Tom’s rule: if you don’t feel it, neither will they

too right yeah first of all this is a good lesson for all of you as you get into the realm of doing sponsored content be wary of what you bite off so i did sponsor content for whatnot the live selling platform and as part of the deal they like wanted me to go live and do it once too um and i was like yeah sure why not which i had no did not realize was such an undertaking but i had a bunch of brands send me gear and i went live and sold it and donated the the proceeds to charity but it was like an hour straight of trying to keep alive running being interesting and then just like dollar signs like we did like two thousand dollars in an hour and it was it was it was a crazy experience platform is bananas so it's wild the the we have like 14 different sellers here that are like top sellers on their platform they all do 50 to 75 million a year on the platform yeah there's a mom at my kid's school who has like a she's from china has a vintage bag business pure whatnot that's like it's all she does yeah there are brands there are brands that get on there with like live inventory like that is available for sale on their site i know a guy who does they get on there in an hour they do uh they do five figures no problem yeah it's like in One one-hour session.

One of the guys was telling us that he pulled a minted LeBron card, sold it for $2.3 million. Holy shit. Insane. Yeah, I can't even comprehend the sports memorabilia card.

I know. Yeah. Let's talk about funnels. Let's talk about funnels. This whole thing is about going live.

You're live on TikTok. You're going to be streaming on Twitch. Yeah. I'm just joking. But, yeah, we're still letting people in or shopping.

Yeah, we can jump into it. Slow down a little bit. All right, perfect. So this is week three. Welcome to week three. A lot of you guys have been crushing it. Just to note, we have seen a lot of content wins, seen a lot of great content in there.

So just want to give some props while you are making excellent videos. So let's go. But today we are going to talk about a few things. We're going to go into the content funnel with Alex and what it is and how we think about different types of content.

This is a really important concept. This is a bit when we shift from like the tactics of, hey, just do these types of videos to throw the actual strategy, which you'll see in this week's Zoom and next week's Zoom. We start talking about funnels, content pillars, your actual formats and strategies.

You'll see that over these next two weeks. Then we're going to talk about this week's homework, which is going to be trying new formats and new styles. And I'm going to go through talking about carousels because some of your homework this week is going to be both carousels and new styles.

Like we mentioned in some of the previous Zooms, all of this builds on itself, right? So when we go from yap to graphic yap, when we go from one shot to 10 shot, these kind of continue to do more and more.

We want to give you a full toolkit over this month. So we'll go a bit into that and what we're going to hit this week. And then we have one of our favorite guests, Cut30 grad, Tom, the yapping king, who is going to be talking about getting comfortable on camera.

We're talking about his journey. We're talking about just like the power of how you hold people's attention, how you talk. it's gonna be a great one so without any further ado alex wanna hit the funnel yep let's do it cool y'all can see my screen yep cool cool all right first thing we're going to talk about is a lot of you are going to make a lot of good content that has the potential to be great content and what we don't want to happen is you make that piece of content it doesn't get a hundred thousand views and all of a sudden you can it and don't think it has potential.

So I'm going to run you through the land force law, which is a 3% rule. Okay. The land force law means you, you could potentially take, uh, you can make an idea or a piece of content novel if you just iterate by 3%.

Okay. And so what you can do here is you could start to, to really obsess over the data, look at all the data and, uh, in your videos and be able to make changes based off what the data is telling you right and so an example is like if the video has a high share rate and a high save rate but like the average watch time is low and that and let's talk about like share rate save rate in comparison to what it typically gets if you're typically getting 10 say or 10 shares and then all of a sudden you get 100 it's like okay but even if it didn't get 100,000 views that's obviously an outlier in your position and so knowing that you can make changes to your content to make it an outlier because the basically the people are telling you there's value here you just haven't package it or maybe you haven't positioned the idea right.

And so I'm going to go through this example that is a great example of how I did this to take a video that originally got 3,000 views to then eventually got over 300,000 views, 291 here, but over 300,000 views.

So, and this all correlates to top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel content as well. So the first iteration of this video that I made was, and I think I had like a thousand followers at the time, was the secret to landing pages that convert.

When I made this video, if you think about it, the idea of creating landing pages that convert talks to a very very small group on the internet it talks to the nerds that are that actually care about funnels that actually care about building landing pages and if i don't even have an audience built up of those individuals like i'm not going to reach a lot of a lot of people even if i make the best possible video about landing pages it's probably going to reach a hundred thousand people maybe two hundred thousand people at most like the best, best possible video.

Just because even like the title hook, the secret to landing pages that convert, that speaks to a very specific individual. Okay, so that was attempt one. But what I did see when I made this video was I did see a high share rate.

I did see a high save rate. So I'm like, okay, the people that are actually, that did watch this do find it valuable. So there's something here. Like, can I take another stab at it?

So in that second stab, I did how true classic turned $3,000 into $150 million. Obviously you could tell, like I have the same visual hook. most of it is relatively the same. The only thing is like I packaged and positioned the idea a bit different.

Cool. And this iteration got roughly 5,000 views. Okay. But when I looked at it, same thing, like high share rate, high save rate in comparison to likes and compared to all the other content that I made.

So I'm like, okay, there's probably something here. I just haven't packaged it properly. So thinking about the content funnel, I was like, okay, how do I make this as top of funnel as possible within my category, which is just marketing and content.

And with that, I was just like, okay, how big of a company is True Classic? They're doing $150 million a year. Awesome. What am I going to talk about?

I'm going to break down their marketing. Cool. Can I just position this as their marketing playbook? So it got changed from landing pages to then like their funnel to then how about just their marketing playbook?

So the hook for this was, this is True Classic's $150 million marketing playbook. Hooks, all that, like the visual hooks, all of those elements were relatively the same. that iteration of the video got nearly 300,000 views. So we took an idea that was more middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel.

And all of a sudden we made it top of file by just positioning and packaging the idea differently, right? Because you could be a marketer, you could be a founder, you could be a creator, you could be anybody that's interested in business and be interested in this video and also know what you're going to get out of this video. The second I start, the second I say my, my hook, which is, this is true class. It's $150 million marketing playbook, right and so this is all of a sudden how you can take an idea which you're going to get a lot of feedback from us on being like hey like you can you can generalize this topic a bit more to cast a a wider net and so when we think about our content we have to think about it through the lens of a content funnel which there's three parts of that funnel there's top of funnel content middle funnel and bottom of the funnel content top of the funnel content is content to get followers this is how you could easily understand it content to get followers the goal is reached the goal is to to expand your ecosystem. Then there's middle of funnel content.

This is content for your followers. This is creating as much value for the people that have chosen to give you their attention. Then bottom of the funnel content is content to get your followers to take action. Okay. The way I think about this, because I'm from Florida, is top of funnel content is like commercial fishing.

Okay. The goal is to cast the biggest and baddest net possible, right? Like the goal is volume. commercial fishing the goal is volume right and so you have to from a content perspective you have to be able to think about hey if i create a content or if i create this concept does it cast the biggest net possible if it doesn't then it's not a top of funnel piece of content so then you have to think about how you can position or package it differently to be top of funnel when we think about middle of funnel we're thinking about cast net if you've ever gone fishing and and or have tried to catch bait with a cast net it's like an eight to like 12 foot depending on how tall you are like net that you throw and you could catch a whole like a giant school of fish but even then like you there's still it's not the same as commercial fishing right and so the amount of fish that you're going to catch is is not the same as top of funnel and commercial fishing then bottom of funnel when you're trying to get someone to take action it is very similar to fishing with a rod and reel you're trying to catch a specific fish use a specific bay you go to a specific spot you fish at a specific time etc right like it gets all more and more specific that is the difference between of funnel, middle funnel, and bottom of the funnel content.

Now, when we look at this from how you can do this as a brand, as a creator, et cetera, this is how I did it when I was the CMO of this place called The Collective.

For context, it was almost like Equinox meets Soho House, now Trendy Performance Social Club kind of thing. But when we thought about our content funnel, right, we had a good creative team.

And from a content funnel perspective, we were like, cool, we have to maximize reach within our area and within, you know, the, our, our demographic. So we had three top of funnel series that we did. The first one was the win the day series. This played more into inspirational archetype where it would, it would go out every single Monday.

And this win the day series was again, like just how, how do we think about inspiring the individual that would want to train here that would want to work here. And so that series was completely built around that idea of win the day. The other top of funnel series that we had that you see right here in the middle of Jamar Chase was called Cold Hard Truth.

We would get some of our members. We'd get some of the athletes that would train there. We'd put them in the cold plunge and then we do rapid fire questions while they were freezing their ass off.

And so we would do that. It'd be like a minute, minute, 20 seconds, sometimes like usually in that ballpark. And then the third was more docu-series around different founders and athletes that train there and almost like day in the life type of content.

Those were our top of funnel pieces. And we produced one of each every single week. And that was our content that we knew, hey, this is our growth content. Anytime we publish these, they're getting hundreds of thousands of views and we're going to grow our account.

And because, you know, we talked about last week about like hyper-targeted content within the different locations that you live, this was all content that we knew would just take over Austin, right? And because of that, then when we created our middle of funnel content, our middle of funnel content was two parts, right? We got people in the ecosystem. We got them to follow And now we wanted to educate them on either who we are as a brand, what we offer, or the type of people that train their work there.

And so here on the left, where you see like the needling, that was more of an educational piece that kind of we took a lot of the things that we offered as a brand and then kind of turned it into educational content so that people understood like, OK, if you're dealing with this, you could do this.

If you're feeling like this, you could do this. But we did it through the lens of the people that offered that service at the end. the facility then on the right you see almost like a like these candid conversations that we would do semi pod like but was more like candid conversations that we would do with the with the founders um that was a lot about like the type of individuals and more so like brand personality etc that that was more of our middle funnel content and once a week because we were trying to get as many members as possible.

Once a week, we would have these videos that were more around the amenities, more around focused on the people that train there and that had CTAs. This is the exact funnel we used. We never ran a single paid ad and we built both companies to multi-million dollar facilities off nothing but organic content. And so when you understand the content funnel and you understand why you're making content, you understand the goals behind each level of content, you can start to operate very efficiently me uh oren and colin all have our different series that we know are top of funnel and as the platforms change as what like uh consumer uh psychology and even consumption habits change like you have to change those things like for me good content versus bad content worked really well a year and a half ago now it's like a video like they would always get 200 to 500 000 views now they'll get probably 60 to 80 000 like those things change and those things shift and so So you have to be able to change and adapt with just like consumer consumption.

And so those are the things that you need to understand and the things that you need to understand when we're talking about growing a brand and then growing a fan base. Those are two different things. Growing a following and growing a fan base are two different things. be and knowing that you have to understand the content that you have to create to be able to attract and or navigate somebody from follower to fan so that is my spiel we'll go deeper into that but i don't want to take too much time away from tom all right perfect um yeah just i'm going to talk here about kind of new formats and carousels i want to reiterate what what alex said there in that content has like different purposes right so i'll i'll share my screen real quick so i made this video today.

This has like 130,000 views or something so far. This is top of funnel content for me. I talk about like sociology, right? But then here I have like two vlogs and vlogs are going to be some of the new content we'll talk about here this week.

This is just to build affinity with my audience. It's not to get big sponsorships or anything. It's just for people to get to know me better.

They're not going to get as many views. It's not going to hit the same goals, but it helps people learn more about me and my life. And so those things are important, right? To think about that hierarchy.

These videos wouldn't do as well if you didn't have these videos anchoring at the top, bringing in new people, getting people excited. And we would encourage you to kind of have that view of the amount of content you should make.

I think a good ratio for most people is trying to do like three top of funnel videos every week, and then two middle of funnel videos, and then maybe one.

And so if you're doing five a week, it's kind of like a three and two, or a two, two and one.

But really at the beginning, I'd be focused on a good mix of the top and the middle and don't even start asking people for their goals and the things that you want until you've kind of established some some traction but uh getting a ratio like that will help you feel better if stuff doesn't do amazing because right sometimes the goal isn't for it to do amazing and um yeah it's it's all right to to kind of think through that and know that not every piece of content is going to be a hit so on that note before you keep going i want to answer josh's question in line here really quick. He asked, how intentional or strategic are y'all with your content? Do you calendar and plan it or just keep this stuff in mind?

And I'm answering this because, Josh, we are intentionally not getting overly tactical or trying to make elaborate content plans at this stage in this. We're going to talk more about that next week. Is that next week? I think that's next week. Yes, next week.

Including sharing some calendar tools and this kind of thing. But for now, and I think critically in the early days, we're just, we're just shipping.

And then everybody kind of gets another own cadence. And we're going to talk about what some of those might look like next week. But yeah, but in general, pretty intentional about it. We will talk about it next week, but I think everyone's looking at, okay, how do we, how do we bring in some new viewers every week?

How do we achieve some of our goals every week and how we build affinity every week? Like at least I'm, I'm thinking about that pretty methodically. All right.

So with that note, what we're going to do this week, there's two kind of prerogatives this week. One is, and I actually guess they're all tied together. It's all about making new content.

So you have basically trying things you have not tried before. So that's going to be your homework that Colm will go through. But we will notice we have sections in Kajabi for some content that we haven't hit yet. One of them is the green screen.

Some of you may have done this type of content in copywork, but the green screen is where you put graphics behind you and you talk over it. We have tutorials on how to do that. Very kind of thorough ones in there.

There's a couple of different styles with which to do it. So that is one of the ones you could do. The others are a vlog. So similar to a 10 shot, but it could be a 30 shot or a 60 seconds, 90 seconds, whatever, where you are going to make a voiceover.

Basically, you make a script, you write a script, then you put footage over it to tell your story. So we would highly encourage that one of your homework assignments be of this, like basically doing a new style, be either a green screen or a vlog, and that the other one will be a carousel. I'm going to dive into carousels here next because we haven't talked about these at all and they're an awesome tool for content.

So what do we mean by a carousel? So a carousel is a series of static images with text over them. These work really well on TikTok and on Instagram, often a little bit better on Instagram. We would encourage you to post on both. But the way to look at these, the way to think about these is that they are basically the same format as the video.

Your first slide is your hook. The goal of the first slide is to get people to scroll to the second slide. If it comes up in their feed and they scroll to the second slide, you've already won. Your carousel is going to get shown to a lot more people.

So you have basically your title hook and you have your visual hook for every carousel. And your job is to reel people in. How would people, when they see it in your feed, be like, I want to look more at that? So one of our favorite versions of this and the kind of mandatory homework we have this week for new formats is called a storytelling carousel.

This is Henry. Henry did cut 30 when he did this carousel, and he is telling his story. I was an All-American and still had to start over. And I like calling out Henry's carousel because this is not some beautiful, amazing design.

This text wasn't put together by some pro graphic designer. It's a decent picture of him as a runner. And then he's going through and telling his story of when he was a pretty sought after recruit and kind of what happened in his life to get him there. And again, the graphic design isn't amazing.

He is going through slide by slide and telling his story. This is an awesome way to look at carousels. What we encourage for most people in this chat, brand or expert, is to go through your camera roll and be like, what story could I tell?

How did I get this interesting job I had? How did I start this brand? How did I overcome something that you've overcome in your life? Whether it was making a move out of your small town to go to the big city, or whether you had some kind of fancy thing that went bad, telling that really compelling story to people and doing it just with images and text.

And we have tons of examples of that inside Kajabi. So a few other notes on carousels that we find interesting, because this is a tool for you to use, right? When you don't want to make a video, You have some time to be able to put some things together in Canva or, you know, if you are more of a graphic designer, do a little more here.

One of the others that Tom, who is about to be our guest here in a second, did that I love is DMing your followers as you grow. So he DMed creators and then asked them what would they do if they start from zero. And he has this little layout here. Again, he is doing, he's using the default Instagram kind of text as he creates this.

He has some screenshots that he put together on here. he's just getting a question answered. And so if you have an account in a specific niche, like you have a specific travel account, you talk about influence, whatever, this is an awesome one to consider doing.

Pop back here for a second. Another one is just, this is a kind of like a tips and tricks carousel. Kind of talking very simply through, okay, here's an issue I had, here's how I solved it. And again, this is kind of done in Canva.

It looks nice, but it doesn't look like expensive graphic design. Nice. Showing you it doesn't take much to make some of these work.

Another one she made, it's a curation carousel. The sub stacks that may be smarter in 2025. And curation carousels are great. You can just pick six or eight things in a niche and just show them. People love to bookmark these. And then it really comes down to, again, this is a great hook image.

Really, if you did an interesting environment, it's a really simple piece of text that's catching on screen. And then she goes into actually providing some value.

One that I love, if you are an actual expert or a pro, and I know there's tons of you in here, whether you're developing products or you're a coach or a lawyer, whatever it is, eight years as a blank, and still no one believes me when I tell them X, if you're a dentist, a dermatologist, a SEO marketer, whatever it is, going and going through misconceptions about things or about products is an awesome one that is kind of like a surefire winner.

also great for for brands especially if your brand has some sort of stance on this thing is healthy or this thing is better for you or a better experience than something else and then I want to give an example of Sam who's one of our cut 30 grads just like I'm not gonna overthink the carousel right so Sam makes agritourism content and one of her carousels that blew up is this one called what is a farm hotel so literally there's there you would be surprised at how little people actually know about the things that you many of you are talking about that you would assume that they would know what they are right like you say farm hotel you probably have a you think everyone would know that right they do not we had a joke about this with one of our equestrian people were like hey you should do what is a saddle it would probably rip because genuinely many people don't know you can provide a history i wouldn't be afraid of doing a really really simple carousel where she's again taking beautiful images and again this is dead simple a place to stay with rooms or houses on site with a working farm. Again, she is not breaking the bank on graphic design or on writing here. She's making a really straightforward guide for new people who discovered her account where she talks about farm carousels.

After this did well, she started doing a variety of these. She did farm hospitality by the numbers. This carousel could have done much better. It's not super visual, but just showing you that even without that, it still ended up doing pretty well because she's providing information people wanted.

Then she started curating around things in different parts of the world. Okay, let's talk about Francis Farm Hotels. I would look at this from any perspective you have, whether you're talking about cars, it's cars around the world.

If you're talking about baby products, it's different baby products around the world. There's a lot of things you could do to provide value in your niche like that. And then she repeated that format once it won. So again, she did South Africa, then she did England.

So to get a winner in your carousel, you can easily repeat those kinds of things. She did the same thing to then drive it inside an event she was hosting. This is more of a bottom of funnel example.

Another Cut30 grad, if you're a brand, great ways to think about this. This company was doing what's happening behind the scenes. And again, this is when we feedback this being like, hey, this photo is too dark, not enough kind of quite going on.

Didn't matter, still did good, right? Could have done even better. But basically a behind the scenes carousel just to look at what you're doing is an awesome one where you can actually take and take stuff from your camera roll and provide anecdotes of things that are happening at the company.

Same thing with friends, the brand Alex and I both know called Drink Salt. POV, you're on our close friends. They're just showing behind the scenes. They're using that kind of visual vehicle of the close friends icon. Be like, oh, I'm going to see stuff I wouldn't normally see.

They're kind of talking to you very personably and showing things about their brand and their company. The completely unhinged things I did starting a blank company was another one of like talking through crazy scenarios that came from starting whatever business. Again, these are all just camera roll photos. I cannot encourage you enough. Go a year back, two years back, five years back.

What funny documentation do you have of whatever it is you are working on? Negative comments. Another one is that same soap brand. Negative comments we've gotten where they just go through people who have dropped it, they leave with the comment, and then they respond to it. This is an awesome format.

I also love this for experts too, where it's just like crazy things people have said to me as a lawyer online is like a great compelling one to be able to roll through. But if you're a brand, go through some of those worst comments, make a few up if it allows you to answer something and drop them on here is a great way to look through it.

So we have a, I will put all those examples in Slack. We have a ton more examples in Kajabi, but this week we would like you to create new formats, one of which will be a green screen or a vlog and the other, which would be a carousel we have some guides on how to do that um in canva and in photoshop i believe uh that are in the kajabi colin uh what do we got to finish it off uh that's it homework wise um you just hit on it i think critically though you guys part of this is doing stuff that is a little out of your comfort zone essentially that you never saw yourself doing and one thing i want to call out is if you find yourself asking, I want to make this, but is it a video or a carousel?

The answer is, of course, both, right? These are just different packaging on the same content. And you can think about that really with every piece of content you're making going forward. You write a script, but you couldn't get the video to go.

Maybe you can flip it into a carousel, right? So without further ado... Or the video did well. It will also probably rip as a carousel. Yes, absolutely. Excuse me.

All right. Yo, Tom, super excited to have you. Let's go.

I'm going to drop this link again. I'm excited to have Tom because I had this era where I was like obsessive about creator brands, like brands launched on the back of really like influencers and creators. And in that era, I listened to a podcast called Bonus Footage with this guy Tom on TikTok.

And I think that was four years ago. And here we are. We got Tom on TikTok right here on cut three. Full of Tom on TikTok. I love hopping on this because I always end up like getting free game because you guys are dropping new notes every single time.

I was just taking notes the entire time and getting inspo. So I appreciate it, guys. Excellent. Give us the rundown. What's up with you?

Yeah, rundown. What's up with me? So content game wise, you know, I got I went to school for health and phys ed. So I really primed myself to be a content guy.

I started capturing the behind the scenes of my friend trying to make it in music. I ended up slinging his mixtapes online. And it was just my way of just like following my instinct. I was like, oh, like this guy should be seen. And I was like putting his content online.

And Scooter Braun called me. Ended up going and working with Scooter for three years with this artist. Ended up getting in rooms, being the content guy with this little flip cam with Kanye West, Justin Bieber, Kid Cudi, Pharrell Williams.

so the craziest people in the world like fish out of water type type feeling but I got this like this hard knock um look at you know just making content just get thrown getting yourself into the business and and learning I didn't even know what the freaking word content was I remember a girl I dated like three years later uh she was going to temple she got me this book that said like uh content marketing one-on-one and I was like what the heck is content I was like I'm just like I'm just like putting stuff online.

Like this is what we do. So I ended up getting out of that music business, moving home, started making content like, you know, silly music videos with my friends back home, putting them online, just following my instinct.

Then a couple of big brands started to see them and started saying, hey, can you make content for us? So then I started going into the brand world. So I left the artist music world. Now I'm in the brand world making content for brands. This is like, you know, 2015, 2016.

did that for a bunch of years then like 2020 i uh was just like i have this affinity for the small creator the independent person that's just putting their ideas out there and um i had this day job where i couldn't be too creative and couldn't really you know once you get into the corporate setting you can't really flex like there's we want you to make fun stuff but you can't really make fun stuff so i was like i love the small creator i like the person that is just able to go from idea to publish with no committee around them.

And I get lit up about that person. If I met anyone on this call or like any of the coaches, I had like a barbecue, I'm locked in. I'm talking to you guys the entire time. Cause I'm like very curious. I'm excited and amped up about what you're building.

So then I was just like, all right, I got to put this energy online somewhere. So I started bonus footage. The bonus footage is behind the scenes of all the, all the business, all the, all the stuff that I've been doing the last 10 years. Um, and just started putting it out there and and had affinity for the the creator economy um and then just started getting some traction but then kind of got sidetracked because i started getting consulting gigs because once you uh once you start putting your way of thinking out there people are like oh it looks like he knows the creator space so i started doing influencer marketing on on the side um so i my content kind of like stagnated for a little bit and then last year i was like all right i need to like i need to get a snapshot of what's happening on social now kind of like take all of my experience so i took cut 30 and i i came in and i came out i was at like 7 000 now i'm at 40 000 and now it's full circle i'm on the call with you guys beautiful thank you for the rundown dude oh yeah yeah yeah i don't know i didn't know i no it's great i'm trying to bring in context that i'm just an idiot and I'm not that smart and I make content.

Amen. Are we all? Amen. So obviously we're around it a lot, but finally flipped around the camera.

I'm especially curious, and I don't really remember at this point, even though I was there and cut 30, like what the first videos were and then especially like the first ripper.

Yeah. So the first videos were, so like I like this Tia because I came in with this concept called small creator, big content.

and I was trying to highlight and which I successfully did like most of these creators they went on to be big creators but I was finding small creators and trying to highlight the content they were making and trying to show that this creator is like making these really big concepts and brands should work with them and I was like all right I'm going to go into cut 30 I'm going to I want to like figure out the packaging for this specific series and it turned out that like that series even though I loved it and it was a great idea and I was right on the people I was picking And it just, I just couldn't figure it out for short form.

So because of the 30 day, like you had to hit content every single day in Cut30, I was like, I can't hit this cadence with this format. And like, this doesn't make sense.

So I kind of, you know, put it to the side. And then I just started going to old content that I had written down. And it was the content that I had was I had this course called Thrive on Camera. I wrote it in like 2021.

It was about like being more confident on camera. I never actually published it. And I was like, all right, to keep up with this pace that the Cut30 guys want me to do, I was like, I'm going to pull some stuff from here. So I pulled something out of that, and then I threw a higher-up wellness behind me and Justine's camera roll and used them as examples to teach this lesson.

And I put it up. It was a green screen with one frame. I didn't even – I hardly edited it. It was like a green screen yap, I think I would think that is. And then it hit like 150,000.

I was like, all right, we're on to something, no small creator, big content. I'm just, I'm switching from talking about create, create the creator economy as a whole.

And my mind shifted to, I'm talking to the person that wants to talk on camera, like not personal branding, not all this crazy stuff.

The person that wants to talk on camera, like that's a very lonely, like thing to try to do on your, figure out on your own. Like, this is what you guys are helping to solve. And I was like, I want to talk to that person.

And so I got clear on that. And then I got clear on like trying to solve that person's problems. You know, and by the way, for everybody else on here, please feel free to throw questions in the chat.

They're kind of coming to me. So I'm going to keep it going, but drop them in the chat. Yeah. And I have one thing because I meant to say I didn't want to cut you guys off. So I know that the homework for this week is to try something new. And one idea that for green screen is this idea of like this, the sub stack.

or the Substack green screen is to take a Substack in your niche. And the video is this, it's, I read, I read this article on Substack about this, right? You say their stance, you say the author's stance, then you say whether you agree or disagree with that stance, then you give an example or a story, and then you give an application, like how to do it, or like, like, like how to apply this thinking try that uh i made a video about that and a bunch of people have dm me saying like yo like this is my first video that blows up so if you're like if you're like yo i don't know what to make tomorrow maybe start there the substack yeah is that what we're coining it yeah what is it still it's still in the incubator for the actual the actual it's not as good as the land force law but it's it's it's um all right no i had a question here uh tom you're you're about shelby sap and seth curry lives rent free in my mind i think oh i think about it every day thank you for making it that i mean that was made in cut 30 right am i well no that was that was the week after that was the week after uh i'm just kidding but but that's that no that's a good point though because like it's so hard to fully ingest all the information that like you're applying for the 30 days the real learning happens like you know after as you can like really sit with the stuff and start to apply it so um that was basically i took the same format that worked in cut 30 with the shelby uh with the michael smoke uh and uh justine's camera roll and then i was just like all right i'm gonna do it with a two different people and i and that's the video i made um sorry i'm trying to find it to to link yeah i i've posted it it's one of my ones where I post like every other month because like, uh, I'm a huge chef Curry fan.

Like I, I, I, I just admire his game and, and like, anytime I can talk about sports and content, I'm, I'm hyped for that.

Yo, so I want you to talk more about this. I really liked our last conversation about this. This is a, I just put the link in the chat for everybody. This is such like a masterclass and like how to use something as a hook, um, as a vehicle for your ideas, right?

Like you, like, there's a whole video here that, that you basically use a couple of celebrities that people know, um, to hijack people's attention.

And then you just did this, this, this, this thought you had in your mind. Right.

Um, and you, you probably could have made that video without them as the hook. And it probably does 15,000 views or something. Yeah.

If I'm just talking about mindset, no, no one cares. Like, no one's like, I don't care about this.

Tell us. So give a quick rundown on that video. and then just like talk to us about like hijack like using something as a vehicle for your your idea yeah so like for a minute i kind of like avoided doing it because i was like oh i just want to you know blow up on my shit on my own you know but like i was like all right i gotta get out of my head and and uh with that one specifically um i remember writing it uh uh i remember writing it And I initially didn't even have Steph at the beginning.

I was like writing something. I tried to craft a hook too crazily. And then I just, I actually took that part when Steph Curry is balling.

That's how the video starts. I was like, my energy is really good right here. And Steph Curry is in the background. So then I moved that to the front and cut the hook entirely.

So that's one little tidbit about that one. Two is like, yeah, obviously use, try to, I was like thinking of the mindset thing I wanted to get across.

And then I thought of something that I knew or like was, was interested, had curiosity around. And I was like, all right, I can pull from his experience and, and like help it be the packaging for this thing that is so like, like is true for me. And I think other people could, could get any insights from.

And I think the contrast in that one too, of like Shelby Sapp and Steph Curry, like, it's like, all right, someone that's really known in the content world. And then someone's really known in the sport. Like, why are they next to each other? I think that creates an open loop where if it was just Steph at the beginning, it's a different, it's a sort of a different thing. It's like, is this a sports video?

But I think there's a curiosity loop that's open there as well. You know, you, uh, you said you made a whole, I didn't realize you made a whole course about being good on camera, being confident on camera.

Like what are your, give us the game. Like what are the, what are the three things you do? yeah yeah yeah all right i mean i mean i hate to be cliche all right the three things the three things in the course um jumping jacks and so like so like the reason i i enjoy what you guys do so much is because like you help bring it give it structure for short form uh and then for me like i i think i overly not overly but like a bit i'm a big energy guy like i feel like if you're going to talk on camera and we're not actors, you have to lean into your curiosities.

And if you don't, we feel it. We know it. That's why I think like, you know, let people copy your stuff.

Let people do this. Like eventually, like it's going to simmer down. You have to find the little areas where your natural enthusiasm, I don't even care how niche or like whatever it is, like the more niche I got with my content, the crazier it, the better it performs.

So that's the one. The two is I play around with my tone, vocal variety a lot. So for a while, I don't do it anymore, but I would legit.

So there's a couple of activities. So one, you get the script, you read it as fast as you can, and then you read it as slow as you can.

And then you read it as high pitched as you can and then you read it as low as you can because so many people go in with this like one tone but like if you start to just feel it's like it's like this is what it's like i'm sorry about the sports analogies here guys this is this is who i am all right it's like going and shooting hoops and you you never practice around with trick shots or another steph curry example right like he he has all these circus shots right like you have to give yourself the opportunity to go play around with different stuff, then you pull and then you lean in and then you can pull for the video.

The other one is lean into the meaning of what you're saying. So a lot of people are like, forget the meaning after they write it down. Like really think through, like if you watch the, when Steph Curry is balling, like I'm really like leaning into the meaning of what I'm saying. And I think people forget that part.

Another one that is kind of weird is read your script into your voice notes after you write it, then go for a walk and listen to it. Like I don't do this stuff anymore, but there's a time where I'm like, I'm like, it's like practicing with these tools. It's so helpful.

Do that. So, so this is what you do. So you write your script, then, then like consume like other stuff, like, like listen to a podcast, listen to a song.

And then when you're on your walk, then play it back in your voice notes after you recorded it and just hear it, just listen to yourself. And you'll be like, yeah, like I'm flat here. Like it doesn't seem like I care why like uh there's a it's like kind of creating these little moments of game tape that where you can look at yourself and and improve and then over time it just becomes it becomes like second nature it's like a it's just like a muscle i think something you just you just touched on is so key which is there's something i learned from um uh miss excel if you if you know yeah yeah yeah people over over uh complicate content like content is just me transferring my energy to you about the things that I love.

She's like, I'm not trying to sound woo. She's like, if I come and make a piece of content that's that's not that's boring and you don't feel my excitement, like, why would they listen to me? Why would they care about what I'm saying? Why would they give me their attention if they don't think that I love what I'm talking about?

Then then there's no point in making the content. Right. And that's why if you pay attention to her content, she's like, I'm not dancing.

I'm not like doing these things because it's like what TikTok wants. She's like, I love talking about Excel. I love talking about this shit and I want them to feel and know that I love it. So like, if I'm not in a good mood, I'm not making the content because they're going to feel it.

You know, and I think something that you're touching on as well. And like, you know, I'm sure everybody that's listening to you right now and, you know, me and Colin and Orin are texting about it in our group chat right now being like, you're great. It's like, your energy's great.

You know what I mean? Like we can feel that you love this shit and it's such a key part of making content is like you just got to be able to feel it you know like yeah you're probably talking about the wrong thing dude i i love that and and a thing that i'll i'll add on to that is um a lot of people are going to look at me and be like oh i don't have that energy that tom has so like i can't make content which is like not true like like why i want you to kind of practice with your your delivery is kind of find your signature like everyone's going to have their different approach everyone on this call like you guys are monster creators you all have a different little pocket of your delivery your cadence your flow and I think over time you start to see that like if you watched all of your first videos it's night and day compared to where you are now which is so beautiful so I think Oren you posted that one creator uh from from Cannes last week and uh it I think that she's not overly enthusiastic, but you can tell she's nerding out about these very specific niche subjects, and she really cares about it.

And it doesn't mean loud. It just means showing up the truest way that you possibly can. No, not CatGBT. She's got great enthusiasm. It was someone on Orange Stories he posted.

I think I— From Cut30? Yeah, I think it's from Cut30. yeah yeah but bar is a good example she's from a cohort or two ago yeah yeah put her stuff up here um but yeah transferring that energy is so key and then finding your way of just doing it uh you know some people okay this this is one is um i've noticed because i've done this a lot and i still kind of do it i'm trying to get out of it is like talking as fast as i possibly can like like it's like i don't know if it's because i'm a middle child or or like content is cracked out my brain so much but um talking as so as fast as you can i think there's i think the arc where you talk fast is is right here it's like so when you close a loop so if you're like you're finishing a point right you start the next like that's the point where you you pause right before you finish that point and then you say the point and then you start the next one really fast so it's like i can't think of an example off top but like that's the moment where if you're going to talk fast do it there it's like the um you know i wore this white hat on christmas but like and then that's that's a terrible example that's a um i'm trying to i'm trying to think of an example off top but um the the playing with the pace of your voice where like i was very mechanical talking fast if you're gonna play around with the speed slow it down on the point and then once you hit that point open the next hook and you can do it fast the the folks over at bad ominous talk about that too like if you pay attention to their scripting for all their uh other kind of like vlogs they do that where like sam will be talking chill but then when she does the transition she'll she'll be like but then the machine was destroyed yeah exactly that was the example i was looking for i got to be like today was a good day we had a great launch but then our machine broke yes right it's like that like right on the launch right on the little the launch in the butt is the same breath it like pulls you right back in like this is what is pulling you in and that's and that's where it's uh it's good to understand like the pacing exactly blow things down and then talk really fast and pull them back in and that's something i got to get better at like i talk way too fast when i when i do my script so do i i'm like am i on 2x speed but like that's a that's a perfect example a lot of people cut up a lot of people say the launch went great.

And then they like pause for a second. They look to the side, right? No, on the launch went great. It's butt right into the next thing. You know, something I want to call out really quick before we get these questions is I've had a couple of people, at least that I've given feedback in Slack that I can tell are using teleprompters. Right.

And I can't, you know, before you get to Tom's advice of like finding energy and making sure it comes through, the number one, most important thing you do is stop reading off a screen right say it a line at a time yeah memorize that line so you can give that line like all of your energy and that's really the first step to like finding your voice and like and like messing with your inflection and and and all that is just like not having to like read it and trying to nail it 60 seconds at a time you you just don't you don't need to do that and it makes it an uphill battle yeah i i totally agree with that i would the one thing i'll throw in there is I usually, if I'm going, so I have two different formats of one where it's an outline and other where it's scripts.

I do scripts when I'm trying to like hit a lot of information in a thing. And I'll read them like point by point. It'll be like a little blurb. And then it was, so it's like five total blurbs that make up a video. Then at the end, once you get like your, your take that you want, please do a safety take, do it, do another take where you're like, all right, I'm just going to let it fly and try to do it start to finish because now it's kind of ingrained in you.

It's going to come out more naturally. And then like, that's the point where you're just like, all right, like whatever, I already got the take, let's do a safety take on top.

All right. We got a couple of questions here. What are your thoughts on unscripted yaps or do you stick with a script? I feel I lose a lot of energy in a script, but obviously structure is needed and it's easy to ramble.

Yeah. I think the same thing that I just said there is, is, uh, try to go like when you, if you do script it out, try to go like point for point, um, instead of like line for line.

So like, uh, if I script it out, what I do is I have the computer next to me, just like Google docs.

It's, it's, it's opened up. And then I have like, it kind of looks like five paragraphs. Right. So I'm, I'm trying to do like a blurb at a time, not line by line.

Um, and, and it takes me a couple of times and it's annoying. uh i think i posted a behind the scenes of a video the other day it was like taking me forever you know um the other one is like there are certain things there are certain moments where uh i will go off the top i've had a couple videos that like went crazy is it like so i think depending on what on how dense the information is um you can do the script uh but i i think that there's like i i think what i'm telling i've had people that go word for word off scripts it kind of feels like they're reading and they still crush it right like whatever makes you feel the most confident is is like really what you got to lean into there's no one perfect way is what i would say here that's a really that's a really good answer i would say at the very least like give yourself a rough outline and the big thing is as you're going through it make sure that you're not repeating turns of phrase and and like in this kind of thing if you script it out you're probably pretty safe that you don't say like 13 times in a 30 second video and that can easily happen if you're if you're trying to freestyle it all right john and here's something i would say to practice with too uh so i find a lot of people that don't want to go full yap yet practice on your stories just just like same concept if you want to practice something off the top on your story stories are throwaway moments people they're they're gone in 24 hours practice your yaps on your stories and a lot of people find they do it and they're like oh i'm actually it's a little exposure therapy and once they put it up they're like i might as well just put that as a with a reel because as a reel because a bunch of people like it and you get that signal um so it's a good it's good like training wheels to go full on just off the top on your reels all right john said question about the 84 yaps you reviewed how did you choose which ones you wanted to analyze and anything else you can share about studying other creators that's a great question so i use uh so i i literally have a folder of yaps yap inspo uh and you scroll so i you scroll with intention and when you see a yap the beautiful thing about an algorithm once you start saving a certain kind of video, it pushes you more of that video.

So what you do is you go and you reset your algorithm first, reset your algorithm, then scroll, scroll, scroll, look for a yap you like, watch it, save it, hit all the things, give the algorithm all the signal.

Then the algorithm does the amazing work of giving it to me. So then I took that into the video database and uh and to and and there's a another tool called talk script uh that you can that i you can analyze all them with as well um so talk script like help like i you can kind of use them in tandem together so taught you just drop them into talk script is a it has an mcp connection with claude and you can drop it right into claude and you can kind of just talk with it so i i was like what are the patterns of these what and i'm reading through everything uh and yeah yeah it's It's not cool. It's not something you want to brag about to your friends at the party.

But online, you know, it turned out to be a good hook. But hooks in the ideas, delivery. I'm looking at time. I was like very curious.

I'm like, what? How long? It's all over the map. So, yeah, I don't know if that fully answers it.

But, yeah, that's the mechanism. Save them and then talk script and video database. uh all right noah said what do you think of people online saying they post like 10 yaps per day is there any downside um to take the random ideas and put them in your head so i mean i think uh i think if if you're gonna play the 10 yap a day game you're a different kind of beast you're uh i i don't even do that i do mostly i do green like an even amount green screens because i'm just like a regular person, people don't trust my face yet. I need to rely on green screens. I need to rely on graphics.

Higher Wellness, Ken, he's built up so much trust with his brand. His face is a hook now. So you see him and he's already built up all the good rapport and trust. So like you trust he's going to deliver.

But if you're just playing that game, you really have to have, I'm trying to use the politically correct, you have to have guts to be able to do that, right? And know that you're going to play the six-month-to-a-year game of doing that to finally kind of break out. I think at the beginning, if you don't have crazy charisma and you're also not already famous from something else, it's hard to go from zero to one liftoff just that alone.

But a lot of people, there are people like even who's the uh who's higher wellness's friend he's uh the good morning guy good morning he started yapping recently but he he built up his audience to 300 000 before that right people already trusted his face and but he's still not doing 10 a day but it's just me thinking out loud here um you know two things i want to say about that one is i think like if you sit down to do the volume thing first of all it's probably a tiktok thing second of all for sure i would always apply the who cares filter because like i have 10 thoughts a day i could just like talk about for a second but like not all 10 of them are gonna like who the fuck cares guys right and if you can get if you if you can get some where you can like have that angle or make the point or or say the thing where you get there then i think it's it's worth giving a go the other thing though is like yo there's like there is no better practice humanly possible than doing something for like 30 or 60 or 90 days like you think about that you did that for you did that for a month that's 300 videos yeah right like that's incredible and there's something to be said for that for sure and i think the angle is you're 100 right you you post a 10 on tiktok you move over the top three on to instagram but it's still a long game and i honestly my positioning on the yap is it's not it's not usually the best format for everyone but i love the format because it's foundational If you can get good at that, like such a raw, it's like a naked feeling just to like just yourself and your brain, like your ideas, like that's it's not easy.

Right. So you're going from zero to one, one of the hardest formats. It's easy to execute, but it's the hardest to actually get traction.

But it makes you so good on camera. It makes you a better communicator. Like I was on a panel recently on a creator panel and I realized the panel format is basically just a yap in real life and it made me a better IRL speaker. Yo, I want to talk to you about where you're at with just like idea generation slash inspo on videos these days. Are you just like you try to leverage like something while it's hot and top of mind? Yeah.

How are you present? So right now, I got to be straight up honest with you guys. I am like, like summertime right now, my day job has been very busy. I've just been like crazy, like life planning, like all this life stuff happening.

I've, I've been be able to put in like an hour a week on content the last six weeks, and I'm so annoyed about it. So I have all these ideas that I want to do. Right now, I'm sort of just, when I drive to work, I have a random thought that I want to say.

And I've just been saying, I haven't been thinking through and it's been reflecting in my content. Like I haven't had like the bandwidth to actually put into it. But typically, it's on a, like when I was in my mode where I was like really growing was, I'm writing 10 ideas every single day.

And this is from James Altucher, to build your idea muscle. 10 ideas in a notebook. the first five or six are bad, six to seven or eight, like you're really starting to build the muscle and you start to have good ones. And then you journal one page. It's the morning pages, just one page stream of consciousness.

And then the third page, this is from Colin, from Colin and Samir, you doodle, you doodle. So you got these three little things, right?

And then you go for a walk and then you let your subconscious do the work. And if you don't have any ideas then, like, I don't know what to tell you because like, it's like annoying how many ideas you have if you're able to do that a couple days in a row or I feel like it's easy to sit down at the computer to do ideas and then get distracted by 10 things and act like you couldn't have any ideas it's like nope yeah notepad a lot of conversations like I've been having so many I have this this concept and I want to get all three of you on this one day so I have this concept called steps and steps where I hit my steps every single day and I call a creator and I'm talking to them and they're just talking to me about what they're experiencing like mining real life conversations for ideas.

And it's just, it's these no agenda calls that I have with people in the space that as I've gotten more followers, I've built up a better relationship.

So like use your DMs, connect with these people, have no agenda calls in the conversations. If you're a therapist, talk with other therapists.

If you're a physical therapist, talk with other physically, you know, like talk with all these people in this space, mine the conversations and then pull from there. Love it.

I am yapping. No, this has been wonderful. Do you have anything? I'm going to link your Instagram again.

Do you have anything to promote? Anything you want to send us to? I just want to promote you guys, man. You guys are doing a great job. I got one question for y'all, and you don't have to answer it here.

Because I actually wrote 10 questions down for y'all, but I talked way too long. Yo, rapid fire. So, okay. Among the thousands of cohort graduates, what's one thing that the outliers have in common besides work ethic?

I was going to say reps. I mean, it's hard to have. I don't have a witty answer. Expertise is an interesting one. I look at Ryan, hospitality experience, Sam, Sam travels, Hans, a few of these others.

like a lot of them are like they they're not like again like 20 years deep but they're like extremely in on like one subject um in a way that i think is really interesting like obviously like very incredibly passionate about like one thing yeah yeah it's like a a commitment to i'll say commitment to the game but like but like all i'm thinking of alan alan the fiber guy yeah right where it's like dude that dude has gotten tens of millions of views about him farting he does not give he does not care he is all in on the topic on the niche yeah he followed his their curiosity like yeah yeah yeah all the way i think there's a a competitive nature to it as well where even if like i won't call it an orange of win as as much as anybody possible but like if they make a banger video like yo i got to make a video yeah yeah yeah i mean like i like it like That's part of the game.

If I was playing basketball against them, I'm going at them 100%. I want them to score too. You know what I'm saying? It's not that.

It's not like I want them to get injured, but I want to beat them regardless. You want to dunk on, bro. You know what I'm saying? Alex would go on for the knees and the hookies.

I think that's the part of the game because then that forces you to be like, fuck, his storytelling was way better than mine. I got to be better.

I know. That's so true, dude. Why is Colin so witty with these one shots? Fuck him.

I got to make it. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? That happens. And I think that's part of the game.

And I think when you do that, you never lose the edge. You know what I mean? That edge is always there. You're always studying some shit. You're always trying to find out what's a thing that you can do better and you don't get comfortable.

One more. That was excellent, though. I want to recap. Reps, commitment to the game, really, to the niche, whatever it is your thing is.

And then a little bit of competitive juice. One more, Tom. Okay, so you have a video up for a week. You go to check it. What are the first three things you're looking for in the edits app on analytics that isn't views?

What are the three things that you're looking at to dissect this video? Yeah, so the hook rate and share rate is honestly the only thing I'm looking at. And now what I've noticed is the threshold is higher. like my bangers are all like 45 or lower hook rate so like they really have to like is low and then that share rate um kind of getting as high as they can but i'm not looking at anything else on the brand stuff we'll tally some other things because like we'll we'll record saves as purchase intent and stuff like that um but like yeah it's the only two things i'm looking at only and i'll notice too if those two are good i've had this problem happen a lot i'm actually curious to i was to take on this too but like we've um those two metrics are good and the video didn't get a lot of views i've noticed that sometimes it's like the audience isn't there like so basically i have some some videos where i have they're just as good as my bangers but then i'm just kind of the topic is like they're too marketing or they're too like oh you have to really care about brands and so like the audience isn't as big as like these big macro topics yeah i've had some videos where i look at the analytics i'm like for sure this is going to get 250 000 500 000 views but then i like i've kind of dissect this and think about this lately where i'm like the reality is the majority of my content lately has been middle of funnel like all of it where i'm thinking it's top of funnel but i'm so in the weeds looking at it i'm like okay it's top of funnel but it's really it's so nitty gritty like make better content yeah only a certain subgroup of people that actually care about making like truly better content when it's like hey fix the composition you know what i mean like and angles to this or use this focal point etc and so um but yeah the only other thing i look average what is what average watch time to the from a peer like can i tell better stories yeah keep them on longer yeah amazing tom thank you so much i just dropped a link to tom go follow him like crazy thank you i appreciate you thank you so much for joining us uh quick reminder on homework here folks um where's my notepad here we go uh your homework is to do two completely new formats one of them being a origin story carousel and another one being something else day in life process documentation an intention or a mission video something like this uh hit the course content for inspo and uh yeah we'll see you in slack you guys got anything else nope i'm all good on mine keep crushing it all right y'all when you're on the east coast let's hoop well i just bought my needed i'm on i'm on the east coast man i hand you up hey that's when i want to play you when a bum me all right thanks y'all see you in slack appreciate y'all Please.