- This is an iterative process. It's just learn and experiment
and have fun with it. Like that is the most important thing because you could go viral tomorrow. But if you don't have that mindset of constantly learning and
iterating, it's ultimately not gonna be sustainable because we all have to reinvent ourselves, even the most successful people. Like, you know, I've talked to some really wealthy and successful people. They say making money is easy. It's maintaining it and holding onto it. And I think the same plays to success is like you can get that initial success but holding onto it is a different story. (upbeat music) - Hi there, this is Ajit Nawalkha, your host at the business
of coaching podcast. And today I have Brendan Kane for you. Brendan Kane first went ahead
and got a million followers and then wrote a book that is
called "A Million Followers." This book diagnoses and
dissects and shares ideas about how you too can
get a million followers. And so I got Brendan to come down, talk about ideas that you could utilize to get these followers. Now to build a successful
coaching practice, you don't need a million followers and that's not what I'm trying to imply. But hey, listen, if you could get followers
that engage with you, love your content, love what you share, why would you not do that? If you are on social media, if you are on Instagram
or Facebook and so forth and are looking to get engaged followers, this interview is perfect for you. So without further ado, we're gonna bring on Brendan Kane. But before we do that, I wanna remind you that we post videos like
this every single week. Which means every single week, you have an opportunity
to learn from somebody who is doing really,
really well in the field or get direct videos where we share very, very useful information
for absolutely free. And so go ahead and hit
that red subscribe button so you can get a notification every single time we post a new video. Now without further ado, let's roll it. Thank you so much for
taking the time, Brendan. - Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. - Absolutely, I've heard
so many great stories about the successes you've had in the past and the wonderful book that you've written which you'll talk about
later in the conversation. But before we get started,
we mostly speak to coaches, consultants, educators, and that, you know, as you may have known, coaches and consultants specially, live in this world of
constantly being challenged with what they do. You are somebody who
consults a lot, right? So tell us a little bit about how a, you started that journey
of being in the space that you are in right now and how do you get past those
challenges as you face them? - Yeah, so my journey
is a bit interesting. So I've been in the, I would say, the digital technology and
social space for 15 years. And I think my journey
starts even before that like thinking back on it, like I've always had this ingrained entrepreneurship DNA in me. I remember it like age six or seven, taking my toys and walking
around the neighborhood and knocking on neighbors doors trying to sell my toys to their parents. So I really had that instilled in me from an early age. But where that start is that I initially went to film school. I wanted to learn the
business side of film and produce films. And I quickly realized
that they don't teach you anything about business there. So I figured the best way to
really learn about business is to start your own. And at the time, and it
still holds true today is the most cost efficient way to do that was to start internet companies because literally you don't
have to have a retail location. You don't have to have
a huge infrastructure. Like literally, we built some businesses that we got up in 48 hours. And then when I moved to LA
to pursue a career in film, that's when the entertainment industry started to reawaken the
digital after the .com bust. So I basically leveraged that knowledge to get my foot in the door and I started within
the corporate ecosystem of working for two movie studios. And then through that process,
you know, I had success but I just realized I wasn't cut out for working in a corporate environment and that's where I left and I started building
technology platforms and licensing them to big media companies. I built platforms for
like Vice, Viacom, MTV, Yahoo, Paramount and learned a lot about what it took to create a business. And then I think slowly but surely, I just realized that I was better served from a strategic perspective of helping people grow their businesses than growing my own businesses. That's just where my
value and my talent lies. And that's how I got
more into the strategy and consulting side of business. - Oh, that's interesting. So, you realized your super power was to be able to help other businesses more than help your own
business in many ways. How did you come to that realization? How did you find that? That's a tough thing to find out - Trial and error. Trial and error. It's going through a lot of failure to learn what I was good at. Creating businesses, some
that worked, some that didn't. Also just paying attention
to what fueled me, what excited me, what gave me energy, what drained my energy, what I enjoy doing, what the feedback was. I'm a big person about feedback, testing and iterating and learning. So again, it was a long journey. It wasn't like one day, I just woke up with this realization. I think it was a culmination of my career of 15 years of doing things. And I think really over the
past, like three or four years, I really was able to hone in
on what I'm really good at, what I'm bad at and where
my strength and value lies. And that's really how I
came to that conclusion. - Does it make you
uncomfortable thinking about, oh, I can look at somebody else's business and I can see what's up but I can look at it my own
business and find what's up. - I can look at it like, listen, there's a lot of truth to that
and to anything that we do is that when you're in the midst of it, like it's hard to kind of see
the forest through the trees when you're in the middle of it. And that's why I have my own advisors. I have my own consultants around me to help with that perspective. I would say that I've gotten a lot better at recognizing things
just from pure learning. Could I start my own business? In a lot of ways I do have my own business in terms of the brand that I'm building, the team that I've built, the type of client work that I do. It is a business at the end of the day. It's just not me scaling
like a formal corporation or a formal brand in that way. But I think to your question,
is it uncomfortable? Yes, but I think that's what fuels me is whenever I get uncomfortable, When I, like for example, I was doing a campaign for my
personal brand the other month and the numbers are off and
we lost $16,000 in 30 days. And yeah, it sucks. But what that did is it fueled me and I was like, okay, I need to figure out a
better way to do this. And every time I've
been in those situations where I've gotten uncomfortable, I've experienced a failure or I'm not sure how to achieve something, it just fuels me more to learn, to constantly be learning
and challenging myself to push that next level. - Let me tap a little bit into that because that's something
that daily happens for coaches and consultants and for any entrepreneur for that matter, is daily, you're going through, oh crap, that didn't work. Oh, crap, that didn't work. What's your process? What's your mindset around
saying, "Oh, it didn't work." How do you get yourself back up? - Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, in the beginning
it would take days, sometimes days, sometimes a week if you had a failure just starting out. And as you go through that more and more, it just gets easier and
easier to deal with. And like now I'll have situations where maybe it's hours. Sometimes I can get through
it in 20 or 30 minutes. And I think for me personally, I think you need to
recognize that human emotion and not like push it down. Just recognize and have the awareness of what you're feeling,
what you're going through because it is part of it. Like to be anxious, to be stressed, that's telling you something
and it's not to say that, and I don't believe in this concept of you're gonna eliminate stress, you're gonna eliminate
anxiety and all your problems because I don't think
you're really gonna be in a healthy place, but just recognize what you're feeling, why you're feeling it
and then take action. I think that's the biggest part is like, don't dwell in it. I was like, okay,
something didn't work here. Why didn't it work? And what am I gonna do to either fix it or to improve upon it on the next time so that it doesn't happen again? So that's my internal process. I do definitely get down. Sometimes it takes a few hours, sometimes it's 20 or 30 minutes. And I do have a lot of
self doubt that creeps in. But to me, it's like the
only way to solve that is to push forward and to keep learning and finding better ways to do things. - Is it that you found that
there are certain traits that are useful in those situations? Is that like, for example, it could be that you're just very curious as a person? Or you found curiosity to be that trait? Or is it just something else? I don't know, is there any
tree that you identified, you are like, huh, when I
get into the state of anxiety or stress and so forth, the way to process this is
tap into these traits of mine. Is that something - I would say that the
first place I go to is like, I've been in years of
therapy and self exploration. So I find with myself and I
think with a lot of people, the way that we perceive the world and the way that we react to the world is based upon experiences all
the way back to childhood. So first, determining
what's the difference between what's real now, what is causing me to feel something now versus what is something from the past that's causing me to feel a certain way, because you need to
really separate that first and have that level of awareness so that you can make the
appropriate decision. So the first place I go is
just to sit there and feel what am I experiencing? Like what is the level of
awareness that I can get? Is this something that's
stemming from the past? Or is this something that
really is from present moment that I need to pay attention to? And then once I have that clarity, I just sit with it, I understand it. I have compassion and empathy for myself, which I'm not saying
is an easy thing to do, I'm still learning how to do that. And then once I've had that moment, then I'm like, okay, now what is the action
that I'm going to take to fix this problem? Or to learn a different way of doing this? Or to make sure that I take this learning to go to the next level? - So you said you were
been in years of therapy. Is there certain tools
that you've picked up in the process? Like you said, there is of
course, you've done the work and you constantly learned. But is there some particular tools that you would suggest for people who would wanna get past
those challenges quickly? - There's so many like, I mean I've been on this
journey for probably 12 years of personal development
and self-exploration and I have tried so many different things and it's hard to tell because I feel like even if
something doesn't work for you, you still take something from it. And over the course of years,
I've done so many things. So I do meditation. I am a firm believer in meditation and its application to relieve
stress to center yourself. I do therapy with a therapist. I believe that that is
definitely a helpful aspect. I just started working with
psychedelic therapy sessions with psilocybin. I've done a few of those sessions over the past three or four months. That's been a tremendous
experience for me. So I'm always constantly exploring and learning and trying new things. I think it's really a personal thing. I think that certain things
work for certain people and certain things don't. So I would always say, "Just try something for yourself, test. Does it doesn't make a difference? What type of impact do you see with it and then move on to the next one." I think it is being curious and having that mindset of don't just follow the herd, like be your own person. Like, just because somebody even you trust recommends something to you doesn't mean it's gonna work for you. Like, explore it, be open to it, but if it doesn't, move
on to something else. move on to something else and figure out what it is
that really works for you. - Tell me something Brendan, what was it that was a life experience or business experience that got you into a place you're saying, I need to create greater progress. I need to help these companies get the kind of outcome
that you help them get. What are those things? What is that one experience
or two experiences that you felt created that transmission? The reason I asked that
is because usually, in experiences like that, hides deep meanings or
deep motivations for people and sharing those stories
enables other people to be able to see their
story in a different light, often, especially, if they're
struggling in that moment. So any moment or experience
or a life challenge or a story that you feel was useful to you to make progress which may
not look useful at the time when it happened. - I mean, there's so many
different experiences of course, across the course of my career or just life, in general that have put me on a different path. So for example, when I was born, when I was born and I got
stuck in the birth canal. And because of that I had
Erb's palsy in this shoulder and it was underdeveloped. I couldn't fully straighten it out. And I'm naturally right-handed. So I had to learn how to
do everything left-handed. So from an early age, onset, that challenge actually was a blessing because it wired my brain in a certain way that I could see things
differently than other people. Another aspect of my
childhood, growing up, I had a very strong
presence with my father that was very hard on me in sports, would push me, was sometimes
verbally abusive with me. And that was a real struggle and it's something that I'm
currently working on today, but that instilled a specific drive in me that still drives me today. And then I think more towards
the business side of it, what I just realized through
the course of my career of being an entrepreneur is
I always had to go into rooms with big celebrities, big
corporations, big brands and convey a vision. And I don't wanna say sell because I don't believe in selling. I believe in providing value, but I had to go into
rooms every single day and learn how to read the other person, understand how they perceive the world. What are their obstacles? What are their goals? What are their aspirations? And be able to tailor a
message or solution to those that would inspire them to take action. And doing that over and
over and over again, that is where I got really
good at connecting with people. And that's where I feel a
lot of my emission is going is being able to connect people, inspiring them to take action by taking really complex ideas, really compact solutions it's distilling them
into the simplest form so that they can activate on it, so they can take control of that that they wouldn't be
able to do otherwise. - Wow, that's amazing. Let's, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's look at a little bit of the work that you've done in the
past couple of years. Like, especially your book
that we have right here which the title is "One
Million Followers". And before we even get into why did that manifest and so forth, Let's first figure out why
even get 1 million followers? Where did that inspiration come from? - So I, and it's actually the second book I'm working on right now, which is called "Hook
point: How to Stand Out in a Three-Second World" and it's one of the things that I work with people on extensively and the thing that I've perfected over the course of my
career and going into rooms and inspiring people to take action, doing it both offline and online. The reality of the situation
is we live in a world where there's 60 billion messages sent on digital platforms each day. Like we live in a micro-attention world. And especially when you're
talking about like coaches, businesses, brands,
products, and services, like you need a way to
capture people's attention. You can no longer just say,
like, "I'm a business coach. I'm an inspiration coach. I'm a digital strategist. I'm a marketer." Because there's so much noise out there, there's so much saturation. And what I've seen is that you'll have some of the most talented
people in the world that really have the
ability to transform it but they can't because they
can't overcome the noise. So why the one million followers? Because it's a great hook point. The difference between saying, "Hey, I have a marketing
strategy to grow your audience." Or I'm a digital strategist saying, "I generated a million followers in a hundred countries in 30 days." Like that stands out and
that's the reason I did it is to grab people's attention
so the real work can begin. And I'm not talking about clickbait. Like you have to back it up with value and offer real, tangible information but it's a way to grab
somebody's attention so that then you can
deliver the real message. And that was the whole
purpose and reason behind it. - That's awesome. And I wanna, actually, if you're open to talking a
little bit about your next book because I think to craft that hook is paramount in the coaching
world, consulting world, actually the world right now because like you said,
it's a three-second world. How is it that you even think about it? We don't need to go really deep into it but if you could just give some pointers. - Yeah, absolutely. Like there's an exercise
that I take people through that I think is really helpful. And this exercise in this
concept of hook point can be used for anything, like it can be used for
a book title, an article, each piece of video that you create, a landing page, whatever it may be but at a very high level, the way that I visualize it for myself and for other people is let's just say you have
the editor of a magazine in your niche calling you. And they say, "Listen,
we're giving you the cover of this magazine. You're gonna be the only
person on this magazine. What is your headline gonna be?" And that headline has to be
less than a one sentence. The fewer the words, the better. And then when you're
thinking and brainstorming about that headline, don't think about it
from your perspective, think about your potential audience and customer's perspective. And imagine them walking
down a busy street with all this noise and
clutter all around them, and now they're passing a magazine stand and there's 50 other
magazines on that stand. What is that headline that's gonna make somebody stop, pick it up, buy it and read it. Because that's the world we live in. That's how difficult it is. And then when doing that, I don't want you to just come up with one, come up with five, 10,
15, and then test them, test them online, test them offline. See how people measure that response. And that's where like the
real work begins with that. Like, so I understood how
to do this really well offline communication, but
where I got really good online is I worked with a journalist
called Katie Couric. And when she was going
from traditional television to a deal with Yahoo, that transition was struggling because there was just so much
noise online with content. And I spent about two years reverse engineering and the
art of the interview with her to be successful on digital platforms. And I did 220 interviews with her ranging from like a Jessica
Chastain to a Joe Biden, to a Jay Leno, to Chance the
Rapper all across the board. And through those 220 interviews, I tested 75,000 variations of content. Just rapidly iterating and just seeing what would draw people in. How to package content, how to grab people with a hook. And that's where like the fundamental like exercise and analogy
of the magazine starts but where the real work becomes is really just using that in everything that you do and just get really good at it. And that's where I work
with a lot of clients. And it's the reason that
I wanna do this book, because working with billionaires and like huge big CEOs and celebrities, I find that the smarter people get, the harder it is for them
to distill their information down in the simplest form. And that's what excites me of being able to help people on that level really get their information across. - Wow, that's amazing. So I love the analogy of saying, "Hey, what if you're
walking on a busy street, you had a magazine stand, there are 50 other magazines on it. How do you say that one thing that would get people to
say, "I want that magazine." and they wanna keep it or buy it and keep it and read it. I know you kind of
alluded to it a little bit as to really see how to
create a concise message from the perspective of your client, instead of thinking about you, you think about your client and keep it into five, seven
words, whatever that is. Is there a secondary step to that? Is there something that when
I am thinking about that as if I was to discover
that message right now, what are the questions that
I should be asking myself to get to that point? - Yeah, so where my
head goes with this is, first and foremost, and
you already hit on it but it's so important because most people
make the biggest mistake of when they're designing content, they're designing a
hook point or anything, they're just thinking
about what they wanna say not what the person wants to hear. So you have to make that mindset before you even start this process, because if you get so caught
up in what you wanna say and what your message is in your head, it's gonna make everything more difficult. So that's the first place. And then the second place that I start is make sure, and this is
where I see a lot of people in doing these exercises go wrong, make sure it's not something that you've already heard before or making slight tweaks of words. Like some people, for example, like one of the ways that I look at is, you know, meme cards on the top of videos, it's a burned in headline at the top. And the reason people do
that is because 70% of video on Facebook and Instagram
is watching the sound off. So somebody a long time
ago invented that meme card and it works, but it's so oversaturated. Everybody uses it now. So you can't just put texts on there and just expect it to work. You know, it has to be creative. So it's like the difference
of saying on that meme card where a lot of people's head
will go, think positively or think positive, and
your goals will be achieved or something along those lines, I'm sure people come up with better, but you've heard that a hundred times. So I see that and I'm like, "Okay, I understand that I've heard it. I don't need to watch it. I'm gonna swipe up, I'm gonna swipe up." Versus flipping it on its head of how thinking positively
can get you into trouble. And the content behind it
could be the exact same, but just flipping it on its head and capturing people's attention. Like we did a video recently where the meme card was
sweat the small stuff, where you're used to seeing
don't sweat the small stuff. So automatically, we see people stopping and capturing that attention. So just do a play on words of, yes, you can make general statements but make sure it's not a general statement that's been said a hundred times. And if it's been said a hundred times, then make sure you're
doing a play off of words to make it stand out. Again, it's like with the book is there's a difference between saying rapid growth strategies and
zero to a million followers in 30 days. Like the zero to a million
followers in 30 days got 16,000 people to apply
to me in like two months, to apply to work with me just because I'm playing off of words and really wrapping their
attention around that. Then once you have their attention, you need to have a
compelling story to tell. It's not that you just
grabbed their attention and then all of a sudden
everything falls into place. Like the way that I look
at it in the world today is the first and most important part is you have to win three seconds. And you're winning that three seconds for an additional 10 seconds. And then you have to win
them for that 10 seconds. And then you go from 10
to 30, from 30 to 60, and then from going on. So yes, the most important
part is really hooking them in and where a lot of people struggle, but then you have to have the substance and the storytelling to back it up. So what is that really
compelling narrative and story that's gonna wrap back
into that expectation that you've set with that hook point. And then finally, it's like, you gotta build trust and credibility and it has to be authentic. So don't just go after hook
points that you can't back up. Because that's where you're
getting into click bait is like you have to be able
to do it in an authentic way that really matches the expectations that you've set forth with that meme card or with that hook point. Again, the analogy of a magazine is if you read a, you know,
a headline on the cover and you pick it up and the article either doesn't really talk about it or the article is poorly written, you're just gonna be like, "This is dumb. I'm gonna throw this out and I'm not gonna pay
attention to it after that." - Wow, I love it. And I kind of was like,
"Wow, this is brilliant. I wanna recapture what you just said." Because you basically went from saying, "Hey, there is a hook point but you have to think
about how you're capturing or recapturing their attention
pretty much every 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 50 seconds depending on whatever's
the length of the video that you're going for." Because you said, yes,
you talk about something that's an exciting thing, but it's not necessarily
something that is intuitively you go, "Oh, I know about it." It's kind of counter-intuitive or it challenges the
popular belief if I may, and that's kind of to get started. But what was interesting that
you said right after that is yes, but don't stop there. Think about why they will stay
for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 50 seconds, minute, two
minutes, five minutes, whatever the length of the video and that I think is
what sometimes you miss, as sometimes as people were just saying, "Hey, if only I could get more people to kind of look at what I have to say." It's not only about looking at what to say but how to keep them going on to continue to look at what
you have to say, right? - A hundred percent, and I think that you started to allude to it, but one of the most important
things that I've learned, 'cause I studied human behavior and communication and
psychology pretty in depth. And what I find is that oftentimes, it's not what you say but how you say it. It's like people can be true experts and really have very tangible information but they're not packaging it in a way that people can hear it. And that's where it falls flat, especially with coaches
and experts in their fields is they are so smart, they're so detailed. They understand, they're so
in their head about what works that they can't distill it in a way of thinking about the other person. And that's really where
I'm doing a lot of focus of working with people is
pulling that out of them and taking their brilliance
and packaging it in such a way that it can be heard, that you can draw people's attention, especially in the world that we live in. Like when you're talking
about social media, you're fighting the algorithms and like the algorithms get a huge bad rap and everybody's mad at them and upset. Oh, my posts aren't getting reach. And oh, the algorithms are against me. They're there to serve a purpose. And this is the same with the human brain. And I'll just give the
analogy of algorithms because it applies both online and offline is the algorithms are designed that every time you open the app, Facebook, Instagram YouTube,
Twitter, whatever it is, they want to serve up the content that you're gonna engage with the most because their whole
company and revenue source is about keeping you on the
app as long as possible. So if you open up that app and you start getting
content that's not engaging, what are you gonna do? You're gonna close the app. And then if that keeps
happening over and over again, you're gonna stop using
the app less and less and eventually you just stopped
using the app altogether. So the algorithms are designed to push the content that it feels users are gonna respond to the most and it's different for each person. So each of us follows
anywhere between like 300 to like 2000 people, some people may follow more. The algorithms have to design, okay, which content should I serve to you? What content should I serve to me? And that's where it's really designed to basically put the best content at top. And that's where you have
to design your messages. Not just about what you're saying it's about how you're saying it. So the algorithms can read it. So the engagement can
be generated off of it. And it's the same with the human brain. The human brain is
designed as an algorithm to understand what
information should I take in? What information should I keep? What information should I throw out? And that's where it's designing
that message in such a way that it really resonates with people. So not only does it bring somebody in, but allows you to retain that information with the consumers or the audience that you're reaching with your content. - That's a beautiful way
that you just explain to think about algorithms. Because that's something that I know we always complain about,
everybody complains about it. - We complain about it
too, it's frustrating. But, if you know what it is and why it's doing what it's doing and instead of getting upset about it, you come up with a solution to it. - Yeah, no, absolutely. And I wanted to kind
of allude to something which is something that's
very famously said, if you wanna be interesting,
be interested, right. And if you wanna be
interesting, being interested kind of suggest the idea if you want to really be interesting for the algorithm and the clients that you are going to serve or people that you wanna
communicate your message to. be interested in how they operate, right? Like you said, be
interested in why algorithm operate the way they operate and you'll be able to
figure out how to beat them because it's basically you
will be interesting to them because if the engagement, because if not just
thinking about what you say, but how you say it and so forth that the ideas that you communicate, it's the same as the real
world, in the offline world. If you wanna be interesting, be interested in the person across because that's the only time that they are going to
give you any attention. - [Brendan] Yeah. - Okay, so that's fascinating. And this is so much great
juice that is right here. Tell us a little bit
more about your journey to get one million followers. We understand the context
of why you did it, it made sense perfectly. Then how did you go about doing it? And what was the secret to that? - So what happened was initially, I helped build one of
the largest social-paid optimization firms in the world. And what that means is we were
optimized advertising spend on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram for like Fortune 100 and 500 companies. And it was really an experience for me because we would have the
biggest brands and corporations the world come to us with a
piece of creative and say, "Here's a piece of creative
that we've invested hundreds of thousands, in some
cases, millions of dollars on and here's a budget of a million dollars." Sometimes it was more than that. And we wanna target,
let's just say, females, 35 to 50 years old with
this piece of creative. And when you ask them, "Well, how do you know
that this piece of content is gonna resonate with this audience to the tune of risking all of that money?" Nine times out of 10, they
didn't have the analytics or data to support that decision. They were just doing a creative
hunch and a creative risk. And for huge corporation, sure, you can take a few of
those risks and and lose and not have a tremendous
impact on the business but it's not a long-term strategy. If you keep losing,
it's not going to work. And then for the rest of us, we just don't have that level
of money to go off and risk. So I left working in that company and I started building my own
set of testing methodologies on top of Facebook and Instagram, really to be able to test content at scale and understand what content
formats, themes, and stories resonate with people
to get them to perform a specific action whether it's to share a piece of content, to just view it, to like it, to comment, for lead generation traffic,
followers, whatever it may be. And I went back, I started
using it on the brands and corporations and was seeing success and hitting their key KPIs, which a majority of them is awareness and just overall engagement because they're going after massive reach. And then I decided, okay, can this be applied
working with celebrities and professional athletes as well? But not just from an awareness
and engagement perspective, but generating followers. Because I had specifically
some professional athletes that I'm working with where their endorsement
deals are specifically tied to how many followers they have. So I wanted to see could
my learnings be applied to that as well. And I was seeing success with that. And as I was seeing data coming in from different parts of the world, it really fascinated me to understand what it would take for different people, from different backgrounds, from different parts
of the world to engage and follow a brand that they
had never been aware of before. And then it seed another idea in my head. It's like, okay, it's great. Over the course of my career, I've worked with some of
the biggest celebrities and corporations brands on the planet, but what about people
starting from scratch? What about people starting from zero? Could I take the learnings
and apply it to them? And that's where, when thinking about it, again I'm a very experiential learner. I don't like theorizing about things. I don't like talking about them. I like doing, like,
'cause that's how I learn. I thought that I have to run an experiment to figure out what's possible. And when thinking about who to run it on, I thought why not myself? Because I've never been on television. I'm not a professional athlete. I'm not a musician or any of those things. I was starting from scratch,
I was starting from zero. And that's where I set
out on this experiment of, you know, building a million followers in a hundred countries in 30
days on Facebook initially. And then I built another system, a similar concept in terms of the process that we do for Instagram as well. - So you're like a scientist
for social media in many ways in the modern world how
to really approach people in an interesting way to be
able to get the attention in the new world. - I would say that I focus on innovation and I do it in all aspects of business. Social media is just what
I'm known for recently, because of the book and the
million followers thing. But like, as we're talking about, the next book hook point, there is a social media component to it but it talks about both
online and offline. So I would say that I am more of an innovation and strategist that I just love figuring
out how things work, like complex problems, distilling it down to its simplest form and then scaling it. Like that's what I really love to do. And social media is just one
of the aspects that I focus on because I just feel like
there's so much potential there. - Absolutely. So tell us a little bit what
you may already be discussing in the book, by the way, this is the book that
was sitting right by me. What you may already be
discussing in the book, which is how does one get
to a million followers? - Yeah, so the book is the
methodology and the process that I used to do it. First and foremost, I don't feel like everybody needs a million followers because it's a pretty daunting task to do. It's really just the system
on how you can be successful in social and digital platforms. It's the underlying process that we use, the underlying mindset that we use. So it includes my process,
breaking down step-by-step of how I did it. But then I went off and interviewed my top friends and partners
in different facets of digital and social growth. People that have created billion
dollar e-commerce companies people that have scaled
YouTube platforms, Instagram, all of them, so that I could
give well-rounded information. Because I'm a firm believer that not every strategy
is right for every person. So I present my strategies and then I present other
people's strategies and say, "Pick the one
that works for you." But just giving a well-rounded
base of information that comes from leading experts and it's not just high-level
fluff information. It's very detailed and specific
of how we approach that. I get really upset and turned
off by people in the space that just say, "This is the
only way to do something." And you see so much of it
from agencies and contractors because that's all they know. And that's why I like being
a strategist than an agency because I can come to somebody and say, "Okay, this is the exact
strategy that you should use and here's the perfect partner to do it." So I'm not incentivized to say, "You should use my strategy because this is the
only way I make money." I don't think that that
really provides value to people in reaching their goals. - Absolutely, absolutely. But because for the
sake of this interview, I am a hundred percent alignment with you which is where we come in as well where we try to never, not try to, we never say, "This is the way." Which is why this podcast is designed the way it is design is
because we bring in people from all walks and say, "Hey, this is a way of doing something. And if this is right for you, go for it. If it's not fine, it's fine." The next person maybe, you're
looking more for inspiration than actual going, okay,
I have to copy someone. That's not our intent here as well. But still it's inspiring
to see somebody else be able to pull off something that sounds sort of really crazy idea especially because you're like, I'm not a musician, I'm not
an actor, I'm not a celebrity. But I said, what if I had to experiment to get a million followers across a hundred countries in 30 days, what would I do? We could do it two ways
of approaching this. One, you could talk about the mindset of how you approached it. I mean, it probably is
a lot about testing. But definitely we can lean into that, but we would also love to be able to, if you would be able to
share some of the ideas that happened, things that
worked, things that didn't work and how did you deal
with that along the way? - Absolutely. Just first and foremost, mindset is the most important
thing in all of this. That's where I really start and I've shifted my message
and how I work with people is understand why you're doing it. Most people don't
understand the real reason that they're trying to
grow a social following and what that tangibly means for the future of their success. And the reason that's so important is this stuff, this is hard work. Like, yeah, I did it in 30 days but I work on it every day. And we're working on new strategies and new ways of doing things and new ways of producing
content and engaging people. And some people come
to me and they're like, "I hate social media, but I
feel like I have to be on it." I said, "Don't do it. Just don't." Like first off, there's other ways to be successful in business and if you don't like it,
you're not gonna be successful. Even if you hire an
agency or a contractor, you have to be involved. So even if you don't like at its core, you have to find some redeeming factor of understanding and conceptualizing, okay, this is where it's
leading towards my success or my overall goal. And using that as your guiding light when things do get tough. And I make people rank
from a scale of one to 10 when they visualize why they're doing and what their ultimate goal is like, with 10 being the highest, is it a five, is it a four, is it a 10? Because that's gonna
really drive your decisions going forward. For me, it's a 10. So I keep pushing forward. I risk money, I risk
time, I risk resources, just constantly figuring this stuff out because I know the potential and I see the potential, I see it paying off and
I know where it's leading and I'm not going to
settle for anything else than achieving the end
goals that I'm going after. In terms of the tactical side of things, what I break down in the book is a three-step adaptive process. So the first step is a hypothesis of what is that content
format, theme, or structure that you think is going to work to generate the intended
action from the audience that you're trying to reach. And a part of that hypothesis phase is doing a competitive analysis. So people always come to me, it's like, "Should I produce videos? Should I produce photos? Should I produce articles? What does it look like?" I was like, "Okay, make a list of accounts from anywhere like five to 25 accounts that basically reach the
audience that you wanna reach. And you don't wanna go after the outliers. You don't wanna go after
like a Taylor Swift or somebody at that level
because their numbers are skewed based upon the traffic sources
and how big their brand is. Go after people that are
anywhere between like 200,000 to three million followers that you know gained it just from creating compelling social content. And then study, like, what
are the format, structures, and themes that are working for them and also the ones that
are not working for them. And if you do that
across multiple accounts, you'll start to see trends of what works and what
doesn't work for them. And then the most important thing is which of these formats
feels authentic to me? Because just because it
works for somebody else doesn't mean it's gonna work for you. And then once you have that hypothesis, then you go to the second
step in the testing phase and you create a low-cost proof of concept that represents the
hypothesis you set forth. And when I mean low
cost, I mean, low cost. I don't want you spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars
on a single piece of content until you figure out that it works for you and you've done it multiple times. So that can mean using stock videos. It can mean putting an
iPhone in front of your face or just any way that
you can quickly iterate to produce that hypothesis
to see if it works. And then the third step is
you measured the results. You measure the data from that. And if it didn't work, then you start that process over again. You set a new hypothesis
you test and you pivot and you keep doing that
over and over again until you find something that works. At a very conceptual high
level, that's the process and I wanna make it simple
because that's how you succeed. Like it's just following
those three steps. It may take you a hundred times,
it may take you 500 times, but that is how you're successful. And it's also how you're
successful in the long run. Like, because just
because you have success doesn't mean you're going to maintain it because things are constantly iterating, things are constantly changing. So I always wanna instill that into people because the biggest mistake people make is they just keep
putting content out there and they don't learn anything from it. And they just keep doing the
same thing over and over again and they're not seeing the growth, they're not seeing the engagement, they're not seeing the results. And then they think, oh, either I'm not good at social media or social media doesn't work, or social media doesn't work for me. It can work for anybody. I've worked with clients in every aspect of the industries I
worked with non-profits, healthcare companies,
supplement companies, professional athletes. I've done pet stuff like
all across the board and the system works if you just follow it
and you stick with it. In terms of further detail, like people ask me the difference between images and videos. Like videos are far more
effective and powerful but they're so much harder to pull off because there's so many
different variables that come into play. Like we were talking about before, you have the first three seconds, you have the meme card,
you have the captions. Then after the first three seconds, you have to maintain them for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. If you nail it, like the
growth is astronomical, you look at what Jay Shetty does, what Prince EA does, like,
they've got it nailed and that's where they
drive tremendous growth. Photos much easier to pull off because it's a split second. People determine whether
they like it or not, but it's not as viral as a video. It's not as in-depth, it's not
building the level of story that a video can. And I'm not going to just
generalize it for everything but just at a high level, that's kind of the way it looks. So I always recommend, and
in the groups that we run, like we have a call every month where we just dissect the
videos that we produce and we just break down our
methodology and process. Why did we choose this story? Why do we structure the content this way? Why did it work, why did it not work? Because I really wanna
instill that into people is like to understand how, and my creative director
calls it communication design, is like how you design
continent in a certain way that effectively communicates to generate that level of engagement that you're looking for, to generate the intended response that you want for your outcome. - That's a really well
put together process. And I feel like it's so
important even for business, like, of course you gave
it in context to show me, but that also shows how
you're a total strategist because the iteration
process that is adjusted it's so useful in anything
that you do really. Even for a product that you create. I wanna ask a directed question
for the type of individuals that watch this, right. There will be coaches and
consultants, especially. And because of that, like you mentioned, not all of them need a million followers. They're not necessarily trying
to enroll thousands of people into their programs. They are trying to enroll 30, 50, a hundred people in that program because their programs are
usually pretty reasonably priced. They're at 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, a 100,000, right? So they're not looking
for a ton of clients but they're looking for the right clients. And I know you said in,
previously, in this conversation where you kind of said it's
not that everybody needs a million followers. What would you suggest to somebody, if you had to kinda like
flip the conversation of a million followers and just say, hey, let's say a client, a coach,
is requiring 30 clients a year, hypothetically, right? What would you suggest they approach if they decided and they felt right that social media was the way they wanted to approach clients and find clients, what would be some
suggestions that you would go, this is what you wanna think about, this is what you wanna create,
this what you wanna test. - So there's two approaches
that you can take with it. The first approach that I
generally recommend for people is like, if you're trying
to just drive leads, trying to drive revenue,
trying to drive sales, don't focus on followers. Just focus on campaigns that's
going to drive the traffic into some type of funnel or some type of lead generation that is going to bring
the people that you want. And again, it's the same process, a three-step process, the hypothesis test and pivot and doing that
over and over again. And at the hook point is a
huge critical factor in that because the hook point will
dictate how effective you are in terms of driving down
your cost of capturing leads. And then you can look at the platform, what is the best platform to do that? Like typically viewing
after higher-priced people, you know LinkedIn is a
great platform for that. You can do it off cold traffic
on Facebook and Instagram. You gotta go after more scale with it where maybe you get 5,000 leads and you find a way, and there's different
ways that you can do this of just make sure that
you're offsetting your cost to capture those leads. So you're generating those leads for free. And then you take them through
some type of ascension model to find those key 30, but you're still building
your brand at the same time and you're giving lower
cost products or services to those other people. But just really focused on direct response marketing campaigns. It's feeling in ad words. There's another one you
can use leverage ad words, you can use YouTube advertising, you can create YouTube videos to really bring in that audience because YouTube is the second
world's largest search engine. It's labeled as a social
network, which it kind of is but it's really, at the end
of the day, a search engine. So that's one way of thinking of it. The other way of thinking of it is there's this concept of
the thousand true fans. And, you know, there's a book on it. It's been talked about widely of just building those fans
and those leads one by one to build your business. The interesting thing is, and I hadn't realized
it until I had a friend point it out to me is I
actually do the reverse of it. So I started off in the movie industry and in the movie industry,
you're trained to think big. Like you have to take a piece of content, unless it's a sequel, like
you have to take a brand and make it known in like
less than two months. And you can't go into a
meeting and talk about ideas that are gonna reach
10,000 or 100,000 people. You'll get fired for that. So I had to immediately think about like how do we reach tens of millions
of people with our message? So that's where, like, why I go to a million followers in 30 days is my brain is automatically
trained to think big. So the other approach that you can take it's a little bit riskier to do, but there's far less competition because people aren't doing it is you build a large social following, and then you leverage that
larger social following for opportunities. So you leverage it to
get on large podcasts. You leverage it to get on TV, you leverage it to get book deals, you leverage it to get on bigger stages. And by doing that, that's where you can
reach your core clients. So you're leveraging this
concept of a social following and the leads or the clients
that you're trying to attract may not come directly from the social following
in the beginning, it's gonna come from strategically leveraging the audience size that you have into these other opportunities where those leads, where
those clients will come from. In addition, by doing that, you're increasing your brand awareness and driving back to build the followers even further from there. - That's a really, really
cool and interesting approach to reverse it, but also
look at it from the lens of a thousand raving
followers or however that was, a thousand true followers, sorry. Yeah, that was the word you used. So, I love the dichotomy of being able to play this or be able to play that. If you were to, so there's this concept, and this is something that
is more a personal question but I'm sure this is a question for a lot of people that
may be listening in, one of the concepts that I am
passionate about, personally, is being able to connect with people as personally as I possibly can, right. Which is why I keep these
conversations very personal. Anything that I do on social media, I try to keep it as personal, but it is significantly more harder because you're trying to go and you're actually trying
to comment on every comment. You're trying to respond to every person. But again, our business is so focused on a really small audience. If you think about it, how many coaches are there in the world? There are not millions
of coaches in the world or thousands of coaches
in the world, right? So we could keep that approach
and it would still work. Do you suggest, again, in
context of the type of people that we're talking about,
I know you go more mass and then you sort out the
audience, which is amazing. But just knowing algorithms
and just knowing social media, just knowing relationships,
psychology strategy, what would be your
recommendation to somebody who wants to keep the
conversation personal? Is social media a good
network for it even? - It's a great question. I think that anything
through digital devices is less personal than doing
it in person, face-to-face, that's just the reality of it. But you can't ignore the fact that that's where a majority
of communication happens. That's the nature of it. And a lot of consultants and coaches, they build their business
by working with clients that are all spread out the world. It's one of the beauties of the internet is that we can all now go and travel, live in different places, connect with people in
different parts of the world and help them. So to me, I don't really
look about is it personal? I look at it as am I providing value? Am I having an impact on somebody's life? If I'm having an impact on somebody's life through a video that I've just put out, then that's having an impact and yeah, maybe it's not the same impact of having a face-to-face conversation, but it's still making a
difference in somebody's life. It's still helping somebody in their life. So, yes, is it impersonal but I think it's just a
different form of communication. And like, for me again,
like, I am very interested in how you leverage the online
for offline opportunities. How you leverage online to get
those in-person experiences so that you can go and speak at events. So you can run in-person workshops or things of that nature that you can have that one-to-one interaction, or you can have these
conversations on podcasts or different press like that. So I look at it more
holistically than just to say, okay, social media is impersonal, so I'm just not gonna do it. Like you can take that approach. But I think that it's
a little shortsighted because I think that people
can have tremendous value and have tremendous impact
on other people's lives through that form of communication. - Beautiful. Brendan, if there was, I like
to conclude all interviews with one question, which is, hey, is there something that
I should have asked you in this conversation that I didn't ask? Is there a question that
I should've asked you that I didn't ask? - I think that we covered
pretty much everything. If there's one distilling thing that I would convey to people is that this is an iterative process. Let's just to learn and
experiment and have fun with it. Like that is the most important thing because you could go viral tomorrow. But if you don't have that mindset of constantly learning and iterating, it's ultimately not gonna be sustainable because we all have to reinvent ourselves. The most successful people, like, you know, I've talked to some really wealthy and successful people, they say, "Making money is easy. It's maintaining it and holding onto it." And I think it, the same plays to success is like, you can get that initial success but holding onto is a different story. Especially in the world that we live in, where things are rapidly
iterating so quickly. So don't get frustrated by the
things that are not working, just learn from it and keep going and searching for the right answers and the right strategies and then ultimately, it will pay off. - Thank you, thank you for sharing that. How can people know more about you? Of course, everybody
that's listening to this, get this book called
"One Million Followers" to know more about how to do that. And a lot of other iterative processes, there's a lot of insight here on how to communicate with people. But other than that, how is it that people
can know more about you, your services and things that you offer? - Yeah, so for the book, it's in major retailers, it's on Amazon. They can go to
book.onemillionfollowers.com where we have the free shipping offer. And we have some add-on courses and things of that nature that provides more detail and
context of the methodologies. Then they can check out my
website, brendanjkane.com. Brendan's B-R-E-N-D-A-N. They can email me directly
bkane@brendanjkane.com or they can direct message me
on Instagram at Brendan Kane. - Cool, oh, thank you so much for making yourself so available. Thank you so much, Brendan.
- Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
- That was phenomenal. - Thank you. - I absolutely loved
talking to you, thank you. - Cool, thanks.
