The Russell Brunson Show - Unleashing Free Instagram Traffic with Edward Collins

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

After months trying to craft a perfect daily publishing strategy, Edward Collins hit gold by accident! Now his current business is almost entirely fueled by free Instagram traffic. This is the perfect process to craft a ‘free content’’ strategy that makes your online sales & funnels take off! Follow My Daily Instagram at @russellbrunson And model Edward Collin by following him: @edwardcollins_upleveled Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Travel moves us. The only thing that gets outcomes is action. Like quite literally, the only thing that gets outcomes you desire is taking action. But you have to be in the right rooms with the right people asking the right questions so that you can get the right answers upon which you can take action. Yeah. I love that. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online.

This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about Instagram, the gram, whatever you want to call it, and how do we grow a following very, very quickly. I know that in the Traffic Secrets book, I talk a lot about how one of the things that if you want to be successful, you got to publish every single day. And I told people and I say, I'm convinced if you publish every single day for an entire year, you'll never have money problems again. And by publishing, it could be publishing a podcast or writing a blog or whatever it might be. And so our guest today is actually someone

who heard me say that and started doing it and started posting and was very, very consistent posting every single day for a year and four months. And the end of a year and four months only had, you'll hear on the interview, but like 5,000 or 6,000 followers and was ready to give up and then decided to make one little shift, one little tweak to how they're actually posting. And the very first video they posted this direction, got them 8,000 new followers, more than double their follower count. And then went on to build a following of millions of people in the last like 10 months, which is, this is like cutting edge, brand new, cool stuff. I'd heard about this person. He's in my inner circle. I, everyone keeps talking about what he's doing. But I wanted to find out exactly what he's doing so I could replicate it. So by the time this goes live, I will have done

a bunch of these on my channel. You can go and check it out. Um, but this is a new way to do Instagram posts. They go viral. Um, and I'm pumped to test it out and I think you guys will as well. It's a fascinating interview, really cool story about the back, uh, the backstory about how he got to the spot. But on top of that, you're going to learn some very tangible, very practical tips that you could implement today for Instagram, for TikTok to go viral and get a lot of views very, very quickly. So if you're interested in growing your following, tune in for today's episodes. It'll be a lot of fun. And with that said, let's jump right into the interview. All right, everyone. Today I've got a special guest and I'm excited to dive deep with him because he's someone who comes from a more traditional business, not really an internet

marketing business, but was trying to get into internet marketing. We'll go deeper in the story. Was trying to post on Instagram, having some success, but it was really slow. We'll talk about the numbers and then shifted their model and went from like 6,000 or 7,000 followers to over a million followers in record time just by shifting what they were doing and how they were doing it. And honestly, he's been talking about here at my Inner Circle meeting. Everyone keeps telling me stories about it. He spoke on stage last time, I think, or two times ago, showing the strategy. Enough where I got excited, but not enough where I understood it and then can actually go implement it for myself. So this is my evil motivation to bring him here today to find out all the answers for myself and you guys get to listen in as well. So our guest

name today is Edward Collins. And thank you so much for hanging out with me today, man. Russell, it's definitely my pleasure. Definitely my pleasure. So I'm curious first, because again, you're not like the traditional like internet marketing person. What is your background prior to jumping into this? Well, I own a variety of different companies. So I got my start as an adult owning my own first business back in 1998. I launched a financial planning firm, a small little practice, but that was really my escape from what I was doing at the time because I was on the dark side. For anyone who's following my content,

they know what I'm talking about. I worked for the government. So I had this dream when I was a teenager that I wanted to be an FBI agent. So I eventually got started working for the United States Department of Justice, but I saw behind the curtain and learned I really don't like the government. A lot of the challenges there. So when I decided to make my break, I went to the thing that I always had an interest in was money, like the concept of money and how it works. So I launched my financial planning practice in 1998. So I predate Google, predate YouTube. You're a graduate of high school. So there you go. Yeah, exactly. But you grew up with technology. I did not. So what I built out was all built by like literal handshakes. Like I actually had to meet people in person.

Face to face. face to face, face to face, like build out those networks. I know. And it's, yeah, it was an interesting journey. Like I had a lot of challenges in the beginning of my career. But eventually I got to a point where I started having traditional milestones of success, then started building other businesses that were complimentary to it because I saw a need in the space that I was serving. So I started beyond my financial planning practice. I started a fractional CFO company, a tax practice, accounting firm, eventually got into real estate, residential, commercial real estate. That's part of our portfolio now. I still own

all the companies, but my latest push is my coaching business where I'm actually trying to coach business owners on how to, quite frankly, outsmart the IRS, keep more of their own money and then use their money to put it to work to create real wealth. Yeah. Very cool. So when was the transition from like, I'm going to be shaking hands to build the companies and things like that to, I'm going to become a huge success celebrity on Instagram. What was the transition to that? It definitely wasn't like mindful in that regard. Like I just, I'd recognize that, um, one, I, I sort of retired, uh, almost completely, um, back in 2014. Cause all my companies were running, I had all the, all the infrastructure in place and I was essentially like the advisor. And I got to a point where there's only so many beaches that my wife and

I could go to and visit. We've seen them all. Yeah, exactly. We've definitely traveled the world. And it's amazing. But one of the things that a lot of people don't talk about in this concept of retirement, because of Instagram age now, everyone's looking for it. It can get really, really boring. Like it really. So, um, my wife, uh, essentially encouraged me to get out of the house, go back and do something to work. Exactly. One of what actually someone said is something, um, pretty interesting to me recently. He had a phrase and he's like, when you you're married, it's your wife's going to look at you sometimes. And she may say something like for better or for worse, but not for lunch, go to work, right. Get out of the house. Um, and that's essentially what I did. I started going back into my companies and started getting more active and figure out

like what we could do to, to take it to the next level. Um, and then COVID hit, right. And then that was like, Oh my goodness. Uh, what do we do now? Um, now? Because again, all of our companies were brick and mortar oriented, very, very old school. And I had to figure out technology because we couldn't meet with people face-to-face. So I started learning about things like Zoom and go to meetings and all that sort of stuff. And I started seeing a lot of your content at the time. I'm like, oh, there's this interesting thing called a funnel? What is that? And I'm like, Oh, there's this interesting thing called a funnel. What does that? Um, and I'm like, okay, let, let me dive a little bit deeper. I eventually got hooked into a webinar that you, uh, were hosting. I think it was in either January or February of 2021. Um, and then it sold me on to comic club live, which was your event. I think

it was in June or that same year year dove in i was like i'm hooked this this makes a lot of sense i actually was in uh at one of my companies in one of the boardrooms i had i was streaming go go to uh to comic club live to that boardroom and i literally had like a whiteboard and i was everything that was being taught i'm like well wait a minute if i could do that okay there and then i i was sort sort of like really just bubble charting everything out. And by the end of the event, I'm like, well, wait a minute, scratch that. I can create a whole new company that is like the coaching arm of the business. And then we have all of these other brick and mortar done for you services that could be complimentary to it. And that's when we launched Uplevel Entrepreneur.

Very cool. It's interesting the transition I see that, especially in the Dan Kennedy world, when I bought his company, like most entrepreneurs come to him and they learn how to grow their business. That's like phase number one. The phase number two is like,

then they start coaching people who are like them, right? So they become the gurus of the dental industry and then the chiropractor industry, but it all starts like using principles for themselves and then using it to train others. which is interesting that you probably didn't even use them for yourself initially you figure out how to work and then the transition like oh we should like go deep on the coaching side i think it's it's everyone is best positioned to coach the younger version of them right so i can help people who have been through the journey that i

went through because i literally went through it and i at least for myself i knew the steps that you could take in order to get to the other side, sort of giving an opportunity for people to shortcut through the journey, get the similar outcome without similar scars, right? You and I have both been through some interesting scar experiences during the development of our careers. So it's funny. People tell me all the time, like I'm starting a business, but I don't know who, who my dream client is. Cause I was like, figure your dream client is. And one time I was like frustrated with someone telling me that I'm like, your dream client is because i was like figure your dream client is and one time i was like frustrated with someone telling me i'm like your dream client is literally you five years ago and then like the light bulb went off and i was like oh that's it like that's who i was that's

who you are like most of the people it's like you five years ago what was the path what's the result you figured out you're going back in time to to the young version of you and you look at it that way it changes everything you're like oh this would have like resonated like this is the thing that i told the story before but like when i I was in elementary school, I was getting into, I was buying junk mail for like how to get rich quick schemes and stuff. And my name back there, my nickname was rusty. And so my parents called me rusty. And so I remember when I was first writing copy for my very first, like how to start a business offers. I always think back like 12 year old rusty. Cause I would get all this junk mail sent to me. And my mom, I come from junior

high and she had me my stack of junk mail. I go to my room and I'd read every single one. And I remember I get like 10, 20, 30 letters a day. Sometimes I was like calling all these places and it was fun. Cause I would like, I read the sales letter and then some of them, like, this is dumb. This is dumb. The ones I was like, I need it. I put it, I had two different piles and the piles, these are the ones that I believe in enough. I'm going to go beg my parents to buy them for me. And they never did, but I always do that. And so I was thinking like, what would 12 year old rusty, like would he have, would he've gotten excited by this? And it shifts how you create anything because you're like, Oh, this would be anyway. So, okay. So I want to ask you a question then.

So you started, you started doing this stuff and I'm specifically interested on the Instagram thing because it's such a fascinating story. Cause I know that when you, when you started there, you spent a lot of time posting and nothing happened, which happens to of people right they're like I'm doing the thing I'm posting every single day why something happened I love to hear that part of the journey well I think one of the things you have to also understand about me is I didn't grow up with this stuff right my very first social media post was in October of 2021 after after funnel hacking live and it was because you said we had to post I'm'm like, okay, I'll post. And then that was very inconsistent.

So from October through the end of the year, it was like not happening. But then you made another comment that you have to make a commitment, do it every day. So I sort of held myself accountable by announcing it to my team that I was going to post every day starting January 1st of 2022.

And that's what I literally did. Every single day we posted across all of 2022. And that's what I literally did. Every single day, we posted across all of our different social media platforms daily. And for a year and four months, we got like crickets, like no traction at all. First off, that's the same that you stuck with. Most people quit after like two days. My issue is I'm very, very stubborn. It's going to work. We're going to make it work. It's going to work. And again – again, since I didn't grow up with it, I didn't really understand how to do it. So I was constantly like asking different people what should I be doing and I was changing it all the time. So it was a very inconsistent look and feel.

I did talking heads. I did carousel posts. I did picture posts and quote cards. I did like all the different things that everyone was telling me to do. And we got to a point where in April of 2023, so a year and four months in, I walked into the studio and across all of our socials, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, like everything, we had less than 6,000 followers. That's with posting every day. And I walked in and i basically said to my team i'm done and they were like no you're not and i'm like no you don't understand i'm i'm done and they're like no especially like my director

of implementation jose is like you made a commitment and i'm like ah man you because what a good person by the way to do that most most teams are like okay like you know probably on them it's like cool it's a lot of work for us too. But instead they held you to the, held me accountable. Because again, I'm, I'm very stubborn. So if I say I'm going to do it, like if I, if I say I'm going to be there and I break my leg, I'm going to get there. Like, it doesn't matter.

Like I'm going to do that. So I said, okay, if I'm going to do this, I can't keep doing what we're doing. Cause what we're doing is not clearly working. Like it just doesn't work. So let's look back. And we started to look back at some of our posts that had gotten some traction. And we noticed that there were these consistent posts that were getting traction. And for us, again, you have to understand the timeframe. Traction for us, the most views was like 100, 150, 200 views in total.

Like that was a lot for us back then. Again, we had like 6,000 followers less than in total. And there were these reaction videos. And the way I was doing them was I was doing a lot of research into like what videos I thought could make a lot of sense and were aligned with my thought process and the way I talk and the subject matter. And then I would like choreograph it and script it out and like fine tune it and do like 18 million edits to it. And then I would film it.

It would take me like four hours to do one video. And I said, we're not going to do that. Just pick one of the videos, put it on the phone, hit record on the camera. I'll hit play and you'll record me watching it for the first time. And my face did weird things because it was the first time I saw something. And I was like, oh, that's not true. Because my subject matter is I'm a lawyer. I specialize in tax estate and business law and obviously pretty heavy into the financial arena.

So when I hear a lot of the stuff online that is not true, I get a little frustrated. Right. And so my face started doing some weird things and I literally just put the phone down and I just spoke no script. And that was about three minutes of videoing. And the editing that the team did is they just took out the ums and the ahs, chopped it up and just posted it. And I went home, came in the next day and the team was like bustling. I'm like, what's going on? And they go, you don't know? I'm like, know what?

Because I don't, like again, I'm not the social guy. You're not on TikTok. Yeah, I'm definitely not scrolling. And they're like, we got 8,000 followers last night. 8,000 followers, not views, followers. Followers. Wow. And I'm like, what?

I'm like, we more than doubled our follower count in a day? And like, what happened? And I'm looking. I'm like, oh, we're going to do this. And that's what we did. We went all in. Do you remember how many views that first one got? Oh, my goodness.

By now, in the millions. To get 8,000 followers from a post, that's a lot of views. A lot of views. And then we just went all in. And what a lot of people don't realize is that like, we don't even source the videos. Like the community sends my team videos. So we don't even do any research on all the videos, not at all. And then the team just picks the one that we're submitted the most and they don't even

like go through it. Like they put it on the phone, they hit record. I watch, I hit play. I watch it for the first time being recorded. I literally put the phone down. I just talk. There's no scripting. I literally put the phone down. I just talk. There's no scripting. It's just based.

Again, I have an unfair advantage. I've been doing what I do for 26 years. So I can just talk about this stuff just like you can talk about marketing, right? You're able to teach people pretty much on any subject related to getting traffic and understanding how to build an online community and all of those aspects of things. And I could do that in the area of finance and legal structure and things of that nature for entrepreneurs here in the US. So the videos that people are sending you, are these videos from like other gurus or the news or all sorts of stuff? All different things. So mostly online gurus in the financial space

of some sort. Are these people your friends or they all hate you? Actually, it's remarkable. The vast majority of people are really happy that I'm doing these reactions because in certain cases, I'm affirming what they're sharing. And in those areas where they are lacking, I'm adding additional context and additional value. And then the areas that are wrong,

I'm never attacking the person, I'm attacking the concept. That's a big deal. Don't attack their character. Never. Because I mean, we're all human and I've made plenty of mistakes in my life and I would never want to call someone out for a mistake they're making. But I do want people to be well-informed about things that could potentially impact their real life. So when I talk about a subject that has been shared online that is not quite accurate, I try again to be tactful about it, but it's always about the item, the topic, the subject matter. It's never about the person. And I think that that's endeared a lot of people, even when I disagree with what they're sharing. And I'll

tell them exactly why I disagree. They're always pretty happy about the experience. Right. I had a situation that just happened within the past two weeks where I commented. The person made an outreach to me saying they were really unhappy about the experience. And then we just got on a call. He's like, you're so right. I'm so I'm so happy we had this thing. And now we're probably going to do some collaboration in the future because his goal is to teach athletes about finance because a lot of professional athletes leave the sport and they leave and don't have any good financial management and they end up making major mistakes with their money. So he's aimed at a really good outcome to help people become financially literate. And I want to support that. But yeah, I mean, we,

we took our, our following by just doing these reaction videos to that less than 6,000 followers in April of 23 through less than 10 months to now more than 2.9 million followers, all organic, no paid ads, no paid followers, all organic and highly engaged community too.

So when we post, we typically get somewhere between 40 to 60,000 views the same day. And then we'll get hundreds of comments, hundreds of DMs per day, per post. So very, very highly engaged. And it's just been remarkable. Like it's totally something foreign to me because I didn't grow up building businesses this way, but it has been a dramatic shift in, in the amount of humans that we're able to actually serve, um, and add value to. And, uh, yeah, it's been quite remarkable.

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Okay, so you said that your community sources the videos. Are they DMing it to you, or does it have a form, or how does that work? Yeah, we did a couple stories early early on in this immediate growth right because we had we had a few days where back-to-back days we'd get like 8 000 10 000 new followers uh over a course of a couple weeks we get 50 100 000 followers within like a month or two we already hit 300 000 followers across the social so we started doing these stories where we're saying if you or we would add like a call to action at the end of whatever I was sharing. And we'd say things like if you are interested in or you find content that you'd want someone else to take a look at, send them our way. We actually by accident created this tagline, which has now become pretty infamous or famous, I guess, in some way on socials called Edward Verified. Right.

So a lot of people now send us these videos and they want to know, is this Edward Verified? And that was a complete accident, by the way. Just one time you dropped that or something? Yeah. So, again, the way I do my reactions is, again, I don't know what I'm watching ahead of time. So I'm watching it for the first time and then I'm putting the phone down and I'm either correcting something, adding additional value, trying to do something. And I watch this one video and I put the phone down and I'm looking at everyone. I'm like, I don't have anything to add. This is correct.

Like a hundred percent. Like if I were saying this, I would have said that. And they're like, well, you got to say something. And I'm like looking and I'm like, what am I supposed to say? And they're like, I don't know. You have to say something. I'm like, okay, this is legit. It's Edward Verified. And that was it. That was the end of the video.

And then literally that day, people started DMing and commenting and adding other people's, like making comments on other people's posts with the hashtag, is this Edward Verified or Edward Verified? It was like crazy. Like it was literally like within, within a day or two of that post. And now that's become the thing. So people send us these DMS and these comments. Is this Edward verified? Or they'll comment on someone else's post.

Is this Edward verified? And then I know it was tagging you and everything. Yeah. A hundred percent. It's crazy. So interesting. Are the people in your market modeling and copying us now? A lot of people are.

I think, again, there's value in finding what works for you. I think the real reason why we've had such a rise, if you will, is because of the fact that I'm just me now on camera. Like in the beginning, I was trying to be someone that everyone was telling me I should be. Being the social media influencer. me now on camera. Like in the beginning, I was trying to be someone that everyone was telling me I should be. Yeah, I was like trying to be all proper and focused. And I wasn't being my authentic self. And when I was just literally watching it for the first time and then commenting based on my initial experience, like there's no script. So obviously it's going to be me. And then I think that that's what resonated with people. Now, don't get me wrong. I know that a lot of people don't like me, like, because because not everyone will because I have very strong opinions about certain things.

Like I literally hate the IRS and I think taxation is theft and I have major problems with government for a variety of reasons. So a lot of people don't like that and are very vocal about that. But it just adds to the algorithm. But it does, 100%. But those that do resonate with your authentic you, they are really resonating with it. And you can make a connection with people in so many crazy ways. I know you are truly celebrity when it comes to this sort of stuff. I'm very new to it.

So I get stopped in the airport from people. I'm like, hey, you're Edward Verified. My family and I, because we don't believe in like gifts to each other. We, we rather give experiences. So we travel a lot. Um, um, I have two little ones. So my son, Ryan, who, you know, my daughter, Victoria, uh, who, you know, and 10 and eight respectively, we, we go away a lot for the holidays. So we went to South Africa this past, uh, Christmas season. So we went to South Africa this past Christmas season. So we went through Christmas and into the new year. But we flew by way of Heathrow to get to South Africa. And in Heathrow, like two different people at different locations, the airport came up to me like, you're, you're

Edward, Edward, Edward Collins, Edward verified. I'm like, Oh, yeah, man. It's like so surreal. What do your kids think about that? My son Ryan has, has this statement that he often, and I try to discourage him all the time, my daddy's famous, and I'm not. I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy who's online telling people what I believe to be of value. I share who I am pretty authentically, make tons of mistakes in my life, as every human does, and I just try to serve. My kids are the same thing. They're always got spotted dad got spotted and yeah it's pointing out every time

we go out i get spotted somewhere and they think they're always just waiting and they're all that you know and nor my littlest one's funny because she always wants to talk to the people or she's some of the click funnel shirt on and she's like dad do a quick photo go talk to him like i don't you know i'm like scared like i don't talk to him like okay i actually want to do this so sure i got instagram pulled up and we'll make sure everyone can see at home but do you want I don't want to talk to him. Okay, I actually want to do this. So I got Instagram pulled up, and we'll make sure everyone can see it at home. But do you want to show a couple of these and just talk through them? And just curious, like the thoughts or how you're doing. Some people are like, you hear the concept, but I think when I started looking at them and seeing it, it's like, oh, this is what you're actually doing.

So you can grab any random one. I mean, I just literally plug anyone because they're all pretty much the same. Let's go again. How are you attacking yourself from liability with the gym and the football court? We have a LLC that owns that property. It's an Arizona LLC. And then we have short-term rental insurance above that. And then I have an umbrella policy in addition to all that.

And then the Arizona LLC is owned by my holding LLC, which is a Wyoming LLC. You always want to set it up like that and have a holding LLC in one of these three states, Wyoming, Delaware, or Nevada, because they're non-piercing states. And what that means is it protects you from the inside attack, but it also protects you from the outside attack. An inside attack would be a tenant slipping and falling or a guest drowning in the pool. An outside attack would be you getting in a car accident with a motorcyclist here in San Diego, and that motorcyclist suing you to get into properties that are out of state. So when you have an LLC, a holding LLC in Wyoming, Delaware, Nevada,

it prevents that piercing from happening. This is legit, except we're verified. What's being described here is layering of entities in order to get all of the protections possible. You see, I have something called the real wealth matrix, which is the ideal hierarchy of ownership over everything in your life. When you leverage an LLC by itself, you get statutory protection, sort of like a force field around your business. But when you layer in a Wyoming LLC,

you get sort of like a cloak of invisibility because no one knows what you own because your name is not on public record. Now, if you don't know how to put all these pieces together, you want to be in the right rooms with the right people, asking the right questions so you can get the right answers. I have such a community.

It's called UpLevel. If you want more information, drop the word UpLevel. I'll send it your way. So that's an example of I did a CTA at the end. Do most of them have CTA or no? No, not all the time. From time to time, and we're trying to be strategic with that. But quite frankly, this is not scripted.

So if I feel in the moment that it makes sense for me to say something, I'll just say it because that's not prerecorded. That's not like a separate thing that we're adding to it. I'm literally saying it in the moment based it makes sense for me to say something, I'll just say it. Cause that's not pre-recorded. That's not like a separate thing that we're adding to it. I'm literally saying it in the moment based on what I just watched. Cause I don't know what the video is. So I'm clicking play. I'm like, Oh, okay. Well this is, this is now structural structure. And a lot of people have questions about that. It's hard to get answers because there are a lot of people who don't understand that. Even like I'm a lawyer. So there's plenty of lawyers have no clue about how to actually organize your life, both from a context of just statutory protections, but also understanding the practical application of doing that and

whether or not it's simple or challenging and what are the tax ramifications of doing certain things. So I'm like, okay, well, this makes sense for me to then say something about a community. So I'll literally just say it. But there are, your phone locked, your phone locked. But that's the same concept. Like all of our videos are relatively similar in structure, right? I'm watching someone else's content and then I'm going to say something, right? So I've essentially hacked you with the concept of hook story offer, right? Why? Because what is the hook? The hook is there's some guy watching someone else talk about something.

What's going on here? And there's like this suspense that gets built because the question is, what am I going to say? Are you like, is this going to be positive or negative? Probably trying to guess. Exactly. I was watching, I was trying to guess, like, is this legit or not?

Exactly, right? Like, I was curious. And then the story is when I put the phone down and I comment, right? And then the story is when I put the phone down and I comment, right. And then the offer is either an, a, an overt one, like a call to action, right. Jump into our community, get this PDF or cause I, I try to deliver as much value as I can. So we give a lot of, a lot of stuff away for free. Um, or if it's a, a, a, a more of a, a hidden CTA, the hidden CTA that's ever present is if you like this content,

follow so you can make sure you get the next one, right? So it's sort of like always a hook story offer. It's just on how we've designed it. And all of the people that I've been noticing now on social media, because I'm trying to become a student of this since we are putting a lot of effort into it, everyone seems to be doing something like that, right? Everyone has some sort of hook. And again, whatever the concept is, it could be something that's physical, maybe something they're wearing. It could be a visual, like what is the room they're in? Like if you look at my feed, I have an amazing team behind me because it's definitely not

me. I don't know any of that stuff. I don't know how to get the lights to turn different colors and like all that sort of stuff. I don't know how to get the lights to turn different colors and like all that sort of stuff. I have an amazing team behind us that that physically curates the visual experience and the audio audio experience. And then I'm just the talking head. Yeah, I'm just doing me like and that, it's always, again, hook, story, offer. It's always present. And that's why I'm obsessed now and looking at what other people are doing and saying, okay, well, what's working and why does that work? Yeah, reverse engineering. That's really the big thing. I mean, that's pretty much what I teach other business owners how to do in business and in wealth creation like if anything is possible you

can reverse engineer the steps to get there um and that's what we've been doing now i love this because like i feel like so many ways that we're taught social media they're all there's a lot of ways that are great a lot of them are i know for me as a creator too it's like my team's like here's a script you gotta read or here's the and it's like it's so hard because someone had to come up with the idea and then write a script and i gotta perform it what doesn't feel like you know it's like, it's so hard because someone had to come up with the idea and then write a script and I got to perform it. It doesn't feel like it's, you know, it's like so much, so much work and anxiety. It's hard versus this is like, you just show up and it's like, yeah, it's such an interesting, like so much faster to, to create something that's working so much better. Yes. No.

First off, first question is how often are you posting? Is it daily? We do post every day, but I film in batches, right? So I'll walk in and my team will load like five, six different videos on my phone and I'll just hit play. They're hitting record. I hit play, put it down, talk, pick it up, hit play, put it down, talk. So like just getting through it. It's pretty quick, relatively speaking, to batch through them.

And then I have an editor. My editor does all the editing. And we literally just put it then on the calendar for when it gets published because we have a whole project management system that we try to leverage in order to be as efficient as we possibly can. How – like in a batch day, how many – day, an hour, how long? Yeah, it's usually about an hour, maybe up to two hours depending on how how many we're trying to batch. Because I do travel a lot still. We have businesses in different states. We have real estate in different states. You're going to be noisy to hang out here. Yeah, come out to Boise to hang out with you and learn the real sauce, right?

But yeah, it's definitely necessary to coordinate that because I have learned that if you are not consistent, it does become a challenge, right? And if you are interested in really growing a community online and being able to serve, you do need to be present. And if you take too much time away from doing it, it can be a challenge. Now, luckily, I have an amazing team that helps facilitate all of this, right? So one person, I could not do it, at least not with my technical lack of expertise there. But we have been posting now literally every day since January 1, 2022. And so the first year and four months, you said, before the first reaction video. And since then, it's just blown up.

I think you said there's multiple accounts, right? It's not just all one as well. What's the model of that? So we have an Instagram account. We have a Facebook account. We have a TikTok account. We have a YouTube channel, which we are just launching. So this will be fun to figure out how we can try to repurpose some of this content.

But yeah, it's all the socials, essentially. And collectively now, across all of them, we're at just about 2.9 million. Is the same reaction working on these other platforms? They have. They've worked across the board. We are evolving our YouTube presence to be much more long form. So what I'm doing is I will do a reaction video but some it's really hard to get a lot of good value in just 90 seconds right. So to me's logical. The next step is to give them more. So a CTA is, if you love this, comment the word YouTube

and I'll send you a link to a video that we'll post on it. Or if I get enough comments on this, I'll create a video on this subject. Yeah, a 30-minute video going deep on this thing. And that's been some of our best performing content on YouTube, right? Here's the one that,

you want to say something secret? Yeah, please. A lot of people are concerned about the algorithm and how the algorithm works. All algorithms are exactly the same. What I mean by that is they just care about keeping people on their platform, right? So if you create content, whatever that is, whatever your hook story offer is that keeps people there and present and interacting, they're going to reward you. They'll push that content out to more people. So again, whether it's 15 seconds or doing this, whatever it is, it's about can you keep

someone's attention for a period of time where the algorithm notices and then wants to send it to more people who just paid attention to you? So you can sort of hack that concept. But here's the thing. A lot of people will use things like link in bio to get them to move. The algorithm hates that because that gets people off the platform. So the way you can get a similar outcome is to just request the viewer to comment a certain word as an example. And then that could be used in the DMs to link them to outside content, right? To link

them to things like your YouTube channel or to a landing page or to a lead magnet of some sort, an opt-in, whatever it may be, which is amazing, right? Because now you get to essentially capture an audience that currently TikTok owns or Facebook owns or Instagram owns in some way, and you can capture that lead and then continue to cultivate that through email campaigns and newsletters and, and community building. There's so many different ways to do it. And again, this is all something so new to me, right? Compared, comparatively speaking, because I've been doing what I've been doing for 26 years and what I've been doing in this environment, this ecosystem, this iteration has been only about

two years old. So it's so cool. So fascinating. My next question then is you see a lot of people, especially like the famous people, right? Like people my kids all follow. They have huge social followers, all sorts of stuff. But most of them are broke. They're not making money or whatever it is. I'm curious, like how has this affected your business now?

Oh, yeah, definitely. What does it actually look like? So I think one of the things you have to recognize is you have to have a plan, right? If you're going into it without a plan, then yeah, that's why you end up broke, right? It's like, if you don't, if your goal is to get to California, you can figure out wherever you may be, how to get around obstacles. But if you don't know where you're going, like how do you get around an obstacle when it presents itself? And a lot of people will go into things and they'll wing it and they won't have a game plan or even an idea of what they want to get a return on their investment for. And I think that's the biggest challenge with a lot of things in life.

So I go into pretty much everything I do with a mindset of I want to know what my return on investment is going to be before I decide to commit anything. So we've noticed that when we are generating a significant amount of attention, right, that we can redirect that attention in ways that potentially could turn into a customer or turn into at least a relationship that we can cultivate over time that eventually could turn into a customer. And that curation process is, that's what I'm referring to it internally, we're essentially curating our audience and cultivating them into an opportunity where I can convert them into a prospect.

My definition as an audience is just someone who's interested, as like I got a little bit of their attention, but that prospect is someone who's like, I'm in a position to essentially buy whatever it is you have. It doesn't mean someone who's like, I'm in a position to essentially buy whatever it is you have. It doesn't mean they've bought, but they're in a position to. And then the closing environment is where you actually make them an actual customer, an actual client, someone who's exchanged their dollars for your value.

Yeah. I view the world in funnels. That's, you know, it's a funnel. You have, here's Instagram with the hours, 3 billion people. And You have, here's Instagram with hours, 3 billion people. And then from there you've got your millions, a million followers. And then from there, it's like, and again,

I think a lot of people like stop to step one, step two, because they want influence. They want to be famous or whatever, you know? It's like, but yeah, I'm the same way.

So I really don't care about that at all. I care about it because I want the attention. Right. And I want to be able to direct the attention in a way, because again, I'm trying to direct the attention in a way, because again, I'm trying to do value forward in everything I do. So even if I can direct your attention, you never become a client. Everything I'm trying to do is you are better for having given me your attention. Like you will have learned something. You will have been able to say, okay, at least

now I learned enough where I can ask the right questions of those who are in my life that actually I rely on, right? Whether that's an accountant and a lawyer, a financial professional, whatever it may be. So no matter what, they're better for what I've done. And if they become a client and I'm actually positioned well to be able to serve them, if I can actually add value, I want to do that, right? Because I'm an unapologetic capitalist. I 100% believe if I can add value, it's my moral obligation to tell you I can. Because it's like if you have the cure for a horrible disease, you would be horrible not to share that, right? So that's my thought process across the board. And I think a lot of people will jump into social media for the celebrity aspect of it. And I've just never been interested in that.

I know that there's a reason to go that route to capture more and more attention. But I'm not doing it for the celebrity aspect of it. I'm doing it to be able to push people into an environment where they're better. Hey, Funnel Hackers, let's be real. How many of you have forgotten about subscriptions and you keep paying for these things month after month after month? That was my wife and I before Rocket Money came along. Literally a couple months ago, we downloaded this app

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next campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash clicks to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash clicks. Terms and conditions may apply. LinkedIn is the place to be, to be. So walk me through what your funnel looks like, like your goal. So again, here's all of Instagram. Here's your people. They're seeing your stuff. Where are you traditionally? And maybe there's one funnel. I mean, there's a lot of you doing webinars free. Here's for the most part, like what that, what that looks like. You're the way you're pushing people towards. We're essentially redesigning everything now because we're purely organic, right? We don't do any paid advertising. Although I need to change that based on your,

because you've told me, like, why not, Edward? You hate money? As long as you're doing stuff, might as well, yeah. It's funny because I was the paid people. I don't do any organic. I don't do any paid.

I'm like, why don't you guys do both? Exactly. I get it. It makes all the sense in the world. So my team now has that direction, right? And they're the ones who are going to support us in, in that transition process. But, um, we, we essentially have an organic funnel. So our, our short form content is essentially leading to long form, right? So we want to shift people from Tik TOK and Instagram and, and, and Facebook to YouTube, because that gives me an opportunity to really

spend time with people virtually. And I could get to leverage that experience because I can record that video once and people can watch it over and over again, or thousands of people can watch it, hundreds of thousands of people can watch it. So you get economies of scale when you do that. And what we're doing is from then the YouTube or the long form, then we push into community, right? And inside of community is where we essentially funnel everyone, right? So it's designed to be able to ascend. Is it a free community? Free community that is still gated, right?

Meaning we need to capture your name, your email address, your contact information, right? And then you get access to the free. But inside of the free community, there are things that you don't have access to because they require ascension, right? They require some sort of upgrading. But they can see them, right? They can see all the different things that they have the potential of accessing and taking value. And depending on where they are in their journey, I can help navigate them to you may want to consider this course or you may want to consider this mastermind or you may want to consider this private client group. And then they can choose to raise their hand and say, hey, Edward, I'm interested.

So the conversion process for us is relatively – I don't want to say easy because nothing is ever easy, but it is simple. I'm developing a relationship with people over time, leveraging something that I put in a lot of energy in upfront, but I get to use it over and over and over and over again, like infinitely, and essentially still continue to add value the entirety of that time. And again, give people an opportunity to say, hey, listen, Edward, I'm over here. i'd really like that and uh they essentially are closing themselves as you ever do this i was it's always fun for me again first time i ever did was in an event it was a fun hockey live event with 5 000 people we talked for four days i started doing the math like if i was sitting down with one person and the next person like how many hours that would have been and how many years like it was like 30 something years i think about with

youtube like for example this video probably get who knows 30, 50,000 people. And from that, we had a chance to sit face by face to 30,000 people and explain what you're doing and give them enough belief. And then the tools to do it, it would take us 10 years, right? But one video now does that and it leverages it. You know, you think about how much content you put out there. Like, again, I'm a big ROI guy, less on the money side, more like everything. If I'm doing a video or a conversation, like what roi on the thing and i start thinking about this it's like man this conversation is rubbing right now the roi that'll come from that and then you know every video you post on your scene and then i'll think about this like you

know when we pass away or whatever those videos are still there like it's it keeps it's true legacy going for so long yeah true legacy yeah so legacy. Yeah. So I think anyone who's – a lot of times I think people get nervous because like you, you jump in there and it's like I'm going to spend a year and nothing's going to work. Is it worth it? It's like, man, it's hard up front, but it's so worth it because of the long tail. And now who knows how long, five years, ten years, whatever your career is going to be before you decide you're disappearing back and ready to go to some more beaches. All of the stuff you're creating, the impact that'll keep coming for generations to come it's pretty amazing like when when people really embrace technology because there are only four ways to get leverage in business right you you have you have collaboration which is you working

with other humans like whether they're your team your employees your your staff whatever it may be your customers even can collaborate with you. Then you have technology, right, code, that environment where you can leverage the technology to enhance the collaborators, right, the things that the collaborators are doing. Then you have community, which is an ability to take a vast number of other humans and make them your marketing team for you. And then you have capital, right, putting other people's money into work to enhance all the other three. But when you look at that concept, it is remarkable what you can actually accomplish if you go into everything with how can I leverage? How can I leverage my time? How can I leverage other people's time? How can I leverage the outcomes that those that I serve

are going to get? All of that concept. And if you go into it with that mindset, you can dramatically change things. Like for instance, if you're in a sales meeting, right? So we're experimenting with this thing now, which is pretty interesting, where typically you do these one-off sales. Like if the audience doesn't know like the whole sales environment and the process, like book to call funnels and things of that nature. It was very intimidating for me because it takes so much time and other humans time. So we're experimenting with this thing where our sales engagements, our sales conversations are going to happen in group. We just did one where we had a bunch of different individuals on the same call and I delivered the same exact pitch, if you will. And we saved, I think it was like

seven or 10 hours worth of time. This is one-on-one calls? With one-on-one calls for that few minutes that I was able to spend on with just the group at the same time. And they convert it, right? And then I start to then analyze, well, how much leverage did I get there? Was that a good return on the investment? Are there ways to enhance it even further? How could I add things like video warm-ups to that call where they can then experience like precursor events prior to getting on that call? And even on the call, how do I curate the call, maybe curating other content and do a facilitated oriented event like what you're spousing. I'm sitting in an inner circle meeting and I'm like, I'm taking notes from what you're sharing in my teams. I have my director of implementation here and he's taking notes and

we're like, well, we're going to have to sit down now on Saturday and redesign this process because again, it's all about taking advantage of the resources you have available to you in the most efficient and effective way possible if your goal is to have success. Now, everyone's going to have a different definition of success, but the milestones of success are usually pretty similar. Whether they're monetary, whether they're time freedom, whatever it may be, you just have to figure out what your definition is. And as long as it is a possibility, you can reverse engineer the steps. But I have this way of talking about it. I never try to teach someone that's impossible, right? Because I have no idea if it's possible. For instance, if someone asked me how to get to Pluto, I have no clue. I don't know anyone who's ever been there, right? But if you ask me how to get to 30,000 feet,

I can tell you that because it's possible, right? Go to the airport, buy a ticket, go through security, get to the gate, get on the plane, and basically stay on the plane while it takes off. You'll get to 30,000 feet because that's where they fly. So since it's a possibility, you can basically reverse engineer the steps. But here's the thing. Most people will just stop in the reverse engineering, meaning they'll do the research, they'll sit down, they'll come to mastermind events and they'll take plenty of notes and they're like, oh yeah, that's great.

But that's not actually what gets outcome. The only thing that gets outcome is action. Like quite literally, the only thing that gets outcomes you desire is taking action. But you have to be in the right rooms with the right people, asking the right questions so that you can get the right answers upon which you can take action. Yeah. I love that. All right. So those who are watching this video right now, let's reverse engineer this for them. So they're like, I want to grow my Instagram and I'm going to use this concept, reaction video, stuff like that.

They're just getting started. Walk us through the steps in order. And then now they'll have a blueprint to go to execute on to find find a video on any watch the video record you watching the video and literally comment based on your zone of genius like whatever you are authentically good at or have knowledge about and you don't have to be the the most genius person in that topic you just have to know more than the person who's going to align with you, right? You have to just know just enough more than the person who needs the information that you have and then build a connection. And the best way to build a connection is just to be you, just to be. And I know that's

really, really hard. It's hard when the camera goes on you for the first time. I struggled a lot with that, right? But if you're just you, you give an opportunity for someone to actually genuinely connect with the you, which means then you don't have to try to be someone else. That's really tiring. Like it's really, really exhausting to put on a mask. If you could just be you and connect with those who resonate, your life can change. Yeah. be you and connect with those who resonate your life can change yeah one of the principles i think about a lot because i think most people when they first get in this business they they do exactly you did they they try to do it the way that everyone's doing it yep and it's not authentic

and doesn't work i hate that word like you're authentic self but it's interesting because there's a biblical scripture i love that christ talks about it says like my sheep will hear my voice and they will they will come to you with one fold with one shepherd and while that was obviously true with him and christianity everything like it's true for all of us like yes like i'm gonna put my stuff out there and there's people that hate russell brunson you go on like page three or four google there's people that hate me down there but my people hear my voice and they're here and you're in voice and like these are my people and i can serve them and everything like that and so you gotta stop worrying about all the rest and just put yourself out there your way and like your

people hear your voice they'll come to you and you can serve them. And I, I strongly believe everyone's been called to serve somebody on this planet. And it's like, until we're willing to put ourselves out there and do it, um, they're not going to hear our voices and they can't come to us. And so it's like, that's the, that's the call. That's the thing for you guys to do is to go out there and be willing to do it. And you and I have an unfair advantage though, right? We we've come to realize that that's a truism, right? That's a real thing. I'm a stoic, so I try not to invest any energy I have in things I can't control. And I try to put everything into those things I can. And when you think about it, you can't control anyone else's opinion of you at all. You can't control

it. You could do so many good things and people can still have a bad opinion of you. So if that's true, why do you waste energy in what they think? Just be you and those who resonate will come to you. They'll hear your message. They'll hear your voice. They'll come in and they'll be interested. And then serve because that's always the prerequisite. Like you want to talk about the steps. The first step is come from a position of actually wanting to add value because all money follows value creation. Like if you go out and create value for someone, money is the natural byproduct of that process. And if you're concerned about the money thing, well, the reality is like, again, I'm an unapologetic capitalist. Money is just a tool and there's nothing good or bad about it. It's how it's utilized. And you can actually get financial resources and do amazingly good things with those things. And again, I think you could do – if you're a good steward of your resources, you're way better at managing them than anyone in Washington, D.C. ever would be. Again, I'm pretty firm in my beliefs.

I 100% agree with you, by the way. So yes. That's why we resonate. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thanks, man, for sharing. I think it's cool. So I'm going to commit to you, by the way. So yes. Yes. That's why we resonate. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thanks, man, for sharing. I think it's cool. So I'm going to commit to you right now.

Please. I'm going to do my very first reaction video next week. I love it. And so my team's back here. We've got to find a really cool video for me to react on. And I'm glad you told me about the surprising thing. I was going to bet him ahead of time so I could be like, that's actually better. Yeah.

This way you don't have to worry about scripting it out. You just get to talk. Yeah. And you're also amazing at what you do so you you can talk about an infinite almost an infinite number of ways to tackle a similar similar thing because like because i you know i wouldn't for me and i'm seriously dude i don't have to pull it from just marketers it's like anything i can talk about an ad or this or you know all sorts of everything relates to what you do yeah but that's true for everything right so no matter what you do anyone who's watching this right no matter what you do

everything relates to it because that's your zone of genius you can always connect and make ties to it and as long as you speak from an authentic position speak about something you actually know, and come to that particular scenario from the position of wanting to add value, it's hard to lose. That doesn't mean you're going to get the first video to take off. I didn't. It took me a year and four months to get anything. So just be diligent. That's where it comes down to it. You have to put in the reps. At the end of the day, you're not going to get six-pack abs from three visits to the gym.

Yeah. I have a couple different content types we're really focusing on, and I'm going to add this as one of them. So it should be something we're doing once or twice a week, just in the queue. And so I'm excited to see.

So next time you go back here in Boise, I'll show it. And I'm very competitive. So with YouTube, I'm trying to beat Myron Golden and grow YouTube. But now my next goal is to, so what's your biggest reaction? You know, the most views you've got so far?

Because that's my goal. Three million. Okay. That's a big goal. All right. Three million views. I'm going to get four million on one of my reactions. I think it's three million.

Is it more? Yeah. Something like that. I think we'll have one that's like eight million. Eight million? Yeah. Man, you just made it way harder. All right.

So we're going for nine figures. Well, three million was just recent. That was like last week. Okay. All right. Ten million. We're going to, so, and hopefully you don't pass me. So we're going for we're going for nine figures three million was just recent that was like last week okay all right 10 million we're gonna so and hopefully you don't pass me so we're racing now you know i'm very competitive too it's gonna this is fun this is fun awesome thanks for being here you guys 100 create a reaction video be consistent put some stuff out there and change the world that's the game plan so thanks everyone thank you man i appreciate you well bye for now