# How To Blow Up ANY Personal Brand in 2026 (and Get Rich) ft Jun Yuh

Channel: THE 505 PODCAST
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ktFOfOH98
Duration: 2 hr 4 min
Language: English
Words: 28341
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/H-ktFOfOH98

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[0:00] always my formula for anyone starting to create content. It should be the equation of three one two one. So three attract, one nurture, two position, and one convert. That's Junu. And that single framework is the reason his content doesn't just get views, it builds businesses. After over 5 years of posting daily, he's built an audience of over 8 million and turned his personal

[0:18] brand into millions in revenue. Creative College in the last 9 months did $3.6 million. June is living proof that you don't need the perfect setup or a big production team to win in today's game. I grew my first three million followers with a shattered iPhone 12. And everything he teaches comes back to one core belief. But for the very first time, you have access to one piece of content that can reach millions of people that shares exactly who you are, what you stand for, and what you have to offer. And if you do that effectively, you will never

[0:44] chase another opportunity again. In this episode, June breaks down content like we've never heard before. And today, you're going to learn all of his secrets. I promise after this episode, you'll never look at content the same again. If you go into one day with me and you actually sit down and consume content with me, I guarantee the way that you look at content again afterwards will never be the same. Real quick, before we dive into this amazing episode with June, we want to tell you about an amazing free product we have for you guys. It's called the paid offer playbook. We understand that one of the

[1:13] biggest struggles creators go through when trying to build and monetize a personal brand is figuring out what to sell. That's why we created the paid offer playbook to help you get massive clarity on a product that your audience is absolutely going to love. So check it out. It's the first link in the description. Let's get into this

[1:27] episode. Okay, June, you've posted a piece of content every day for six years. You've amassed an audience of over 8 million. Is consistency you think the number one thing that people need in their content? I definitely think it's part of the equation because I think the larger body of work that you have, the more you can extrapolate in terms of common successful patterns. But I believe when people hear me say that I've posted every single day for the last six years, they believe that I've been creating

[1:53] every single day for the last six years. And that's not true. So I really do believe for a creator to be consistent. It speaks much more to the back end of how that creator operates. And so for me, it's very systematic based. I come from an engineering discipline, so it certainly helps. So I do a lot of repurposing. I do a lot of batching. I do a lot of mixing of loweffort and high effort contents. And when you do that, you're not necessarily creating every

[2:14] day and you can still show up regularly. So I when I think a creator isn't operating on a consistent level, it usually speaks to the fact that they don't have a system on the back end. And that is more of the telltale sign that they won't be successful as much as that they would like to be. So I think consistency is that first barometer for success, but there's usually much more behind the scenes that if you unveil it that you could help them in terms of the

[2:34] operation. So what do those systems look like for success? If you were to help a creator say, "Okay, 2026 is the year I'm going to stay super consistent." What does that backend look like and what needs to be in place for them to stay consistent? It's a beautiful question and there's so much nuance that goes into it whenever you're thinking about all the different stages of being a creator. Today, my system is a lot more evolved than it was when I first started, but it really does boil down to what are you posting and how are you packaging it? So, what are the content ideas that you have and

[3:02] ultimately which formats are you repurposing or do you know that you have a high confidence rate that it'll be successful? And so, if you boil down everything to that, ultimately a content plan, a really good one, helps you a ton. But really after you study content the way that you would study any discipline, you start to recognize that nobody's really reinventing the wheel in its entirety. And so for me, I have this entire principle called the creative vision. And the creative vision is oftentimes when I go and speak that that's what I normally speak about. But the creative vision is this three-pronged approach. You have the

[3:34] creative vision, you can write your name with apostrophes s and then creative vision at the very top. And then you have your first branch called the what. And that is ultimately the message you're presenting and the various content pillars that you're using to share that with. Then second branch is your who, your target avatar. So the demographic and the psychoraphic. And then ultimately you have your uniqueness. This is your story, your truth, your experiences, your skill sets. And so that really helps me understand which content ideas are aligned to my personal brand while still allowing me to diversify. And then the formats. I do this practice called the 7

[4:03] by7. And every single two weeks I'll study 49 pieces of content. So, it's seven creators I look up to and seven of their highest performing formats and I'll study it at great detail and it'll help me understand how do I package that content. So, when you combine the creative vision and the 7 by7 ultimately you have content that is going to work

[4:20] more often than not. Have you felt burnt out at all? I mean, I know that this is something you've done for quite a bit of time. You're also still so young, but you've been at it for every single day. What like what refills that cup up and what what what are the other things in the background that you have in place? So even if you're not feeling it that day, we still

[4:39] have something that's going out. Have I ever felt burnt out? The truth is no. And I don't even think that I've been very close to it. And I think I'm very very blessed in terms of the background that I come from. So for me, I come from a very poor immigrant household. And when I see my dad working a bluecollar job the way that he has my entire life and my dad having to go through the separation after my parents' divorce, it gives you perspective, right? in the sense of knowing what is

[5:06] actually burnout, what's actually hard. And therefore, when I pursued my bachelor's and masters in biomedical engineering while building my first million-dollar business as a senior in college, that felt hard, but it wasn't to the point that I was burning out. And so, I think perspective really does help drive performance when you calibrate it perfectly uh perfectly the way that I have. And so, I think that's a big part to it. I think the other part to it is just understanding that a lot of people

[5:30] are afraid to repurpose their content. They think that because let's say you filmed a B-roll a few years ago and you try posting again that it's going to feel redundant to your audience, but it never does. And I've been doing that for the last six years and I still have been able to build an audience around it. So you will see my phone photo album in my phone and also in terms of our Dropbox shared folder with the team and it's just listed by scene actions, right? So if we know that we want a piece of content out, we know which format we just plug and play. So that definitely

[5:55] helps too in terms of a systematic standpoint. So in a Dropbox, it's like June writing, June eating, June, what does it look like? What are these everything that you're saying? And up to this point in time now, we have like 55 different clips in each of those. Um, and we can pull from even young version of June doing X, older version of June doing Y. And it definitely helps when we're doing those storytelling

[6:16] content that's predicated around B-roll. So yes, it's literally listed out by scenes like that. So it's what I call my scene library in terms of managing my B-roll. Yeah, we got to get more organized on that. We're over here going through I'm like, "Dude, this is in 2014." Like, you bring up a really interesting point, though, because there's always a new set of eyes and ears to consume your content, and you're going to be consuming your content more than anyone else because you're the one

[6:39] making it. No doubt about it. And so, I've even found this to be true in the last week and a half of me posting content every single day. I'm like, "Fuck, I feel like I'm using the same B-roll clips or same photos to make carousels." And I'm like, Well, who cares? Like, people who saw it the first time or didn't see the first time might see it or not see it this time. And it this is another chance for me to be seen by a new audience who's

[7:06] never actually seen these photos of me. So, I think that's also really interesting. But you also brought up uh studying seven formats from seven creators. Do you find that the most successful creators have at least seven formats that they use? I think even if they don't know they're doing seven different formats, when you actually study the nuances across, let's say even a talking head video will have many different discrepancies across a creator stylistic choices. And so when you go through some one's content, you'll start to notice, okay, this talking head is much more different. This talking head had multiple B-roll segmented in the very beginning of their hook, while this one,

[7:46] let's say, had much more of a static. it was just them putting their phone on the table and using it much more of a naturalistic standpoint. And so even in that, I think a lot of creators actually do have a lot more formats. I think the reason why people don't recognize is because they don't study their own content or other people's as intensely as they should. And this has always been the biggest biggest eye openening experience that we do for all of our students at Creative College. Because if you go into one day with me and you actually sit down and consume content with me, I guarantee the way that you

[8:14] look at content again afterwards will never be the same. you'll go across your explore page and you start picking up on things that you would have never thought about, but it completely changes your perspective from a consumer standpoint to a creator standpoint. And so yes, I do think actually a lot of creators do the best ones have a lot of their formats. They might categorize it in one main bucket, but if you look at the nuances, I think there are a lot of

[8:35] differentiation. So what are some of those things that you're looking at? Like I think a lot of people know about a hook. Okay, first second, super important, but what are the other things that you're looking at that are like this is what really made this video successful? I'll I'll tell you exactly how I study it. So, I'll even go to the weeds to the point where if I see what I call a silent film

[8:52] format, that is B-roll, music, and text. I will import it to my cap cut and I will literally break it up in terms of its scenes and its music and its cadence and its text duration, every single part of it. So, I will see in my brain, can I read this text aloud and how long has this text been there? How many words are there naturally in this period of time? Am I looking at the call to action? does this creative put in the middle of their video and does this person put it at the end from story arcs. A lot of story arcs are oftentimes the same in terms of

[9:19] telling your story from let's say starting off with the pain and ultimately having some sort of pursuit and then a transformation. So I pay attention to all of those detail and what you start to recognize is that you will find one creator in the knitting space and then you'll find another creator that is in the business space that are doing the exact same thing from a format standpoint. So I've always had the ethos that if you want to be a creator, you can. It's a skill that's learnable. And so I really do believe if people understand from the format formula standpoint, it really does open their eyes to it. And so those are some

[9:48] of the features that I look at. And then you can talk about in terms of which types of bureau are you using, static, dynamic, and all that in between. I think the closer you look at it, even if you did it for do you guys ever track your macros by any chance? Like in terms

[9:58] of food? Yeah, I have in the past when I was like, you know, really [ __ ] big. I've gone through I've gone through stages of like weighing out my food. Yes, exactly. And when a lot of trainers will tell you that if you count your macros for even about a two month, three month period, you will never see food the same way. You'll start to be a lot more aware of what you're putting into your body. I think that's with content, too. So, if I can help you study content for about four weeks, I don't think you have to study that intensely afterwards, but you will completely change your

[10:25] perspective on the content. Yeah. Do you believe in niching down? I personally do not. I I do feel as though some people can win in that world, but I've been creating content long enough to know that you are naturally going to have different interests over the span of your time creating. And for me, I don't want to be creating for the next two years or three years or four years. I want to be creating for the next 16 years, 17 years, 18 years. And I even know in the last six years, I've had a huge evolution of my audience. So when I first started, I was a student getting

[10:55] my bachelor's and masters in biomedical engineering. So I was creating a lot of study-led content, right? Once I did that, I launched a book that landed number one on Amazon's new releases, had a digital product, and hit my first million dollars while I was still a student. Then after that, I went to a mentorship program that actually went into more of a wider demographic. So, I started to have a lot more working professionals inside of that. Then, we launched Creative College, which was completely different, more for entrepreneurs and creators. But, I've been able to have more successful businesses each iteration and grow a larger audience by understanding that

[11:25] you don't have to niche down. I think it's much more powerful to find ultimately a message like what is the message that you want to convey and then being able to branch out different content pillars and I think what's really helpful is that if you are saying to me hey I really want to niche down and I I just want this particular topic the only thing that I'll ask of you is to actually tell your story significantly more because your story tends to be that pivoting anchor. So, for example, if you're going from, let's say, teaching about entrepreneurship to teaching about artistry, right? If you could tell your story behind why you

[11:55] were in business to why you chose this new space of yours, if you could talk about the why a lot more versus the what, it allows your audience to champion you versus your tips, it allows you to make that transition a lot more seamlessly than if people only knew you for a specific topic. So, I go through this practice with everyone. Anyone that comes into creative college or ever works with me personally, I go down to that creative vision and say, "Let's find your message. Let's find your

[12:15] target avatar. Let's find your story. And that's significantly more important to me than a niche. Yeah, that's super interesting. But do do you feel though because you hear that you are the niche and I think that people struggle to conceptualize what that actually means in practice. And so if you were to explain to someone, okay, this is exactly what you are the niche actually means, what would

[12:39] you say? Yeah. So I think the creator vision is literally the equivalent of what a niche would be for most people. So if I was to break it down and if we were sitting down together, I would say first let's go into your what branch. Tell me your message that you want to convey to the world. So for me it is something along the lines of a personal brand is the greatest asset that anyone can build, right? Because I've experienced it myself. So I have different content pillars such as content creation, the skill of it from digital products to let's say even building up a team,

[13:08] relationships, whatever the case may be. But the powerful part to that is that your message can be conveyed across different content pillars. So your content doesn't feel the same to every single person and it actually allows you to have much more differentiation in the long term. So for another example could be if your message was that you believe everyone should live a life of more freedom so they get to do more of the what they want to do. Their content pillars may read travel, business tips, financial tips, and even relationships with their family. They can convey that message across multiple different pillars which allows them to not, let's

[13:38] say, pigeon hole themselves into one topic. They're not a travel creator. They're not, let's say, a relationship creator or a business creator. They're they're them, the niche, and they have a message. And then you're looking at target avatar, which is who your demographic and your psychoraphic. Demographic is a bit more obvious, but psychographic I really dive into a lot. It's in terms of what is your audience's

[13:56] desires and what are their pain points? How can you best understand that? What type of content they currently watching? And so, there's a lot of content right now. If you were to make a piece of content right now that said if you were between the ages of 17 24 and you're struggling with burnout right now here's exactly what you should be doing that content is very powerful because you've understood the avatar behind it. So if you see it as someone 1724 struggling with burnout you're going to actually be retained on that piece of content. The

[14:19] third branch is that storytelling one. So it's your uniqueness branch your story your skill sets. And when I look at that diagram, I start to extrapolate many more differentiated ideas, but they all fit under this idea of a creator vision, like your entire branding. So for me, I think it's about getting an understanding of what type of ideas align with your brand, who is actually receiving your content, and how can you tell more of your story. I think that's much more of a holistic strategy than

[14:43] just finding one topic to dive into. I like that. I also me and Brandon have been talking so much about I don't know what is in the water in 2026. It seems like the level of content has leveled up a little bit. Do you find that as well? And also if someone feels like ah maybe I missed the boat, you know, like

[15:08] do I still have time? What would you say? I'd actually say that it's still early. The way that I think about it is I believe there are about five billion users of social media and I believe when I last checked it was like 200 million or so-called creators meaning that's about a 4% difference right you have literally a lot of time ahead of you and I think what happens is that we tend to look at content that has a lot of high effort behind it right so in terms of production quality especially from your guys' background you guys are very good at that so when other people see the

[15:40] type of content that you guys like and that you guys are creating they'll see and they're thinking, "Ah, it's too much. There's no way I could develop that type of skill level." But you go across Tik Tok and you go through my Instagram, you're going to start to see a lot of creators that have very low

[15:53] effort content that are still winning. So, I think it's about understanding what is your actual capacity. How much effort can you put into it? And then if you can build a strategy around it, I think it's still early. And I think a lot of business owners, I think a lot of entrepreneurs, I think a lot of people in the service providing world are starting to recognize that. And I would really encourage every single person if they have any desire to build a personal brand that 2026 is not too late. It's

[16:16] actually still early. Do you believe that someone can build a strong personal brand around a lot of lower quality or lower production value content? I believe that you have your own stylistic choices of content. So I believe there was a bodybuilder, his name was Sam Sulc, right? So we're thinking about the YouTube side just iPhone,

[16:39] right? But if you then Exactly. [ __ ] audio. Exactly. It's really like But it's so good. So good. And if you look at the best It's the best content to watch. A lot of even short form creators now are doing something quite similar. They've always been this thought process of you know what, like I know I can't compete with the high caliber in terms of production level, so I'm going to stay in my own lane. And so for me, I grew my first 3 million followers with a shattered iPhone 12. a shattered iPhone 12 that had about 64 gigabytes of storage, I had nothing on there and I

[17:09] was still creating and still able to post and build an audience. So, I definitely think that even if you just use your phone, whatever's in your pocket, um, and you have loweffort content that's still strategic, like you're telling your story, you're tell talking about the right things. Yes, I do think that you can build an audience

[17:21] around it. So, with the back end of you actually batching stuff, what does that look like? So, are you writing on Sunday and are you shooting on Monday and Tuesday and then the rest of it? like what does your week look like to be able to have this much output? Yes. So, I like to think of it as pre-production, then you have production, post-production. So, I will batch those stages. So, I will go through my script writing, let's say, for an entire Saturday afternoon, and then I'll go into my Tuesday mornings, and it's all about filming that day, and then my editing will be done on a

[17:52] Thursday. But nowadays with everything with business, it's really been really difficult to try and let's say have a consistent approach to this. A lot of times it's kind of sporadic. But what I have noticed in the past six months is if I don't set boundaries with my team in regards to when I create content that they won't know how much time and energy and effort actually goes into it. So now my mornings since 2026 has been completely blocked up to actually create content because that's like the driver of our business, right? Without organic traffic, we're going to lose in the long run. So I think making time for that is

[18:23] very important. If someone was going through a repositioning, you brought it up recently, right? they're they're switching maybe niches or career paths. What advice do you have if they've built an audience around a specific topic or niche or message and now they're repositioning into something else? How would you recommend them make that repositioning without it being like I'm neglecting or doing something completely

[18:47] different now than I was before? Cool. Can you give me an example of where they first started and where they want to head to? I can use myself as an example. I just quit being a freelance videographer and my content, personal brand, a lot of that was built around photography and videography beforehand and now it's a lot more around the podcast, traveling, um, building a personal brand and kind of what me and Brandon are doing with

[19:16] 505. Cool. That's beautiful. So, if I was to be working with you, firstly, I would say we can't just completely neglect the audience that we've built up to this point in time. So, we can't just rip the band-aid off right from the beginning and just all of a sudden completely change our content because you're going

[19:31] to hurt obviously your existing reach. Secondly, the thing that we have to do is understanding that there's going to be a gradual process that you have to commit to. If you don't commit to it all the way through, you're not going to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then ultimately, what we would do is start to on a weekly basis tell your story a lot more often. So that would be about three to four times in terms of short form content. And maybe if we're talking about once a week long form content, maybe once per month is going to be predicated around your story. And what

[19:56] we're really trying to get at is the why behind the work that you have ultimately accomplished. So for you, if it's around videography and photography, I would want to understand why you even did that in your life. There's a part to it that's skill-based. Sure. But I mean, you can scroll down, you find another person that's really qualified as a videographer to share the same exact tips. But for you, it's like what drove you? Is it having to do with your relationship? Is it having to do with your purpose? Is it having to do how you were brought up? Is it the the inspiration that you saw when you were

[20:21] younger? Talk to me about that. And if you were to adhere content more towards that and on your story to do it almost every single day, what would naturally happen is that a lot of the people in your audience right now that are more ghost followers that are watching content but not necessarily interacting, they'll come out. They'll start to be like, "Oh my goodness, I actually resonate with that. I have the exact same type of story as as you did." That type of content tends to build a lot more deeper connection to people. And then if your why stays the same, let's say when you're going to personal

[20:46] branding topics or what you guys doing with the podcast, you're like, I want to do my podcast, but I still want to do it for X, Y, and Z reason. There's a lot more connection. It's like the bridge between your content. So I always say if you want to go from A to B, right? So

[20:56] it's like one topic to another topic. You can't go from this to this immediately and expect a good return. What you have to do is find your bridge gap. And your bridge gap is ultimately the story that you're telling to help people understand the why. So you can't go from what to what. It's what, why, then what. And that ultimately tends to

[21:10] be a really good process for pivoting. I like that. That is so so good. Yeah, that is game. Write that down. Get out your notebooks. You you talk about this in your videos how there's three different styles of storytelling, right? So, we have we have or three different types of content that you're putting out. We have storytelling, we have value, and we have reach. Talk to me about each of those different buckets and how it plays into the bigger scope

[21:32] of what you do. Yes. I think when I create short form content, it tends to be a much more oversimplification than the actual process that I operate upon. And it's just simply because when I first started, if I was to talk about everything I'm about to share with you right now, it would be really difficult for me to digest that information. So, I think it's just understanding my audience profile. So, yes, you can bucket into those three, but let me buck it into something a little bit more in terms of our level and understanding of content. So, I think of content having one of four missions every single one of

[21:58] my posts. And there's attract, nurture, position, and convert. And I think that ultimately is a better way of looking at your content in terms of if you're already having an audience and how do you build upon that? So track content is top of funnel, right? It's content that you can maybe perhaps combine a viral format with and combine your own message to. So it's brand building, but it can also be telling your story because we as human beings universally we connect through struggle, right? So the ability for you to lead with struggle in your storytelling content ultimately helps people understand why they should champion you. So, for example, if you're

[22:28] creating a piece of content and immediately you're flexing your fancy watch and you're flexing your nice lavish lifestyle and you're wondering why nobody cares about you, it's it's literally because nobody cares about you. But if you if you were to break that down a bit further and you were to say, "All right, well, you had a transformation in your life that had given you that success." Talk about the before first before you introduce the successes. So, lead with pain, lead with struggle. For me, it's the fact that we came from a very struggling financial background. So, I want to do something

[22:53] for my family, but lead with something. Is it heartbreak? Is it something in terms of just a genuine desire to make something of yourself? Like start with that. So that tends to be track content, top of funnel. Then you have nurture content which is bringing your walls down and making people feel as though you're a human being on the opposite side of the screen. So it's a lot of existing struggles that you have. And there you don't need to showcase a transformation. So for example, I posted a piece of content last week that was about how when I post content, there's a different reception from strangers and

[23:20] friends and family. Strangers often times celebrate your wins much more than sometimes the people that you care about. the most, right? So, I post that piece of content without necessarily transformation, but a lot of people are thinking, "Oh my goodness, I feel the same way." Like, I feel like I'm resonating with this person on a human level. Then thirdly, you have positioning content, right? Content that actually positions you as someone of credibility, of authority. So, brand elevating moments or if you're speaking from an expert lens, right? And then ultimately, conversion content. So, when I look at all four of those, right, that's how I bucket my content from the

[23:49] way we operate today. And my always my formula for anyone starting to create content, it should be the equation of three, one, two, one. So three attract, one nurture, two position, and one convert on a weekly basis for your reels. If you're posting seven times per week, and that is ultimately a really good formula to continuously build trust and bring awareness to your brand in the

[24:08] long term. I'm not leaving the room after the pod. I'm just going to be writing. Well, I was going to say I writing, dude. I was going to say I have to re-edit my post that's going out today. Perfect. It was just flexing with the Lamborghini. It's the rental, dude. We got the rental. Dude, just here in my garage. Um, for the

[24:29] all these books behind me. Shout out if you know that. You know what's better than a book is or what's better than a car? Knowledge. Knowledge. Knowledge. Um, so funny. For the positioning. Yes. Hit me. Being seen as an authority figure. Yes. What if someone feels like they don't have anything of credibility? How can they build credibility if they're not yet in the

[24:51] position where they've achieved success? That's a good question. It's such a good question. Give him my fist bump. This is something that I get all the time. That was the bridge, by the way, of we're taking it's mental. You guys are already applying. Yeah, we're applying. So, whenever I think about positioning content, you're totally right. You have two types of people. And the way that I split up the perspective is either a journey POV or an expert POV, right? And

[25:13] they still act as positioning content. So, let me explain. If I was to be creating positioning content, let's say from the expert lens of personal branding, I may say something along the lines of, I've been posting every single day for the last six years and here are the six things that I've learned, right? But someone could also post a piece of content that says, I've been posting every single day for the last six months and I've lost 100 followers. Here's what you should not do. Right? That's journey POV. someone that hasn't necessarily achieved the other end of it, but they're still sharing their experiences and from doing it from a perspective of

[25:46] a peer, it's actually quite powerful. So, a lot of content nowadays in terms of short for content does that. They're like, is it possible to make $10,000 in a month, right? It's journey POVled content, but it still builds your positioning because you're actually doing the work. You're almost like the hamster that's being temp tested and so that the viewers don't have to go about applying it themselves. So I think whenever you're thinking about content, it's journey or expert POV for your position content and they both work

[26:09] perfectly fine. That is so interesting. It's such an interesting dynamic shift of what I think a lot of people are thinking about in regards to the content that they're that they're putting out right now. What formats do you see working the most? Like I you're someone who's constantly testing. I notice you're doing carousels, you're doing reels, you're doing like split screen. What do you notice has been successful in these last few weeks? cuz this is going to come out in a few weeks

[26:32] and I want people to be like actionable. They listen. Coming out next week. Next week. It's coming out next week. Oh my goodness. We're quick. Heck yeah. Well, I can break it. Hey, we're batching New York though, dude. That's what we're doing. I can definitely break this down for you. So, number one is I actually have a Meta partner and she helps me understand what is going to be pushed out from Meta's perspective first. So, what do they want to activate more of? So, she actually told me in 2026 they want to push out more carousels. Like that's a part of it. So now I think carousels

[27:01] have revived themselves and as long as you're actually providing value in them, treating them like a real in terms of having a hook, etc., it tends to be a good idea. So there's one component to carousels, no doubt about it. But if I was to give your audience right now a way to succeed immediately, and I have seen this work for people of all stages, walks of life, and every single time I host a free event, there's probably a thousand people afterwards that tag me

[27:24] in it, and they're all very successful. It is the silent film storytelling format and it's one that I've perfected over the course of the last three years doing it and I will literally repost the exact same content. It'll perform well after the course about maybe two months of a gap. But it's the proof that the format is working really well and it's been working well for now quite a bit of time. So I'll break this down. So there's five common features that you should always have if you're doing a silent film storytelling format. And I would love to see it on both of your

[27:50] guys' Instagrams in the nearby future. Maybe that's my post tomorrow. I'm going to scratch the Lambo. We're going to get in the lab today and we're going to write this out as soon as he leaves. So, we'll get this going. Silent film. Silent film. Silent film and storytelling format. So, here we go. So, so I'm not talking I'm not talking in

[28:05] this. No, you're not talking in this one. And there's a specific reason for that. So, when I think about top offunnel content, attract content, storytelling content, it can definitely be done with you talking. But if you think about how most viewers are watching content muted, it helps to have content that isn't necessarily talking to help you push to a wider demographic appeal. So, let me break this down in terms of the five things that you should be looking out for in terms of st silent film storytelling format. The first thing is a visual hook that actually amplifies pain. And I'll talk about that in a little bit. But the second component to

[28:35] this is having a text hook that also describes that pain. When I think about silent film storytelling format, I imagine it to be very similar to a picture book, the way that a kid would read it. So when you think about how a picture book is designed, you think about how the parent is supposed to actually be able to read the text while the kid all they're doing is actually understanding the visuals, right? It's just making that story come to life for them. That's exactly what you want to do

[28:57] for a silent film storytelling format. So you start off with text hook that describes the pain, but the visual doesn't have to actually be of that moment, right? So I do a lot of silent film storytelling format and the number one question I get is, "June, I can't post this because I don't have pictures of when I was younger at this specific moment of time." I'm like, "No, you don't need it. Like as long as you describe the emotional pain and that visual that you're first starting off with, it's more than enough, right? So what I think about is first you have the visual hook. It's it's showcasing the

[29:22] pain. Secondly, you have the text that describes the pain, right? And again, why do we start off with pain? It's because universally we as human beings, we connect with struggle, right? That's always so if someone sees struggle, they empathize immediately and think, I've been there before as well, right? They want to champion your story. Thirdly that I look for is the sound choice. So the sound choice always needs to have a rising action experience, right? You want to have something that actually anticipates a transformation or a payoff. And so that helps a lot in terms

[29:48] of building up that story. The sound you use. Yes. So like not a trending no sound. I think that you can definitely look for trending sounds that have that feature. But I use sounds that have been popular probably a year and a half ago. Like for example, for your guys' post tomorrow, if you're really doing this, you can use the Adele Skyfall trend. um that was probably prevalent 3 and a half years ago and now you can use it today and I bet you would still have success with it. So I really think this idea of trending sounds help but they're not necessary and it's more about the stylistic choice

[30:19] and does it actually tell and convey the story more than anything else. So that's the third point, right? The choice of sound. The fourth one I think about is what is the actual story arc that you're bringing about in this video, right? And so the best way that you can do this is having some form of pain that you're struggling off with, then a pursuit and then a payoff. So some form of

[30:37] transformation that you've experienced. So especially when that music drops, that's when you ultimately want to convey that transformation. So for example, if you're somebody that went from financial hardship to having a business that sustains your life, that could be a transformation. Or it could be as something as simple as let's say that you lived your life afraid of being seen and now you're more confident. That could be an example. If you were to tell me that you were struggling with burnout and now you found work that was more important to you, that's a great example. So they don't have to be ginormous transformations. They just have to be something that you've had a

[31:07] payoff for. And so those are the four things. And then fifth one, this is ultimately going to be really helpful if you want to try and take that silent film storytelling format to the next level. It's what I call a time anchor. So a time anchor means that you have some form in the beginning of showcasing a previous year or let's say even a previous month. But you do that because psychologically when someone sees that they know that you're not going to stop at 2022. Like why would you have 2022 in

[31:35] the very beginning of your video, right? They know there's something coming. And so then when you have a time or a month, and I do this all the time, my silent film storytelling format, it insinuates that there's going to be something more to come, so you should be retained for it. If you can package all five of those features, your silent film storytelling format tends to be more successful than not. And of course, it's not 100% success rate. But the better you get at it, I have seen people from parents to business owners to MIT graduates to designers to photographers, videographers to mindset coaches to financial advisors, all have success

[32:05] with this format. And immediately after my free event, every single time, cuz I go over this template, I show before and afters. And afterwards, I'll play the second example of another one that I did. And people are like, "Oh my gosh, I see it now." Immediately right after the event, there's like probably a thousand different posts of people doing the exact same format. It's their highest performing videos. And it happens because they understand the psychology of good content. So that is something I would recommend for you guys if you're

[32:26] serious about it to to execute on. Done deal. Cool. Do you want to you getting your ticket? Yeah. Do you have Do you want a ticket? Do you want a ticket to the moon? Cuz we're on the moon tomorrow with the with the with the text on screen though. Um you're not keeping the same text on screen during the whole video. It's

[32:45] changing to tell the story. Exactly. So that's part of the story arc. And yes, if we were to decipher this, and it's a fantastic question, so I'll explain a little bit more. In terms of the story art component, you definitely have to have it readable. When people think short form content, they think speed, right? But they lose nuance when they only bucket it that to be that generalized. Actually, it's speed, but also being readable. So, if you look at silent film storytelling formats, the ones that are bad are the ones that have like 18 words on one frame. It's impossible to read and then move to the next frame because then it's

[33:16] jarring, right? It feels like you can't keep up with the story. So yes, the story actually changes and you're narrating it with that text. So the text needs to evolve. But the big part to this is your texts have to be tight and concise enough where you can get the feeling expressed without having to overexlain yourself. So if you really want help with this is I would go first on a Google doc and write this out. And ultimately if you wanted to actually import it into your video before you actually export and get it ready to post is actually like try to read it aloud, not in your brain. read it aloud and see

[33:47] if you can get every single sentence out before the frame shifts. If you can, good speed, good cadence. And if you realize you can't, a really good practice is to go to AI. And that's a very good way to use AI to help you try to make your information a little bit more concise where you can remove the fluff because some people are not really good writers. So, it helps to have something like that to help keep your message more clear and concise. But if you can do that, yes, you're supposed to convey a message that changes throughout to kind of explain the story, but that

[34:12] often works well. I'm excited for this one. This is going to be fun tomorrow. Something me and Braden were talking about literally last night was trial reels. I've tried one. I got you. Didn't do super hot. Got maybe three interviews. And then Braden said, "Oh, you didn't see uh Instagram CEO said you can't just repost an Instagram post and like double down or double dip on your

[34:34] engagement." I just reposted the same video. So, for trial reels, because I've seen so many videos and podcasts and people talking about how trial reels can be super successful for creators, is there an art to trial reels or like Yeah. Have you found success with them? Oh my goodness. Yes, there's definitely an art to it. And I can break down the entire history of it so I can showcase why it's much harder today. So, originally when Tri reels came out, it was Meta's mission to try and make content more accessible to more creators, right? So if you make content for those that are watching that don't

[35:06] know what trial reels are, it's content that only gets shown to non-f followers. So imagine the most of the population, they're not posting because of afraid uh a fear of judgment, right? So if you post to non-followers, it gives people a higher incentive to start. So they first started off like that and they actually allowed your post to literally go to nonfollowers, which means that the whole point of social media is to try and

[35:27] grow, right? It was like a great hack. So all these really successful creators actually all they started doing was double dipping on their engagement. So all they would do is post 10 15 previous content and just giving it a new life and it would go to only non-f followers. So then these people were blowing up like 50,000 70,000 100,000 followers

[35:43] used to work. It used to work exactly the way that you were talking about exactly the way that you're talking about and then meta start to recognize all right this is probably not the way that we wanted it to like hold on that exactly those the Spider-Man it wasn't their intention to do it that way. So they started cracking down on best practices like no other. So now they're so good in terms of understanding if it's any type of repo. So I mean like used to be would change just your hook and it would be considered a new piece of content. No. If even if you change

[36:14] the hook and majority of your bureau stays the same and your text stay the same, they'll crack it. They'll be like, "Nope, it's it's a repost." That's probably like what you did done, right? Something similar. No, I ripped the same exact same one. Yes. But I was we were talking I go So you would you would make completely separate double pieces of content to Is that what I'm hearing? But you can think about this much more strategically from a pre-production standpoint. And you can actually create a lot of volume by just adding this to be a part of your content creation process. So now when we

[36:42] create content, it's about understanding derivatives. It's almost like AB testing, but you're actually AB testing the entire formula of the content. So for example, if I'm doing a split screen content, I'm still going to use as a trial reel, but I have to change up my narrative around that. It's like, all right, maybe I start off with a different visual frame and let me change the entire story of it. So, it's not about, let's say, my confidence increasing, but it's about my fiscal success, right? So, then I look at that, I'm like, "All right, let me create a different piece of content." But the

[37:07] entire format is pretty much the same. You're just rearranging some of the text in your messaging. But that is the new trial reel strategy in order for you to actually make sense of repurposing, but actually give your trial reels a fair shot of being successful. Dude, we're locking in on trial reels. But there's a big part to this, too. What you're saying is interesting. So, trial reels aren't meant to be consistently successful the way that are supposed to be on your main feed. So, don't get disheartened. If you post a 100 trial reels and only one of them do well, that's significant because they're all to non-followers. So, the amount of

[37:35] new followers that are increased by that one post is exponentially higher than anything on your main reel page. So, it actually is very normal and I've seen this across creators that have millions of followers and are just getting started. There is no consistency. It's like I'll get trial reels that have 18,000 views and another trial re gets like 6.2 million views. But, it's that drastic change where if you keep producing volume, one of them is going to hit and the amount of increase that

[37:56] you'll get in your traffic is worth it. And you find that a real you find that a trial reel that gets 6.2 mil versus on sorry you find that a trial reel that gets 6.2 million views versus a regular reel that you post on your to your followers the trial re is going to generate you a

[38:15] lot more followers. Yeah. If you do it properly and add a call to action to it that's sensible that's aligned. No doubt about it. Because again, if it's going out to non-followers, right, if I think about my content on a regular basis, we're looking at maybe 60% to non-f followers, 40% to existing followers, right? If you're going 100% to non-followers, it does definitely help if the content piece hits. And that's why it's super important that it's integrated into your strategy because you're only looking for two of those to hit a month, two of those to hit per two weeks, but it' be well worth the time and energy you invested early

[38:47] on. So, that's something I definitely recommend if you guys are doing it. Do you ever get down now on the numbers given the size of your account? Do you look at your account and then go to some of the things that you've done and you're like, damn, like why did this not resonate? Or do you look at it because

[38:59] you're you're an engineering background. Do you look at it as purely data and say, okay, well, maybe the hook was bad here. Like you look at the retention graph. What does that process look like after seeing something didn't go as well as you thought it did? Yeah. I actually have something internally with the team that if we don't flop at least once a week, we're not trying hard enough. Meaning that you have to flop. You have to you have to post content that is outside of your comfort zone because without it you will never actually take it to the next level. And I've always found it to be I

[39:28] give you a very specific story. When I first started creating content I created content about fitness and fashion because I thought that's what cool people did. And so I did that in my basement. I was literally creating styling videos and it was really embarrassing but I was doing it. And when I was going from that to studentled content, it was not purposeful. Like in that period of time, I just stumbled upon content related to studies and I realized there's a large bulk of audience that were gravitating towards it. I mean, study like content is not a cool thing to do and it's certainly not

[39:57] a popular thing to do back then, right? And so I think when you can allow yourself to experiment on a weekly basis and I always think like 80% should be proven formats, 20% could be experimentation that allows you to keep growing and also ensures that you're not getting so caught up in those vanity metrics and you're actually using those metrics like you're saying for data that's pushing you in the right

[40:15] direction. So I think it's okay to flop. I think it's necessary to flop. I think it's necessary to lose followers. I think it's necessary for you to shift content. I think it's necessary for you to show up one day and feel like you posted something that's horrible. Like I think that's all part of that creation journey. And I would be lying if I said

[40:29] that didn't impact me on a human level. But you start to realize in the greater street sk uh scheme of things that it's important that you actually allow yourself to experiment and fail. Talk to us about a period of time where you may have been losing followers or you may have noticed a downward trend because I think

[40:45] we've been creating now for 10 years. It's up and down. You might have a really hot month or you might have something that goes to a million people and like the impact that those videos have is ridiculous like that we all know and those listening that have had something go to that broad of an audience like it's crazy the impact that it has for sales for inbound inquiries

[41:02] and all of the above. But what do you talk to the team internally about when those things are happening and what does that roundup look like and what are you what are you talking to yourself about? What are you thinking about in those moments? Yeah. So I think about the creative growth model and something that I developed to give me sanity but also has given sanity to a lot of the students that I work for. Um and a big part to this is understanding it's never a linear progression no matter which creator you are. It's always these huge ups and downs and ultimately if you're good at it you'll have these ups and

[41:31] downs and you'll go to the top right corner of the graph and you're growing over the course of let's say four five six years but in between you're having these huge es and flows right so even when I am having a very successful month I get 100 million impressions on my Instagram I'm thinking to myself hey so many this is awesome but I know that we're going to have a plateau soon it's going to happen it's okay like we should expect it we shouldn't get too high on ourselves in that moment and then when we're having bad moments where it's we're losing followers it's like it's

[41:57] Hey, it's part of it. It's because there's constant dynamics in terms of let's say the algorithm shifts to understanding who you're appealing to in terms of your content strategy. And for me to understand that mentally that if I'm having a good moment, that there's going to be a bad moment that follows gives me a lot of confidence to know that that thing's going to happen, I'm going to be prepared for it. And then when I'm in it, I don't panic. I'm like, it's cool. I've been here before. I know what to do. So, um, there's been many

[42:18] moments I've lost a lot of followers. I'll even give you a very specific example. So, in the course of the last year and a half, two years, I had a very important conversation with my co-founder. And my co-founder is the owner of GenFlow, one of the largest UK agencies. And so, he's been around creators for the last eight, nine years, has helped them generate over $300 million in total. So, he knows what he's talking about. And so, we had a big conversation, and I'm always eager to learn from people that have done it

[42:43] first. And so, for him, he sat me down. He said, "June, if you're at 5.3 million followers right now, you have to look me in the eye and be okay going down to 3.2 2 million. And I said, "Why?" I was like, "Of like why why would we do that?" He's like, "If we're making it that large shift from, let's say, student demographic or working professional demographic to entrepreneurs and creatives, we're not going to have as many creatives and entrepreneurs, but you have to be able to stick through with this plan long enough for us to see the fruits of our labor in terms of the creative college

[43:07] standpoint." And so, it took me about six hours to get on board with that. And then we did. And so, once I um actually agreed upon it, it took me about I don't know about the last year and a half. probably lost in the span of that like 200,000 300,000 followers in that span of time and at the same time we're getting new followers that in the right audience demographics and experiences like that. So for me it's like what are the metrics or barometers for success and my growth from 5.3 to 5.2 to 5.4 doesn't really have any sense of my own success. It's like how much is created

[43:41] college making? Are we making the impact in the right spaces? And so Creative College in the last 9 months did $3.6 $6 million and it's just right off the cuff, right? And I mean, we're running a digital product, so a lot of that is profit. So, that gives me indication like, all right, we're headed the right direction. So, there's something that I do with all the students that I work with. I always say that no matter how many followers you have, you actually don't have that many followers. So, for me, if it's at 5.5, I will tell every brand that I work with, hey, I have 5

[44:04] million followers. And if you have three million followers, I'll tell everyone that you should tell uh your partners that you have 2.5, 2.6 million. If you have 5,000 followers, I'll say that you have 2 and a half thousand, 1,000 followers. And what that does for you is it's stops you from stressing about all the small nuance changes because it really does not matter. And it gives you the freedom to experiment and lose more followers by trying out more, showing up more. And that ultimately is the unlock from 5,000, 10,000 to 15,000, 20,000. So I've always operated that way. I think today I probably have like 5.2 million

[44:35] on Instagram, but in my brain I've had 5 million since like a year ago. And I want to keep that in my brain so I don't change the way that I operate. and we can um ensure that the barometers for success that are important to us remain priority. How did you decide to switch this with your co-founder to completely switch the model of like you're you're 21, you're making really good money in college, then you graduate, start this thing like talk me through that process of building

[45:00] this out and what that process was like. And should should someone sell right off the bat? Do you think as they're building up should they have something that someone could potentially raise their hand for? I think if you have a really high skill level in a specific domain, sure, you can do high ticket coaching right off the bat. Even if you have I had worked with a creator named Kenzie and she had 5,000 followers and she was making hundreds of thousands of dollars because she was charging for a high ticket, high skill experience. But I think majority of the population isn't that place. And I think it's much more

[45:30] often the case that it's better to grow your audience first, right? To actually practice the skill of content creation because I always think about it like this. I think who cares if you made $10,000. Who cares if you made $100,000, $150,000. If you do that one time, it really means nothing over the course of the next six years. You want repeated success. And it's really difficult to do that if your audience isn't growing, if you haven't understood the skill of content creation yet. So, one of the more common demographics that we have inside of Creative College are coaches that have made the first 50,000, $150,000, $300,000. Like, I have

[46:02] saturated my existing audience. It's because you have 25,000 followers, 20,000 followers, and you sold the same thing over and over again. Of course, you're going to oversaturate your existing audience. So 99% of the population, I think, is better off building an audience first, understanding the skill of content creation, understanding my four missions of content from a track, nurture, position, and convert. And naturally, you start to make sales that way. And I have seen this where even with my own offering. So that mentorship program that I had initially after my first studentled products, I had this mentorship program for about nine months. And it was based on my

[46:32] neuroengineering background and I was doing human performance in terms of mentorship. I done this for about eight nine months did similar amounts of money in terms of my student le products and then ultimately retired that product to do creator college. We took it links out of my bio. We took we never shot an email to that um group of people at all and there were still people signing up on the back end of that like six months down the line. We're like wait this is a problem because we're not actually marketing that. We're not fulfilling upon that the way that we want to. So we'll refund them and things of that

[46:59] nature. But it just shows you the power of doing an attract nurture position convert understanding that skill standpoint. Then your other question in regards to how did you know to make a shift like that? I think naturally I did not want to be the creator talking about college and studies and education after graduating. I felt like that was not the cool thing to do and it didn't feel aligned to me. I felt like I would grow really complacent in it. And so basically the whole conversation first started off with where do we take this upon your graduation right? Do you want to keep doing educational student led

[47:27] content? Do you want to keep selling your learning system book or do you want to operate in a different sphere? I want to operate in a different sphere. Then it's set next of like all right where can you actually operate that you have a skill level in it became content creation and personal branding and entrepreneurship and so that became the huge shift. It was an understanding of my long-term vision as a human was more important than what was currently working and we needed to make that

[47:46] shift. For someone who is creating and they they are dialing in their content creation process and they're starting to see success. How do you recommend they start to monetize? Like, is that something you teach in Creator College? Yes, no doubt about it. I I think it definitely depends on the person. If we're thinking that they have sub 10,000 followers and they have a high skill set, we say high ticket coaching is probably your best bet or some sort of consultation because you'd make a lot of money and you can actually predicate it around your skill. Then, if you have someone that's growing from an audience standpoint, we always often say you

[48:18] should have digital products that meet your audience where they are. So, it's about having a value stack. Ultimately, it's something like you do it yourself, we do it with you or we do it for you. And it's like those prongs of digital products. So, at the highest, you have one-on-one coaching, but you should have low ticket digital products. You should have freebies, lead magnets, you should connect them with many chat. You should

[48:35] have volumes of new leads all the time. Then you have things like, let's say, cohorts like what we're currently running with creative college. I know that you guys are running as well. So, that's what we call let's say like the branch above where it's like we do it with you, right? And then do it for you is more of that agency model and things of that nature. So we still take on maybe a few clients where they're much bigger creators and behind the scenes will help them operate in terms of their businesses from understanding their content side. Um so I think it depends on which stage you are as a creator but

[49:02] I think it's all about understanding the landscape of digital products and almost plugging your skill set into that to think where can we actually make the most amount of money now. But in all honesty, I always find the creators that are willingly delaying gratification with that wins in the long term the most because they have the willingness to actually grow the audience first and those are the people that always have a huge pool of audience members to actually turn into clients and leads and things of that nature. So um that's what

[49:26] I would say for that. You've called a personal brand the most valuable asset over a resume, over a degree, over anything. Why is that? Because a personal brand is your public reputation. It's the way that the world perceives you. But for generations before, we had to rely on teachers, managers, bosses to advocate for us. But for the very first time, you have access to one piece of content that can reach millions of people that shares exactly who you are, what you stand for, and what you have to offer. And if you do that effectively, you will never chase another opportunity again. You will attract all of them. Right? So, I think

[49:58] about everything that I've been so blessed with for the last six years. I've never outreached for a single one of those. Right? From being an investor into Newonic to starting Creative College to having my books, it's always been inbounded opportunities. And so when I think about the college kid that has no money in the current moment that are is trying to figure out something for themselves, it's like build a personal brand. It'll only help you in your career. When I think about that business owner and that's trying to get more leads for their business, I'm like build a personal brand. It'll only help you. When I think about that athlete,

[50:23] I'm like when your career is over, can you have something to rely on? If you're designer, can it help? I I can't think of a person that wouldn't benefit from a personal brand. And that's why I believe it's the powerful asset that everyone, if they want to, should build. You put out a video recently. Yes. And you titled it the new way to build a

[50:41] personal brand. Yes. In 2026. What has changed and what is different in this year than previous years? What's interesting is that there's a huge focus still in the short form realm, but it's almost been doubled down upon in terms of the most successful creators that I know personally. And what I mean by that is there's this there's always been this argument where long form content is better for depth and also better for human connection. And there's a lot of truth to that. But I think about this in the sense where now that I'm exposed to

[51:11] so much of this data behind the scenes. If a creator posts a long form content, a YouTube video once a week, it's a 15-minute video and let's say that in that 15-inute video, they have 50% retention. So you're looking at about a 7 and a half minute watch time, right? You look at that and then if you think about if you posted a minute and 10 second short form content every single day over the course of seven days, I actually think you're more relevant. I think that you're showing up in front of their eyes a lot more often and you can share different parts of your

[51:37] perspective a lot more and it actually helps. And then if you draw that traffic into your long form content, it can only help you in the long run. So it's very fascinating. A lot of the creators that we work with, some of the largest, right, in terms of behind the scenes consultations, what used to be more conversations around like, how can we start our YouTube to be the thing, it's like a lot of them are now going being like, "How can I start my short form content? How do I build a team around that?" Because like we need to get more volume out and now with trials, you can only imagine

[52:03] then come out with more features that make it more accessible for creators. So, I think in 2026, short form content is still king. I think right now it helps to actually if you're just starting out to put your eggs in that basket. Get really good at iterations of that content first and then put your learnings into YouTube then keep investing into that because if you post once a week in long form content you're having 52 posts in a year to try and learn from. You post a short form content at least once a day. That's 365

[52:30] iterations that you're learning from. And I think it helps in terms of understanding story arcs to features the formats and all things like that. I think that's true though too because you think about it. YouTube is such a higher barrier to entry too. It's not like you can just for the most part unless you're very very intelligent. You have

[52:45] something crazy that you're giving them. It's like you can't just pop up your phone and become a very successful YouTuber for the most part 99% of them. So it's like you get so many reps and then you can take that skill over onto YouTube. How often are you posting on Tik Tok? In all honesty, I think that now the algorithms have changed so much to the point that Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts all have very different short form algorithms. Meaning that one post on certain platforms will not perform well on another. In the beginning, you used to be able to

[53:14] repurpose across and you can just fine. So, that is a big thing for me in 2026 that I want to bring on more people because like up to this point, I've been ideating, filming, editing, and posting all of my content for the last six years. So now I want to be sure that I bring on people onto the team from the content side that can actually allow my time and tention to go to other platforms like a YouTube, like a Tik Tok. So at this current moment I'm posting almost every single day on Tik Tok, but they're usually the same exact post from Instagram and they don't

[53:41] perform well on Tik Tok as much as they used to. And so I hope that as I can bring more people on and navigate my attention to some of those areas of weakness of mine that I can keep building out that portfolio. still posting daily, maybe twice, three times per day on Tik Tok still works just fine. Whereas on Instagram, I often find

[53:57] the sweet spot is about once per day. With Tik Tok specifically, what are you trying to change from what's not working right now? Like what is your thesis on what will end up working for you to follow out the rest of this year? Yeah, it's a very good point. I do believe that Tik Tok, it's so interesting that it's headed this way, but it is much raw, more raw straight to camera has been doing so

[54:19] well. Yeah. and less editing, less cuts, just more. And I think the reality of why that's the case is because you can produce a lot more volume on Tik Tok without being punished for it. And so what is normal on actually a lot of Tik Tok creator accounts today is that it's not as consistent of an engagement rate as an Instagram would be. And because of Instagram's algorithm in that way, you're much more specific and curated in terms of the content that you're producing. Whereas Tik Tok allows you to have much more volume. So you can post a lot more of those naturalistic content knowing that even if this one flops,

[54:50] it's okay have like three others coming that day. So that's a big part to that, but that requires time and energy to try and actually create content for that specifically. So what is ultimately going to be the next step is to take a lot of the systems that I have for Instagram that I really enjoy about it and then try to bring that onto the world of Tik Tok where I have more energy and time to produce them, but keep it in a much more raw unedited fashion. And hopefully to see that type of success rate increase would be probably the first step. But there's so

[55:19] many talents out there in terms of all platforms. And even when I watch Tik Tok, there's some really awesome creators. I look at them like they're phenomenal. Like their ability to storytell just with their voice, without any B-roll, without any music choice is just brilliant. So I'm going to study them just as much as I study Instagram creators currently today and do my 7 by7 practices and see my favorite Tik Tok creators and see what I can do. Um, but

[55:39] that will be my first step for sure. It's crazy though, but I I would love to talk to you after you've done a little bit of studying on Tik Tok because it seems like there's a lot less different formats from successful creators on Tik Tok. It almost like the higher up wellness dude. He's just iPhone camera. He has one format. He just talks to the camera and like that's

[56:00] it. No text, no nothing. It's super interesting. Yeah, it's whereas I feel like most of the very successful creators on Instagram do have multiple formats and same with YouTube, they at least have like two or three that they're rotating between. It's like you see Ryan Tran the I tried like you know it's like it's consistent. I'm trying to do X, I'm trying to do Y, I'm trying to do Z. So even with us on TikTok, what we noticed back in 20 when we were still living at 505, any singular podcast clip that we posted 10K plus was like guaranteed. It

[56:31] was like a rocket ship every time. Million, half a million, quarter million. And then there was like a very noticeable shift, I think, when so many more accounts got into the platform. Like you were we were there at a gold rush era. And that's what really helped the pod in the very beginning get kicked off, which is so interesting. But now I feel like the the posts that go above 10k plus, like in that realm, it's almost sporadic to me. I I watch them back and I'm like I'm not really understanding like why this one and not these other four that I thought were even better which is so

[57:02] interesting. And I think it is just going to take us producing much more volume and studying and seeing what's work cuz that's the craziest part about social media. Something that worked for us a year ago might not work today but something that worked like a couple years ago might still be relevant today. You know, I think something that I always always say is that you guys are really great podcasters and I bet if I was to hang out with you guys on a daily basis, I bet your conversations are revolving around podcasts. I bet your conversations revolve around YouTube content. I bet you're looking at YouTube

[57:32] creators all the time. You're spending your time and energy in that way. I can almost guarantee that if you put that type of energy and time into Instagram, you guys would be phenomenal Instagram creators as well. I think the truth is is that all of us as creators want to be massive across all platforms, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to pick and choose where you want your priority to reside. And there's no right or wrong answer in that regard. So, I bet if the three of us was like, you know what, we're going to start a Tik Tok podcast. And actually, for the next

[57:58] like year, all we're going to do is become really good Tik Tok creators, I bet we'd be able to do it, right? It's just about the trade-offs and what does your business actually need and what do you enjoy? And so, it would be interesting and about I'm sure I'll text you in like two months from now be like, "Hey, so I just started posting more Tik

[58:10] Toks. this is what I'm starting to find. And we'll be able to kind of bounce ideas off each other. [ __ ] yeah. Yeah. But I think that's the whole premise of content. It's like you choose the lane that you think is going to help you and you enjoy. Stay in it. And then as you build out your team, try to expand across those, but take your time doing it cuz it works well if it's

[58:25] working. If a creator was to come to you and say, "J, I've been posting every day and I'm not growing and I've been going every day for freaking six to nine months." Yeah. Is it just because they haven't taken enough time to study the platform and study their past posts and really dissect like what is working and what's not working not only for themselves but

[58:50] for other creators. There's definitely a truth to that. No doubt about it. There is also a timing component to it. I think it's okay. And I always empathize with creators, especially if they're putting in the time and energy to post that often. The first thing I say is like, "Oh my gosh, congratulations. like you've done something that most people will never do. Like most people are afraid of being seen. You just did something really massive for yourself. So I start with empathy and then I recognize, okay, let me actually see their content and see how they're progressing. And usually there is no progression, right? And that

[59:19] often just says that you don't know how to study it the way that you've just claimed it to be, right? So I think I've always said this. I think volume always will help you as a creator, right? The more proof you have, but it has to be thoughtful quantity to derive quality. It can't just be quantity. And I think a

[59:36] lot of people think like post every day. I'm just gonna pick up my phone for 10 minutes and film something. Hopefully it does well. But what's really cool is and it this fires me up. And I get so much of a rush in terms of my energy. There's this guy named Ed and he's an MIT graduate, works as the senior director of Microsoft startups, and he came to me. I met him at Red Bull. So basically, I worked with Red Bull as one of their global judges for this huge entrepreneurship competition. But he was there and I met him and he's like, "Hey June, like I

[1:00:04] want to start a personal brand. Like what should I do?" And he's like, "I I'm really not sure if Instagram is even the right medium for me. I don't know how to do it and I've never been on video before." And I was like, "Just try it. Like let's see if we can do this." He actually ended up joining Creator

[1:00:18] College down the line when we launched. And he's one of the coolest stories that I can ever tell because if you go across his page, you will look at and be like, "How the heck does he have 100,000 plus followers?" He went from zero and literally his first post in the program. We told him to post a real. We looked at his account and it was a main feed post just he didn't know that there was a reals tab. Like he didn't know you could click on that thing, right? He's like a 40year-old man that has never used Instagram before and now he's posting and in the span of the last four months

[1:00:44] together he has grown from zero to 100,000 plus followers. Right now he's launching a book in the next few weeks. But what's really cool is if you look at his content, I'll show it to you guys after. It's literally just the same exact format, hyper optimized based on messaging and packaging that we've looked at together. And now he's winning. So that gives me hope where I'm like, it's actually early. Like even if you have any type of resilience, any type of desire or passion to do this, as long as we can identify a few formats you can tackle on, you can win. So usually if they're posting for that long

[1:01:12] and they haven't seen any type of success, it probably means they're not intentional about the content that they're curating. Yeah. God, this is like this just blowing my mind. And I'm sure that the people listening are like you're writing, you're taking notes because it's been such an eye openening conversation behind I mean you're you're such a practitioner, you know, you're really not just I'm not you're not a creator first. You are so much in the back end and obviously a brilliant creator, but it's like you have all these different checkpoints before something actually does end up on someone's feed, which I think is just such a different approach to the way

[1:01:42] that a lot of the traditional creators look at the stuff. And I I think even we've discussed this over the last 6 months if we've been posting much more. It's like it's not just us flipping your camera on and talking and saying something that you think is good. It's like this pre-production process is so important. And it's like it's what we do for our clients and taking it into your

[1:02:02] personal content is so so so important. And that is what I respect about you too a ton. You guys are practitioners. You're not theorists. And I think that my greatest pet peeve in this space is that there are a lot of people that haven't done it themselves that the only way that they've grown is by teaching other people how to do it. And you'll hear some of the things that they proclaim to be true. You're thinking they've never been creating content long enough to even know what that's supposed to mean. And that is where I start to get a lot of negative feelings only because my students at Creative College

[1:02:34] have been scammed by those individuals, right? They've gone through their programs and they go, they're listening to all this stuff and they're like, "Wait, what? I didn't even know that you needed a message. I didn't even know that there these different formats. I didn't know if you had to study content this way. I didn't know that you could package in these ways." And so, I've always said that if I don't do it like a hundred times over myself, then I can never talk about it unless I'm confident in that experience. Another part to that is even with the business standpoint when creative college launched for our

[1:03:00] first three cohorts and this is going to be insane. The first three cohorts that we launched we had about 130 people in each of them. I physically closed all 130 people in DMs myself without any other help. Could we have brought on a sandals team a lot earlier? No doubt about it. But I thought it was so important that I was close to the customer experience, understanding what should I put in my VSSL because if I don't know how to talk to them in DMs, I'm certainly not going to be able to produce a VSSL for eight minutes that's

[1:03:26] going to convince them to buy, right? So, I think everything in terms of leadership to content, you have to be a practitioner if you want long-term success. And so far, that's held up true. What does the team look like now? Now that we've generated really consistent revenue, like you're starting to build that out. You know, you have an EA. What are other folks that you've brought onto the team that have really impacted what

[1:03:46] you're doing? Yeah, it's a huge part. I've learned that hiring is a huge skill that I'm going to have to develop over time too. At this point, we have about 17 people globally from people in London to Dubai and some people here in LA. And in that regard, we have the team split in a multitude of different ways. We have, let's say, the actual fulfillment side

[1:04:06] of creative college and the VIP program. How many coaches do we have, right? and how can we train them to feel really confident that they know what they're talking about and they have to be trained on my material, right? It can't just be like any type of person. But there's another part to this where we

[1:04:18] we've brought on really good experts. So, in terms of people that have worked with some of the top creators in the industry from a social first standpoint, we're looking at that and we've brought them on. So, they've served as coaches. Then, we're talking about like the operation side of things. And holy cow, when you have 17 different people, you wake up to probably like a 100 plus new messages in your Slack that you have to get to. And because of the time differences, I wake up at like 4:30, 5

[1:04:40] a.m. It's already an insane inbox. You're you're a 4:30 a.m. wake up. I mean, so the team is so London team's 5 hours ahead of me in uh Philadelphia and now South Carolina. And then my co-founder, Sean, is eight hours ahead of me in Dubai. So if I'm not up, then we missed out on quite a big portion of

[1:04:56] our um workday. What time are you going to bed? I I'm gonna be fully honest. Last year, I've not been healthy whatsoever. I've probably been sleeping at like 12 and just getting four hours of sleep and working through it. I don't think that's healthy. and I just got um my my lab blood work and stuff. So, I'm trying to get much more healthier this upcoming year. But nowadays, hopefully I'm

[1:05:14] sleeping a little bit earlier than that. Probably like 10:00, 10:30 if I can do it. But it just had to be that way, I think. And now, because we have some awesome people on the team, like for example, Shitika, I'm sure she's going to be watching this. She's like head of our operations and she's a powerhouse and that has saved me so much time and energy from a lot of the day-to-day tasks and things of that nature. And I think as we operate more on the content production side, so a big part of this upcoming year is actually hiring people to help me on the content side. I'm

[1:05:40] still going to be in charge of it, but up to this point in time, since I've been doing all of it myself, it takes me like eight hours throughout entire week to like trying to think about these ideas and and to develop them myself. So I hope that as we plug those people into place that the production side, the content in terms of the marketing and the fulfillment side will be taken care of and I could focus on what I really enjoy, which is the creative side, knowing how to actually message and position creative college. I really like like the mix of like business and also

[1:06:03] like um the creative side like like right in the middle. Like I don't have a good creative expertise. I don't have a lot of business expertise but I like like sitting in the middle of that. Um so hopefully the team as we build it out will allow me to sustain that. That's where the pod sits.

[1:06:16] Seriously right there. Yeah. Split the difference. Um find the bridge, dude. Find the bridge. Find the bridge with hiring more people. Yes. Will you try to increase the number of pieces of content that you put out or is it just I like the cadence that I'm going at right now. We're seeing success with it. Let me just have it take up less of my time so that I can focus more

[1:06:46] on creator college. Yes. So, more of the latter, but differing on platform. So, Instagram and YouTube, I like the cadences for it. Tik Tok. I would love to spend more time creating new contents for, but really it's it's the thought of how can I get more consistent quality out and how can I ensure that my time and energy isn't held up on areas that I don't need it to be. I'll be fully honest and you guys know this from the cohort sty. You can please tell me more about your experiences too. When people think about fulfilling, they think about like the one-hour call schedule that you have

[1:07:16] programmed in your calendar. That one hour usually turns into like a 5 hour conversation between me and like 50 other people, right? And I love that though like that that's what excites me and I love working with people and being close to that experience. So I want more of my time and energy to allow me to work with those people at depth and then ultimately hopefully allow things like the podcast. We want to launch one upcoming this year in March. So ultimately hopefully my time and attention go to those things that will move the needle for us and the team can help me take care of the things that

[1:07:42] I've been doing up to this point in time. If you need help with podcast we can call us. Yeah. I was just saying I was just saying I'm probably going to be texting you guys and likewise if you guys need anything I'm I'm a call away. It's been I was telling June when you were in the bathroom earlier it's like this has been the best decision I've

[1:07:59] ever made in my life by by far bar none. I feel the exact same way. people that we've been able to chat with and and the impact that you get to have that is really not possible unless you have a show like this because like you got to think not only am I learning a ton from this conversation, you're learning a ton from this conversation, but you have all these people from all around the world who get to listen and then a lot of them end up telling a friend and that friend ends up listening and then they tell a friend and it's like this crazy domino effect that you

[1:08:28] never realize happens and I don't think it happens as much with short form and I don't really I think it happens tons with YouTube because I think you have a lot of YouTube creators who have audiences but they're like in a silo. They don't know that there's tons of other people out there like them. At least that's what it felt like when I was coming up with YouTube and you'd find these people but I'm like there's not really like a community here where I could talk to them. They're in the comments but like I didn't feel like I was really a part of something like that. And I feel like a podcast you

[1:08:54] really do have a tight-knit group of people cuz they're like I listen to this person for hours. They spend more time on a pod, think about this, than they do with their closest friends. Think about that. And a lot of them spend more time on a pod than they do with their own families. If you're listening every single week, think about how often or how long the conversations are with your your significant other or not your

[1:09:13] significant other, but more your Yeah. Yeah. More your parents. I barely Yeah. I just my office. No, but like think about the how long the conversations are with your parents, especially as you get older and you leave your parents home and then your closest friends, you don't see them as much. then they get married, they have kids. It's like you're not seeing each other as much. So the conversation that you end up having with a podcast like team is really a ton of time. It's like nothing else on the

[1:09:38] internet. And I want to say what you guys are doing in terms of your impact probably goes way beyond even what you can physically imagine because especially in the personal branding landscape. Imagine my audience is watching this, right? A lot of them are creators. What is going to happen? They're going to take your guys' knowledge that now they found in your podcast, extrapolate it, do it for their own audiences. So that domino cascade is insane. So imagine the information that you guys providing on this podcast. Yeah. Might be helping like you're talking about maybe a,000, 2,000, 10,000 people immediately. But the downstream effect of the creators

[1:10:11] creating more content because of things that you guys shared about. That's such a cool experience. Yeah, it's crazy to think about. I didn't even think about that. I also think it helps people see you in a different light. I think you show up a certain way, whether it's on YouTube or Instagram or Tik Tok. This is very, of course, we're asking questions and we want to be professional and all that kind of stuff, but we're still cracking jokes and it's like more casualish conversation and so I'm excited to hear your experience once

[1:10:38] you start the podcast. Yes, sir. Um because I think it'll help your audience see you in a different light. Not even that you're like gonna be talking about necessarily different things that you're talking about on Instagram or YouTube, but just the way you speak and like it's just a completely different format than on

[1:10:55] YouTube and Instagram. You you brought up earlier that you come from an immigrant household, right? You you grew up with just your dad. Your mom and dad had divorced. You didn't come from a ton of money and you come into money at a quite a young age. What has your relationship been like with money as you've come into more income and more people around you, more people asking you of certain things? What has that relationship been like? And what's your advice to folks that are in that camp that maybe they don't come from a lot of money and they, you know, they make

[1:11:25] something amazing as an entrepreneur? That might have been my favorite question that I've been asked in probably like the last nine months because it's so personal to me. meaning that I really have in the beginning a lot of guilty experiences when it comes to it because I would think about how hard my dad worked and then I am literally making more an hour than he does in probably a month and it's crazy now to be able to say that but when I look at my dad I go back home and I'm very close to him I talk to him every single day it it originally made me feel

[1:11:55] very very guilty but then something happened where I start to recognize once I faith is a huge thing for me so for me when I go into scripture and I'm praying a lot. It g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g gives me a lot of peace and understanding and purpose. And a big part to this was understanding that money just amplifies who you are. It just amplifies your qualities. And if you are a selfish person, an egotistical person, it will show up in how you spend your money. My accountant says this all the time. He's like, June, you have to

[1:12:20] spend more money. Like you're not spending enough. And it's a problem. And I'm like, I've never heard that problem my entire life. And he's like, you don't have enough expenses. Like we're we're we're paying so much in taxes. I'm like, I'm cool with it. Like I don't need to change the way that I live. like I don't really care for those things. And so I pay a lot of money in taxes and I'm like cool. Like it is part of it. I don't mind doing it. And a really cool part to this is I've been able to do things for my dad and my family that I could have

[1:12:43] never dreamt of at my age. So I mean in this probably time I've probably gifted my dad well over $250 $300,000. I've been able to take care of like when my sister moved I was able to help her with all that stuff. Pay for fees, pay for new furniture. When my brother moved I was able to do that. Things like that make you realize like wow cool. like

[1:13:01] money just amplifies who you are. Another big part to this is now I get to carry around a lot of cash and when I carry around cash you get to tip a lot of people and that makes people happy because my dad I I don't know how to explain this in a way that will hit home at people but if you are immigrants out

[1:13:14] there you'll know exactly what I mean. My dad was looked down upon my entire life. Like I would go to Home Depot with him because he's a contractor and every single time there would be workers that would scoff at him because he couldn't understand what they were saying. And I was there at the age of seven, eight seeing this with my own eyes. And so when I started to recognize that, I'm like, it can't just be my dad. I'm sure there are many people out there that feel like they're taking getting taken advantage of. And so even like within our own team, it's like so cool that I

[1:13:41] get to pay them a lot. And I'm like, hey, like you're doing a lot of really great work. Here's a bonus. Like here's, you know, here's a gift. Like here, it's just cool because when you have that type of money, I think it definitely helps to understand, you know, can you serve more of an impact? So, one of my big things that I want to do in this upcoming few years is to own some sort of like foundation, like charitable work, and I want to actually have like something that's more active upon that because I think it's a big part of me and my girlfriend's New Year's

[1:14:03] resolutions this upcoming year. So, it's funny though, when I first was doing this, I have I have a really funny story for this. When I told my dad that I was, by the way, he doesn't understand anything that I do by any stretch of the imagination. Like, I can't physically describe it to him. And so I I try to, but you know, when you tell your Korean immigrant dad who's been working construction his entire life that I'm making a video on my phone and I've been able to build an audience and to sell something, he thinks I'm scamming people. He thinks that I'm like doing

[1:14:31] something very weird. Um, I don't want your money. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, he like tries to trust me on things. Now, over time, he's learned it. But when I first, this is a serious story. when I first uh told him that I was coming out with my first digital product called the guide to academic success. Obviously, whenever you're launching something new, you're very nervous about it and anxious about it. So, he knew that. And he sat me down at our local cafe shop the morning of launch and sat me down and said, "Hey son, I'm very proud of you for all of the work that you've done up to this

[1:14:57] point in time, if you make zero sales today, I'm proud of you and I and I love you no matter what." He told me this, but knowing my dad, the reason why he's doing this is he like 100% believed I was going to fail this thing. like he knew he would never do that to me unless he knew very confidently that there's no way this is going to work. And that same week I made $30,000 and I showed him my account and he's never seen those numbers on any type of statement in his entire life. So again, he thought that I was scamming something and then he

[1:15:25] figured out eventually I was telling the truth because my brother and my sister who speak Korean better than I do explained it a little bit more eloquently. And then ultimately over time, so when I did some really cool milestones like hitting certain numbers in my own bank account or the creative contact account, he still has like no idea like how to fathom that in his brain. So it's like really cool when I get to update my dad. I'm like, "Hey dad, like we just did this." And I know he doesn't understand it, but he's just proud regardless. So those are some of

[1:15:46] my favorite moments I look back upon. And then I asked him not too long ago. I was like, "Hey dad, like do you remember when you sat me down at that cafe shop and you told me that if this doesn't work out, you should be proud of me." And he's like, "Yeah, I had no idea what you were doing. I thought that you were 100% going to fail." and I was just

[1:16:00] there to try to be supportive for you. And I'm like, how does it feel now? Like to be a part of the process. He's like, it's really cool and and um heartwarming, but at the same time, even if I didn't make any money, I'm sure he would be proud of me. That's amazing, man. I mean, what's it like having your dad say I'm

[1:16:14] proud of you? He's not proud of your Lamborghini outside or anything of that nature. It's rented. It's rented. I I wanted to ask you Oh, wait. [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] Dude, land the plane. Um Um Um Um Land it. Oh, you got it, dude. Come on. Come on. Land this plane.

[1:16:31] Doing so good. Get me back in there. No, I lost it. I lost it. Oh. Oh, fine, dude. He landed it. Does your dad know and remember your friends names? Cuz my our Yeah. Our dads have no idea about our friends names. The craziest thing. When I was growing up, you talk just now, dude. He'll be like, "Who's that guy you're podcasting with?" I'm like, "Dad, that we've lived. We lived together for like four years, dude." You know? You know what I mean? My dad knows one person in my life, my girlfriend Tyle, and he'll always call me and say, "Hey, how's Tyle doing? How's your mom

[1:17:03] doing? Is her dad okay?" And that'll be it. He He really does not care about any of my Even I just called him and she was on the she was next to me in the Uber ride. And my dad called me. He's like, "Hey, I miss you. Like, what are you up to?" And I was like, "Oh, I forgot to tell you that I'm in LA for for a

[1:17:16] podcast for the weekend." He's like, "Why are you in LA?" And I was like, uh, I'm trying to I'm trying to shoot like a thing where two people or three people are like in a conversation. We have to film the thing and it's better if we're doing it in person. He's like, "That sounds like a waste of time." He's like He's like, "Okay, are you guys at least enjoying the weather over there?" See, it's so

[1:17:36] funny how much he doesn't understand. But it's also hilarious because he will try to take credit for where I am today in the sense where he'll he Yeah. But it's so funny because what he'll do is he'll see my Instagram or he'll see my TikTok videos and he'll let it play over like 18 times and he'll call me while he's doing it on my stepmom's phone uh phone be like hey June by the way I just watched your video 18 times so if this blows up like it's because of me and I'm like at least he's starting to understand the tension he's understanding that a little bit in

[1:18:04] this space. It's very cool. That's so funny. I know you guys didn't cuz my where are my dad's? And I know you guys didn't meet him on the way in, but there was a a show that I was on my right after I graduated my senior year of high school called Summer Break and it was a reality show on YouTube and it was like

[1:18:21] what? Yeah, it was it was a throwback but it was big. Every time we go out in public, someone will like be I'm like which is hilarious. Is it a pod person or or what I love? But but it was hilarious because I was walking out of school and my dad had picked me up and the guy the um they were like scouting and trying to talk to kids from our high school to get to like audition for the show. And so the guy stopped me and he was like,

[1:18:47] "Hey, have you heard about this show? Like you'd be great for it. You should uh you should not apply but um audition audition." And and my dad to this day he's like, "Yeah, I told you that you should do that." and the guy came up. So like you owe every all your success is

[1:19:05] because of me. It's hilarious. Yeah, it's fun. My dad's the exact same way. So funny, dude. That is hilarious. Going going into the rest of this year, I think something that creators are a little weary of and honestly, I think there's a lot of content that scares people around this topic. Uh but how how have you integrated AI into your workflow? What are your thoughts for creators who are thinking about

[1:19:29] utilizing it in some way, shape or form? Yeah, so I believe that AI has made it easier for creators to post a larger volume of content than ever before. I think the problem is is that most people are using AI in the sense of, hey, Chad, can you give me 10 content ideas that fit this space, right? Because you had some sort of guru online that said that this was the best prompt to use. Now, everyone is doing that, but you can tell when content isn't yours, right? Or doesn't sound like you. But I do believe that if you are always thinking properly, thinking in depth and always

[1:20:00] ensuring that your message and your world and your reality is first done and then you use AI to help refine that process or help expedite that process afterwards and post, that is no problem to me. And I think the more you leverage it, the more speed you'll have. So I'll tell you exactly how I do mine. Every single time that I create content, again, for the last six years has been entirely myself. Like I've never had anyone to bounce ideas off of, right? My family don't like none of them understand content creation. So it wasn't something I could be like, "Hey, what do you think about this idea?" It

[1:20:28] was always just myself. So when AI came out, I actually used to do this thing where still I I I try to implement as much as I possibly can. Every single morning before I go and scroll on my phone or something of that nature, I try to take time to intentionally extract the ideas from my own brain before I

[1:20:43] flood it with other information, right? And it helps me behave in a way that my own intention still stays relevant. And so I'll use a journal of some kind or maybe my Apple notes or something to jot down ideas of. Then in conversation using the chatd dictate function, I'll actually conversate my ideas out in full full like thesis statement like a very long narrative format. And then I'll see how AI actually removes fluff that I might have not necessarily known it was fluff because that's how I consume the information or understand it. But then AI will be like after I give it the prompt to refine it or help me remove

[1:21:16] some of the fluff, I'll see it. I'm like, "Oh, wait. I didn't actually need this paragraph. I can reserve it for another video in its entirety." And that has helped me increase my speed of creation a lot more in terms of going from pre-production to production. So I think if creators are not afraid of using it and actually can leverage it for your own speed and also your ability to leave more impact ultimately, it's a good thing. I think that people that are using AI to generate them ideas are the ones that are going to fall flat very

[1:21:41] quickly. Yeah. Um, going back to monetization real quick, because you have clearly been extremely successful from a monetary perspective, especially with Creator College, and I think, um, a lot of people do want to monetize, you know, their content. And so, I like what you said about having products where you meet people where they are depending on their journey of

[1:22:03] when they come across your content. Um, what other advice do you have for people to be able to nurture their audience to then be able to turn them into an actual customer? Yeah, it's a fantastic question. So, whenever I think about monetization, the issue is that people look at conversion content in a microscope and they think this one piece of content should drive me x number of sales and if it doesn't then I failed. When they don't realize it's an actual human being behind the scenes. So there's that rule of seven in marketing where someone needs to see it seven times before they make a purchasing decision. But content

[1:22:37] creation is no different. You have to keep appearing in someone else's explore page for you pages to garner that level of trust. So for me when I think about monetization I think about entire funnel. It's like all right do you need content that actually brings people into your audience? So wider to reach content attract top of funnel absolutely. Do you need content where you're exposing a little bit of the difficulties that you're going through right now so you

[1:22:58] can feel more human nurturing content? Absolutely. Do you need content that positions yourself as someone of authority by teaching an expert lens or an attorney lens? Absolutely. Then when you post the conversion content, it's not about the immediate sales, but it's understanding that if that content pieces on your actual page, what's brilliant is that the way that the algorithm works, if you've been retained on one piece of content from a creator, you'll see more of their content in the future, right? That's when I think the floodgates start to open. So everyone thinks about creating content in a microscope, but I think about in terms of planting the seeds and if you can

[1:23:26] effectively do that on a weekly cadence very consistently, sales tend to happen very naturally and there's ways that you can expedite that process. Right? So with the free event, it's a beautiful model. It definitely takes a lot of work to operate and a lot of expertise to operate. But for us, we've done about eight of these free events and we host them very differently than 99% of other creators. And we know that because we studied them, right? We went into the entire process like studying who's doing

[1:23:48] free events and how are they doing it. And most people, in all honesty, it's just an extended pitch, right? Most people are just literally spending the entire thing trying to pitch their product. We do it very differently. So for about an hour and a half, I am full-on teaching. I'm full-on teaching. We don't mention the product. We don't say any. I'm just teaching for an hour and a half. And my goal in that hour and a half is to be so good at what I teach that I give you at least a zero to one transformation where you feel more confident that if we're definitely working with you that you'll actually

[1:24:15] have that level of success even further, right? When we started hosting free events like that, what it does is just expedites the process in which your conversion content works because you'll bring them on to a free lead magnet, like a free event, right? People will learn something as your one transformation. And when we pitch, no one is in the comments saying like, oh, I can't believe you're pitching me something. It's like, yeah, because we just spent the last 90 minutes. So, of course, they're going to feel like, okay, okay, if something comes like it's it is what it is. I think for me, I think about content like that. It's

[1:24:39] planting the seeds in my content in terms of what people see on the explore page for you pages when they go on to my profile. And then on the back end, the free events or webinars and things of that nature is like my expedited way of showcasing my expertise and genius and giving them that zero to1 transformation. We can do that with

[1:24:54] other types of lead magnets as well. We've done a lot of free resources, but that I think you need the entire ecosystem if you're actually going to monetize on a consistent basis. If you don't, this is what happens. You will monetize for a short period of time. You'll have like launches where you'll have like very successful weekends and then the next month you have to do it again the exact same way and you realize, holy cow, I'm just chasing this entire hamster wheel. When in reality, if you can plant the seeds very consistently across a month, you should have sales every single day. And when you have those weekends, yes, it should

[1:25:22] be like a 500,000 mile launch if you have something big, but you should be able to sustain a level of success even that weekend following, right? And I think that's where the content is so imperative that you actually have a real launch strategy um so you can actually plant those seeds. How many different

[1:25:35] products do you have in the ecosystem? Like what and are you switching out the different free products? Like do you have a different free product that's loading up every single month or is it like we're sticking with one for a period of time? Yeah, it's a really good question. So a lot of our free resources we have developed probably a year and a half ago. So these were already things that I use in my content production system. So we have different content planning templates, we have different hook templates, things of that nature that would, let's say, be a thing that gives someone a zero to one transformation

[1:26:03] almost immediately, right? But obviously more of the in-depth content strategy requires time and energy and effort for someone to apply. So that's where our low ticket products come into place. We have a lot of $99, it's called short form content playbook, and we probably have like six or seven others that are more specific. So from a monetization standpoint, a digital product standpoint, a brand deal standpoint, we have all of these one-off digital products. Then we can sell them in bundles. Like for Black Friday, we sold them in bundles. So we ultimately were able to make more money for each customer but also make them happy in

[1:26:29] terms of their comprehensive knowledge. And then ultimately after that we have our VIP program which sits at about 2 and a halfk to three and a halfk depending off your early bird or depending on uh you know whenever you sign up. Then we have other services on the back end where it's done for you. We have more agency styles where it's like more of percentage of profit or maybe let's say a higher 10k a month retainer things of that nature. So we have all of those product stacks. I would say probably in total you probably have accumulation of about like 10 15 different products that we're always

[1:26:58] live with. But because we're constantly so focused on the organic reach side, right? What's really cool is that when you capture people's email, you can send them different flows. Like you can send them different upsells and people in certain demographics will want certain products versus others. I think having more ammunition the better. And if you could strategically place those ultimately the better long-term return you get. Do you have any sort of continuation program or is a paid community something that you've

[1:27:24] entertained at all? Yeah, so we actually do have one. It's called Creative College Studio. So what is ultimately happening is after the VIP program ends, we sometimes have an upsell to specific people that we actually want to take on 101 because that is really hard to do for us in terms of our bandwidth. So it's only select people that we will reach out to

[1:27:40] and be like, "This is an opportunity. What do you think about it?" But then most people are downsold to a creative college studio, which is what you're talking about. that's a community-based. It has all the creative college pre-recorded material. We have about 320 master classes that are continuously being updated. We have about 100 plus resources inside of there. So, they get that in addition to a weekly call with one of our team members. So, that's the downell that we have for the VIP program um in terms of the continuity and then if they want to and we have the space for it, the 101 will be the next tier

[1:28:08] up. Wow. It's so interesting. It's such a it's a welloiled machine. The flywheel is also super interesting. It's always really interesting to hear how different people kind of operate their business because there's no one sizefits-all for creators. It's like there's so many different ways to monetize. And would you say your primary platform is Instagram that you put the most

[1:28:26] attention into? Yeah, just because of how many mediums of connection you have with especially with the many channel automations and DMs and story replies and things of that nature. No doubt about it. I think Instagram has been my favorite to grow upon and so that is my priority number one. And in terms of creative colleges Instagram, we actually have people hired to do that

[1:28:46] separately. Oh, interesting. Oh, so it's a totally separate Instagram and you're just are you still making content for that yourself? Yes, on more of an infrequent basis, maybe five posts per month, but that running a business page and a personal brand is very, very, very different if you're doing it right. And for me, my time and energy goes into the thing that's actually going to have the highest return for us, which is my personal brand. And then we have people to take on the socials of creative

[1:29:12] college. They're also way more likely to follow you than they're going to follow business. Yeah. Creator College. What kind of stuff do you post on the creator college Instagram? Yes. So creative college Instagram it's much more for testimonial based. It's much or for understanding your target avatars much more when we have free events to promote those. You can actively do that without necessarily being redundant to your existing audience especially if you have a personal brand. So I think business pages help but the truth is I get this

[1:29:36] question all the time. 95% of people out there don't need a business page for the first million dollars. I'm very confident in saying that because I didn't have a business page until Creative College and before that I had multiple different products just solely based on my personal brand. If you care about a business page, all you need to do is have story highlights that are proclaimed to your product type. That's all it really requires in

[1:29:58] my opinion. Do have you ever had imposttor syndrome online? And what would you tell someone who's listening to this right now who might feel like, you know, I don't have something that I think I should be sharing right now or I don't feel like I know enough about this particular topic. Yeah, for sure. I I have it probably uh once a day. And I think it's an honest truth to it, right? Where you start to compare yourself naturally because you see so many successes on

[1:30:22] social media. But I I'll actually reframe a lot of times those students' perspective. What I mean by that is many people think that they need a special experience in order for them to create content on. So what happens and you've probably heard this too as well. It's like someone will tell me they're going on a two-month traveling experience and they're like, "Oh, it's now it's the time to create content because I have all this really

[1:30:41] cool stuff that's upcoming in my life." I'm like, "No, it's probably the worst time for you to create content because you can start creating a bar for expectations that it's impossible for you to meet because after you're done traveling, what the heck are you going to be creating about afterwards, right?" It's like, no, in your most boring of times, in your most mundane moments, in your hardest days, that's when you should start creating content because if you can create content about the shared struggles, it actually has a lot more reach potential than trying to create about those elevating moments in your life. So, for those people that have

[1:31:08] imposter syndrome, it's very normal. And creating content is very difficult in terms of an insecurity standpoint. But knowing that if we as human beings have shared struggles and that's our common denominator in human experience, it's actually the best place to start for creating content. And if you're creating content about that, it's your truth. It's your experience. No one can actually take that away from you. I think it's a very good place for people

[1:31:28] to start if they have imposter syndrome. And then what about someone who is maybe a little insecure and they're scared to show up and talk to the camera and put their story out there and be vulnerable online? What advice do you have for somebody in that position? Yes, actually I'm going to throw that back to you guys. When you guys have been creating now for four years so consistently, you guys have done a phenomenal job. Can you guys point to moments in time where your friends and family or people closest to you had judged you or made fun of you or teased you at all? Or was everyone quite

[1:31:58] supportive in that experience? I don't think with the pod necessarily, but for sure in college, I mean I there's a the app Yiky Yak. Do you know about this app? Basically, it works for like a very it's geoargeted, right? So it' be like in Los Angeles or at USC. Dude, I think we I think he's too young. I think I think Yikyak had maybe a year

[1:32:18] and a half, two years. Anyway, it's geoargeted, right? So it' be like USC and it'd only be folks that are in the USC area that can be on this app, right? And I remember I was making fitness YouTube videos. Cringey, right? I was in college. I was like 20. I was like, 19 years old. And I remember one day someone sent me a [ __ ] yik column and it just had like hundreds of comments like the it was me and my two buddies that were doing this fitness content and we were like I was like dude there's something here. This is super fun. I'm going to learn how to edit and shoot

[1:32:46] videos and we'll help people with working out cuz I was super tiny. I was 125 lbs when I gradu or 130 lbs when I graduated college or graduate high school and going into college I gained like 45 lbs. I was yolked. So I was like I was like I'm going to teach people how to do this. This is crazy. I was a skinny guy and like now I have this going on. So, it was just getting ripped to shreds. And I remember when I saw it, I was like sitting in my dorm and I'm like, do I keep doing this? Like, am I am I a joke? Like, is this the right

[1:33:13] path? And I was like, I can't let these [ __ ] win. Like, I just can't do it. So, I just like tripled down. And, you know, now look at where it's gotten us from not stopping. But, it was it was like this weird. We were teased for sure. Guys in my fraternity would tease

[1:33:26] me. I was teased. It was like a whole thing. I was teased a lot for the summer break show that I told you about. Understood. And even before then, I was on a different YouTube show called Teens React. And it was basically like the first ever, it was the first ever reaction channel. And they, funny enough, they actually tried to um prevent any other channel from doing like that style. And people were like, "You can't [ __ ] steal that

[1:33:58] for patent a format. Yeah, you can't pat a format." Um, but I was, man, I was on that when I was 15 or 15 and a half. And it's funny cuz I actually thought of a new series that I wanted to start. I told Brandon about this. I've now been on the internet creating content for 15 years. And so I kind of wanted to start a little series called like the 15 things I've learned in the 15 years. Um, but I was on this show and I would get teased, but it was more so like kids in my high school being like, "Oh my god, are you

[1:34:28] coasters from Teens React?" Like as a joke, teasing me or whatever. But I think between I was really fortunate. I think the the people that was were close to me, uh, friends and family, they were very supportive. I never felt like they were talking [ __ ] behind my back or or not supportive of what I was doing. If anything, my parents, I think, gave me the confidence to be able to do what I'm doing now, which is awesome. Um, but I think because I had those experiences of the Teens React and then the Summer Break Show getting teased teased, I think I just grew thick skin. And I

[1:35:05] also, it's funny, I'll look back at it and be like, they kind of had a little bit of a reason, you know, maybe I should have been bullied a little harder, honestly. No. So, but um I think growing that thick skin from a very young age and I also kind of had the mindset of these people would switch spots with me. Like they're teasing me probably cuz they'd be on if they had an opportunity to be on a show, they take it. Um and so I think I was I kind of had um that mindset going into it. But yeah, it is scary kind of

[1:35:36] putting yourself out there. I also always looked at the long goal. I was like, I saw these YouTubers who I wanted to be and I'm like, these people are making amazing money. They don't have bosses. They do whatever they want. Their job is to like talk to this camera every day and work out with that group of people. I'm like, you're telling me you don't want to do that? You're telling me you want to go to an office job? Get out of here. Like, there's just

[1:35:56] no way. The reason why I had asked that question back to you is I I do believe that is almost a badge of honor at this point, right? In terms of creators, we all go through that experience. It's cool too to know that we've all come from different backgrounds too. Santa Monica, right? So you probably have more people that are understanding of the entertainment, the creator lifestyle versus what I had in probably a small location in Pennsylvania, right? And so the people that are watching this, especially in those areas where being a creator is not normal or common to go ahead and create some content takes a

[1:36:25] lot of guts and energy, right? Right? And that's where I look at people like that. I'm like, man, you're doing something so incredibly powerful. Because I'll always say this, you will never ever be judged by somebody doing more than you. It will always be those that are doing less. And if you were to really consider how many people are consuming content on social media, go and check with your friends if they're watching content on Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube. I can guarantee you they are. You're telling me they haven't once thought about being on the opposite side of the screen and creating content. So, like you're saying, it's because they

[1:36:54] actually would want to, but they can't get over the fear of being seen and therefore they want to bring you down. So, there's also something very scary and also very, very unfortunate about this experience. The people that are closest to you, oftentimes the ones that hate the most because they've started in the same place as you. So, if they've started in the same place as you, they've had the same desire as you, but they've never acted on it and you actually win, what does that mean about them? That they've made the wrong decision. So actually a lot of the people that hated on me the most were the people that were in my

[1:37:26] close circle. And I'll give you a very specific example of this. When I was creating content about a year into it, we had quarantine lockdown, right? So all of my classes were remote and on Zoom. Someone thought it was very funny in the Instagram chat box to put my Instagram post up from the night before and started making some very unfortunate comments onto it, right? And there's probably like another 20 people that watched it and started to commentate on it as well in this live chat room in this room where I barely knew some of these people. They're all biomedical engineers, right? So it's probably a

[1:37:54] room of 150 people that could never understand the world of social media, right? Because engineers are very very different in terms of how they are. And so things like that would happen all the time. People when I was in my labs and wearing my laboratory coat and then they talked about a piece of content from the week before that they saw, they thought that it was cringy and they were posting in group chat saying that, "Oh, you're trying too hard. you're being an

[1:38:15] influencer and things of that nature. What I like to think about is the fact that again, you will never be judged by somebody doing more than you. So, if you're ever going to take a drastic step in your own career, in your life, in the way that you earn or the way you make impact, you're always going to have that. It's a good sign. It means that you're doing something right, something risky, something that actually will

[1:38:33] allow you to develop in the long run. So, I love your guys's perspective on it because I'm sure it's a shared common experience for all creators. So, if you're going through that right now, it's okay. It's part of the process and actually enjoy it. It's well, it's also funny because I actually forgot that I

[1:38:47] had this experience. One of the [ __ ] kids who was like kind of teasing me a little bit for the [ __ ] summer break show. I He checked me in to a show that I shot like a concert cuz I was touring for and I was like, "Oh, you're checking me in, dude. Now, you're not doing too well." Oh, that's so I have a very similar story about several of the people that I've worked with in the past that Okay, this is a very specific story, but when I was first starting out in trying to monetize my account, I actually went B2B. So, I actually was trying to help

[1:39:24] other businesses get more attention on short form content. And I helped a gym out. I won't say any names, but I helped a gym out. And in my first, let's say, few months working with them, we were able to generate over 100,000 plus followers, right? So, it was blowing up, especially in our lo local location. And I actually did that for free. So, I was a very big part of this understanding where you should do work for free and try to give out and learn as much as you possibly can, but with the understanding that if I execute on the thing that I was going to do that I was going to be

[1:39:55] compensated for the next retainer. When we got to that point in time, that person made it feel as though I didn't help them at all and that it was all entirely on them that made the content work. They're like, "It's because I'm the talent that the reason why we had the traffic. Why would I pay you x

[1:40:11] amount of dollars to do that work?" And that was very disheartening. Actually, I was with my girlfriend at that period of time, so she knows how I felt about that because I poured my heart and energy into this while balancing two degrees at the same time. I was stressed out and I did it and I was so heartbroken because I was like I can't believe I did all that and didn't come into fruition. Fast forward fast forward four or five years and you're looking at two of their employees at that company had asked to work at Creative College and it's just a full circle moment when you start to

[1:40:39] recognize like if you can focus on your work, you don't cheat people and you know that your reputation means everything and if you can go by the book and just be true to your morals, good things happen to you and the other people. Usually everything takes care of itself in the long run. 1,000%. This has been like the most incredible episode ever. I I am going to leave you with one question. If you could chat to the group right now who's 17, 18, they're coming out of school and they want to do this full-time, what would you what would your advice be to

[1:41:09] that group? I believe that you do not have to drop out of school. I believe that you don't have to change your life 180 to pursue this experience. I believe you can do it all. I believe that if you stop limiting yourself, you can absolutely crush it in your college if that's what you want to do. If you want to pursue a different type of job and do content on the side, I think you absolutely should do it. The truth is I believe everyone can become successful creators without necessarily needing to devote their entire livelihood to that experience. So, if you are somebody that cares for this,

[1:41:42] but a lot of those 17, 18 year olds, the big uncertainty for them is that they don't know what they want to pursue and it feels as though if they put their eggs in one basket that they're going to limit themselves from pursuing other things. I say go for it. Whatever it is that you want to pursue, still treat content creation as a priority. Keep it in parallel to the work that you're doing on day-to-day basis. And if you keep your head down and you have thoughtful quantity that delivers upon quality over time, you will win. It's still early and you have a massive opportunity in front of you. They should

[1:42:08] still keep watching you guys and learn from YouTube as much as you guys can possibly learn. And I think the reality of the matter is those people that are persistent enough that have the mindset for growth are the ones that are going to win in the long term. Gosh, this has been episode 191 with Junu. Please hit the subscribe button, drop us a comment, leave us a like, and we'll see you guys all next week. Peace. Some say they've made it to the best part of

[1:42:29] the podcast. I can't believe they let you in. Yeah, this is uh formerly known as the PPD. We're calling it the afterparty now. Yeah, I think that that that fits better. A subscriber gave us that idea. Has a great ring to it. So, welcome to the afterparty. Welcome to the afterparty. Still shocked they let Braden in.

[1:42:45] How'd you get on the list, dude? I I run the list. You know, a guy. I run the list, too. You know the bouncer? Yeah. This was one of my favorite pods I think we've ever done. And I got to be honest, huh? I went into this episode being like, how much do we not know about the content game? We've been in it for a decade. I feel like we have a pretty good grasp on how to create content and how to make it at a high level and how to think about building a personal brand. And so, not that I went in as like a skeptic. I

[1:43:21] don't think that's the right word. I was just very pleasantly surprised with how eyeopening this conversation was. This was one of my, like I said, favorite pods that we've done. I think that June has so many actionable pieces of advice throughout this entire thing. I just don't think I've never heard somebody talk about content almost like a a scientist, dude. He

[1:43:46] studies. Oh, yeah. June studies. He Dude, he's in the lab. He's He's studying. He's taking notes on all the different factors that what makes a video do really well. He's looking at the hook. He's looking at the music. He's looking at the text on screen. If it tells a story, is there a rising action? Is there a payoff moment? And I mean, we sat for two additional hours after the pod wrapped. And we're having such a fun conversation of all things content, all things media, where he's taking his business. and it's so interesting to just hear how he thinks about uh social media and how he

[1:44:20] approaches it. I think it's it's different than pretty much anyone we've ever spoken to on the show. Yeah. And I'm I'm curious to see if people feel the same. Um I think one of the biggest takeaways I had is he's posted every day for almost six years, but the consistency is there. But he said, "Just because I've been posting every day

[1:44:44] doesn't mean I'm creating every day." And the only reason why he's able to stay consistent is because he has those systems to be able to create consistent content. But that doesn't mean he's creating every day. And I think that's important. Yeah, he he's batching, right? He can't do everything. You can't wake up and post every single day. I mean, tomorrow we're going to travel to New York. So, I'm assuming are you going to have your

[1:45:06] post done tonight for tomorrow? No, because I want to make a piece of content. I want to make a piece of content of our travel day. Um, but yeah, if I was smart, I if I was smart, I'd have one ready to go to launch out in the morning. Something that we talked about after that I thought was really interesting, he has this framework called the creator vision. And so I think we get really wrapped up in thinking that you can't broaden out who

[1:45:37] you're speaking to. And for example, let's say let's say the theme of your content was consistency, right? Let's say that's a a through line. You believe in consistency that's showed up in your life. June is saying to not just say, "Okay, I preach consistency through this podcast." It'd be like me. I could water my plants on a weekly cadence and I could explain the concept of consistency in a totally different medium than this podcast. Or I could go to the gym and explain that I'm going to the gym consistently and that's something that I believe in because of X, Y, and Z. And so broadening it out to

[1:46:13] different things that you're already interested in or things that you like or things that you're already doing and grabbing your message and putting it into these different areas of your life. And that way you're not going to run out of ideas as often because you have these different things to do it. If we were just confined to these four walls in here, you'd run out of ideas, I feel like, pretty quickly because you'd feel like you were saying the same thing just over and over again. But I think he does a really good job of that where he's in his kitchen, he's outside, he's in his car, he's in his

[1:46:40] office, he's on the road, he's on the treadmill, and he's still giving you a very similar throughine, but it's through all these different ways uh that he shows up in his life. Yeah. You want to think about what are the messages that you want to spread and whatever it is that you're interested in. Let's say I've heard him give this example, but you're not a fitness creator. You're someone who preaches a certain message and you just so happen to spread that message through fitness content or nutrition content or photography content. And so getting clarity on like what are those what's that one core message or what are those few core

[1:47:23] messages that you want to spread throughout your content is super important. And every post should have like a job. It's not all it's not all just for people who follow you. It's not for people who don't know about you. He's really being specific at what each piece of content goes towards like what group it goes towards. So, he was talking to us after as well about how, you know, he might make something and be like, this

[1:47:47] is for someone who doesn't know I exist. And you guys might be listening to this thinking, well, man, if I make this piece of content, my followers already, you know, already have heard this story. Well, that doesn't matter, right? You're making something for maybe someone who has no idea about your story or doesn't know you exist. They have no idea that I worked for the Lakers or did this. They have no idea. And how are they going to know if you don't repeat it? If you don't repeat the process. We we talked about this. I

[1:48:10] We've talked about this in our cohort. We talked about this with June, but a lot of the biggest and most successful personal brands have their little backstory is super repeatable. Like you've heard them say it like a million times. Oh, I grew up and you know, I I had this thing happen in my life. I came from here and now I'm a successful entrepreneur and I sold this company or whatever the heck the thing may be. But they've repeated that throughout 5,000 different ways in different metaphors and photos and carousels and reels and all these different things. So it becomes like ingrained into your brain almost like a slogan for one of the big

[1:48:41] popular regular brands that we all know and love. I think people are timid or shy or maybe even scared um to share their story more often than they should be cuz I like you feel as though everybody's consuming your content as much as you are, but you're the one making it and not everybody is seeing every single piece of your content and so

[1:49:11] Yeah. They see it as a microscope. Huh. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm thinking for example, you're so in the thick of it. You're writing every piece of content, you're editing every piece of content, you're posting every piece of content. You've probably watched your story, you know, 17 different times on the same day to make sure it's like curated a certain way. Like, you're consuming your content

[1:49:33] more than anybody else. Yeah. And it's rare that somebody consumes your content. It's rare that somebody consumes every single piece of content that you put out. And so if that's the case, you're not sharing your story nearly enough. And also, every time you share your story or your backstory or struggle that you've gone through, it's, you know, there's always a a fresh set of eyes and ears to consume that content. And back to what you were saying as well is like every piece of content has a different job. you know, a growth piece of content is not also necessarily going to nurture someone who's already following you and

[1:50:12] then also lead to a sale. It's like you have you have different pieces of content that are going to do certain things and that they serve different jobs. We were also talking about this earlier. Uh you and I were saying how by sharing these experiences that you feel like are unique to you, you actually end up like broadening out. And I'll give you guys like a phenomenal example for a video that I'm probably going to post tomorrow. So, we're going to New York,

[1:50:38] right? I'm gonna need to pack my stuff. My office literally looks like a bomb went off in it. It looks It's embarrassing to see like how shitty it is, but I feel like it's funny because in other aspects of my life, I feel so buttoned up. I feel like we have a really good thing going with the show. We have great guests coming on. I feel like my businesses are doing well. We're getting clients. My house is clean, but my office literally looks like a bomb went off. And if you walked into the crib, you'd be like, "Wow, this is great." And then you'd be like, "Holy

[1:51:10] [ __ ] what is going on in this office?" And I think being which is weird cuz one of your messages is cleanliness. It's not. It's definitely not. I think being an entrepreneur who has ADHD, you guys will feel this if like I compartmentalized different portions of my life where I'm like, dude, I'll deal with that when we're done with this

[1:51:33] thing. And while we're while we were doing our cohort and we were selling it and stuff, I'm like, the last thing I can do right now is clean this room. Which is funny because I just couldn't do it. I'm like, I just can't do it, dude. I've been there. And it's funny because something that would make such a difference is having a clean space, but I can't get myself to I can't get myself to like clean it until like this portion of what we're doing is done and

[1:51:58] over with. And it's funny cuz I know I just know this like and I've talked to people about this. I know that like this video will get a lot of um a lot of response because a lot of people like deal with this and most of the [ __ ] you see online is everyone's office is like doesn't look like it's an office. It just looks like it's like perfect like people

[1:52:16] aren't working in their office. Okay, so let me ask you this. It's weird. What is um what bucket do you feel like this piece of content is going to hit? And how are you going to weave your core belief or message into this piece of content? Oo, that's a really good idea. I I think that this bucket hits anyone who is an entrepreneur but feels like everything online is like very perfect and polished and I think it'll give you like a real example of opening a literal door into someone's life that isn't perfect and polished and it's like this is the reality of what I'm dealing but I'm

[1:52:50] going to clean the room. The room's going to look great before I leave to New York and it'll be really nice to come home to like a nice clean office. But I think my through line is my like message with this is that like that's okay and it's like that's just part of life is sometimes you're gonna have a season where you're working really hard on this other thing and it's funny my car and my office they go

[1:53:10] hand in hand. Yeah. Car and my office are dirty. It's probably because I'm working really hard on something else and then they're either like spotless or disgustingly dirty. Yeah. I don't think I have like an in between. But it it's just uh it's just interesting. And I I also feel like that as as an entrepreneur with ADD, I have to do things to make sure

[1:53:30] that it doesn't get to that state. Feel like I got to nip that stuff in the butt when it's at like level three out of 10 or level four before it gets to seven, eight, n it gets to 10 and you're like, damn, now I really don't want to do it. And I don't know if you guys feel

[1:53:44] this way. It [ __ ] pains me to do laundry. I can do towels. Towels are easy, bro. It's the hanging up of the clothes and folding that [ __ ] that drives me. So like I can do towels all day, bro. Dude, it sucks. I can do towels all day though. Towels are easy. I got my little system down like papa and they're away. It's when I have like oh I got these shirts, underwear, jackets, socks. [ __ ] pisses me off when I don't when you know when you take your socks off if you do it inside out on accident and I'm like why am I why am I doing this for myself

[1:54:14] later? Well, you know, you know what I mean? And then you get them on, they're all inside out. I'm like, "Bro, you know what drives me crazy? Tell me what drives you crazy." Sarah Catherine. Okay. Love her to death. Okay. Okay. I'm going to marry the girl. Uh-huh. She doesn't She'll throw socks that are like bunched up and wash them like that and then dry

[1:54:35] them like that. And And it's a problem. Yeah, it's a problem. Let's Okay. If you're if you're like dialed on laundry sock on the sock game specifically, you know that you have to take like when when everybody takes their socks off, they take them off. You got to do one little hit and then and then they're inside out. You got to make sure they're right side

[1:54:54] in or whatever. Yeah. And then you wash them. Yeah. And you know, I love my girlfriend. That's part of growing I'm growing up. I'm growing up, man. I'm getting it I'm getting it going, though. That That's part of Yeah. My my office isn't looking great. My car is a little messy, but I keep telling myself like it's a treat that I'm going to get to when I'm back from

[1:55:11] New York. So funny. Another thing I love that June talked about was the journey POV versus the expert versus the expert. And I think a lot of us tell tell people like the difference in that cuz I feel like the rocks listening might be thinking that I'm waiting to make content until I am the best at this thing. I feel like they miss out on a

[1:55:39] lot of growth. Yeah. During that phase, so you shouldn't pose as an authority figure if you're not. And and that's a big thing that we learned from Caleb Ralston because there's a lot of people on social media claim who claim to be gurus or experts at a certain thing um but they haven't seen actual success in the thing and they've made all their money by teaching people how to do the actual thing without having done it themselves. So if you are an expert and you actually know what the [ __ ] you're talking about, you can position yourself as that. But there's a lot of people who are young

[1:56:15] and just starting out. Um, for example, like you shouldn't be a 22-year-old life coach. You just haven't experienced enough life. You know what I'm saying? But you can create your content around the journey of you, you know, becoming or trying to become an expert in said field. And you can you can build credibility and create your you can build credibility and you create and you can create authority for yourself just by showcasing the journey that you're on. And so a lot of you guys need to just take a deep look in the mirror and say, "Do I actually know what the [ __ ] I'm talking about or am I still on

[1:56:56] the journey process?" Totally okay. And you can actually build a successful business doing both because there's always somebody one step before you. And if you don't know who to talk to, just think about talking to yourself three to four years ago or maybe even six months to a year ago because I'm sure there's stuff that that you've learned over the past couple of months or couple of years that has gotten you to where you are now that had you known what you know now, then

[1:57:28] you would be a lot farther ahead. 1,000%. Something that you guys should put into the things that you're doing. A lot of us are waiting for an excuse of camera, lighting, tripod. I need the perfect microphone. Jun was telling us that like most of his stuff is all on an iPhone. Mhm. Just an iPhone. He's like, there's nothing crazy going on behind the scenes. There's not this whole camera team behind me. He's like, it's just

[1:57:52] literally me and the phone. And his brand reflects how big you can get something with just simple production process. Like obviously he's spending a lot of time writing, but his actual production process is his phone and he's just using apps on his on his phone, you know? So I think that we get so caught up in having like everything be perfect and so much of the content

[1:58:14] that I like. And actually, it's funny. We're going to interview Marcus Million in New York. I actually [ __ ] love this kid's vlogs. Way back in the day, I don't know if he still does them on TikTok. I used to love his like day in the life videos. He wasn't doing any retention editing [ __ ] It was literally just him turning his phone around and it would be 12 clips of his day, sometimes four clips of a day. Today we're doing this and we had his problem and we solved this problem and that was my day and it would be I'm like that was such a

[1:58:42] fun piece of content to watch but it wasn't like you didn't have Sam filming him for these Tik Tok vlogs. It was just that it was just like this is what I did today. This is what happened. And they were just so fun to watch and so entertaining. And I think that we all get so caught up in, you know, and we specifically, we have, dude, we have everything at our disposal. We have every nice lens. We have thousands of dollars of lenses, thousands of dollars of cameras. I have a $4,000 tripod that I'm looking at across the room. But you

[1:59:10] don't really need any of that stuff. We've accumulated it from years of doing production work. We don't need it. We just need really just need our phone in a window, you know? And that's like that's the only thing really holding most people back, I feel like, is just more so the fear, not the gear. Oh, that

[1:59:26] you're kidding, dude. Put that on a shirt, dude. Put that on a shirt, dude. Only thing holds you back is the fear, not the gear. Oh my god, dude. Did I just cook? Dude, you're red in the face. I I hope so. Because Because you are blushing so hard. Oh my god, dude. You better make that before I do.

[1:59:46] I hope that, dude. That's crazy. I'm going to go live with that tonight. Your video tonight. I'm going live with that, too. Your video tonight, dude. Only thing holding you back is the fear, not the gear, dude. Print that. Oh my god, man. I think we got to leave it there. I feel like that's as far as it needs to

[2:00:02] go. Yeah. Okay. Comment. Comment if you made it this far. If you're still at the Dude, what time is it? 3:00 a.m. Oh my god. After party still going. We got to get on a flight. Yeah, dude. In a few hours. Holy [ __ ] God, this has been episode 190. Yeah. Or 191.

[2:00:20] Dude, we've done so many. I lost track. Julie, can you confirm? The one thing The last thing I'll say, 191. It's 191. The one last thing I'll say about June that I realized I need to do is he has a Google Drive like so organized. Oh my gosh. I know. Tell him about the G Drive. Dude, he was telling I don't even know if he

[2:00:41] talked about this on the podcast. I think he was after he was telling us that he has a Google Drive of like every photo and every B-roll clip organized to the tea. like this is June writing. This is June running. This is June setting up his camera. And ages too. He's like, "Yeah, young June, young June writing, older

[2:01:01] June, right?" Like writing. So, it's so interesting to just think about and I'm over here just being like, man, I hope I can find that photo in my favorites. I think I took that photo in 2014 or Yeah, dude. We're getting on it, though. We're getting on it, dude. But man, what a year 2016 was. Gosh, 2016 was good. We've been listening to bangers all week, dude. I went back through, this is also actually really funny. Went back through

[2:01:28] some of my old hard drives from abroad. 2016 was the year I studied abroad. And I wanted to be like a influencer so bad. I wanted to be like a vlogger so bad because all my favorite creators were vloggers at the time and I was so hyped that I was in Europe and I thought I was going to blow up cuz I was like who's

[2:01:53] not going to want to watch this stuff? Yeah. How many views were those getting? Do you remember? Dude, a decent amount. Like a few thousand. But it was because I had the clout from Teens React. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. In summer break. And um but dude it was just so cringey. I look at myself then and it was I think I was just trying to be someone I wasn't and I also was just young and I think we've all made stupid silly cringy videos. Um

[2:02:25] some more than others. Yeah. Yeah. I'm probably more than others. But I don't know, man. It's uh it's just interesting to look back and I think like you talk about Marcus making these vlogs and I think a big a big key when it comes to being able to show up authentically yourself or show up confidently on camera is you got to work on yourself. You have to know who you are. I think that a lot of times the people who who show up in a way online that doesn't feel true to them is because they're actually insecure and they haven't spent the time to get their

[2:03:06] mind right and and work on themselves and they don't have that actual confidence in themselves. So, they're insecure and they think that if I show up online, I have to show up in a way that I think people are going to like as opposed to I'm confident in myself. I'm good enough myself. That's all I need for these videos to be successful. And I I'd be curious to ask Marcus about that because he strikes me as someone who has just he's like, I am who I am. I'm unapologetically myself and that's just

[2:03:35] how I'm going to show up online. Mhm. I can't wait. We're leaving tomorrow morning and we'll be gone for a week. We're going to get you guys a new video. New YouTube video on the other channel. We rebranded the other channel, dude. We already rebranded it. We did rebrand. Dude, we're YouTubers now. I know. I know that. Not just podcast,

[2:03:50] dude. video almost has 1,000 views. Yeah, it's like almost at 900, right? It is past it. Oh, is past it, which is pretty cool. So, you guys should go check it out. The channel's Beef Figgy and Coast. Pretty cool. Yeah, pretty exciting. We rebranded it. It's great. Uh, so that's exciting. Go subscribe if you haven't already, and we'll see you

[2:04:08] guys in the next one. Well, let's go. Episode 181, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button, drop us a comment, leave us a like, and we'll see you guys all next week. Peace.

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