Founder's Story - He Made Millions Every Year, Then Went $800K Into Debt: Adam Hagaman on the Trap of Success | Ep. 410 Founder of Content Cash Flow
Episode Date: June 22, 2026Daniel and Adam Hagaman dive into the painful early chapters of Adam’s life, including growing up without a father, trying drugs in sixth grade, selling drugs, dropping out of school, and going to j...ail every year from 18 to 25. Adam explains how a party invitation led him to meet his future wife, the daughter of a pastor, and how that relationship introduced him to faith after years of darkness. The conversation moves from redemption to entrepreneurship, covering door-to-door sales, building businesses, making millions, losing nearly $1 million, and the shift from being a Christian with a business to becoming a Kingdom entrepreneur. Key Discussion Points Adam shares how growing up without his father shaped his identity and pushed him toward the wrong friends, drugs, alcohol, gangs, and selling drugs at a young age. He explains that from 18 to 25, he went to jail every year, but at the time he didn’t see it as a wake-up call; he only thought he had to “do better next time.” Adam tells the story of meeting his future wife at a party, even though he originally thought inviting her was a bad idea, and how her family and faith opened the door to a new life. The turning point came when his wife left with the kids after he chose drinking and friends again, forcing him to realize he was becoming the absent father he promised he would never be. Adam breaks down how door-to-door sales changed his life after 2008, especially after dropping out of high school and struggling to find work without a diploma. He shares his biggest sales lesson: don’t make it about your commission, make it about the person, because when he lowered the price and focused on the customer, his results exploded. Adam explains why success can become a trap if you never define enough, describing how chasing more can pull you away from your family even when you are physically present. He opens up about falling nearly $800,000 to $1 million in debt in 2024, and how that season taught him more through loss than he had learned through years of winning. Adam defines the difference between a Christian with a business and a Kingdom entrepreneur: one includes God in the business, while the other gives the business fully to God and lets Him lead. He shares how he started posting content on December 20, 2023, instead of waiting for January, and grew from zero to over one million followers across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Takeaways Your past does not have to dictate your future, but transformation starts when you stop making excuses and confront who you are becoming. Sales is not about pushing people into what benefits you; it is about understanding the person, solving a real problem, and making the deal good for them. Success without a defined “enough” can become a hamster wheel that costs you the relationships you were supposedly working to protect. Content does not require perfection to start; Adam began with a phone, no microphone, and a willingness to post before he felt ready. Short-form video can become the billboard that leads people into your deeper message, but you have to start before you are confident. Closing Thoughts Adam Hagaman’s story is about redemption, but it is also about responsibility. He went from living for survival and status to building with faith, family, and mission at the center. This episode is a reminder that attention is powerful, but purpose is what gives it direction—and no matter how far someone has fallen, they are not too late, too old, or too broken to start again. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/founders. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Trustpilot rating as of 6/1/2025. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You went from drugs, alcohol, and jail to now reaching millions of people.
I said, God, I need you to take this from me.
Like, I don't want to stop.
I keep going back to this.
So I need you to intervene.
That was the moment we chipped at everything.
Since 2012, I've never had a year that I've made under a million dollars.
I teach people in content cash flow about reaction videos because reaction videos are big.
YouTube's putting so much money in shorts.
Like, it's worth a couple hundred million.
They're saying it's going to be over a trillion dollars.
by the end of 2027.
Don't make it about the sale, make it about...
So, Adam, you went from drugs, alcohol, and jail
to now reaching millions of people.
What happened that led you down that path when you were younger?
Well, I grew up in a good home.
I just had my mom.
My dad left when I was...
I don't even know.
I don't even remember him.
I only met him a handful of times.
So I was 25, and that actually is a part of the whole story, too.
But I think around my teenage years,
even before that, I think by the age of 11, 12, 6th grade, whatever you are in 6th grade,
started seeing, hanging out with the wrong friends. I tried drugs the first time in 6th grade
at school. And I was just trying to find who I was. Like I said, I had a great mom. She was a
hard worker, but she worked, since it was just her, she worked hard. So I was trying to find just other
things. And so hung out with the wrong friends, started drinking, started smoking.
started doing all that like a sixth grade was when it started but then by eighth grade it was just
full blown um and i don't know how old i was just trying to think of the age maybe 12 13 14 by the time
eighth grade right um but as early as 11 um just started trying and hanging out with the wrong
people doing the wrong things and that ended up being I actually dropped so part of that is I dropped
out of school too so I dropped out of high school because
hanging out with the wrong people, I started actually selling drugs as well. And so I had thousands of
dollars in my pocket. And so I was like, why am I going to go to school? Like, I'll just do this.
As just a dumb kid, not knowing better, not knowing any other way. And by that time, too, the music
and the culture and the influence, like, hey, this is the cool thing to do. Rap music started coming out,
talking about these things. And so people wanted to be those things and ended up getting involved with
gangs and yeah like I said just started selling drugs dropped out of high school because of it
and afterwards it wasn't until i never went to juvie um so all the way to 18 but 18 to 25 i went to
jail every single year uh had DUIs i had possession charges i had all kinds of stuff and then in my
mind you'd think that would stop you but in my mind it's just like oh they got me this time i'm
I'm going to do better next time.
But it wasn't until I was actually 25 and I met a girl at a party, really,
and it turned out to be that girl at the party was a pastor's daughter.
She grew up in church her whole life.
I never grew up in church.
And so we met, started talking.
And that kind of was the start of just changing everything.
I used to say this, in the world, especially the drug world, because I've seen witchcraft.
I've seen a lot of, I seen darkness.
And so I used to say this, like, I know there's a devil, so there's got to be a God.
Like, I see this darkness.
I see this all around.
There's got to be the other side, but I just don't know how to reach that other side.
I don't know what to do.
My family didn't go to church, anything like that.
And so I met her and her dad was the actual pastor.
So, man, I had lots of questions.
And long story short, is asking those questions and literally just changed my life around, just gave my life to Jesus.
It wasn't an instant transformation.
I wasn't like just done with everything.
But slowly he started just changing my life completely.
And that's when the journey of entrepreneurship and everything else started
because I wasn't in sales before.
Legally, I wasn't in sales before.
But when I gave my life to Jesus, from 18 to 25,
so I stopped selling drugs, maybe around 18 after going to jail a few times.
But I was still just living how I shouldn't be.
and um so 25 was basically the time that everything changed and i was like okay i need to do something
different like i'm down this path and and i can share with you if you want what actually finally
changed everything down that path but um that's basically a long story short before you share that
i'm curious did you always know that you were destined for something better did you tell yourself
like I'm in this now, but at some point, I know I can do better.
Or did you give that up when you were, you know, up to the point of 18, you're like,
this is my only path in life.
Yeah, even I think to 25, I think that's what I thought.
I wanted to, even when I thought about making lots of money, it was to do things that
just weren't that productive.
It was to own things that probably bars and different things like that and things that, yeah,
wasn't very productive and that's what I thought my life was. That's what I thought it was going to be. It was
literally a complete 180. So what's the moment then that religion came in where you said,
I'm going to embrace this? So I, like I said, I met, she's now my wife, the story, I love the story
because my friend actually invited her to the party that we were at. And I remember telling him,
why are you doing this? This is dumb. Like, we're at a party to meet girls and we're not rude,
so we can't be rude to her because we're inviting her,
but why are you actually even doing this,
telling him how dumb he was the whole drive to,
because we met her to show her the way back.
But I like telling the story because I was sitting there saying
how dumb he is for inviting her,
and now she's my wife.
So I'm like, man, God, you had to plan this whole entire time.
But since I grew up without a dad,
I used to say to myself all the time,
I am never going to do this to my kids.
I'm never going to not be there for my kids.
I'm never going to be an absent father.
I don't care what me and my wife had.
This is my thoughts before.
I don't care what me and my wife's issues are.
If we have issues, I'm always going to be there for my kids.
No matter even if she treats me like crap or whatever, I'm still going to be there for my kids.
I don't want them to feel what I have felt growing up.
Like, I never even had a dad.
Where was he?
I seen other people happy with their dads and I didn't even know what that was even like.
So I used to say that.
And so as I'm learning, as I'm getting saved, I'm still not transferred.
transformed completely. So I'm still, I've grown up this way with my whole life. And so I was
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Not as bad anymore, but still going out and party and still going out on the week. So I thought,
I work Monday through Friday. My weekend is my weekend to, I work hard. I'm going to go get drunk
with my friends at the bars. And my, she was a girlfriend there, soon to be wife, but she was telling
me, she's like, stop, quit doing this. Like, you know, you're not, in my head out, you know what I
used to say is like one more weekend. I'm going to do it one more weekend and then I'll
finally give it up. I'm going to do one more weekend, but that one weekend just kept on
being one more weekend, one more weekend. And it was, uh, I think even on her birthday that we were
hanging out and my friends were going out and I left just to go with them. And I remember her
telling me, if you don't stop, I'm leaving. Like I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving. And I don't
know if I didn't believe her or if I didn't, if I didn't believe her or just didn't think it was
true or maybe just as me being selfish. But I went out anyways, but I remember coming back. I
came back that night, drunk, and went to the house and she was gone. And I just remember thinking,
oh my goodness, like I was crying. I was thinking, I said my whole life I wasn't going to become this
man my whole life. I'm not going to be this person. And now, look, I am. I'm doing the same things
he was doing. I'm doing the exact same things. Choosing drugs, choosing alcohol, choosing friends over my
actual family. So that and I said, God, if you are real, I know you're real, but I need you to
take this from me. Like, I don't want to stop. I keep going back to this. So I need you to intervene and
just transform my life completely because I need to not do this anymore. I've said my whole life I'm not
going to and now I'm here in this spot and I'm exactly doing what he did. So that was the moment
to shift at everything. Wow. I mean, that's powerful. It's tough, right? No matter what, when we don't
want to do something our parents do, like we don't want to be like that, it's so hard to not be
like that. And I find myself, too, in these moments of anger, frustration, it's just an automatic thing.
I just go to seeing what my father would do in that moment,
even though I never wanted to do that.
So I can totally relate.
Now, when you look at business and entrepreneurship and you also look at religion,
what holes do those fill together that you were always seeking in your life?
I mean, I was just a go-getter.
So business, that's why I liked business, especially as an entrepreneur.
My first sales job because I was in 2006 to 2008,
I was a manager at a place called Interstate.
trailer. I ran the wire prep and paint department. And then 2008 happened. They shut down the whole
night crew. And since I dropped out of school like I shared before, I didn't even have a diploma.
So automatic, I never needed one before. But now in 2008, everybody wanted one. They're like,
hey, where's your diploma? I couldn't even get a job. And so my first door to door or first sales job was a
door to door sales job. And that's how I learned. And let me tell you this, too, I'm the kid that way back when I
actually did go to school and would have to do like something where I speak in front of the class,
I would either not do it or skip that class. Like I did not want to speak in front of anyone.
I did not want to be in front of the camera. I did not want to be any of that. And so I wouldn't
do that. And so I think God just started showing me, especially going door to door, going house to
house. Like I'm the person that didn't want to do it. Now I'm going face to face with one house after
another house. I ended up actually, I think we were doing oil change packages at the time.
It was a great deal. I still remember until today. It was like six packages. We could sell it for
$80 all the way down to $50. At $50, it became like $8.33 cents of oil change. Like,
especially thinking of now, that's insane. But back then, you still couldn't even buy the oil for
that price. And it was a hundred. My hardest sell was making people believe that it was real. A lot of them
would call the oil companies because they were mechanic shops.
And what was in it for them was it was a mechanic shop.
So people came in for oil changes.
And now they had on the right side, like a bunch of stuff like free air conditioner check or free maintenance.
You know what I mean?
So they would get new business off of it.
So it was good for them.
And so, yeah, I think just being drawn to that and being pushed to go forward in that.
But I mean, I don't.
The religion part of it is I think that helped me get there, get my mind on straight to say like, hey, I have a family.
I need to provide for them. I need to do things right. I need to do it the right way instead of doing the way I used to do it.
Now there's a new way. So it started showing me a new way of doing things, doing things right, doing things with integrity, doing things to others as you would want it to be done to yourself.
instead of doing things wrong.
So I think that's kind of how they mix together.
Is there something else you wanted to say specifically about that?
No, you know what I've always said.
If you can learn sales, you'll never not have a job.
It's probably the most important thing that you can do.
And I almost feel like it's kind of like in somebody.
Like it's just in you.
Either you can be a salesperson and you can learn to get better.
And then there's people that will never be great salesperson.
It's just not who they are.
I remember going door to door myself.
I lasted like 24 hours and then I quit.
Oh, wow.
But what in sales that you learned early on that you still to this day use?
Don't make it about the sale, make it about the person.
Plain as day, no matter what you're selling, don't be so overly anxious to get the sale and forget about who you're selling to.
Like, the oil changes.
That was such a good deal.
it was convincing them that it was actually true.
That was the hard part of it.
So in sales, I learned that.
Learn who you're dealing with.
Learn it's not just about your commission check.
It's about helping them.
So that's number one.
Number two, I learned this in my first week in oil change sales.
I was going out trying to, because we got 40% commission.
And I wanted to sell for $80 because I got $32 versus 50 where it's only 20.
So my first week, I only got two sales the whole week.
working my butt off probably six, seven, eight hours every day knocking on doors, only got two
cells. And these other guys, they're getting five, six, seven cells each day. And I'm like,
what is going on? And so they were actually from another state. And so when they came back,
I went out with them again. And they said, Adam, we sell it for 50, not 80. And I'm like, well,
why would you do that? Because, you know, 32 versus 20. They're like, yeah, how much money did you
make selling it for that higher price? I was like, well, I don't know. I had two sales.
They're like all week, two sales, we got 50 cells all week.
So 50 times 20 versus two times 32.
And so what I learned from that is like more is not always better.
Don't think you have to sell it for the highest price.
Don't think that it has to be, you have to make the most on what you're doing.
It's still, it would have been a better price for the customer at 50.
So if I would have been thinking of them more than thinking my commission, that it would have been a lot more beneficial.
When I took that mindset on, I actually ended up the record,
was 34 in a day and I had 32 cells in one day. So it just changed everything when I learned
more about putting the person first versus my goals and ambitions. And so, yeah, I think that's
the number one, number two is just making sure you're, it's not about you. It's about who you're
selling to. Make sure it's a good deal for them. Make sure you're listening to them versus just
pushing on them what you want to make and what you want to do. Sometimes success can be a trap.
And I know you've talked about being a Christian with a business versus a kingdom entrepreneur.
And when I say success can be a trap because maybe what you think is success in the moment is not really the success that you need as a person.
What is the difference between those two things?
A Christian with a business and kingdom entrepreneur.
I'll answer that, but let me tell you about the success real quick is the reason.
why success is a trap is because most people don't realize or set a goal of when I get here
I'm going to do this. There's really, when I get here, now I want to make more. Now I want to make more.
Now I want to do more. And when does it ever stop? It's like a hamster will. You continue just
working and working and work. And nothing wrong with that, but you have to have a place that you're like,
okay, I'm content with this instead of the greediness of more, more, more. I need to make a million,
I need 10, 20, 50, 100. There's nothing wrong.
with that, but you have to have a plan, especially if you have a family, you will be run to the ground
reaching those numbers. I've done, since 2012, I've never had a year that I've made under a million
dollars. So every year we've made a million. I think 2012 is the lowest of a million, so it's
always been two to three or more every single year. But you have to be content with knowing, hey,
this success that when I reach this, I'm fine. Like I, I would rather have time with my family.
Because earlier in my career, I was just working and working and working.
And I had a home office.
And so I remember saying one time to my kids, like, I'm here.
And they're like, you're here, but you're not here.
You're in your office all the time.
And there was no nine to five.
It was even if I went out, I'm like, oh, I forgot to do that.
Come back in.
So you have to watch and know what the success is and where you're comfortable with getting,
stopping, and don't leave your family out.
You have to conclude your family in it.
and block out time to spend time with them.
So that's the success part.
But the Christian with the business versus a kingdom entrepreneur
is something that I've learned in a lot,
up to 2024.
So if you would ask me from 2020 to 2024,
I would have said, I'm doing great.
I'm doing it because we made millions.
We had brands.
We were doing good.
And I ended up getting in debt in 2024,
almost a million dollars.
And I went through a valley that I was like,
I've never been here before. I felt physically sick. I'm $800,000 in debt and thinking,
how am I going to get out of this? I've never been that much upside down. I've always done good.
I've never been here. And I spent three, four months going to the mountains every single Wednesday,
and from 9 o'clock in the morning to around 3 o'clock, just spending time with the Lord,
spending time reading my Bible. And I learned, you know what, I learned more in my loss than I have in my wins.
and what I learned during this time is, it was like God was speaking to me, Adam,
you were including me in the business, but you weren't giving it to me.
So that's when I started thinking about this more, and he started sharing with me,
a Christian with the business is a Christian, you own a business and you may love God,
and I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong.
I would have not thought I was doing anything wrong.
I can only see it now that I'm out of it and can look back in.
So a Christian with the business is somebody that includes God,
God goes to church, ties, whatever, doing everything wrong. I'm not saying they're doing something
right or not saying they're doing something wrong. But it is exactly that, just including God into the
business. A kingdom entrepreneur says, you know what? God, you're the CEO. I don't even want to
show me where to put the money. Show me. It's spending time in prayer. It's spending time before you
just start running forward because that's what I do. I full fled just move forward. I'm a builder. I go,
go, go, go. And I built myself out of having God in the picture. So a Christian with the business is just
saying, God, you're included in here. A kingdom entrepreneur is saying, God, I'm not going to do anything
without you. You are the CEO. I work for you. You own this business. And I think it's important
because I think there's so many people that are there. And I can look back and see how I got into all
the debt is because I kept marching forward. And I was praying like, God, I know you can do this.
I know who you are. I was cured from a disease that there's no cure for. I was healed from prayer,
and so I know the supernatural of what God can do. So I was praying, saying, I know you can get out of
this, and I'm getting out of it now. It's getting chipped away very quickly, but it's now that I
turned it completely over to him and said, this is yours. I can't do this without you. I got in trouble
in a mess without you. I thought that you were in it. I thought I was including you in it. I thought I was
including you in it, but what I didn't realize is I wasn't giving it to you, and I got myself
in trouble because of that. And so that's one of the lessons he showed me during this time is
like, Adam, you were just including me into it. You weren't actually giving it to me. And so when you
give something to God who owns everything, right, he knows exactly what to do with it. And especially
when your mission is to use it to fund the kingdom, use it. It's not just to go buy a big fancy house
on the hill, buy the nicest cards. I'm not against that. I'm not saying don't do that. But when you have a
mission of saying, God, what I do with this money, let me know, pray. Like, am I going on a mission
trip? Am I going to give this to missionaries? Am I going to give this to church? We do a lot of
conferences around where I live, and I'll rent out like the Civic Center, not charge anything to
anybody, pay the whole price, bring the speakers down, just letting the whole, our place is called
the Treasure Valley, letting the Treasure Valley just get blessed and not have to
pay anything, but it's because of what I've done and saying, God, what do you want me to do with
this? And so now thousands of people have benefited from it, been blessed from it because I put him
first. So you then at some point saw that being on social media is a way to amplify this mission,
right? Like, you can talk to 10 people, 20 people, but you can go online and talk to 10 million
people, which is amazing. At the same time, though, it can be very nerve-wracking when you're
talking, I think, about what you are saying, just because you're going to have a lot of people
that might believe you. You're also going to have a lot of haters. I think that's just how it is
nowadays. When you open yourself up online, you also open yourself up to criticism and hate. How is that
experience for you? And how did you get over the ability to say, I'm just going to tell my story how it is?
it's so important.
Yeah.
So I felt like I was supposed to go online.
I'm a licensed minister.
I preach.
I'm not a pastor,
so I don't preach every Sunday or anything,
but sometimes every couple months I would preach on a Sunday,
but I felt like God was giving me more.
I dropped out of high school.
I ended up getting my diploma.
I ended up actually going,
I don't know if you can see it,
but I got my bachelors even at Wagner University and ministry.
So I always knew, like,
I'm not learning all this stuff just for myself.
I don't want all this head knowledge.
I'm learning it because I want to share it with others.
And so I knew I was supposed to go online,
but then the kid in me that was back in school that was afraid to go in front of the class,
I had to deal with that too.
Like, oh, man, I did the door to ourselves, dealt with it.
But then when I looked at this camera, I'm like, oh, man, nobody else is in the room,
but it's just the camera.
And I'm like, this is very intimidating.
But what I tell people and what I teach people is like, just go for it.
when you start, I started in December 20th, 2023, finally.
And the reason why it's December 20th, 20203 is because I was going to wait until January,
but I'm like, I got to just start.
I felt like God was telling me just start, just go.
And so that's why it's such an odd day.
But if you look at my videos way back then until now, I haven't removed any of them because
you can see the progress.
I started with just my phone, not even a microphone, just my phone, just recording it,
and putting the messages on YouTube.
I paid, I think, $5,000 for to learn how to start doing shorts to do it.
Because you can learn things on your own or you can pay and get there faster.
That's all joining courses, joining masterminds.
That's what it is.
Like, you can spend years and learn it on your own or pay and get there in a couple months.
And so that's what I did.
I don't want to spend years.
I wanted to find out how to do it.
And so I went from zero to over a million followers in the last two, yeah,
last two years.
So from zero to over a million followers on.
four platforms with YouTube, Instagram, IG, and Facebook.
About each of them are about 300,000 followers right now.
I think YouTube's about to be 400,000.
So just getting over that and going forward and saying,
look, I'm just going to do this.
When you look back, and that's huge results, by the way.
I mean, having up to a million and spreading different platforms,
I think that's always, at least for me, it's hard, right?
when you it's so easy to focus on one thing one platform but when you start adding in more and more
it complicates things it makes more challenges uh but when you look when you think about your 18 year old self
the one that you described early on if they have seen you now would they even believe this is who you are
no not even because by like i said i didn't even give my life over till 25 so i would have never
guess that. I would have never thought that. Not at all. Nope. So when you when you think about your kids,
when they when they turn 18, for example, what do you hope that they know about you and what you've
done in life? So I got four kids. I actually have one that's 23, one that's 22, one that's 18, but
about to turn 19 and one that's 15. So yeah, the two older ones,
They seen me going through this, right?
So they were younger.
We learn as we go.
And what I tell people all the time is like, don't let your past dictate your future.
Maybe you weren't the best dad.
Maybe you weren't because I didn't have a dad.
So I didn't see how it was.
And so I was so focused on ministry, so focused on business.
In my mind, I was like, I got to provide for them, go on vacations, do all these things,
instead of spending quality time.
So my mind was about just making money.
making money so then they can have a better life than I did.
Like, I just had a mom.
We weren't poor, but I didn't get the nice things.
Like, it was hard getting a new pair of shoes.
It was hard getting some of these things.
And so in my mind, I'm like, man, I'm going to just do good.
And my kids are going to have nice shoes, nice clothes.
I want to give them what I never had.
And so they seen that part of me.
And so I think they actually got the work ethic part of it.
But then the part of me that learns how close family is.
And like I said, early in this, spending time with family, that's what they see now.
That's what they see is important.
That's you don't, we all have 24 hours on a day.
And nobody gets more than that.
And each day that goes by that you're not spending time with your family, you're losing opportunity.
You're losing a very important part of your life.
So about the part of growing from zero to a million, and I know you asked about like how that was with haters as well, I really didn't have any.
So I was actually surprised because people were four.
Actually, when I very first started, I'm like, what am I going to do?
From December 20th to 25th, I just did a bunch of what's the real reason for Christmas?
So many people are just presents, hustling to get money for presents instead of the real reason for Christmas is Jesus.
And so I was pointing people back to that.
But even from then to now, I have some now.
Some people were say some stuff, but I even seen other people in the same type of category that I'm in.
And they're always talking about how they're getting people hating and everything else.
And I almost don't want to say I was jealous, but I was like, man, why don't I have those haters?
So I'm blessed, I would say, because I don't want to have the haters.
But every once in a while I have somebody say something that they don't like what I said.
But I've been very fortunate to not have that and just have people like what we're doing or if they don't, just not say anything.
What's one of the biggest changes that you made to content creation where you really saw a huge lift-off?
The shorts.
The shorts were a big one because shorts are huge.
There's some people who only do shorts.
There's some people do the shorts and long form.
Shorts are kind of like when you're driving down the freeway and you see those freeway signs.
You can use your shorts to lead to your long form.
If you do it right at the beginning, if you don't do it right and you only do shorts,
it's very hard to start doing long form after that because you develop an audience that are more short focused
and they only want those six I think shorts go up to three minutes now so 60 seconds to three minutes
they don't want to stay and watch a long form they want to just watch that short clip and maybe binge a
bunch of your uh that's what we've realized too is like sometimes they'll see one and they'll go through
another one and another they might spend five or 10 minutes going through different shorts rather than
just reading or not reading watching a long form.
video. I mean, I remember like a year and a half ago. Someone told me like, you got to do shorts on
YouTube. And it was crazy how how much that like the trajectory of our YouTube changed overnight
because we just started doing tons of shorts. And I've seen what you're saying where people are old,
they do like one long form to have it. Let's say YouTube for example, but everything else is shorts,
which makes sense. Our attention span. No one has long form attention span anymore. It is pretty
bet let's say though there's someone out there who's stuck right now they're lost similar situation
as you they don't have purpose today how can they get started like i said when i was talking about
the phone just start like start recording yourself start capca as a simple tool to use
record yourself i teach people and content cash flow about reaction videos because reaction videos
are big. And you'll even see celebrities and people up there that are doing very well. Now they have
realized, man, these reaction videos do very well. And now you'll see them either looking at their phone
and reacting or having them there and having the other person above. So I teach people how to do
reaction videos. And it helps push forward your videos because you're actually reacting to a video
that already went viral. So then you're adding your two cents to that video and it helps
yours actually go viral and get more. I think I reached 100,000 subscribers in the first,
I don't remember now, I'd have to look, but three to four months on YouTube.
After I, like I said, I took the shortcut. I joined the mastermind, paid the $5,000,
and learned how to make them versus taking a couple years. And that's how two years were
almost to $400,000 on YouTube. And now, with those shorts, it's changing. YouTube's
putting so much money in shorts. Like long form still there. I'm not saying don't do long form,
but they're putting billions of dollars into shorts. They realize the attention spans,
as we spoke of, is getting smaller. And I would say to somebody who wants to start is now is the time.
I forgot the exact numbers, but let's just say a couple hundred million is the creator economy right now,
not people, but dollars. It's worth a couple hundred million. They're saying it's going to be over
a trillion dollars by the end of 2027. That's a huge, from hundreds of millions,
to trillions is a huge jump.
But the only way that can happen is more creators jumping on.
And how that works is because if you jump on how these platforms make money,
is they get people to pay them ads based off people watching your video.
So they need more people creating good content to put it out there and they'll reward you
and they'll pay you for making good content.
And that's basically the content cash flow that we teach is how to do your content that you
like I didn't mind just preaching about Jesus.
I don't sell anything.
I don't have a product on there that I'm trying to sell.
I just do my own videos and the platforms pay you for that.
Yeah, I love that.
I'm inspired.
I need to do more short form.
I literally need to do better short form.
But I mean, yeah, it seems like attention and awareness is the new gold.
Like the new oil and gold is attention and awareness.
And that is, you know, the way you do that is.
online and through whatever platform.
So attention is the new currency.
Attention is the new currency.
It's the,
there might not even be the dollar at some point,
but it's attention.
But attention is the new currency.
Content, cash flow,
Adam, this has been great.
I learned a lot today.
I'm inspired.
And part of my mission when I started this show
was to positively impact a billion people.
And I can tell that you also live a similar mission.
So I can relate to a lot of the story that you gave in the beginning.
I was lost myself.
We eventually, hopefully will find something good and positive that we can bring to this world.
But I really appreciate you being here and sharing your story.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
It was a blessing and it was an honor and hope somebody who's watching this just gets something from this
and just knows that you can do it too.
You're not too late.
You're not too old.
A lot of people think they're too old.
You're not too late.
You're not too old.
You can do it too.
