Katie of Pilot Blog: one video away from a different life

um yeah and then today guys so we have no oran he's lost uh lost in the off the amalfi coast somewhere his ship went down uh sunday night we haven't heard from him uh we're just assuming he's gonna be okay i'm just kidding um uh he had a conflict i think it's it has something to do with it being like 1 a.m there but uh no oran today just us we're going to be covering if i can pull up our agenda.

We'll get started in a second here. We're going to be covering profile and bio optimization. We're going to go through some post vitals as well as touching on just like the bigger picture a little bit as we continue just shipping and iterating and posting this week.

We like to acknowledge the fact that we're totally breezing over strategy here in the beginning, but that's an important part of it. I think I'm going to give people another like 60 seconds here jump in hey alex can i ask that desk in the la marzocca video is that like concrete or is that's like the like brutalist like that thing is hard i wanted to ask you about that like what is that it is it's like um i have two of them it's like these two concrete tables and they are they're like very brutalist um but i just replaced it i put that in my in my studio because i like i want to i have two of them but i want to have them like uh connected at the studio and then i just got wood desk for here um but yeah it was sick like it was i used to work at this place called the collective and we when we moved into a new location they just like getting rid of them i was like i am taking those and then i got hit with a facebook ad for them shortly after and they were each like seven grand i was like oh i hit the biggest lick right now amazing that's so dope i have my uh standing desk was broken sitting down for like the past six months so i finally bought a crank and i'm like replacing the top but now i'm like thinking everything content right like how can i turn this desk into a set piece the way i see y'all doing so i'm sure it's all part of it yeah before we get started and i have an anecdote i picked up from a neighbor moving out when we talk about like random come-ups we had it was three 15 foot long tables that were made out of slabs from a bowling alley.

So it was, it was bowling alleys. There were these giant mega conference room tables. They were absolutely incredible until we had to like move. And it was like, what do you do?

I mean, it was like literally 50 feet of table. Um, uh, they were, they were one of a kind, that's for sure.

Um, all right, let's, let's dive into it. Um, so again, agenda for today is, um, bios profiles and then post vitals. Then we're going to get into it with Katie.

everything that we're covering here in our Zooms. There's supporting or related content in the curriculum if you haven't already picked up on that. So this is not meant to be a furious note-taking session.

There's more inside. We're just kind of covering the important stuff here. The first and most important thing to talk about is, look, we all know that there are going to be questions around what is the perfect strategy for my content? What about pillars?

I see y'all talk about pillars. How do I think about pillars? And we want to let you know that we are very intentionally putting that later.

We will touch on it. We'll give you some game on that when we get kind of towards the end of Cut30, but we cannot stress enough how critical it is to just be shipping work right now and trying things. That goes for you if you're brand new to this.

It also goes for you if you've been doing this for a while, but you're in Cut30 to get a fresh look. We're going to continue just shipping content here in the beginning. Then as we get a little bit later, we'll come up for air and maybe look at getting a little bit more intentional.

But really, as someone who's made hundreds and hundreds of videos themselves, I cannot state enough how important it is to just let it rip and find your voice, find the formats that work for you, so on and so forth. The biggest mistake you can make in this is to try and architect a perfect strategy and then sit down and put a ton of energy into executing that without having tested the waters and found your path a little bit.

So it's always worth remembering. We will get into more strategy and pillars and stuff at the end though. Alex, with that, let's talk about bios and profiles and making your page a landing page.

Let's do it. I'll second what Colin's saying though, the reason we don't, one of the main reasons we don't talk about strategy is it's so easy to spend two, three weeks trying to put together the perfect strategy as if you have the data to ship the right content and you know what content's going to work, what formats are going to work, what ideas, et cetera, versus developing the skill of putting out content and making content that people want to consume, because that is a legitimate skill, right?

Like whether it's how you cut it up, how you intro an idea, all of those things, those are all different skills. And so it's very easy to feel like it's productive to make the the best content strategy and then buy like your third piece of content that whole content strategy is out the door and that's that goes for the creator who's just getting started and also for the brand that's doing you know 50 million dollars like it that rule still applies a lot of these brands and a lot of creators like they don't know what's going to work for them and they have to be able to be able to ship things and get things out as fast as possible get data and then make changes and then understand your content pillars and then build a strategy right like that's that's really the process and so that's the process that we're building out for you guys but we'll go into profile setup one of my do y'all see my million tabs yep they're looking good up there let's go there's last time it was 28 we're down in 24 all right so the one of the main things that we want to talk about is setting up your profile how to optimize your profile and how to really treat your profile very similar to a landing page When you're running a meta ad and you're sending cold traffic to a landing page and the goal is to convert, you're optimizing the landing page.

You're trying to get as much traffic as possible, get them there, and then convert them. Your profile is very similar where you want someone to watch one of your videos that doesn't follow you, doesn't know who you are, click through and convert. And so when we talk about a profile, when we talk about optimizing a profile, there's really three questions you want to be able to answer with what you write in your bio.

The first one being, why should I follow you, a.k.a. what value will you provide? This needs to be very, very obvious, right?

Someone should be able to scan that first line and think about it no different than like the first headline on your landing page. Someone needs to be able to scan it and immediately know the value that you're going to provide for them. And that can be, hey, like you're making a bunch of educational content. It could be that you're making skits. It could be that XYZ thing. But it has to be not only obvious, it has to talk directly to the person that you're trying to get into your ecosystem.

The second thing is what makes you different than any other X. And what I mean by that is you have to find your uniqueness factor, right? You have to find that thing that makes you run in a race where you're the only other one running, right? And typically that's combining one or two things alongside like the main thing that you're going to talk about that makes you extremely one of one or makes you extremely unique within your category. And we'll go through good and bad examples of this. But an easy one, obviously, is like if I'm just talking about content and, you know, and in my bio is just centered around content marketing, there are millions and millions of people just like me.

The second I add like one little twist in there, all of a sudden I'm separating myself from all of those individuals, making myself more memorable. The third question is, why should I trust you or buy into you?

And the trust part comes from if like you have social proof, if you're building a brand page and you want to have some kind of social proof there so that if you do have a video go viral, it's like, hey, like 20,000 people have purchased this thing. Awesome. If you have a newsletter and you want to be like, hey, 95,000 readers or people read this. Awesome. That's that's the part of adding social proof to the bio on the other end.

you have some kind of story and or some kind of journey that you're building out on social and you want people and invite people into that is where you can kind of add that layer right like if you're trying to take a company from zero to a million or one million to ten million etc like those are those are things that you could add in your bio so that people understand that you're inviting them into their journey and they're going to be able to see that and so when we look at the what makes up a good bio it's really the intersection of three things your value proposition so that again Like the thing that people are going to expect from you and that they know anytime your profile comes up, they're going to consume X amount or X specific concept or content from you that is centered around or whatever, like a specific category, education, entertainment, etc.

Second is your identity. Can you cement your identity so that somebody knows exactly who you are from based off the concepts, based on who you describe yourself as, as the things that differentiate you, et cetera? You want to be able to cement your identity. And then third is that story or social proof at the intersection that is a good bio.

So here's an old bio that I had, but again, like it hit all of the rules. So the first thing was content to make smarter marketing decisions. If I have a piece of content that went viral or performed well, right, let's say it got 100,000 views and I'm gaining traction from it and it's a marketing playbook.

And then the first bullet that somebody reads is content to make smarter marketing decisions. It's basically like that is that is me checking the boxes of you just consume this from me. Now, the first thing that you you scan is, hey, is basically telling the person you're going to get more content like this. That makes it much better to convert when we're talking about a video that maybe gets 100,000 or 200,000 views and X percent are converting.

If you could take that from 1% of people clicking through and converting to 3%, like that is substantially different. And so that's how we want to think about that first line. And again, like I'm being very straightforward here. You guys could put your own personality and spin into these.

The second one was training for the CrossFit Games. I more so leverage that part of it because I like to put my training content on IG. That was me just differentiating myself, right? Like I have this goal. I want to do this thing.

I am going to share that part of it. So like, yeah, you're going to see all like the nerdy content stuff. You're also going to then see like the gym part of it as well that most of the people in my category don't post or don't do. Again, like putting myself in an arena of one.

The third is building a nine figure media company. On top of the educational content, on top of the training content, there's vlogs, there's there's BTS, there's postcards, there's all this other content that shows the making of the building of, right, which is me pulling into like some aspirational, pulling some aspirational strings, some kind of documenting archetype like strings as well that feed into that story.

And then that fourth one is a CTA based off like I had a lead magnet. I like to put a single line CTA for whatever's the link in my bio. So for me, like I had a CTA in there. It could have been something, if it was just my newsletter, it could have been like read by 150,000 marketers, right?

That's how you can, again, play around with these different parts. Now, if we look at like what a bad, if I look at what I just went over and then I look at what a bad variation of that would be, it's when you're too generic.

When you're not giving enough context, when you're not really being crystal clear about the reason or about the reasons somebody should follow you. Example, marketing content. Really, that could be super educational.

It could be skits. It could be me covering marketing news. Like that really doesn't tell the person what type of value you're going to be providing. Right. it doesn't say crystal clear like, hey, I'm going to be getting educational content about landing pages or about content marketing or about short form, whatever the case may be.

Marketing content is so, so broad. You want to be more narrow and be very direct with the value you're going to provide. If I say CrossFit Junkie, there's no story attached to CrossFit Junkie, right? It's just a general term.

And again, we want to attach stories to the things that we tell people because it's going help them get attached to us. Third, entrepreneur. Anybody can claim that it's different when you have a goal that you're putting out in the world and then trying to document how you get there, right?

Fourth, this is like more of a personal one. Like I don't like to have all my links unless like, you know, like it's not that I never have it. Typically, I'm rotating links based on the content that I make because I've just found it to convert better. So like if I'm trying to get somebody to sign up for the newsletter versus like sign up as a lead i'll just rotate links and i have like just a process in my my notes app for making that extremely easy but me personally i like to have that one link so it's super simple um ways of just optimizing the things as just being a lot of the rules that apply for for your hook about like providing or being extremely clear and and making sure clarity is at the forefront providing context like those are the same things apply to your bio the reason for that is when we think about like quote unquote like the discovery funnel where you have a piece of content go viral or perform significant very well and then they click through the first thing that they're going to do is scan right they're going to scan your bio real quick content to make smarter marketing decisions xyz thing they're going to scan and then consume right you want to make sure that when they scan they under they and then they consume they have the context to basically be like, do I follow this person or not?

Because this is how it's going to work. Like most people don't just follow someone blindly. Very rarely do they follow someone blindly. Right.

And so this is basically the bridge to the follow. They're going to discover you. They're going to scan, get the context that they need. And then basically be like, hey, does this, based off the context that they give me, do they support that? Like, is it, are they actually bringing that to life through their content.

If they are, I will follow that individual, right? And so you want to optimize for this middle ground, right? For this bridge right here from discovery to deciding.

The better you can do that, the more people are going to follow you. It's honestly as simple as that, especially the more content you continue to publish. And so with the homework, and Colin will go over with the homework.

We'll be optimizing all of our bios. There is a link in the course that you can click through to, and it's going to have a Notion page with over 50 different bios in there that you can look at and kind of pull inspiration from big name creators to small name creators to brands, startups, et cetera.

Like the whole nine is in there. I would look at how they all do this because they all have a lot of common denominators. I'm not saying that they all follow this exactly, but they all are very, very similar.

And you look at some of the fastest growing accounts, like you can kind of study what they do and what they put it in and how they put things in their bio because they're all doing it for a specific reason, right?

They're all trying to grow fast. And so the more you can look at those common denominators and pull from them and do that based off your category and the things that you want to talk about, the better it's going to be.

So. All right. Everything, all of Alex's advice there aligns with a lot of the feedback that you're going to be seeing us giving, which is be anything but generic on everything, right?

Avoid generic, avoid standard at all costs. And with that, let's get into post vitals. This is going to seem silly to go through, you guys, but I think everyone on this call will miss something really obvious and stupid as they're making a video.

And so we're going to go through it one by one right now. Man, the curse of the new computer here. I got to get my permission so Zoom can see my screen. Okay, that's not happening.

Here, send me the deck. Man, you know when you get a new computer and you got a first, there's a first everything. This is not my first Zoom, but it's my first screen share on a Zoom and we dropped the ball again.

I was about to say, you did say this last week. I know. Well, like, exactly.

All right. You're shared on that. You should be good. It's slide seven. Cool, cool, cool.

Excellent. All right. So we're going to go through all the elements of a video. Each one of these things you should think about as an opportunity for you to inform the algo a little bit about what your content is about.

So hit me with the next one, Alex. Great. So first and foremost, we have our title, our titles, our title hook.

For me in every video I've ever made, the cover of the video is something, is a screen grab from the video itself. So in the video, I'm putting my title and then I'm using that to double as my cover, right? So this is the title that shows for the first three-ish seconds.

It should be clear and concise, three to maybe five words. We've talked a bunch about title hooks at this point. And then again, like I said, it can double as your cover. You should not overthink this.

When you are recording your hook, you should have in mind where this is along with your captions. Next slide, Alex. It's been a while since I got to give somebody the next slide cue.

All right. So again, with your captions, always consider your safe space, whether it's a green screen or a yap or otherwise.

You're like for me, I'm doing either middle of the frame or slightly above. It also works if you're doing like a car yap to do them like chest or neck type of spot, just have it in mind.

So you don't record a great video and then realize that it's a totally awkward spot. You got to pin those, those captions at the top, which, which never works very well for me. I'm never displaying my captions for that first three seconds where my title is up.

This is a detail that probably ultimately doesn't matter. It definitely will muddy things up. If you got a really intense graphic, I would not have your captions in that first few seconds, assuming you've got a good title hook. With this, your captions are an opportunity to get keywords and relevant topics on screen, which is yet again another signal for the algo to understand what your video is about.

It is, of course, also in the in the audio and getting transcribed by these apps. But again, just another place for it. Next slide. Your description.

So SEO is real, especially on TikTok with this stuff, right? TikTok is going to let you do, I think, up to 2000 words these days. It's probably more by now. You don't need to overthink this. You do not need to do 2000 words.

Two to three sentences with relevant keywords is going to go a long way though. And anytime you have something super specific, I would hit on it. The more, the merrier here.

Like a note on this. If you are making a video about how to do X, I would literally make a point of to get how to do X in your description there, right?

You can, it doesn't need to be the very first word. So it's overly generic. It's something you can work in. But again, if you have something that's in play to show up in a search result on TikTok, especially, you might as well give it your best shot there.

Next slide. All right, hashtags. So I think we can say like hashtags alone are certainly not important. They're less and less relevant every single day. We always get questions about it and it all comes back to, you know, is this something that we can use to give a little signal?

And it absolutely is, right? It's not going to make or break a single thing. You could post zero hashtags ever and be fine.

But since we're, it's on all our minds, uh, uh, generally speaking, you want to give it a couple, three or four is good.

You should have a mix of like, of larger and smaller, the big ones like FYP or, or golfstagram or whatever it may be for your niche.

The big mega ones are not useful. All right. Um, and, and if you are doing something a little bit more, uh, esoteric isn't the word, But if your video is vibey and vague, they're absolutely going to serve as a little signal to inform the algo.

They're not going to make or break anything. Do not overthink it. Tags and mentions. So this is tagging someone in the video, mentioning them in the copy.

These work similarly across platforms. On TikTok, you don't actually tag somebody. When you tag someone, it actually just inserts them into the description as a mention.

The most important thing here is to use them organically. If you tag 20 brands or 20 creators or whatever it may be, whether it's tags or mentions, it's not going to do anything for you. If you're making a video about a brand or you're covering a specific creator or another account or whatever it may be, and then you organically tag them or mention them in a way that actually makes sense, then again, this is another signal.

If you dilute it with 20 of them, it's useless. If I make a video about Mr. Beast and I tag Mr. Beast, I'm much more likely to get into the Mr. Beast algo with that video. Next one here, on this last one here, we're going to talk audio and location.

So audio is an interesting one, right? The Instagram and TikTok are going to do a really good job of picking up whatever song you add to a video, even if you add it in CapCut. Generally speaking, unless you have like a complex edit that you are editing around the audio, I would generally add the audio natively in the platforms, even though they'll pick it up either way.

It's just a little bit better foot forward. Ultimately, these things like hardly matter. A much more important thing is you've got a piece of audio that is working in the algo and that matches your video that fits the vibe, right?

We've seen so far in this session, we've seen some extremely elevator music that wasn't ripping anywhere. There's not helping anybody. But like all these other pieces, if we have a hot audio that works for your video, like people who have liked videos that use that audio are going to be part of the mix for who the might show your video to.

All right. And then finally, location. Don't overthink this. Alex, tag your location that you live in or a location relevant to the video or not at all.

I tag Portland in all my videos. Therefore, my videos like will over index in Portland more than they otherwise would have. That's also because the like these apps know that I'm uploading from Portland most of the time. Anyway, an example I like to give is like Oren making a video breaking down Erewhon, right?

And he tags it at his local Erewhon. That's a good example of where you might tag something even though you're not physically there. Besides that, again, use this organically. Don't try and game it and don't overthink it.

Like I said, when we started here, you will be disappointed at how easy it is to forget one of these core things. and just like upload a video without captions or not have a title hook or so on and so forth. So put some intention behind things just to make sure for no other reason that you check all of these boxes.

Alex, let's get to notes on words. There was I think our next slide. Yep, so.

No, it was in my deck and it's me, but it's just the next slide you were jumping to. Sorry, new computer. That's good.

I'm never gonna live that one down. No. just next slide cool all right so this is going to be common feedback for the rest of cut 30 and already has been the the nature of short form is it's not good because people like like dance videos or or uh or people have no attention span like all the boomers want us to think short form video is excellent because it is extremely efficient communication, right?

And so the best way to think about this is when you're sitting down to write your script, focus on word efficiency. I was just giving Greg Flock this exact feedback today. Write your script and then go back to the top, read it and delete 35% of the words.

You will be disappointed that it's the same video. Like you said the exact same thing with way less words and way less time. And this is the case, like this is not just going to make for a video that's the zero fluff. You can still have inflections and make jokes and so on and so forth. It's just about deleting the shit that does not need to be said, right?

It's different for everybody, but if you're aiming for a 40 second video, which is a good target, um, uh, early on when, when, before you're masters of this stuff, for me, that's about 130 words. If you write a 200 word script, it's way too long.

If you write 250 words, that is way too long. That's a two and a half, three minute video in a lot of cases. All right. So next slide for me, Alex.

This is an example from an early cut 30 session, but it's an excellent one. And it applies to all of us, even though it happens to be about Black Friday marketing. So the original script here was, this is my Black Friday ads playbook as someone who spent a hundred million with meta.

The three most important parts of the playbook are your offer, your creative, and your landing pages. After we cut this down, the hook is I've spent $100 million on meta. Here's my Black Friday playbook. Let's talk offer, creative, and landing pages.

This is literally 40% less words. It says literally the exact same thing. Ads is implied when we're talking about meta spend. Anybody that we're talking to knows we're talking about ads if we're talking about meta spend, right? It doesn't need to be said. It certainly doesn't need to be said multiple times.

The word playbook literally is redundant. You can say it once. You don't need to say it again. All right. And then introducing the same things with a bunch of words, the three most important parts is not needed.

We know it's important. You're about to give us a 40 second video. You don't have room for not important things, right? And then finally, literally the word you're Like saying your three times is not needed, right?

So we get the exact same meaning out of this. This model should be applied to every single script you write, every single yap you do, so on and so forth. Again, you'll be disappointed at how easy it is to get the same video with so many less words.

With that, we're going to hit on homework and then intro. Katie, our homework this week is, Alex, it was one more slide there, but I can do it off the dome.

You're good. Your homework is to optimize your profile, share it in your track channel to get feedback from a coach and from your peers. Show us what you're working with.

We always love to see it before and after there. It doesn't matter though. And then start shipping videos. There are no more uploads allowed. We're only sharing links and video sharing.

We want to see a minimum of three videos this week, and we want two of them to be a 10 shot and a graphic yap. These are very specific video briefs that you will see in the curriculum, similar to last week's homework, where we're going to tell you exactly what to do.

So three videos, a 10 shot and a graphic yap included amongst those. This is part of our escalation. We went from a super basic one shot. We are taking it up a notch here, but all that matters is we're shipping videos and we're getting three out this week.

critically start engaging with people. If you're not already look at their videos and video sharing, go click into it on Instagram or TikTok, give them a like, leave them a comment. Like that is the nature of the beast here.

And without further ado, sorry, Katie, we're a little long winded here. I'm going to drop your link again here. As I intro you, this is, I always learn. I swear.

I always learn so much. And you guys get me thinking, I was just pulling up my bio. I'm like, Oh, I could use a little bit of updating. I like your bio. I like your bio. We'll get there. I want to give you a quick intro.

Um, like Katie's been a guest here a handful of times. And my favorite thing about Katie is, is like content is just part of her life. The last time that Katie was a guest on cut 30, she was not a mom.

She was not making content about being a mom. I'm pretty sure now as the, as the, the, the chapters of her life move on, that's a part of her mix. And she's an excellent example of someone who's just evolved with content at the center.

I'll shut up. Katie, welcome. What's your deal? Give us the elevator pitch. Oh man, the elevator pitch.

So I have my page. I've been working on my brand for 15 years now. So it's evolved so much over the years. On this side, I also do, I'm a short form videographer. So I know that you guys talk about tracks. I think last time you talked about having an expert track.

Do you still have that? Yeah. So for background, everybody in here, most people in here are falling to the expert personal brand. We also have some people working on brand and business stuff.

But we're, I guess this is a good context. We're in week two. We just came off a week one. So we're, we're at the beginning here. I don't know where you're, where you've joined us in the past, but we're at ground zero for a lot of folks.

Okay. Amazing. So I do short form videographer for people who are on the expert track. So I film a lot of health and wellness professionals here in Austin. And so I'll do talking head videos for them. I show up and a lot of my clients have like, I mean, absolutely blown up. They are in the health and wellness space.

So for them, I do hope they're more the experts. My page, I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily the expert. I think I'm really good at specific things. Like my page, if you, if you were to go to it, it's obviously for the girls.

It's very like, not to say that I don't have guys there, but it's very girl talk. And my big thing is, um, super easy wellness routines, like the easiest that you can possibly think of that gets huge results.

I'm very concerned with ROI, how much you can get within like a two minute self-care act, for instance. And so, but I never really positioned myself necessarily as the expert.

I'd say maybe I fall a little bit more into lifestyle, my own personal brand, but yeah, I've been doing it for a super, super long time. I absolutely love it.

You know, it's, it's forever changing. So it keeps it a lot of fun. Yo, you guys, if you haven't She just told you what she does and her bio like is exactly that.

Yeah. Right. It is hyper clear. It's exactly what she just told you. And I also love the lead being just girls only.

Yeah. Like standing out and having personality and being unique. That's a good announcing who you're here for is a good way to do it.

Talk to us. Talk to us about what's going on with your content right now. It's definitely different from last time I was browsing. It's so, it's so different. And it's so interesting because I was just talking to my husband and pal, cause he also does content.

And I was saying like, so when you have such a major shift in life, I feel like sometimes in, and you're a content creator, like the identity piece, especially that you guys talked about, like that is probably the main part that I struggle with now. Like, I'm like, Do I want to show up more as like a mom content creator?

Do I want to show up more as like just still, you know, the beauty and wellness stuff that I usually do. So I currently am definitely in that phase of like narrowing what my, narrowing what my identity truly is on Instagram.

I feel like I have a very big, you know, I'm extremely self-aware, you know, I, I've like been told to have like, like, I'm just like, I'm extremely clear in what I want, what I like and all of that.

But in as far as like narrowing down Katie as the content creator, identity is probably like the biggest thing that I'm shifting around right now and figuring out. Like as far as value add, I know all of that. It's like my short routines that people absolutely love. And I'd say like a thing that I'm also focusing on is trying a bit new formats, honestly, because like you guys were saying, I really agree with this so much.

Like it's not starting, just as someone who's done this for so long now, like not starting off thinking you have to have a strategy. And it is so crazy how many people think that because like I film all these health and wellness professionals and some of them we do start from ground zero.

And before we even talk about the content, before they even get good at like being on camera, before they even distinguish what it is they want to talk about, like they are so concerned with strategy And it really is so backwards.

Like you have to find out that you have something like viable that people really want to watch and everything. And then the strategy really does come about. What are you, you talked about formats.

Actually, I want to talk to you about your mix because you, you're professionally doing content. When I go to your page, it is like at first glance, at least it's largely more around you and your personal brand.

How do you think about that mix between doing something to drive leads or start a conversation around that with the right person versus just doing Katie content, etc.? Yeah, totally. It's so interesting because I know I do often need to be a little bit stronger with the call to actions because I do love just doing Katie content.

I really, really do. I genuinely love to create. I love making videos. I love telling a story and all of that. And then, but sometimes I don't have the focus on growth as much of like call to actions, which could be better.

But when I do, I mean, it's so, like it works so well. Like I was thinking about what Alex said on like changing your link on whatever you're trying to, like he's constantly changing the link of like whatever his call to action is.

And like, I remember like there was a time I had this one video that was going hugely viral. I think it ended up being like a 20 million view video. And it was actually a huge difference maker for me because it actually took me so long to grow.

I didn't even get, I don't even think I got to, you know, I've been doing this, like I said, truly working on my brand for 15 years.

I started like back in the Tumblr days and then moved to like Facebook and then finally got my own blog and all of that. But it took me like on Instagram to get to 10K. I think that took me like six years. And then it took me like another like four years to even past 20K.

And now I'm like almost at like 250. But so I had that one lymphatic video. I was showing something called The Big Six. And it's by this guy, Dr. Perry Nicholson.

And my big thing is like citing sources in the health and wellness world and just pointing to like who I'm like learning from and all that. So I'm like, this guy is changing my life with something called the big six. And I've been doing it and it takes 60 seconds. And I demonstrated how to do it.

And I did it in this like beautiful, like this like beautiful lake behind me. So it was super like the opener was just beautiful. And right away, I, so that video just kept going up and up and up.

And it literally changed my life. I remember I was in Vermont with my husband's family. And I remember I woke up and it was like three o'clock in the morning. And I don't know. And I couldn't get back to sleep.

So I opened up my Instagram and all of a sudden I had jumped like 15,000 people. I could not believe it. Like overnight. I mean, I like went and woke up my husband. I was like, I can't believe this, this video.

And he's like, okay, we need to have a call to action. We need to do something like right away. You have nothing on there. That's a call to action. And so I, you know, I didn't have that much prepared, but I was like, you know, I mean, I wouldn't mind like making a little bit of money off of this, you know?

So I contacted this one lymphatic therapist in Austin who I absolutely adore and love. And I believe in her program so much. And I was like, I want to point people to your thing, which is called like the Lymph Love Club at this time. I was like, but I need an affiliate and I need it fast.

Like I need a UTM link and I need an affiliate and I need it seriously within like hours. And I'm just pestering her like, please, I need it. Like right now, I promise I'm going to get so many people to, you know, I'm like, and And so she's like, okay, I don't even know how to do an affiliate.

Like I'll figure it out. You know, I'm really going back and forth. So she figures it out. I put it in my bio and it was like, go, go here to go.

Like, if you want to learn where I learned from LIMP, something, I can't even remember what it was, like go here. And I ended up, you know, like making like a couple thousand dollars, which is really awesome.

And I grew like a ton and I had this, like, you know, this page and people were thankful that I had somewhere to send them. So yeah.

The 20 million view, that's amazing. Right now today, are you sitting down like, today I'm doing KD content versus now I want to get something up on stories about producing content for other people.

Do you have an intentional mix on that right now or is it kind of as it happens? Yeah. So I never talk about, so like the clients that I film, I never really, I never advertise for that business like ever, ever, ever.

I just I talk about what I do and how much joy I get from it. And I swear just as a result of that, I will get clients like I never have to say like, I'm opening up my calendar for more clients. If you're interested, I've never done anything like that.

I really just talk about how much I love filming them because I genuinely do where I'll like be in the car and I'll prop up my phone, you know, after like filming one of them. And I'm like, you know, I filmed the stem cell scientist and did it and I'll talk about it.

And so I am constantly kind of like dropping little crumbs of it's very obvious what I do. So then I will get people who are like, hey, like, do you ever film someone who's in this industry or whatever?

So my lead magnet for that isn't even like a it's kind of like a secret one. I just like talk about what I do and then it happens. As far as like sitting down and doing Katie content, that's like where I could do Katie content all day long.

And it is so fun. And I think the Katie content is why I have longevity. People know exactly who I am. I know exactly who I'm talking to. Like the rapport is so strong with my community.

I spend most of my time in DMs, but I oftentimes am like way too focused on retention than growth. Like that's like always been like my number one thing that stalls me is I'm so, so, so focused on retention and not growth.

So I'm constantly making videos. It's like, I know exactly who I'm talking to, but never like, I never think in my head, okay, this person doesn't even know who I am.

Like, why would they go to my page? But I, when I do think that way, I see more growth. So I need to do more of those.

When you start working with a, with a client, how do you think about testing formats? how do you kind of like look at concepting, et cetera? Yeah. So if, so a lot of, so some of my clients, they, do you want me to talk about ones that started ground zero or do you want me to talk?

Okay. And then move to like bigger ones as well. Like we could, we could almost look at it as like in buckets, like ground zero kind of midsize and then like bigger creators. Okay.

So ground zero. So my first client ever actually was, um, ground zero and I still film him to this day and he's almost at 700,000 on TikTok, growing tremendously on Instagram.

He's like, it's amazing. I remember like he was at zero for so long. And then finally he popped off at like six weeks, 10 K. And then ever since just been going, going, going, but with him.

So I knew him personally and I knew the things that he could talk about all the time. He has this IV clinic here in Austin and he would do these little lunch and learns and all these health nerds would go. And the way that he would talk, I just was like, this guy is going to like pack a stadium one day. I swear he's so passionate. And so I said I'm like, you should start a TikTok.

And so I noticed that this main things that he loved to talk about was the liver. And he loved to talk about inflammation in the body. And he had an interesting way of doing it. So it kind of was as easy as like, I pulled out my phone and I'm like, tell me the most, what is the most fascinating thing about your liver?

And he was like, the liver is the only organ that when you chop it in half, it will grow back completely, you know? And so we started off with like that one and all these like liver facts and it was slightly less saturated than it was, you know, like five years ago.

But, um, with my ground zero clients, you know, like get to, I'll get to know them and see what lights them up. And the things that like, they can't stop talking about the things that it's just like, it's so clear they're an expert in.

It's like the things that you could wake them up at three o'clock in the morning and be like, Talk about toothbrushes for 20 minutes straight and they could totally do it. It's like that's the things that we're going to start talking about. And we won't deviate. I think that's such a key thing.

It's like if you're going to be making content and you're going to not only make it, but make it in a way that people are attracted to the content, you have to that passion and that excitement, that energy has to come through the phone to like the other individual. Well, there's, I don't know if you guys know Miss Excel, but that was like one thing that she said a long time ago.

She was like, content for me is just like energy, transferring my energy through the phone to somebody else. And like, if they can't feel that I love what I'm doing, why, why should they watch?

And I feel like that's key too. Even like when you're picking topics and when you're thinking of ideas, it's like, you should think of things that get you excited that you feel like you could just talk about. And like, at this point, it's just like, I have to package it well.

Totally. That's so true. Like I, um, another, my, one of my clients that we started at zero, um, he, so I told him in the beginning, like whenever you, we hadn't started filming yet, but I'm like, you know, in the next two weeks, when you get in conversation with someone that's like so passionate and you can tell the person's like, yeah, like, hell yeah.

They love like what you're talking about. I'm like, you know, when you're in that conversation, when you're just like ripping and that person is locked in on what you're saying, I was like, I want you to immediately text me after and just say like, had a conversation on like X, Y, Z, you know?

And so then when we do film, and by the time we filmed, he had like six things that he had sent to me of different conversations. And he's like, oh yeah, this guy, you know, this guy was a dentist.

He's like, oh yeah, this guy came in, you know, he was grinding his teeth like da-da-da-da or whatever. And he was totally able to recreate the, what he had talked about.

But it was awesome because he had had these real life exchanges that were so passionate. And that's where we started because he was kind of able to just recreate it on camera. that's awesome what about the the next layer like in more intermediate creator someone that's at like maybe that 10 maybe even like 5 to kind of 50k range yeah for sure okay so um I'll talk about the stem cell scientist guy that I I filmed so he now is huge he's at I think like 150,000 on TikTok I think like 250 on Instagram like he's just like growing growing growing growing um he so he's like done exceptionally well and this is where I want to give um like hope is he had had his account for I think like a year and a half and he was stalled at 20k and no growth in fact people were just unfollowing him like left and right and he was so that's just like that sucks you like all this working you're just like totally flatlined and after like a year and a half like you start to wonder, like, do I even, is this thing even worth reviving?

Like, can I even do it? And I had found his page. I knew he was in Austin and he's like this French stem cell scientist. I was like, he, I know for a fact his videos would do so good. He's just, he doesn't know how to like condense. Like I was watching his videos and what he's saying is so interesting. If you really did lock in, it's just, he would go for so long and you could tell he wasn't thinking of his opener And like whoever was filming him, it wasn't in like great natural light.

Like it was just, you know, there's always like funky shadows on his face and all of that. And so I saw him and his wife at a, at a conference and I was like letting them know what I did with Nurse Doza's page. And, um, I was like, you know, I just think that you could do your videos could be so much better, but even like low effort, if you just had a better hook, if you actually put captions on your videos, you know, if you like thought about your, what you wrote description a little bit, like just minor tweaks like here and there.

But really what you need is just better lighting, better background and a better opening hook like you would do so well. And so they took a chance. I mean, they're like, yeah, let's let's let's film together. And I'm not even kidding. When we showed up, we didn't have ideas.

What we did is I just went one by one of his videos. I was like, OK, you film this one six months ago and it was all about this fruit called C. buckthorn berry. And you just went on and on about like the science behind it.

Like, what if we like, let's, let's reframe this entire video and start off by saying the number one fruit to put more stem cells in your body is C. buckthorn berry.

And people ate it up and loved it and ended up doing like million, million on millions. And so we just kind of like redid. So I'd like look at his video. I'm like, how can we shorten this? How can we shorten this? How can we shorten this like he already had so much up and I mean his growth was just like insane out the door did the the uh just packaging it instead of like all about fruit x to like making that hook in the packaging useful for me as a human unless I'm just wanting to nerd out and into like the fruit to get xyz from uh it was like duh um yes I also want to just wanted to call out and wonder if you got any more on it.

You mentioned like, so client calls or consulting calls, like any conversation you have that you're fired up about is like such an idea source for any content. Right. And one of the places I always go when somebody is like, oh, I don't know what to make videos about is like when you hang up from the, when you close the zoom from the client call, or when I close this zoom, I'm doing cut 30.

Like I've got ideas related to my, to like what I want to make content about are flying and, and like either taking notes during that, or in some cases, even like recording during it.

Right. Um, it is a great way to just capture ideas or yaps or, or things in the moment. And, uh, it's also a good time, like when you're fired up about it, when it's top of mind, is a good time to, to let it, let it rip.

Um, what other, like where else do you go for idea sourcing? I know, again, with people at the ground level here, that is a hot topic or a common question.

Okay. So another place where you can find inspiration is, so there are a lot of the top creators where they, they know how to make these huge videos. And let's say, let's say you are an expert in cars, for instance, like, let's say that's just the thing that you talk about.

What I, one thing I would do is I would go to, I would go to, I would find content creators who also talk about cars, maybe a little bit differently than you, but they talk about cars and they, it's very clear that their videos do extremely well. And they have cultivated a ton of people who are into cars.

I would go back and look at some of their videos in the comments. Cause you'd be so surprised how much gold is in the comments, like a question that they asked that the creator never got to, but in that question might have like, you know, thousands of likes on it. So it's so obvious that people are looking for that answer or, and then, um, like that's, that's actually, I think like such a good one.

Like, um, one of my clients, for instance, that's one of the main ways that we even find ideas that we would go back and some of our old videos, and there are some comments that people have left.

And then you'll even search it in SEO and you'll be like, wow, like there's actually no one making a video on this. this comment was liked 5,000 times and there's like no information on it clearly people are wondering about it like this is something that could really you know so I would look at the comment section see what people are liking in the comments not necessarily like if the video did extremely well but is there the comments that yeah got a lot of traction and then could you answer that question could you make a video around that to to reiterate that applies to like comments on As well as comments on any video like in my niche that I see.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the comment section in 2026 is like some of the best content on the Internet, period.

It really is. I feel like people who write great comments should be they should pay those people like people who are like the best commenters. I swear they are the ones that really deserve to be making money. Yeah. We were talking about the Facebook marketplace algorithm.

like earlier in this, the other thing I want to call it is the threads reply section. So like the replies and the comments on threads specifically, another just like beacon of hope for everything.

Katie, question for you. When you're making content, whether for yourself or for clients, like what are you doing in 2026 format wise to take it up a notch, get different, whatever it may Obviously, a lot has changed as long as you've been in the game and is always changing.

What's it look like? How's it different today than it was 18 months ago or two years ago? Oh, my gosh. It is so different. I think you definitely are battling.

There's more saturation. So having to stand out is way more important than ever. And I think especially looking at your niche, yeah, because I mean, I talk a lot about health and wellness.

There's so many health and wellness people now. Like, how can I be just a little bit different? I will say like one thing that I have seen so much success on, on my own page. And I know it's not necessarily video, but it helps me so much with conversion of people is, uh, carousels.

And so like me, I'm a, I really am a writer, like at my core, like I'm genuinely like, I need to start a sub stack because like, I love to, I love to write more than anything.

So carousels have been so great for me, especially because I think sometimes people have a little bit more attention span if they're into like reading something. So if you want to be more long form, I think that can be great. Okay.

I will say this in 2026, like you guys said, as much as it hurts my heart, videos do need to be way shorter. They really, really, really do need to be way shorter. Like even how, as you were saying, Colin, you're like, like a two and a half minute video.

Like, what are you doing? You know, like it's so true because I am someone I love to do a two and a half minute video because I have so much to say. But it is it's like the numbers don't lie. Those videos do not even perform half as well for me. If it is around 45 seconds or so, like does so, so much better.

So being more succinct is is just it's everything you have you have to do it. And so, yeah, so cutting down on that way. And then and then I would say one thing that I do think is coming back a little bit is more like creative, like aesthetic, not necessarily editorial, but like a unique and beautiful eye.

Like I think there was a time like a couple of years ago, for instance, like Nurse Doza, right, filming him. He had kind of a boring background, but even like a few years ago, you can kind of get away with it if what you're saying is so interesting, but it just doesn't work as well anymore.

We have A-B tested it, like just to see, because he's a data nerd like I am. And anytime he has like a really, really beautiful background, like behind him, his videos do so well.

In fact, he loves filming outside. And it's crazy how when it's really green and lush, he could do like the same video and it'll do so well. But in the wintertime when everything's a little bit dead and he does like filming outside, it just doesn't do as well.

yeah and I think too like uh I am looking more into captions as well like on videos like I I'm starting to experiment a little bit more um before I would just animation wise animation wise yeah sure and um like you guys all do such a great job with just captions and all of that like it always just looks so beautiful and I feel like mine's getting a little bit boring and I feel like I kind of am at the point where like, I want to try like a little bit like a, of a new font maybe, or something that again would like fit my new identity or like the one word at a time, instead of like a full sentence.

I know it's not a deal breaker. It's not everything, but I do think at this day and age, it's just, yeah, it is all about pivoting and reinventing, especially if you've been doing it for a long time and you've stalled a bit, like you, you have to switch things up.

Experimenting. Yes. Excellent. I just, I just linked to a nurse Doza.

I'm pretty sure that's the right one who you mentioned there. I will say I do not do his entire Instagram. So if there's a video that you don't think is good, it probably wasn't me.

There's a video that you think is amazing. Then it was me. Perfect. Perfect.

That's it. That same thing goes for all cut 30 students you've ever seen. Excellent. This has been wonderful. Do you have any, any final parting thoughts, anything you want to shine some light on?

Where can people find you? I'm going to link to your Instagram again. Yeah. Yeah. Just at pilot blog everywhere.

My parting thoughts would be is to truly keep going. It is a numbers game and one video can absolutely change your life. Like it really, really can.

And you need to, you have to have that thought because it is so tedious. It can be so hard. It can take so much time. You have to have a strong why and an excitement in there. It's almost like, like fishing, you know, like you can, you have to love fishing because there's times you can go out there for eight hours and catch nothing.

So you have to enjoy the journey. And it's the same thing with content, like find a way to genuinely love what you do. Fall in love with researching for that video, fall in love with learning how to, how to edit, you know, tell yourself like, I am learning a new skill for my brain.

Like how good is that for my adult brain? My brain will actually get bigger, more healthier because I'm learning a new skill. If you can look at it that way and put purpose behind it. And again, just knowing, yeah, you're one video away from your life absolutely changing and just keep trying all new things.

Don't assume that you know what people want because it might truly surprise you and be ready to take your page in a whole different direction, but you can absolutely do it. Have so much fun. There's so much opportunity. It's absolutely worth it.

And you're already ahead, like doing cut 30. Like I said this, I think the last, the last few times I wish so badly, I had something like cut 30 when I was first starting.

Like you genuinely have a leg up because majority of people are out there. They're not investing in something like this and they're, and I swear they're losing probably a couple of years. Like you are fast tracking yourself. If you really do all their homework and do everything that they talk about, like you will have a leg up by the end of this.

And everything that Katie talks about. Thank you. Thank you for the kind words, Katie. Big time. Thanks for joining us. Guys, I dropped a link to Katie's Instagram in the chat.

I want to recap homework real quick and then we're going to call it a day so everyone can move on with their evening. We've got redo, rewrite your bio post it in your track channel for feedback from the people as well as from coaches.

And again, love to see the before and after on that when you do that. And then you're making three videos. One of them will be a graphic gap. One of them will be a 10 shot.

We've got detailed briefs, how to's, um, references for you in, um, in the curriculum.

And then finally go start engaging like crazy. Um, go make some friends, go leave some comments, like some videos, hit some follow buttons, all that this week is all about making this real and, uh, and, uh, using these platforms and really getting this ball rolling.

So that's all we got. Smash the like, exactly. Thank you so much, Katie. Hit the link and we will see you guys in Slack.

See you all. Bye. Bye.