Special Episode: Brendan Kane: How to stand out in a 3 second world

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Welcome to a special episode of our podcast. This is the very, very first episode I recorded and it didn't fit to what we wanted to do, so for almost two years I didn't release it. But after our latest chat with Sue Elwes, where we talked about how we wanted to back then start our podcast, it came to me that it wouldn't be fair towards Brendan Cain, who gave his time to do an interview, that I never released it. I am deeply fascinated by how marketing works. It is my profession, this is what I do, and Brendan is a guy that really understands this a lot. So I reached out to him because he wrote somewhere that he said yes to podcast interviews, to however big or small people's podcasts were, and we didn't have a podcast. But I was like, okay, maybe that's a way to provoke myself to start. So I wrote to him and he answered back and then I actually had to do the recording and I was scared shitless when I did the recording. I was nervous and it didn't fit it into what we actually wanted to do with our podcast back then. But, as I say, at the same time Brendan gave his time. He come with so many good views for people on how to work with social media and marketing. He is very knowledgeable. I have learned a lot from him and I want to honor the time he gave me to share it with you.

01:45
So this is why I made this little introduction to let you know that, ah yeah, and it's my own, you know, insecurity. I'm like, oh, I'm probably nervous and stumble over the words, and but time has passed. Now we have done more than 75 episodes and I today don't take it so seriously. I could use what Brendan said. I learned a lot from him. This is a special episode that we will release. So if anyone out there are working with marketing or is promoting something, this is a step in my learning journey. I've learned a lot from both his books and I recommend you listen to it and I hope you will enjoy it, and please forgive me if I stumble and cannot speak properly or whatever. I was damn nervous. So, yes, thanks a lot.

02:41
And here, with the introduction, let's turn back the time back to I think it was August 2022, where I had the pleasure of interviewing Brendan and then first, more than half a year later, we released our ever first episode of the podcast, which is a podcast we do together. We are always me and Cecilia, and if there's anything else, we release them as these specials. So, yes, please enjoy. I hope you will like it and that you will learn a lot. Thank you, enjoy.

03:15
Okay, welcome to a podcast about how to handle life outside the box. We speak with people who fascinate us, people we can learn from Along the way. We also share our own story of how we became a full-time traveling family. Our goal is to create this podcast we ourselves would have loved to listen to on our travels and on our way to create the life we have today. And today we have invited Brendan Cain, who is the author of the two books One Million Followers how I Built a Massive Social Following in 30 Days, and his latest book is called Hookpoint how to Stand Out in a Three-Second World. We have invited Brendan to talk, as I am deeply fascinated with marketing, but mostly the things about marketing. I really love is to think about what lies behind, what makes people triggered, the way they do, what makes them react, and one person who knows a lot about this is Brendan Welcome.

04:14 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Jasper. It's a pleasure to connect with you and everybody that's tuning into this.

04:22 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I would love to start for the people who don't know you. I can shortly tell that one of the ads worked on me, one of the ads on the social media. I saw one of your ads and I was like, oh, one million followers in 30 days, that sounds incredible. And I started researching a little and now I've ended up with both books. And can you tell me a little about the ads you have created for the 1 million followers and how have you have done it?

05:01 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
Yeah, I mean that's a pretty complex question because we probably tested hundreds of ads over, you know, three years of promoting those books and so kind of there's some layers to it.

05:20
That's why it's complex. So, you know, my second book is called Hookpoint how to Stand Out in a Three-Second World and a hook point is really designed to stand out at the highest levels. So when we talk about like 1 million followers as a book, how I built a massive social audience in 30 days, that's the core hook, that's the thing that grabs the attention. But within that hook, that's the thing that grabs the attention. But within that hook you can express it many different ways. You can just do a photo of the book cover, you can do a video, you can talk about the application of a case study, how social media is evolving or changing or gaining power, how social influencers are made. So the way that I kind of look at designing ads for our books or for any other project that we're working on is, initially, what's the fundamental baseline of the hook that's going to help us stand out, and then, what is the best way to contextualize that hook, how do we express it in different ways and test those to see what really drives the most impact.

06:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And you do this with a lot of A-B testing on the ads. I know I can understand and I remember the first time I made A B testing was on the subject lines for emails and I found it really fun. It's a fun learning experience about what makes people act. And also I remember I used a lot of time thinking about okay, why did it actually do this? Because sometimes you know, I've written a subject line and I thought that would be the winner and it didn't work. Um, so when you sit and work with all these I think you in one of your books mentioned you tested 300 different layouts, text, images or small tweaks. It could be a color um, what do you? How do you work with it? On the psychological level, Do you go in and say I think this work word works better, or do you just pump out a lot and analyze it? What is the, the? How do you do it?

07:38 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
Yeah. So we have two different processes. We have one that's designed for paid, which is really direct response, lead generation, conversion-based marketing, and then we have organic side. We can talk about both today, but from a paid perspective. Yes, you want to test as much as you can, but you want to have informed tests. You want to have clear hypotheses around what you're testing and why you're testing it, because if you're just testing for the sake of volume and something works, then you really don't understand why it works. So every time we're creating a test, an A-B test, we're doing it with intent. So there's an element that we want to test to see if it impacts performance. So some of that is guided by experience, some of that is guided by research of studying other ads and other segments and other brands and things of that nature. And then there's also a big component of the subconscious communication, like how are we contextualizing our message based upon how people perceive the world in different ways? So we have a communication algorithm that we use that's based on 1.5 million communication assessments done worldwide and what it does is it shows us the six different ways that people perceive content and perceive brands and it's basically broken down into a mathematical formula.

09:08
So the largest subset of the population 30% is feeling based. So they're going to connect, to make a decision based upon how it makes them feel. They want an emotional connection to the product, the brand, the creator. The second largest subset of the population is fact-based that's 25%. It's not about feelings and emotion. To them, it's about does this make sense? They want data, timeframes, information, who, what, when, where, why. That's how they make decisions. The third largest subset of the population is fun-based it's 20%. So they want to know. It's fun, it's exciting, it's stimulating to make that decision. 10% is values-based, so they want to know can I trust you, are you dedicated, are you committed to my success? Another 10% is imagination. They reflect on the world.

10:01
So the best analogy I could give you is Albert Einstein. If you do research on him, he would spend hours on and staring out in the window reflecting on everything that he was studying, everything, all the information he was collecting. And then the smallest subset, 5%, is action-based. So they don't think, they don't feel, they just move. They want to go, they want to move fast, they want the bottom line, they want the best. So the perfect analogy of that is if you've ever seen Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. He's not thinking, he's not feeling, he's not having fun, he's just going.

10:33
So we layer that on in the respect of are we connecting with the largest part of the population? So typically we say focus on the big three feelings, facts and fun because that represents 75% of the population. So typically we say focus on the big three feelings, facts and fun because that represents 75% of the population. So when we're running tests, when we're constructing ads, we're also perceiving it through that lens to ensure that it's actually resonating. So Pixar actually uses this in all of their movies and their ads. So if you go to a Pixar movie like Inside Out, they have characters designed for each way that people perceive content and perceive the world that is, yeah, it's, it's that is.

11:17 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It's wonderful and and wild at the same time. Um, and what one of the things that? Um, people like us who are these full-time travelers? Um, I sometimes have to debate with my wife. Uh, it's like she's asking me why aren't we on instagram and why are we on facebook and youtube? And part of me we think we are, because I it.

11:43
For me, it's kind of research that I love to study the, the different channels, what can you do there?

11:49
But it's also a way of giving back to the people who came before us, who were inspiring us on our travels.

11:58
But I will probably never get my wife to say yes to me making ads on hey, come and look at our unschooling lifestyle. And I see a lot of people on the social media who are in this mix where they share their life, but it's not commercialized. And I'm a little in doubt if the same technique somehow can be used this mix where they share their life, but it's not commercialized. And I'm a little in doubt if the same technique somehow can be used, because my wife is blogging and she has been writing articles about having your children at home and unschooling for more than 10 years, but it's not with a commercial angle. But on the same time, I feel like you know okay, you have used two to three hours to write it, you have used more time to think about it. Why not get it out to as many people as possible? But can some of the techniques you're presenting and are talking about in your books and in your work be used for non-commercial entities?

13:03 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
A hundred percent. It can be't be. I mean, content is content. You know, an ad is a piece of content. Organic piece of content is content. So it's and I would say that your wife is probably has that viewpoint, and rightly so, because she's seen so many bad ads oh yes, and that's, and that and that kind of turns people off, because and what I mean is a bad ad you can clearly see that you, they are selling you something, versus a good ad is they are reaching out to you, connecting with you and trying to help you solve a problem that you are facing in everyday life.

13:41
So the principles still apply is what is the effective story that I'm using to personally connect with this individual on the other side of the screen, whether it's selling a product or just entertaining them? Because even if you're doing Instagram or YouTube or TikTok or Facebook organically, at the end of the day, your content is the product. It still has to engage and entertain that individual, otherwise they're going to scroll past it, because what essentially you're selling them on from an organic content perspective is their time, and because there's so much content out there, you have to subtly convince them. Hey, you should stop and watch this piece of content because it can provide value, and the same way an ad does it to say I think you should stop and check out this product because it's going to add value into your life. So there's obviously big differences, but there's a lot of commonalities between the two as well.

14:54 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, and I know, neither me and my wife will, you know, do all the dancing videos on instagram, uh, but I think it could be valuable for the people listening to to hear some of your thoughts about from the book hook point with the three seconds we have, and stuff like that, because I have read the book but a lot of them probably hasn't. I would love them to read it. So if you can tell about what you have figured out about how you need to stand out in this world we have Well, it's first starting by defining the world that we live in.

15:30 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
So I started in social media around 2005.

15:33 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And at that time.

15:33 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
There's probably about a million people on these platforms Today. There's 4 billion people on social media, so it just. There is so much content, there is so much competition for attention that your first job as a content creator is how do I just get somebody to stop the scroll, or how do?

15:53
I get somebody to click to watch my piece of content, because if you cannot achieve that, then you can't get to your message. And that's also the first signal to an algorithm that your content is not worth distributing to the masses. And there's a lot of myths about the algorithms, one being that they suppress your reach on purpose to get you to pay for reach, and that makes no sense at all because then nobody would ever go viral. In addition, again, we are these platforms product. Without us they don't have a business. But because they have billions and billions of pieces of content to choose from and, as we all know, when we open up the feed, there's only so many pieces of content they can serve to us. They can't serve us a billion pieces of content to choose from. They got to serve up 5, 10, 15 for us to engage.

16:43
They're looking for content that can grab attention and hold attention for as long as possible with the widest possible audience. So our first job as content creators is how do we win that attention in the first three seconds? Now, when I say how to stand out in a three second world for my book, it's not that we can't hold attention for as long as possible, because we can. Because you look at like Netflix, people will binge watch a series over a weekend or they'll listen to a two hour podcast. So it's not that we can't hold the tension, it's just because there's so much choice out there of content to engage with. Our first job is to just get people to stop in those first few seconds to let us demonstrate that we are telling a story or we are storytellers or content creators or brands that are worth spending more time with.

17:41 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, one question I have for you, um, and it's the subject who, which is often on our mind, as our kids are unschooled and we have been looking a lot into the educational system and all this is. I tried to figure out your background. I've listened to some of the podcasts. I should have taken a sneak peek on your LinkedIn, but how much of what you know today, brendan, is self-taught and how much come from you being on an actual education?

18:22 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
much come from you being on an actual education. 99.9 is self-taught. Okay, and I don't say 100 because certain things in school teach you fundamentals, yeah, to kind of set you up. But all the things that I'm talking about I didn't learn in school. But obviously the fundamentals of schooling allows you to understand how to learn and process things and things like that. But from the content that we're talking about today, it was all self-taught.

18:46 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, but how do you I mean, you have moved from the 1 million followers books to, I presume, seeing okay. Okay, there's something about the hook points and I need to to know more about that. It's when I look at you from the side and the interviews, I'm thinking it's a passion for this area that drives you, um, but but how do you determine what's the next book or what's? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe the right question is what interests you now? What is the new book going to be about? Is their natural development, from where you have, from the followers, the ab, testing all that to understand, looking in and researching the hook points, how that works. What are? What are you focusing on now?

19:37 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
yeah. So there's two questions in there. Yeah, one, how do I choose the subjects that I focus on and that goes back to what we were talking about earlier with ads and things is what is the biggest problem that I can solve? That I have expertise in. So that's's you know, when I'm constructing a hook point or constructing a book or an ad, I'm coming from the standpoint of what is the biggest problem that I can help other people solve with the knowledge that I have access to.

20:14
In terms of what we're focusing on now, we're launching a new guide to going viral that breaks down our process. We have a viral content engineering process of creating content for social media that's backed by 60 billion views, 100 million followers and a billion in revenue for the projects that we worked on, and the core crux of that process is research and insights, and what that means is, if you want to be successful in anything this isn't just social media but with going viral, with mastering social media, you need to study how others are successful and understand how others are successful. Now, the blessing and the curse of social media is that you can open up this platform, click a button and post a piece of content. It's a blessing because it's so easy, but it's a curse because it's so easy that most people don't put any thought into it. They think, oh, I'm just going to post something and it's going to go viral.

21:16
But again, like anything in life and you know this from being in marketing for many years you have to study the elements that drive success on the top viral content creators, formats, brands and breaks down why it's going viral, so that you can apply those principles to your content. And the things that we break down are not really the message. It's not what they're talking about, it's about how they're talking about it. So we look at these nuances. We have over 50 different performance indicators that we look at and it's like some of them are like pacing, tonality, editing the first three seconds, titles, captions, thumbnails it's all the context of how they're telling their story, not really about the message themselves. And you know you had mentioned previously as though me and my wife don't want to do dancing videos.

22:15
Well, we have found content creators in every segment that are going viral tax accountants, insurance real estate, doctors, so so that's where you can find examples in any type of subject matter and, again, we don't pay attention to the content itself. So like we could break down, for example, a real estate agent and break down the nuances that are making them go viral and apply it to your channel of going, of traveling, it's not like you have to look at the exact people that are doing the same thing as you because, again, it's about how they're telling their stories and the nuances that are for that.

22:59
So, uh, what we've done is we've created a private community called viral trends, where every week, we're breaking down the latest research. So we get on a live call, walk through the research of a influencer, a brand content format, and explain these nuances of why it's going viral. Give you our actual research, give you an activation guide to break it down further on how to apply it into your content. So that's the big focus for us. And again, it comes out of a problem that we're solving is most people in creating social media don't understand why things go viral. They talk about just overarching trends, and the problem with just looking at overarching trends is that it's like the iceberg analogy is like if you ever see the image of an iceberg analogy, you can type into Google but you only see the tip of the iceberg above the water and then the rest of it's below. And that's the same thing with trends is, people will look at a trend and they only see the top one percent that are succeeding with it. They don't see the 99 of people that are failing with it. So that's really a big focus for us right now as any.

24:28
Will it turn out to a new book also, or would it more be keeping it and we may turn it into a book? I'll kind of just see how it unfolds. We've got a lot of things that we're working on, but it could be a potential for a book. But books are a little bit difficult because I live in the social media age where I want to be nimble and move fast and get feedback and modify and change things and books are not the best medium to achieve that. Books are an amazing medium but when you're you know I've driven my In a world that evolve all the time it's kind of difficult not to update it every month.

25:07
Yeah.

25:09 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Okay. One interesting thing is the why. I think I heard you talk about it in one of your other interviews and you also say, when I asked you about your processes, you mentioned that you ask yourself what is the biggest problem I can help other with solving, and I think that's one of the issues that many content creators on social media don't have and maybe they haven't solved that part or haven't answered the why, and maybe sometimes, because you know, I feel my wall on Instagram and Facebook sometimes is just like oh, it's a piece of junk, it's just stuff happening where I miss the quality content from people, and maybe it's because they feel needed to produce so much or they don't have the why very clear. I got not almost sad, but when you said what is the biggest problem, I was like, oh, have we asked ourselves that when we write content or do we just write about our own experiences? So how do you work with your clients about the why and that part of it?

26:27 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
Yeah, typically we're not working with clients on the why, because they typically know the why we're working with them on how to express that. And I also want to say, is the why can're working with them on how to express that? And I, and I also want to say, is the why can be purely entertainment. You know it can be putting a smile on somebody's face as you look at mr beast, one of the most successful influencers on the planet, and you know he's providing entertainment value to his clients. The same with movies, and sometimes people need that escape from their everyday life. So that's why I never put down content creators that are doing stuff for that, because it's it's important for the world.

27:09
Uh, you know, and I watch a lot of pet content. You know the good pet content that kind of tells stories or creates characters out of pets, because it gives you kind of that essential break from from from the end of the day. So your why can be a huge range of things. It doesn't necessarily need to be I'm solving poverty or I'm solving the environmental movement, can be that. But uh, you know to, to us, the challenge is less about the why. The challenge is more about the how, the context of how they're doing it, like you're in a space with a traveling family and even education, where there's millions of people creating content on the same subject matter and there's some that go super viral, in a majority that don't, and the difference isn't really the why. The difference is the execution of how they're expressing that, that message.

28:14 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Or people who want to try to break through the wall and find the right people for them, the people who want to hear their message. Is it just about putting out content or there's different tags and stuff? But yeah, I think what I'm asking is what is your best advice for people who are just starting out, who wants to see if they can grow a social media following Because you work very professional with it? So can the same techniques be used for small channels?

28:51 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
Absolutely. And the first place to start is and I want to preface it by saying social media is like anything in life it takes time, energy, resources to get good at it, and resources doesn't have to be financial. It can be your time. So just know, going into it, you've got to have the desire and the motivation. This is not something that just comes easy. It takes work. So just know that going into it, that uh, cause, cause.

29:22
I will say you do not have to be on social media to be successful. There are many other ways that you can be successful in life. I have built massive businesses and closed major deals without social media. Does social media provide an advantage? Is there a huge opportunity? Absolutely, but I am not, even though my business relies on it. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's the only way to be successful, because it's just not true. But if you are wanting to get into it, as I mentioned before, you've got to study what makes social media work.

29:56
Why does one content creator go viral versus another one? And I can definitively tell you it's not because the number of hashtags you use, the type of hashtags, the time of day, the amount of content that you post, it's not because of that, it's because of the content that you create. So it's really become a student of how others are telling stories. What is the difference between, for example, in your case, a travel influencer or travel family that has millions of followers and somebody that only has thousands of followers? And breaking down those nuances of how they're constructing their content and that's really the best way to start is, like, before even producing a single piece of content, start doing this, studying and start making these lists of these things that you think is driving that performance, so that when you create the content, you have a hypothesis of what I'm going to focus on and then, when you create that piece of content, put it side by side with the reference.

31:01
That you analyze and really be honest with yourself is what did you get right, what is missing, what did you get wrong?

31:09 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So to me, that's the best way to start is really before you speed up yeah, and if people want to get started, one of my recommendation would be to get both of your books, um, but if they want to learn more from you, what is the the best way to do that? How can they? What do you have to offer them? To say it like that?

31:40 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
yeah. So I would say the most cost efficient way is our new community that we launched, where we're delivering these research and insights on a weekly basis, and they can go to go viralhookpointcom. If they want to engage us directly, they can just go to hookpointcom and schedule a call with their team to discuss. But those are really the two different ways. In addition to the books, I would just say that our community goes a level deeper where it's like every week we're updating what's going on, why this is working? Because, as we talked about, social media is constantly evolving. Our books still hold up. It's just in the community we can go a level deeper than we can in the books that we have published.

32:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And with your own personal background. Why did you end up being an expert in social media? What happened that drove you down that road? Because you seem to me like a person who loves analyzing and that that it's sounds like that is part of what drives you um with with all the work you do there. So how did it ended up being social media? That is your. Yeah, it it.

33:01 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
It was because of a hook point. So I went to film school. I wanted to be a film producer and I showed up in LA in 2005 and, like everybody else, I started at the bottom making coffee copies deliveries and when people had asked me why did I move to LA? Predominantly the people I wanted to connect with when I had a chance, like studio executives, directors and producers and I said I wanted to be a film producer, I could just see everybody's eyes cleaned over because I was one of a million, you know.

33:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I wasn't standing out.

33:32 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
so I had to take a step back and really analyze what is a problem that I can solve, and I just noticed the for for the studios that I worked for that every time we completed a film, we would invest tens of millions of dollars to produce a single piece of content, and then we were going to invest tens of millions of dollars to market this piece of content. And then, on top of that, we needed hundreds of millions of people around the world to know about this piece of content in a matter of months. We needed hundreds of millions of people around the world to know about this piece of content in a matter of months.

34:05 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So there was a real sense of anxiety that would overcome the studio whenever we had a new film that was about to go to market.

34:07 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
It's a big investment.

34:09
Yeah, yeah. And while I was going to college, I created a few internet companies just to really experiment and learn what it takes to run a business. Just to really experiment and learn what it takes to run a business. So, recognizing that level of stress and anxiety over the studio, I just started approaching those same people directors, studio executives, actors, producers and said, hey, listen, I know how to tap into these online audiences, these digital audiences, for a fraction of the cost, in some cases no cost at all compared to what we were spending on television, print and radio, and that it was scalable to get our message out. And that's what really took me from making coffee to building digital divisions. And then, as I was doing that, I just saw larger growth opportunity in the social media and digital space than the film career, specifically for myself.

35:07 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, and are you now all the knowledge you have gained since you started down this road? Are you going outside again from the social media and moving back into the film world? Do you have any ambition about using what you have learned here on that, or will you still stay in this realm of the online marketing on social media platforms?

35:34 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
I have friends and partners that are still in the film industry and I will help them from time to time on their projects. But the challenge? I have friends and partners that are still in the film industry and I will help them from time to time on their projects. But the challenge I have with that industry is it's so ego driven that they say they want to innovate, they say they want to change, but every time I go in there and talk to them they don't. And I have to me.

35:56
You know, I've worked with, you know, some of the biggest corporations, movie studios, celebrities on the planet. To me, I could care less about the level that you're at and more about the mindset that you have. That's what excites me. So if I have an opportunity to work on a film where the mindset is like, listen, we really want to figure this out, we'll really take your advice, implement it, then absolutely, but I don't like seek it out at this point. Um, in addition, we work with solopreneurs that are just starting out, our pre-revenue companies, and we can be excited about working with them because of the mindset that goes into it, because there's a clear distinction on the projects that we have success and don't have success working on, and it is all about the mindset of the individual on the other side of the table yeah, I was um thinking what?

36:59 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
what keeps driving you, brendan? Because a lot of people, when I look at you from the side and look at the books, I'm like he must have succeeded in creating that a big good turnaround. So I presume you are okay financially set, so that is in order. So what is it that keeps motivating you to work with this area?

37:26 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
I love learning and I love sharing what I learn. That's what drives me. I don't know that I will ever be a person that just sits on the beach in retirement. It's interesting. I've heard stories of very successful people that you know, at an older age, retire and then their health, them even pass away suddenly. So for me it's learning, and there's still levels of success that I have the desire to achieve. So I haven't reached the level of success that I want to, so that drives me as well. But again, it's learning how things work, and then, once I learn how those things work, is sharing that information with others to help them in pursuing their goals.

38:25 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And you said the next step of what you're exploring now is what makes stuff viral. Can you give some pointers on what is it that makes stuff viral? Because when I think about some of the things you're saying, I'm looking at it and say my wife is a trained psychologist, I need to say, and that is wonderful on many levels. But it gives me an angle where I look at stuff and look at the humanity behind the screen and what people react to. And is there some psychological aspects you look at when you look at the virality? Is there some common areas where you say, oh, that's just people and that's how they react and that why they like that piece of content? I know I lay many questions. I should be better just asking one.

39:17 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
So again it's. It's so nuanced like we. You know, before jumping on this, we just had a call for our viral trends community and we were breaking down a very specific format on tiktok of people giving money to strangers.

39:34
Yeah, I've seen some of those, yeah yeah, so we looked at and this is a big part of our process so we have a gold, silver, bronze process. So within that format, we looked at the gold, which is the highest performers, which was about like 20 to 70 million views, and then we look at silver, which is the average performance, which is like 1 to 3 million views, and we looked at bronze, which was 30,000 to like 400,000 views. And what we do is we we create hypotheses by looking at the goal of what we think is driving it, of the success, these nuanced details, but then we have to analyze the silver and the bronze, the underperformers, to see if those hypotheses show up there, because if they don't, they do, then we know it's not the reason driving that success and it's people doing the same thing so it's the same format.

40:28
They're just doing it in different ways.

40:31
So that's again the trend is you could say, oh, because you've seen viral videos of people giving money to strangers. Oh, this is the trend, so we're just going to do it and we're going to go viral. But again, that's the iceberg. Analogy is you're only seeing the tip of it. You're not seeing all the other people. So it was very clear the gold performers, the high performers, they were doing a few things. They were doing a few things. One, the entire content was about the person that they were giving the money to yes, what?

41:07
was their reaction? What did they do versus the underperformers?

41:13 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
it was all about themselves, yeah, yeah, yeah look at what I'm doing. I'm getting the hell out of me, yeah yeah, but that's it's.

41:24 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
It's a very subtle distinction that most people would not recognize. However, it drove performance there was. Another thing is that, um, some of the high performers what would happen was is they would give the money to the person and then that person would give the money to somebody else right afterwards. So there was layers to the story. It wasn't just about this person getting money. It was what they did afterwards, and what we really kind of narrowed in from a storytelling perspective is the high performers. It wasn't a story about giving away the money. It was a story about humanity and what it means to connect with another person and to help that other person Versus the low performers. Again, was people just trying to jump on the trend and say, hey, I'm going to go and give money to these people so that I can look good on camera and try to capitalize off of this trend.

42:28 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah.

42:29 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
So, but again, there's so much, you know, I don't sit here and say and this is the difficult part with social media is people are looking for broad answers to apply to anything. Yeah, when it's so nuanced, based upon the story you're telling the platform, you're telling it on the length of the content, your message and things of that nature. So that's why we're we're so focused on this research and insights direction.

43:02 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And here TikTok and the whole concept that things are trending and people copy-paste it to see if it works for them. That must give a massive amount of material to look at Because, as you say, it's the same thing they're doing of material to look at because, as you say, it's the same thing they're doing, is it?

43:22 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
yeah, but again is like when we're looking at something, we're not just looking at the ones that are successful, we're looking at the ones that are not successful so that you can clearly create the delineation. Because that's the problem with trends is, people are only looking at the one percent and they think, oh, if I just give money away to other people, I'm going to be successful, when they're not seeing the underlying principles that are driving that top 1%, because they don't see the other 99% failing at it.

43:54 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
How have you built up your team, brendan, because there must go a lot of research into it. Is it self-taught people like yourself, or have you been outfying trained researchers?

44:07 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
We train everybody internally, so I don't know that we have found anybody that knows this stuff. We find people with the right mindset that we train on how to do this research.

44:22 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Wow. Yeah, I find it very interesting with our perspective on the world, with the whole unschooling, because for us it is when our kids are passionate about something we just let them run with it. And seeing you saying that almost 99% of what you know today is stuff you have been dedicated to figure out and have learned for yourself, that makes super much sense and it also reminds me of I talked with my dad back in the days about career and he said to me you don't know if to take an education, you can do that, but you don't know how the world looks in 20 years, when you are seven years, when you are finished. Just do what you want, and we have done that. So, brendan, I think I've covered what I really wanted to hear about. So I will just invite people to go check out both your books, but also goviralhooponcom, and I would like to thank you a lot for your time.

45:19 - Brendan Kane (Guest)
Yeah, thank you. It was a pleasure connecting with you and everybody that was tuning into this.

45:24 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Thank you.

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