. That imposter syndrome is lying. So, yeah, you should feel bad about lying. Okay? I was like, "But if you told the truth, it probably would be even more effective. If you just said, 'Hey, I had an agency. I sucked at running an agency. I was really good at selling agency clients. And so, then I said, 'Well, why don't I just do that for agency owners who are actually good at delivering for clients?'" And then this business was born. Everyone would be like, "Oh, that actually makes a lot of sense." And so, what you forget is that the truth is the most compelling thing out there from a marketing perspective. The reason that state the facts and tell the truth is the number one thing that we say at acquisition.com in marketing is because it sells the most. The truth sells the most. I will say this again. The truth sells the most. The truth converts. All right? Above everything else. But, it has to be the whole [ __ ] truth. All right? It has to be the the truth. And so, he can't say uh just half of the story. You have to say all the [ __ ] where you look bad, too. And then, people will believe the [ __ ] where you look good. That's the That's the whole game. Right? I got asked a bunch of times throughout my career. They're like, "So, should I think I was on Diary of a CEO." And he's like, "Alex, should people talk to you about happiness?" I'm like, "No. That's not my I don't have authority there. All right? I'm the like, 'Hey, you're trying to figure out how to scale your business?' That's me. You're like, 'Trying to figure out how to sell shit?' That's me. I can help you there. I got a lot of proof there. Right? But it's like, 'Hey, how do you How do you gain Sorry, this thing is just wobbly as [ __ ] Um So, my team is watching this. The thing just keeps swinging. Maybe we can get a different tripod. Um anyways, sorry guys. Well, uh I'll do my best. I'll do my best. Otherwise, this We're going to be on a This is just going to be a wild a wild ride. I'm sorry for the shakiness. But at least you know it's raw, right? It's raw and authentic. That's me. Raw and authentic. We're raw dogging this life. Oh, it's falling the other way. It's either the camera swings or it tips over. That's my problem right now. Stay. All right. Oh, look in the background kind of adjust. Looks kind of nice. Okay. So, let's do preguntas. Oh, I'm going to have to adjust this this thing. This is going to be a disaster. Please work. Okay. Let's rock. Uh okay. Again, theme of today will be content and uh personal brand, all that kind of jazz. All right, sweaty solopreneur. Are you sweaty, bro? Take a shower. I'm good. You're good. Okay. Totally could prove whether it does or doesn't post the same video twice, one color graded, one not, with nearly similar content. Uh one graded, one Okay, yeah, great. Um Personal brand question. Brady Telen. Um is having a large audience but you serve the algorithm or a smaller audience but you do only what you care about. What you want better? Okay. I think I understand what you said there. By the way, if the questions are in English, that's much easier for me to to answer. Uh So, by the way, replace the word algorithm with audience and it makes a lot more sense. So, it's like the algorithm change Dude, the algorithm is only an expression of what humans want. That's all it is. It's a It's a bunch of nerds in a room trying to quantify human interest. That's all the algorithm is. And so, the North Star should be make [ __ ] that the people that you want to buy from you will find interesting. Period. Now, there's the personal side of this. So, there I want to say like the objective side, right? For the business, the business requires you to make [ __ ] that your customers find interesting so they buy [ __ ] from you. That's what the business requires. But you as human, unfortunately, we have other desires. You might get bored of that, which is a big cost to you. And so, the the the risk for you is that you get burned out from doing it cuz you don't want to make content anymore cuz making content isn't always the most fun. And so, instead, we say, "What things do I want that I hope the audience finds interesting but I find really interesting." And I will say on a personal level, the stuff that I find the most interesting, um as much as it's very kitschy to say, um if you make something that's interesting, everyone will find it interesting, it's not always true. Some of the [ __ ] that I find really interesting, some of y'all would not find interesting. Some more advanced business stuff, it's just like it's cuz it's not relevant. That's the thing. It's just not relevant to the vast majority of people. Now, if you want to go whale hunting, this is why this is important. If you want to go whale hunting, make whale content. If it is interesting to you and like if I want to make, you know, I want to make content for somebody that has multiple hundred million dollar businesses, then yeah, the [ __ ] that I'm I'm [ __ ] with right now, I might be able to attract them, but it's not going to get a lot of views. But the thing is is that the algorithm, right, the targeting on the platforms is so good at finding people who would be interested in that stuff that it has never been before easier to reach people who are niche. And so, um I'll give you this little example. Uh I'm a an equipment file, which is a fancy word for somebody who likes gym equipment. All right? Um I Obsession is a strong word, but I would say that I am tend I tend to be obsessive as a person. Um I would I would say I look at gym equipment daily. Like I I look at new equipment daily for probably 30 minutes a day. So, like it's a pretty significant thing. Like I I look at equipment. I know all the [ __ ] that's in the pipeline. I know all the brands. I know the different make and models. Like I like gym equipment. Okay. You're like, "Where's he going with this?" My newsfeed on Instagram is gym equipment and metal manufacturers and metal fabricators that are tiny tiny guys uh well, they're bigger guys, but tiny audiences, right? Um and so, when I look, it's like 1,000 followers, 3,000 followers, 5,000 followers. But I see their stuff on my discover page because I am the perfect customer. When I look at the content they're making, they're like, "Hey, look, I welded this handle on kind of differently and look what we can do with it." I am the only person who finds that interesting. But because I find it interesting, the algorithm gives it to me cuz I consume all that stuff. And so, that guy might look at his content strategy and be like, "Oh, I don't know if content's working." Of course content is working. There's a guy who uh Temple of Gains, I I I won't share his exact numbers, uh but he's at about 6,000 followers on Instagram. I'm pretty sure he's doing like a million bucks per He's doing multiple millions of dollars. I'll just say that. All right? Uh from his 6,000 followers. All right? And so, I bring this up as an important point to say that you can make a lot of money with a small audience as long as you make the [ __ ] the [ __ ] they want to see. That is the thing. All right? And so, you don't need to pick between the algorithm. You just make [ __ ] for your audience and then make [ __ ] for you. And if there's stuff that you find interesting that they that you're customer and this is why by the way, you being your customer is the primo. That's the best case scenario, right? If you are your customer, then you make stuff that's interesting for you, which then by default becomes interesting for them. Over time, especially for B2B, sometimes it can be difficult because if you level up as a business owner and by percentage a smaller percentage of the audience now is what you're into. This happens in fitness for example, you were once overweight, you were really into it, you got in shape, and now you're helping people overweight. The stuff you're into is like more advanced programming and and you know, macros and competing, whereas for somebody else trying to lose 30 lbs, then you're going to have you're going to have to make content that is what you used to be interested not necessarily the stuff you are interested in now. And so I'd say I would encourage you, this is my meta my meta frame for this. The thing that I'm always interested in is winning. And I'm always interested in doing things well. And so it is more aligned with my ethos to [ __ ] do my best at whatever job is in front of me than it is to try to play the ukulele of my my very ephemeral desires. All right, and trying to guess what I'm going to love today. I don't know what I'm going to love today, and I don't know if I'm going to be in the mood today, but the work needs doing either way. All right, and it's either you or your competition, but those eyeballs are out there and they need to find out about your stuff. All right. I am Mr. Green. What would you do to build followers? I started blogging and repurposing content from blogging to social media. Okay, I mean that sounds fine. The big thing that people mess up with this with the whole idea of like do a lot of stuff is that you have to do a lot of stuff with a feedback loop. Meaning you have to look at what you did, see the stuff that works best, and then do more of that. Not just do more. You do more so that you can have a larger sample size so you can get a top 10% because if you post two times, you don't know what the hell's working. Right, you post 100 times, you can look at 10 posts that did better than the other posts, and then from those 10 extrapolate, what if I look what if I do more [ __ ] like this, and then try the next 100 posts, make them look like those 10, and then all of a sudden, you start improving. And I'm saying this cuz I get sometimes like, "I've been posting every day for 10 years and and I can't grow." First off, it's probably lies. They probably haven't been posting every day for 10 years. But even if they did, you have to be a very special kind of psycho to not look at feedback and say, "Maybe I should try and do this a little different cuz this [ __ ] is not working." Right? So, it's like you have to consistently put the effort in. You don't necessarily do the exact same thing every time. All right? You need to put the same effort in. But the the output should change. You should improve. You should get better. If it's the same thing, then you're you're just spinning your wheels. All right. Uh I don't even know how to pronounce this handle. Uh when should you start running paid ads assuming your organic marketing is already working well? Great question. So, paid ads is one of those doors that I don't want to say it's a one-way door, but once you start it, it's kind of it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle because you have to put a lot of infrastructure in place in order to run paid ads correctly. And I'm going to make an assumption here. This is for services. If you're doing e-commerce, it's easier to spin spin paid up without like a lot of extra infrastructure. Uh with service, you're probably going to sell over the phone. You have to have phone teams. There's other stuff involved. If you're going straight to a checkout page, basically whenever you do it, like if your content gets bigger, the ads will just work better. And so, think about your your your content as the top of funnel. It warms the audience up, and then you retarget with your paid ads. If you truly use paid ads for cold cold, like no one knows who you are, then that once you get that converting, it will all it'll all convert your your warm because the ocean of people who don't know you is always going to be bigger than people you do. But the magic sweet spot, I think for most people is doing organic as kind of laying the foundation and then kind of retargeting with paid because when you do organic, it's very difficult to make CTAs, right? That type of content does not perform, right? People know if you're trying to ask for, you know, for [ __ ] or whatever, right? And so, it doesn't get reach, it doesn't get shares, it doesn't get engagement, all that kind of stuff. On the flip side, when you make an ad, you can be very targeted about who you want it to get get shown to, and you can make a very direct ask, and you can guarantee that it gets reached cuz you pay for it, right? And so that's basically the idea is like I my perspective is we yes and and the strategy from a branding perspective is that the entirety of your brand as someone sees it is the combination of the ads and the organic because people buying zones don't differentiate, right? And so it's like I would like to still have more organic going out than paid ads, but the organic leads the way, it finds new audiences, it warms those people up to my stuff, and then we follow up with the ads. That's my thinking process. But basically whenever you run paid ads, you're going to make more money as long as you know how to run them. Cuz more people will find out about your stuff and you're going to make more direct offers. And so then what you don't want to do is kind of like burn through your audience with paid. And so I think there's a sweet spot kind of what I'm referencing cuz if you do quote burn through your audience, then you actually need to change the way you sell in order to accommodate colder traffic and that then has a lot of upside, but you're going to have to change the whole machine. All right, so I'm just saying as somebody who's done both, um I'd say it's significantly a higher ROAS return on ad spend to use organic to cement the way and then have paid kind of layered in on top. Demos Milonas, I'm going to guess that you are Greek. Um maybe you might like my background. I'm not in Greece, but it looks Greek. Okay, making broad content for more views versus specific content for the ideal customer, do both or just one? I think that the view stuff so I I kind of I think already answered this question, but if you're looking for commerce, you want to make specific content around the stuff that your avatar deems useful so that they can help them along whatever vector you provide services, period. That being said, there's a certain amount of influence that you get as a human being by being more likable or relatable, things like that, that if you made content if I made content, um so for example, if I made political content, which I don't make political content, but if I did make political content, there would be a certain percentage of my audience that would be polarized towards me and a certain percentage of my audience that would be polarized against me. And by making that content, I would probably get a lot of reach and there would be some percentage of my audience that would like me way more, right? And so, I use that as just kind of a simple example of like if I share something that's not necessarily relevant to the thing I sell, but is relevant to the person I'm selling to in some way, uh you can, but it is a gamble, right? Um and I would, you know, do not get into politics stuff unless you really want to. Um I'm just I'm I'm the green party, baby. I'm here to make money um and help those who are also in the capitalist party. And I like to say that up front because I never want somebody like, "Alex is only doing this stuff cuz he wants to make money." Yes. Yes. Yes, 100,000%. That is the point. That's probably what a lot of people work for, but they're ashamed to say it and I think we should normalize working in exchange for money. I think that should be okay. I think capital-ism, right? That's the That's the idea. It's a system rigged around the the generation, the allocation, the returns on capital. Not a bad thing. It's worked out pretty good for the the societies that have adopted it. Uh is it flawed? Yes. Is it the best system we have? Also, yes. Anyways. At Sea Digital Marketing, I suck at pushing enough content. Would it be a good idea to use a college intern to produce content for me? It may come Okay. Editing, sure. Being in the content, I probably wouldn't have somebody be the face of a business that kid is going to like leave in 5 weeks. I think that's a bad idea. Uh but in terms of like pushing means posting and editing, then yeah, I think that's fine. The Apple Avenger. That is an interesting handle. Uh how do I get better at communicating my thoughts? Okay, here we go. Write down what you want to have happen in the real world as a result of what you are saying. And then tell people that part and skip the thing you were going to say originally. So, oftentimes, you may have had this happen. You'll go on this long-winded rant and then you say, "All right, well, TLDR, this." Just cut out all of that, and then just make it the TLDR. And if you want to have very concise communication, then the entirety of your communication is TLDR TLDR TLDR TLDR TLDR, and then what happens you get a book that looks like Leads, or a book that looks like Offers. Is that you take like that those books were were four or five times the length and then got compressed down to what are the only things that someone can do as a result of reading this sentence or this paragraph or this page, right? Or this video or this short. So, me, what I'm saying to you right now is something you can literally do. You take the words you said, and then say, "How does this translate into what someone can do with their hands or do with their bodies in the physical world?" And what's beautiful about that is that there are there's no room for miscommunication. That is what's beautiful about it. When you communicate that way, people are like, "Man, he takes something that's complex and makes it simple." I'm telling you how like I'm telling you I'm giving the keys to the castle. Like the way to do it is you just tell people what you want them to do. And so, this also because I have a relatively um uh what do you call it? What's the hot take? Uh controversial view, right? Which is that what is the point of communication? Real talk, let's think about this. What is the point of communication? To change behavior. That is why we communicate. I say, "Hi." And I do that so that I can get you to say, "Hi back." Right? I've been trained, I've been reinforced to say, "Hi." You say, "Hi." I change your behavior. Right? I say, "Thank you." You say, "You're welcome." I change your behavior. Right? That is the point of communication. And so, when when people communicate, they're just trying to change each other's behavior back and forth. Right? And is it And again, people see this as a manipulative thing. We we use the things we have to orient the world around us. This is not a bad thing. My goal is that long-term, you guys eventually are bigger businesses, um and are like, "Hey, I want to use Alex's products and services. I want Alex's help to help me scale my thing because I've gotten to a point where I don't know how to get past this or like it's not growing as fast as I want or I'm worried about some of the new ass stuff that's coming out. I want to know what they're doing. That's why I do this, right? It's like I've used 20 other things that he did and it worked and so I bet you if I came out in person we met with the team it probably would not suck. That's what I want. That's my transparent incentive. And so my goal here is to change communicate is to communicate in a way that changes your behavior so that when you follow the stuff you get the good things you want and then you say, "Hey, I'll bet you if I follow other stuff that Alex suggests more good things will happen and it'll be worth the price." That is the idea. Like I'm pulling no punches. Like some people just think you need to be clever. The more I have learned about marketing and sales you need to be clear. People think like like no one is paying attention. Everyone is in a rush. Everyone's got four [ __ ] screens open. They've got Slack notifications. They've got texts coming in. Like you have no time to waste with your avatar, with your prospects. So you better be [ __ ] clear. Tell them what you want. Tell them what you want them to do. Tell them what they're going to get out of it. Tell them why it's worth it. That's it. And then drill that into your head and then whenever you get into like big jargon then zoom back out and say, "Hey, it's kind of like" and then give an example. Woo. I was feeling heated today. All right. Uh okay. Let's look here. Sigma Sigma Vard. I don't even You have the wildest usernames. What happened to like Tom Abrams? You know, what happened to that as a username? What happened to like just like car junkie? That work that's a good username. All right. What do you suggest for personal branding content when you work in sales for a company that has ticket restrict uh tight restrictions on what they allow us to post about? I mean, post whatever you can within the within the restrictions that you're allowed to post about. I mean, I I feel like that's Think about this for a second. They probably have rules that are like don't do these things. Everything that is not those things, you can do. It's kind of like the Garden of Eden, right? It's like, don't eat from this fruit this fruit tree. You can eat from any other tree. Anywhere else. Just don't eat from this tree. People are like, I don't know, that tree looks really good. It's like, dude, just don't look at that tree. Just look at other [ __ ] Right? There's so much type of content out there. Uh at the end of the day, I think you have to answer the question, what do you want to get out of the content? Right? If we're being real. What do you want to get out of the content? Do you just build your personal brand? Do you want to you want to spin you want to spin out and do something of your own? Are you trying to generate leads for the business that you can sell and get a higher commission on? Like, what what are you trying to accomplish? And based on that goal, you'd reverse engineer the actions. And so, um I think I I don't know if this video's come out yet, but I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to give you some some sexy stuff in case it hasn't. Um So, the three questions that my team hears me ask the most, and these are write or downers, all right? For your team or for anybody. Is number one, what problem are we solving? Number two, what do you want to have happen? Number three, what would it take? And so, if you want to have like the the three most common questions that I ask other business owners and my and the people who work for me is that I get called on to a meeting and I'm like, hold on. What problem are we solving here? Got it. So, like, we have this churn issue. Got it. What do you want to have happen? This. Okay. Now I have context. Great. And if I want something, then I ask the question, well, what would it take for us to X? And then that assumes success and allows them to reverse engineer my desired outcome. And so, I would encourage you to ask, what would it take for you to insert make 200 calls a day? What would it take for you to do 100 minutes of content every day? What would it take? And then solve for that. If that's what the constraint of your business is or why you can't grow, solve the constraint. What would it take? And then orient the rest of your life to make sure that that's true. Okay. How do you find this is Brady? It's a normal name. Brady Thielen. Okay, I'll take it. For content, how do you find a balance of quality and quantity? You do the best you can. Do you think starting a personal brand and then a business is better than a business and then a personal brand? Thoughts? Um This is a good question. I I don't think there's I don't think there's a better or worse. I think if you have [clears throat] a personal brand, it makes a business easier to start. Um but it depends on what you want to make the brand about. So, if you want to have a B2B brand that talks about business, it's tough to have a personal brand if you're not if you don't own a business. You have no proof, right? If you want to start a beauty brand, you could absolutely have a personal brand about beauty and then eventually start your own. And so, I think it depends on what audience you need to have trust with. And so, that is my nuanced answer is that in order to build a personal brand, you need to have trust. If you're going to have trust, you means you have to have demonstrated a high level of efficacy. You need to be talented in some way. You have to have an outsized uh outcome of in some domain uh that other people can say, "I'm going to follow this person for this reason cuz they've done something I can't do." And then, as a result, you have proof around that thing and then you can start your own line if it's again something that's not businessy. But, if it is business, then you want to have proof around that thing. I think that's a pretty good answer. Um By the way, I came up with a permanent answer to the question of like what business should I start and I feel very happy about it. I've been asked that question a zillion times and I finally had one come out that I was like, "I like that answer." So, I will tell you what it is even though no one asked it. If you are struggling to figure out what business to start, it is because you have too many options. If you want to figure out how what business to start, you need to narrow your options, which means you to put filters. So, imagine you said, "Hey, what should I buy on Amazon?" It's like, "Well, what do we what are we looking for, right?" There's tons of great products on Amazon. There's tons of great businesses out there that you could start and there's tons of great businesses that don't exist. But, of the many businesses, do I want to be remote or do I want to be in person? Uh I'd rather be in person. Okay. Do I want to be uh selling services or do I want to sell products? Or do I want to sell software? Uh okay. I I think I'd rather I'm more of a tech guy. Okay, great. I'd rather sell rather sell software. Do I want to sell a lower ticket thing that doesn't require a sales team? What kind of sales motion do I want to put in place? Do I want to sell in person? Do I want to sell over the phone or Zoom? Do I want to sell with a checkout page? I think I'd rather sell with a checkout page. Okay, great. Right? And so as you narrow it down, all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, it took from this world to wow, there's much smaller uh pool of options." And then instead of picking from a thousand things, you're picking from four and you can be very well uh you can feel more confident about your decision. Because the thing is is that your confidence in your decision is typically inversely correlated with the number of choices you're presented. And so the idea is you want to limit your choices as much as possible. Right? If And this is part of the issue with dating right now. If you're in a town that has one stoplight and there's five people your age that are the opposite sex or whatever you're into, whatever, that you got to pick from, then you're going to be like, "All right, well, you know, this this guy or gal doesn't have a lazy eye and it doesn't smell bad. And so I think this one's the one for me." Right? And you feel pretty confident about the decision cuz you look at the other four and you're like, "I got the best one." Right? When every day you're bombarded with the illusion that you can choose from millions of supermodels and for the women, the super rich, super tall, super blue-eyed, you know, whatever the hell, right? It just gives a distortion and then it makes every choice something you second guess because you had the illusion of choice. Right? And so right now you have the illusion of choice. You probably aren't going to go raise like a shitload of money. That would be another one. Like of those little filters, is this something I'm going to have to raise money for or can I start bootstrapped? Which one do I want to start? Both of those are fine. You just got to make a choice. Right? And so yes, that is how I'd answer the question Uh what business should I start? You have to ask all the things you hate and then look at what's left and then make your decision with the smallest possible pool you can pick from and then move forward. Okay, uh Hold on. I got a Layla buzz. 2 seconds. I'm outside. Come join if you want. I'm here to chill with you. Last thing of the day. All right, so if you're curious how I talk to Layla. All right. Um Okay, as someone growing There we go. Drake. So as someone growing and trying to grow a marketing agency, I'm very heavily using personal brand in my content. Is there way to start to grow the company branding without me? I would encourage you to just lean into your personal brand for now, dude. Like I just I mean [ __ ] dude. Look at Look what acquisition.com Look at how many followers acquisition.com has and look at me. And we post it on acquisition.com across a lot of platforms and the follower count is not even close, right? Um Like you can look at any example out there. Like people follow people more than they follow businesses. It's just like they're faceless corporations. It doesn't matter what like it's very very hard and even the businesses that are like Nike I think is the best example of a business that doesn't have a single personal brand, but what do they do? They have a shitload of personal brands. They just find the goats. That is literally Nike's strategy. They find the goat of every single sport. They lock them down for life or to the greatest degree they can or or for the entirety of their peak career and they say that guy wears Nike. Tiger Woods wears Nike during the entirety of his peak career and then he can go start his own thing, right? MJ, he's with Nike for the basically his whole career. LeBron, his whole career, right? And so they they find these goats. They sign them up and then basically they are the aggregate, the amalgamation of all the goats. That is how you really do uh brand right. Um and you can look at kind of the up and coming brands like Gymshark. And First Form's not up and coming, but like First Form is a great example of somebody who's, you know, with Andy, he's kind of like a hybrid where like he he has a personal brand following, but the the company is much bigger than he is. Right? So, that's kind of the a good hybrid situation, but either way, I would say that since you have your personal brand, I would not like unless you're trying to sell this company on some very short timeline, you should lean into the advantage you have, which is that people like you and you're going to be making content. There you go. There's my two cents. All right. Uh Sinch Taj. Uh hey Alex, how do I become someone worth headhunting? Huh. Okay. Um you probably want to post about the stuff you're doing at work on LinkedIn, cuz that's where they'll look. Um I'm assuming I don't know if you're working in a in a business right now um in the role that you're looking for. So, I like the best people have jobs. So, get a job using the skills that you have with AI that you say you have. Um and then from there you can level up, basically. Um but yeah, head hunters are probably not looking for not probably, they're not looking for people who are unemployed. That's that's my that's that's me making generalization, but I also think I'm right. Um Renato. Most of my colleagues met spa agencies Oh, met spa, sorry. Most of my colleagues met spa at agencies get around 40-50 views per video on YouTube. Does this mean met spa owners aren't on YouTube or just people don't have it figured out yet? Yeah, it just means they suck at making YouTube videos. That's that's all that is. I bet you I could make a YouTube video on met spas and it would probably get seen by a lot of met spa people. Um no, you got it like they it they they don't know how to work YouTube. I can almost guarantee you. Which means the good news is there's a huge opportunity. Cuz the equal opposite Could you imagine the equal opposite coming here? Uh my industry is super saturated. All these people are making views or you know, getting views about med spas. Um does that mean it's too late for me? Right? There's always a reason not to do something. You just need to ask like is that more or is it more or less likely that I'm going to succeed if more people find out about my stuff versus not. This is why first principle is so important. Like you can just like get around all the [ __ ] of like your headspace of like what's going on? Is this like dude, just let people know about your [ __ ] Tell them why it's good for them and let them make a decision. And the more people you ask, the more likely you'll make money. All right, Diego. I have good client results, but not sure my clients want their numbers out there. How do I communicate how great I am? First off, you can I mean how many I don't I don't name company names constantly. I just give exa- I gave I gave example earlier about a fencing company. Gave it exa- earlier about a an agency business. Like you can just say, hey I've got a client in the pet space and they blah blah blah. It works fine. Um if you want you can fudge out you can show the results and then fudge the brand. That's fine. Like I this is this is not a thing. And if you if people get weird about it, um you can ask for forgiveness rather than permission. But if you blur if you blur their logo out, it's very tough to for anybody to get bothered about that stuff. Um my best performing ad right now is a single image meme which I arrived at through the rule of 100 testing. Awesome. Uh would like to do video, but don't know where to start. Do the same exact rule of 100, man. Make a ton of Make a ton of different videos and then look at the top 10% and then iterate from there. Like this is how we do it. It's It's basically I when I the rule of 100 is reinforcement training done with humans rather than AI. It's [laughter] all it is. It's a learning algorithm. You do a lot of volume. You figure out where you get the pings, the reinforcements, and then you say, ah I will seek out more of this. And then you do that again. It's we We learn the same way machines do. We try to make it complicated, All right? All right. NC Emmanuel Let me get your opinion on sharing insights and knowledge to the public as a constant strategy for growing my business. I mean, you want my opinion as I give you insights and knowledge to the public as my constant strategy for growing my business of whether I think it's a good idea or not? That's my answer. Sweaty solopreneur, damn, my content question was too early. Uh I want to do lives. I got shorts and long form, but I can't figure out lives that aren't here's how data brokering and marketing works. My audience want [ __ ] and Bull TV. Well, give them what they want, man. Like also like here's the here's the funny part about live streaming cuz like I'm learning this, too. I'm Part of this is like I'm going to I'm going to do this and I'm going to share what I find out. Um I'll give you some of the things that we figured out. Uh when I take calls live, um attendance drops. So, we found that out. When other people talk, uh attendance drops. Not always, but sometimes. Uh we found that out. The more I engage with chat, the better it does. So, here we are, right? Um I doubt that the background matters, but can't hurt. Makes me feel a little better. Uh nice to be outside. Um what else have we found out? Um I think that's the big stuff. >> [laughter] >> Oh, yeah, I can't read the comments fast enough. So, my team reads them and then they feed them to me. I've got this little iPad in front of me where they have the good ones. And so, for those of you guys who are just like spamming the comments, I promise you we will literally never answer your question. Like from the soul, brother. If you spam, just disappear. Just just dementors kiss yourself. All right? Um So, if you ask a reasonable question like a reasonable person, you have a much higher likelihood of getting uh getting uh getting selected, all right? So, just don't act like a dick and you're probably going to get an answer. All right, Reginald, I train protection dogs as well as pet dogs. I want to bring on more customers constant wise. Should I focus on educational entertainment? If you want to bring on customers, then education's going to be the way, man. If you want to do an entertaining thing for yourself every once in a while, then go for it. You know what I mean? Like um sometimes doing like work space memes and things like that at work place memes and jokes like that like I think Layla does it and that seems to work really well for her. But like her whole brand isn't Cuz think about it this, if her whole brand was work place memes, then she would be a comedy account, not Layla, right? Um if one out of 10 posts you do is a work place meme, then people come there, they look at other stuff, and then they might like they come for the bikini, they stay for the community. Like the ham in the garlic, they come for one thing, they stay for another. And so it's okay to have some of that stuff as long as it's still like at least adjacent to what you're doing. Um and to be very clear, there's no rules. I mean you could post a picture of your dog I could post a picture of a cat or a dog if I bought one, right? It's not like I'm going to you know, I'm going to lose followers overnight about it. It's just not going to be that relevant. However, it might make me more likable to certain people who have dogs and cats, right? And so this is the this is the part I think people get really really messed up, right? Which is like how much of myself should I share? Like if your objective is to have some sort of influence and I use that in the formal sense, not in the icky way, right? Is that you would like people to want to buy your stuff when you say, "Hey, can you buy my stuff?" That would be an indication of influence. You nudge them, you influence them to make a purchasing decision. Um then the more likable you are A, but also the more like them you are, likeness is in similarity um then the more people respond. Like if somebody If somebody looks exactly like you. Like I probably don't do well with old Asian men, right? Or old black women, or people who look the least like me, right? I probably do great with the same age as me, 25 to 45, white men, and I probably skew towards people who have more traditional gender roles of masculinity because I look like this. Not that I have those, but I mean I do. But like but that's not what I got to talk about. >> [gasps] >> But the point is my content skews that my the my audience skews away cuz I don't look like certain people. And so if you want to expand a brand overall, then you want to have avatars that represent each Again, this is from a business perspective, from a business perspective. So if I have a business, if I have a beauty brand, right? If I only have a white girl spokesperson, I'm only going to get white chicks. I might get some around the edges that aren't, but the majority going to be white chicks. The people and this is kind of interesting. The people who do not look like the avatar, they will probably hardcore [ __ ] with everything that is intangible about the brand. So, if I want to get more demographics, then I need to represent more demographics in my avatars and my in my kind of affiliates and my influencer campaigns, right? Now, again, this tends to happen on its own, um but just something to be mindful of like it is it is economically a wonderful decision to have diversity in your marketing cuz you will sell more [ __ ] to more people. All right. Um but you can't have diversity in yourself. You look the way you look, right? And so I say that to say around the the dog and cat thing that I was saying earlier, if people are like, "Oh, he has a dog. I have a dog." They will like you more because you have something in common. It's the same reason when you're selling, it's not it's not uncommon to find some common ground when you're talking to a prospect because like why why is it that a local business can sell with significantly less friction than if you're, you know, selling over the phone across the world? Because you have way less in common, so there's less trust. Right? If you're down the street, they're like, "I know where that guy is. We have a lot in common. We live in the same area, right?" There's There's more likeness. As a fun fact, if you've ever been abroad, this is partially to my American people who are watching this, but if you've ever been in another country, I'll just say that. This goes to anybody. You've been in another country, and then you find somebody who's from the same country as you in that other country, don't you immediately like them? Which is ridiculous, cuz if you were in your own country, you'd be like, "I don't [ __ ] care." Right? But there, it makes them more unique. And then, if you find out there that they're from the same city as you, you're like, "Whoa, that's crazy. We're We're going to be best friends." But But if everybody who lives in your city lives in your city, right? And so, the thing is is that within that context, in that diverse environment, they are more unique, right? And so, because of that, they're more like you in that context. Now, within your context of your local city, that becomes the baseline, and then everyone has to be more like you in order to gain credibility. Sweetie. You want to You want to vacay? All right, I might have to vacay. All right, so I'm going to do one more one more pregunta, and I'm going to I'm going to We're going to bring the heat, and then uh then we're going to call it We're going to call it a a vacation. A honey A honeymoon. Not a honeymoon, a baby moon. Going to a baby moon. Um and so, I answered the dog the dog one. And yes, Tiger Sales, you should repent for your sins for uh for spamming. All right, don't be a dick. All right, Agora Anime, if I have a YouTube channel analyzing movies, what does proof even look like in that context? Mhm. Interesting question. So, you ask an educator question when what you were actually looking for is an entertainment. So, what proof do I want from an from an entertainer? You don't. You just want it to be good. And so, this is important. The objective of entertainment is for it to be consumed. That if if you get someone to watch the entirety, then you have entertained them. And so, you don't need to have proof. You just need to keep their attention. With education, there's risk because we assume that there's an action that the prospect or the person watching needs to take as a result of watching the video. And so, that means that if they're going to take action, they're going to incur cost. If you're going to incur cost, you need to be worth it. In order to be worth it, you do a risk adjusted return analysis with you even know what that word means. In your head, you say, "Is Is Is Am I Is what I think I'm going to get worth this?" So, how do we approximate worth-it-ness? How likely is it? If it's guaranteed, how do we know it's guaranteed in the real world? If we see a hundred people in front of us walk across the ice, we think it's probably likely that if we're 101, we're going to get across. Right? Now, you're like, "Wait, they might have warmed the ice up, and maybe it's going to be cracking." But you get the idea, right? A hundred people jump off a cliff into the water, they all survive, you're probably like, "As long as you can swim, you jump off the cliff, you'll survive." Right? And so, proof matters when someone has to take an action as a result, which means education is where it matters. Entertainment, what proof do I need in Avengers the movie? I don't. I just need it to be good. Right? What proof do I need in in a TV show? It's literally made up. It's literally fictional characters. I don't need any proof. I just need it to be good. I need it to be interesting. Now, if you have reality TV, which is a different subgenre because it is real, upper quotes here, right? Then the stakes is the proof. So, for example, if we have a million dollars, the audience has to believe that we're going to give a million dollars to contestants. If we say we're going to blow up a Ferrari, we have to believe that it's truly a Ferrari. As long as you check the basic boxes that you're not deceiving the audience, you're not misrepresenting, then your entertainment will be fine. All right. So, um with that being said, my lovely pregnant wife is wanting me to spend this honeymoon, baby moon, with her, and so I'm going to oblige. But, I try to stay under our 30-ish for 30, and I'm going to share all the findings um in a month, in 30-ish days or so. So, anyways, keep being awesome. Love you all. Bye. How do I get out? All right, how do I live? You guys want to watch me awkwardly trying to figure out how to exit? So, you can see how