# Transcripcion de https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPSxuquqxRw

- **Canal:** The Anatomy of a Dream
- **Publicado:** 2026-08-04
- **Duración:** 01:40:04
- **Fuente:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPSxuquqxRw
- **Origen del texto:** ScrapeCreators `/v1/youtube/video/transcript` (en), sin proxy
- **Palabras:** 19614
- **Bloques:** 159

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## Transcripción

**[00:00]** We were able to take Gary from 300K to three and a half million. And then with Alex and Leila, we were able to go from 1.2 million to 11 a.5 million. But the reality is is you can build a very successful business with less [music] than 10,000 followers. And the way you do that is not super complicated. If I was wanting to scale my brand, this is the playbook that I would use. Meet Caleb Rston, brand expert turned CEO who's behind some of the biggest personal brands [music] in the game. And today, he's going to reveal his brand building secrets. People are trying to optimize for virality rather than optimizing for the thing we're actually looking for, which is sales and conversions for our business. The number one way to grow your brand is if you

**[00:38]** do that, you're ahead of everybody. And how to use your personal brand to break through in any dream. Thing that a lot of people make the mistake of is they want to be known for all these different things and they confuse their audience. Like what do you stand for? Who are you? What do you do? In order to stand out and [music] in order to be trusted, pick the thing that you want to be most known for in this very moment. What's the anatomy of building a strong [music] personal brand? We have an equation that we like to use. You will be ahead of 99.9% of personal brands online. Wow. When I started my business and started looking at like, oh, I'm going to start making my own content. I didn't know what to expect. I never thought I'd

**[01:14]** be in front of a camera. I remember thinking, clearly, you don't have chops for this. You should go back to getting a job. I had to figure out getting my own clients and producing my own income. But then I thought, [music] what would happen if we were to that really paid off? This is the exact blueprint that I would follow. On this channel, we don't just talk about dreams. We like to help make them happen. And that is what our project, what's your dream, is all about. We have been seeing some amazing results from working on these dreams with you guys. And we cannot wait to share more. But in the meantime, if you are interested, let us know in the comments.

**[01:49]** What is your dream? What you currently need help with and you might just hear from us. All right, guys. Let's get back to the video. One more thing. Um, if you guys could subscribe, that would be great. I don't know what else to Okay, please subscribe. I don't know how to ask. Caleb, in your opinion, what are the biggest lies that we're told about building a brand online today? Well, I think the biggest one uh is all press is good press or all views or all attention

**[02:29]** is good attention. In a world where the industry is trying to teach everybody how to go viral, how do you optimize a brand for trust? Because the way that you put yourself out online, the things that you talk about, the subject matters, the people, the things that you pair yourself with, that's what shapes your brand, that provides the filter or the lens that people view you through. And the people that I'm speaking to, they're not just trying to be famous. They're trying to get a business outcome off the back of their personal brand. You can have millions of followers and make no money. They've built an audience that they cannot transact on. I also know people who

**[03:07]** have less than 10,000 followers who are making millions of dollars because that audience is the right person. It's the exact demographic. It's the customer base that they are trying to reach. And in order to do that, I think you need to be far more intentional with what you pair yourself with rather than just trying to go viral any chance that you can get. Now, another lie is I'll figure it out as I go. And so many people online right now are saying like the number one way to grow your personal brand and to make your content strategy work is just post consistently. That is correct, but it's missing an element. If you understand where you are wanting to go,

**[03:45]** being consistent will be great. If you don't, being consistent might actually end up hurting you. And the reason why is because they've never defined what that outcome is. And so they don't know what to post. And that's why people are just posting random [ __ ] talking about so many different subject matters. They're like jumping from their expertise to their Starbucks order to their morning routine and all these different things. And I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with that. But what I want to help people do is develop a strategy that's going to get them closer to their goal, not further away. I'm very guilty of that. When I first started working on my personal brand for 180 days, we posted. Wow. And I was convinced that if you're

**[04:27]** consistent, you will grow, right? Not one of those 180 videos worked. Yeah. And it reminds me of the the story of Alice in Wonderland. There's a moment where she's walking down the the path and she comes up to a a Y in the road and there's a cat. Cheshire cat sitting in the tree and Alice says, "Which way should I go?" And the cat says, "Well, where do you want to end up?" And Alice responds, "I don't know where I'm trying to go." And then he responds with the most clear way. He says, "Well, then either way, we'll take you there." And so the actions that we are taking in building our brand,

**[05:05]** we are going to build a brand, but I would rather build with intention that maps to the outcomes that I desire. And this last one is the one that just drives me absolutely insane. I need to go viral in order for my brand or my business to grow. And I love going viral. Going viral is not bad, but when you optimize and you orient everything that you do around this need, you end up taking on behaviors that are not going to lead to the business outcomes that you are looking for. So, let's start with the basics. In your opinion, what separates a bad brand from a good brand? I think good branding when you do it well is an intentional pairing

**[05:45]** of relevant things done consistently. So, that's the action. The outcome of branding is brand. Good brand is when the audience inherently associate you with the thing that you want to be associated with. Okay? And so the thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that you're on one of two paths. It's either the forgettable brand or the intentional brand. And if you don't understand what you want to be known for, then you will be known for random [ __ ] If you want a good brand, you want to know what associations do I want? And the way that you create those associations is you

**[06:22]** just pair yourself consistently with the things that you want to be known for. However, people do a lot of work on figuring out what associations they want to have over here, but they ignore the work over here, which is what associations do I not want to have? What associations would make it harder for the outcome that I desire to occur? If we want to be known as a trusted individual that actually delivers results, but we show up online with a bunch of characters who are known for not doing that, what does that lead to? The audience inherently associating us with them. This is where the term lumped into the crowd comes from, right? We are who we surround ourselves with,

**[07:02]** right? Because the negative associations, as we're seeing with a lot of characters in the public space right now, are actually more detrimental than the positive associations are helpful. And so I try to use the language of toward or away. Does this association move you towards where you want to go or away from where you want to be? Okay, that is then how you on an individual basis are able to determine what is a positive association, what's a negative association, right? So, which companies have paired themselves correctly in your opinion? The classic example here is Nike and Michael Jordan or LeBron James, right? And they've done this in every single sport

**[07:42]** now with the top athletes in the world. They wore Nikes every night. By doing that, Nike was able to pair themselves with greatness. And what's crazy is like I remember as a kid I thought if I got the Air Jordans I was going to dunk it. [laughter] I thought I was going to jump from the free throw line. But like this is how branding actually works. This is why the celebrity endorsement is so powerful. Now in a completely different arena here, Savage Fenty, what Rihanna had done was absolutely incredible. In a world where Victoria Secret was kind of the dominant player,

**[08:20]** they advertised to one body type and Savage Fenty came in and they're like, "No, we believe actually like women of all shapes and sizes should be able to buy lingerie." And what they did is they consistently paired themselves with that visual. They showed women of all different shapes and sizes wearing their lingerie. And by doing this, they showed that there was another option. They differentiated themselves in the market and then they became worth over like a billion dollars in like three years. Like very very fast. An example that maybe is not the best example is a couple of

**[08:58]** years ago, actually it's quite a while now, but Pepsi ran an ad with Kendall Jenner. And this was during a time in the US where there was a lot of uh heavy things going on. And Pepsi chose Kendall Jenner as their voice for basically just standing up for people who couldn't stand up for themselves in that moment. Uh is how I will put it to to make it basic. And they got extreme backlash for this. It was very much viewed in uh the cultural zeitgeist as like extremely insensitive, tonedeaf, like it it was really bad. I remember. Yeah. They put it on YouTube and they tried I think within

**[09:39]** 24 hours they pulled it off their YouTube but the internet being the internet people downloaded it and re-uploaded it and that I would call a bad pairing that went viral and it's how we decide what podcast I'm going to go on because the frame is what if I went viral with you if there's any hesitancy in my mind I don't want to do it right and so that's a frame that people can take is if I'm going to talk about this I'm going to show up with this if I'm going to bring this organization up and it goes viral, am I going to be proud of that? And if the answer is no, I would argue it's not a good pairing to make. And so, we need to have a road map of what we need to do in order to

**[10:20]** get to the outcome that we desire. So, if someone watching this episode right now had one hour this week to move their brand forward, what would you tell them to do first? Brand journey framework and the differentiation exercise to identify your contrary intake. If you do those, I think you will be ahead of 99.9% of personal brands online, even the ones that are a hundred times bigger than you. And so, we're gonna have to unpack this a little. Okay. Okay. Um, the way that we work through the brand journey framework is it's reverse engineering the desired outcome to today. So, the first question that we ask is, what do I want to have happen? Now, this is where I think sometimes,

**[10:58]** and I want to clarify here because sometimes people misunderstand me. When I'm saying, "What outcome do I want to have happen?" I'm not saying, "What kind of brand do you want to build?" I'm saying, "What do you want to have happen as a consequence of building your brand?" I see what a lot of people are doing right now, and this isn't necessarily the wrong thing, but they'll say, "I want to build a brand that teaches young women that they too can build a business and they can be successful and gives them an example of that in the marketplace." And that's amazing. I love that. But I want to know actually, first off, what is your selfish desire? Are you wanting to speak on

**[11:33]** more stages? Are you wanting to write a book? Are you wanting to work with a new type of client? Are you wanting to be able to build relationship with people that you admire in your industry that are way further ahead than you are? Right? What is the desired outcome off the back of building my brand? So, that's the first question that we ask. The second one is what would I have to be known for in order for that to happen? I believe that our reputation precedes us and it leads to so many incredible opportunities in our life. And so, I want to figure out in order to have that outcome, what do I need to be known for? The third question is in order to be known for that thing,

**[12:11]** what do I need to do? We both know you don't get known for [ __ ] by just talking, right? It's actions. It's things that we do that lead to a reputation that we develop. The final question, number four, brings us right to this very moment to today, which is in order to do the thing, to be known for the thing, to get the outcome I desire, what do I need to learn? Let's say we're working with somebody and she wants to speak on stages to inspire young women to start a business. Well, you probably need to be known as a woman who has built a successful business. And to be known for that, you got to do it. But then in order to build a successful business, you have

**[12:50]** to have a lot of skills that you learn. There's many different departments within a business, right? And so there's so many different skills that we need to list out that we need to learn in order to do this. And this gives us the roadmap of how we're going to go from where we are right now to where we want to be. But your desired outcomes will change. The thing that I always tell people when we work one-on-one with a partner, I always tell them, you think it's going to go one way, but if we do this correct, your your opportunities are going to become crazy and you can't imagine them right now. And so this will evolve over time. And so I recommend people do this exercise every 6

**[13:27]** to 12 months. You know, I filled out the brand journey framework and I found it super helpful and there was one thing that I did struggle with because I have so many outcomes, right? Going back to your first question, right? I want growth for this show. I want to lead growth for our marketing agency as well and long-term I would love to be in a position where we could invest in other people's dreams and their companies and their businesses, right? Yes. For someone who has multiple goals like that, right? How do you know which ones we should anchor ourselves to? I love this question. Uh what I typically recommend is actually I would love you to do the brand journey framework for each one of those outcomes. Oh, and it's going to help you have more specifics on what

**[14:05]** you need to do in order to reach that outcome. I don't know why I didn't think about that before. That makes so much more sense. Probably cuz I probably didn't even say that. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to clarify that. One of the thoughts that came to me when I was filling it out is like I was looking at my results what I had written down. I was like feel like so many other people with similar outcomes and goals might be filling it out the same way, right? It doesn't seem necessarily like I've differentiated myself in any way. And so, how do you stand out if everyone in that space seems to be saying the same thing, love? What you need to do is you need to add in your competitive advantage. What can only you talk about? What can only you do? How can only

**[14:45]** you show up online so that you aren't looking like everybody else? And then let's amplify that. What so many people are doing is they're amplifying sameness. they're showing up exactly the same as everybody else. I mean, it gets really disgusting with like I I have this joke that I like to give, which is the fake plant, the bookshelf, the red and blue light in the background, and it's like, in what world do you think you're going to stand out? Also, the funny thing that I think a lot of people are doing right now is they're trying to build their personal brand trading off of the information, right? Like to your point, a lot of people could be teaching the same things. So, what makes you different? There's a couple of different ways that you can differentiate

**[15:21]** yourself. So, let's tackle the first point of differentiation. And it's an exercise that we love to do. And this is uh I call it like the two column approach. Just grab a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and on the left side, what I want you to do is write out all of the things that are said or done in your niche, in your industry, in your space that you disagree with or would do differently. And then on the right side, you just write out what you do, what you believe. And what this is doing is we are identifying what we call contrarian takes. I believe the best way to make a splash in your space in your pond that you're competing in is

**[16:03]** to have a different take than what everybody else is saying. To take something that people believe to be true and show that it is not. For me, it's what we started with. It's optimizing for trust, not virality. In a world where everybody, not everybody, but the majority of people that talk about personal brand content strategy, they're saying that you need to go viral, you need to get millions of views, blah blah blah blah blah. You need all this attention, and then you got to somehow convert them into your offer. I believe the opposite. I believe that you need to optimize your content for trust, not virality. And that is my contrarian take. And so this exercise allows you to identify multiple contrarian takes. Mhm. And so what I want people to do is they identify

**[16:42]** these takes and then they're going to integrate them into their content. If they do podcasts like this, they need to share it. If they're making videos, they need to share it. LinkedIn posts, they need to share it. And what they need to do is track and see what is resonating the most with the audience. As in, people are DMing you about this. They're commenting, referencing it, or asking you follow-up questions. These are signals that your audience is [ __ ] with it and they want more of this. And that's what you lean into and you turn into your common enemy. It goes from just being a belief that people nod at to literally something that they can take action and rally around. You position this common enemy as just the thing that stands between them

**[17:20]** and what they want to have happen. So that's the first point of differentiation. A second one is a credibility bank. The thing that I'm seeing right now online that is really getting just frankly disgusting to me is everyone is just regurgitating the same generic advice. Can I swear on this? Yeah. Cool. In every [ __ ] niche, everyone is just regurgitating the same generic [ __ ] advice. There's nothing new to it. It's not in any way shaped by your personal experiences, your losses, your wins, and it's just taking the transcript from some other creator in your space and then tweaking the examples to you, and that's it. I'm done with people copying what their

**[18:00]** competitors are doing. I think oneof10.com is an amazing tool, but I think people are misusing it dramatically right now. They're looking at what an outlier is in their niche, in their category, and they're just ripping it. And they start their ideation with their competitor. And I think whatever you optimize for, you're going to attract more of. So why do we want more competitors? I want more customers. And if you always put your customer first, you will provide the most value and you will win, right? because there's now I mean I think it's something like 750,000 hours a day uploaded to YouTube. It's nuts. And so the number one question that the viewer is asking is

**[18:37]** why should I trust you? Why should I listen to you on this? In order to stand out and in order to be trusted we need to earn that trust and the things that we have done in our life in our career are the things that earn that trust. You need to develop what we call your credibility bank. M the most effective way of building a strong personal brand is doing the thing that your audience wants to do. You need to write down what you have done and the lessons that you have learned off of what you have gotten right and what you have gotten wrong. And then that's what you need to be sharing and teaching to your audience. If somebody who doesn't necessarily feel like an expert,

**[19:15]** let's say they don't have the proof, right? They haven't had that experience yet, but they want to develop their personal brand, right? Do they wait until they've gotten to that expert level or do they pursue it anyway and find another way around it? I love this question. Every expert that I know is the student in every room they go to. But I do distinguish into expert versus student, right? And student I basically just articulate as like you have not done the thing that your audience that you're trying to build wants to do. You are on the journey to do the thing that your audience wants to do. the losses, the mistakes are wildly useful for your audience from this frame. And

**[19:55]** so I absolutely think that students should make content instead of the credibility bank because maybe you don't have any credibility yet. It's the interest bank. What are you interested in? What are you testing? If you're the student, the way you need to think about yourself is you're the proxy for your audience. You're the guinea pig who is spending the money and the time and potentially the relationship capital in order to achieve this thing. and you're bringing your audience along the way so that they can avoid the mistakes that you're making. The problem is is when and we have this a lot right now. You have a lot of people who are actually students posturing as experts. The student goes and rips the experts transcript and then regurgitates it in their parents' basement on

**[20:38]** TikTok, right? That I have a huge issue with. And the whole thing just comes down to know thyself. Chris Doe has an incredible quote about the beauty of personal branding is knowing thyself. And if you are the student, frame yourself as such. You will put yourself in a better position to win long term because what I will tell you is you will get found out. If you're the student and you're posturing as an expert, it will come out eventually and that will hurt a lot more than the gains that you made during the 6 to 12 months that you fooled everybody into being an expert. Yeah. So that's the second point of differentiation here. The third one is

**[21:18]** showing up as a real human. Yeah, we utilize an exercise for this called interest stacking. And it mirrors how relationships are developed in real life. For anybody listening or watching, think about when you first went to your first job. In the beginning, if you're like me, you were probably shy and didn't really reveal much about yourself. So the only thing you have in common with these folks is we both work here. But over time, I would get a little bit more comfortable and reveal something about myself. Maybe it's the fact that I love metal or I love Harley-Davidsons or I love trash reality TV. And by me revealing that, somebody Sarah on the team also is like,

**[21:58]** "Oh, I love that too." Now Sarah and I have two things in common. Now she's a work homie, right? She's moved closer on the relationship sphere. This is how relationships are developed in the real world offline, but it's the same way you can develop your relationship with your audience online. Give your audience more opportunities to connect with you on a deeper level. And the only way that you do that is by sharing things that are outside of your subject matter expertise, outside of your niche. We call these non-niche human inputs. It's the things that make you you, right? That is the only thing that only you can talk about. But your individual stories,

**[22:35]** your insecurities, your excitements, your passions, your interests, these are things that can't be replicated. If somebody shows up on the scene talking about personal branding and says how much they love metal Harley-Davidsons and shitty reality TV, I'm going to be like, "That's a little weird. That's my story. That's my unique combination. That's the thing that can't be replicated." And this, I believe, leads to loyalty and differentiation. In the same token, not one of our 101 partners that we've worked with in the last year at Rston, none of them have been obsessed with Harley's. Not one. They could give a [ __ ] But what's interesting is they are

**[23:11]** obsessed with their Overlander rig or their super car. And though they don't understand the Harley references, they understand the obsession and they see themselves in that and they can relate to that. And so it's not always that they're going to directly connect with that interest, but they can see the passion you have for the interest and they can relate their passion for their interest to that. So if there's someone listening right now and they're like, "Okay, like I want to build my personal brand, but I don't really quite know what the topics I would specifically be discussing are. Is there like any questions or framework that you use to help

**[23:47]** those people?" Yes, we have an equation that we like to use. your ideal customer's painful problem plus your unique solution equals idea. Okay, that idea can then be tackled and leads to many different angles and those angles are your individual pieces of content. So, we can work our way back. Painful problem. What does that actually mean? What are the most costly problems that my ideal customer is facing? what's costly in time, in money, in reputation. What is a problem that they are dealing with regularly that I have previously solved? Which brings us to

**[24:27]** the unique solution. I don't mean make some [ __ ] up. I'm saying even if you have the same solution as everybody else in your space, you probably have your own unique way of approaching it. I would hope. And so what you want to do is just identify what is that unique solution. And that gives you the idea. Okay? I like to also refer to it as a gift that you're giving your audience, right? And so that idea, maybe it's I don't know how to come up with ideas. That's the problem. My unique solution is what we're walking through and this is an idea. But then I could attack this in so many different ways. I could make a whole video about identifying your ideal customer's

**[25:05]** problems and what painful problems are. And so these ideas lead to multiple angles and those multiple angles are your individual pieces of content. So if you do this over and over, you could easily very quickly identify three to five problems. I would love if we could get to 10, but a minimum of three to five of these problems. And if you identify that, I have a feeling that that gives you a minimum of 25 individual pieces of content right there. And the funny thing where people get trapped and they get stuck is they think, I don't want to keep repeating myself. I've ran out of ideas because I've said all that I have to say. And I understand where people are

**[25:45]** coming from. They think that the audience is going to get tired of it. They're getting tired of it. But the reality is is unfortunately after somebody watches your video, 99% of the time they forget about it seconds later. And I can prove this because there have been many big personal brands that I have managed where I have posted a clip on Instagram and then four days later posted the same [ __ ] clip and nobody called it out. This is a real thing. And so we need to repeat ourselves for many different reasons. One, so that we pair ourselves consistently with this thing so we become known for it because that is branding. Anyone who watches my YouTube content is like,

**[26:23]** "We get it, Caleb. We've heard it." I'm going to jam that over and over and over because I want that pairing. When they see another creator talk about that, I want them to think of me. Yeah. But then how do you get variety? Because nobody wants to watch the same video over and over and over and no one wants to make the same video over and over. And this is where Gary Vaynerchuk's document don't create comes into play. The variety comes from your experiences. If you're still in it, then you are probably working with clients, customers, and those clients and customers are the ones that bring you the individual variations of stories. You're still solving the same five to 10 problems

**[27:02]** for everybody, but it's the variety or the context of the individual that provides the variance in your content. Does that make sense? Yes. No, it totally makes sense. If you have customers and clients, you probably What did I say before? Ask Granola. What did I just say? That's literally what I wrote, but like in bullet point form. I like that. And this episode is sponsored by Granola. You're recording this, right? No. Wait, are we? It's for security reasons. You promised me that we were not going to use these as the ads anymore. I never said such thing. Okay. Well, then let's let's use Corala. Did Roy This is what makes us different. I think we should use this report.

**[27:44]** [laughter] I just want to figure out like how can we capture what it does. I mean, I literally don't think I could survive without granola. I think we should use this recording. No, we're not. Maybe we could talk about how it's an AI notepad. Honestly, it really is. It enhances your notes right after the meeting. You can talk to it and ask it any question about any meeting you've ever had. You can use it for a lot of different things. Like, I think it's a great tool for writing follow-up emails. That saves you a ton of time by writing you a quick summary. Tiff, are you paying attention? Yeah, I'm ready. [snorts] You know, you know, you know you're sharing your screen, right, Tiff? Dude,

**[28:27]** I'm going to put you on mute. Okay. Or should I not put you I'm going to put you on mute. If you are in backtoback [music] meetings and you are So, we just don't tell her and we put in the cut. You want to take it away? All right, guys. Make sure to click the link in the description for your one month free trial. Back to the video. That's what she says, right? Should we just leave while she's still talking? [laughter] If someone is in the early stages of creating content for themselves and for their brand,

**[29:04]** what should be the few things that they focus on? After you did the brand journey framework that we started with, right? We do the differentiation exercise. We did our interest or credibility bank. Okay. Once we have those out of the way, from a content perspective in stage one where you're like zero to 100K, it comes down to consistency, like just actually creating the habit of showing up and doing it. Too many people are listening to all of these gurus online with the thousand different things you need to do. Make sure that you have the right hook, a visual pacifier, all these different things. And we see all of these huge creators online that are pumping. I mean,

**[29:39]** now Gary's talking about posted 300 times a [ __ ] day. Yeah. You know, like it's absolutely insane. And he's right. He is 100% right. That is the best way. But it's not the best way for somebody getting started because they'll never continue with it. And so in that consistency, you need to determine a cadence that is realistic. Okay? And the way you do that is not super complicated. Like for everyone watching and listening, if I say, I want you to post 14 times a week on Instagram, how do you react? Cool. Then let's not do that. What about 10? No. What about five? Okay, five feels more realistic, right? Pick a number that feels realistic right now. And the most important

**[30:15]** part is the cadence or frequency that you increase that volume. So we started our YouTube channel with one YouTube video a month. Just one a month, which in YouTube strategy land is like insane. And so what are we doing in year two? We've doubled our output on YouTube. By the end of the year, we will have averaged at least two videos a month. And so I just want people to figure out and know yourself and then increase from there. So that's consistency. Next, I believe it comes down to speaking about a more narrow topic. You want to be known for one thing in the beginning. Can you explain a little bit more about that? Because I had a very very rough time.

**[30:54]** Every time I would hear niching, it like made my stomach drop because I'm like I didn't want to be pigeonholed into one corner, you know? Yeah. Niching down shortterm is the right move 100%. Like I would gladly debate anybody on that one. If I'm getting to know somebody, it's much easier for me to know one thing about them and then expand over time versus when I meet somebody, if they were to just tell me everything about themselves and all the things that they're interested in, everything that they've ever done. It's overwhelming and I don't know what to associate them with. The thing that a lot of people make the mistake of is they want

**[31:29]** to be known for all these different things and they confuse their audience. Their audience has no idea what what are like what do you stand for? Who are you? What do you do? Over time, that can grow. But I highly recommend in the beginning, please pick the thing that you want to be most known for, at least right now. What do you want to be most known for in this very moment? Okay? And that's what I want you to build your brand around. And so, one of the most important things is understanding what pond you're competing in. Meaning, so many people enter the space, and let's use business as an example here. They want to build their personal brand. They're like,

**[32:05]** "I'm going to be in the business category." And I look at them and I say, "Cool. Good luck. You're competing with these savages who have been doing this for a very long time that have large teams that have built up a very strong credibility and a very strong personal brand." And so what I prefer to encourage people to do is pick the pond that you feel you can compete in right now based on what you have done. And then after you dominate that pond, so to speak, and there can be multiple people that dominate a pond, then you can jump to the next one. And that's how I believe that most people should ladder up. And so you're not niching down forever, but you are narrowing

**[32:45]** in on a subject matter so that your audience has an easier time of knowing what you stand for and what you talk about. And so for everybody who's hearing me say this, know that it's not permanent, but it is your best shot at competing in the marketplace. And what's beautiful is pretty much every creator in the business space, they did this. Cool. Literally everybody, Gary's a great example. He started talking about wine, then it was marketing, then it was business, then it was personal development, right? Like whether you love him or hate him, and I know he is a very polarizing character. Joe Rogan did an incredible job with this with his podcast. If you were to go

**[33:21]** back to his early episodes, he's not talking about all of these different things. In the beginning, it was comedy and fighting, okay? And over time it expanded to all the different subject matters, all the different interest stacking that he does to acquire so many different individuals. And then the people that like multiple things that he talks about, they become the super fans. And so everybody can do this. You just need to understand that it's a sequence. It doesn't all happen at once. And then the third thing is you want to be tracking the data. You want to be making your decisions off of data, not off of just intuition. Now, what I like to do though is I like to not

**[33:58]** track a ton of things. So many people, myself included, for years would look at these like crazy robust spreadsheets that somebody on the team would build, right? And it'd be like all these different metrics and I would just look at it like and I have no idea what to do with it. And so the number one piece of advice for everybody in this stage and beyond is only track the metrics that if you see it go up or down or stay the same will cause you to do something different. If it's that then track it. If not, ignore it. Right? And you better [ __ ] believe that we are going to double, triple, quadruple down on the content that leads to more of our business outcomes that we want.

**[34:38]** Right now, we did a video that is on our YouTube channel. wildly niche. It's gotten no views. Like, it is really low in views. The only people who are going to watch that video are the people that we want to watch. One of the clients that I set out that I wanted to work with this year, they reached out because their creative director watched the video and the struggles that I called out were the struggles they were facing and they wanted our personalized help solving those problems. Right? What that shows us is if we were just just tracking views, views are important, but if we just tracked views, we wouldn't make another video like that. But we signed a really

**[35:14]** big client that was really good for us. And so if we know that to be true, we should make more of that content because that's the outcome we want. In the beginning, if you don't have something to sell, have something free. Build a really powerful lead magnet, a workbook, for example, like we did with our course, and track the downloads of that. And that's how you can start to see like, oh, I now see somewhat of a conversion rate happening here. This course got a million views. We got 55,000 downloads on the workbook. Now I understand, right? Amazing. And that's what we can do. That's what we start tracking. Thank you for going into that. Has there been ever

**[35:51]** a data point that changed your content strategy that you didn't consider before? Yes. Recently, and this is a new thing that I've actually not talked about anywhere, so this is very fun. What we have started to see, contrary to what a lot of strategists are preaching out there, is the majority of the traffic now isn't browse, it's search. I've been noticing that if you search personal brand on Google, our two courses are the top suggested video. Not just under my browser, but under any browser. But the point that I was actually trying to make is that it's

**[36:26]** very interesting that everybody right now is overemphasizing the Mr. beast like out the gate packaging for sure. The whole thing of like create curiosity. What we're finding is we're getting more success off of these more on then evergreen style packaging formats for our videos than the last video you'll ever need to watch on personal brand. Like I'm sharing this mid strategy. Like we are literally working on this where we are going to test two different packaging approaches. your first wave like the out the gate packaging and then the evergreen packaging because our

**[37:04]** videos do in the beginning get the overwhelming amount of attention through browse. So, it is brows and suggested. That's the beginning. But I wanted to share it because I think it's really interesting to see like there are multiple ways to win. And just because everyone is sharing this one tactic doesn't mean that there aren't other tactics or potentially principles here that can be utilized that are different and more complimentary of the brand you want to build. Right. That makes sense. All right. Are you ready for some rapid fire questions? Oh boy. Quality versus quantity. Yes. I constantly struggle internally of like should we focus on the quality of our episodes

**[37:42]** considering that's what's resonating or of course I would love to do both but do I sacrifice that a little to do the quantity and I know there's so many people who struggle with that as well and I'm curious as to what your thoughts are. I'm not saying this at you. I'm saying it to the audience well to you too and to me. Yes, we don't know what quality is. We have our subjective views and definitions of quality but we are not the determiner. Our audience is who determines what quality is. And so for 99% of people that are in this 0 to 100k phase, I strongly urge you to utilize what I call the accordion method, right? An accordion expands and it contracts and it makes

**[38:19]** beautiful music. You're going to do the same thing with your content strategy here. In the beginning, you do want more volume, not because you want to show up everywhere and be omniresent. It's to acquire the data of what your audience wants more of quicker. By putting out five videos over the course of five different months, it takes a long time to see what our audience is resonating with. If we were able to compress that into five weeks, we get a lot more information a lot quicker. And then we can start to put more effort into what our audience has labeled as quality. Was it the topics? Was it the formats? What do I need to double down on? Yeah. And then what I recommend

**[38:59]** people do is they actually contract the accordion and they take the effort they were putting into that higher volume. Let's use an example of 14 posts a week on Instagram when you expand. Now I want you to contract and do seven. Put the same amount of effort that you were into the 14 into seven. But now those seven you have more understanding. So you're choosing seven pieces that your audience will resonate with. And the cool thing is is then that will cap out. you will hit a ceiling where all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, well, it's not working anymore." So, what do we do? We expand the accordion again. And we just go back and forth, back and forth. And that

**[39:34]** is the approach that I like. Now, the advanced version of this is every time that you expand, each new expansion, you're doing more than the previous expansion. And each new contraction, you're doing more than the previous contraction. And so, that's the little difference here. One other little thing, if you're in the beginning, you're like, "Caleb, how is this going to work? I get like 96 views or 113 views on my videos. My response is, cool. If you do 30 videos, one of them is going to get 415. And that's your first signal. I'm not saying that's where you want to go forever, but in the beginning, you're not going to be able to track conversions cuz nobody's clicking

**[40:08]** on the [ __ ] link. And so, you do have to look at views as your indicator of what your audience wants more of. Double down on that, and then you can continue from there. It makes a lot of sense. Content creation feels so overwhelming and there are just so many freaking platforms nowadays. How do you manage them all while you're managing your business and developing your personal brand? Sorry, I want to butt in here because this was a question that we struggled with for so long. And before Caleb gives us his answer, I wanted to share what has actually worked for us and that is Rea. We are currently right now in an editing session and normally I would have had to stop in

**[40:48]** order to post on all of the different platforms which was so stressful and now any minute now all of our posts are going to go up on every single platform. So what is Rea? Rela is an all-in-one social media management tool where you can build your content calendar, brainstorm ideas, schedule your posts, and you can manage all of your accounts in one place. Also, something that I have noticed since using Rea is that we have become a lot more consistent with posting our content. It does become like a lot easier to track our actual content in the metrics of it, which Caleb is going to talk about in a second. That being said, Rea, thank you so much for sponsoring this video. We

**[41:22]** love you guys. And uh Roy, take it away. Go to geta.com and use code anatomy for your first three months or annual plan. Oh my god. 10% off. Ready? That's you got it. Use the code anatomy, please. And that is getroyal.com. All right, guys. You heard him. And now back to the video. I think that a lot of people think I can't make content for every platform because I don't have the time. And my first reaction to that is correct. You shouldn't be trying to attack every platform

**[41:57]** in the beginning all at once. For solo creators, I tell you to pick one primary and one secondary platform. If you have a team, then I tell you to pick three primary platforms and one to three secondaries. So, I think that that's actually a really great segue for our show and tell. You ready to dive in? Amazing. I loved showand tell as a kid. Basically, you have this framework that I really, really love where you talk about how you track your data, right? And how you do it for your clients. And so, you are so kind and you're going to actually go over our channel. And I think the goal of this show and tell is for you to kind of walk us through what does it actually look like

**[42:35]** when we're tracking this data because I know that a lot of people watching including myself right is that we're looking at all of these numbers but we don't really know then what to do next right so I think that we really kind of want to dive into that right now and if you can can you share a little bit about that multiplier mindset that you kind of do so what we encourage people to do is to look at the last 90 days and calculate your median of your views, your likes, comments, saves, conversions, downloads, whatever the metric is that you are tracking because you know what you are trying to accomplish. The reason why we say median and not just your average is

**[43:12]** some of us have videos that have like popped, right? And that's the only video that popped, but it completely tips the scales for our average and it's not actually helping us be able to interpret the data effectively. So, I am curious like what you know do what are the first things that you look at? We have the multipliers here. This one almost doesn't seem real. Wow. 957.72x. Yeah, that's [ __ ] nuts. Oh, but it got 3 million. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, that's crazy. Normally get nothing. So, real quick off top, we're looking at this for the first time. And I would normally go a lot deeper and look at this a lot longer. And so, I'm giving you my

**[43:49]** immediate thoughts here, which is the first thing that I would do if I were you is I would actually ignore this for a second. I would like throw the crazy outlier out the window for a moment, okay? And I'd be looking at your top 10% of your content and I would watch those videos a thousand times. Not literally, but over and over and over. Basically, you want to act like a scientist. You want to make a hypothesis of, okay, I've noticed that these two things are across all of our videos, or maybe not all, but nine out of 10 of them, or eight out of 10 of them. The mistake that a lot of people make is for this one for example, they see, "Oh, she's wearing a red shirt. Okay,

**[44:26]** we need to wear a red shirt every time." But like that's probably not the case because in here I don't see a woman wearing a red shirt, right? Rather than looking at these silly little tactics or silly little bag of tricks items, right? Like is the thing that they have in common a topic? Is it a format? Is it a hook structure? So those are the elements that I'm looking for there. And then in the next series of videos, we're going to force these to occur. And then what we're going to do is try and validate, is this actually something that leads to the success of this video or was it just a random happen stance. The key is is the moment that you develop that hypothesis, you want very

**[45:04]** little time in between the hypothesis and testing that hypothesis. And if you do that over the course of a year, you develop a lot of learnings. And what you're wanting to do is identify one or two at most three things that I add to my checklist that I make sure every piece that I make moving forward checks this mark. And if you do this every month and you review your top 10% and you add to this list, by the end of the year, you're going to have a very robust checklist that shows you these are the things that I have done in the past that have led to good performing content.

**[45:40]** And in theory, and you want to validate this, if I continue to do these in my future content, I will get similar results. Like in the context of your show, it's maybe not even necessarily just topic, but it's type of guest or expert that you're bringing on. Are the clips that bang starting with you or your guest in the first frame? Right? So, I'd be looking at those things. Are they sharing a contrarian take at the beginning? That typically does really well as a hook, right? And so those are the other things that I'd be looking at like what are the repeatable functions that I can actually force into my future content and you're going to start operating in a way where

**[46:17]** you're able to predict that your content is going to do well, not just hoping that it will. Okay. Can I actually say something? Cuz the comments that I've realized that we get on our shorts, I don't necessarily feel like they're the right audience. Like they're not the audience that listens to our long form. The comments we always say are like a happy place in long form, but they're like a sad place in shorts. Is that a bad thing? If we started noticing that our shorts were attracting people that had nothing to do with what we want to be reaching or who we want to be reaching, what Trevor and I would be doing is we would actually be narrowing in and making it more specific on who this is for and limiting, literally sandbagging our reach, knowing that I'm

**[46:55]** just trying to reach the right individual. The other thing that you can do with this is you can use terms and lingo that people aren't going to understand unless they're in your target demo. can be a great way to signal to people this is for you versus this isn't for you. Thank you. Seriously, this is actually very very helpful and we're going to start implementing it in our meetings moving forward. Get ready team. All right. So, you've grown some of the biggest names out there. Gary Vee and the Hormosis. What are the numbers are we looking at? Uh we were able to take Gary's Tik Tok from 300K to three and a half million in I think just a little over three and a half months. And

**[47:30]** then with Alex and Ila, we were able to go from 1.2 2 million to 11 and a half million people in the audience. Wow. So, take me back. Take me back before, you know, you built all these incredible personal brands, including your own. Now, I want to know where did this all start? Like, for real, for real, it started with uh me and my sister stealing my mom's Canon PowersShot camera and filming funny little videos in the backyard. And then as I got older in high school, I started becoming really obsessed with powerlifting. Just my entire world revolved around it,

**[48:07]** honestly. And I started consuming a lot of training videos online just to learn, but also to get stoked before going to the gym. And I just was like, damn, I love watching these guys train, but these videos are awful. They're done terribly. They're boring. And I decided, I want to start making video content for these guys. And so I would literally go to the local bodybuilding shows where they would have a guest poser. They'd bring out the Mr. Olympia Flex Lewis, for example, and I would just go up to him as an audacious 15- 16-year-old and I'd be like, "I think you have done an amazing job with building your physique, but I think your videos are kind of like not

**[48:43]** very good. If I film you while you're here and I make some cool little mini vlog and you like it, maybe we could work together." And so I started doing that. But when I was 18, I was like, I think I want a consistent paycheck. And so I started working at a company uh called Logos Bible Software and we had an in-house media team and that's where I started learning like more of how you guys do the production. And so that was an amazing season of my life. And then a crazy thing happened. There was these massive layoffs. I think they laid off 30% of the entire company. And I was part of that. And it was actually the best thing in the world for me because I had gotten to a

**[49:19]** point where I was debating whether or not I should leave and go do something else. I felt like I hit a cap of what I was able to learn and do there. And so this propelled me into an era where I was doing freelance and a friend of mine introduced me to this I502 cannabis company in Washington state. It was when cannabis was first legalized. So this was brand new. Yeah. And they were wanting to build their social presence and that was an incredible time in my life. I developed this idea of like my competitive edge in the marketplace is I'm gonna work with brands to create these little moments. I'm gonna take these little moments that we all experience and I'm gonna inject the product

**[49:56]** into it. And so we were able to do that and I was able to actually work with my sister who does a lot of production and set design. She's incredible at that. I got to hire buddies that were helping with motion graphics. I got to bring people from my world into my work. And I remember I had a studio apartment downtown in Bellingham, Washington where my sister and I, we would work and just grind and we'd have like Gary Vee videos on the TV that we'd be watching and like trying to learn and apply those things. And I was making more money than I had ever made in my life, $48,000 a year. And I thought I was the hot shot. I just started, I think, having this attitude

**[50:36]** where I was operating like it would never go away. And um then that turned out to not be true. Uh about eight months into working with uh this client of ours, they came to me and said, "Hey, there's some things with regulations and these different taxes that are changing that our tax bill is about to be enormous and we are not going to be able to compensate you in the same way that we have been. We're going to need to cut your compensation in half." And I uh had not been saving money or being smart in any way. I also during this time made

**[51:13]** the huge mistake of thinking that these would be my clients forever. So I wasn't working on getting new clients or building any sort of weight list. Yeah. So you were really relying on that client. All my eggs were in this basket. Jesus. Yeah. I had to go to my sister and to my friends and say, "Yo, I can't pay you." And so now I was seeing the domino effect of my decisions. This was my fault, not their fault. I know clearly I could have made different decisions, been more intelligent, and more thoughtful with how I was operating. What I do is no longer just impacting me. I'm not this 17-year-old kid who's making videos in my parents living room and it's just me. So, what

**[51:53]** did you do? I quickly recognized, okay, I need to get back into action. If I mope about this, I'm not going to attract any sort of amazing opportunities. Nobody's going to want to work with somebody who's like down in the dumps feeling sad for themselves. They don't give a [ __ ] about that. And so I quickly pivoted into, okay, I don't have a client right now. What kind of side project could I take on? I started working on it. I was It's so stupid. I was going to start a podcast called Vitamin C. Why Vitamin C? My name's Caleb with a C. It was so stupid. But in doing that, I started showing up to more local events and I started getting more opportunities. And then I was

**[52:34]** in action and randomly working on a project, I get a text from my best friend Jordan Villmore and it was a screenshot of Gary Ve's Instagram story post saying that they were looking for videographers. Immediately did it. I literally got that text and within probably 10 minutes I was sitting there and I was literally in the middle of editing a project eating my chicken nuggets with my barbecue sauce and ketchup because that was my move at the time. Chicken nuggets and edits were like the best move. And I just film a video talking about why I think I'd be a good pick and I just share what I'm passionate about, who I am, the fact that I've been watching Gary for so long. I've gotten so

**[53:14]** much value and I didn't get a response. So then I followed up again and didn't get a response. Followed up again, no response. I kept following up over and over and over. But the thing is is I was providing value each time I followed up. Okay? And so every follow-up email, I included another video that added another aspect. There's one where I literally do like a mini vlog. It's I'm in my house putting on my shoes, walking out the door on my longboard, and the whole time I'm talking about who I am and what I'm interested in. That's awesome. not even necessarily my editing or video skills, just who I am because I know that that's an element that is part of the decision-m

**[53:50]** process when hiring whether it should or not. It is. And then eventually I got the opportunity to interview for two different roles. either PureWow, which is a women's lifestyle publisher that Gary had bought, or something called Vayner Talent, which was essentially taking the personal brand media team that surrounds Gary Vee that helps amplify who he is and his content to the world. That was an offering that Vayner had for external clients. So, those were the two paths. And for me, Vayner talent would be more in line with what I ultimately want, which is working for Gary,

**[54:26]** like directly on his team. But then when I really thought about it, I was like, I should try something that I have never done and I do not understand. And so I was like, man, I've gone fitness, I've gone the religious route, I've gone cannabis, now I'm going to go women's lifestyle. Like, this is a very interesting combination that gives me more context than your average bear. It was an amazing opportunity for me. And so I chose that, flew across the country, moved to Brooklyn, New York, and started working at PureWow. And it was absolutely insane. I think the interesting takeaway though from my time at PureWow was if you go to my Instagram page, there is a post. It's a carousel of my first meeting with Gary. He's famous for five minute

**[55:05]** meetings. That sounds like nothing, but if you get a five-minute meeting with Gary, you're blown away at how much happens in five minutes. It's wild. Like he covers a lot of ground in a very short amount of time. And he had an open door policy. So, I met with him and I remember at the end of the meeting, he invited me to spend basically my 5 to 9 with team Gary up here from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. My team lives here and most of the rest of the building goes home. Yeah. You should come out here and like jam with them at times. Yeah. You should just literally think there's an open invite

**[55:40]** for you to sit here at 7:37 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on a random Wednesday night because there'll be people here. Deal. And you'll pick up [ __ ] Cool. Through osmosis. Absolutely. It's not like you have to be doing something, right? And then, you know, then third time you're here, they're like, "Hey, can you edit this real quick?" Yep. You know? Yeah. Learn by observing. Absolutely. It's just a good If you got nothing going on Yeah. It's the default. Yeah. If you don't have something that you have to do on Pure Wow, if you don't have a metal show that you want to go to, if it's [ __ ] literally next Wednesday, y always assume from 7 to 9, 8, 10, it's here. And then on the subway ride home, I remember thinking, I've been given a responsibility and an opportunity

**[56:22]** up here. Wow. I should focus all of my extra time on this, not on something extra, not on a shiny object, so to speak. And if I apply ruthless focus to this and build a strong reputation here, maybe that will work its way to Gary and then who knows what will happen, right? And so I actually chose not to take him up on his offer and I didn't go hang out with team Gary. All of my extra time I just put into Pure Wow. So I was charged with making more Instagram content. But we also had things like sponsorships from massive, massive brands that would sponsor content. And there was

**[56:59]** projects that would come up where we needed to pitch. When those opportunities would come up, it was never a 9 to-5 opportunity. It was a five to nine. I had to do that in addition to my job. But because I didn't decide to go pursue the shiny object, I had the capacity to do that. And that earned me trust with Ryan Harwood and Mary Kate, the people that were leading PureWow that had a close relationship with Gary. M and 9 months 10 months into being on PureWow, I get tapped on the shoulder. They asked me to come up to the conference room and they're like, "We would love to pull you on to team Gary. Would you be interested?" I was like, "Fuck yes, I would."

**[57:35]** Like sign me up yesterday. And all because you had that Caleb can do it, right? You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah. I I think that a lot of people think about personal brand in a public setting, but I believe that you can also build your personal brand within the organization that you are a part of. And so for me, the brand that I wanted to build at Pure Wow was Caleb can do it. Like you give me a project with no specifics, no clarity, and I'll just figure it out. Caleb can do it. Oh, somebody on the executive team on Easter Sunday sent me a clip of them playing tennis. They're like, "Is there any way you could cut this for me to post on Instagram?" I did it. Like,

**[58:12]** I just did anything that came my way because I wanted to build the reputation or the brand in the company that Caleb can do it. And that Caleb can do it attitude translated over to when you actually started working alongside Gary Veaynerchuk. Yes. Can you walk me through what like an average day of working with Gary B was like? It's it's truly a wild wild role. And he never required us to do this. I always wanted to make his life easier. I my goal was like I don't want to just be a videographer. I want to supplement a bunch of things. So when we'd be walking through the airport, if I could, sometimes he'd be like, "No, I got it." But I would try to

**[58:49]** carry his luggage. A lot of, you know, fans and audience members would bring him a gift. So I'd be like grabbing that, holding that while filming while also texting the admins, coordinating the five-minute meeting that he's going to have backstage before he goes on for the keynote. Like just so many things. But what's interesting that I I don't really talk about a lot is at the same time this was probably like career-wise I was very happy. And so at the same time that it was the best moment in my career up to that point I was also wildly depressed. Like I was at a point where I would finish work and I would have to hit the bar and have like two or three shots for my

**[59:26]** commute home. Like I was I was really not coping healthfully with it like in a healthy way. And um it culminated in this moment where I got wildly sick. I couldn't breathe. Like and I remember I called my mom crying asking her to sing me to sleep because I was scared to fall asleep because I wasn't sure if I'd wake up the next morning. And when I went into the ER, the doctor literally told me, he was like, "Dude, if you would have waited one more day,

**[1:00:04]** I don't know if you'd be able to breathe any longer." And I was like alone in this ER because it came to a point where I started realizing, cool, you work really hard and you're investing all of your resources into your career. Guess where you haven't been investing? Your relationships, your family. And so this was kind of the beginning of me starting to see, okay,

**[1:00:40]** I need to figure out some way to balance. I know that is a a hot topic word that some people get very visceral about, but I need to figure out how do I balance this need to pursue and work really hard with also now I realize I do have a need for these relationships and these friendships because I don't want to be the person who has spent my entire life pursuing something amazing. I accomplish it and I got nobody to celebrate it with because I was the person who would

**[1:01:15]** constantly say work is number one and work is number two and then it's family, friends, health, all of these things. Yeah. Where did you fall on that list? Oh, I didn't even Yeah, that's a great point. I've never even thought about I didn't even I was even on that list. Yeah. Like I didn't even come to mind. [music] And then it took me another like five or six years. It was really only until honestly starting my own business where I realized, okay, I can prioritize my relationship with my girlfriend. Like I turned to her and I was like, I'm blown away that you're still here. Like I'm sorry that I haven't been there the way that I wanted to be. Which is a process,

**[1:01:52]** by the way. Like the other thing that I want to add real quick is I don't regret that season where I was working really hard because it's not lost on me that without that I wouldn't be here. like without the grinding in New York, without the grinding with those cannabis companies, without the grinding at the software company. And so like I think for me it's realizing that there are different seasons. It's less like black and white like everyone online likes to make it, you know, it's like, you know, work hard and ignore everybody in your life or like only pursue your friendships and relationships and who cares about your career? It doesn't mean anything.

**[1:02:29]** And it's like both extremes I think are terribly wrong and I think they lead people down very dangerous paths. I think it comes back to that beautiful quote from Chris Doe which is you should know yourself and know yourself in the season that you're in. This season I think that I don't subscribe to really the belief that work life balance exists in a week or in a month or even really sometimes in a year. I look at it as kind of like I can have work life balance over the course of my entire life, right? I'll have a season where it's work and I'll have a season where it's life. But, you know, right now I'm in a work season. And I feel like when I look

**[1:03:03]** at it that way, I feel like I am a balanced person. I'm just doing it in longer stretches of time versus fitting it cramming it all in one day, which is impossible. Absolutely. So, if there was one thing that you could say that you learned from Gary Vee, what would you say that was? Putting the audience first always when it's convenient and when it's inconvenient. I'd say that actually let me add another one that I haven't shared which is that empathy is cool. Uh it's funny he always says this and so I'm going to sound like him because I was around him a lot and so I picked up a lot of his isms like I got goosebumps just saying that. Um I always thought

**[1:03:42]** it was like kind of a a weak thing. I didn't have a real example in my life showing that empathy was cool. Gary I think for me and for many others has made being empathetic cool and I think he showed me and gave me permission that like oh I can lean into that and that can actually be a superpower not a weakness and now you are building your own company rston another thing that I learned from Gary is optimizing our life for lack of regret at the end of it. I don't want to be that guy

**[1:04:22]** who's on my deathbed wondering, I worked for all these amazing entrepreneurs and learned so much, but I never went out and tested to see if I got it like that. Cuz for the last probably four or five years, I've gotten a fairly good amount of DMs on Instagram and LinkedIn asking like, "Do you have any content anywhere that shares like your views on brand or content strategy?" And I did not have any resources anywhere. I did not have time to work with them because I was working on the thing that I was focusing on, my full-time job at the time. And after a while, I just started feeling like, damn, like this is a problem. Like I I need some sort of solution to this. But that

**[1:05:00]** felt like, okay, this is the moment. If I'm going to try it anytime, I have momentum here. I have interest. I have demand. This is the only time that I can try it. And so I uh I decided to take the crazy plunge and risk into entrepreneurship. And so early 2024 when I started my business and started looking at like, oh, I'm going to start making my own content. I started realizing like I never thought I'd be in front of a camera, I always said statements like, you know, I've got a face for a videographer. I am not articulate. I'm not good at communicating. I'm not good at sharing the message. I'm great at amplifying someone else's. So, I partner with people who are really

**[1:05:40]** good at communicating and then I help amplify that message. And so I I knew that I wanted to do this. I didn't know exactly the way that I wanted to. But I also started noticing like, okay, everyone who talks about personal branding, they they do this thing that we call value edging. They give all this information right up to a point and instead of giving you the takeaway, they're like, "Now you can go buy my thing." Yeah. And it just right up to it, but no release. It was awful. And so I thought, what would happen if we were to take the thing that they charge for, make it better, and put it out for free? I bet it would probably impact my business. To be clear,

**[1:06:20]** $16,000 is not a lot, but that's how much I spent on it. This was month two of me being in business, so it was like, okay, that's an investment. Yeah, it was hefty. And like my goal, I told Trevor, I'd be flabbergasted if in the first year we got 10,000 views. cuz in my head I'm like, nobody's going to watch a 6 and a half hour video on YouTube. I've watched it twice, by the way. That means the world to me. Um, and it is now over a million views. When I saw the success of that, I immediately went to Trevor and I was like, "My dude, let's do another one on the media team." So, that's where we did that one. That one did really well. And we got a lot of email opt-ins. We got

**[1:06:58]** people off platform to a channel that we have direct communication with them. And so we're building a very significant email list here, right? I can't tell you how much that just like fundamentally changed my life. Like my life is completely different because of doing that singular project. Yeah. That specific bet really paid off. And so for me, I think I just keep getting reminded that like I've got a fairly decent intuition and I need to trust that more rather than talking myself out of it. It's like let's act quickly. Let's execute on this very fast and try and figure it out as we go because I have been continually rewarded in my

**[1:07:38]** past for doing so. What do you say to someone who wants to start their personal brand, but they're scared because of the fear putting themselves out there online, the fear of hate comments potentially? Me too. Me too. I am terrified of it as well. Uh when I was in high school and I was making the fitness content, one of the things that I did to try and attract more clients, this was before this was a strategy and became disgusting. I had a podcast that I would invite people on that I wanted to eventually work with, but I didn't like do it in some weird way. I would just actually build relationship with them. But I would interview the greatest of the greats.

**[1:08:17]** I'm talking like, and most people probably won't know this name, but anyone who's really in it, Fred Hatfield, Dr. squat, the greatest squatter of all time, taught everybody like a whole new way to approach the squat within powerlifting. He had not done an interview in probably like 20 years. I was the first one in like 20 years for him to do. And so, everybody flocked to this and here I am, a [ __ ] 15-year-old kid on Skype interviewing him. So, hey, what's up? This is Caleb from Mass Muscle TV bringing the competitors to you and uh we're joined by uh with him today. So, how you doing, Fred? I'm great. Great. Great. Awesome. It's great. It's an honor to have you with us. Fumbling

**[1:08:54]** over my words, asking really stupid questions, and I got ripped apart in the comments. I'm like, "Oh god, really? They saw that? They noticed that? I thought I was hiding that really well." And it was tough. But I think I have adopted having empathy for them and recognizing that like you must be in a pretty dark place if you need to bring somebody to your dark place by commenting publicly on their content something negative. Like that's kind of a wild thing. Yeah. I just imagine honestly when I get ever get a hate comment I just take a moment to imagine them typing

**[1:09:30]** every single word I'm reading. Yes. And what I will say is there is no magic pill. There is no magic thing other than just doing it and getting more and more comfortable with it. The thing that I have determined is the ultimate way to win the game of personal branding is to stick with it. And the only way that I am going to stick with it and be able to do this long term is if I am truly who I am because that's the only thing that I can consistently do. Now, there's certain elements that we don't need to bring. There's parts of my story that I'm never going to share. So, what I'm not encouraging people to do is go the overshare route. There are things that you should

**[1:10:07]** reserve for yourself, but I believe in sharing like insecurities that we have. Like I recently just took my hat off in a video and showed my bald head, which what's funny is uh a bunch of people are like, "Bald is beautiful. There's nothing wrong with that, brother." But what they don't realize is how insecure I have been my whole life about this. And in making content, I never wanted people to see me without a hat on. But what do I believe to be true? Everybody has insecurities. Yeah. I am curious about, you know, this this season of your life. What do you feel Caleb, who started off at the beginning, what would he say about this chapter and what would he say

**[1:10:45]** about what you're doing now? Younger Caleb would be freaked the [ __ ] out. I think he'd be like, "Holy [ __ ] I've [music] been spending the majority of my life and career filming the characters who are the guest on a show like this, who are sharing these things, [music] and it is insane to me that now at some level I'm doing that." Caleb, I just want to say thank you so [music] much for doing the work that you're doing cuz it's it's truly very meaningful. So, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm honored. So, thank you. [music] All right, guys. You know the drill. We're going to be diving into the anatomy of Caleb's dream. We're

**[1:11:22]** going to be going over the principles that came up in his journey. And because there are so many, we're going to be putting up a list of all of them, and we're just going to be touching on the few that we find to be the most important. Of course, if there are any of them that you want us to touch on again in a future video, let us know. All right, let's dive in. So, our first principle is to evaluate the right metric. Evaluating the right metrics means measuring success by the numbers that show whether we are getting closer to our dream rather than looking at the numbers that simply look impressive. In the anatomy of Caleb's dream, a huge part of his success was in the fact that he understood which metrics to focus on. And he did not allow himself to get

**[1:11:59]** distracted by the wrong ones. We all want views. We want followers. We want virality. But none of those things mean anything if they do not bring in the right people, our customers, the people who are willing to invest in whatever it is that we are offering. You may remember Caleb mentioning a very niche video that received relatively few views. However, one of the companies Caleb had specifically wanted to work with found him through that video. If views had been the only thing and the only metric that his team evaluated, they probably would have assumed that that topic did not work and that they should have never made another video like it. Something I thought that

**[1:12:35]** was really interesting that Caleb had mentioned is that on some of the videos, they intentionally sandbag the reach of those videos. Meaning, they choose a very specific topic knowing that it's going to get very few views, but they also know that it's more likely to reach their potential customers and ultimately lead to conversions. Now, this reminds me of our conversation with Grace Andrews when she spoke about giving every piece of content a very specific goal. So, some of the content she mentioned is created for exposure. Some are created for engagement and some are created for conversions. And so, if a video is intended to drive conversions and that went viral but generated no leads or sales, then in her eyes, that video did not work. And this is why

**[1:13:16]** you have to know what you're measuring before you create something. This is why Caleb says that we need to choose our outcomes. So create an outcome for every single post. If your goal is awareness, views might be the right metric. If your goal is to build a community, comments, shares, and returning viewers might tell you more. If your goal is to grow a business, qualified leads, workbook downloads, email subscribers, or sales may be significantly more important to look at. So before you make your next piece of content, ask yourself one, what outcome am I actually trying to create? and two, which metric would prove that I'm actually getting closer to it because

**[1:13:54]** something could look successful without moving you any closer to your dream while something that appears small from the outside might be producing the exact result you need. And before we move on to our next principle, down below we have included a downloadable worksheet where you can go through all these questions and these exercises yourself and hopefully start putting these principles into action. All right, our next principle is the proximity principle. We have spoken about this principle before and it's basically that your environment shapes your outcomes. It's the fact that being around certain people and places and ideas increases our odds of success because they expose us to opportunities and ways of thinking that can move us forward. And I can't tell you

**[1:14:33]** how many times I have looked at successful people and thought, well, they were lucky because they had access to this person or that person. But then I look at Caleb and I'm like, well, neither did he until he made it happen for himself. He himself spoke about how he did not grow up with access to people like Gary. But the way that he even got himself there was by putting himself out there. Now, let's look at how he approached Flex Lewis. He didn't wait for someone to introduce them or invite him into the room. Caleb literally walked up to him and explained how he could improve his videos. And because he did that time and time again, it changed the course of his life. I mean,

**[1:15:09]** think about how much time he spent with Gary and how that proximity shaped the way he thinks or how he operates. And of course, I can't help but wonder if Caleb would have ever stepped in front of the camera had he not spent years watching some of the best people in the game do it. And so, my point is, we focus so much on changing ourselves that we forget how much can change when we change our surroundings. And so, what do we do about this? Well, Caleb didn't meet Flex Lewis on the street. He met him at a local bodybuilding show. He went to an environment where this person would be. Which, by the way, going to physical spaces with the proximity that we want is the ultimate

**[1:15:47]** hack. Even if it's changing your local coffee shop and going to one in a bougier area. So ask yourself this. One, if you spent the next 5 years around the same people, who would you become? Two, what environment would make the person you want to become feel normal? Is it a seminar, a founder event, a cafe in a bougie neighborhood? or three, what is the one thing that you could do this week to put yourself in proximity to the people or opportunities that could move your dream forward? Because as we saw with Caleb, repeatedly putting himself in that proximity helped him build a track record that became our next principle, undeniable proof. Now, undeniable

**[1:16:26]** proof means creating the kind of results that are impossible to ignore. is using your past results, your reviews, your reputation to create what Caleb spoke so much about, trust. Now, the fact that you are watching this video right now, it's an example of how powerful this principle can be. In the teaser, the first thing that you heard Caleb telling us was how he helped take Gary Ve's Tik Tok from 300,000 followers to 3.5 million and how he helped grow the Hermos's audience from 1.2 million to 11.5 million. Now, it wasn't only the names that gave Caleb credibility. It was the results behind those names. I want to dig into the psychology of this because as human beings,

**[1:17:04]** we are drawn to certainty because certainty makes us feel safer. And we are especially drawn to certainty when we are trying to achieve an outcome, especially ones that cost us a lot of time and a lot of money. I'm assuming that you clicked on this video because let's say that you wanted to grow your brand or your personal brand. That's the outcome. Now, the first thing that you see is how Caleb has already created the outcome at an extraordinary level. That's his undeniable proof. Therefore, you are more likely to keep watching because his undeniable proof shows that he knows how to get the outcome that you want, which increases certainty. Now, I'm going to say

**[1:17:41]** something that maybe a lot of people are going to disagree with me on. Maybe, I don't know. But what I have seen time and time again from the most successful people, including the people that we interview on this show, is that one of the most valuable resources they accumulate is not money, it's proof. Obviously, you need skill and experience to get that proof, and we're going to cover that soon. But my point is that it wasn't until Caleb spoke about having a credibility bank that it hit me that undeniable proof is a form of capital in and of itself. The only thing with undeniable proof that we should keep in mind is that it obviously doesn't earn you trust forever.

**[1:18:16]** Your past results will always be a part of your track record. But if you give people a reason to question you, the trust those results created can disappear. Which is why Caleb talks so much about optimizing for trust. Being honest with where you're at, aka don't lie about the results you don't have while you try to build that credibility bank. And by the time Caleb started Rston, he had built a pretty solid credibility bank, which meant that a founder considering working with Rston did not have to rely solely on what Caleb promised that he could do. They could literally look at what he had already done. And I'm sure Caleb could have built Rson without all those names and experiences behind him. But the beginning would have been a lot harder. But I also think that this

**[1:18:51]** is where we have to make an important distinction because recognizable credentials, aka names or brands, and undeniable proof, they are not the same thing. When we started our agency, we thought our client list was the proof. We had worked with brands like Netflix and Starbucks and Verizon and what else? Bumble, Tinder, Starbucks. Do we say Starbucks? Yes. We did Tinder, Starbucks. You keep saying Starbucks. And to be clear, those names absolutely helped establish credibility, but they did not answer the most important question a potential client had. What happened because they hired you? Did the content perform? Did it reach the right audience? Did it create demand?

**[1:19:28]** increase sales or solve the problem that they brought you in to solve. Was their investment worth it? A recognizable company hiring you proves that you received the opportunity. But the results are what prove what you did with it. And that was the part that we had misunderstood. We did not only need to tell people who had trusted us. We needed to show them why that trust was justified. And so how do we apply this tangibly? If you sell a product, it could be repeat purchases, the reviews. If you sell a service, it may be revenue generated or time saved. But I want to be very careful with that advice because that does not mean that your content should just list those results. No one wants to feel like they are constantly being sold to. Let's say that you're a

**[1:20:04]** luxury travel agent and one of the outcomes that you create is saving your clients time. You do not necessarily need to make a video telling people, I save my clients time. You can show them. Someone who does a really good job at this is Travel with Libby. She has built an entire business by filming these insanely engaging skits around some of the craziest client requests. We get to watch how she handles those situations. How she in theory would handle the things that would take her potential customer a lot of time if they were doing it on their own. Just the other day, she released a few videos showing how she pulled off the world's largest bottle service presentation at the win for a client. She showed and didn't tell us. In Caleb's case, he created

**[1:20:43]** a free 6-hour course to show exactly how valuable his expertise is. But remember, no matter how you go about it across the board, what is the outcome that you have a track record for? And show us what that looks like so we don't have to imagine and just take your word. So whether you are in the early stages or year five of building your brand, ask yourself this one, would your dream client or ideal customer look at your work and feel completely certain you could deliver? Number two, what numbers, results, or examples do you already have that you're not using? Number three, what proof do you still need to build that would make the right person say yes without hesitation?

**[1:21:20]** And speaking of hesitation, let me tell you what I no longer have to hesitate on. Waking up. Wait, what? What is correct as in what did I do before? Unbed. Oh, we're doing this now. Yes, we are. We have started a tradition where we shout out one of your dreams. And in this episode, we wanted to shout out one of the incredible subscribers who has a product that all of us, I mean all of us, need. I struggle so much with waking up. Unbed [music] is literally an alarm that forces you to physically get out of bed. So, you put this little block somewhere outside of your room. I put mine on the fridge. And when your alarm goes off, it will not stop until [music] you

**[1:21:58]** get up and scan this with your phone. Okay, ready, guys? I've set an alarm on the app. Guys, show don't tell. Show don't tell. Tell me that is not amazing. This is technology technology. Technolog. Thank you so much to the founders of Unbed for sharing this with us. You guys [music] are super legit. They were literally featured in the New York Times, which I think is so cool. Please go to Unbed at the Unbed app, support their page, and we will leave a link in the description, so go check them out. Let's get back to the video,

**[1:22:34]** guys. All right. So, our next principle is to build a personal brand. And obviously, a significant part of the anatomy of Caleb's dream began when he stopped only building other people's personal brands and he started building his own. But Caleb's personal brand actually began way before he started posting online because at Pure Wow, he intentionally became known as Caleb can do it. which was so interesting to hear him say that because I think that what many of us misunderstand is whether you post online or not, people already associate something with your name. Now obviously we are in a new era where personal brands are building companies instead of companies being the

**[1:23:12]** thing that builds the personal brand. Literally the stats are like 77% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company where the founder has an active visible online presence. Another one is that companies led by CEOs with strong personal brands saw that their share prices grow 80% faster than their peers in the Fortune 250. People like Gary Vee and the Hormosis are building trust with an audience and then using that trust to elevate their companies, which proves that we are not only buying from brands anymore. We're buying into the people behind them. And Caleb himself is the ultimate proof of that. Yes, building a personal brand isn't the only way to reach success. Man,

**[1:23:52]** is it a hell of a way to get there faster. And so, how do we actually build a personal brand intentionally? Well, I want to go over how I synthesized everything Caleb taught us. The first thing is to pick our outcome. Caleb spoke about this through his brand journey framework, but ultimately, you need to decide what you want your personal brand to create for you. Is it customers for your business? Is it speaking opportunities? Is it downloads? Because if you do not define what's working, that means that you will not have an idea whether the content you're creating is actually moving you towards it. And so the second step I took away was to pick the associations. As Caleb said, what do we want people to immediately think about when they hear our name? And I don't

**[1:24:27]** think we get there by choosing broad terms. For years at our company, we would be like, we want to be associated to excellence or creativity. But how many companies are doing that? We need to get so comfortable getting so specific that ideally when someone describes you to their friend, you're not one of many. The third step that I took away from Caleb was to define our point of view. What's our contrarian truths? What do we believe? What experiences and lessons do we want to speak about? And if you don't know how to decide, this is where Caleb said that it's understanding your audience or your customer's painoint and finding ways to speak to that. Let's say you own a luxury event

**[1:25:02]** company. Going back to this luxury thing, I don't know why I keep talking about luxury companies, but let's say you own a luxury event company and you create a video about how to make a party look expensive on a budget and it may get a lot of views, but it's probably not the problem that your ideal customer is trying to solve. So, what would make them respond to that? Because if anything, they may associate you with affordability when you are trying to become known for luxury. Now, the fourth step that I took away in building our personal brand that Caleb talked about was to decide how you'll deliver it. In other words, are we delivering our POV on a short form video, long form video, LinkedIn post or weekly newsletter? Like what's the format? Another thing is, will our

**[1:25:38]** content be made to entertain or inform? Like what kind of video is it? And as Caleb said, the answer will depend on what kind of content they are most likely to respond to and on what platform they're on. And so honestly ask yourself, would you yourself care if you saw this? Would you yourself go out of your way to comment or follow? I am so guilty myself of ignoring LinkedIn as a platform when our audience is business owners. Like what am I doing? And so we need to choose where and how we deliver this message. And then we decide how often we can realistically show up to do that. As Caleb said, we do not have to become a content machine immediately. We just need to pick a schedule that

**[1:26:16]** we feel is manageable enough to maintain. And that brings us to the final step. Repeat it over and over again because this is where trust is built. That does not mean making the exact same piece of content every week, but you do need to reinforce the same association because people cannot know you for something they have only heard you mention once. Like Caleb said, if you want people to connect your name to a specific idea, you have to keep making that pairing until the association becomes automatic. But ultimately, the biggest thing here is that if it's not working, repeating it may not always be the best answer. Caleb himself says that consistency only works when we are optimizing for the outcome we want. Meaning, is the content moving you towards the

**[1:26:56]** outcome you chose? Are you reaching the right people? Are you building the association you actually want? Repeat what is working, but be willing to change what is not. Now, after all of this, I think it could still be easy to look at building our personal brands like this separate side project from the actual business, almost like it's a extracurricular activity. But for many of us, especially those building founder-led companies, we need to start viewing it as part of how we build the business itself. Because when it comes to growing a business, we will always be the best marketing asset our company has. Moving on to our next principle, which is strategic focus.

**[1:27:36]** Strategic focus is the practice of narrowing your business around ideally one clear direction. It can be in where you compete, who you serve, what you offer, what receives your attention, all of that. So that your effort becomes concentrated enough to actually break through. And stay with me here. I feel like sunlight is the perfect example because when it's dispersed, it creates warmth. It feels nice, right? But when it's focused through a magnifying glass, it can create a fire. That same light becomes dangerous when it is concentrated. And this is all over Caleb's story. But before we

**[1:28:12]** get into it, I want to play a clip from an Alex Heroszi video that I actually came across that made me pull the trigger on this principle. If you look at how the vast majority of people made their wealth, the vast majority, they made their wealth doing one thing very well and then then they have enough resources that they can start building out other verticals. There's been no truer lesson in my life than the return on focus. I think David Zenro from the founder podcast, I don't know if you you've heard of it. Um, he said he cons if he consolidated it every single podcast he's done with all the billionaires he's been on into one word, it was focus, which is just choosing to go all in over and over and over again on this one thing. And as founders, I will tell you most of

**[1:28:50]** us are not applying this principle of strategic focus. We confuse being busy with being focused and we think that we have to cast a wide net in every regard to maximize growth when in reality we probably would be far more effective if we looked for every place that we could do less. And what I'm realizing is that we have seen strategic focus show up across a few of our principles. We see it in simplicity as a strategy which came from our conversation with Shiron Shravatza. Chiron spoke about how the simplest businesses are often the easiest to scale. So basically focus on a specific offer. We see strategic focus in attention management. Basically focus your attention.

**[1:29:27]** And lastly we see strategic focus in the riches in the niches principle which is basically focus on a specific market. Let's start with attention management. Attention management is aggressively focusing on the few things that actually move the needle and being willing to say no to everything else. And we saw this in Caleb's journey when he was at PureWow and Gary told him that he could come hang out with team Gary and work on different projects with them. And I mean honestly, I would have said yes to that. But what Caleb did really stuck with me because he realized that instead of using all of that extra time to chase another exciting opportunity, he could put all that attention into doing incredible work where he already was. And that if he built a strong enough

**[1:30:03]** reputation there, maybe the work would eventually get back to Gary anyway. So ask yourself this one, what is one way that you could narrow your focus right now? Two, which opportunities am I saying yes to that are pulling my attention away from the outcome I want most? Number three, what three to four tasks have the most leverage in my dream? When you identify that, focus in on those tasks. Which brings us to another way that Caleb applied strategic focus in this idea that there are riches in the niches. Feel weird saying niches cuz I know it's niche. But by the way, this is totally inspired by Alex Hermoszi. He's the one that I first heard say riches in the niches. So, in his

**[1:30:41]** honor since we're talking about Hermosi so much in this episode, riches in the niches. Anyway, riches in the niches is this idea that choosing a smaller, more specific pond allows you to become more relevant, build a stronger reputation, and compete more effectively than trying to appeal to everyone at once. And we see Caleb applying this right now with personal branding. I mean, so much of what he understands about content and storytelling and audience growth could easily apply to companies and larger brands. I mean, can it not? But that is not what he leads with. I mean, throughout the entire interview, what I thought was so interesting is that he kept

**[1:31:15]** making it incredibly clear that his expertise was in personal branding. And I think the fear most people have when they hear the word niche is that choosing one means stunting our growth or trapping themselves inside it forever. But as Caleb said, once we dominate one pond, that is when we can move on to the other ones. We see this pattern with so many people who are known for much broader things today. Gary Vee began with wine. Steven Bartlett, the diary of a CEO started with entrepreneurship and guess what? They definitely aren't interviewing CEOs anymore. They expanded the show into health, psychology, AI, geopolitics, and literally everything else that it does today.

**[1:31:54]** This is what Caleb calls ponding up. You choose the pond where your experience gives you the best chance of standing out. Become exceptional there and then you move on. But this does not mean every business should expand. Some can stay in one pond and build something huge while others may weaken their brand by trying to do this too much because honestly it can dilute your brand. I mean think about Samsung versus Apple. Samsung slapped their logo on like way too many niches and honestly like what do they even stand for? What do we associate them with? Literally a dishwasher but also a TV

**[1:32:28]** and also a phone. And then think about Apple. So ask yourself this number one. What niche gives me a real chance to stand out while still having enough customers to grow? Number two, what niche is currently being overlooked or underserved by the larger competitors? And number three, what niche best fits my current strengths and experience? And speaking of experience, this brings us to our last principle, skill stacking. Skill stacking is this idea that different skills and experiences build on one another over time until they become your unique advantage. Now, as we know, Caleb started his career as a videographer in the fitness industry. And today,

**[1:33:06]** he builds personal brands through his company Rston. Now, in Caleb's case, he did not bounce between completely unrelated careers like we've seen in the past. But throughout his career, he learned multiple different aspects of that world. His early videography experience in the fitness industry taught him how to work with talent, which obviously became valuable when he later worked with Gary, Alex, and Ila. working with talent taught him how to hold someone's attention through the camera, which would later become valuable when he stepped in front of it. But the part I want to highlight was the part of the interview where Caleb spoke about his decision to join Pure Wow, because it gives us a glimpse into the way that some of the most successful people think about

**[1:33:45]** building their careers. If you remember, Caleb mentioned that, you know, when he got offered the job, it was between working at team Gary or Pure Wow. And obviously team Gary Vee would have been the more obvious choice. It was closer to the work that he had done and seemed to offer a more direct path toward the ultimate goal of working with Gary. But instead of asking which opportunity gets me closer to where I want to go, Caleb also asked which opportunity will teach me something that I do not already know. And that led him to choosing Purewell. Now, why is this so important? Well, I'm realizing that this is something the most successful people do differently. They do not

**[1:34:25]** always choose the opportunity that makes the most sense on paper, but they do choose to stay open. And we often think that success is calculated, but honestly, what I'm realizing is that it's built through curiosity. And the funny thing is is that this principle of skill stacking in a lot of ways contradicts niching. It contradicts strategic focus. But I think the best explanation I've heard of how both of these things can be true is this idea I read in David Epstein's Range. It's the idea of becoming a T-shaped and pies-shaped person. Overall, it's you're going wide like the top of a tea and you're going deep like the bottom of a tea. The pies people are the people who are

**[1:35:04]** doing this multiple times throughout your life. So the overall goal in your life isn't necessarily to become only a specialist or a generalist. You kind of want to be both. There are moments when you go broad and explore different things. And then there are moments when you go deep. And eventually you come back up, you go broad again, and then you find another place where you need to go deep. And honestly, look at the most successful people that we've been talking about in this episode. They all did this. And this is where Caleb's idea of your unique combination comes into play. Because information can be replicated but the combination of experiences that shaped your

**[1:35:43]** perspective cannot. You may become known for one specific thing but the way you understand that thing or solve the problems within it will be shaped by everything you learned before. Even if those things have nothing to do with what you're doing now. And yet even though I know this and I'm saying it right now, I'm being honest. When I think about the anatomy of my own dream, I keep feeling like I've done it all wrong. Like all of what I just said doesn't apply to me. Because for the past 15 years, I've been moving between my directing career, different YouTube channels, our marketing agency, writing various scripts. And while I saw success in those things, the success I

**[1:36:27]** built wasn't stable enough for me to honestly ever stop. And I honestly felt it that I would get a lot more traction and momentum if I just focused on one thing. But I was just so scared to choose something. And then eventually I decided to go allin on this channel. And finally, [snorts] we're really starting to experience some growth. Just a few days ago, we hit 50,000 subscribers. Honestly, like what I what I know. I can't believe it. And there's like literally not a moment where Yeah,

**[1:37:12]** I'm not going to go into that. I'll start crying. So, um, just thank you guys. But all that to say, even despite the highs of the highs of this growth, somehow I still keep having this thought. I wish I had started sooner. I keep thinking, man, I wish I had done this when I was 25. Cuz if I were 25 years old right now, I could enjoy this more. I [music] wouldn't feel this insane stress about starting a family and needing to get my life together. I wish I had niched sooner.

**[1:37:46]** I [music] wish I had focused my attention sooner because if I had, where would I be right now? But then I look at Caleb. Caleb the CEO [music] needed Caleb the videographer. Caleb the CEO needed Caleb the brand strategist. Caleb today needed every version that came before. And so if you feel frustrated with where you're at or you wish that you figured it out sooner, [music] remember that arriving earlier would have meant arriving as a different person. Maybe the years I spent directing and building our company and being terrified to choose weren't

**[1:38:30]** the years that delayed this dream. Maybe the dream required them. It required my directing skills. so I knew how [music] to tell our guests stories. It required our marketing agency [music] so we could edit it at the caliber we wanted. It required years of owning a business so that [music] I could ask better questions to the entrepreneurs that we were talking to and asking them questions from genuine firstirhand experiences. [music] And in a funny way, it required years of attaining

**[1:39:07]** various random skills to even [music] speak about this principle. And that doesn't mean that focus doesn't matter. It means focus and exploration may belong to different seasons of our lives. There are seasons when we need to go broad enough to collect [music] the skills and experiences our dream will one day require. And then there are seasons when we need to take everything we've collected and [music] point it in one direction long enough for it to compound. Don't judge the season you're in because the version of you that will accomplish your dream

**[1:39:44]** needs the version of you right [music] now. The version who may not have it all figured out, but hasn't stopped building the anatomy of your dream. All right, guys. I will see you in the next