Brock Johnson: 10 Years of Instagram Growth Advice in One Hour

0:00You don't own your social media. You are operating on rented territory that can be taken away from you at any point. So, I believe that there's only two extremes in terms of content that are going to be performing in the near future. They are the super cinematic or the opposite end of the spectrum, which is the raw, genuine, authentic, in-the-moment

0:19storytelling. The biggest thing is the aesthetics. Those days are gone. Now, what people want more than ever is authenticity, realness, genuineness. Brock Johnson has spent nearly a decade helping creators grow with an audience of over 1 million. In this episode, he breaks down how to stop overthinking your content, find what works, reach more people, and turn your audience into customers. How are you producing all of this content while also maintaining such

0:43a healthy [music] work-life balance? My phone goes into what I like to call dumb mode, where it turns itself into black and white, it removes all the social media and all the work-related apps. We have seen Instagram shift, we have seen content shift, we have seen industry shift, we have seen algorithm shift. What do you think is so important about growth today that in 5 years will

1:03still remain true? If someone in your life calls content creation not a real job, I got something for you. Because it's not a real job, it is the dream job. And if you want to turn content into an actual business, there is a system behind the scenes that works for all the top creators, and it is called ManyChat. I'll tell you more about it later in this episode. Try ManyChat Pro for free at get.manychat.com/real-job

1:29with code creator. I really don't want you to miss any of our future episodes, so I'm going to ask if you to subscribe and make sure you turn the notification bell on. This will only help us do more podcasts like this, bring on even better guests so that you can learn more from it. I love all of

1:42you guys and let's get back into it. [music] One, first of all, Brock, I mean, congratulations on your event. We're going to be talking a lot about it, but I know how hard it is to run those things and you've done a great job with it. So, just congratulations with that. you. Thank you. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I was I was definitely big-time inspired by like seeing the event that you did in London. I think you did one in New York, too. And it was like so I loved so much of of seeing those and and took inspiration for sure. So, no, I

2:11really appreciate it. I was just telling you before the cameras were rolling that I was really looking forward to this because Brock, you are a stand-up guy. Like when I had first met you, just your smile, your energy, your excitement, your kindness. I was like, "Yeah, I can't wait to have him on." And I think you do it the right way. So, so again, I'm excited for this conversation. Thank you so much for

2:27coming on. Yeah, of course. Really really excited to be here and right back at you. I mean, I always feel like in this industry, you can tell really quickly like when someone's genuine and when their heart's in the right place and when they just want to serve people. And when we met earlier this year, I was like, "Wow, June's like a really really good dude." Like someone who I want in my circle. So, anyways, I'm glad we're getting to have

2:46this this conversation. [laughter] To give some context, me and Brock had met in Can Lion where we were just sweating head to toe. And we were doing our very best. [laughter] It's impossible to describe how hot that was. I was trying to tell the team once we had come back like how ridiculous it was. But I don't know, we got a good chance to meet each other, a lot of good people there, too. So, I think it made

3:07for a really good experience. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I agree. It was it was it was special. It was awesome. And just so unbelievably hot. I mean, there's there's like for anyone who knows Fahrenheit, it should never be 100° at [laughter] the beach. It was 100° at the beach and humid. It was it was but we were all in it together. Like we were all kind of just accepting, "Hey, we're all dripping in sweat, so we might as

3:29well just deal with it." I love it. Again, thank you so much Brock for for coming on. There's so much that I want to discuss with you. But Brock, where I want to start is something that you had done recently, which I don't believe many experts in your position would do. You had come on to your page and you had admitted that you want to share more about your life, your interests, do more storytelling on your page. And this goes against the old adage that you and I have been taught, which is to only share value. So, speak to me about that personal evolution, and then moreover,

3:58why does this distinction today matter more than ever before for those people listening? Yeah, so this is a really great question. Back I I mean, I've been growing on Instagram. I've been teaching social media strategy for almost a decade now. And when I was first getting started, I shared a ton of my personal life. And honestly, at that stage, it was in large part because my page was transitioning from what I had previously used as my personal Instagram account

4:24into this business Instagram account. And so, if you scroll far enough down, if you're crazy enough to scroll 17,000 times, you'll find my [laughter] high school football pictures and my, you know, prom photos and all that. Like, you'll find all that. So, it was more of an a slow transition, right? Where I was sharing my personal life, sharing about all my interests and passions and hobbies. Oh, yeah, and also here's some social media strategy as well. But, over time, I started to see that the more that I shared just value or just about my, quote-unquote, niche or just about growing on social media, the more I was growing. And so, I kind

4:59of over time just fell out of the habit, quite honestly, of sharing a ton about my personal life. Then, about a year ago, my wife brought something up to me, which I love having a partner who can kind of be my mirror and who can kind of, you know, hold up that reflection for me. And she said, "You haven't been posting a ton about your personal life on your Instagram really at all recently." And I was like, "You know, that's that's a good point." And so, I started doing it more on my Instagram stories. I started talking more about my personal life, sharing anything that was

5:28going on. Currently, at the time that we're recording this on my Instagram stories is some moose that were in my backyard yesterday that I thought was just so crazy to see this 8-ft tall animal. Um, but as we would both probably agree, you're going to get a lot more views on your feed. The reels, the posts you're making on your feed are always going to get more views and distribution than your Instagram stories. And so, even though I've been sharing about my personal life on my stories for the last

5:53year, I hadn't been doing it on my feed. And so, it was actually at my live event, uh I hosted a live conference a couple weekends ago, and Jessie Jean, who I know is a mutual friend of ours, she was one of our speakers, and I got to pick her brain after her presentation and kind of do a live Q&A on stage. And I asked her about this whole idea of sharing about your personal life and including these stories on your feed, and she said that the secret to the success of her YAP

6:21challenge was that people really care. People cared about her, and she believes that the reason they cared about her was simply because she told stories. She talked about her personal life. She shared these storylines and these life updates. So, she was more than just value. She was more than just a talking head or an educator. She was someone who people truly could relate to and someone

6:42who people could really identify with. And so, in that answer, she also said, "You know, Brock, when you invited me to speak at your conference, I wanted to do some snooping, as we all do. Who is this person? Let me find out if they're a good person." You know, if they don't get the opportunity to hang out like you and I did for a few days in France, the way we get to know people is we're going to stalk their page a little bit, right? See what they're up [laughter]

7:03to. And so, she said she started stalking my page, and she was like, "Wow, this guy's got a lot of value, but I don't really know much about him. I don't know much about his values. I can't tell if he's a good person. I can't really discern these things about him." And she wasn't saying this to intentionally call me out, but I was like, "Oh my god, this this is a call out right now." And I actually love the way someone phrased it, June. They said, "She wasn't calling you out, she was calling you up." And I

7:28absolutely love that that reframing. But, regardless of how you say it, it was it was kind of a wake-up call like, "Yeah, I need to start sharing these personal stories on my feed." And so, over the last few weeks since the live conference, I've been trying to do a much more intentional job of that. If you've ever commented on one of my Instagram posts and you got a DM from me, it is not me staying up till midnight to get back, but instead it is actually an automated system by ManyChat. It's been the system that I've used on my back end for the last 2 years

7:56and it allows me to take the attention that I'm I'm already generating, but actually do something with it. So, connecting with the right people, sending them to the right place, and ultimately being able to track that data so that I know what to double down on and I know what to correct. So, instead of them seeing a post and then swiping away and forgetting about it, I can use that post to spark a conversation, to

8:15know how to serve my audience better. Then this becomes the perfect opportunity for me to show the different resources that Creator College offers. So, it's the perfect integration to every business. Attention is only half the battle, it's what you do with it that really makes it count. And you know, I'm always trying to help you in any capacity to build your dream job with content so that you can have more freedom, more ownership, and more opportunities. ManyChat will help you do that. So, try ManyChat Pro free for a month at get.manychat.com/real-job with code creator. Okay, back to the episode. I have found that to be one of

8:52the biggest competitive advantages once someone does nail that within their respective strategies because it's so easy in the age of AI to copy information or copy tips, but is there a way to make you stand out? Can the football version of you and then coaching side of you and then you as as a partner, like all that come together

9:08in a mirage? I think you're doing that. Now, talk to me about, let's say, other experts that are listening into this. Maybe people that are wondering, "How do I protect my image while also still telling my stories?" What is a good first step for them? Yeah, I think that a good first step is finding ways to incorporate bits and pieces of your personal life, of your interests, passions, and hobbies into the value that you're delivering. So, something that I often do in the winter, uh which a big part of me, a big part of my life is snowboarding. I moved to Utah away from Southern California so that I could

9:38live in the mountains and snowboard. And so, I've started every winter filming some of my reels on the chairlift when my beard is like covered in icicles and snow. And so, even though the the reel is not about snowboarding, people are able to see that that's what's going on, right? They're able to see like, "Why is Brock wearing goggles and a helmet and there's snow in his beard?" They're able to connect those dots. The people who follow me who are skiers and snowboarders, they recognize it immediately and they can appreciate those things about me. Um but even the people who don't necessarily who maybe have never been to snow in their life,

10:10they can start to pick up these little bits and pieces. And so, I think that if you can find ways to incorporate these interests and passions, maybe it's cooking and you're going to start uh cooking a meal during your video. And there's like the visual hook, the dynamicness of you chopping up uh food and and preparing items while you're also teaching something that maybe has nothing to do with cooking. Those little elements are an easier way that you can start to incorporate storytelling and parts of yourself into your content while still providing that value. And then over time, I think it's important I I did this early on um and it really

10:46created this habit in me, but it's writing down every story, every moment that is like, "Oh wow, that was really funny." Or that was really exciting. Or that was out of the norm. Or that was That was an experience, right? Even if it's something like, "I was going to drive 30 minutes and there was a car wreck on the highway and it ended up being a 3-hour drive." Write down that story and write down some details and save them in in a note in your phone. And what that will do is two things. Number one, over time, you're going to get a lot better at recognizing

11:15these moments in your life. Because we all feel like, "Oh, my life isn't that exciting. My life Oh, it's boring. I don't have these stories to tell." We all have crazy things that happen to us all the time. So, just start documenting them, number one. And then number two, in the future, when it comes time to create content, when it comes time to teach a lesson, record a podcast, whatever it may be, you have this bank of stories that you can pull from. So, if you're teaching a lesson about, say, um staying consistent in the gym because you're a fitness coach, you could go through your list and say, "What from

11:48this list of stories is an example of someone who is inconsistent? Or a time where someone was super consistent? Or a time where consistency made all the difference?" But you don't have to just rack your brain for that story. You have all these stories that are kind of pre-logged and and ready to use. I'm interrupting really quickly to tell you about my next 5-day virtual masterclass that's happening right around the corner. It is 100% free, and inside I'll be showing you exactly how I create content, exactly how I think about content, and ultimately how I can take that attention and scale businesses behind it. This is not just about

12:19theory, it's going to be very practical, and you'll walk away with an exactly made plan for you. If you want to get your free spot before it runs out, then make sure you look at the show notes or the description box. Let's get back into it. I love this, and I want to actually keep expanding on it. So, let's say that someone listening to this is taking your advice, and they have their Apple notes or their phone notes, and they're finding events in their life as they come across it. And I think it's so important to learn how to read your life. Then how do you they make that

12:45story interesting? How do you go ahead and take an event and then make a piece of content around it where people will actually want to care? Yeah. Focus on the feelings more than the fillings. And what I mean by that is when we try to tell stories, oftentimes and I'm thinking of my dad as I'm saying this answer because bless his heart, he loves telling a story, but he My mom and I, when he starts telling a story, we just kind of give each other the look like, "Here we go." Because he includes details that are unnecessary. And moreover, [clears throat] oftentimes what I feel people get wrong

13:17with storytelling is they're just focused on the details in general. People care a lot [clears throat] less about the statistics. Or to use the phrase I started with, the fillings of the story. The exact date and time and temperature. They care a lot more about the feelings. To use a story that you and I told at the very beginning of this episode, we were talking about how we're dripping sweat at this creator event in the south of France. I know I shared the the detail, the feeling that it was like 100 degrees, but even before that, we're

13:45talking about how we're dripping sweat. We're not hugging each other because we're all just soaked through our clothes and we're constantly like looking for shade. You don't know necessarily what time of the month it was, you don't know what time of the year it was. You know it was the south of France, but like we could have left that detail out. You don't care as much that we were there for 4 days or 7 days or 3 days. You don't care about all these details. You care about the feelings, right? What were we actually experiencing? And I think, not to get too nerdy scientific on you, but I think

14:15that's because when you focus on the feelings in your storytelling, people's mirror neurons are able to fire and they're able to picture themselves in that experience. Whereas if you focus on the numbers and you focus on the all of the details and and the logistics of the story that you're telling, the analytical side of people's brains take over instead of just them getting lost

14:37in the story. There's a really good framework where I tell my students to do the problem pursuit payoff. And it's speaking to a lot of what you're saying here where you can go ahead and it's not even just the details, but a lot of times people talk about the successes. Like people talk about how great they are, what they've achieved, and they'll lead with that because of the credibility, the polished component. But if you lead with payoff, not many people will actually recognize that to be their experience. But problems we as human beings are a common denominator, struggle. So you and I might not have the exact same living

15:06experiences today, but we've gone through insecurities, impostor syndrome, this fear of trying and failing in public. And we have these fears, these problems that we experienced. If we lead with that, so the same idea with the story about Ken Line, it's this idea that you and I had experienced the heat and we were struggling, we were nervous, we were insecure coming into it. We're trying to make an experience of it. If we led with that, the people actually care about the pursuit. How did you overcome that? And then ultimately that payoff actually has more meaning. I love that we're we're going like super into this already cuz I feel like we're going

15:33to have a lot to talk about. I want to start a little bit earlier because you are somebody that I've heard say that you're not going to win on creativity or editing or humor or looks alone, but you're going to win on sheer output. And you obviously practice what you preach because you post four or five times a day. You do your trial reels, you produce your podcast, you do this beautifully well. And I want to speak to your workflow here in a little bit, but where does this dedication come from, Brock? Where does this discipline come from in your childhood? What is actually

16:03stemmed you to be who you are today? Yeah. First of all, I love that you used the word discipline because people often ask, "How do you find the motivation?" And and I don't. There are plenty days where I'm not motivated, plenty of days where I'm like, "Uh do I really want to do this today?" Now, we can talk more about systems and workflow and how we can avoid those things, but it really ultimately, especially early on, comes down to discipline, right? Sticking with it and being able to do the hard thing, do the thing that you're committed to, do the thing that you said you were going to do

16:30even when you don't feel like it, right? Um I think where that comes from is I have a a background in sports. So, specifically in football. My grandpa is the winningest coach in Orange County, California history, second winningest coach in California state history um for football. My dad played professionally, my uncle played professionally. So, even though people look at me now and they're like, "Oh, you come from a line of entrepreneurs." Because my mom is an entrepreneur, my grand my mom's father is an entrepreneur. So, in that sense, I do come from entrepreneurs. Um more so for the first 18 to 20 years of my life,

17:06I come from a football family. I come from a a family that is considered football royalty in Southern California. Um and so, from a young age, I got to be around high schoolers. I got to see them being coached. I got to see what kids went off to play at Stanford and USC and go play professionally, and I got to see what kids were really, really talented on the high school team, but never made it out of high school. They they dropped out or they had, you know, drug problems or whatever, and I got to see that first hand. And then actually you saying the word discipline, I I don't know if I've

17:37ever shared this before, but on one of my youth football teams, I think it was maybe first or second grade, our coach would give us a word of the year every year. And we would print off these little laminated labels and put them right on the forehead of our helmet. It's actually where the little Riddell usually logo is, the logo of the helmet brand. We would cover that up with our word of the year. And I'm pretty sure for maybe first and second, maybe even and third grade, the word was discipline. And so from literally age 6, 7, 8, I was getting hammered about

18:09discipline, discipline, discipline. Um and we can talk more about perfectionism and things I've had to overcome in my life, but I think some really good things that came out of my football life was uh a lot of discipline and dedication and and you know, I I don't mean to put any entrepreneurs or content creators down when I say what I'm about to say, but personally, I feel like in college, if I was able to wake up, which I did, every day at 4:00 a.m., go to a couple hours of meetings, I was a quarterback, and then we'd go to a couple hours of lifting weights, and

18:42then we'd have some more meetings, and then we'd go to practice for 2 hours, and then we'd usually have more meetings after practice, and then around 1:00 a.m. I would eat my meal while I was on the way to a couple hours of classes, and then I would come home from classes, and then I would do my business stuff at home at like 6:00, 7:00 p.m. that evening. Like in my opinion, if I can do all that stuff, if I can manage my books, ball, and business while I was in college, then managing the business, creating some reels, creating some content now in my professional career,

19:10Uh it feels easy. There's a conversation that me and my co-founder just had and he was asking why am I so non-stop? As in why is it when something is achieved that that you have the energy to go ahead and do something again? He's like, "I'm not as young as you. Like I think we need a little bit of some of some break." And I said the exact same thing that you just said, which is when I was in school and getting my degrees in biomedical engineering and I elected to get both my bachelor's and master's, like that was so much harder than what I think I am

19:38doing today. I think the willingness cuz I think nowadays you and I actually see the fruits of our labor. Like we see that when we actually do something, we do a launch and it's successful, we see that. When you're playing football and you're grinding it like every single day and you're not necessarily winning the championship or you're not winning the award, it's hard to show up every single day. And the same idea when I was a student. And I think it's a really important message for everyone to be listening in on this cuz they're probably not at the stage where they've

20:03made their first million dollars, right? They're in their stage where it's this idea that I'm grinding, I'm grinding, I'm grinding. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel and I need a little bit of hope. And I could give them perfect person to ask about this because I always say the content is two parts. There's a tactic side, there's also a mindset side. And it's usually this mindset component that decides whether someone lasts or doesn't. So you talk about football, I'm talking about studying. Can you give me a tangible way that other people can practice their discipline ahead of of preparing for what is going to be a long-term struggle

20:34in content mentally? Yeah, I think it's a a really great question. Practicing discipline. I There's this saying that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. And while I think that you could argue against that in some regards, I think that in many regards that is very true. And so um I think that even to this day, I exercise almost every day and I know

20:55that's a huge part of your routine, too. I remember when we were in Canon you said, "Oh like I you know I had this long flight. I traveled all the way over here and I was still up in the hotel this morning getting my workout in, right?" Those sorts of things like discipline, it's all areas of your life. And so, it's going to be very hard for you to be disciplined with, let's say, daily content creation if you aren't disciplined with your exercise routine, or with your diet, or with your family, with your priorities. I'm not saying that you have to be perfect, absolutely not, but I do think that if you let

21:26yourself not have discipline in all areas of your life, and then you expect yourself to suddenly be disciplined in this one area of content creation or business ownership, it's going to be a real struggle. And so, I think that that's number one is apply this discipline to all areas of your life. Number two, give yourself grace. You're not going to be perfect. I think [clears throat] people believe that discipline requires perfection, and as soon as they miss one day, they miss one workout, they miss one post, it leads them into a spiral, right? Um even the most disciplined

21:55people in the world are going to miss. They're They're going to have mistakes. They're going to have days where they just literally They're sick, and you need to take a day off, right? Those sorts of things. And that's important as well. And then the final thing that I'll say that I think is really underrated is

22:09getting an accountability partner. Whether it's a spouse, a loved one, a colleague, a business partner, someone in your community, find a local entrepreneurship or content creation club, or whatever. Or find someone digitally. Like, Instagram is full of people just like you, the listener, who are trying to grow, trying to build their their brand, or or grow their business. Connect with some of the other brand owners and and business owners on Instagram, and just reach out and say, "Hey, I would love to be your accountability partner. Would you like to be mine?" Like, I will help hold you accountable, you hold me accountable, because we're way more likely to cheat

22:43out on ourselves, or to use a fitness analogy analogy to skip some reps in the gym, uh when we're doing it by ourselves, but when we have a coach or an accountability partner, or someone there who we're working out with, we're a lot less likely to cheat them. And so, if you can find an accountability partner, I think that that's a huge

23:00unlock for your discipline. Uh it's so true. I mean, using that workout analogy, there are many times where I'm in the gym like, there's no way I could lift that weight. And then I'll have a workout partner come with me. They're like, I think you could do it. And then I end up doing it. And I think that you don't realize your own potential unless someone is objectively

23:16looking at and keeping you accountable. I think that is so good. I know you had mentioned your parents earlier. And when I was researching you, what stood out to me about your childhood isn't even that your parents were entrepreneurs, but it was that they allowed you to try different things and also fail. And I'm curious how that has prepared you for the inevitable ups and downs that a

23:34creator entrepreneur experiences. Yeah, I'm a big believer that everything is figureoutable. And that was something that was taught to me from a young age by my parents. And my parents did an amazing job of teaching me about entrepreneurship as a kid, teaching me really about life as a kid, not through the lessons. We didn't sit down at the dinner table and they lectured me. We didn't sit down and here [snorts] today you're going to learn about KPIs. And

24:00today you're going to learn about SOPs. And today you're going to learn about customer acquisition costs. No, they instead lived their life as entrepreneurs and they allowed both my sister and myself to monkey see, monkey do. To observe and learn. And that allowed us to take our own interest, right? As a kid, you're naturally going to gravitate towards whatever your parents are doing. You're interested in what they're up to. And it's no secret that I know there's been plenty of studies done that have shown that people often times end up in the same career that their parents are doing. And I think you're a lot more

24:29likely to enjoy that career if you're not forced into it, but you instead get to find it on your own. And so again, my parents lived their life as entrepreneurs. And so that means I got to see all of it. I got to see the pros and the cons. I got to see the the fruits of my parents' labor and the the successes and the, you know, family vacations we got to go on with our entire family. And the way my parents got to take care of their friends. But I also got to see the struggles. I got to see the the tough years. I got to see

24:56something that my mom has been open about, which is that she struggled with workaholism. I got to see that first hand as a child. And so, all of those things taught me lessons. Um, and so, there was a lot of learning that I did from that young age about entrepreneurship. So many lessons that I was able to to gain from them. Um, and I think that it's a huge part of who I am today and and how I got to be where I am is is I got to learn from them. Uh, and yeah, I think it totally set me up for

25:24the future. The brilliant part about you is that you've taken these lessons and you've also applied it to ensure that you don't make the same mistakes. You actually have one of the best work-life balances that I've heard of. Like, speaking to you, working with you directly, like I I know that from you. And I think that you take that very intimately and personally for yourself. So, I I want to get into your workflow, right? Like, how are you producing all of this content while also maintaining such a healthy work-life balance? Talk to me about the system behind it. Talk to me about ideation all

25:53the way through posting. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I I appreciate that. That is a focus for me. Like, that is maybe priority number one is my work-life balance. And I do want to say that there are seasons to be more in balance, right? Like, I you and I both talked about earlier, um, you and when you were getting your master's. For

26:12me, it was as a college football player. There are these seasons where you're grinding harder, you're hustling more, you're you're working harder, you're maybe spending more hours, um, on the laptop and spending more hours working than you are uh, maybe enjoying the fruits of those labors. Like, I loved your dedication and the way you were posting in lead-up to the story challenge that you recently did, where you were documenting, like, here's how many hours I've spent building and and ideating and planning out all these things. There are times and seasons for that. I'm absolutely a fan of working

26:42hard. I'm a huge fan of working hard. I'm not a fan of sacrificing your priorities. I'm not a fan of, um, sacrificing your health. You know, like again, to use my mom as an example, she would she it was a very it was very important for her to not work and to be very present when my sister and I were around. So, what that meant was she would put us to bed and then she would

27:07stay up until 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 a.m. working. And then she would wake up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning to go teach a fitness class and be home in time for us to wake up and have breakfast. That means that she was working for 4 or 5 hours just overnight while we were sleeping. And then while we're at school, she's working more. And so, you know, not to get too lost in in that story, but I again, that's what taught me a lot about how I want to live and the work-life balance that I want to have for myself. And so, first of all, it starts with some boundaries, which

27:35for me, I never pretty much never take meetings or calls prior to 10:00 a.m. This conversation is an exception. We're having this at 8:00 a.m. Mountain time. But, I'll make an exception I'll make an exception for you. And also, I have some travel today. So, I was like, you know, I'm going to be up anyways, let's do it. Um but, rarely do I take any meetings

27:52before 10:00 a.m. or even 11:00 a.m. because I like to have my mornings to be with my wife, make her coffee. I like to I'm a helper, so I like to do the morning chores and and, you know, put away all the dishes and and do all the stuff around the house in the morning. I

28:05like to have my workout in the morning. That's important for me. My day is going to be way better if I get to get a pump on in the morning rather than putting it off. Um so, usually before 11:00 a.m. I don't have anything. And then I have a hard stop at 5:00 p.m. Very, very rarely do I go past 5:00 p.m. If I'm in the middle of a task, I might push it a few minutes and finish it up. If I have a, you know, a live training at a 6:00 p.m., sure, there's an exception. But, for the most part, 5:00 p.m. hits, my phone goes off. Um and I have

28:30automations and and shortcuts set up in my phone so that at that time, my phone goes into what I like to call dumb mode, where it turns itself into black and white, it removes all the social media and all the work-related apps. And the only apps that I have left are my anti-productivity apps, Pokémon Go and um Wordle and like things that I can do

28:49that are not work-related at all. And another huge part of my work-life balance is my wife. So again, earlier I talked about an accountability partner. She doesn't have to do this very much at all anymore. But when we first started dating, I was fresh out of college, so I was still transitioning from this grind hustle mindset mentality, this bachelor mentality to now we're together, we're you know, spending time, we're we're

29:14moving towards engagement and marriage. And if I was working after 5:00 p.m. and I had expressed to her that that was a boundary of mine, and she looked over and saw that I was like typing on a Gmail, she'd be like, "What What What are you doing?" And And not even like trying to call me out, just just curious, "What are you up to?" But even that, I would be like, "Ah, I'm not hiding it. She knows I'm [laughter] working. She's noticing that I'm working, right? Because as entrepreneurs, we'll always try to sneak it in. We'll be like, "Oh, it's a commercial break." And my partner is on

29:42their phone watching TikTok, so I'll like open my email and type out a or I'll open my notes app and type out a post. They notice. Where your energy goes, they notice. And so even if you're both sitting together on the couch and she's on her phone watching Instagram Reels, if I'm working, there we're not together. We're not watching Reels together. We're not hanging out together. I'm working and she's not, right? Um and so she would call me out on that and so that was very

30:06helpful. Um but in terms of my overall workflow, to really answer this question, something that's evolved over time, but I really try to take the idea of of batching or time blocking and break it down even further into individual tasks. And so what that means specifically for me is that when I am writing scripts, I am only writing scripts. I'm not filming, I'm not ideating, I'm not coming up with ideas, I'm not editing, I am just writing scripts. Then when I'm filming, I'm filming as much as I possibly can. I am filming 15 or 30 or as many Reels as possible in that sitting. I've already written the

30:44scripts, I've already ideated. I'm not editing, I'm not planning, I'm not deciding when is this going to go, what's it going to No. I'm just filming. And so, I'm able to stay in these different modes rather than constantly having to mentally shift my attention into a new task, and that's very helpful for me. Um and then, most practically, the way that I break it down is that I will script write probably about two or three

31:05times a week. I ideate pretty much constantly. There's pretty much every day I'm I'm seeing ideas, I'm getting inspiration, I'm reading a chapter of a book, I'm seeing an amazing post from June, I'm watching a podcast, whatever. I'm getting inspiration, right? And so, I'm constantly getting inspired and and soaking up the creativity that's around me. Again, a few times a week I'm script writing. Really only about once a week or sometimes even once every other week am I actually sitting down to film content. And then, as much as possible, I try to pass off the stuff that I suck at, which is uh editing, which is the

31:38actual like putting together of the post. I try to pass that off to an editor um or to some sort of software or tool as much as I possibly can. I love that. And you treat content like a full-on business, and we just heard it there even in the mindset of the boundaries. And I think you need it cuz sometimes if we don't have those boundaries, it will literally bleed into

31:58our life, and our life becomes content. And I think that scares a lot of people, but when they hear the fact that you're treating it like 11:00 to 5:00 and keeping your mornings to yourself, I think it feels very approachable. So, I love that you've spoken about it. Talk to me in terms of who's on your team, and talk to me about how you found them and how you're managing them cuz what I have learned and I and I've worked with so many of these different creators who go from beginner stage when they're doing everything by themselves from ideation, filming, to editing, to posting, to managing analytics. And

32:25then, over time as their business grows, they need to bring help on, but they don't know which steps to take, and you've been doing this for a while. So, give people a little bit of an insight into that. Yeah. Hire before you're ready because when you feel like you're ready, it's too late. When you feel like, "Okay, I'm I'm ready to hire." It's not because you're at like this perfect moment, this

32:44perfect intersection of now's the time. It's because you're you're burnt out. It's because you're like, "Oh my god, if I have to read one more email. Oh my god, if I have to manage one more inquiry. Oh my god, if I have to do one more reel that I have to edit." You're at that point where you're like you're burnt out, you're over it, and and that's you don't want to be in that position. You're going to hire someone and they're going to get the worst version of you because you're burnt out and you're over it and you're just like, "Here, take this." So, hire before

33:08you're ready. And I think just like everything else in life, people worry about what's the right first step? What's the right post to make? What's the right What's the right? I think it's much more important to make your decisions right than to make the right decision. And so, what I mean by that in terms of hiring is there are lots of people you could hire first. You could hire a creative director who's going to come on your team, they're going to ideate your entire vision, remake your brand, hire a bunch of people underneath them like an

33:34editor or a content creator and whatnot. Or, you could start by hiring a content creator, or you could start by hiring an editor, or you could start by hiring a copywriter. There is no right first hire necessarily. What I have found and what I did personally is when I was 19 years old, I hired my first assistant. And I hired her at that stage when I had made $2,000 in total in my business. And I had no idea what to give her to do. I remember I hired her and I was literally like, "Uh you're I guess you're going to work 5 hours a week and maybe like check my

34:06emails for me." But even that like she wasn't really checking my emails. I was still checking them. I don't I don't even remember what I actually had her doing. [laughter] I think at that time I was also on Snapchat, so I had her doing like Snapchat research, which meant every few days she would send me some articles of that came out from Snapchat and that

34:22was about it. But again, I hired before I was truly ready to hire, but because of that, my business in the first month that I hired that assistant at 19 years old, did as much in revenue as the 6 months prior, which was at that point the first 6 months of my business. And no offense to to Joyce, my assistant at the time, it wasn't because she was really moving the needle, like I just described. It was in large in large part because I had those little tasks that were off my mind, and I had someone else who I was accountable to now. The business, the

34:57revenue, the sales, everything, it wasn't just going to pay me, it was also going to pay for my assistant, right? Um and so that was the first hire that I had. Now on the team we have an assistant. My wife works really closely with me on my personal brand. She's kind of our CFO. I like to say that she uh keeps me out of jail for tax fraud. She handles all the money and all the finances and and our bank account. I haven't logged into our bank account in like 4 or 5 years. Um and so she handles all that, and I'm really fortunate to have her on the team in that regard, uh

35:26because I'm not type A, I'm not very organized, so she is that's very uh that's awesome. Um I do have an editor for my Reels. However, she doesn't necessarily edit all of my Reels for me. She edits more of the complex ones, the talking head ones, the ones that might require a little bit more B-roll, or a

35:43little bit more graphic design in them. Um and I would say she does about 16 per month for me currently. Um also on the personal brand side, uh I have someone who edits my podcasts, cuz that's something I could not do. I have someone who produces, or you could say manages the podcast, so they manage like the uploads, the thumbnail getting added, the right description being written, and all that stuff. Um and then I recently brought on someone who is I we don't have a formal title for her yet, but something along the lines of vice president of content. And so she's someone who's basically doing everything

36:15that we talked about a minute ago in my workflow. Yeah. She's helping me with ideation, with discovering formats, with script writing, with coming up with ideas, with repurposing content that I've posted before. We have like 937 videos from that live conference I did a few weeks ago. She's turning that into actual content that can be posted and can be used. So, that's on the personal brand side. And then, we also have the business brand, which is the InstaClubhub. And on that business, we have about 20 people who work on it. Um and that's all the normal um you know, we have a head of the pro program

36:46director. We have a media buyer, someone who does advertising for us. Uh we have a few people on the automation side. We have a customer service team. We have a graphic designer, fulfillment stuff. All the normal business ops. Um but I'm a big fan of stop doing what you suck at. I think that as entrepreneurs, we need to ask the question who, not how. Not how can I get a million followers? How can I make a million dollars? How how how? Instead, you ask who. Who has done this before? Who can I learn from? Who can I hire and bring on the team to do this for me? And so, I am able to put my

37:15ego aside and recognize there's a lot that I suck at. And all of those things on that long list that I'm really not good at, I'm going to hire someone and pass that off to a team member who not only is good at that, but loves doing it as well. It's such a good point because for me in the last 15 16 months, I've hired more than I've ever had before. So, it's like a very slow thing for me. Like I brought in one or two people. And then it's kind of exploded. And then when I recognized how important these hires were, I started doubling down on it. But there

37:45there's two skills being done there. There's the hiring and then there's the leadership, the management side of it. So, I want you to speak to that cuz what I have found a lot of creatives are really good at coming up with ideas and being inspirational and things that they they call it like the vision. They're like they're really good at defining the vision, but they're not so good at the operation side of things. And when you have other people that are depending on you for your leadership and your strategic advice, it's so important that you make them feel seen. So, talk to me about best practices around leadership

38:10and management. Yeah. I think making people feel seen, as you just said, is very important. Every person is not going to be led the same way. Every person is going to want to be led in a different way. That it reminds me of this quote uh from Ryan Howard from The Office who said, "I want to be led the way I want to be led when I want to be led. That's how you should lead me." And as funny as that quote was, it's true. I mean, everyone has their own unique way. And I know that even on my team, there's certain people who I I need to give long explanations to, and

38:41I need you to give them time, and I need to really give them runway to think about the tasks and projects that we're working on. And there's some people on our team who I can that they're all about brevity, be concise, be direct, right? Um sometimes that's that's like my uh vice president of content, she's a Northern European, and she is someone

38:58who's like, "Just be direct with me. Don't sugarcoat it. Don't be nice. Don't do the compliment sandwich thing. Just like give me the direct feedback." Um so understanding that, and that comes from a place of empathy, and that comes from a place of listening more than you speak. I think that oftentimes when we think of leaders, we think of the monologue, we think of the speech, we

39:15think of the person doing the talking. And I think the best leaders are actually the best listeners. And so the more that you can listen, empathize with your team, your staff, and truly hear what their needs are, the better you're going to be able to lead them. Um and then I would recommend reading the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Um the word extreme is in the title. It's a little extreme in the book, but I think it's a really great leadership book, and it's taught me a lot um about the way I want to lead my team in the way that I do uh lead my organization. But also,

39:45leadership takes practice. It's a skill just like anything else. Sure, uh you know, there's that phrase natural-born leader. No one's a natural-born leader. We're natural-born babies. You don't come out of the womb like directing your parents on what to do. Sure, there's some, you know, characteristics and behavioral traits, whatever. But ultimately, leadership is a skill that can be developed. And the final thing that I will say when we're talking about this who instead of how is if you are truly someone who you're just a you're a creative uh leaf in the wind. You're someone who just loves uh having no rules and and no one to report to and

40:18just being your being your uh, freak flag flying and and just being yourself, well, then maybe you're someone who needs to hire that leader to be the director of operations, to be the person who is very regimented and who's going to be that uh, director for your team and then you're just going to be like the crazy visionary behind the scenes who talks with just that one person and then they can disseminate and actually

40:41lead the team. I love how nitty-gritty we're getting cuz again, as you scale, you need these types of conversations. Like I wish I wish that I could have turned on some footage and had someone explain to me what you have just explained when I was making my first five hires because leadership is something that you have to constantly take extreme ownership around. Like everything that goes wrong is entirely because of you and everything that goes right is because of everyone else on your team. And it's like constantly nurture that culture and I love it. I want to take a second to zoom out for more of the beginners

41:11listening in on this and you're one of the best people to ask because you've been a coach in this space for longer than almost everyone. You've been doing this for the better part of a decade and I want to hear from you how how the paradigm has shifted from 10 years ago how content looked to today. What are some things that you stood behind back then that you no longer stand behind

41:30because things have evolved. Mhm. The biggest thing is the aesthetics. The aesthetics are gone. Um, again, earlier I mentioned you can scroll down in my feed and see my high school football photos. You can also scroll down in my feed and see the 2016 to 2019 era of Instagram where everything was so aesthetic. Everything had to look a certain way. You had to

41:51pick a font. You had to pick a color. You had to pick a filter. I remember my coaching clients back then part of my services was connecting them with a local photographer to go out and have Instagram photo shoots where you would take a bunch of content, get a bunch of photos for your Instagram, right? Those days are gone. Now, what people want more than ever is authenticity, realness, genuineness. And the great thing is that we all have phones now that can shoot in 4K. Your phone is more than high enough quality. And so, you have the ability, you don't need a production team or a photographer, but

42:24you have the ability to film and photograph yourself constantly in your real setting, in your real life, in your genuine um living space, in your genuine emotions, and sharing those actual stories. That's something that has really changed on Instagram over the last few years, and I think uh a huge part of that now, especially, is AI, right? Everything is reproducible to a certain degree with AI. And I think that AI is getting better and better and better at professional, cinematic, high-quality content. And so, I believe that there's only two extremes in terms of content that are going to be performing in the near future. They are

43:01the super cinematic, like I am literally a Hollywood cinematographer. I I you know, we met people, both of us did, um at Cannes Lions, who they're literal Hollywood cinematographers, or they had a background in music video production, or they worked on X and Y and Z movie, and now they're making Reels. And it's like that's that's the level of cinematic, professional quality that we have to compete with. Or, the opposite end of the spectrum, which is the raw, genuine, authentic, in-the-moment storytelling. The things that show the real human emotion that people are going to want to connect with, and people are connecting with. And so, the biggest tip

43:38that I can give for that, authenticity, is that authenticity comes from speed. Authenticity comes from reducing the time between idea and execution. The faster that you can get from here's a topic I want to talk about, a story I want to tell, a framework I want to teach, to actually doing it, the more authentic it'll be. Conversely, the longer that you spend editing it, scripting it, I I worked with a woman just yesterday, I had a conversation and she said, "You know, last year I would film all my reels and they were doing great. And then this year, I've been taking the extra step of putting them

44:15into Chat GPT and trying to refine them and make the scripts even stronger and they've been flopping. And listen, I love Chat GPT. I love I love Claude. I love AI. There's There's a lot of really powerful and and great uses of these tools and they can really, I think, make your systems a lot more efficient. However, she was saying basically she she was answering her own question, which is that her posts had lost the authenticity because she was overly scripting them and then using AI to refine those

44:42scripts and then she was editing them. And so it was no longer coming from her. It was no longer genuine or or authentic. It was no longer uniquely her. It was a prompt from Chat GPT had had executed this script. Um and so again, that authenticity, the more that you can lean into that and that means the imperfections, that means the messy background, that means the oh my hair was out of place. Um that means oh I was I was uh not in in the right setting, so to speak. I wasn't in the aesthetic background. I didn't use the right fonts, colors, filters, whatever, but I

45:14still posted it anyways and people are, I think, going to connect with that a lot more um and they're going to connect with it a lot deeper uh now and into the future. This conversation, I think, applies significantly to all of my business owners, service providers because what happens is they've been trained to show the polished output of their work. So maybe it is a photographer or videographer and they're showing their final edit. Or let's say that they're a wedding planner, they're showing the final wedding. They're showing the end result. Maybe they're doing lash tech work and they're showing the final output for their clients. But the

45:46problem is if you search up lash tech or if you search up wedding planner or if you search up photographer or videographer, like you said, you were competing with the cream of the crop. You were competing with people that are significantly higher production than you, that have more cinematic experience than you. And if you're not going to compete off of aesthetics, if you're not going to compete off of even let's say pricing, the best way to compete is with authenticity. And I think what you're telling us here is that it's a skill to be learned. I think a lot of people hear the word authenticity and they're like,

46:15how the heck am I going to do that? Like I'm not authentic. Like I don't know how to show up there. And you're making this really good point where if you go from ideation to production of it and streamline that process and make it as fast as possible, then someone can't have the time to overthink. Now, I also know a lot of people are just going to be like, Brock, tell me how long I should take. So, what is a good recommendation? Let's say that someone has an idea in their car and they're like, I got to go film it, I got to post it. And to Brock's point, I got to make

46:39that distance as short as possible. How long are you recommending? Cuz of course there is the process where you do have to flush out the idea. You do have to film it correctly and things of that nature. So, how long are you generally giving as as a good recommendation? Yeah, I think it can really vary. But I I would say if it's, let's say a 30 to

46:5760 second talking head reel, right? You're you're teaching a lesson, telling a story, whatever. You're talking to the camera, yapping as some might say. That should take, in my opinion, 20 minutes or less from start to finish in order to maximize authenticity. Now, eventually, like you said, it's a skill that can be developed. Eventually, that can be 4 minutes, right? It takes a minute or two to think about, okay, what's my hook? That is one thing that I do think is important to think a little bit about how am I going to start this video? That might be one element where you might bring in a little bit of AI to

47:29refine find the hook or the opening statement because that is so important and there's so much studies and and research has been done on the psychology of an effective hook. That might be an area where you spend a little bit of time brainstorming. But then, for the most part, you want to lean into the, okay, I'm going to yap. I'm going to tell my story. And if there's a part where I'm like, oh, I didn't like that sentence, you can cut that sentence out in post-production. Or you can re-record

47:53that video and don't say that sentence. But really leaning into speed. So, I would rather, if someone's listening today, I would rather have them have an idea, spend 10 minutes on it, and post it, and then learn from it, than spend 30 minutes on it, and post it. Because, and I think everyone listening will will agree with this, the post that you're like, "I'm sure this one's going to go viral. This is the best one. I spent so much time, energy, and effort. I can't wait to post

48:20this." You post it, and it flops, right? And then, on the flip side, there's the post that you're like, "I just kind of whipped it together. I didn't think much of it." And I post it, and it did my It was my best this week, this month, this year. It was my best post ever, right? And so, use that as evidence to lean into under thinking. To talk about this the whole, you know, again, everyone's looking for the perfect moment, the perfect right

48:40choice, the first hire, the first step. They're also looking for the perfect amount of thinking. Like, on the spectrum of thinking, we have under thinking and over thinking, perfect amount of thinking. There's no such thing as perfect. There's no such thing as the perfect amount of thinking, June. And so, what they do is, they go overboard, and they end up over thinking, and over editing, and over scripting, and over doing, which removes the authenticity from their reel. And so, to the best of your ability, lean into under thinking. Intentionally spending less time. Intentionally saying, "You know what? I'm going to set a timer for 10 minutes, and whatever I'm

49:12done within those 10 minutes, I'm done with, and I have to post, right?" That means you're going to make some mistakes. I make mistakes all the time. Even just 2 days ago, I made a post that was like super authentic and genuine, and I was sharing some of the the difficult moments, some of the losses from our live conference. And on the second slide, I said, "This isn't for

49:30pity." But, I spelt the word pity wrong. Why? Not because I was trying to like boost engagement from people who were like, "You had a typo." But, because it was a genuine typo. Because I was focused on the authenticity of telling the story, of sharing this moment, and not on spell checking every word, and

49:46making sure that everything was perfect. And so, that's a small, concrete example, but the more that you can embrace under thinking, the more authentic you will be and the more efficient you'll get with content creation. You talked about speed and efficiency and it's such a good point because people don't even realize that that is trainable. Because when they hear 20 minutes from you, Brock, they're thinking, I spend 20 hours. I spend 20 days making a piece of content. 20 minutes is crazy. But I've gone through the similar experience where I I looked at Parkinson's law, for example, where work expands to fill the time allotted for it. And you will always be your

50:18biggest critic. You will always be coming perfectionist if you allow your mind to roam. You always think, ah, it's not good enough. I got to make this subtle change. And at the end of the day, no one's going to really care about the typo. No one's going to really care about that 2.2 second difference. No one will care, but it's in your constant mind. And something that I've done when I was doing this earlier, and I think it goes back to how busy we were when we first started. Like a lot of people might look at us now and look at full-time creatives or entrepreneurs like they spend all day making their

50:45content. And it's like we didn't start that way. Like we we also had these busy occupations around us. You have to train for speed. And so I would always have a timer out. Basically, I would have this little sand timer with me and it would it would mark 20 minutes. And I would use these 20 minute timers to make sure

51:00that I could get to that next phase. Because I think that everyone listening to this right now has to learn what is good enough. Like you have to get good at understanding, yeah, this is good enough. I'm going to get it out into the world. So I love the fact that you talked about speed. And we can even give these people a challenge. Like for the next 30 days, try it. Like you'll never get good with speed if you don't practice it. And I love how you're leading with that. I think it's a really

51:21helpful point. Something that I want you to also help people with are trial reels. I think I keep getting that in my DMs all the time and I think it's because a lot of people are speaking to the newest updates for them. And obviously Meta had cracked down on best practices. So things have shifted for us. So talk to me about how you're using trial reels today and how people can also implement them for their

51:40own content. Yes, I love this topic and this is one of those rare times where you can talk about an actual strategy and nitty-gritty. I I don't like using the word hack, but more or less this is a rare opportunity for us to use a feature and take advantage of it and it's working right now. So, as [clears throat] you said, the the rules and the requirements and whatnot are constantly changing, so it's important to stay up-to-date. But, for the last few months, here's the general best practices. There's really two ways that you can approach trial reels. One is for testing, one is for distribution. Talk

52:15about the distribution first. Every reel that you make, you should, prior to posting it to your feed, your normal feed, post it as a trial reel first. The reason we post as a trial reel first is that one of the new rules that Instagram has in place is that they do not allow duplicate trial reels. Or, to be more specific, you can upload you can post a duplicate trial reel. You can post a trial reel that is a duplicate of one that you've posted before, but the duplicate just won't get any views. It will literally get three or 13 views. It will be stuck below 50. And that's a

52:49good way to see if Instagram is limiting your views. But, if you post as a trial reel first, you can then post it to your normal feed second and you get double the bang for your buck because the trial reel, and and this is really the reason trial reels work and the reason that they're such a holy grail, is that they're only shown to non-followers. So, when I post as a trial reel, it's going to reach all these new people. Then I post it to my feed, it's going to primarily reach my existing followers and then hopefully it reaches some new people as well, but there's no crossover. No one's going to

53:19see both. That's just that's not how the algorithms work. The algorithm wouldn't show them both reels. So, now you get double the opportunity. The other thing that I would recommend doing is after you post it to your feed. So, you've posted it once to trials, a few minutes or a few hours later you've posted it to the feed, post it again to trials, but we need to make some non-minor changes. We need to make some changes to the reel so that Instagram doesn't view it as a duplicate. At a minimum, usually I recommend mirroring the video. It's a very easy trick as long as you don't have like text, you

53:53know, in the actual video, like on a whiteboard, let's say, or on a t-shirt. Well, then the the video is going to look totally fine mirrored left to right, and then you can still have your closed captions or whatever else is on the video. Um but then you can upload that a second time, and because it's a mirrored video, Instagram's duplicate

54:09detection software will not catch it. For some people that doesn't work. For some people you might have to mirror it and kind of zoom in on the video and maybe change a few of the frames or maybe cut off the first couple seconds or speed up or slow down the video. Like basically just make some changes until it's different enough that Instagram accepts it. That way, you have one reel and you've posted it three times, once to the normal feed and twice to trial reels. So, that for distribution is a huge game-changer, huge hack. The other way that you can use trial reels is the way that they were intended by

54:42Instagram, which is for trialing, for truly testing your content. Um and the best thing that I would recommend doing here is upload your trial reel and then give it a few hours. Give it at least 6 to 8 hours to breathe. Give it time to reach an audience. Sometimes it takes some time with trial reels to pick up steam. And then I want you to pay attention to two statistics. One is the retention graph. So, when you view your insights at the bottom of that page, you can see how many people were engaged throughout the duration of this reel. If it drops off immediately after the hook,

55:15okay, well, then my hook wasn't very strong. If it steadily, slowly declines and then there's a sharp drop off drop off at the 14-second mark, okay, what was going on then? Did I give an example that didn't make sense? Did I use a word that was too complicated? Was there something unnecessary or redundant in

55:29that reel? Remove that, and then you can clean up and and improve the overall retention of your video. And then wherever you see the second drop off, that's where the video should end. So if there's a drop-off around the 7-second mark, okay, I'll clean that up. Okay, now I'll repost as a trial reel a second time with that middle section removed. Okay, now there's just a slow, steady decline. People are sticking with the reel. And then with 3 seconds left in the reel, boom, the retention drops off a cliff. That's where the video should end because that's where people are scrolling anyways. So it allows you

55:59to kind of keep testing and refining this reel and improving it before it gets sent out to the feed. And then the second statistic that you should pay attention to is the share rate. Because share rate ultimately determines virality. And the amazing thing about shares is that when someone sends a post to someone else, they are the perfect, ideal viewer. The algorithm is constantly guessing at like, "Okay, hey, you've been into storytelling recently,

56:22so let's show you one of June's posts." Or, "Hey, you know, you've been into some content strategies. You seem like a small business owner trying to grow, let's show you one of Brock's posts." It's guessing at what each of us wants to see on our feed. But you know who's not guessing is our loved ones, our best friends, our spouses, our group chat with our buddies who we're always sending content and reels and TikToks and they're not guessing what we want to see. They know us. They know us so intimately. And so a share isn't just a higher quantity of viewers, it's a higher quality of viewers as well. So as

56:52you're testing your trial reels, pay attention to the share rate of those trial reels as well. I think something that we have done recently that has really unlocked, even for the storytelling content challenge, and it's my first time really saying this aloud, but with our trial reels, we actually film different hooks. And so anytime that I script write, I will always have about five different target avatars that I'm thinking about because the algorithm has gotten so differentiated that it can actually rank per post now. Usually it was ranking per account, but now it's like per post. So if I have a post that's calling to a

57:25specific avatar and I have no idea if that's going to work or not, we do it that way. And then we do it another way, then another way, another way. And the rest of the body actually remains the same. It's a lot like how we trial paid ads, too. It's like the same process. And I'm realizing trial reels is a great effective way to do that, where you don't get that duplicate detection. And so, if you want to do the flip, if you want to do the punch-in, if you want to add a music or change some b-roll out, too, but you also want to get reached by

57:46some different target actors, give it a shot. I think that could be another add-on to to the support, as well. I want to highlight something for you that that you have done a really good job of, which is not just the attention, but it's the business side, right? So, I think a lot of people, especially the people listening to this, will want to learn that side. Content isn't just about getting the right traffic. It's

58:05about what do you do with that traffic? So, talk to me about Brock's funnel. How does someone get aware of you and then also play buy into one of Brock's products? Yeah. The awareness comes in two parts, the organic and the paid. So, my organic social, almost at a million followers, and then we do paid ads. I think we did over a million dollars in advertising spend last year. I think that's important for people to hear, because you can have success without advertising. You can absolutely grow the business grow any business without advertising. However, and I love that Maria Went talks about this a lot on her

58:35page, is that if you're making any money, if you have any revenue or profit in your business, reinvest that into paid advertising. Because if you can spend a dollar to make a dollar and 50 cents, wouldn't you do that all day? If you can spend a dollar to make 15 dollars, wouldn't you do that all day? And I think people really overthink and overcomplicate advertising. You don't have to spend a million dollars year one. You can spend a hundred dollars uh the the first month. You can spend a hundred dollars the first year and just

59:04test the waters, just like trial reels. Test the waters and see what works. But, ultimately, our funnel, the top of the funnel, is the organic. So, we have my podcast, we have social media, and we have the advertising. I will say it fluctuates, but I would estimate roughly 70% of our business comes from the organic, the unpaid social, whether it's

59:22my Instagram, the podcast, etc. And then from there, we have a huge plethora of lead magnets, freebies, digital downloads. I think we have like 36 at this point. Basically, anytime there's a topic that's that people want, um, and I I think of this of of like giving a person a fish versus teaching them to fish. All of our freebies and lead magnets are focused on giving people fish. It's ChatGPT prompts. It's

59:48hook ideas. It's viral reel templates. And then there's a little bit in those that start to teach them how to fish. A little bit of tip or strategy or here's how you can do this for yourself in those freebies. And then ultimately, those freebies then lead into let us show you how you can do it yourself, and that is our InstaClubUp. So, that's really my primary, if not my only offer, is our InstaClubUp, which is a monthly membership. Um, and the way that the funnel progresses is that we have a $7 2-week trial. So, uh, pretty much everyone, once they download one of our freebies, lead magnets, whatever, um,

1:00:23they get into an email sequence where they're eventually sold the $7 2-week trial. And then we have a super high conversion from that trial into being an actual member. I believe it's upwards of 60% uh, of people who start the trial actually end up becoming a member. Um, membership varies depending on level of membership and, you know, monthly versus annual and whatnot. But, that's basically how the funnel flows and operates. And uh, for us and for our business, it's very effective. I don't think it's the only way. I've had plenty of conversations with business owners who don't do memberships. They just do low ticket. Or

1:00:55they don't do low ticket or memberships. They just do high ticket. I think there's plenty of ways to have success. I mean, you yourself with the storytelling challenge, that was what I think people would call like a mid-ticket offer, and that was super effective. And so, I don't think there's one way to skin a cat, but that's that's how we run our business, and that's our

1:01:10funnel. I love it. And I I know a lot of people that are listening to this will know exactly what you're talking about in terms of lead magnets and being able to upsell on the back end, giving them the trial. Let's talk to you the pure beginning group, which is like, I've no idea what the heck Brock just said. So, let's say that you're taking them from a piece of content. We both use ManyChat, so explain to them how that works. And then ultimately, why give them something for free? Why is this lead magnet existing? And then ultimately, when are you selling? Is it an email? Explain to

1:01:36them that process, too. Absolutely. I'm glad we're breaking this down because this is something that a lot of people gloss over, and it's kind of like there's everyone who knows about what what I just talked about, and they're going to skip over this answer. And then there's everyone who's like, Brock [laughter] just spoke a different language. What is he saying? June, thank you for asking the follow-up cuz what is Brock talking about? So, um essentially, people are on Instagram or social media getting dopamine, right? They're scrolling, quick video, quick video, quick video. And so the likelihood that someone's going to go from quick 8-second video, 17-second video,

1:02:06dopamine, dopamine, dopamine to pulling out their credit card and spending a lot of money is relatively um uncommon. It happens, for sure. There are those buyers, but it's relatively uncommon. So, the more sustainable or reliable flow is that you take them from social media, where they're getting all this value from you, they're trusting you, they're getting all this content, whatever it is that you post, and then they're getting into your business in a easy or inexpensive or literally free way. And so what I mean by that is you can have what are called freebies or freemiums or opt-ins, which are basically oftentimes digital [clears throat] downloads, short

1:02:48playlists. There's something that is it's valuable, for sure, but it's kind of like a free sample at Costco, right? It's not meant to be an entire meal, but hey, you're getting this for free, and you're getting a little bite of cheese. And you're thinking, "Hmm, that was pretty good. Maybe I want to buy the whole bag." It's the exact same idea on social media. So, if I make a post teaching people about hooks and telling them how they can improve their hooks, I might end that post with a comment-to-DM keyword automation, which is a big fancy phrase that basically means and everyone's seen this comment the word hook and I will send

1:03:21you 25 viral hook ideas. What happens then is that people comment the word hook, right? Because they just learned from me on the post. They're like, oh, this guy knows his stuff. He's talking about hooks. I want his 25 viral hooks. So, they comment that word. And when they comment that word, they instantly and automatically receive a direct message from me with the link to that free digital guide. Now, the reason [clears throat] that that is effective is because they are now interacting with the post. If I had done the other method, the old-school method of click the link in my bio to download the 25

1:03:54viral hooks. Now, the people who don't want the hooks, they're scrolling. And the people who do want the hooks are also leaving the post to go click the link in my bio, right? So, either way, I'm not getting engagement on that post. Instead, I tell them to comment the keyword. They comment that word. Now, my post gets engagement. Now, my post gets more views because of that. And the other thing that I like that is often overlooked in this process is how many times have we all gone to click on someone's link in their bio and it's this Olive Garden-sized menu with like seven different It's like,

1:04:25I wanted the free [laughter] thing and now there's like there's a podcast, there's this, there's like something flashing at me. It's overwhelming, right? So, instead with DM automation, they comment the word hook. Boop. They instantly get a little notification at the top of their screen, a DM from me with the link. They don't have to go hunting for it. It's in their DMs. It's ready for them. It's going to be unread, so that it's kind of reminding them to click on it and open it. And then from there, the the follower at that point I was going to call them a customer, the follower, maybe the lead you could call

1:04:52them at that point, simply visits the page and they either put in their email or in some businesses they might put in their phone number or you could even explore low-cost lead magnets. There there's pros and cons to that, but if you charge, let's say a dollar or $7 or $14 for for lead magnet, are you going to get less people getting it? Yes, because a lot of people want things for free and there are some people who can't afford it or don't want to pay. But, what you get instead is you get a higher quality customer. You get a higher quality lead because someone's already paid you. They already see the

1:05:26value and they're already willing to pull out their credit card and purchase something. So, you get less quantity, but you get higher quality when you do make it a paid lead magnet. Um we've tested this with whenever we do like a webinar, which is another great way to to sell and to promote things especially

1:05:41if they're a little bit more expensive. Let's say a few hundred dollars or up. It's easier to sell those on a live training, a webinar if you will, a Zoom. And uh what we've done is we've tested the price point and we've found that from $1 all the way up to $14, we don't see any change in terms of the number of leads coming in. So, whether we price if we're doing an upcoming webinar and we're selling it, "Hey, you can get your ticket for this webinar for a dollar or you can get it for seven or nine or

1:06:0911 or 14, doesn't change the conversion. The same amount of people are purchasing and signing up for that webinar, but we're going to A, we're going to make more revenue if we're doing $14, which then we can reinvest into ads and into the business and we're getting a higher quality, a more qualified lead if they're spending $14 to attend a webinar rather than just $1. So, that's you know, really how people get into the flow and then ultimately business is still done via email marketing. Like as a social media business owner, um you know, we we can talk all day about going viral, getting followers. If you

1:06:47don't have an email list, if you aren't growing your email marketing, then your business is not very sustainable. Algorithms change, people get hacked, people uh they lose favor in the algorithm so to speak. You stop showing up on people's feed. You can't convert. Whatever, there's so many things that can go wrong. You don't own your social media. You are operating on rented territory that can be taken away from you at any point. So, every single business owner, every single creator even, any person who wants to make money

1:07:16online, they need an email list. There's a lot that you have just shared which I'm so happy I was a lot. I think people [clears throat] are going to really enjoy that. There are a few things that I want to even double down on. One is this idea that with ManyChat, our greatest leverage for us has been to develop new duplicate landing pages per lead magnet. So, we can track conversion rate cuz I think it's so important that a lot of times your messaging on your content will say something and then your landing page messaging copy will look different. And then you realize the conversion drops off because you forget

1:07:46that person came from that. And when you have so many automations running, you can forget how many, let's say, people from this piece of content want this specific thing. And so, what we have done and I think what ManyChat allows you to do, which they're so grateful is you can, let's say, have 12 lead magnets, you can also have 12 landing pages with 12 different copies and you

1:08:04can see which one attracts the best. Which means that when you're selling something a bit more high ticket, you know exactly which message angle to lead with. And there's so much data that you can collect. I think we're all speaking to this idea that that creatives are now becoming business owners and you have to become really in the the needle with this because these are real human beings that you're trying to tend to. They you're trying to actually love on and say, "Hey, this is the product I think

1:08:23is right for you." There's also something that you're saying that I think you glossed over which is so important. You at your stage have one offer. You know how many people have like 55 offers and they're like they haven't even earned their first $5,000. And it's like they have the Linktree and they have all these different links to it. They're like, "Oh, no, I want to sell some low ticket, mid ticket, and high ticket." Something that we always say is that any one of these can win and obviously varies based on your own expertise. So, if you're going to sell low ticket for, let's say, a big audience, then you need to have

1:08:51that big audience. But, let's say that you're selling high ticket. If you're going to sell high ticket, you're going to have to have the expertise needed to charge a few thousand dollars. And if you have that, then you got to think about your strategy differently. But I any of them can actually win. Low ticket, mid ticket, high ticket. But you will never know if you keep making like 55 different choices and giving so much friction for your viewers. So there's so much that you're breaking down I think is really really really helpful. And I think a really good final question to ask you Brock cuz I think you're going

1:09:18to be the perfect person ask and I hope in 5 years from now that you come back onto this podcast. But we have seen Instagram shift. We have seen content shift. We have seen industry shift. We have seen algorithm shift. What do you think is so important about growth today that in 5 years will still remain true? Having a personal brand or just having a brand in general that people can recognize, that they can trust, that they can rely upon is arguably the most valuable asset moving into the future, especially as AI becomes so much more

1:09:53popular and present and ever present. People are going to be asking the question, who can I trust? And we've Mhm. all been asking that question since 2020. Where can I get my information? Where what's my news source? What's my you know, where am I politically? What who can I trust? Who can I get my news from? Who can I follow that is truly not giving me BS? And part of that is us as consumers, as viewers, we've gotten really good at smelling that. We've gotten really good at picking up when is someone lying to me? When is someone BSing me? Right? And so I think especially moving forward, the more that

1:10:28you can tell your story, the more that you can be authentic, the more that you can be genuine and build that trust, people are going to That's how people are going to build businesses. And that's what people are going to flock to, right? I think that rather than spending all of our time on social media following 17,000 different influencers and just blindly consuming content, people are going to be a lot more strategic and intentional with who they're following, who they're truly trusting, and who they're going back to over and over again for content. When they open up Instagram, sure they might scroll their feed a little bit, but who

1:10:59are they searching? Who are they going to the search bar and specifically hunting out for? When they open up YouTube, sure that they might watch a few of the top recommended videos cuz the algorithms are dang good, but what channels are they consistently going back to? Oh, I I always listen to this guy's podcast every week when he puts something out. I always watch her reels whenever she posts one, right? Those sort of content creators, they're going to reach that level because of the storytelling, because they built and earned that trust from their audience, and it's something that takes time,

1:11:30right? Trust isn't developed overnight. I often think of it like dating. When you first go on a date, you're for the most part, you ain't getting married after that first date. I know there's exceptions, but you ain't getting married after that first date. It takes time to build that trust. It takes time to build that intimacy. It takes time for someone to truly know that you are genuine and where your intentions are and that you are aligned with them. And so, give it time, but I truly think for anyone watching or listening today, the best thing that you can do to set yourself up for success in

1:11:57the near future and in the next 5 years is to start leaning into storytelling, lean into authenticity, and ultimately build your personal brand online. [snorts] It's such a full circle moment because we led with that, right? The idea that even ourselves we're trying to do more of it because it is the way. So, I love the fact that you practice what you preach. I love the fact that you're leading the way, and I love the fact that you love this so much that you've been doing this for the better part of a decade, right? Like you got to be so passionate about to do it. So, I

1:12:24appreciate you, Brock. I'm sure we'll be speaking to you very soon. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor, and you are an absolute pleasure. And for anyone watching or listening, June's the real deal. One of the most genuine people I've met in this industry. It's not It's not a show for social. He is truly a light in this industry. So, June, thank you so much

1:12:40for having me. I I appreciate you. If something in this episode lit you up, don't just leave it there. Go and do something about it. And when you're ready to turn that attention into something bigger, an audience you can reach, a business you can grow, and freedom that gives you opportunity to focus on the work you care about, ManyChat has got your back. You already have the creativity, ManyChat can help build the system that supports it. Try ManyChat Pro free for a month at get.manychat.com/real-job

1:13:08with code trader.