Digital Social Hour - Viral Video Secrets: 3 Steps to 100M Views | Hilary Billings DSH #876

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Unlock the secrets to viral content with Hillary Billings in this exciting episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Dive into the world of content creation and discover the 3 steps to achieving 100M views. 📈 Hillary, the queen of content, shares her journey from a journalist to a billion views superstar. Learn how she cracked the code of viral videos and how you can too with her expert tips. From grabbing attention to sparking emotion and creating curiosity, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss! 💡 Tune in now and join the conversation as we explore the power of the algorithm and how you can leverage it to your advantage. Whether you're an aspiring content creator or a seasoned entrepreneur, these insider secrets will transform your approach. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Don't miss out on this must-watch episode! #contentcreation #socialmediamarketing #howtogenerateleads #digitalmarketing #tiktokalgorithm #howtogrowoninstagram #digitalmarketing #selfimprovement #instagramseo #howtogoviralontiktok CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:33 - Hillary Billings Backstory 04:58 - BetterHelp Overview 07:36 - Engineering Viral Content 13:32 - Future Content Trends 17:35 - Earning Attention in a Noisy World 19:41 - Posting Times Impact 20:38 - TikTok Copyright Issues 21:57 - Trending Audio Significance 24:16 - Importance of Repurposing Content 25:13 - Characteristics of Good Repurposed Videos 29:20 - Were You a Lion Tamer? 31:51 - Your Weirdest Job Experience 33:10 - Miss Nevada Insights 39:18 - Firewalkers Tribe Discussion 41:30 - Hillary's Travel Plans 43:35 - Most Interesting Guest Insights 45:04 - Get Hillary’s FREE Viral Video Blueprint 45:57 - Outro APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Hilary Billings https://www.instagram.com/hilary_billings/ https://www.instagram.com/attentioneers/ https://www.attentioneers.com/blueprint SPONSORS: BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Do you follow dog accounts? I actually don't. I think that just speaks to the power of interest, not familiarity. But it's so great to see the algorithm and how it plays. Where can we draw the line, right? The algorithm's constantly looking, so I would be sure that your content or algorithm is also saying,

okay, he likes dog content. Right. I think the algorithm's constantly trying to find the limits as to what we would watch and sit through. You gotta be really careful about your watch. I know right? Alright guys, fellow Vegas local here today, Hillary Billings, the queen of content. Aww, the queen of content like that? Yeah, Billion Views, we'll get you that title I'd say.

Oh thank you so much, I appreciate that. Not a lot of people get to a million, let alone a billion. It's been a fun journey, that's for sure. How appreciate that. Not a lot of people get to a million, let alone a billion. It's been a fun journey, that's for sure. How long you been posting content and getting views? You know, it's been a funny journey. I actually started over COVID. So before that, I was an on-camera host and journalist. I worked as a celebrity interviewer for USA Today.

I did a lot of behind-the-scenes award shows, red carpets, interviewing everyone from Ringo Starr to Dolly Parton and Mark Cuban. And then I was a personal brand strategist for a while and helping everyone from Victoria's Secret Models to billionaires figure out how to tap into their messaging and monetize their reputation. And then COVID hit and every single revenue stream dried up. And so I was approached by an acquaintance of mine who happened to run the largest network of Facebook watch pages. And at the time, you probably remember you couldn't monetize unless you had access to a publisher.

So he asked me and my partner at the time if we'd be interested in making content. It's like, well, yeah, sure, we have background in making all sorts of content. Before being a journalist, I was an international travel blogger, had readers in 120 countries. We can make sub three minute videos and just kick it off. And then it turns out we were terrible at it. And we spent about nine months just banging our heads against a wall trying to make content work. It was so frustrating.

And we were trying everything. And it's like you see other people having massive success and getting the views and making the money. And even when we copy them, we couldn't get people to listen. It was like nobody cared. So we finally had to To have this moment of what if everything we thought about content how content was together what was wrong? What if instead of views being accidental someone just picking up their phone and being able to film something and have it go viral

What if it was actually very intentional so we we took a weekend, watched thousands of viral videos. I do not recommend that anyone do that for their mental health. And we started to see it was almost like what's that movie? John Nash in a Beautiful Mind where the numbers and patterns start to emerge. We were documenting everything. What happens at second one? What happens at second three? What are they wearing? What are they saying? What does the hand gestures look like? And it started to become really clear that certain things needed to happen to move through a video in order for it to be successful.

So we took those learnings, we applied it to our next video, that next video did five million views. Wow. The video after that did 10 million views. Jeez. And it's not to say that everything that we touched turned to gold, but we live in Vegas, so what I like to attribute it to,

or the analogy I like to use is, I can tell you what the best odds are for which game you wanna play, which slot machine, I can tell you which ones not to play, I can tell you which ones are not gonna do anything for you, and I can tell you that a little old lady has been sitting at that machine all day, and she just got up, and that's the one

that I would go and hit. So one in every four of our videos did over a million views one and attended over 10 million we went from no views in the first nine months to over a billion organic views the following 12 months incredible and that was on Facebook that was through Facebook tick-tock Instagram we kind of played the gamut across different platforms nice yeah it's interesting because just because you're a celebrity doesn't mean you'll get views.

100%. Well, and even with that as being not a celebrity, right? How does somebody who doesn't have a following that isn't well known, how do you break through and create that kind of content? And I'd be curious if this is in your experience as well. But I think one of the cool things that TikTok did is they helped to democratize distribution of views.

No longer was about you needed a million followers in order to make that happen. It was about interest. People follow or people watch content based upon interest, not familiarity. I mean, you can scroll through Instagram and look at five to six different posts that you don't even follow.

You don't even know the people whose content you're being served. But because you like that type of content, or you're watching those types of videos, that's what's ending up in your algorithm. And so that's where I think, especially with entrepreneurs and businesses, people can win now more so than they could even five years ago

in the content industry. Yeah, it was way harder to break through then. You kind of needed a following. Yeah, and it's interesting because I feel like people tend to demonize the algorithm and be like, oh, it hates me. I'm shadow banned and there's all this language that gets used. But, you know, we I think at our peak, maybe, well, you know, my my TikTok blew up from

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Zero to 400,000 followers in 40 days. When I started Tik Tok, but for a long time, especially on Facebook, we were operating with 10 to 30,000 followers. Like we were batting way outside our average just because we were engineering the content in a particular way. And it's been really fun now as the CEO and co-founder

of Attentioneers to help personal brands and entrepreneurs and to teach them how to do this. Because I think we were talking about the dark side of between Henderson and Summerlin. I think it's also kind of that way of content creation sometimes, or at least for me, of how do we get in front of these service-based entrepreneurs, how do we get them in front of their audiences, how do we get the messages that need to be heard out into the world?

And I think they probably struggle more than anyone, because this isn't their full-time job. As a content creator, how many pieces of content are you putting out a day? At least three. At least three. And then you're dropping multiple podcast episodes a day as well. Yeah, two to three, yeah.

And how many people are on your team? A lot. Over 10 now. Yeah. And it's a beautiful machine that you've created. But the average business person, entrepreneur, they're either soloing it, trying to figure it out on their own, or they have a intern, right? Or maybe someone in their 20s who knows how to use TikTok

that they're trying to figure out how to break in and crack the algorithm to get to their clients. And really at the end of the day, the views are just a conduit to get what they really want, which is the customer. So how do we help them make content that their audience is gonna care about that they won't cringe at,

that's gonna lead to the outcome that everyone wants? So that's been really fun to be able to be focused on that and helping our clients 250x their views. That's insane, 250x? Holy crap, yeah, because you don't believe videos go viral on accident. I do not. I think that there's a lot of engineering

that happens in content. And I personally believe, and what we've seen to be true, is that every single viral video has three particular components. And content that you've loved that probably didn't go viral or didn't do as well as you wanted to, it's probably because it was missing one of these components. And if you had a piece of content that just magically

went viral or accidentally and you don't know why, it's probably because it had these three things. And it breaks down as the following. So it grabs attention, it sparks an emotion, and it creates a curiosity gap. So with grabbing attention, pretty straightforward, right? You have two seconds to make an impact. Someone is deciding in two seconds

if they're gonna give you another two seconds. And so you have to earn it. And when we were full-time creators, we'd spend more time talking about the first three seconds than any other part of the video. How are we gonna get them to stop the scroll? What kind of visual metaphors are we gonna use? What kind of bold statements are we gonna use at the top of the video and allow that to then service the rest of the content?

Because I think of it back to advice that I would give my personal brand strategy clients, which is you can write the best book, you could have the most amazing speech, but if the title isn't right, no one's gonna pick it up off the shelf, no one's gonna buy it. So all that work is wasted if you don't get that opener right. And so how do we help them to create the opener,

grab the attention? So that's the first piece, is you have to be thinking about the open, probably even more so than the end. We'd have videos do 20, 50, 100 million views, 99% of the people aren't gonna get to the end of the content. So I think a lot of content creators,

a lot of business people think, let's set it up like a movie. Let's save the best for last. It's gonna be a really cool plot twist. But if you do that, then you're actually missing out on the majority of the audience that's going to be able to watch it. So we gotta grab attention.

Then we have to spark an emotion. So studies and research show that depending upon the emotion that you're emoting from your viewer is then going to predict or determine what type of behavior they're going to take. Are they going to comment? Are they going to share? Are they going to like it or engage on it?

And you know what I like to say is when people get emotional, they get promotional. So that is how you are able to propagate ideas and allow something to really catch on fire and catch on fast is by anchoring in on an emotion that you want your viewer to see. And it's very interesting how, again,

different emotions trigger different behaviors within your viewer. So if you're not doing that that's probably why you're not seeing engagement or why you're not seeing shares. And the final piece which I think is the one that most people don't talk about is how do you create a curiosity gap? How do you leave something out purposely on the beginning of the video that also tells them what they're gonna get if they watch the end of the video? And that's how we lengthen the watch time. So we were talking about before we of the video that also tells them what they're going to get if they watch the end of the video. And that's how we lengthen the watch time.

So we were talking about before we started bold statements, right? And so you had brought up another interview of like, what was the... Dave Asprey, coffee mold. Coffee has mold? Yeah. Right. So it's like, okay, well, maybe I didn't know that. So then now I need to watch the rest of the video to understand it.

Or maybe the curiosity gap gap if I was to set That up might be you'll never guess what's in coffee like or this toxic thing is in because it's toxic chemicals and coffee You you don't want to drink coffee that has this right? So how are we setting up the piece of content? So that people are waiting for you to fill that gap to give them this payoff to answer this question. And it also allows you to then create more trust with your viewer, right? Because you're giving them great information. It's something they know that they want to watch because you've clearly set the tone. And that's how you get people to watch at the end of the video. I definitely agree, especially with the emotion part. Yeah, my most viral videos are usually debates, people debating

in the comments. So I would imagine that the emotion that they're experiencing is a lot of anger Yeah, the the creator is bringing that out in them with with the bold statement or something like that Yeah anger because the maybe something they said wasn't factual or something. Yeah, or it's political political stuff is hot right now Oh, I'm sure well as we're heading into the Election season here. It's only gonna probably become more and more exasperated. I can't get rid of it on my Twitter feed. Oh, I bet.

Yeah, yeah. I remember the assassination attempt. That day, I was like, I'm not even going to post today. Yeah, it's not worth it. I was not going to get involved. People are only going to talk about this. Totally. Nothing else.

Well, and that's an interesting point to content, too, right? Is that you might have a really great video, but depending upon what else happens that day in the news, in politics, Taylor Swift does something amazing, right? She wears some cool dress. Then all the attention is going to be on that. Right. Versus like you could post a subpar piece of content on another day and the content isn't as strong and that one then is able to propagate and grow more.

Yep. So there's a lot of things that are outside of our control. So I'm always looking at what can I control with content? How can I win my game? And what are the metrics that I'm gonna look at to mean success for me? Because sometimes it's not views, right? Like views are a great vanity metric,

and we got a lot of them, but especially for a lot of our clients and attentioneers, views isn't the end goal, right? They're looking for revenue, they're looking for clients, they're looking to sell a product, they've got a service. So how do we translate the views that they are getting into money? How do we translate that into trust and credibility

to build a reputation? 100%, I know a podcast that gets maybe a thousand views, but they're making millions a year. See, it's so funny how people will make a judgment based upon what they see online as to what's actually happening behind the curtain. That's super fascinating. No, even my show,

because I'm nowhere near the top shows, but this show is bringing in millions a year, and people probably wouldn't know that. Right, right. I mean, and you guys, again, with the flow of content, how everything works for you and your primary business models, that's really fantastic. Yeah, so what type of content over the next few years

are you looking at? As far as what do I see trending? Yeah. So what type of content over the next few years are you looking at? As far as what do I see trending? Yeah. So there's a lot of data to support this, my answer on this. The first statistic that I'll share is that Goldman Sachs recently estimated that in the next three years, we are going to double the amount of money that is in the creator economy than has been in the past 17. Whoa. Yeah. So the creator economy is going to massively exponentially continue to grow. So as far as where people are putting eyeballs, where money is going, it's definitely in digital.

Now Adobe released a study last year saying that 80% of the time that we're on our cell phones, so just think about how often you're on your phone. I mean, we were texting. Yeah, eight hours a day. Right. Yeah, eight hours a day. Right, yeah. So 80% of the time that you are not texting or calling someone, you are watching short-form video. And so I think about that like Pareto's law.

So if 20% of your efforts is going to get you 80% of your results, if your consumer, if your client is spending 80% of their time in short form video, that's where you're gonna have the best chance to meet them. You can do the email newsletters, you can do the campaigns, the blogs, the photo posts, what have you, but if 80% of the time this is their focus, that's where I would put all of my energy.

And again, as we're just continuing to see with how platforms are competing with each other, how, whether it's YouTube Sh shorts, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, all of them, they're really focusing on short form content. Yeah, I saw LinkedIn even recently, right? Yeah, yeah, sub three minute content. Everyone's trying to get into the game of that. And there's obviously a lot happening legally as well

to try to move people out of the game. And there's always going to be changes in the players. But I think we're definitely not going to see short form content going away. And in fact, I see that as being the utmost skill set that you can either have on your team or you can learn yourself to grow your business. And we see it right now.

The companies that are doing it well and have embraced that are seeing massive success. I mean, you're one of those people too. Yeah, I'm doubling down on it. I just hired another short form editor. Really? Yeah, we're about to do four to six a day instead of three a day.

Wow, that's amazing. Cause I think there's so much potential and I have so much content for days. So do you think similarly then that short form is the moving forward? Yeah, and that's why this podcast succeeded cause if I only focused on long form, I would have been irrelevant, you know?

Yeah. I mean, they get like 10K an episode, but the short form is what brings in millions of views. So you're using then your short form as a feeder to the podcast. Yeah. Okay. Feeder plus like just branding and podcasts with networking. There's a lot of wins with podcasting. Oh, I bet. Yeah. It's a really, I recommend most business owners try it on the side, honestly.

Did you launch the podcast and the short form in concert with each other or did one come first? No, in concert. Okay. Because I already had a decent following. So I knew I had to take advantage of that. Yeah. If I just launched a podcast, everyone has a podcast, like you need to do something different.

You know, what's interesting too is that, you know, over COVID, there was such an explosion in the podcast market. And since then, I think we've lost 200 or 300,000 podcasts, which makes sense. People have gone back to work. It was a short-term hobby. But it's funny that there's not as much, I think even right now, this statistic might be off,

but last I looked, it was something like 700,000 podcasts versus 20 million new videos are being posted to social media every single day. Geez. We've consumed more content exists now in the past three months than in the entirety of human history. Holy crap. Right?

So just the sheer noise that is out there that you're fighting against as a creator, that business owners are fighting against to get views, there's a lot. Now granted, it's not all great content. Yeah. And a lot of it's crappy content in the sense of it's not quality, it's not engineered well, it doesn't bring value. And then AI is only continuing to add more noise and then the amount of noise is adding

quicker and quicker. So all that to say, I'm just a big believer and you can no longer expect attention, you can no longer deserve views. Just because you exist, you have to earn attention. This is all about how do we earn it. For sure. And the game's constantly changing. I study my algorithm two hours a day at least.

Do you? Yeah. So I'll watch my reels, I'll watch TikTok, sometimes Facebook reels and YouTube shorts. So when you're doing that, what are you looking for? I'm looking at the engagement. I'm looking at what people are commenting. I'm looking at the topic.

I'm looking at the guests of who's speaking. It's a good way to find guests actually. A lot of different things, but seeing seeing what topics are going viral mainly, I'd say. OK, so you're not even looking at your own content. You're looking at just what's in your algorithm being served to you.

Yeah, I look at my own, too, which videos popped off the most, but that's quick. I'm actually studying. I'm scrolling. I'm a user in that mode and just observing. I love that. That's one of the, we run a virtual short-form video boot camp where we go soup to nuts.

Here's the process how we've got all our views like help you apply that to your own your own business. And that's one of the things that we have our attendees do is like let's sit down three minutes put on your observer or your consumer hat and I want you to scroll through and just take note of what you stop at. Why did you stop on that video? Like you don't need to have a sample set of a population in order to be able to test and understand user behavior. You'll learn a lot just from your own behavior. Oh, so much.

Yeah, so much. But then you gotta take action on it too. Totally, yeah, it's a combination. I think it's really easy for people to get paralyzed. Yeah, super easy. Yeah, what would be your recommendation to someone that's being paralyzed by just getting out there or creating content?

Just start filming, honestly. Yeah, just go for it. I waited so long to start this thing, like years. Really? I should have just started it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because when I started this show last year,

I was pretty late to the podcast game. People think this show's been around for a while, but I was super late. Yeah, that's really fantastic and fascinating that within just a year? A year and a half, yeah. We started in January last year. So 18 months, you've been able to build this catalog of content. And just what a testament, right, to how just consistency and content, and I'm sure you've learned a lot. I'm sure the content from the very beginning looks very different.

Oh, so bad. It was on iPhones. Yeah, iPhones. My teeth were super yellow. I didn't care how I looked. Yeah, I've leveled up. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. There's a lot of gurus who push all this weird stuff, like posting at certain times a day, using hashtags, trending audio.

Does any of that matter? Great question. So in my opinion, you cannot out-strategize bad creative. And so when I say creative, that means the video itself. It's the video that's going to stop someone's scroll. It's the video that's gonna get them to feel the emotion. It's the video that's gonna get them to build the trust with you, that's gonna allow them to learn something,

to get the credibility. It's the video that's gonna then get them to go to your profile, to wanna learn more about you, see what else you got. It's the video that's gonna then get them to go to your profile to wanna learn more about you, see what else you got. It's the video that's then gonna allow you to move them into a funnel or get them to your website. All those other things are just to me, in my opinion, the last 20%.

And I think that there's a lot of social media agencies out there that focus on it because those are the dials and levers that they know how to pull really well and they're good at it. And sure, I think those things can help. Over the course of being full-time content creators, we've had a lot of our content stolen. Really? Oh, yeah. I remember I had one video that I posted that didn't do well on Facebook and I was like, well, that sucks. I thought it really was a great piece of content. I was excited about it. Someone ripped it, posted it on TikTok. It did 40 million

views. Holy crap. They ended up getting like 40,000 followers out of it. It ripped it, posted it on TikTok, did 40 million views. Holy crap. They ended up getting like 40,000 followers out of it, made international news. None of it tied to me, right? But we had copyright protection on it. So we were able to see. And within a day, I had 20,000 rights management cases. Geez. That came up on the single of other people stealing it. Now- What? The interesting thing that I don't think a lot of people know is that the terms and conditions of each platform says that you cannot rip and repost someone else's content without their permission and if you do so, you're at risk to having your profile deleted, right? Because you're stealing IP.

So we took all the content down, but I can tell you having seen this happen time and time and time again that those posts had no hashtags. They wouldn't even have a description, right? There's no trending audio. It's just they're reposting our video. And we do a lot of deep data insights on the viralist videos, the viralist? That's not even a word.

The most viral videos. And what we see is that the best videos, the ones that are doing the 100 million views, it's all original audio. Interesting. I will say doing the 100 million views, it's all original audio. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I will say on the trending audio front,

I'd be curious as to your thoughts on this, because you do all original content. With trending audio, to me, it's a lot like being a day trader. So you have to time it when it's on the way up, and hope that you're able to capture the views. And you don't want to hit it when it's at its apex, and you certainly don't want to hit it on the way down, and to have the ability to make a determination

of this is the audio that we want to use, this is the trending challenge that we're gonna do, again, that takes a lot of time. So I think especially for business owners and entrepreneurs, this isn't your full-time job, that's a tough assignment to try to figure out, especially since a lot of the time, it doesn't quite fit with their voice,

their values, or their brand. And so, in my opinion, the only reason that I would do a trending audio is if I felt like I could add something new to the conversation with it, so I could bring a different perspective. And that's where we see people that are able to make extra views count on it,

even if that trend has already been worn out. Plus with trends, at some point, people are going to get worn out by it. It's very, and we would do a lot of this type of trending viral content where we would create these challenges and a lot of them put that out into the world. And it would very easily lose its sparkle when it's luster. We'd have to move on to the next thing. So it's not a sustainable model for content for them. And then with that same token in mind,

if you are using a trending audio, if you're following a trend, you're by definition a follower. And what I wanna do, and I think what you wanna do is we wanna create thought leaders. How do we be a thought leader on social media? How do you be a thought leader in your industry? It's not gonna come from chasing a trend. I agree. Yeah, I think all that stuff's pretty

relevant like the font color, the font size, like trending audio hashtags. Like it could work on maybe one video but not in the long run. Well, and I think as we've talked about everything's constantly changing but what's not gonna be changing in theory is your voice, your values, your brand, what you're here to say to the world, the message that you have. And I think as you grow as a brand, those things can expand for sure. But if people are coming to your content, that's really what they're looking for.

And there's certain levers we can push to make the content look more interesting and go faster and how to use colors and how to use transitions. But at the end of the day, how is the video engineered to be successful? 100%. Now I have an interesting take on repurposing. Please, share. So a lot of people repurpose a show. I actually don't go after them.

Really? Yeah, I don't claim the money because I think it's just in the long run good for the brand. Like I had one guy tweet out a clip about when Sneak-O came on, it got 18 million views. Good for you. Wow. Yeah, but I think it's just, it's good, because people see the, I bought these because of that actually. Super smart, I think that was probably the biggest difference and the thing that I wish,

because we would often use actors, or it would be the content as viral creators that we were doing was pranks, hacks, recipe videos, so we weren't always in the content. I can totally see the benefit of your face being everywhere else, right? Just more exposure for you. So when you see people benefit of your face being everywhere else, right? Just more exposure for you. So when you see people repurpose content,

not necessarily yours, but because I have a lot of thoughts on this too, I think a lot of people repurpose their content poorly. If they are on a podcast interview, they're not setting it up, but you do a very good job of this. So I'd be curious as to your thoughts on what makes a good repurposed video. Yeah, you want to have your branding in it, whether it's a mic flag, background, whatever.

And then I have a watermark in the bottom right. So just have your branding everywhere and ask them to tag you if they repost it. That's nice. When other people, when you look at other repurposed content, so not someone that's repurposed yours, what do you think makes, so instead of using just the podcast when they're now turning it into a short form video, what makes that a great short form video? Yeah, I've seen some reaction videos do well,

but you need to have the personality, like you can't just be boring with it. So I haven't tried those yet, but Brad Lee, who lives here, does a great job with those. So yeah, I've seen that. What have you seen work for that? I have seen that it's really important that you have a very clear title.

And the title needs to, again, grab attention, create a curiosity gap, and is probably also going to spark an emotion, even within itself. Because in a podcast conversation, you're not necessarily thinking about how am I going to set this up for short form, right? So you're thinking about in terms of I'm going to tell a story.

So maybe the story is like, well, once upon a time I had this dog when I was seven, and so if you're scrolling through and you don't know me, and I'm starting off the conversation or that video clip that way, you have no idea why you're gonna watch this. You don't know what's in it for you. So I think it's important as the repurposer to say,

okay, what's the title that I can throw on this? It's gonna let the viewer know what you can get out of this. So why owning a dog changed my life, or what I learned from my Shih Tzu, right? So there's something like that that's gonna really help to make it clear why they keep watching. And I think a lot of personal brands, entrepreneurs, speakers, even with speaker reel footage,

the same thing, of how can we make it really clear, even with just a title or the description, why they should watch. I've seen some cringe speaker reels. Yeah. I know. Yeah, people need to work on those, I think. Definitely.

Yeah. Dog videos are my weakness. Are they? Oh my gosh, I get one every four videos. Really? That's the one emotion that will invoke in me. And what emotion does that bring out in you? Sometimes they're sad.

Sometimes I get the ones where they're putting their dogs down. And what emotion does that bring out in you? Sometimes they're sad. Sometimes I get the ones where they're putting their dogs down and I'll be borderline tearing up. Sometimes it's like new puppy videos and I'm excited. Yeah, those get a ton of engagement I noticed, the dog ones. I mean, I think animal videos in general, you can't go wrong.

Yeah. You can't go wrong. Now, do you follow dog accounts? I actually don't. Interesting. They just show up on my reels. Yeah. I think that just speaks to the power of interest not familiarity. Right. Right. I might conversely, I watch a lot of raccoon videos. Really? Oh yeah. So it's like. I've never heard of that one. Raccoons washing their hands, raccoons playing with bubbles, raccoons hugging dogs.

Like you give me a raccoon doing anything, it's fine. I'm here to watch it. I'll sit through the video. But it's so great to see the algorithm and how it plays with, okay, she likes raccoons. Does she like other black and white animals? Or is it just raccoons? Or does she like bears? Or where can we draw the line? The algorithm's constantly looking.

So I'd be sure that some of your content or algorithm is also saying, okay, he likes dog content. Does he like dogs with cats? Does he just like dogs? Will he watch a cat video? Maybe he'll watch someone in a dog costume or he'll watch an adoption video We know we've got him on the sad one, so we're going to keep serving those videos Will he watch other sad animal videos right? It's just I think the algorithm is constantly trying to find the limits as to What we will watch and sit through?

Um, so you got to be really careful about your watch. I know Do you feel like raccoons are misunderstood? I think all animals in some level are misunderstood. Especially ones where we've encroached upon their environments. I was with my fiance and we saw one and she freaked out. I'm like why are you scared of a raccoon? I guess people think they're dirty or something. I don't know. Yeah I could see that. Do you have a pet raccoon? I wish I did. could see that you have a pet raccoon. I wish I did no I do not have a pet raccoon. I don't think you can actually there's only a few states where you can own them really It's a weird that I actually know that yeah That's your animal though. I rock with pandas everyone's got their animal

You know I will say I have a I have an entire friendship with one friend and all we do is exchange It's our love language Instagram. I'll send her one. She'll send me one We've just got this beautiful friendship. That's funny Yeah, you've had a lot of hats before this I want to go through some of these so were you a lion lion tamer Holy crap. It was out at the place in Henderson. Yeah, I've been to that place. So you would feed them so Previously I've had so many hats from Burn Survivor to Miss Nevada to International Travel Blogger to

journalists everything you pick a hat I'll wear it I'm so interested in just finding different things to do so I when I was an international travel blogger I traveled all over the world I had different exotic animal handling experiences and so at the time that the MGM was shutting down the exhibit, all those cats were owned by Keith Evans and the lion hat. And so at the time, he now had 40 African lions. And it's like, OK, well, we've got to be able to support them. So he opened up the exhibit, The Sanctuary,

for the first time to the public. And they wanted to do an exotic animal handling experience. So they brought me in to consult on it and work with some of the younger lions. The older lions were so used to their daily routine of they get bathed and they go in and do their job. They take a nap for five hours and come back. So it was really fun to be a part of that.

And I really give them so many props. There's not many people that are advocates for ethical exotic animal handling. And I know he's done a lot of work to try to push for specific laws within the community and the counties and to make it harder for people in Nevada and Las Vegas in general,

has very loose guidelines for exotic animal handling. And so, yeah, I know going out there, you can just probably see how happy the cats are. Super happy, I fed them. Oh, did you? Yeah, it was cool. So you went through the... It was through the cage, I didn't go inside, but yeah, I probably would've died if I went in there.

And again, another thing that I love about how they take care of their animals is they're very specific of, you do not go in the cage unless you work with the animals, since they were a cub, and the way that they handle the safety of the animals and the trainers is just really really powerful So that was a a really fun experience to be a part of and I just yeah I love getting collecting these stories. Yeah, I love that. I fed the giraffe there, too Ozzy, did you feed him out of your mouth with the no lettuce in your mouth?

You could do that Yeah, you you can put it between your teeth and then and then he'll bring his tongue down and wrap it around Whoa pull it right out of your mouth. Yeah, he was precise with it I guess as soon as I put it up it was gone within a second and you know it's funny I think a lot of people think that I mean giraffes live in herds, but male giraffes are solitary creatures I didn't know that yeah, it's an interesting interesting facts about animals Have you ever had an interesting? like what would you say is your

weirdest job? Weirdest job dude, so I never had a job. Yeah I'm complete opposite of you. Say more. Yeah I was only my own boss my whole life. Wow. Yeah I remember my mom tried to get me to work at Wegmans because we grew up in Jersey and that's a big grocery store out there and I just purposely failed the interview. Like I said, the dumbest things I could think of. So what did you want to do instead? I don't know. I saw my dad be an entrepreneur. He was selling books and I kind of just wanted to do something like that. I just found a 9 to 5 lifestyle. It never gave me a sense of fulfillment, I guess. What was your first career then?

I started, I tried to book a concert Miserably failed as in like an event coordinator. Yeah, I tried to I even paid the talent lost all that money And then paid the venue sold four tickets. Whoa, how to cancel it. What did you learn through that experience? I was in way over my head. I thought I could just fill it up because the artist was a big name But you need a lot of marketing Behind it. I think that's kind of like anything, right? Like people think if you just start posting on social media or you build a website, like people will come versus like here's there's a lot that has

to go into creating the funnels to drive into that. Yeah. That's interesting. Absolutely. So you were Miss Nevada too? I was. That is crazy. Yeah it is crazy. When was that? Many, many years ago. I actually crowned, I think you had Lisa Song Sutton on the podcast, so I crowned her. And that was a wild time in my life. I'd never done a pageant before.

I had never had any interest in pageantry. And the only reason that I entered the pageant was because I was a burn survivor. The summer prior, I was hit in the chest with a malfunctioning firework on the 4th of July. Whoa. I suffered second and third degree burns to my chest and my stomach. I was at a friend's house. It was complete fluke. Holy crap.

The fuse went up, nothing happened, everyone got quiet, then the firework exploded, but not in a pretty way. And the fuse, which was on fire, traveled through the air, curved around, hit my sunglasses and went down my shirt Geez and we went to like three ERs everything was closed and it was at the time. I was a travel blogger I just gotten back from living with a firewalker tribe in Fiji Whoa, and I was like really still processing and acclimating from that experience And I had all these safaris and trips planned for the fall everything had to stop Fun fact the chest is the slowest healing part of the body.

I didn't know that. Doctors didn't know what my healing was. Because there's no, it's all like bone, right? Yeah, it's the type of skin. Like your face heals the fastest, your chest heals the slowest, it's really fascinating. So they didn't know what I'd look like, or they didn't know if I'd heal normally,

and of course, like as a female, that leads you to a lot of questions about femininity and beauty. And about six months into the healing process, I was just so tired of feeling sorry for myself. And I needed to do something to get out of my own self-pity. And in my blog, my travel blog, I talked a lot about getting uncomfortable through travel or just finding something uncomfortable and finding a way to make it comfortable as a way to find self

growth. So I wasn't gonna be traveling. So at the time, nothing sounded more terrifying than being on stage in a bikini and having someone judge you based upon your appearance. So I went in thinking this will be a great blog post, I know nothing about pageantry, and I was really surprised by the caliber of women, how smart everyone was, how they all wanted to use the platform and the microphone.

They all had a purpose and a reason, and that was really beautiful to see. And then I answered my onstage question. I thought it was like a total loss at that point. What was the question? Well here's the funny story is the the first couple questions were total softball. It was like for the other other top five girls which was like what who's your favorite first lady and why? Should we drug test athletes in high school? I'm like great. They're gonna ask me a favorite color like this is gonna be so easy And then I think they asked me something about like invading Iraq what I was like I'm sorry

Can you repeat the I'm just like I was trying to put it together and I Yeah, it's like it is gracily free bush this. And I was really surprised when I won and it was a beautiful, beautiful experience. I ended up working with the Byrne Foundation, the Byrne Institute, Camp Beyond the Scars here at a Southern Nevada Byrne Institute and Camp Beyond the Scars is actually

out of Southern California. And they help children who are Byrne survivors to be able to feel like kids again, go to camp and not be gawked at, not looked at funny and just have a beautiful experience. So the Southern Nevada Firefighters and their Burn Foundation sends children and firefighters every year to burn camp. Only firefighters and burn unit nurses are camp counselors, which is beautiful.

And it was a phenomenal experience to be able to use that platform to say you don't have to be flawless to feel beautiful. A year to the day that I was burned, I was competing in nationals and swimsuit preliminaries. Crazy, so you still had the burn on you when you were? Yeah, I mean I was very lucky that the scarring was, I mean it could have been a lot worse, right?

And I met a lot of burn survivors who had had a lot worse. I was very, very lucky. Wow. But yes, I still had scars, and it was a really full circle moment to get back on stage and not allow that to be something that hindered me. Beautiful. What a story. I will say, I think the most interesting thing about the year was that I would often get

approached by people and say, you don't look like I'm Miss Nevada. And I found that so confronting at first. Because it's like, okay, I get it. I'm not a Maxim model. But like, really, like you first, you need to say this to me. Or they would try to give me some sort of question that they thought might thrill me because I had that Sashen crown on, and then I'd give them a really coherent answer. It was great, because we were able to build rapport.

But I loved being able to tell people, great, I'm so glad that I'm able to break the stereotype over what you think a beauty queen is. And I was very proud of the fact that The year after my rain we tripled our number of entries. We had lawyers. We have publicists We have business owners again Just really showcasing that smart women can use this as an opportunity To to grow in their business and their life and to give back to their community

I think I did like 300 or 400 appearances And I still have ties to all those community organizations today. Incredible. I'm still the burn ambassador for the 7th Battle Firefighters. Nice. Yeah, you and Lisa are both really bright, intelligent.

I'm glad you guys are changing that narrative because when you think of beauty pageant winners, like dumb blonde girl, that's like the typical thought. Totally. And I love being a part of that change. And I think that's why, even with comments, hater comments on the internet, I use it as an opportunity if I'm in the mood to, right,

to just like, oh, hey, let me show you how this can look different than your perception, right? Or like, let me just ask questions. And I think even through that, when you see that whatever someone is saying to you is just a reflection of their own view of the world and actually has nothing to do with you, life becomes a lot more manageable. And so I think just

being able to stay in your lane, like I know that I'm smart and I know Lisa's very smart, and we're savvy businesswomen and we're ambitious and we're gonna attract other women that see that. And there's always gonna be people that are gonna think otherwise, but it's really fun to be able to mix it up and showcase a different narrative. Yeah, reminds me of Cody Sanchez too. Oh yeah she's wonderful I just saw her at the Sean Cannell event. Oh nice. Yeah she's wonderful. She had actually talked about on on stage how she just recently started wearing more makeup and I don't want to butcher this but how she recognized like certain

things were important to reach different demographics and how do you leverage that? Yeah, she's super, super wonderful. I want to hear more about these tribes. So part of where I want to take this show, because I'm constantly thinking of ways to be different. Love it. Because you got to evolve as a podcast host,

is I want to start going to tribes and communities that never got their voice out and interview some of the members for a podcast. Yeah. Yeah, the Fire Walkers. So they claim to be the originators of the practice of walking members for a podcast. Yeah, yeah, the Fire Walkers. So they claim to be the originators of the practice of walking on hot coals. So Tony Robbins learned fire walking from them. And they're a really interesting community

because you cannot get there. They live on this island called Daki Banga. So Banga is the main, or Suva, the main capital. And so to order to get to Daki Banga, it's a three hour boat ride. And it's fascinating because you can see the island from Subha and the boats go so slow, it's really an interesting journey.

You get seasick? No, actually I was very grateful for that. But you're not allowed to go to the tribe unless you're invited by the elders. So it was a really special experience to go out there. And my first night there they had a Kaaba ceremony. So anytime you as a guest would go into a new village they would hold a ceremony. And essentially the ceremony was for you to ask the village elders and the tribe to accept you there and to essentially put out a

prayer to all of the spirits and ancestors to protect you and also also welcome you in. And it was such a beautiful experience. And I remember sitting next to one of the teachers of the school, and they had the largest school on the island, and all of the children would come in by boat, stay there during the weekend, and go home on the weekend. I remember asking him what what is one thing that you would love to have here in the school? And he's like, well, we don't have a computer or a printer. So anytime I have to make tests, he has to take the three hour boat ride to the mainland to type up a test and print it out. He has a copy machine. And then he will come back, take the three hour, but right back to make copies

of his test or his materials. Yeah, it's just the things that we take for granted, right? And being in the place that we have their generators are only on for a couple hours each night. But really beautiful, beautiful people, happy people, and they just really understand a lot about the meaning of life, I think. I love that.

Yeah, I think it's important to interview people like that and give them a platform. What inspired you to want to do that? I have a spiritual advisor. Really? Say more about that. Yeah, she's just a former guest that I really bonded with and was going through some difficult times, so needed some guidance spiritually. But she told me I need to start experiencing other cultures and getting their messages out and documenting it. But she told me I need to start experiencing other cultures and getting their messages out

documenting it So next year gonna start traveling internationally going to tribes and like the jungle and all these all these interesting. Yeah Locations. Yeah Yeah, it's gonna be cool any other travel that stood out to you from when you were a travel influencer Oh, man, I mean, I think each trip had a spiritual or special significance. I think I ate my way through Paris How could you how could you not? Australia was really beautiful I went diving in the Great Barrier Reef Wow what I loved most about travel and still is one of the things that I love About it today It's one of the easiest ways for me to get out of my microcosm thinking right especially if life

starts to feel really narrow or small or I find myself getting lost in a very narrow perspective just by picking up and moving locations or even getting a 30,000 foot view from a plane just puts a different mental perspective on things. 100%. And what I love about traveling to places like Fiji is you get to feel really grateful for the life that you have and also see how other people live and it just opens your worldview and your perspective up in such a way that allows you to live really in gratitude. And I love being able to connect with people from different backgrounds too.

Yeah. The smile is one of the most universal languages, I think, that's out there. 100%. I just had this guy on yesterday, Gurudev. Oh, yeah. Have you heard of him? Yeah.

He brings people from all over the world into one conference. I think that's powerful. Yeah, he had a million him? He brings people from all over the world into one conference. I think that's powerful Yeah, he had a million people at his last one. I think there's just there's so much power and bringing different perspectives and being able to hear it I mean you do that really well on this show as well Yeah, I try to and that's the problem with a lot of shows actually they get so locked into one category or one type of person Yeah, one persona and they don't talk to other people You know and then they're in a bubble. Have you had, what's been your most interesting conversation?

Rememberable, would you say? The ones that stood out to me are the spiritual ones, actually, which is a surprising answer coming from a business background. But Mateus de Stefano, Robert Edward Grant, Billy Carson, those three, I'd say. Did you have a biggest takeaway that you've integrated into your life? Each

one yeah honestly every episode every guest I pick up something and incorporate in my life. I'm sure. Yeah so that's a great thing with podcasting but like I was honestly atheist before the show. Really? Yeah no religion or anything and it's totally shifted. So what would you say you believe now if you don't mind sharing? Yeah I don't tie myself to any religion but definitely like a god or higher power of some sort and I do believe in past lives and reincarnation. Have you have you remembered any of your own past lives? Not really remembering them through images but

I've had past life therapy done on me. Oh wow. And I've released some dramas. That's cool. Yeah have you done stuff like that? I haven't before, but it sounds really interesting. Yeah, I can introduce you to some people out here. Sure, yeah. I love how open you are. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. That's a rare thing to have.

Oh, thank you. You know, again, I think it comes from just when you have such a varied background and you see that there's not just one path to get anywhere. I'm a big seeker of knowledge and it sounds like you are too, right? And so I think the more that you can be open and then filter through what works for you and I think that's how you really find and reach enlightenment as it were.

Love it. Hillary, any closing messages for the audience? Yeah, you know, at Attention Ears we just see personal brands and entrepreneurs all the time that are struggling with short-form content, struggling to get their message out to their audiences. So one of the things that we put together is a free viral video blueprint, which is composed of three areas where we see creators get stuck the most. The first one is our hook handbook,

which is gonna give you 40 tried and true hooks that you can use on your content right away to increase your views. We've got chat GPT prompts that are also tried and true. We have a viral video AI script writer that we've personally trained in all of our systems, but this is the next best thing outside of that that's gonna help you to start making scripting

better content. And then we have our workflow template, which is gonna show you where you're getting stuck with the creation process. So people can go to attentioneers.com forward slash John. And again, we'll talk to you in the viral video. Boom, we'll link below. Thanks so much for coming on, that was fun. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for watching guys.