The One Question to Ask Before You Post Anything: Who Are You Actually Talking To?

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone, my name is Armando Perez-Carreno and welcome to the Web Talk Show. Today with us is Jake Isham, filmmaker turned brand strategist. How are you Jake doing? Well, how are you? I'm doing very well. Some weird climate coming in to Texas. We got a lot of rain so the allergies and everything are going to be very interesting over the next few days. But very happy to be here and to talk about not only film making but brand strategy and how in 2026 every company or business needs some sort of content posture. So I think you're going to be able to provide some great advice for people listening and give us an insight also into what happens behind the scenes and all the cool stuff you do. So Jake, can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now and and how you got to this point? Totally. So I run a creative agency based in Los Angeles and we help entrepreneurs basically build their personal brand through content. Um we do a lot of top offunnel work. Um, my background in this, I never planned on being in marketing. If you asked pretty much up until 25year-old Jake, 26-year-old Jake that he would be in marketing, he'd be like, "You're insane." No. Um, I grew up uh as an actor, actually. grew up as an actor and then um moved behind the camera and fell in love with it and you know uh but then after film school you know they don't teach you really the business in film school as as well as I hoped they would and you know just I was very naive at at the time as most early 20-year-olds are. Yes. Uh, and so I then basically had to just figure it out. Mhm. U, I'm very fortunate both my parents are artists and so they were of the same **[00:02:00]** mindset of just like go figure it out. You want to be a filmmaker? Go, go, go. Good luck. Yes. So I freelanced and then basically realized I need to kind of create my own business, my own company. And so done that. To date, we've done over a billion views. We've worked with guys like Grant Cardone, brands with like 5'11 and Callaway Golf and countless others. And so, it's been a it's been a fun journey. That sounds super fun. I mean, obviously not the figuring it out at part of the beginning. It's fun, but tricky. Still figuring it out. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The I mean, but that's the ride of the of being an entrepreneur. like we we trade certain levels of security for certain risks and we get more freedoms but at the same time a lot more problems and a lot more barriers. Yes. But I in my opinion better rewards as well. The highs are higher but also the lows are lower. Yeah. So you know it's who if you what appetite do you have for that? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Not not everyone I've heard this said many times not everyone's cut out to be an entrepreneur and that's okay because it is a tough ride but it is it is it's a fun ride for those who who want it uh it's very interesting for sure experience and with what you can learn online nowadays it's also a lot more fun I think because there's there's so much that that's out there for you if you want it especially now with AI like it just it does take you know the the willing to bet on yourself and and a delusionally confident. I forget where I originally heard that, but it's basically I've I've loved that. It's there's a delusionally confident of like, no, of course I'm going to be successful. I I don't know what you're talking about. Well, do you know how to do any of this? No. **[00:04:00]** Okay. But I'm still going to be successful. It's just delusionally confident. Mhm. Yes. And you've you've made a couple of films, right? Like actual films. I have. What was that journey like? Well, I mean, I started shooting stuff in in in high school, you know. I just This was back when DV tapes were still around. Oh, yeah. For sure. Well, no, I I I definitely know what you're talking about. for for anybody who's under the age of, you know, 103, uh, a DV tape is a small recording tape that you would have physical data. It was not digital data and uh, so camcorders, this was before SD cards and iPhones existed. And so, oh, do you have one? I'm sure I just saw a couple like two days ago. I'm sure. I'm sure. We'll figure out where they are, but I'm sure I literally just saw a few. That's I I would shoot my, you know, uh short films as in in high school on those and little music videos with my friends. Uh to then film school and I my big senior thesis film. Uh so you make a a big film as a senior in in college and you know we had a 30 person crew. It was a whole action movie. I didn't I didn't you know a lot of typical college thesises are you know small dramatic pieces you know intimate moments and I was like I I don't care to make movies like that that's not what I want that's not the stories I want to tell it's not the movies I go watch I and at that time Skyfall had come out recently and I was like I want to make that and so I did my best and and you know it was not bad for for a 22-year-old y old senior thesis action James Bond type movie uh you know little Mission **[00:06:00]** Impossible little but you know it it was it's pretty good and then you know since then I've made a lot of other short films two years ago or a year ago I uh was deep in you know growing my agency and then was like okay I need to get back to my creative side and my wife and I um made 14 short films in four months. And I just we just blitzed at it and we're like great, let's take a little break from work and let's just bang these out. Well, I didn't take a full break from work, but you know, while running my agency did that. Uh those uh one of those films we then took out to festivals and and it won some awards and so you know, it's fun. Well, of course it is. a creative if if if you're listening and you're you haven't done anything creative before which I think every all of us have done something creative um but sometimes you don't express like you think oh I'm not I'm not creative because I don't draw or paint or do music or do film but you you do something creative you all all of humans do something creative cooking a good meal is creative of course a good outfit is creative throwing a great dinner party or growing throwing a great birthday party is creative. Mhm. And all of that is just living beautifully and our minds work so much better when you're mixing creative endeavors with technical items. So as you're shifting between those, I feel that's where you get the most elasticity or whatever you want to call it. uh and and and and really using our our brain's power. Yeah. When we see people on social media, we see all these shorts, some very highly produced, some not so highly produced. **[00:08:00]** Mhm. Many people see that and they're just consuming content and they see, well, okay, that that's cool. And then they enjoy it, but then they think, I could never do that. like I just cook or I just help kids or I just do woodworking. Like they don't they don't visualize the unless maybe if they're watching other people in that specifically specific niche, they uh many people just don't don't see themselves as being able to have a videobased, if you will, um presence online. and they they might think it's hard and it's they need a lot of technical expertise. Um, what's your take on that? Do you think anyone can can just start doing things? Is it a complicated thing to to get started and creating videos nowadays or or or or is it something that's worth giving it a shot? Yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, any skill can be learned. like it's it is now it might take longer, it might take shorter, you might pick it up quicker. Certain people have a natural aptitude to certain things and are like prodigges and whatnot, but any skill can be learned. And one of my like core tenants in my company is like be competent. Like you and you do that through three very simple steps. Look, first you got to just be willing to look at it. Let's take film making, right? Are you willing to walk into a camera shop? Are you willing to look online at cameras, at movies or social media videos, whatever it is, right? Can you learn? That's the next step. Watch YouTube videos, talk to people, like just learn about the subject. And then **[00:10:00]** the third step is practice. Like it is that simple, but it's the repetition in that that's where you get it. So 100% whether it's the larger being creative or specifically in video like it's a unbelievably important talent and skill to learn these days, especially as an entrepreneur. more from the fact of it's not that you have to do it is that as an entrepreneur you need to be the right executive and pretty much every company now is becoming a media company to the point where you have like Under Armour creating an entire you know channel you have all of these different brands that are literally becoming media companies and we need to be doing this at a small level you know on a SMB level and that's one of the things I help with. But, you know, like I just saw like two two wild examples of like you're like, "Really? That's a media company. I was just consulting with a CPA firm." Mhm. Nothing creative and artistic about a CPA firm. They're about to break a million on Instagram and they're doing an entire studio buildout. So, that's consulting on and they're going, "Great. What are the what are the nice cameras? What are this? Like, but they've been they're investing in themselves now because they're like, great, let's take our content to the next level, but a CPA firm is becoming a media company. I also just saw on Instagram this um landscaping company, and I've seen their videos and whatnot. A landscaping company, right? Like nothing creative about that gardening. They're like, "We've done over 15 billion views in the last month. Wow. That's a media company. It's a And then they were now selling a course on how to do social media as a landscaping **[00:12:00]** company. So it it is a valuable skill. And so even just as an entrepreneur where whether you're going to be in front of the camera, you're going to be the one holding the camera. Most likely you won't be the one holding the camera even if you're not going to be in front of the camera. But that the same reason why you need to make sure that you know your what your sales people are doing and what your marketing people are doing and what your delivery is doing and you know every division of and every department of your organization your media team you need to know what they're doing and how they're doing and so that if they're not doing something correct you can help improve them. So I'm a big believer as uh for entrepreneurs to understand and know every department because then they can better work with that person in that department. When we look at the landscape maybe 10 years ago, social media, right, was more of a the CEO where someone just hires a company. Yeah. Yeah. just just do some posts or or have someone, you know, do some posts. And they would do these these basic they're just posting things, but it they it wasn't really something that made people feel the company, right? Like really understand what's going on with that company. And now it's more of these companies like you're saying, they're creating so much content, but video content, audio content, interviews, experiential content that that now you you're watching it and it's like you feel you know them and you know these people and you know these brands and so and so it's no longer you mentioned at the very beginning you you help with the top of funnel a lot and I want listeners to understand what topofunnel means and I'll let you explain. explain it in a bit, but it's like **[00:14:00]** if you see it as part of your funnel in a way that it's a whole conversation, a whole different conversation if you cold call someone or if they've seen your content and then either they reach out or you meet them or you actually cold call them but they've seen your content like the conversation goes completely differently because you're positioned in a whole other way. Yeah. I mean, one of the the great examples that I like to to tell people about is uh and she has a tremendous amount of viral videos. There's this gal named Judy and uh she has this pink like this diner in I think like Illinois or something like that. Again, not like a a major city. It was not like Los Angeles or New York or something like it was like a random but she makes all these viral videos and they're all very silly. Mhm. To the point where it's like you want to go to the diner just to meet her, just to see her make the video and like that's top of funnel. Like it itself will you will not buy a pancake because of the video. Like it's not like oh watch the video great conversion by now. Yeah. It's not like, "Hey, oh, I saw her video. I'm going to buy a I'm going to order a cup of coffee online from her." It's like, "No, you have to fly." Because the the amount of people that live in that area, like I got to learn a little bit more about where she is so I can give this example better. But like I looked at it once and I was like, "What city is that?" It was not literally not a major city in in lo in the United States. And uh but she's like and she's this Asian gal and wears these funny glasses and it's just and they're hilarious. But that's what top of funnel is is just creating creating awareness of who you are and what you do. It's not saying buy now not this like get now order now this here come in our **[00:16:00]** shop. It's like you know just get attention. Mhm. I I saw recently I where was this? It was again also I think it was also like a regular not major city this this guy I'm sure it was the owner outside his like sandwich shop or something like that and they're recording a video for Tik Tok and they're like oh you should whatever and then this lady comes by has nothing to do with it and say oh you're recording a she's never been to the place but she's like oh let me help you and she starts like bragging about the place and it's so funny because she does a really good job but then it went tremendously ly viral. And so then they they try to track her down like if anyone knows this lady, we got to thank her because they like they made so much business out of it because because of of of just awareness like you're saying. Yeah. And and right now we're in an era of quantity like oh we need to worry about like it needs to be it's like no just do this version. Great. Do this version do this. Like the worst thing that happens is getting no views. Yeah. So that means no one saw it, which would still happen if you have a good production. Yeah. Like I have a buddy who who's a big musician. Yeah. Uh you know, a million listeners a month on Spotify and he runs ads for his like he he for his band. And he was even saying the nice camera ads versus the iPhone ads. Which do you think performed better? I'm guessing the iPhone. The iPhone app. Like literally statistically because he and he's put thousands upon thousands of dollars behind these ads to test them. Every ad that's shot on iPhone performs better than on a DSLR like than on like a fancy, you know, Sony or Canon camera. And but again, that's that's him in his **[00:18:00]** industry and what he's tested for his music. Everybody's a little different. Like part of the reason why people work with me is because their branding looks elevated because I shoot everything not on an iPhone. We shoot it with an ice camera. We light it. And so it creates an elevated brand look. But again, there's no right or wrong answer. Like it's really what do you want to do? How do you want it to look? And the biggest thing is just consistency in it. Yeah, that's a big one, right? A lot of people start, they're very happy, but then they see no views or or 50 views at the beginning and they just stop. Yeah. And you know, they're like, is anybody like, cuz I talked to a lot of B2B business owners, right? And it's like, you don't need a million views. What you need is the right views. You need the right thousand views because a thousand views and if you have 1% conversion which is would be amazing, right? We think of 1% conversion. We like what are you talking about 1% conversion? That's awful. But if you had a,000 views and you had.1% conversion, that's one person creating a lead every,000 views. It's pretty epic. It's like free and like in many. Yeah. for free.1 conversion. So like you don't need a million views. No. No. And that's a great point because B2B for for context people, it's like if you're selling at $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 service, one sale is big, right? And so if if you have 600 views on your videos, that's 600 people. Place yourself in a room with 600 people, that's a lot of people to be with. So if you can consistently, like Jake is saying, put content out **[00:20:00]** there once a day, multiple times a day, etc. If you have the capacity to be consistent in that, even if they're very basic, and you're going to get 50,000 views a month, for example, for free, just starting out, like with a new account, then if at least a few people buy, you're like you're you're in business. Yeah. Like and that's where again thinking with you could say the level what's called the charact the levels of awareness the customer levels of awareness um it's an old marketing term any of the listeners can go Google it and you'll see the visual dynamic it's done as a pyramid um and I'm not going to have it 100% correct but basically you know you at the top of it you have the most people which are just unaware aware. They're unaware that of the problem. They're unaware of the solution. They're unaware of just all of it. And then they're the next kind of level is, you know, problem aare. Man, I need a, you know, I need a new sweatshirt. I need new glasses. I can't see. I need to, you know, I need to upgrade my prescription. Okay. I solution aware. Okay. Is there a doctor in my environment? Okay, I'm now becoming aware of the solution. Great. There's three doctors to that I can see. Great. Which doctor is the right doctor? Now we have the next level of awareness of just like, okay, great. I like this one. Great. Now you convert. So it's these these and so you got to kind of think with making or just go, okay, great. what is my content fulfilling in in that and not to overthink it and people you do it naturally by just doing it more. Yeah. But the biggest thing is just go I need **[00:22:00]** to make content consistently speaking to my audience. If you first and foremost just do that and you just go, "Okay, great." You know, the people who jump on my sales calls, the people who I'm doing, you know, consulting with or, you know, people who ask or just even friends who are like, "Hey, tell me about this. Wait, what do you do?" Mhm. The what do you do? Even question, you put that on video. This is what we do. We help this person solve this exact problem. If you have that problem and you're this person, let me know. That's what we do. Oh, okay. Well, how do you do it? That's another video. Take every like I mean it's not that hard to come up with video ideas because you just literally answer the questions you get asked. Yeah. And make them into videos. It sounds simple. It it but it is. And people overthink it. Yeah. That's the that's the problem inherently is that people just overthink it because they're like, well, you know, I and and it's usually it's the it's the simple ideas, not the complicated ideas. It's the simple simple ideas, you know, ba based on your friend's experience with the iPhone versus DSLR or cinema cameras. I think it go ties with that, right? Because sometimes it's not the video quality that matters, it's the message. And so when it's shot in the iPhone, a lot of times it's more improvised. It's more like in the moment it's more what naturally came out and and that might trigger again depending on the industry, but that might trigger the response versus like depending on on what you're doing, but it's just doing it. And that's the biggest thing is just it's doing it and being consistent about it. Like **[00:24:00]** uh you know I have a friend who is an influencer. He he and his wife had stopped doing the social media game and they were like, "Great, let me just build like they had were growing their accounts and then they they stopped and they were running some more business stuff and this and that." And then they finally came around just recently um to doing their accounts. And so they had an account that had like 20,000 followers on on Instagram and I provided a little bit of coaching. And basically they shoot once a they shoot Wednesdays. Wednesday morning they go they wake up get their son to school and then they sit at their whiteboard. What ideas are we going to shoot today? Great. Come up with the ideas. Come up with their seven ideas. They shoot their seven ideas that day, edit them, schedule them out, and they're done. Yeah. And they are now in I think it's been about 3 4 months. They've grown from 20,000 and they just are about to break 100,000 followers on Instagram, including many videos over a million views and even one video that got 50 million views. Wow. And it just comes from doing the work, from being consistent. being consistent and you don't know what's going to pop off. You go, "Oh, this video would is going to is going to do it and you're like, "No, that didn't do it." But then this video gets a million views and you're like, "Oh, okay." And so the biggest thing that I would say is like once you have a video that does pop off is repeat the formula. Repeat the formula. Like it worked. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Double down. Double down. Double down. Double down, double down, double down, double down, double down, double down until it does not work anymore. Like, milk it for all you can. That's my two cents. That's excellent advice. The **[00:26:00]** deciding on your own whether something's going to work or not is silly because you never know because it's the audience. I've found myself sometimes If I think about it, I might stop something from from going out. And sometimes we use clipping tools. We have the we have long form and we clip them. And so if I look at the titles or the things sometimes like ah maybe this one I won't, right? Or this one. But then I said, "No, no, no. I think I should just like you were saying it's a volume thing. So I should just put them all out. If they work, great. If they don't, great. We'll learn. But some of those that I might have stopped I see like I that one I would have like for for sure I would have put that one like those pop off because maybe they were more controversial or maybe whatever. And but it's like sometimes you're afraid of the people in the comments going at it. But I mean if they're commenting that makes it get more reach. And so you get someone commenting and then it's funny because someone does a negative thing but then someone else is like no no but listen to what they're saying. and like you start getting people defending the argument, right? And like and that gives you reach as well. So, so on that, yes, controversy will always go viral like it's the it's the cheap tool of going viral. The way I recommend doing it personally is pick topics you will defend. So, for I'll I'll give you two example from like a a macro and a micro. So, from a macro standpoint, I have a friend of mine who's a very big influencer in the fitness space. He's he's one of the big online kind of uh trainer type individuals and he has uh guidelines in his company where he's like we don't talk about politics, we don't talk about religion, we talk purely about fitness and health. Mhm. Because that's why people are following **[00:28:00]** us. And but he also like he has his view. He's like, "This is what helped my body, so I'm going to talk about that. There's irrefutable evidence that this doing this helped my body, so I will stand by this." And by having done for his own body, he helped lots of other people successfully rehabilitate their bodies. And so it's like, yeah, it's controversial, but it helped me. It's different than the norm, but it helped me. and thus he grew a massive following because of it and has helped and has tens of thousands of clients. So that's on the macro. On the micro, um I run a podcast with a buddy of mine in the film making space and we just it's an excuse for us to a hang out and b be nerd be filmmaking nerds. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I understand that perfectly. And we don't we don't care. We're not pushing as much right now on like reach and this and like larger podcasting strategies and he just the other day uh GoPro for example um basically came out with a new camera and he was hating on it but he had very logical arguments for it. It's because of this camera is essentially this the same camera that this other company came out with a decade ago and it flopped. There's nothing different. there's no reason for this new GoPro camera. And he started getting a lot of hate on it. But he's like, "My my argument is sound. You don't have an argument against me." Like if he but he's willing to like and he was like, "Whoa, there's a lot of hate on like whoa." But he's like willing to hear out like is I I don't see the advantage of this camera. But to the point, I'm going to give you such to the point. Literally just yesterday, GoPro commented on his post **[00:30:00]** and was like, "Hey, we'll send you one." Now, we'll see if that actually happens or not, but it was it got so much and he's not a big influencer by any means. not not not particularly like a a massive following or anything like that, but it got so much engagement and reach that GoPro themselves reached out and commented on the post. So, you never know what's going to happen and but by having an opinion on something and just be willing to put it out there. But it's having an opinion in the right in something that you want to have an opinion on and have a discussion on. The two or three times I've ever let myself give any slightly political cuz I'm so not political and the one or two times I've like kind of oh let me give my perspective on XYZ thing going on in the world and post it on Facebook and I get a lot of hate. I'm like I don't want to have this discussion. I actually don't care and I delete the post. Like the two times I've done it, I've got a lot of I'm like this is not something I want to fight on. Like it's not something I want to actually have a discussion on. But if you come at me and be like, you know, quality is the only thing that matters. I'm going to I'll fight you on that. You know, where you're like, oh yeah, only shoot on on an iPhone or only shoot on a DSLR. And I'm going to be like or like only post the best. Don't post any like you only need to post once a week. I'm like I'll fight you because that I'm willing to fight about. That's a conversation I'm willing to have. And so it's just really pick the battles. Like I know we talked about U Grant Cardone. I'll give just one last thing on this because as you see this is something I'm willing to discuss is controversy and like this the subject of **[00:32:00]** controversy rather than you know you can have somebody who takes the flip side is like never be controversial and I'm like no be willing to be controversial but on the things that you want to talk about so I'll take this one last point which is uh Grant Cardone he's willing he has built his platform on controversy because he's willing to fight. But that's also the bulldog he is. He's like, "Yeah, I'll say this thing about this." Because he know he goes the more clicks, the more views. That's all I want. He He's doing it strategically, not from the standpoint of like, "Oh, you're wrong. I'm right." He's doing it from the I just want you guys talking about me. But that's his view. So, he's willing to make political things that he does stand behind. He's willing to talk and say kind of outlandish things because he just cares about the attention and he knows, yeah, 50% of the people are going to hate me. I don't care. That's But again, yeah, that's what his appetite is. I don't have that appetite. I I like that. I like the the concept of if you're going to use controversy because we all know it works. Use it for the right reasons or or just not necessarily think of it in a controversial way, but stand strong to your point. And if there's controversy, then stand strong to your point. And I found it's funny. And you, if I may, you can always say, "Hey, I was wrong." Yeah. Like that's not a it's not a bad thing. Like you see so much now people double down on their viewpoint even when they know they're wrong. Yeah. And it's like you're not allowed to go back on your view. No. Like you can be like, "Oh, wow. Hey, look, I didn't know this information, this information, this information. **[00:34:00]** Cool. I I learned. Thank you." Like in if you acknowledge the community and that was the thing my my buddy was talking about in terms of the GoPro like he was like look at how the community came out and are having this discourse on this camera like that's the film making community and what we're wanting to do on social media is build a community social it's social media you go to a what is when you you look at the definition of social And as a noun, hey, you're going to a social, meaning a gathering of people. So part of what you're doing on social media is you're creating a community. You're creating a gathering to have discussions. Sorry, I'm going to get off my soap box. This is this is super valuable because people just follow whatever everyone else is doing. Sometimes whatever pops or they think pops. And so even the LLMs like you ask for help me cut this clip or use oppus clip or dcript or whatever these and the clips that they make you the clips might be okay because it's just your content but the titles all the titles are hyped up. They're controversial and like you have to tell don't do controversial takes if you wanted to like just just do normal, right? Just talk about whatever I'm talking about. You don't have to make it sound like clickbait, but since it knows that that's what hap has worked before in the past, that's sort of what it's strained on, not necessarily the most recent things. And so it gives you that. And and yeah, I think what like you were saying, many times it's you don't you don't have to be like everyone if you if you want to do your own thing. I I think nowadays more and more you're starting to see these channels pop where they're very casual **[00:36:00]** and very honest to the point and and and like people are liking that naturalness of it. Yeah. And it's just there's an authenticity, you know, that you you need to have of just like you're building relationships. they're just online. But like the goal is as a business owner in my opinion is you want to build these relationships so that they become clients and customers. So when you make a video, you're not talking like you're not talking to the masses. you're talking to the person on the other side of the phone, on the other side of the computer, that is a potential prospect, that is a potential client or a customer if you're on the B2B side, like or on the B TOC side, like that. That's who you're talking to. You're not talking to the algorithm. You're not talking to the masses. You're talking to one other person on the other side of the phone watching this video. Yeah. I like Gary Vee always says that people they give the excuse of the algorithm. They're like, "Ah, the algorithm hates me." And I've seen a lot of people say that. They're like, "No, it it doesn't." But he uses it in such a funny way. Like the algorithm is people, right? It's just whether people like the video or don't like the video or keep watching it or don't watch it. These platforms want you to pop. like they want your content to pop because that means more views, that means more reach for them, that means more ads or whatever monetization strategy they have. So, it's not like they see a channel like, "Oh, I don't want to promote that channel, so let me as if they had time." They have billions of users in many cases. They focus on on making it work. And what's your take on how much to post? Like there's I know there's some people that post once a day, but then there's some that post 100 times a day. Has have things changed? First and foremost is what you can do consistently. **[00:38:00]** That that will always be my senior rule. It's what can you do consistently? I constantly compare social media to the gym. What's better? Going to the gym one day a week for four hours or going to the gym three four times a week for 20 minutes? four times a week, you're going to get more gains. You're rather than, you know, stress out the muscle. You relaxing and it's the same thing with social media. If you're posting three times a week, it's going to be better than, you know, for 6 months rather than, okay, great. I'm going to do 30 posts in a month and then not post for five months. Mhm. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. And what about focus? Should you for the sake of the algorithm, other people should is is there something to be said about focusing on a specific subject or subject matter such that these sort of understand on your business. Like if your business is landscaping, don't talk about your cats. If your business is telecommunications, don't talk about football. Like, don't talk about sports betting. Like, talk about your business. Like, I talk about marketing, but I talk about Okay, great. Hey, look at how the Super Bowl you look at marketing during the Super Bowl, but I'm but I'm not going to be talking about, you know, sports betting. But I could talk about how marketing relates to sports betting if that's relevant. But like, did you notice on this podcast, we've only talked about marketing. We talked a little bit about filmm, but that's my background. But we've just talked about marketing and branding and and positioning and **[00:40:00]** content. We're not being like, "Okay, great. Hey, who do you think's going to win uh the World Series?" Like, why are we talking about that? doesn't make sense. So, that's a good point. I I've found that from what you were saying at the beginning of if you have an audience, people people are watching your videos. And if it's B2B, you might need a,000 views or five 500 views or 2,000 views or 50,000, but you don't need millions, right? But that's because you're talking about focused audiences. There are audiences that that like your content. And I think there's two sides of it. Let's take scrub. Like let's take a a product like Scrub Daddy, right? Okay. Like every household can have a a sponge. Yes. All they do is talk about sponges and cleaning. They're not talking about driving a car unless they're talking about cleaning your car with a sponge. Like it's still about their product even though it can reach everybody. Everybody is their audience. M they're still just talking about their business. Now they can make funny sketches about their business. They can take informational and educational videos about their products. Like you could do it in any kind of genre of content, but they're talking about their you talk to your your prospects, your customers, the people who are going to want who you want to pay you. That's who you're talking to. As long as you talk to them about things that they that make sense that's coming from you, like you don't go to your optometrist, your eye doctor to ask about, you know, your kidneys with a stomach or with a stomach ache because it doesn't make sense. Yeah. I I think there's some people might might have heard for example Gary Vee talking about you can talk about **[00:42:00]** other things like your interest and things like that and might think like this goes against what you're saying but it doesn't right because it's like he he doesn't say oh now always talk about blackberry picking right no it's like once in a while you can talk about your interests right if within the thing so that people understand you as a whole yeah for sure like you we're talking about film making like sure it's related yeah there maybe relate like in my opinion how does it relate to the brand if it doesn't really relate to the brand like now if the brand is you Mhm. Yeah. then it relates. It's making you more relatable. The same way like Alex Hermoszi loves the gym. He He's not in the gym world anymore, but because he came from the gym world, but if you look at Alex, he just talks about business. Yes. Yes. And there's gains to be made with that focus because if you're doing a lot of other stuff that might not be related and that pops, then you're going to get the wrong audience watching your content. So that's what happened to me back in 2020. I this was, you know, I was just getting into TikTok and, you know, like in co like everybody else, I was like, let me try this out. was posting videos, not nothing relating to anything, but just me having fun because we were all locked in. And my dog went viral, 10 million views, and then another million views, another million views, and everybody just wanted dog content from then on. And I got 200,000 followers, but for dog content, which I don't want to be a dog influencer, dad. Yes. So, that very much happens. Yeah. And you just got to be that's why you have to stay on topic. **[00:44:00]** What do you think about live streams? Yeah. I mean, live streams are great. Uh it takes a commitment. It takes it's a a slow build, but if it if you do it well, and that's the ultimate consistency. It's the ultimate ultimate consistency, but it's also the greatest one of the greatest tools you can do. But it it takes a like we're doing this and it takes a willingness to like this could take three years. It it's it's the it's one of the hardest, but because of it's one of the hardest, it's one of the biggest returns. Did you hear Mr. Beast talking about when they went on the stadium with the influencers? Yeah, that's my point. It's it it's one of the hardest to build. And because it's one of the hardest to build, it's it it has the greatest ROI, as it always is. Yes. It's it's hard in many levels, right? Because it's the consistency of doing it, but then also you're live. So, it's like you have to be able to say things live. You need to be able to respond to the comments. You need to be able to be strong willed to not look at the negative comments and a bunch of other things. Yeah. Which is great. It's great practice for for anything in life though. Like if you start streaming at an early age, for example, not not like kids, but if you start streaming, you're you're doing it, you're young, whatever. Then if you ask are asked to go speak at a conference, you're good. That's why I love podcasting. I love being on podcast because it's it's one of the best low lift ways of building your brand and um understanding your talking points. So live streaming is is easy to get into in terms of like specifically now with Tik Tok for example you just turn on the phone go on **[00:46:00]** Tik Tok click go live and and I you think you need to have specific number of followers followers but and and it's not it's not really true like I started streaming on on Tik Tok earlier because there's a trick if you go on they have like a gaming part of it so if you go online and so PC P only, but you go online, you can set up like a gaming account. And so it allows you to do Tik Tok live from the computer, from a PC, which you can do in virtual machine if you want. And that gives you access to like real life Tik Tok and you can start and Tik Tok is great in that terms of like people they're sending people into your live stream constantly, which is very interesting. So if you figure out what people like, you can you can do well in in terms of that compared to other platforms. But what I figured out was you could do that, start getting views, and if you stream for a certain number of days that they ask you to, they sort of change your account to like the right level. And so you can have 50 followers, subscribers, whatever they're called. And then you can still stream now from the phone. And so my Tik Tok following isn't isn't big. And I can stream from it no problem since uh like last year or whatever whenever I did that. So that's a little trick that people can do to like get access to it without having to have a huge following. And since not everyone is streaming, there's a lot of people you see a lot of people streaming, but compared to the number of people putting content out there, the streamers are like nothing. Yeah. Yeah. It's But again, like what I love about hearing that because I didn't know that because I'm not in the gaming world at all and but what I love is like it's the consistency again. Yeah. Tik Tok validates that you do that you're consistent. Yeah. That you've done it enough and you're you're like, "Yeah, I'm serious about this. I'm doing this." They're like, "Oh, okay, great. Here you go. We're going to reward you for being consistent." I love hearing that. I It's It's hard in people's minds, and **[00:48:00]** it's been in my mind as well, where you you want to start, but then you get excited and you overwhelm yourself because you think, "Okay, so I'm going to do five times a week." like even one time a week is it's tough to maintain it because you have all the other responsibilities in work and whatever might get in the way. So you need to be prepared whether it's streaming or podcasting or posting content just just separate the time like if it's a meeting because you don't take any other messages when you're in a meeting. So that's what I do like Tuesdays and Thursdays for the podcast that time is blocked. Like I know that's that's when when I do the show and so it always works out for magical reasons, right? If I have a meet stunning meeting with a client, it magically always works out. Like maybe you change one every so often because there's like a school activity or something, but most of the time you keep those. And so I think a lot of times we don't give ourselves the permission to block that time for creating content and and then we might start but then we like oh emails and you start answering emails and you no block it off. You're doing content. this your thing because consistency is what's what's going to take you far. Yeah, 100%. That's that is what I recommend with people is you have to block it off like it's a doctor's appointment, like it's work, it's just a meeting, it's, you know, however you want to look at it. Great. That's my four hours to shoot. That's my two, you know, 3 hours to edit. like whatever it is, but like if you put it on the calendar and basically don't allow yourself to do anything else besides that, it'll get done. And that's where, you know, to kind of go full full circle on this, it's like start at the gradient that you can do consistently. If you're like, "Oh, I could easily do that." Good. Just start there. If it's like, "Oh, that's scary in terms of like, you know, seven times a day, like seven, you know, one a day, seven times a week." **[00:50:00]** Oh, I don't know if I can do that. Well, then don't do that. Just start with three times. And if you can easily do it and you're way ahead, great. Fantastic. Like then maybe go up to four. But don't go up to like don't again just take it step by step by step. And then once you start doing more and more and more, then upgrade the quality. And you can upgrade the quality in a couple different ways. Either literally, you know, the quality of the the the camera, get a microphone, get a light, get, you know, the whatever technical gear you need to improve the quality. but also improving the quality is well maybe I take an extra hour and prep more. What are better hooks? What are better videos? What if I go actually look at my analytics and make sure that this is actually the right video that I need to be making right now? Those are all ways to improve quality over time. We hear the pros like Hermosi or Gary Vee saying things like the hook super important and things like that. But sometimes we we know we hear them but we don't pay as much attention to it still because you're like no because it's hard. But you have to realize if the hook's not good they're not going to watch the video. they're because they're unless they love you by because you already have that following that's fine. You don't always have to be cookie in videos. But if you're trying to get and I want your p perspective on this, but if what you want is you're starting out, you want to get that reach, you want more people to watch you who don't know you at all, then you need to have a way to to hook **[00:52:00]** them so that they'd actually stay for a few seconds. All content has a structure. And this was something that just even recently I like really realized and was a big kind of change because at times I would fight it. I'd be like, well, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. Like I want to be different. I want to be contrarian. And I went cuz again I come from the film world, film and television world. It's like if I were to write a sitcom, you know, like Friends, How You Met Your Mother, etc. Like there's a structure. It's six parts. This happens and this happens. Like there's commercial breaks, etc. If you're writing for Netflix and Apple TV, HBO, there's a structure. If you're writing a movie, there's a structure. Yeah. Social media has its own structure. And you just have to understand the structure. That's what it's like Mr. Beast talks about. like I could make a channel and in 6 months have 10 million followers and never show my face or my voice because I because he understands the structure. And I'm not saying I'm, you know, a that I perfectly understand the structure myself, but what I'm saying is that there is a structure. Yeah. And if you understand and learn the structure, you'll win. And so you can again going back to being competent, you have to look and you have to learn. If you're studying, okay, great. What are these guys doing? Not only like what are they like teaching, but also just like watch a Mr. Beast video, watch 10 Mr. Beast videos, but like write out, okay, great. What happens here? What happens here? What happens here? Or if you want to do a podcast, watch, you know, Diary of a CEO, Modern Wisdom, Caller Daddy, like look at the top 10 podcasts. Go, okay, great. How do they how do they do this? How long are they? Where do they do this? Where do they do that? Where do **[00:54:00]** they do their ad breaks? There's a reason why they're number, you know, I can't you can't really count Joe Rogan in my opinion because he's kind of, you know, the OG and he kind of just does his own thing. But if you look at the guys who've had to fight to get there and go, "Okay, great." These guys are studying their analytics incredibly. Yeah. And are optimizing it. So you can either fight it and go, "Well, I want to do my own I'm not going to I don't want to copy them. You're never going to copy them because you're different. You're you. You're not them. As long as you don't say literally exactly what they say, you naturally will be different. But if you copy the structure, they're winning at the structure. And you just do that, you'll win. Yeah, that's true. I just saw an interview from the lady that helped diary of a ZEO get to where it was. And she was explaining like all the testing that they did like crazy and a lot of data and things that you don't think about when you're just watching it. You just enjoy it. It's a good show. But yeah, it has a structure. And even for long form, they have, you know, at the beginning if you look at it, like you're saying, you just look at it. They have the thing where they show you a bunch of little parts of what is all the teasers and then like that's the hook for a long form but then they started doing like teasers of the teaser like a like um what's it called? Uh like a trailer basically. So they started doing trailers and then testing off of the trailers. And so it's super interesting like you're saying just look at what others are doing. quickly if you if you take it if you go kind of 30,000 ft up and look at it, it's essentially what's called the Burger King model. So McDonald's spends I think that I think it was like some tens of millions of dollars on market research of where **[00:56:00]** do we put the locations? Is it on this side of the street or that side of the street? Is it on the right turn or is it on the left turn? Is it like on, you know, two blocks this way or two blocks that way? like they're spending tens of millions of dollars a year to figure out the location. You know what Burger King does? They spend zero money and they just go, "We're just going to be right near McDonald's because we know they're spending tens of millions of dollars. We don't need to do it. We're going to just be right near them as close to them as possible." That's why you always see a Burger King right next to McDonald's. So, if you want to get into the game, look at who's winning the game and just go quoteunquote right next to them, which is follow their structure, edit like them, light it like them until you have enough analytics, you have enough following, you have enough growth, you you have enough of volume where you can then now start doing your own actual testing. But so many people want to iterate before they duplicate. That's good. I think at the beginning you don't have any data like you're saying and so just try try things see what others are doing. Experiment, right? But it's also you don't need to experiment. And that's where like I know cuz it stopped me. This is where like oh like and again cuz it was my contrarian filmmaker in me that's like I want to be original. I want to be creative. I need to figure this out and and just do my own thing. And I've seen others who like for example my those friends that I said that grew, you know, 70,000 followers in 3 months is because they don't do anything original. They see what others are doing and they execute it themselves very well. M they're doing some original things, but they're just executing on great ideas **[00:58:00]** that have proven to be successful and are growing, growing, and growing. Like, they're not worrying about, oh, we need to come up with this original, you know, they're not worrying about that right now. They're worrying about, okay, great. Let's just get the rhythm. Let's get the duplication. Let's let's follow the formula. Let's find the formulas. Hm. So, follow formulas or instructions. Let's let's call it instructions at the beginning until you're good at it. Like when you're cooking. Let's say you're doing pasta for the first time. You have no idea. You follow the instructions in the box. If you follow those instructions, you're going to get pretty good pasta. Now, can you make it better as you make it many times? Yeah, you could become a pasta savant. But the first time, read the box. 10 minutes after boiling, it's gonna work. And then do your thing. 100%. And that that's all it is. It's like you gotta just duplicate what others are doing because also like, okay, great. You do that for 100 videos and you grow to 100,000 followers. 100,000 followers. Yes. To everybody. Like you got to look at on both sides of the coin. It's a lot of followers, but it's also not a lot of followers. like you get the you know the the reason why you get the people who are like oh you're just copying blah is one of two reasons. One because they're massive and doing it and then they're not iterating at all but they have 10 million followers or something like that and you're like okay well you're just copying Mr. Beast. are just copying blah or that person who's saying it wants to be doing it themselves and is not doing it at all and so they're just all they can do is put you down. Yeah. If you were asked for advice by a business owner or somebody who wants to start creating content, they're doing **[01:00:00]** their stuff on their iPhone right now. They're good or Android, doesn't matter. but they want to do it a little better. Where would you say is the best next thing? Get like a mic or try to get your camera more stable or try to get a better camera. What What would be without really microphone first? Yeah, microphone. Good audio always first. Second, a light. Don't get a ring light. Please do not get a ring light. Please, please, please do not. But you can get a light panel, a softbox light. Like again, a hundred bucks or so. Like then, because for example, this podcast, I'm on my iPhone right now. My iPhone is my webcam. Wow. But I have a good mic. I have a light so it looks professional. I know how to light it. I put a little light, another light back there, so it looks a little bit more interesting. I have a good set. you know, I've taken these time to make these elements. Now, if I upgrade this camera, if I didn't have the light, didn't have the mic, but I had a nice DSLR, it wouldn't look great. It would look awful. But I can put my nice, you know, $5,000 camera on here and it'll look even better. But it doesn't replace having bad audio. as we, you know, first started this podcast before we even clicked recording, you you perfectly caught that it wasn't set to my microphone. You were like, "Whoa, why does it not sound so good?" That was the first thing you said to me and it was because the setting was off. It was set to a different to my phone microphone which sounded really bad compare comparatively right to you know a $3,000 mic or not a $3,000 m a $300 mic but and one would hope you spend three 300 bucks on a mic you would hope it sound really good. Yeah. **[01:02:00]** Yes. That's that's very important. I because you see the camera so people see and they're like oh first thing I'm going to and then they spend ton of money get the camera because there are no cheap cameras but like your the iPhone camera is great and you could do from max depending on which one you have and everything like you could do the continuity thing or whatever and you get the camera that's that's great works great but yeah I've seen like even the where do we have it I bought these like cheap lapel microphones that now you can connect to the phone I mean not But cheap in terms of like you you're in film making like when you started how expensive were microphones, right? Plus the gear. Yeah, it was it was it was tough. And so now you can get these things for like 40 bucks or 80 bucks and you get like a really good 80 and $120 for a good one. Like actually 100 bucks. Yeah. Magnetic. They're fabulous. Two mics. You could do interviews when you're walking on the street. Like I love I got them just to have something. Yeah, it they work great and now it sounds a lot better for those like live streams. You're doing a video on the thing. If you listen to that live stream versus the one in the studio, very different if you just use a phone audio. But once you grab one of those mics, completely different. And and that's where it's like you upgrade the gear over time. Yes. And that's where it's like great. How do we improve quality? Well, we can improve the quality of the content, you know, better hooks, better structure, understanding that better, and then upgrading the actual gear and technical over time. I have a friend who didn't upgrade her, she built a a great YouTube channel, over 300,000 followers, and it's plateaued for a couple for the last several years because she hasn't upgraded her gear and she hasn't upgraded the quality of the content. And I partially think that's why it's **[01:04:00]** stagnant, why it hasn't really been growing because the quality of the videos are not as good. We're not improving over time. Yes, there's not she's not innovating on both sides. Her gear she hasn't improved on. And then the quality of the video of like great, how do we make this more interesting? How do we do better editing? How do we do more better camera work? like all of these little things she hasn't done. Yes. Yes. So over time as needed or as you feel it makes more sense instead of jumping right in before you have the important stuff. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Jake, if people want to learn more about what you're doing and maybe get some advice from you, where is the best place for them to get your content? LinkedIn is great. LinkedIn is is is fabulous. Uh Jake Isham. Uh I have an Instagram Jake creative marketing that uh they can follow. Otherwise uh you can reach out kind of on any channel you'll see my photography which is Jake captured this or my film making uh which feel free to you know follow and but uh otherwise just you know DM me on any any channel and you know always happy to help and you know see how I can if you need advice or anything like that. Amazing. I'll put all those in the show notes for listeners to find you. And if you're listening and you haven't liked and subscribed to the show, please do so. That way you are aware whenever we have new episodes like the one with Jake today, which was amazing and full of excellent advice. Jake, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. See you on the next one, everyone.