Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - From Nobody to Netflix: The Genius Marketer Behind the Liver King

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Marketing genius John Hyland takes center stage in our latest episode, where he reveals the secrets behind his strategic prowess in building influential brands. Known for steering talents like the Liver King into the spotlight, John shares his remarkable journey from a quiet beach town in Florida to becoming a powerhouse in talent management and marketing. His stealthy approach to brand success is illuminated as he recounts his serendipitous entry into our podcast, sparked by a casual Netflix binge that turned into an unexpected Vegas meet-up. Listen as John elaborates on his philosophy of staying behind the scenes, crafting success stories for others rather than seeking the limelight himself.   We dive into the nuts and bolts of John's methods, from launching massive events like Build-A-Beast to distilling core branding principles that stand the test of time. His philosophy, encapsulated in the MAX approach—Measurable, Actionable, and Extraordinary—serves as a blueprint for cutting through today's media noise. John’s unique insights into personal branding strategies prove invaluable, offering a fresh perspective on how to maintain a strategic edge in an ever-evolving industry. With over 200 influencers and athletes under his management, John's wisdom on capturing attention and creating compelling narratives is a masterclass in modern marketing. Join us for an enlightening conversation that promises to redefine how you perceive the art of brand building.   CHAPTERS    (00:00) - Escape the Drift With Special Guest (02:47) - Marketing and Brand Building Strategies (10:51) - Personal Branding Strategies and Philosophy   💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #escapingthedrift #johnhyland #marketing #brandbuilding #johnhyland #strategicprowess #influentialbrands #talentmanagement #netflix #vegas #personalbranding #maxapproach #measurable #actionable #extraordinary #cuttingthroughnoise #medialandscapes #personalbrandingstrategies #compellingmessage #clearcommunicationstrategy #liverking #ancestraltenets #xfactor #strategicedge

I haven't been able to identify, but he has a very, very interesting way of weaving in really big words, complex things, but making it simple. Like, oh my gosh, I just understood. I've never heard that word before. But I know what it means. But I know what it means and I know what he meant. And Jordan Peterson has done an incredible job. And now Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you

want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again. We found the episode of Like It Says in the Opening Man, the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today, man, talk about serendipity. I'm going to start with a little story today.

So the other day, me and the wife are flipping around through the old channels. I'm trying to figure out what to watch. And what do we see on the on the old Netflix? We see the Liver King documentary. And if you don't remember who that is, that's that lunatic dude that was all jacked up, it was like jumping in cold water and eating animals alive or whatever he was doing and had a good, you know, everybody know who this dude was.

He went from nobody to everybody in like two seconds. And we're watching the documentary about his rise and fall, whatever it was. And, you know, it's like 30 minutes into it. And I'm, you know, I'm watching it, but I'm not super minutes into it and I'm you know I'm watching it but I'm not super vested in it because I'm like okay this is kind of whatever but you know I'm not super vested in the program and then all of a sudden this dude pops on the screen and this guy says I remember exactly what he said he goes so he came to us and he said he wanted a million followers and

we said okay we can make that happen and And I was like, okay, wait a second. Who's that guy? Who's this dude? It's talking about you want a million followers that are highly engaged. I can make that happen. I'm like, this is for me. It's like, I don't just look at the dancing chimps on the stage. I want to see the man behind the curtain. I want to see the wizard of us. I want to see the guy pulling the curtain. I want to see the wizard of us. I want to see the guy pulling the strings, making things happen. So I start Googling this cat and my wife sees me pick up my phone and she's like, are you bored?

We turn this off because she wasn't that into it. I was like, no, no, no, no. I'm just looking up this dude because this dude's obviously got something. And I Google him and I'd read, do some research. I'm like, cool. I'm like, I need to talk to this guy at some point. The very next morning, I get a text message from somebody that knows this guy that was on the screen

and said, hey, are you recording a podcast on Tuesday by chance, because this guy's gonna be in Vegas and wants to be in your podcast. I was like, I'm in. I told that story about, I told the guy the story that I just told you, and I said, I'm in. So ladies and gentlemen, we are very lucky Welcome to the program the Wizard of Oz behind the liver King King. This

Is the brains it the one DS collective. This is John Hyland John. What's up, man? Thank you, man What an intro thanks for joining us. Why I gotta tell a story man. I've got to sink them in You gotta grab the attention. Yeah, you know, the doc is funny. I got to see my parts. I think it morphed to when I got to see the cut, but it was very, very interesting to see how this stuff unfolded. I've been getting texts from all over the place saying,

holy hell, the same response you've had. It's been a wild week. So let's talk, I don't want to talk just specifically about liver king, but obviously there's some magic there. So is this, he came to you and said, I want a million followers, or I want a million engaged followers.

Not just BS where you'd buy the bots from China. He wanted real engagement, right? And that's something that you guys obviously do, because you made it happen for him, and he's proved positive that he can be done. So how do you get into that? Let's go back a little bit before we start talking. Let's talk about John Hyland.

What did you grow up doing? What did you, like, how did you get into this? Yeah, I think, you know, I, a serial entrepreneur, you know, grew up in Florida, as we were talking before. God bless. Yeah, and, you know, small beach town, wanted to get out. My grandparents, parents, all very business savvy and I was saying, you know,

I need to get out of sleepy beach town. This is where I'm gonna retire. I moved to New York, pursued some different things there, had fun for a few years. And then I had an opportunity to come to LA and put together a deal to create the Millennial Tony Robbins Self-Help Program. So what we were going to do is myself and partner at the time, we co-wrote an audio book and wanted to get in front of young people in live event setting and talk about goal setting, state management, and just like, you know, chasing

your dreams. And so that morphed and I was managing talent throughout all of this. And there was a talent that my partner was working with at the time that, you know, wanted to expand his brand. He's like, how do I, I've always been very, you know, deep thinking about how can we monetize and maximize these, whatever the opportunity is. And he came to me and I said, you know, let's build a, he goes, I have, you know, a bunch of people coming to LA

to audition for my company every year. How do I monetize this? So here's the interesting thing about that, because a lot of people have, cause dude, if you haven't seen him, John's a good looking dude. And a lot of people with that thought process would think, how can I get on stage?

How can I be the guy out front? But you, did you guys always kind of think, we're gonna look at this kind of almost from a record label standpoint, where we go find talent and then we are, we're the machine behind the talent. Did you always think that way? Well, yeah, I think I never wanted to be in front. And even with the audio book program,

my partner, he's a very, very smart guy, my ex-partner, and he's still doing amazing in life. He was a student of Tony Robbins as well, and he wanted to be out there, like evangelizing about philosophy of self-help and how to unlock a better version of yourself. And I was cool with that. I'm like, you go do it. I'm going to sit back. I'll strategize and do what I do. But yeah, I've never, I've never thought, you know, I had, I had an opportunity. We, we, you know, from him coming to me saying what we could do with the brand,

we created the largest event in the commercial dance space called Build-A-Beast, it was huge. Got dubbed the Coachella of Dance, 10,000 people from around the world came to the first event and like professional dance learning for the best choreographers in the world. And we capped it off with an audition to become part of the dance company, which is the biggest dance company on YouTube,

pioneered the whole dance video space, you see dances like online, the viral choreography stuff and built a whole business around that. But like I got asked to come on stage at a couple instances in front of these people. And I never had a problem speaking, but I was like, no, glory, I'll just stay back here, do what I do.

I can live a quiet life and help people achieve their dreams and hopefully change the world for the better. But what's also good about that is, you know, everybody has an arc. Yeah. You know, you have a peak and then you have a valid, and then you maybe drift off, right? It's the same, but you, because you're the guy behind the guy, you just replicate the same systems for the next person and the next person and the next person. So, you know,

regardless of what happens with taste or trends or appetites for certain individuals, you can always maintain and stay solvent just by finding the next person. Well, of course, and mediums change, right? Materials change, but I think at the end of the day, yeah, tried and true. Marketing is getting attention, right?

One of the best books ever written, breakthrough advertising. And the same exact philosophies that were introduced back when copy was it, how do I, people flipping through a newspaper. Copy. Copywriters are the most valuable part in marketing. They still are today. Who's your favorite copywriter? Well, I mean, breakthrough advertising news paper. Copywriters are the most valuable part in marketing. They still are today.

Who's your favorite copywriter? Well, I mean, you know, breakthrough advertising amazing. We have a couple of really good copywriters at One DS. And I don't, I think following, following how people get attention with words is amazing. And I think watching that transform like YouTube, we were able to all have a broadcast channel, change things. Yeah.

How do you get attention? Same thing. It's the same structure in like psychology behind all of that. And so I think fast forward, I think, yeah, you know, Liver King, for example, you know, we had to put really polarizing things on screen and get it in front of a lot of people. And we have channels to be able to do that and strategically distribute

content. That's what makes us pretty unique. And, but, but I mean, it comes down to the same thing. You have to have something that people are interested in. You have to present it in a compelling way and you have to find a way to keep them around. And, you know, I think it's, it's, it's the same thing. It's just how do you, how do you package it up? And, you know, I think it's, it's, it's the same thing. It's just, how do you, how do you package it up? And, and everybody's unique with dance, with the example I gave you, you know, everybody had this, aspired to be part of this dance group is the best dance group in the world, like from a credit standpoint. But, but you know, and,

and people traveled around and we created an experience out of it. And then we sold, and then we created a media company from that. And then we created a studio where we shot and did around and we created an experience out of it. And then we created a media company from that. And then we created a studio where we shot, did classes and we created a clothing line and monetized that. And it's all the same stuff. How do you make something, whether it's a piece of clothing, a ticket to an event

or a person like a liver king, interesting in a very simple way and then tell, interesting in a very simple way. And then, you know, tell that story in a really compelling way. So do you think that, obviously that guy's a cartoon character, obviously, obviously, right? Like he walks the door and you're like,

okay, this is gonna be easy. Yeah. How hard is it for you when clients come to you and they say, you know, I wanna get the same kind of results. I wanna do this, but I'm not all jacked up and I'm not jumping an ice bath and wearing an Oak hat or whatever he's wearing.

Like, do you, do you have to have that sort of a thing to catch on like this or is just your content can be delivered in a certain way to make you that way? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that there's a ton of different ways to grab attention. I think, I think obviously when you have a guy with, you know, as jacked as obviously when you have a guy with, is jacked as he is, with a shirt off,

eating crazy food, doing crazy workouts, like he was the real deal. We just needed to package this up and distill it in a really compelling way and then make it go. And then media training and just continually just sharpening the ax. But yeah, I think that building person, a lot of what we do is personal brand stuff.

At 1DS we have a marketing agency side creative that's strategic in this type of liver King thing. Liver King was our first personal brand where we deployed our agency model, which we would do for brands, right? And it worked wildly well. And so now we've attracted some personal brand engagements. And we also have a talent management side that has like,

I think roughly a little over 200 influencers and athletes under management. And we do some light strategy work with them, too. But that's more of a traditional talent management thing. And I think around the personal brand thing, I think. You have to have an engaging and compelling message. We start everything with a strategy, communication strategy, right? Branding, branding is everything.

And then, but simplicity and branding. And you know, the nine ancestral tenants for Liver King was very complex. Like I remember and list all the nine in a row, but like all people cared about were a few of them, right? And it's like, wait, I can, if I eat better, if I move, and if I sleep good, what? And then you can block and shield and sun and ground

and bond and all this stuff, but no. And then it's like, well, let's digest this because if people are interested in that, they're gonna unpack more. So simplicity is key. And so with a personal brand brand with anybody, unique angle, copycats crazy. Like I think the personal branding space is everyone's trying to take everybody else's message and remix it some way. Yeah. And I think unique, we have something in

that we dubbed it 1DS that I think is really, really helpful. It's for clients as well as our philosophy. It's called MAX, measurable, actionable, and extraordinary. And the extraordinary stands for unique, right? And I think that X factor there is very important in things. I think that, hey, in your business, real estate, right? How does an agent stand out? Well, I mean, you talk about it, integrity, going above and beyond. You might have to buy a refrigerator, as you say, right? Like there's-

Everybody buys a refrigerator once in a while. But you know, and you're getting down to like, what makes you special and being able to communicate that to have people trust you and then continually build upon that message and stand for something. Because at the end of the day, the entire real estate industry, they're just trying to do one thing.

They're trying to get properties moved from one entity to another. And so how do you create that compelling? And I think a lot of people do, it's a unique touches. It's when you get in a Lyft and an Uber and they have water for you and a snack or something. And it's like, you don't have to do this. But it was a good experience. And so we just try with the personal branding side, tying them all back around. How do we create a unique brand story

that we can distill down in a really compelling way and then do some proactive strategy of like, how can we be different? But also how can we ride the trend and what's currently happening in the social media and digital world that we can latch onto because people are searching that,

but also play into a unique go-forward strategy that gets people's attention and is creative. Yeah, I think it's talking about, most talking heads online all sound the same because they're watching each other's content. And I think you absorb it at a visceral level, right? Like I had a, what was it was on here. Oh, somebody great. And I said something in a Ari myself who's great. Ari's amazing.

He, he is the go-to guy on streamlining organization, organization of business. He's the guy he's written great books on it. And I made a comment about something that I do with my, with my email while I was talking to him and he goes, Oh, where'd you get that? And I said, I don't know. You know, maybe I thought it up. Maybe I do this. And he goes, no, you got it from my book. I was like, I was like, you know, sorry, I didn't give you credit for that,

but there is a certain amount of redundancy. But I think a bigger problem to that is you see like, as you're scrolling down social media, I see like all of these ads for, you're going to get our full proof system for, you know, making content and we're going to have our AI pull what's trending and then rewrite the scripts for you. And so it becomes this just hamster wheel of the same shit. You know what I mean?

That just spends. So for you guys, when you're working with, well, listen, not even when you're working with them, if somebody's out there that wants to start making good content, like how do they make it? What do they need to focus on to make good content? I think they need to understand who they are

and what they stand for first and foremost. I think as people, we need to understand that. Escaping the drift. Yeah. But I think once you have that and you're passionate about something, I haven't even stepped up and made content at the level I should. And then I built our entire organization

with my partner around helping people do. I always say I'm like the painter on the street who has the worst painted house. Right? And I'm like, because you don't want to paint when you go home. That's a horrible excuse, but I laugh about it. But no, I think that, you know,

finding your voice, being passionate, because you want to wake up every day, and this isn't easy, this podcast, putting it together with the grind. You're in the what, 200 episodes now or something like that? Yeah, give or take. Yeah, and it's a lot. And so like that's a lot.

One episode a week, that's four years. And now just starting to really understand, it takes time and effort. So I think understanding and being passionate about the content you're making is one thing, but I think going to like the tactical standpoint of like, okay, yes, I'm passionate. I'm gonna show up every day. Yeah, I think, you like the tactical standpoint of like, okay, yes, I'm passionate. I just show up every day.

Yeah, I think, you know, focusing on there's a psychological structure to what content, like if we want to talk short form, because there's different formulas for different mediums of content. I'm so glad, I want to get to that, so keep going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but I mean, you know,

capturing attention and holding it. I mean, I have an eight and a six year old and, and they, you know, thank God that they have, they have some YouTube people that they follow and a couple of clients of ours and stuff that the content's good. And it's not like, you know, crazy in your face, TikTok content all day.

And I'll let them watch 30 minutes of that a day or something like that. I was like, but that's your or something like that most of the night, but that's your client, dad. And I'm like, okay, you can watch it, right? But I think that the attention span is lower. We need to capture attention quicker. It becomes this, we're in an attention economy.

And so I think that you need to find what you're doing, find your core content pillars. I wanna tie it back to the example, because it's an easy one that we can all have reference to. And Liver King, he was working out twice a day and he was eating crazy food every meal. He wasn't eating what we were giving him to eat on screen, but we were like, we can really, really lean into this. And then how do we lean into this?

And then how do we shoot it? And then where do we get it distributed? But like, it was something that was natural and organic. You just need to present it. We needed to present it in a really, really compelling way. And I think that because it takes so long to see success with content and branding from a personal side, I mean, hey, you can have amazing press events happen and you get a little bump, but like consistency in it, it has to be something that you're doing.

It can't be fabricated. It has to be authentic. And as long as that's happening, there's tons of ways to slice and dice a strategy to make it, and content strategy, social strategy, to make it unique, yet still capturing waves of trends. Recent trend right now, this big guy blew up on Instagram and he put in work, Ashthen Hall, get ready with me routines.

Everybody on the internet is dubbing him and parody him. We pour the Saratoga water and the ice thing and shove it in. Right? And like, but that became a viral phenomenon. And so if you would have caught that trend early, you could have done a really compelling video just trend jacking that

and seeing view just from people looking and recognizing that set up in a video. Yeah, but doesn't that dilute your authenticity? Like dreadfully? But that is a part of the strategy. Okay. Because I think that now obviously, hey, you're gonna have a professional business person

not dumping their head into, for fitness and other entertainment, looking for content ideas, riding these trends strategically is a part of the strategy. But I think it's- So for long-term success, you have to do part of that. Well, I mean, it's not stealing somebody else's idea, but it's like, what are people interested in

and what is currently getting attention? It's the same thing. Now, how do you, like, if we want to take an escaping the drift analogy, right? You could be talking about, you know, how people are wavering and paralysis by analysis and all of this stuff, but you have to bring it into current two day, you know, situations

and things we're dealing with to be able to make it relatable. I think, I think the same thing happens on social. The way that we can tell a story and the way we can capture attention is how do we hook them in the first three seconds? Well, let's give them something they recognize. Let's give them something they're used to.

And then we can take them on our own journey. But the most important, the craziest part of it is getting their attention. I guess we do that to a certain extent here because I've already told my staff, if you're listening to this right now, this got recorded a couple hours ago. This is going up today.

I love it. Yeah, because the documentary just came out. We've got to go today because that's what people have eyeballs on. So I'd rather be right now. Yeah. I'm not putting you in the stack for four weeks from now because who knows how bad documentary is going to age.

We're going today. Yeah. And you said your philosophy is something interesting. Paralysis by analysis, right? And just like, just move, right? Fail forward. I think a lot of people, myself paralysis by analysis, right? And just like, just move, right? Fail forward. I think a lot of people, myself included at times, I think, you know, social world is a scary world.

You're gonna be putting content out there, something you might not be comfortable doing. Yeah. We say, hey, no one sees it, right? I have like 2000 followers or something. Yeah. No one sees my content. And if I wanted to test something, I could test it

and I could take it down and I could retest it. And I could post it 10 times with different hooks and I could just go and just go and go and just get out there and do it. Because I think that on top of just, you know, having a good strategy, I could write you the best script or somebody, never been on such the best script in the world,

and have the best strategy. If it doesn't get delivered authentically and somebody can actually look like natural, then it's not gonna work. So then it's not that that script didn't work. There are multiple components that come into this. So how do we round this thing out and work on all of the components

so that like, just get reps in? So when we sign a client, we say, hey, we want you, we're gonna send you content ideas, we're gonna send you scripts, you're gonna send us scripts, you're just gonna start shooting in front of content and send it to the team. And we barely even watch it.

We will have some of our strategists watch it to give them feedback. We just need to get them to send a video consistently to us every day so that they can see themselves on camera, they can listen to how they talk, they can shut their eyes, listen to themselves, they can shut eyes and ears

and read their words in a script and go through all of the steps to say, how do I look, how do I sound, what am I saying? And then how do we hone that in so that when we actually come out with a strategy and we actually come out and start pushing, it's packaged. I think people don't understand how difficult that is for people that have

never done it. Uh, you know, some of my great friends are the guys that are V shred and Vin Saint who is everywhere online. Now you, you know, I asked my, you ask him, what's the heart, what was the hardest part in the early days of building V shred once you got traction and Nick will say, dude, I would sit there with them with our VSL copy and he would read it and I'd say again And he'd read it and I'd say again again again till he was just blue in the face because he goes it wasn't good He goes now the dude is amazing

But when we first started getting him over that hump took so much work But people see him come rolling down like hey, it's been from V shred and it's like he's just such a natural at it Well, no that that's a skill that's learned. Yeah, it's been from V shred and it's like, he's just such a natural at it. Well, no, that that's a skill that's learned. Yeah. Earn that skill through reps. It's crazy. And, and, you know, I think, I think that's why I think the biggest thing coming off the top of the head, be able to format.

So authentic authenticity, that's where it comes from. It's the same thing with public speaking, right? You get up on a stage, you talk about something, you know, inside and out. Most of the time, I remember in college, we had to get up and in high school, whatever public speaking, when you're taking and learning how to put together a presentation, nine times out of 10, those things are, you're talking about something you're not passionate about. So I, I remember when I was in college, I talked about counting cards.

I was passionate about that. I was like, Hey, I, I'm going to teach the class that he does that here in Las Vegas, MGM executives that may be listening. Not happen, does not happen. It was how he wishes he could count cards, not counts cards. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But no, I got up and I was passionate about it.

Didn't matter, like fears go away. You're passionate about something, you could talk. Now, okay, so I'm passionate about something I can talk. Then once you're comfortable talking, then let's work on the formatting. Then let's, so you can, so like speaking a second nature about the topic, now I can think about,

wait, I could have said that better to capture someone's attention better in the first few seconds. I could have built the story arc a little differently. Let me go back here, let me tease it, and let me come back to this because I know that I need to keep them till the end where the payoff or call to action is,

and I need to keep them that long. And it is an iterative and generative process, and it takes time. And I think like, you know, people will see a success story or any success story and say, I want that. And like a million followers. And I'm like, the amount of dedication and time in, the resources that takes to get there.

It's wild. Well, and it can happen. It can happen for anybody, but it's an absolute commitment. And, you know, I think people that are committed to any craft can do it. and there's a science to success. There's a science and an art to it. I think that was one of the weirdest things that I think he said in that documentary

when he's like, I'll take a hundred takes for a story. I'm like, bro. I mean, I'm pretty good at this, but dude, a hundred takes, I mean, are you that bad at this? Well, I mean, you can go back and look. I don't know what's up on it anymore, but we would often go back. We launched, I remember this,

because it was either the day before or day after my birthday. My birthday is August 17th. And we didn't launch his Instagram or his socials. We launched TikTok before we launched Instagram. And he didn't even know about TikTok. We built TikTok to a million followers before he even knew it had a TikTok. And we just said, hey, and we just said, oh, by the way, we built TikTok to a million followers before we even knew we had a TikTok. And we just said, hey, and we just said,

oh, by the way, we built your TikTok up. But I think we launched it either the 16th or the 18th in February to the day we got a million followers on Instagram. That didn't count all the other platforms. That was the goal. A million followers on Instagram in six or seven months. We did it in four or five, I think, to the day.

But like in the very beginning, you can go back to the early videos and he was horrible on camera. Like very uncomfortable. Yeah. I don't know what to do with my hands. Yeah, yeah, like doing it. But hey, he got up every day and said,

"'Good morning, primals.'" I put my feet on the earth and I stay anchored, grounded to the earth. And he had the got up every day and said, good morning primals. I put my feet on the earth and I stay anchored, grounded to the earth. And he had the same thing every day. People knew what to wake up to. He had a motivating message and he was changing lives. And showing up every day.

It has anything in life. It is so, it's the same thing. People think there's some secret formula to success or social. It's the same thing that needs success in every other realm of our life. Show up. You gotta show up every day.

Every day. And you're gonna get 1% 1Ds for one degree shift. That is the absolute ethos of everything we do. Because one degree shift over time equals a great disparity. Sure. And I think that we try to just get incrementally better every single day.

And when we look back, major improvements, efficiencies, effectiveness, and all of this stuff has happened to me. We work that into our strategy. Test often, go hard, and commit to it, and it's successful. So do you think most of the good content out there is scripted versus just off the cuff? How much of it's scripted?

I mean, if you really wanna do good at this, do well, do good. If you wanna do well at this, how much preparation, should you be scripting everything? Should you be running this through a chat, should it be T to try to say, is this got a good hook on it? I mean, what should you be doing if you're the-

I mean, I could ask you right now how to start a real estate company. How to start a title company, how to start a loan company. You can say like, where do we start? I could give you the floor for two hours and you just go. Then you think like, wait a second, I have somebody that's never been involved with real estate before.

I need to go back and say, wait a second, I could have talked about and formatted this story a little better so I could, it's influence, right? And so it's like, wait a second, I need to be able to frame, reframe, revisit, introduce things, touch on them, build a backstory. It's the entire thing of like, if you were to put a speech together to a huge 10,000 person audience on building a brokerage,

you understand what is the audience thinking about this thing. I think I use these examples because I think it matters, because I think that it's not one size fits all. Somebody very educated on something might just need help formatting and making it compelling. Might be changing the background. Might be, you know, they wear horrible clothes that they've had for 20 years, and they look like a ragamuffin on screen, right?

Like, how do we, but look at all of it and say, like, we are presenting something. Now, there's different branding and different things, and we are presenting something. Now there's different branding, different things. And we're presenting something to the world that has to be, I say holistic, like W-H-O-L. And it all needs to be tied together. Yeah, it needs to be tied together and buttoned up. So when you say script, like somebody could rip,

I could ask somebody's not passionate about it. Yeah. Or if they're super skittling, yes, we'll write you a script. Let's read off a script. Try not to read off a script. You know, try to like say, hey, I know enough about this, I've studied enough. And I think that's another thing, you know,

put time and effort into like studying your craft. Yeah. Right, because if you're looking at a script for the first time, it's showing up, you're gonna need a script to read off of. But if you've read it a hundred times, you need talking points. And that's the key words.

It's the same with like, if you're making it 100 times, you need talking points. And that's the key words. What's the, it's the same with like, if you're, if you're making calls, right, in the, in the sales industry, if you're reading a script, it's painfully obvious. You're reading a script. You're not getting anywhere. Yeah. And so it's like talking points, right? And then, you know, be like, anchorman, right? But, but no, I think, I think that with everything, it's, it just takes time. I think if, if you don't know what to say and when that camera turns on, you freeze. Then yeah, write a script, ease into it.

You'll probably record 50, 100 pieces of content before you ever post anything. And it's just like, but go until you get a cadence and test it. I think as someone that has tried and failed personally, and I'll admit that, you know, we do very well in the podcast space. Our YouTube sucks.

It just does. Just, I don't know why. Just, it just does. Probably because it just doesn't have enough effort leaning into it. I've never been able to crack TikTok. I just cannot figure that thing out at all. So we just barely do anything.

I just, we're posting the same thing. What, let's go through each media channel and how you become omnipresent. Cause you guys are good at being omnipresent everywhere. So I just want to talk about in your opinion, obviously, we don't have to go too deep in it, but I just want to get like what works for each channel. If I'm out there trying to make content for each channel, let's just do the basics.

We'll do Tik TOK. We'll do Instagram. We'll do X. And then we'll do YouTube. YouTube. What works for each one? Well, I mean, I think, I think... And can you recycle the content over? Well, yeah, the biggest thing is to ask, like, where are people viewing this, right? Like, because I would imagine Instagram, like most, X, Instagram, TikTok, are all viewed

when you have 20 minute break at work or when you want to escape. So that needs to be entertaining, edutainment, right? Like how can you just, how can you create something that can't be dense, it has to be entertaining because somebody sitting somewhere that got their lunch break, sitting eating their lunch and they're scrolling, they want to stop

and they want to laugh and're scrolling. They wanna stop and they wanna laugh and escape. Typically, right? And then it's like, okay, well, then I'll actually have a little bit more honed in, niches where a lot of crypto communities on there, finance and business, and like you have all of this stuff where there's really, really engaging conversation.

Wasn't very video-centric. Obviously now they're introducing video in a major way. And well, they have been for a while, but really focusing on it. And then TikTok was a younger platform, right? That was Bitdance and that was Musically before it was TikTok. And that was just, you know, having songs and dancers.

We work with Musically early days because we had dance stuff, launch songs for record labels on Musically. But I think it matters that. So, you know, somebody has a, you have to make it entertaining, light and engaging. And that's where the magic of the strategy comes in. Because I think that, you know, though it is scientific that there are structures to content that works, there's ways of viewing things, there's ways of presenting things, there's a way of shooting things, there's ways of editing things. There's a bunch of just technical knowledge and best practices.

There's also a magic of understanding what do we have here? It's like looking at a kitchen table of a bunch of ingredients and saying, I can make plenty of different dishes here, but I know, hey, these people haven't eaten all day, I'm making pasta for them. Or I don't know what it is. But you know what I mean? And in understanding the different audiences

and the different platforms and saying, so YouTube, for instance, a lot more long form, where I believe you can go deep on things, but it still has to be engaging. And I think that people, if they're gonna open up YouTube to consume content, they plan on or intend to sit there for a little while. We watch YouTube on our TV, right?

And I think you're not pulling up TikTok or Instagram on TV. So I think that that lends itself to more, but the same capture attention, create intrigue still happens. The whole thing podcast is a very, very laid back atmosphere where you can open it in any way shape or form. If you're, you have a good platform, you have a good, a good, a good guest and you have something compelling to talk about. They're what they're listening to it in the car for an hour drive.

Right? You know, it's funny, man. When I first got into this, you know, and I did research and I got to meet some guys that were very good in the space, like really good in the space. And they all kind of said the same thing. They said, it's very difficult to move people from podcasts to the other mediums

because they're just podcasts. People are podcast people. And they don't necessarily want to do that. Now, I don't know how much of that is still true today because I think people are consuming things over all, over every medium, but it just, it's always been a little bit of a challenge. Now, my next question is this, cause this is some,

we're going to get into some stuff that I wrestle with in this space. And I'm curious what you think about it. So what says you as a guy that is, is the guy behind the guy that gets millions of views and captures so much attention and 30-second increments Do you think? Do you wrestle at all with the morality of the potential damage for doing to the attention span of kids we talked about? And do you think you are contributing in some way to the dumbing down of America?

Because I wrestle with this shit. Yeah. Yeah, it's an amazing question. Yeah, I think it's interesting, right? Because marketing is that in itself, right? And we are a marketing entity in the ecosystem, mostly. And yeah, I think as attention spans lesson, and which one came first, right? Car and horses, right? Who knows?

But I've thought about that a lot. I'd probably lose a lot more sleep if I thought about it. And then the way you're making me think about that. You're not sleeping tonight. No, but I think, you know what the biggest thing for me is, is that integrity. And you know what the biggest thing for me is, is that integrity. There's a difference between manipulation and influence. I think that in the early days of the liver king message

and what he really, really stood for, and was very empowering, and that's why we got behind it. To answer like me, do I, I don't, we demand to work with people that are doing good and we don't have like relationships or market companies. There's no nonsense. There's no Island Boys running through your,

you're not helping those guys jump around and do things. No nonsense. We'll fire clients like that. Yeah. And because, and that's essentially what happens over a long term and never very, very grateful and anybody that trusts us and clients and stuff, but there's a certain line where I say,

hey, no, so I don't feel that because I'm not, we're not pushing things that are bad for people. Now, how we get their attention could be a topic of your conversation of like, you're attributing to the attention span of our young people. And I get that. I think, you know, the platforms in which,

and I'm doing a really, really good job of messing our kids up, if you could say that, of the way they present things, the way you scroll, infinite, like insatiable appetites for content. Yeah, a lot of the streaming partners, like Netflix, where insatiable appetites for content. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of the streaming partners like Netflix, where you watch the doc and all this, they can't acquire content enough because people just have a ravenous appetite for it.

And so I think that, you know, people want to consume content. I think with the amount of clients we have, we're mainly in health and wellness, mainly. We work in some other verticals, I think with the amount of clients we have, we're mainly in health and wellness, mainly. We work in some other verticals, have had experience of real estate and some partners of mine and some different things. But I think essentially, I think if I'm, I will team up 1DS, our group will team up

with people who are doing well. Well, I think there's hope for the space, right? Cause you look at guys, cause you think, that's kind of what I wrestle with. It's like, dude, I'm trying to put this content out that helps people, but it's not me jumping around, you know, with a tiger in here. It's just it's not that right. So how do you make it engaging where you can still get the message across?

And you see people like like Jordan Peterson that I've had no problem capturing a tremendous amount of quick, you know, quick, whether you agree with this politics or not, the dude's really smart and makes a lot of great points and is engaging through his content in a way that I think inspires other smart people to try to follow in that footsteps. So Jordan Peterson, did you listen to his Rogan? No, not the recent one. He's, he's, he's very intriguing. Jordan Peterson does a really, really good job

of taking things that all of us are going through and talking about it. You trust him. He's built that trust. And he says it, he has, I haven't, now that you say it, I haven't been able to identify, but he has a, he has a very, very interesting way of weaving in really big words, complex things,

but making it simple, like, oh my gosh, I just understood, I've never heard that word before. But I know what it means. But I know what it means and I know what he meant. And Jordan Peterson has done an incredible job. Credentials, he's being authentic, he's counselor and psychologist for a very long time, still maybe is practicing.

And he did a really good job of distilling this and talking to things that people were going through every day and giving really sound psychology advice to people going through relationship issues and issues in life, mental health issues. And so he caught on because it resonated and related to a lot of people. And he took what is typically a complex,

he was teaching psychology at Harvard. I mean, like, you're not talking about like, husband and wife getting in a fight, talking about, you know, deep stuff and the science behind it, but he's done a really, really good job of putting stuff, a lot of influencers and the same thing. Leaders in their space, they found a really, really good way

to simplify the brand and, you know, their space, they found a really, really good way to simplify the brand and give people what they're searching for. Well, let's talk about the flip side of that coin, which is the, now what I've seen, and I think there's a lot of blowback coming to it now, but the entrepreneur bro is what I like to call him, and friends with some of these dudes, I get it, whatever, but you're starting to see some of these guys.

Like for example, there's a dude, Jeremiah Bull Evans, that just got sentenced to nine years in prison for a massive Ponzi scheme for his embezzlement thing for real estate. And you're seeing these guys, social media made them huge. And then there's these, invest with me, coaching program stuff that would not a lot of substance behind them.

So the eyes go wide for John, if you're not watching this. So my first question is, like as somebody that puts out and we're in charge of so much content, obviously you guys don't deal with stuff like this because you just talked about the level of integrity you have with what you do. But deal with stuff like this because you just talked about the level of integrity you have what you do But how do you like? What's how am I trying to say this like if you're someone that watches a lot of content? How do you not get duped?

Yeah It's a really really good question. I mean what it's like that It's like what every time you watch finance advice as they say do your own research, right? I don't think enough people do that. Yeah, I think people are good at content and they understand the scientific method behind it. And I think they can get attention. And typically people, if they look up to somebody or they see them somewhere,

and they're like, oh my gosh, I saw that. And you saw that. And I, oh my gosh, let me listen to this. Let me buy this. They run you through a funnel. Yeah, they run you through a funnel. And then all of a sudden, you end up giving this person a hundred bucks, a thousand bucks, five thousand bucks,

10,000 bucks, and it's wild. Yeah, there's a ton of that out there. I think there's also a lot of people that have really, really good stuff that don't get the attention. And so, but anyway, to what you said. I know one. No, but to what you said, man, I agree completely. You know, it's tough.

Do your own research. You know, anybody would ever ask me business advice or anything, and I said, just Google it. Like, so many of these scammers, they get caught. And I said, I will, I'll think, I'll read a story or listen to a piece of content and I'll go Google their name. Yeah, it's all out there. Better business bureau, this, lawsuits.

US government versus United States of America versus. And these people are signing a contract, paying somebody, getting buyer's remorse, Googling and seeing it after and then that- Should've Googled before. But you know what I mean? Like, I think that just gotta use our heads. And you know, I am very conscious of what I read, what I watch, because I believe, you know,

what we ingest matters subconsciously. And so- Well, why am I so worried about what they put in their mouth? You need to be far more worried about what you put in your head. Exactly, exactly. My follower list is very curated that I follow, or even newsletters I subscribe to, all of this stuff.

And I don't read fiction, and I just, I don't resonate with it. I like psychology and business. And so, I think that I don't resonate with it. I like psychology and business. And so, you know, I think that I filter that stuff out. I see something very compelling and I do a ton of research and I think people should do the same. Well, and I think also when you're listening to these guys online, like you talked about earlier,

and it's why I do not do the, I guess I have to in some way, but I don't like doing the news kind of viral stuff. Like if somebody talks about a certain topic and it takes off, right? The reason I don't do that is because it's almost like you make a copy of a copy and it's a little worse and you make a copy of that copy and it's a little worse

and a little copy of that copy and all of a sudden you kind of can't read it. And there's so much of this information being disseminated online that doesn't even make any sense by the time this guy has regurgitated it five times down the line, it's just so far-fetched. There's been times when me and my, instead of breathing six breaths,

as John Ashraf would say, taking six before I did it, there's been times when I have called out financial gurus online that wanna prognosticate about the real estate market, where I did it, there's been times when I have called out financial gurus online that want to prognosticate about the real estate market, where I've said, dude, I'll put $10,000 in an escrow account right now, you put $10,000 in and we'll wait six months and see if you're right. And nobody ever wants to take my bet.

Nobody ever wants to bet against me on real estate. We were talking about that this morning. We're building up a tech AI company as well, where we can, you know, solve a bunch of problems for businesses that are marketing and social and content problem like you're talking about. We're building a platform for that. But anyway, we're having a talk about that this morning

with the head of that company. And, you know, even AI and the systems in which we're like, AI is going through the same thing. Garbage in, garbage out, it's now learning itself off of garbage. Yeah. And it's bloated and you know, there's a bunch of, I think it's the same thing.

You have somebody make up a story. I think that what was really, really good, and I think people are, when you say back to scammers and this stuff, I think this last election, not political at all, but the last election from, you know, how different news organizations on both sides everywhere latch onto a story, see the story,

take something out of context, that gets picked up. And then you have all the secondary and third publishers. Have you seen the video with the split screen and it's like all the local news and they're all reading the same story? Well, yeah, yeah. And you see, so you have an article that gets picked up by a major publication or a traditionally trusted

publication, and then you have RSS feeds all over the internet that are now picking that up and feeding it into automated posting on blogs, automated posting on social sites, automated posting everywhere. But then you also have, you know, now with the age of the tools that are at our disposal, let's take a major channel piece of content,

whether it be video or whatever, let's run it through a system, let's rewrite it in our voice, but what you're just saying, we have now just manipulated a shit story in the first place. And all of a sudden you get, you know, what? 10 steps removed from that, it's a completely different story.

The elephant's not blue anymore, it's a pink penguin, right? Like, and it's wild. And I think that that's happening in content. I think that similar to my thing of what we call trend jacking, it's more about a video format and framework than it is like a content idea.

So it's like, hey, this is going right now. The ice bucket challenge is a great example, right? Or, oh, that's more of a content idea. But like the get ready with me framework, there's a format that the internet, it was no sound, all like ASMR sounds, like no music. Which I don't get that at all. All that, and from the ice pouring and the water to the, you know,

everything, and it focused on that and really compelling visuals. And so if you read between the lines, you can get the, but going back to what I was saying, it's everything is a remix. I mean, you know, well, anyway, I won't get into that. Everything is a remix. Have you seen that YouTube series?

I haven't, but it might as well check it out. That is a watch. All right, cool. Everything is a remix. There's like a four part series. I don't know. It's been around for 20 years, but it was a really, really well done. They go through art, music and all this stuff, mainly music.

And they talk about all of the tones and the chords stolen and remixed and done this. And then they go through just life in general, pop culture. And it's a fun one. Everything repeats itself. Yeah. You know, it's interesting you talked about AI because I also see a trend of like,

Billie Jean is marketing, I don't even know who he is. Billie Jean is a great guy. But Billie Jean with AI and using Hey Jen to create the avatars of him and he's just telling me, speech in and I think you're starting to see this now. Set it and forget it where you can create an avatar and then you'll just get scripts from what's trending and put it in here No auto post it here. Bah-bah. I think every social media channel is about to absolutely become unwatchable With because of shit like that. I think it's just gonna get flooded with just nonsense of AI

generated nonsense That like you said, AI is learning from itself and it's not becoming bloated. It's not working. I think these videos are gonna start posting and say, oh, that's a good video when it's not, and then it's gonna replicate it on some other avatar and then it's gonna keep getting posted.

It's gonna be a sea of just, it's gonna be a mess. Well, I think that the same thing in business life cycles, right? Well, let me ask you a question. The question I was gonna get to that was, Same thing in business life cycles, right? Well, let me ask you, the question I was gonna get to that was, do you think it'd be wise for the content, for the platforms to say no AI content?

I don't know, that's a great question. Because they're already doing, you have to say it's AI generated if it's AI generated. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that it's coming to a place right now where I think it's going to be indistinguishable. Obviously, there's a ton of metadata and stuff. Yeah.

We're quickly coming to a place. Human, Hagen's great, but the human regeneration and the AI image is not there yet. It's close. You can there yet. It's close. You can still tell. It's going to get there. Number of fingers. Yeah. That dude doesn't have seven fingers.

Yeah, exactly. It's getting there. There's some, there's some, and then, but it still takes a ton of human intervention. And so like, I think we're far away from not having to manipulate, not far, I don't, time and space is extremely relative to AI because, because you know, tech, tech has been moving quickly anyway, but this is a completely different animal that, yeah, we can talk about that

later. But, but anyway, so, so you take this and I think that the, the, the rate in which, you know, I could take a video in which, you know, I could take a video of you, you read a script, I can reproduce you, I think it still needs a level of tweaking and editing to it for it to actually be believable to be you. Now when you go onto a website and you're used to seeing

like a training module that's boring, right? And you actually see a human or you talk to a customer service on the phone and you're used to hearing a bot, but that's getting better and it sounds like a real human, that's not going anywhere. And I think that's gonna get better and it's actually better for us. But I think from a content on social media standpoint,

it's really, really hard to do that right now. But I think just like anything, quality will win. And so I don't, though we're having this, it was like crypto back when at first, everybody was jumping on the NFT train. And then when everyone started jumping on the NFT train, a bunch of fraudulent projects came out. A bunch of people got fleeced.

And then NFTs died down and there's some projects with utility that kept going on. Well, none of it had utility. Yeah, but at least you could trade it for real world stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and it had some utility to where if I had this. I can get in here. I can go to this event.

Exactly. Exactly. And I was never really big in the NFT. My business partner was though. But then you have crypto and you have a bunch of projects like this meme coin thing jumping up, but all of them, like that is dying off too. I think the same thing is going to happen with content. We could go on and create really shitty content really fast right now, right now, but no one's going to watch it. And so the internet is going to be flooded with horrible content. And like always, quality is gonna win.

Now, what it's going to be is it filters for that stuff. Now then you ask the question, so the platforms come in and stop it. I don't know, I think they'll do something. But I think the same thing, there's a ton with before AI, there's a ton of really bad content on the internet. Yeah, I guess that's true. And we don't consume it.

It just gives anybody with a keyboard the ability to create content. And just like- And have an opinion, which is probably terrible too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There are so many blogs out there that just don't get attention, but I think it's the same thing.

I think that creativity and quality will win. Authenticity will win. Caring about something, building a community around that. I think that the same things still ring true. If you're selling a product or have a service, amazing customer service and building a raving fan following, whether it be customers and clients or whatever it is, having a great reputation, talking about things of value, adding value, like those things still ring true. Like I said, the core fundamental philosophies that have rang true through time are still true to today.

We just have different communication and different mediums in which to tell stories and to communicate. And people sniff out inauthentic, we can sniff it out. We're smarter. And people say, Oh, cool. I thought that was real. Like, yeah, you did. Now, you know, well, here's my next question. So as you know, everybody was talks about the algorithms changing through the social media channels. Well, yeah, you know, man, I was killing my, the algo is killing me. I'm got shadow ban this and that.

Do you guys worry at the level that you're at, right? With the agency level, do you guys worry about the algorithm so much? Is it really just about making the best quality content you can? Yeah, it's a mix of both. Majority of it is quality, strategy and creativity. The other side of it though is yeah, formatting. A great example of this is when IGTV came out,

that was a while ago, we got a beta program where we, because we have partnerships with all the social platforms, they'd give us access to tools before we give them to our top clients and people and test them to do stuff. And we got ahead of that. We were first to YouTube Shorts. We got, not us first, but there was a pilot program,

very select partners that get the stuff. And we go to summits at these headquarters of these, Snap, YouTube, all this stuff, TikTok. And they give us access to this stuff. And platforms change. These platforms are constantly in a race on how to keep you on platform, right? Yep.

Yeah, and so how many different formats and mediums can they push to get you to stay on? And then you want more people creating content, you wanna incentivize good content to keep you on the platform, keep scrolling. So if they can find a better way, something to push, a feature to push that like, you know, is gonna help. I think it's good.

I think it's good these algorithm changes, but it's the same thing. You get ahead of them. You have a team that understands what's going on with the platforms, whether it's, you know, an agency, a partner, like somebody in the company that lives and breathes on these things and knows them. You can get ahead of them and And they're minor tweak adjustments,

a new feature coming out where you're like, oh, what, we can now make three minute videos instead of two? It's like, well, it still has to be an engaging two minutes or no one's even gonna get to the first 30 seconds. It sounds like what you're saying is when somebody says, the algorithm changes, screw me up, is like a salesperson saying, the leads are weak.

No, you're weak. You're weak. Yes. There's an ounce of playing to it. There's an ounce of it, but a majority of it is just tried and true. All right, well, we'll finish up with one last question, which is if you could go back and give 27-year-old you some advice, what would it be?

I'm gonna start ending the podcast. You know what, I'm gonna start ending every single podcast with that question I just decided Yeah That's a wonderful question I was always fearless. I was gonna say be fearless and just go after life. I think Wow And you talk about this and I think it's really, really important because I never took any

shortcuts and I believe I did stuff the right way and I like people around me that do the right way. I also, which is controversial, I built this business, my brother, my mom, some of my best friends, brought along with the ride. Amazing, controversial. Have fun with the people you love and do it the right way. And be true to yourself. I want when I'm sitting, when I'm telling my grandkids, I'm your father to a girl, especially the little girl,

look up to a man, legacy, be true to your word, honor. I think these things that are very, very cliche in old school, but you realize them the older we get, you start thinking, man, like, if I could tell my younger self, these things matter. When you start doing business and there's a lot of options and a lot of competition out there, these little things, reputation, trust, integrity,

these things make the biggest difference in life. You'll never know if you didn't get the gig or got the gig based on these things, but I know from experience that this stuff stacks and exponentially grows when done right. And it's Warren Buffett of compounding. I think we compound in our everyday lives. And if we do things right, things happen.

Dude, we're gonna wrap it up on that, my brother. If they wanna find you, how do they find you? This is his first podcast by the way. So this is where you thought like your answer to your main door, your website. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, it's at j underscore H-Y. Yes, there you go.

I don't have much of Instagram, but agency at one ds collective on all social platforms, one ds collective.com. We're doing some cool stuff. We're kind of, you know, boutique. We have, we have a bunch of different things going on and, and, and, and yeah, Hey, happy to talk this stuff. This is, I'm so excited about what you're doing. It's, it's inspiring. Love it. Anytime you want to come back, you let me know. I love it, brother. Well, let's wrap it up guys. Look, if you listen to that today,

I think the things you got to take away is If you want to get traction with people anywhere man If it's social media if it's just in your circle if it's in your network if it's through your business Be authentically you because everybody else is taken. See you next week What's up everybody thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com, you can join our mailing list, but do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that

five star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you, hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.