1 BILLION VIEWS PER MONTH: Unlocking Viral Success

Prepare to unlock the secrets of viral success with Justin Flom; a magician turned social media superstar who has racked up over 30 billion views since 2020. Discover how Justin transitioned from his magical roots to mastering the art of audience engagement in the fast-paced world of social media. We'll explore the concept of the "barrier to exit" and how Justin uses it to dominate algorithms, ensuring that his content is not just seen but remembered.

Are you looking to create video content that captivates from the first frame? We dive into practical strategies for small business marketing, revealing how visual elements like subtitles and surprising visuals can keep viewers glued to their screens. Learn about the tools of the trade, such as Capwing and CapCut, and see how AB testing can help you refine your approach for maximum impact. We'll also discuss why delivering immediate value and continuously moving your narrative can make or break your video's success.

Finally, we focus on the dynamics of short-form versus long-form content. Understand how to maximize engagement on each platform, be it the quick dopamine hits of TikTok or building a loyal audience through consistent branding on YouTube. Justin shares his insights on the rising preference for raw, authentic videos over polished productions and the growing role of AI in shaping the future of content creation. Tune in to gain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving social media landscape.

Chapters

• 0:00 Entrepreneurship and Content Creation Strategies
• 15:21 Creating Engaging Video Content
• 20:19 The Power of Short Form Content
• 27:23 Navigating the Future of Online Content
• 39:18 Analyzing Viral Video Strategies for Businesses

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Elevate Media Podcast with your host, chris Anderson. In this show, chris and his guests will share their knowledge and experience on how to go from zero to successful entrepreneur. They have built their businesses from scratch and are now ready to give back to those who are just starting. Let's get ready to learn, grow and elevate our businesses.

Speaker 2: 0:21

And now your host, chris Anderson, welcome back to another recording of the Elevate Media Podcast. I'm Chris Anderson, your host. Again, we are in a different location. Usually we're online, virtual. It's a little bit different today. We're actually going to be in the home of Justin Flores. What's up?

Speaker 3: 0:38

This is my home. This is a crazy looking home and his home.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Yeah, we're going to be able to take a tour about that later, but it's just magnificent. You see all the props and stuff behind us. For those who don't know who Justin is, justin started out as a magician and started getting into social media with spray paint art on social media, showing that side of things, and then he started his house into the quote-unquote trapdoor house, where it started, and so he's got all these different uh gadgets and trap doors and magic type things throughout his house. So we're gonna be excited to explore that later. But, yeah, man, and you know, and it kind of all started in 2020 right, you're doing, you know, magic, building stuff up, and you gained since 2020, so right now we're doing this in 2024. You've got over 30 billion views.

Speaker 3: 1:27

It's crazy, even that stat's probably a little out of date, like I think, so you can kind of look at it as at least a minimum of a billion views every month since 2020. Early pandemic.

Speaker 3: 1:41

It just blew up huge just because of a totally different way a giant shift in my thinking to be, instead of artist centric, to be audience centric, which both are very viable options. Both bring great art, I think, great business as well, because you have people like Steve Jobs who say I'm not listening to the consumer, I want to create something. The consumer doesn't know what they want. And then you have great artists who have said the same thing I'm not going to listen to what the customer wants, I'm going to create something great. However, the other way is to go what is the audience viewing and I can create to that, and that's another fulfilling way to do it. And same thing in business is to go ooh, where is there a pocket that's not being utilized and I'll just slide right in there and take over, and I've been lucky enough to kind of take over some of the algorithms just by focusing on what people are consuming.

Speaker 2: 2:49

Yeah, and I think that's a unique and unique way to do it, and you know, what you do is so unique because it's such entertainment, is such what people want in that, in that avenue, and you know, magic's kind of the same way, right you? You have to feed into what the audience wants, whether that be slide of hand, using me, whatever the tricks are. What was that like for you, though? Going from magic to the social media shift was-.

Speaker 3: 3:16

We can go kind of into the inside baseball immediately on this, because I grew up as a magician. My dad was a magician, my uncle was a magician, my little brothers and sisters did magic with me as kids, so we'd go to the Minnesota State Fair and do our magic act. Right, it was a cool way to grow up. It's a great foundation of entertainment because magic is so derivative of all other art forms. It uses a little bit of dance, a little bit of mime, a little bit of puppetry, but a lot of carpentry and sewing and writing. There's a lot within it. So it was a great education, but terrible for social media. Why? Well, magic starts ordinary and ends extraordinary. And now, maybe, same thing for your small business or whatever you're doing. You might have a great piece of truth or something that you want to communicate. That is at the end of whatever you're talking about. Terrible way to create content in this new age of social media. It's a big problem because as you're swiping through, you don't know that something great is waiting for you at the end of the video. So if your video doesn't start great, no one's going to see it. Here's so we in fact one of your crew guys said it right before they talked about the barrier to entry. Right, we all know the words barrier to entry, but I coined a term in 2020 called barrier to exit. Totally different thing. Here's the barrier to exit.

Speaker 3: 4:57

When you go to a Broadway show, or here in Vegas, you go to a Vegas show, there's a high barrier to exit. You've bought a ticket, you got a babysitter, you got dressed up, you went to the show. You're sitting there surrounded by a thousand other people. That show would have to suck really bad for you to get up and leave. Very high barrier to exit. Same thing at a movie you bought a ticket, you sat there. You can sit through a lot of bad. To eventually give it the chance, you'll probably sit through the whole movie. Very high barrier to exit.

Speaker 3: 5:35

But on a TikTok or a Facebook video or a YouTube short, where I am, the barrier to exit is one inch, one inch of swiping your finger. Not only that, we have highly motivated our consumers of content, the viewer, and we've told them hey, the entire history of human knowledge is waiting for you, one swipe away. In fact, not only that, our algorithm is tailored to give you exactly what you want, so you probably should swipe if something's not interesting to you, and so that barrier to exit the viewer is just itching to swipe away. That means you've got milliseconds to communicate to that viewer why they should watch whatever you're putting in front of them. So I have to think about the viewer way more than I ever had to as a magician who would do magic shows live, because I started in Branson, missouri, selling tickets.

Speaker 3: 6:40

That was a harder job, but when I did cruise ships, this is an audience that has nowhere to go. We're in the middle of the ocean, so they're there just because you know it was a seat and the show's free, so nobody's going anywhere, but on Tik TOK or on YouTube shorts. If I keep the audience and that's why I'm actually kind of honored to have a billion and a half views every month on YouTube because you really have to earn that. You can't even buying. It is hard because you can't make someone sit through your video unless they want to. So that means what do you do? What do you do with that information? How do you create for your small business or for your fans or your following? How do you create for them in this new age of the algorithm?

Speaker 2: 7:33

And that's what we can unpack. Yeah, I was going to say and that's something you've done really well, obviously over a billion per month, because you've become so unique as well. You stand out for one and and you understood how to grab that attention. So how did you go about? Like the spray paint or all the trap doors in your house? What made you decide that was what the audience wanted and that's what the algorithm is going to push with that unique kind of factor.

Speaker 3: 7:58

I'm lucky because I like data and I got into the data side, which is to me it's like a video game. It's a score you know whenever you put up. Whenever you put up a video, you get to check your high score on it. How long are people watching? What's the percentage watched? So, early on, I tried lots of different magic, because that's most of my possessions and repertoire is magic tricks and I tried it a million different ways and I could not get it to work because magic didn't start interestingly enough, until I figured out that if I were to start with the secret of the magic trick, well now, this is a good opening shot, which brings me to whatever you're doing.

Speaker 3: 8:46

The very first thing you have to think about is what's the opening shot? That's maybe the mantra we say more than anything else around here is what's the opening shot? We have you mentioned spray paint, art. We have pieces of art that we want to do, and I say we. My team is small and mighty. My whole team is in this room right now. There's two other guys behind the cameras and then there's me, but I've got a Bruce Willis painting I really want to do of him crawling through the vent in Die Hard, but I don't have an opening shot. So I've had this painting ready for a year, but it will not go to camera until I figure out the opening shot, because I don't care how cool the painting is, if I can't get people to stop the swipe, then there's nothing to do because again they're swiping through a million different things. You've got to stop it.

Speaker 3: 9:42

Now the cool thing is so what I'm doing. I'm casting a very wide net because my money comes from views. So the more views I get, the more money I get paid. Got it. So I have to just go for the highest view count possible. But if I was a small business owner let's say I'm a plumber in Minneapolis if I was a small business owner let's say I'm a plumber in Minneapolis Well, the algorithm is actually still valuable to me because I can get to the audience that I need to using that algorithm.

Speaker 3: 10:13

But I'm going to make my opening shot something that's just going to attract the customer, and this is going to be, you know, sharing knowledge about plumbing. This is going to be. Hey, here's a tip If your sink is dripping this way, or if your water pressure is this in your shower, here's how to fix it. Also, you want more of these tips, or you want the experts in your area boom and you can. Suddenly, the best way to get in front of everybody in your market is to get in front of everybody in the world. Right, like that's a weird thing to think, right, yeah, but it's true. So if you want to top your market, you'd not and it's not that hard to beat everybody else, because very few people are thinking about it this way. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Speaker 3: 11:05

I forget what the original question was, but the point is you think about the opening shot. What is the swipe stopping shot that is going to make people stop and pay attention? And it doesn't have to. So for me, you've seen I'm taking a chainsaw to my balcony banister a chainsaw to my balcony banister. Nobody knows that. They wanted to see a video of me rappelling from my second story down to my first story. That's a weird thing, and if the video title was I rappel from my upstairs to downstairs, I don't think anyone's going to watch that. However, if the opening shot is a chainsaw going through a balcony banister in a domestic home setting and then I put something in the ceiling and then I strap it around my wrist and I go all right, I'm going to jump.

Speaker 3: 11:53

Well, now we're interested. We're interested because I've introduced mystery, a question that you want answered, and then I don't give you the answer to that question. I don't give you the answer to that question Well-serving entertainment for 60 seconds on the shorts feed, but it also worked very well in the long-form side on Facebook, which is above three minutes. Because I don't answer that question and I'm entertaining throughout, I end up with a very long watch time which puts something at the top of the algorithm. So, just for the viewer or the listener, right now I'll go very basic just for a moment to say here's how the algorithm works, because it sounds like a big, scary word. Whenever you hear the word algorithm, all you need to think of is audience.

Speaker 3: 12:42

So previously, nbc decided Thursday must see. Tv is going to be Cheers, seinfeld, friends, whatever we're going to choose it, this is the day that we're putting on this stuff. You have no choice in the matter and if you want to watch it, you have to tune in. At this time my daughters don't even understand They're're like. They can't even wrap their head around what that means. You know, because they haven't ever. Yeah, like, and. And even our generation doesn't understand that.

Speaker 3: 13:13

There was a time that if you wanted to watch the wizard of oz, you had to wait until christmas the one time a year that they would air it on Christmas Day, like that's a crazy thing. This is before VCRs, but now we're in a time where there's not a guy at a network deciding when this thing is watched. Instead, we have a guy Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Google that says, okay, whatever viewers are most interested in, that's what's going to be at the top of the feed. And we're even going to be a little bit more nuanced and I'm going to feed your feed different content than my feed, and we're going to do that by looking at who looks like you in terms of your viewing habits on the internet. And if another guy who has the same general interests as you liked this particular video, chances are you'll like it, so we'll serve it to you.

Speaker 3: 14:11

And then we track how long the average person watches a piece of content. The longer it watches, the more people it'll show it to, and that's kind of a general overview. I know that's very basic, but I feel that actually I have to communicate that, because many times, artists come to that platform any platform, youtube, facebook or business owners and they go. I put up my commercial. How come no one's watching it? Or, even worse, I'm paying for Facebook ads with my commercial and no one's watching it. Still, it's very expensive. Well, the secret is, the better your video, the better the content, the cheaper the ad. In fact, you can get it for free. You don't even have to pay for ads if you can just get that ad to the top of the algorithm, which is a total mind shift to think about.

Speaker 2: 15:07

Yeah. So you know, with that kind of diving in a little bit more too, so you know if a business is trying to, you know, hook the viewer in, like you've had your example, the chainsaw, with you hooking yourself up to the ceiling, okay, I'm going to jump Like that's a great opening, like what just happened, what's going to happen to keep people watching. For businesses you might not take change stalls to banisters and banks.

Speaker 3: 15:24

Yeah, it doesn't have to be visual. Now. It should be visual in that understand that most people are swiping their phone on mute. So most people are swiping through their phone and their wife is sitting right over there and they're sitting on the couch, so they don't have the volume on right. Or they're on the subway and they don't have their volume on, or they're in bed late at night. They don't have the sound on.

Speaker 3: 15:53

So you got to put up titles, you got to have subtitles, you got to have that and you have to, in the first second of your video, communicate what you will be answering to the viewer in question. So if you're a small business owner again to use the plumber example, I would say a great video would be like what to do if your water pressure sucks. Okay, and that's something I'm dealing with right now at a different house I've got water pressure that really sucks and I want to know how to fix it If a plumber were to and you know, given my Google history, the platforms know that I'm looking into this, so eventually they will serve to me some piece of content that's going to answer my question. You, the plumber, can be the guy to answer that question, but you better communicate it in the first second. Uh, and, and then here's the great thing you can AB test uh, in those ads, what's the best way. So all you have to do and you don't need any production you just pick up your phone, stand anywhere, try to be well lit, don't have the sun behind you. You don't need special lighting, but just go to a window, get some good lighting on you, make sure your face is there, clearly.

Speaker 3: 17:20

Everything is free on the internet. You can go to a website like capwingcom, or you can use CapCut, an editor, whatever these things are and you can throw titles on it. I would start with does your water pressure suck? Here's how you can fix it for free. And then you go water pressure is the most important thing to most people and just say five different versions of it. And then, when you go to Facebook ads I know I'm saying very basic stuff If you're into marketing, forgive me, but this is very unique once you start to think about it in terms of content, title it, caption it, and then put money behind each one and look at which one has the highest retention, how long are people watching, and look at where am I losing people and then go back and cut that part out, because if you're losing people, something in your video told them they're not going to get what they want out of this.

Speaker 3: 18:22

So I have a list for myself of different swipe action, swipe items. Meaning if now they will invest 45 seconds but they can't know that Now I want them to be happy at the end of this thing. So if it does take 45 seconds, that's fine, but don't let the viewer know that because they're just going. Don't move backwards in action. Meaning you know, always move it forward, always be giving the viewer hey, this is, this is going to be good, this is worth it. To you, all of that, or whatever you are, if you're a public speaker, a consultant, any of those things you just want to speak right to the client and you want to speak to them in a way that tells them you want to finish this video because there's something in this for you.

Speaker 3: 19:39

Now, for me it's entertainment and a great object lesson for me was my wife, also a great content creator. Her name's Anna, and she put a baby doll a big baby doll head in a waffle iron. Okay, that's the opening shot. I did not know that. I want to see what a baby doll looks like coming out of a waffle iron. Until that moment, I never searched what does a baby doll look like coming out of waffle iron. Until that moment, I never searched what does a baby doll look like in a waffle iron? Of course not. She found something that was a little piece of mystery, a question that, turns out, viewers were curious to know the answer to.

Speaker 3: 20:19

Now, is this an idea that would be something in a movie or worth a TV show? No, but that's not what our phone is. We're taking little nugget pieces of dopamine and what we do is we get a dopamine hit and we swipe. We get a dope hit and we swipe. That's all it is. So also, don't deliver a dopamine hit before the end of the video, because the habit is you got that hit, you swipe. So it would be tempting to be like no, I want to pack as much great wealth of knowledge into one video as possible. I got five reasons that this is this and this. No, if you're, if you're going to do that and you then yeah, say you got five reasons and then say follow me for the other four, but only deliver on one.

Speaker 2: 21:12

In the short form, then you can push into the long, fuller video.

Speaker 3: 21:15

Yes. So everything we're talking about here is on a swipe feed. There's a totally different thing, which is destination content. So you've got the swipe feed, which is algorithm and the algorithm is mostly looking at watch time. So I have a video that is a 1.5 billion views on just this video and the watch time on it is 130%. What does that mean? Does it go back and watch it again?

Speaker 3: 21:44

That means not only do most people watch the whole video, but a good percentage of them watched it more than once. Now, if the platforms are like casinos or grocery stores, they want you in there spending for a platform, it's your time, so the casino goes. No windows, no clocks. We want just to zero in the experience that you stay. Same thing for the platform like Facebook or YouTube. They want you to have an enjoyable experience, so you keep swiping their content because then you're going to watch ads and they're going to make money. I don't think it's malicious. I think that that's just, that's their business model. Fine, I'll play it. We don't look at television networks as malicious for playing ads. They got to pay for the stuff, Okay, fine. So if if you're swiping through, lost my train of thought.

Speaker 2: 22:43

The short to long form? Yeah, different.

Speaker 3: 22:45

So, on short form, it's a swipe feed and it's just algorithm based on watch time. How long is? If you were watching destination content? Oh, this is a different game.

Speaker 3: 23:00

Now we're into probably where you are spending a lot of time, which is I need people to make a decision to watch my video off of a title on a thumbnail or based off of their feeling about you personally, and this would be the dude Perfect, the Logan Paul. They have a following who know them and love them or hate them, and they will click on that video specifically to invest. They know they're going to invest their time. Here's the crazy thing no one has ever chosen to watch a Justin Flom video ever. They swipe up, they see my big, dumb face and I'm smashing a hole in a wall and they go. Why is he smashing a hole in a wall? I deliver entertaining content until the end, high watch time, and it goes out to millions of people. I'm humble enough to understand that. Now it's not totally true. Of course, I do have some people who have chosen to watch my videos, but for the most part, 90% of my views come from the swipe feed and what's happening there.

Speaker 3: 24:08

Destination content is building a following, building people who care about you. This is where we go more into the traditional media side of things, where, yeah, you better have a brand, you better be unique, you better be an expert in your field, you better deliver, and if you want to hear stuff on that, then you look to like a Mr Beast who, at the time of this airing, is having a bad week publicity-wise. So I'll hold that loosely just in case more bad things happen and I will not endorse him. But up until now, he's been the king of destination content because he has always delivered on what he promises in the video and viewers come back for more. So it's a different way of thinking To me. I'm happy in the swipe feed because whether people love me or hate me, it's irrelevant. I just get to take fun gags, silly, stupid things. I get to put them on camera, I get to have fun doing it and because people watch it for long periods of time, it goes to the top of the feed and it's fun.

Speaker 2: 25:21

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know cause we are in such a shift. You know marketing has come a long way. You know traditional marketing, your print, your TV, all those things used to be the it's factor. Now we've got social media growth stuff you have now you have ads online, and things have shifted Now. I mean now people have phones that can create content and so like. With businesses and brands, especially small ones, I feel like there's just even more opportunity for them to be themselves, I guess, and to stand out. Since there are so many plumbers out there, there are so many electricians out there, that they can kind of find their MO within their business and use that on the short swipe feed.

Speaker 3: 26:03

Yeah, everyone is a broadcaster now. It's a really cool thing because there is no gatekeeper Uh, and also the viewers. So back in 2020, there was a really cool secret, hidden battle that nobody knew was happening, and that battle was between the everyman and the Hollywood, and that battle was TikTok and a company called Quibi, which was backed by all of Hollywood, had millions of dollars behind it. Quibi was going to be short form, swipable content from Hollywood elites you know the Leonardo DiCaprio's and it was going to be curated, high production entertainment. Then you had TikTok, which was dancing grandmas and, crazy thing, we had a pandemic that sent everybody home and put them on their phones and the internet. Oh, this is great. Okay, head to head. Quibi, tiktok Most of you watching this don't know the word Quibi because it died a spectacular death.

Speaker 3: 27:23

The public decided we want the every man, we want the content that is filmed in someone's car. I don't know why. I'm not a psychologist so I'm not going to try and guess about that. I've got my theories, my hypothesis, but for whatever reason, I would rather see a woman in her car talking about a parenting technique than Pierce Morgan in a beautiful lit studio talking in a nice microphone direct to camera and I think that it's a very interesting thing in, like, the connection aspect, like people now have the ability to connect directly with you know people who have a billion views per month.

Speaker 2: 28:09

You know they have the ability to connect with their small local business owner through that and they have that, those synchronicities, like they can relate, yeah, like oh, yeah, you know my car is a mess too, or my car Like. So those connections on the native stuff, yeah, is helping bridge and I think we're going to see more of that, especially with AI starting. There's going to be even less people interaction, you know, one-on-one interactions, because everything's online. There's going to be less real people.

Speaker 3: 28:40

I think what's going to happen. This is my guess and the reason I wrote a live show again and you know I've done the last five years digitally. Yeah, if everything is AI and everything is fake, then the only way and look, it's fooling a lot of people Facebook is filled with AI content that is fooling a lot of boomers. It's some rough times out there. These poor guys don't know like what what is hit, like it's it's amazing. Yeah, I've been fooled. Uh, I on instagram where I'm like oh, that's not even a real person.

Speaker 3: 29:25

Okay, so if digital content online, we won't even know if it's real or not real, and this holds separate the idea that I could.

Speaker 3: 29:35

You know, hollywood is kind of banking on the fact that I will be able to ask a new AI streaming platform for my favorite movie, so I'd say, give me Gone in 60 Seconds, but I want Christopher Walken to be starring in it and also, instead of Angelina Jolie, let's put in Jennifer Lopez and whatever. Okay, if that happens, I want some residuals based off of that, but also my references are quite dated. If that happens, I want some residuals based off of that, but also my references are quite dated. Which is showing my millennial age there Gone in 60 seconds with Jennifer Aniston and Christopher Walken. But Hollywood is saying that AI will soon be able to deliver you a movie to your tastes and what you want, and all that Okay. Maybe or maybe we'll see more and more uh of AI content online where we don't know if it's real or fake. So the in-person or the community or the direct relationship with uh somebody if I'm a business owner, that direct relationship is going to be more valuable than ever.

Speaker 2: 30:47

So you better build a community, you better have some great in-person skills and fuel that with the content online, because I think that will be a very valuable niche soon, absolutely, I agree, and I think even with that, like taking some of the video production stuff is like live streaming, like being live, because it's not going to be really heavily edited. So we were going to actually going to see the individuals in real form and the interaction is there, which is kind of like the step below a natural in person event having to interact.

Speaker 3: 31:22

So this is again just really in the in the weeds of of what we're talking about. If a platform like Facebook or YouTube or TikTok, if they give you a tool, use it. They want you to use your tools. They will give extra preferential treatment to the pages, to the creators who are utilizing these tools. So right now, youtube they just I was in New York, at YouTube headquarters there in Chelsea, and they went oh, we're really all in on shopping. So if you use shopping things within the content meaning their affiliate links or their live streaming, talking about shopping they will push you further in their algorithm.

Speaker 3: 32:09

Look, it's like nepotism, that's a good way to put it. Look, if I'm a big Hollywood director and I can cast my daughter in this movie, I'm going to because I have a vested interest there. Same thing for the platform. If I see that this particular content creator is doing A good content and using my stuff, I'm going to give them a boost. So always be looking and listening to what the platform is trying to put forward. Stop fighting the platform. The platform is not to blame for anything ever. Now I say and I, uh, I certainly dislike certain platforms, but I would never say how much I dislike TikTok or Facebook, uh, you know. But the point is, they're not wrong. They're simply putting out the the things of the ones, and zeros, uh, in order to make it. Don't fight them, go with them, because it's much more important that you win by their rules.

Speaker 2: 33:13

And that's something I've seen lately with some smaller businesses, specifically some car dealerships. They've been using dueting. They'll take the video that's viral the dude getting hit by a bowl and flying forward but right when it gets hit it'll cut to their video of someone like falling into the car or so right, it'll play with that viral video that's already going and use that so right now, as you say that there's a bunch of uh and I mean this with love it's a bunch of old dudes watching and they're going.

Speaker 3: 33:46

I don't want any of this viral trash in my advertisement. I have a high-end consulting company. How dare you? All right, that's fine, but you are going to miss out on the eyeballs that are watching the viral trash. In fact, if you're being honest with yourself, I think you also watch the viral trash. So I tell you what you look. I tell creators this and businesses this, and also churches. I've had a lot of pastors fly here to Las Vegas and they've just asked me questions about the newsfeed, about the algorithm, and I'm going yeah, look, your church service is not very well suited to the newsfeed.

Speaker 3: 34:33

If you want people to see this and they do that is essentially their mission. They want to spread the gospel. If you want that, then you better look at your own viewing habits. How do you swipe the feed? What sends you swiping away?

Speaker 3: 34:52

What makes you stop and start to look at that and actually take pen and paper and note what made you watch that piece of content and what made you swipe away in the middle of it and what made you finish it or watch it again and start to take those techniques and put them in your own content and you're going to have to break some old habits of thinking that an advertisement is. You know, if you've got a car dealership, you know we've all seen the same car dealership ads for the last 75 years. They look the same, like I don't think they've looked different since. You know, whatever the commercial was that we see on Tommy Boy. But if you want to do something that makes the feed, you're going to have to go differently and that's going to be the cheaper way to do it, absolutely Because it's free.

Speaker 2: 35:48

Viral videos are free yeah, but so with that, because we've been kind of toying those ideas of using that kind of viral intro into something that correlates with what we do. But you know, the big thing that I've heard other people say is well, viral, being viral, you're going to get castle wide net, but it's not going to be your ideal client, so you're not going to have like it'd be better to have a small audience that your ideal client and not go viral. Do you still see?

Speaker 3: 36:12

Yeah, so, uh, certainly, that's totally fair. However, what's great is, so, let's take a, let's take an ad, uh, that we've designed to go viral. Okay, now, when we do our targeting, when we do our, again, this is very much in the weeds, but you buy your Facebook ad and you do your targeting. It's just going to be cheaper for you because the content is good. When you buy an ad on Facebook, it's going to be more expensive if people are swiping away from that ad Because Facebook is like this is bad content. If you want us to show it to people, you're going to have to pay us a lot of money, but if it's really good which is the casting, a wide net, viral content it'll be cheaper. So now you can target it to the people that you do want and you're going to get it for more bang for your buck.

Speaker 2: 37:10

So you're almost saying create a bigger pond with a lot of fish and then just maybe narrow it on a certain section as far as like the ad. So once you have a bigger audience then when you target the ad you have a more or better turnaround with that.

Speaker 3: 37:26

Right, look, okay. So if you want to win a race, okay, so let's get you the fastest car possible, okay. And if somebody were to be like, no, no, no, I don't need that fast of a car, I'm only racing this guy who's going to be in a Yugo, right, and for those who don't remember the Yugo, that was a car where you'd get into the car and you'd go okay, yugo, and you would hope that it would go. It was very, not a fast car. But if you've got the fast, if you're in a Lamborghini, yeah, I know you don't need it to beat whatever you're racing, but you will beat that.

Speaker 3: 38:09

So, just, it's not that hard to get the most streamlined, awesome ad ever. So it's, it's. It reminds me of the argument Like I've. I've heard it from my wife where she goes I don't want to go to the gym because I don't want to get too muscular, I don't want to get too buff, and I'm like what? What sort of arrogance is that where you're like oh, are you? You think you're going to go to the gym and all of a sudden, like you should. You should wish that it would be like that. No, it's not going to be that way. But if you use these techniques, you're going to do better for your business in the ad that you're already putting out anyway.

Speaker 2: 38:43

And I agree a hundred percent and I think this has just been really insightful and eyeopening for a lot of people probably who are kind of battling with those things of social media and the content.

Speaker 3: 38:54

Here's a good story. That that'll just illustrate it, because I end up using too many words and the way that I'm talking here. I would never talk this way in any of my actual content. This, right here, is the definition of destination content. Someone has decided I want to hear what these two guys have to say, so they invest their time to sit and watch it.

Speaker 3: 39:18

So I had a girl who wanted to make a TikTok. She didn't have an account, she had nothing, zero followers, and her first video I'm going to film for her. I film it at my dad's house. He's got a sawing in half lady prop in his basement. So it's a living room with a big purple box and I'm like, well, let's use this. So a cute little blonde girl gets in the box, gets cut in half and that's going to be the video. It's going to be 20 seconds long. I'm going to film it using the strategies that I know, which is interesting, opening shot, whatever. So she puts up that video again, zero followers. At the end of the night it has 11 million views.

Speaker 3: 40:08

How, what happened? I'll tell you what happened. Didn't get any shares from me, didn't get any recommendations, no comments or any of the stuff that people will tell you Ooh, if you do this comment and you post it at this time, all that's trash, none of that's real, no-transcript. Upload it to TikTok and it goes out to a dozen people. Tiktok, even if you have zero followers, it will send it out to a dozen people just to see what it is. And I would bet that those dozen people strangers, nobodies all around the world I bet they finished that video because it was pretty weird looking. It's a living room with a purple box. A good looking girl gets in and she gets cut in half. They finished that video. So then TikTok goes hmm, they send it to a hundred and a good percentage of those hundred people finished the video and TikTok goes okay, we might have a good video here. So they send it to a thousand. Keeps up a good watch percentage. Then they send it to 10,000, then a hundred and then a million, and as long as the more people they send it to. If it keeps that high percentage watched, then, yeah, ends up at 11 million, and that's how you end up with banger content instantly.

Speaker 3: 41:37

Now, tiktok at that time was a very pure algorithm. What I mean by that is they were just looking at the content. Now there's always shifts and flows in the different platforms where, like right now on Facebook, I don't care if you've got the highest watch time on a piece of content. They are more concerned with what's the page and how long has the page been active and what was your last content that you posted and have you ever done anything naughty on Facebook using this page? Because then we'll limit your reach on that, so that all gets a little bit complicated.

Speaker 3: 42:14

But really the core of it is how long are people watching this content? And if the answer is a lot, which brings me to just I'll kind of end that rant with this If a thousand people watched your video, nobody watched your video. Not even your mom watched that video, because if they did, it wouldn't have a thousand views. It would have at least a hundred thousand views or more, and you can just really see that the average watch time on a piece of content on Facebook is probably two seconds, which is why when I put up something and it has a 45 second watch time, it goes bang, because most often, like, just look at your swiping patterns, you know, and and just think about how much time you're giving to something. So that's a lot of very in the weeds data analysis of this, but that's what brought me to spray paint. So the question that you asked at the beginning of all this and this and this has been a- 30-minute answer to your very first question was why spray paint, not magic?

Speaker 3: 43:32

What happened? And the answer was well, I looked at the data and more people were finishing a spray paint video than they were finishing a magic video, and I track it every single time and I learned so. So, just off camera, there's a muhammad ali painting right there that's my first one, and it's on a canvas and that did 50 million views. Okay, well, there's something here, uh, and then the next painting got 100 million views and it was a canvas stencil painting of Michael Jordan. But then the views started to go down on painting stencils on canvas. So I go okay, how do I switch up the opening shot? I knock a hole in a wall, do a stencil painting over the hole, tom and Jerry with the mouse coming out of the hole. Boom, 500 million views. All right, something here. So then now I'm knocking a lot of holes in the wall and then, as that starts underperforming, then you switch it up and you go okay, what else can I do? And you just got to figure out different ways that you can track the retention on these things.

Speaker 2: 44:40

And that's the secret. Oh, and I love that and I think, yeah, businesses can definitely kind of open up the creativity a little bit, Like it gives them a little bit more room because there is no necessary cookie cutter way they have to do it. There are pieces like you've mentioned through this episode that work. Obviously a billion views per month, something's working. So, um, taking into consideration what you've said, like we have so much room to be creative and do that to match with whatever your business is and have these results still?

Speaker 3: 45:09

Yeah, but it's a look. I'm not an expert outside of a swipe fee Like I. I am struggling right now to build that long form audience of people who decide, but that's. That's because the ideas, the my real skill isn't coming up with these interesting gags that are just fun to watch. Uh, but none of them are videos that you think like. You take a Mr Beast video of like I'm going to be on a deserted Island for five days and see if I can survive, right, that's a good headline or a piece of long form content of mine that has done really well outside of the swipe feed is sawing a baby in half. So this is a piece of destination content because it's a headline and a thumbnail. You got a baby cut in half and the title is song and baby in half Very easy to understand and I do want to see that and so did 200 million other people, because they just 200 million people clicked on that to go. I want, I want to see song and baby in half and that was based off of uh learning from Penn and Teller, the magic duo.

Speaker 3: 46:25

They had a trick back in the 90s called burning an American flag. This is a headline trick. This is, by the way, they don't burn an American flag. It's actually the most patriotic piece of art that you could see. Because they kind of asked the question with ambiguity Did we burn an American flag or did we vanish an American flag in a spectacular flash of fire? And did we do it in protest, or did we do it in celebration of the very art that allows us to burn an American flag? And it's a spectacular piece. I suggest that you watch it.

Speaker 3: 47:03

But that is a headline piece, and so if you want to build the destination content, then you have to think in terms, not in what's going to make somebody stop the swipe, but instead what's going to make somebody tune in. And now we're more to the classic media side of you know, david Copperfield vanishing the Statue of Liberty, which at the time was, yeah, he's going to make the Statue of Liberty disappear. This is before we had the ability to do a camera trick on our phone, which is why I think he's, you know, living in the past. When he does a press release on I'm going to make the moon disappear, I think the public kind of goes yeah, I could do that too. It's just an editing app sort of thing, but in 1978, that was a really interesting idea. So what is the idea that would make somebody actually tune in? Now you have destination content.

Speaker 2: 48:01

Different thing? For sure, no, but this has been, I mean, a great conversation, because I think a lot of people are trying to, you know, rain in on the short stuff, to swipe feed as well, to grow that audience. So then they have and do it now.

Speaker 3: 48:13

yes, this is the time. Right now, youtube is still exploding with subscribers. You got mark ro, who's a great creator, but he goes over to the short feed to gain 30 million new subscribers off of just three pieces of short content. Like, look it up, it was a crazy thing. He had a great call to action and he delivered on a cool visual, which was he was blowing up kiddie pools of Orbeez. So he's got these colored water beads and he's blowing them up and then he just tells people to subscribe. Great call to action, 30 million subscribers because of the algorithm. Then he has the challenge which he's working through right now, which is great. We've got 30 million people who are watching on the short side. Now how do I engage them on the long form side? And that's a whole other episode?

Speaker 2: 49:07

Absolutely, yeah, that would be. We could I mean, we could talk for hours and hours on all this and how it builds on one another and where it directs and everything. But this has been fantastic and a lot of valuable insight for people to go back and listen to again and take notes and implement. You guys, on your short form, Get out there Again. Look at the data, like Justin's saying, see what works. What are people watching, how long are they watching? How can you tweak?

Speaker 3: 49:28

things. And if you hear anything after all of that, just start. Yes, just start. You have the phone and there's no consequence, or there's very little consequence to uploading too much.

Speaker 3: 49:46

I like Gary Vee, another great marketing, great voice in this world. He goes post 15 times a day. What's the consequence? If it's good and this is how I got my friend into so I've got a magician friend who was just, he was coming from Broadway. So Adam Trent, he's a traditional media guy. He did a you know, he's on Disney plus with his magic special.

Speaker 3: 50:15

And I go, you got to try this Facebook stuff, this YouTube stuff. And I go, here's the great thing If the content is bad, no one's going to see it. Because it's bad, you don't have to be embarrassed, because as soon as it's not seen as good it's done, nobody sees it. And if it's good and you're still embarrassed about it, don't worry, we'll pay you for that, for that, and that's kind of the way that you can look at it is just start uploading stuff and try it out, experiment, and you're going to see. Oh wow, I thought I really needed to. You know, start the video this way and really the main thing will be the start of your videos. So, whatever you're marketing for your company, really play with that opening, because you got one second to capture their attention and people don't care otherwise.

Speaker 2: 51:08

Right. Well, justin, it's been great. Thank you so much for taking time sharing your space with us. Look forward to getting some of the little trap doors and everything you're working on on camera.

Speaker 3: 51:17

Yeah, we can do a tour of the place and show you around, because there's some silly things in this house, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 51:22

One final question for you anything big that's coming up that people should be excited if they know you are to, to see yeah, we've got.

Speaker 3: 51:30

Uh. So the number one question I get in my email inbox is where do you get these stencils for the cool spray paint things? Uh, one of my recent ones is this Thor behind me holding a hammer, which I think is hilarious on a pegboard. But I have designed my own stencils now. These are all designed by me and all that. But now I've designed some for kids and Walmart is putting it in stores in October. So we're in October, in just a couple of weeks, and middle of October, just in time for all the holidays and everything is now.

Speaker 3: 52:12

They're not spray paint. I actually include a cool airbrush, a little marker thing with washable paint. So kids with washable paint. So kids, my daughters, they love it. There's a set with unicorns and Little Mermaid and things like that, and there's a set with race cars and cowboys and things like that, and it's awesome. So you get the layered stencil art that you can do. I'm really excited to put this out. This is a product that's never been to market, which is bonkers to me, because I did not invent layered stencils. Look, banksy has been using layered stencils.

Speaker 3: 52:52

Just because I'm beating Banksy in views doesn't mean that I'm better than him. I am beating him in views, but I don't think he's going for that. I think he's doing a different thing. So it's really exciting. Walmart's very excited about it, and you know. Then the next thing will be videos. Man, I just am excited about these ideas. I just have a list of ideas that is as long as it's long and there's just different silly gags. Uh, this room right there, that wall will not be a wall much longer. We're smashing through that. It's going to be an infinity mirror room and then the closet that's behind that door is going to be a shrinking and growing alice in wonderland room. Uh, if I can figure out how to make a door that is this big grow to be a full-size door that you can walk through and I think we've got the way to do it, we'll see.

Speaker 2: 53:50

You'll have to tune in to see. Absolutely, yeah, everybody tune in. Follow Justin on YouTube, check out his short stuff, get ideas from what he's doing and, yeah, just stay connected and stay tuned for what's coming. We're excited for it. Justin, ian, thanks so much. Yeah, buddy, awesome.

Speaker 1: 54:05

Thank you for listening to the Elevate Media Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. See you in the next episode.