Episode 419: Building a Personal Brand Worth 7 Figures with Jordan Platten
The digital age demands a strategic online presence, and YouTube has emerged as a potent platform for personal branding.
In this episode, Adam Stott talks to Jordan Platten, a content creation expert whose impressive journey in the digital marketing space serves as a treasure trove of insights for budding entrepreneurs and marketers. Jordan talks about his rise from an introverted student with financial challenges to becoming a highly sought-after marketing coach with substantial achievements in building personal brands and effective content strategies.
From his early struggle with cold calls to mastering YouTube as a powerful platform, Jordan shares actionable tips that have contributed to his success, including fostering resilience and strategically narrowing content focus to achieve impactful, evergreen outcomes.
Show Highlights:
- Personal branding is crucial in establishing long-lasting connections with your audience and generating business opportunities across various channels.
- Providing immense value upfront in free content can enhance your credibility and encourage people to invest in your paid offerings.
- Consistency and focus in content creation are key; dedicating specific times for content production and sticking to core topics can significantly enhance results.
- Fine-tuning video elements like titles and thumbnails can greatly impact a video’s reach and engagement, offering additional points of leverage in the content strategy.
- Successful personal brands can bring diverse opportunities, including sponsorships, speaking engagements, and equity opportunities, amplifying business growth.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: We’ve got an incredible guest that we are going to be bringing up. Uh, someone that is going to add an immense amount of value. Uh, and really someone that I’ve got to know very, very well. Over, over the past 18 months I’ve been very, very, very impressed, um, with this gentleman because he is a, a real A player, top performer.
[00:00:26] He’s gone out and built a huge YouTube following. Thanks He, he’s basically followed a lot of the things that we teach, a lot of the things we talk about. Which is why I was really keen to get him here, because even though he’s not been one of our clients, he’s done this himself, but he has followed the pattern, he’s selected a, a brilliant target market.
[00:00:49] He’s communicated with that target market and offered them an incredible product. He’s put a lot of effort and focus into creating an incredible product for that audience. He’s built a huge brand. He’s got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, uh, following him on, on YouTube. He built, uh, the, the largest, um, school group.
[00:01:14] in a day. So when he launched his, and he might give you the semantics of this in a minute, but when he launched out his school group for the first time, He took 40, 000 people from YouTube into school, into a school group, pretty much in the course of a week, and become one of the largest groups in schools.
[00:01:34] I mean, pretty big round of applause for that, right? Um, he’s a really smart guy, he’s a young guy, he gets it, he understands how to market, he understands how to sell, he’s fast paced, he’s got everything going for him. He also asked me to say, I’ll let you be the judge of it, That also he’s a very handsome man.
[00:01:56] Are you going to let me know if you think that’s true or? Yeah So look, you know, I want to give a huge welcome to the stage for the one the only Jordan plan Get serious to
[00:02:26] take the jacket off, right? How you doing my man?
[00:02:29] Jordan Platten: I’m good. I’m good. I’m happy to be here guys
[00:02:34] Adam Stott: Well look, someone definitely agreed with you. I’ll see you after the event.
[00:02:41] So look, Jordan, really, really pleased to have you here. And you are a beacon of a lot of the things that we’re training people in terms of really focusing in, honing in on a target market, creating amazing product for that target market, being relentless in your pursuit of having conversations, making offers, doing a great job.
[00:03:02] You’re following all the patterns. So, but before we jump into that, I’d love you to take us back to where did you, you know, how did this all sort of come about for you? You’ve built 350, 000 followers on YouTube, you know, done an amazing job all over social media. You’re absolutely crushing it. But where did Jordan start his journey from and how did we get to where we are now, my friend?
[00:03:21] Jordan Platten: For sure. Okay. So if I take you back eight years, I mean, just first a bit of pre context, I educate agency owners, lead generation agencies have worked with about 4, 800 in our high ticket programs. Um, and so I know there’s a lot of service based businesses in the room. There’s not a lot I don’t know about marketing, pretty much every service business that exists.
[00:03:40] So, um, we’ve eight years ago, I started this business. Um, was kicked out of university. I was studying architecture, but I started an events company on the side. Attendance dropped and I was in a lot of debt. Um, and I was looking for opportunity to get out of that debt, of course, and I’ve stumbled across sales.
[00:04:00] And so I was naturally an introvert, actually, despite uploading 900 videos on YouTube. Now, actually, every single YouTube video I have to record is a mental challenge, but it’s Something I do out of necessity and because it fuels the life and the freedom that I want inside of my life. And so I jumped into a cold calling based environment making 150 dials every single day.
[00:04:23] And as you can imagine, how many introverts have we got in the room? Can you imagine making 150 calls every single day? It’s pretty daunting. I used to go to the edge of the office and literally shake with my script in hand, terrified, but I knew the only way I was going to get out of this debt is if I managed to learn this skill somehow.
[00:04:39] And so I forced myself into that. And actually within six months of the company, I was in within the top three performers. And I took a lesson from my old days in drama. I used to, I wanted to be an actor. I used to, you probably don’t know about me. I used to do stage acting, singing and dancing at the theater royal.
[00:04:55] And, uh, yeah, you won’t catch me in a leotard anymore, but, uh, I would have done that back then. And I remembered that I had to learn my script. Everything is about learning your script. So you can adopt your own tonality to that script. You can add your own spin to that script and understand the psychology behind the words you’re saying.
[00:05:10] Anyway, cold calling turned into door to door. A year later, door to door turned into me earning quite a decent amount of money at 21 years old, but really unfulfilled in that career, and I had the money, but not the freedom to enjoy the money. And I remember coming back from a holiday with my then girlfriend and saying to each other, back to reality.
[00:05:30] Um, and that just back to reality thing. It’s something I’ve said so many times. It just didn’t sit right with me. And I just thought, if my reality is something that I’m afraid to go back to, then, then, then why am I living this existence where I’m saving all year for one holiday that’s over before it’s even started?
[00:05:44] And so I started looking at online business models, naturally looking at something that was sales driven, and that’s when I started a social media marketing agency back then, back when saying the word Facebook was a buzzword and created FOMO in the minds of business owners. Uh, now, obviously, we’re in a very different era.
[00:05:59] Sales dynamic when we come to that and so I was doing organic services quit my job within two weeks with my first two clients Um, my boss certainly wasn’t happy about that told me said oh you’re going to lose 50 percent of your revenue If you just lose one client, I said yes within three months. I was earning 10k a month within two years I’ve made my first million from that business model started a youtube channel in the middle of that actually as accountability I made the commitment to myself that if I was to document my progress online Then my friends and my family would see that I was Making the commitment to start a business and It was not going to be an option to me to give people the satisfaction of me failing in public And so that accountability actually started it became very inspirational for people I started doing a little bit of coaching that then Evolved into an education business and since then we’ve we’ve hosted mastermind high ticket products And as I said, we’ve taken about four thousand eight hundred agencies through our programs Uh, one agency we took from literally zero at university to, to kids back then in university and now they’re making over 800, 000 a month.
[00:07:01] They’ve got over a hundred employees and two London offices and it’s been an incredibly fulfilling journey.
[00:07:11] Adam Stott: There’s a bit to unpack there, right? When we look at the YouTube, um, side of it, you, and I’ve looked at a lot of Jordan stuff. I think there’s a really. One of the reasons I wanted to bring him here, I think he’s a really, really good example of someone that leads with value first. Um, because when you look at his YouTube, there’s so much value.
[00:07:32] Talks about cold calling, you watch him doing cold calls. There’s videos of you just cold calling people relentlessly, isn’t there? And there’s videos of you, you did something really cool, right? You built a social media marketing agency on YouTube. Documented in building it and then gave it away in a competition to someone on YouTube So he’s done some really cool marketing things Um, but what i’ve always admired about what you do Is you’ve always led with?
[00:08:01] How can I give value first? And and that’s always been your priority now what i’ve been trying to talk to everyone about today Is is having a demonstration of power of giving value first You So that you build a relationship, which then gets people to want to buy into what you do. So do you want to talk to us about why you went down that road?
[00:08:24] Did you learn that? Did you get coached on that? In particular, what was it that made you do that? Because you’ve done some pretty weird stuff on there. Which is quite, you know, really good.
[00:08:34] Jordan Platten: I think I’ve observed over time, and certainly in the early stages, is that Most people are afraid to give away their best stuff.
[00:08:41] They think, well, it’s worth so much, I need to charge for it. When in reality, the presumption, at least in my case, and the evidence is in the fact that we’ve remained 90 percent organic over the last 8 years, so profit margins are incredibly healthy in the business. And in many cases, we’ve been able to create a company, certainly in the coaching space, that’s quite envious for a lot of people to have to spend a huge amount of money on ads.
[00:09:04] And I, what I’ve observed in our customers through feedback is that they say, well, if this guy’s giving this much away for free, how on earth much more value must he be providing for money? And so from day one, I’ve always had the mindset of let me just give everything away. Let me just give people, because what actually is a fact as well is you can give the information, but people won’t implement.
[00:09:26] And this is a massive headache we’ve had to deal with in our coaching as well. We give people the information, but it’s like we have to literally drag people through the process to get them to do the thing. And so you guys might protect the information that you have because you’ve worked a lot to achieve it and it’s taken you a lot of time to get to that point.
[00:09:41] You don’t just want to give someone that. But what you have to remember is people won’t actually do anything with it. There’s such a tiny, tiny percentage of people will. And even the people that do, when they get that little bit of result, they’ll come to you for that next stage. And so we’ve never been afraid of giving it all.
[00:09:54] And I think alongside, that is not just about giving away a huge amount of value. As far as theory is concerned, but I’ve always demonstrated that value as well so I think a lot of I mean every single person in the room has some kind of skill and some kind of service we offer and That skill is very unique to us and people want to see that we can’t just talk about what we do But we can actually do what we do Because we live in a world where, and we’ve heard this term a thousand times, but I don’t know if it ever truly really sinks in until you experience it.
[00:10:27] People buy from people. And they’re not necessarily buying the service that you’re selling. They’re buying the service that you are selling as an individual. And if you can demonstrate to the highest degree that you are who you say you are, and you can do what you say you can do, then you’re going to increase conversion rate on all of your socials.
[00:10:47] And so that’s why. Last year, I, I mean, I’ve already, I still own my marketing agency. We’re much larger team now, but naturally we’re a lot further ahead than the people that we educate who are just starting out. So we almost lose a little bit of resonance over time. Cause they’re like, well, Jordan’s now here.
[00:11:04] He’s now multi seven figure agency. And I’m just trying to get to my first 10 K. And so I was like, well, how can I do that? How can I deal with this? How can I tackle this problem? And so I was like, you know, screw it. I’m just going to get back in the trenches. And I’m going to act like as I was just starting it.
[00:11:16] I’m going to document the process of me cold calling local businesses. I’m going to sign them up on a very generic Facebook ad service. Make it hard for myself. And just show me doing the thing. Over the course of about five videos it was. And that series literally made us three million pounds in cash collected revenue, but it only took me seven days.
[00:11:35] It was a seven day process of me going from making the decision. I used chat GPT to even come up with the niche and some of the branding and so on, just to demonstrate how simple it was. Um, and yeah, seven days it took me for time to 3 million pound cash collected. And that is now evergreen content that still continues to get us leads and sales to this day.
[00:11:55] And I think that people loved it because. Number one, it was so valuable, but number two, because I was willing to put myself on the line and be like, look, this is me doing what you’re about to do. And I think that went a long way. I
[00:12:10] Adam Stott: think that’s
[00:12:14] And when you say three million cash collected, it was because people watched you do what you were telling them that you were going to educate them to do. They bought into your program So they could do what you showed them how to do.
[00:12:29] Jordan Platten: That’s correct.
[00:12:30] Adam Stott: That’s where the 3 million revenue came from.
[00:12:31] Jordan Platten: Exactly.
[00:12:32] But I would add to that, that, because there may be, of course, many of you in the room that aren’t educating on the thing that you’re doing, but you can apply that in simple forms of just documenting what you’re doing on a daily basis. You know, actually just showing the work you’re doing with your clients.
[00:12:46] And that, in just its simplest form, will stimulate the same kind of subconscious and emotional triggers in your buyers.
[00:12:55] Adam Stott: What I think is really interesting, what you said earlier, Um, when, when you first came out, as you said, I’m introverted. It’s a challenge for me to do these YouTube videos, right? Which I, I find fascinating.
[00:13:10] Oh, by the way, same for me. You know, and I go to Jordan, and I say to Jordan, Jordan looks at our YouTube channel, and he’s guided us on different things that we’re doing, uh, for sure, you know. And I also find it quite challenging at times to do the YouTube video. Like what mental struggle? I’d love to hear.
[00:13:27] Uh, for, for how many views have you had on YouTube? First of all, Tony? Uh,
[00:13:31] Jordan Platten: about 30 million views so far. So
[00:13:32] Adam Stott: you said 30 million views on YouTube. That means 30 million people of watched she stuff organically. So that pretty good team, you know, pretty incredible. Right. And you still have a challenge.
[00:13:44] Jordan Platten: Mm-hmm
[00:13:45] Adam Stott: What does that challenge look like? What do you say to yourself and how do you overcome it?
[00:13:51] Jordan Platten: Yeah, so, how does that challenge manifest? It’s, what happens is, I can talk quite fluently in normal conversation, the camera starts running and it’s like I have a stutter. And I think it’s because I’m ADHD, and so my mind is always working at a thousand miles an hour, and I’m thinking about the next ten sentences I’m about to say before the ones I’m currently saying.
[00:14:07] And so, a two hour recording might be only a fifteen minute video, and that can be incredibly, I’ve probably got more content of mental breakdowns recording YouTube videos than I do YouTube videos themselves. And so, things that I’ve managed to do to alleviate that are, I’ve dedicated every single Wednesday for the last eight years to recording content.
[00:14:26] So, every single Wednesday, religiously, that is the day I’m recording content, come rain or storm. I actually broke that rule today to come out to you guys. Okay, he’s fucked now.
[00:14:40] Adam Stott: I hope he’s not a trajectory.
[00:14:44] Jordan Platten: It’s all downhill from here. Um, and, uh, I certainly creating pre frameworks has helped a lot. So just creating, but my advice on anyone creating any kind of content, I think this applies to reels, YouTube, long form, whatever it is.
[00:14:57] Don’t scripts your stuff. When you script stuff, it doesn’t, doesn’t come across natural. People don’t resonate with it. And also you’ll feel friction towards the recording as well, especially if you get someone else to script it. Like that’s an ultimate no, no. And I’ve gone through this whole cycle and you naturally want to outsource it.
[00:15:10] It’s like really time consuming to think about content ideas. Ideation is something like the actual topic is something that you can outsource and you can you can you can build an engine Let’s say even through AI that will help you to do that But actually creating the content we found that we just have like goal posts We maybe have like five bullet points Maybe 10 bullet points and I know the topic and I just kind of wing it in between those topics Maybe we have a unique mechanism or framework that i’m going through maybe a visual aid But the more you try and script a video the less natural it is your tonality doesn’t express very well But certainly frameworking has helped that process.
[00:15:48] How often
[00:15:49] Adam Stott: do you think that they’re terrible and they do well?
[00:15:52] Jordan Platten: As in how many videos don’t perform best? How many
[00:15:54] Adam Stott: do you think like? Oh my god, that sucks
[00:15:57] Jordan Platten: Well, you know, uh, so often I had a video recently I was in the Lake District and I would and my content manager was like Yeah, you can’t not record a video this week.
[00:16:06] So I’ll screw it. Okay. I’ll record this video I set up a camera and I was just like, let me just speak to the camera And I was talking about how in business we are Often build our own prison We have to build our own prison and serve a sentence and the thing is we don’t know how long that sentence is going to be we go into prison and And we and the world is doom and gloom and in the hope that when we come out of prison The world is going to be sunshine and rainbows and sometimes it will rain but ideally, uh, it’s going to be fair weather
[00:16:31] Adam Stott: How’d you come up with that idea?
[00:16:33] Just give me a metaphor
[00:16:35] Jordan Platten: It’s no it came to me It just came to me in the moment because I felt like I was in prison in that moment in the company Um And so I just started talking about that and there was a video actually when I stopped recording I thought that isn’t going to do very well. Um, but it’s done really, really well and a huge amount of like, a lot of comments and actually not a huge amount of views, but a lot of reaction from the existing audience.
[00:16:57] And I think there’s a massive difference between large view videos, which gets your top of funnel, your, your, your, your, your Tam, your, your total addressable market. Um, and there’s a massive difference between those videos, which you definitely need to create, but also just sometimes there’s really intimate, heartfelt videos that just come from your core.
[00:17:15] That do all of the nurturing that hit the middle of funnel in the bottom of funnel, and they’re really, really important. You can’t get emotionally attached to the views that you get. It’s very easy to discount what I’m saying by the number of views that I get. And many of you will think, Oh, well, it’s all well and good.
[00:17:28] Jordan’s making all this money because he’s got all these views. But what you don’t realize is I mean, I know people with really small channels that are getting like 200 views a video, maybe like 50, 100 views a video that has a massive impact on their business because they’re just able to resonate with the people that they’re selling to so much deeper, and it’s not about views, it’s something I’ve had to learn over time, I used to create videos for views, I used to, at a time, I ranked, and I stopped doing this, and I’ll tell you why in a moment, but I ranked number one for Facebook on, this is on YouTube, so how to start Facebook ads, how to write, create TikTok ads, how to create Snapchat ads, how to create Google ads.
[00:17:58] I was number one on all these things. You can go on, you can search Facebook ads on YouTube and still find those videos. They’ve each got millions and millions and millions of views. I actually really don’t like talking about advertising. Um, and so I stopped recording those videos. And I, I always thought that more views equated to more sales, but it doesn’t at all.
[00:18:14] Sometimes, just really intimate, really well thought out, just unique ideas, or just very specific ideas to your target audience works so much better as far as conversion is concerned than those kind of ego led, large scale, Tam based videos, and I think that’s a tough field to swallow. I think we attach, at least when we’re doing content, the success of the content based on the amount of views that it gets.
[00:18:35] But it certainly isn’t the case at all, and it’s something that I’ve dropped all emotional connection to it. Yeah, completely.
[00:18:41] Adam Stott: So when you say you’ve dropped emotional connection What does that look like? What do you mean by that?
[00:18:46] Jordan Platten: It looks like, I mean, you could go on my YouTube channel today, and yes, I’m looking there, two weeks ago there’s a video with 25, 000 views.
[00:18:53] But I used to be going for videos that would just be getting 100, 000 views plus, it’s really what I would be focusing my time on. But of late, I’ve really just been focusing my energy and attention onto very specific content that speaks to the specific desires of the people that are watching it. So, I mean, how to start an AI lead generation agency, for example, it’s a, it’s a, it’s the certain niche that we’re, we’re, we’re teaching right now.
[00:19:13] Or how to make your clients want to stay with you forever. These are quite specific videos, whereas beforehand I would go very broad. What, where’s the search terms? Where’s all of the traffic? Um, but it’s our revenue has gone up by actually allowing us to reduce the amount of viewership and the kind of the reach that we’re trying to reach.
[00:19:31] Yeah, we’re trying to go for I don’t think but on the flip side to that I think people severely underestimate how easy it is to rank a video on YouTube search It’s actually very very very easy to rank a video on YouTube search if you’re creating a good valuable video the reason why 99 percent of people never get a video to rank on search is because they’re too afraid to give away all of the Information so they gatekeep it and then people watch it and they’re like, oh, hang on This is like some half assed like heartfelt thing Um, and that’s really the key.
[00:19:57] If the content is really valuable, then you can, you’ll get the reach, you’ll get the suggested, you’ll get the search, because people are there for how valuable it actually is. And there are some hacks and so on that I can go through that will help that.
[00:20:09] Adam Stott: You’ve also done a lot of your content is very low production value, right?
[00:20:14] Yeah. What do you say? You’ve done some high production value? Oh, we But there’s a lot of people in the room, I mean, to give you Context of, you know, most people in the room, uh, have got small and medium sized businesses. You know, they’ve got some marketing efforts going. But I wouldn’t say too many people have crushed this area, right?
[00:20:31] Certainly in terms of content creation. Um, to give you a bit of a clue. And, and many of them, who’s a bit fearful of it? Going out there, putting it out there, and raise your hands if you’re, yeah, look, quite a lot of people, right, you can see that.
[00:20:43] Jordan Platten: Just, just out of interest, uh, sorry to interrupt. Yeah, go for it,
[00:20:45] Adam Stott: yeah.
[00:20:45] Jordan Platten: Uh, for the people, those of you that are fearful of doing so, how many of you are fearful based on what other people will think, and like, other people in the industry, competitors and so on? Not a huge amount, but there are some of you. Okay, more of you over, over time. The
[00:20:57] Adam Stott: hands keep coming.
[00:20:58] Jordan Platten: Um, it’s quite, because that was, that was something that really held me back for a very, very long time.
[00:21:04] Though I say I would have started my channel years before I did, but I was kind of crippled by what other people around me would think. And I’ve grown to realize that there’s a cycle of free around, around that exact concept or around other people judging you. And I find it happens every single time.
[00:21:18] And I’ve seen it happen with every single person that started a personal brand. Um, number one, when you’re, you’re afraid that people are going to take the mick out of you and they’re going to be like, Why are you doing this now? Why are you, oh, you’re suddenly an influencer now, you’re creating content, blah, blah, blah.
[00:21:28] And that is actually true. The people, the narrow minded people around you will do that. It’s, it’s only ever a manifestation of other people’s insecurity. That’s always the case. Um, they’re scared that you’re going to overtake them and you’re going to surpass them and, and that’s always the way it works.
[00:21:41] Um, number two, they are going to start asking questions. Those same people will come to you and start asking questions when you’re consistent enough, maybe over three to six months, and you start gaining traction. You’re like, oh, is that YouTube thing working for you? Is it actually going well? And number three, they always end up copying you.
[00:21:54] And you see this happen every single time with, with, with just repeat people, and it’s just your little moment, and you’re like, fuck you. You know, you, you judged me, and you, and now you’re asking me questions, and now you want to know the source so you can replicate this same thing. And that’s when you can just keep your distance, you can have your little win, and you can continue what you’re doing.
[00:22:11] But the idea that somebody else has the ability to suppress your potential success because of their own insecurity is just completely absurd. So if that is the reason why you are struggling to put out content, and that doesn’t have to be YouTube, it could just be Instagram reels, it could just be posting more on social media, like, it is, it is, I would go as far to say, it could just be it.
[00:22:34] To be honest, it’s completely stupid to not have a proper content strategy in 2025 and beyond. It is, if you want to grow a company, if you want to stand out from your competition, you, and you are, let’s say you have a good market share at the moment. If one of your, if a competitor comes along who’s new on the scenes that has the ability to offer a service that’s off the same standard of you, but they have a good content strategy and you don’t, they will take your market share over time.
[00:22:56] So the reason why you’re not producing a good market, market or content strategy right now is because you’re afraid of what other people think. Isn’t that a crying shame?
[00:23:04] Adam Stott: So if we were to talk about content strategy, Jord, and you were to take a beginner, and you were to, to move them through that process, where would you start with someone?
[00:23:15] Jordan Platten: I would say, pick three things that You want to you want to talk about I think a big mistake people make is they try and do everything They test out loads of different topics and the truth is you can you can make a personal brand work in absolutely any topic There’s not a topic that exists that you can’t Um, but it’s it’s trying to test loads of different topics That’s really going to make you fall short Because the truth is you’re not going to gain any traction in anything in a short amount of time So you’re never really going to get enough data to get that test efficient run that test efficiently Anyway, so pick three topics that are relevant to you Stick to those three topics.
[00:23:50] Um, and, uh, and try to aim to put out content once per week. Let’s say if it’s long form, if it’s short form, whatever that looks like, let’s say, well, if it’s short form, really a minimum three times per week. If it’s long form once per week. Again, many people would make they overcommit. They’re like i’m gonna do the youtube thing Let me record two videos a week make it low friction have a camera set up In one place mine just sits in my office.
[00:24:11] It’s just sat on the desk Like you you mentioned about the high production thing. I had a big lesson on that even just three months ago I spent 25 000 pounds on a production team to do these 3d renders on this Vsl on a video sales letter on youtube that I was like, wow This is going to be incredible because i’ve observed other people in the industry Do these really high production videos and it completely tanked?
[00:24:31] I had people commenting on this saying what this isn’t you? Why are you why are you doing this video and so on and from a sales perspective? It was it was absolutely useless and when we go back to just completely raw almost uncut like no animations don’t feel yourself of all of the b roll and all of that stuff like all of the Like the stock videos and Stock images like people don’t want to see it.
[00:24:51] Yeah, only use visual aids if you absolutely need a visual aid in order to emphasize a point. Don’t just use it for the sake of it. I think that’s a mistake people make, but make it really low friction. Have a camera set up in somewhere where you can just be like, okay, cool. I’m going to record. Now you sit down, you do your little recording for one hour, two hours max.
[00:25:08] That’s fine. Commit to doing that every single week and just speak about one of those three topics.
[00:25:14] Adam Stott: And how, which, love that, give it up, right? You know, which is awesome. And that’s something that we’ve done, is we, we do Saturdays. So I just do Saturday. We did, we made all those mistakes that you just said.
[00:25:25] I wanted to produce three YouTube videos. Then it’s two. Then it’s just one. Just do one good one, rather than three average ones. And we’ve gone through that, that journey for sure. And I’ve picked a Saturday. You said you picked a Wednesday. Because I have available time on a Saturday. You have available time on a Wednesday.
[00:25:40] Bye. Can you talk about the time part, because I reckon this is what stops a lot of people. How long would you do, talking on three topics, one thing a week, or three things in its short form, how long would you give it before you made any transition out of that, that area? Would you give it a month? Would you give it a year?
[00:26:00] Would you give it 60 videos? What would it be for you? How many Wednesdays would you give up in the pursuit of the breakthrough? And what does the breakthrough look like?
[00:26:12] Jordan Platten: Breakthrough to me from a personal brand is just actually finding it a tangible. And consistent source of leads now when you start consistently generating leads and high quality leads from it Then I think then that’s a breakthrough.
[00:26:25] I don’t necessarily think a breakthrough is related to the amount of views you’re getting on the videos um As far as like how long you would consistently put out content on those topics Like it’s it’s really infinite because you can’t make the mistake on what you want to talk about You’ll know your free topics if you’ve written free topics down right now then those are the three topics that you understand the most.
[00:26:43] You need to understand them and be passionate about them. If you’re not passionate about them, then you’re not going to be able to create content that people are going to feel that in the content. They’ll feel the resistance. And we can all make the commitment to do something for a month. Like, we can all have a New Year’s resolution and stick to it and then give up on it.
[00:26:56] But you need to make a commitment to something that you’re actually passionate about and you can see yourself recording content about for a long time. Um, but I don’t think there’s a time limit on how long you should continue to create content. Putting that content out before you give up on it. Because the truth is you could build a brand on absolutely any topic.
[00:27:10] Um, as long as it’s, as long as it is something that people actually want to hear about, um, and, and, and that can be big or small. I think the key is you don’t want to be rotating around like a month from, okay, this month I’m talking about, let’s say in my case, cold calling this month. I’m talking about marketing this month.
[00:27:26] I’m talking about leadership. It’s something that you’re blending all the time. So if you’re doing a video every single week, you might rotate around to this week, it’s this next week is this next week. It’s this, and you can, you’re continually rotating around. It doesn’t have to be so strict as you’re always rotating from one to one.
[00:27:39] You could do a couple of back to back videos on the, on a similar topic. That’s absolutely fine. But the minute you notice. Any kind of traction on any kind of video. Traction being a little boost in, in comments. Cause it’s not gonna be, I’m getting no views to I’m getting 10, 000. It’s gonna be, I’m getting 10 views to all of a sudden this video’s got 200 views.
[00:27:58] The minute you notice that, that’s a clue that we want to continue. Similar to if we ever run, how many of you guys are currently running your own ads? Or have someone running ads? So when we’re running ads, we, we, we observe what’s working in the ad account. If we see that the data looks good, then we continue making ad creative that’s similar to that existing ad creative.
[00:28:17] It’s exactly the same in content. Okay, someone really liked this topic. Let me continue making videos about this topic and let me do variants of this topic and see if there is something there. So we do want to lean into indications of good data. But then on the flip side to that, it doesn’t mean, just like in an ad account, when we find something that works, it doesn’t mean we stop testing out other things.
[00:28:37] We still are keeping our options open, because this might be, you know, an 8 out of 10, and we might think that’s great, but we might have a 10 out of 10 over here. So we continue, every now and then, we’re dropping in another video that we’re, you know, just kind of testing.
[00:28:49] Adam Stott: So I love that, because I feel, feel like that we’re really uncovering, um, these different elements.
[00:28:53] So if somebody were to pick the time That they’re going to do it. Pick the topics they’re going to do it. Go all in on the topics. Notice for the trend. I’d like to tease them a little bit. And get them to understand what does world class results look like from content in your mind. So talk a little bit about the win.
[00:29:14] And then I want to go back to the struggle. So what does that that look like? Like the school group you launched and got 40, 000 people in a school group, right? So for example, that’s a big win or the camp, the high ticket campaign you launched. Could you talk a little bit about what it looks like when your content has been really well received?
[00:29:33] They love you. The leads are flying in. What does that look like?
[00:29:38] Jordan Platten: At any one time on the channel, we are aiming to have three to five videos that are what we call evergreen. So, they’ve, they’ve done so well that they continue to get traffic over a long period of time. So, over every 48 hours, maybe they’re still pulling in a couple of thousand views.
[00:29:54] If we can, we’re always, and with the minute, what we do is we observe when one of those drops out, because it does happen, sometimes a video will last like two years, sometimes it will last six months. Sometimes a video that you uploaded six months ago that did really poorly suddenly starts taking off and there’s no real explanation for that either way when they drop off.
[00:30:10] We’re looking to replace them now. Why does that matter? Well, that is your evergreen source of lead. And so for context, I had every single year. I used to record a video which was how to start a social media marketing agency in this year, for example, and that was For a very long time, for my first three to five years in business, my only client acquisition strategy, that one video sustained millions every single year in cash collected in profit.
[00:30:38] From just one singular YouTube video because it was just evergreen and it was sustained now a little hack on that if you are Planning on recording because you don’t want to make every single video a big video like that Maybe one a month you’re trying to do trying to go for the the evergreen you’re trying to get a really valuable video You put a lot of extra time into it.
[00:30:56] Maybe you’ve got a presentation with it You’ve got your case studies in there Then what there’s going to be a call to action of some kind of sort Launch a little competition on it. So in the first, like, two minutes, say, Look, just very quickly before we get into the content, I want to announce a quick competition on this video.
[00:31:10] For every one in one hundred people that comment on this video, I’m gonna give away X. And then it’s evergreen. So every time a hundred comments come along, you comment down below, you say Congratulations on XYZ, so for me I’ll do like a free coaching call. Comment down below, congratulations this person, now you’ve still got plenty more chances to win, continue entering.
[00:31:27] Now what this does is it hacks the algorithm, and it means that the content is always getting loads and loads of comments, and that’s increasing the social proof, it’s creating that herd mentality as well, so people are like, wow, this video must be really, really good, because they haven’t seen that you’ve announced a competition before they saw all of the comments, and that works incredibly well.
[00:31:42] Another thing that you can do is you can put a little bit of ad spend behind that that video as well So you could launch it as a pre roll ad so you could maybe spend even a couple of hundred pounds If you could spend like up to a thousand, that’d be great. But again, it’s YouTube doesn’t It doesn’t Judge the difference would I’m sure there is something there, but at least we found that the difference between ad traffic and Organic traffic isn’t judged too heavily Maybe even it’s just the fact that social proof works really well and if people see there’s a video that’s climbing then then naturally It’s going to do well, but the comment piece is a Yeah, it’s great.
[00:32:15] Um, yeah, from YouTube, we announced a school group. We’ve got 40, 000 people join into that group instantly. Of course, then we’re appointment setting in that group. It’s a place that we’re now taking people off the platform when we can nurture those leads. Um, ironically, I made a fundamental mistake that I can’t even think of now about cringing a couple of months ago.
[00:32:33] I just Decided to turn that group from free into 1 group. If anyone has a free community, don’t do that because we kicked out about 40, 000 people from the group and then got them all on 1 and then there was about 2000 people that rejoined, but I actually underestimated how much brand equity that was just having the biggest group on school for agency.
[00:32:48] So probably more than the value of having people that had a higher intent on being on 1 side. No. Um, was that the, was that a second part? Yeah, I think,
[00:32:58] Adam Stott: I think it’s, it’s the wit. So basically the, what, what the win. is, is Jordan saying is you’ve got a video out there working for you every day, for free, that’s building searches and generating you leads, which are turning into income.
[00:33:14] How many of you would like that? Raise your hands. Yeah, right. So that’s the upside, but now, and I want them to understand what does it, what does great look like. That’s what I’m trying to get across so they can really visualize it. And I did that. What does that actually do for me?
[00:33:29] Jordan Platten: I mean, the flip side to it is I truly I’ve never felt so much security in my life.
[00:33:34] And I know that my business could completely die tomorrow, and I will always have 1000 opportunities coming to my desk every single month. I probably get 10 companies every day reach out to me offering equity to help become an ambassador for them. I just took 25 percent equity in a five million pound.
[00:33:51] Business last week in the AI software space something like that and it’s going to completely blow up in a huge opportunity I’ve had so many different sponsorship company. I mean, this is it stays inside of this room Snapchat paid me over half a million pounds for two videos I uploaded on YouTube and this is just from affiliate revenue and I could name two Ten of our companies like that that we actively use that I’ve made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands in affiliate revenue from from like one little YouTube video or sometimes just a tiny little feature and so that is like lifelong security and I can pull that into any business that I run and I think people grossly underestimate the power of a personal brand and what everyone doesn’t realize I mean some of you will do is you already have one and It’s just making the active choice to take ownership over it.
[00:34:34] Like, do you want people to decide who you actually are? Or do you want to control who you are and dictate the path that you take through life? Because it’s not just about your current business. The business that you’re in right now, if we think of The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, which is a book that I recommend to all of you, if you haven’t already read.
[00:34:50] In The Infinite Game, we’re not playing business. Many people see business as a fine art goal. When I hit this point, I’m going to quit. When I sell my company for this much, then I’ve made it. But if you’re playing a finite game, then you’re really going to lose in the long run because when you hit those goals, I mean, how many of you ever hit a goal and it never really was a satisfying as you initially thought it was going to be exactly.
[00:35:09] But if you don’t play for finite goals, then you’re always going to succeed in the long run. And a personal brand is really a manifestation of that mindset. A personal brand is saying to yourself, well, Yes, sure, I’m going to talk about this thing that’s relevant to this business right now. But actually, this is something I’m building to carry me forward in any potential opportunity that I have in life.
[00:35:28] And if you look at me starting a marketing agency way back when, for accountability with this YouTube channel, I didn’t plan on starting an education company. I didn’t plan on mentoring people. I didn’t plan on taking equity in software. I didn’t plan on having all of these sponsorship opportunities. It just came from making an active decision to commit every single Wednesday to actually recording some content and taking ownership of who the hell Jordan Platton actually is.
[00:35:49] And that’s the power of a personal brand.
[00:35:52] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:35:57] Yeah. And I think, I think that’s what I wanted to, you know, get across and inspire people towards because, you know, those little. You know, incremental investments of time and overcoming a fear of really paid off for you in the long run. What I’d love to ask you is that if we went all the way back to the beginning, at the beginning of that YouTube channel, presumably you’re putting content out, you’re not getting much traction, you know, how did that feel?
[00:36:27] And what did you sort of say to yourself to keep pushing forward? Even when those Wednesdays seem like a wasted investment. Did you ever say to yourself? It’s gonna come or did you go? I’m, just gonna do it. Anyway, what was the mentality? That kept you moving in that direction towards success
[00:36:45] Jordan Platten: I think My unfair advantage is the resilience that I built in cold calling for repetition every single day because you get rejected Day in day out and it’s no no, no, no, no, and it takes A, a specific mentality to be able to be told no a thousand times to be, to get that.
[00:37:01] Yes. And actually all of you are doing this already. Mo majority of people, unless you have a perfect business, majority of people are gonna say no, um, to your service, uh, at least even before they fill in the lead form, you know, or before they opt in and decide to work with someone else. And I think for me, having that resilience meant that I already understood that, um, over time you will get the result.
[00:37:21] It’s all just about consistency over that time period. And so the only way that you ever lose is if you give up. And it’s like anything in life. If we go to the gym, we don’t see quick results. It takes a long time to gain any gain anywhere. And that’s very disastering. It can take an incredibly long time to get any kind of progress at all.
[00:37:37] And it’s no different to when we actually start our businesses. We’re just kind of hitting our heads against a brick wall, doing something every day and not really seeing any return for it. And so I already had the mentality that the only way you’re ever going to get to any kind of result is through repetition of doing the thing.
[00:37:52] And the only way that you’re not going to get that result is through giving up along that journey. And I truly, truly, truly believe if you stay consistent at anything for a long enough period of time, you will hit the goal that you’re trying to hit. And so yes, it was disheartening getting no views for probably three months It was probably three months that I even had my first thousand view video And and and then it was another three months from that till I actually started gaining any traction with subscribers and I wouldn’t say there was no point during that that I felt like giving up on it because i’d already convinced myself that I was Making the commitment to do it.
[00:38:28] And so for me giving up on it was a was then a reflection of my mentality and almost a reflection of my My my motivation towards growing the business and I think because i’ve been so Disheartened in my career in sales and knowing that I was never going to get to dream good state Um and have any kind of freedom in my life.
[00:38:51] I knew that it wasn’t an option to give up on that and so Yeah, it’s but it’s it’s it’s inevitable I think that
[00:38:58] Adam Stott: mentality is very very valuable for a lot of people in this room to hear You You know, the reality is, you either quit, or you win. And that’s it. But if you keep going, eventually you’re gonna win.
[00:39:11] And I love that mentality, you know. And I think that’s, um, really, really quite powerful actually, for people to tap into. Um, one thing I’ll spin onto that though, George, because I’d love to ask you this, is Did you ever look for a different route? Did you ever go, yeah, but? Maybe I should be doing this. Or yeah, but, maybe I should.
[00:39:32] Because that’s another thing people do, right? Is they go, I made this decision, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it, I’ve done it for a bit, I’m not getting traction, and I’m not gonna look over here.
[00:39:40] Jordan Platten: Yeah.
[00:39:41] Adam Stott: You know, because obviously you need to avoid that as well, you need to keep pushing through.
[00:39:45] Jordan Platten: Yeah, and that’s, that’s, that’s probably the number one reason why most people don’t ever take off from social is because they’re trying to do a little bit of YouTube, a little bit of Instagram Reels, a little bit of Twitter, a little bit of LinkedIn, and a repurpose in this and repurpose in that. And, and actually, if you look at my socials, it looks like I’m active on, on all social, but we put no energy or attention into any social platform apart from YouTube.
[00:40:05] It’s only now that we’re really trying to push Instagram Reels. It looks perceptionally like we’re doing that. Yeah. But, um, but we’re not. We’re putting no emotion really into it. We’re just repurposing existing content that we’ve got from that main feed. So the ideal situation is you have that main feed and that feeds as an, and sort of pillar content channel.
[00:40:23] And then that feeds everything else. So that might be Instagram Reels for some of you guys. And Instagram Reels, I’m not saying YouTube is. The absolute king I think YouTube hosts the highest quality traffic. In fact, I don’t know that I don’t think that I know that YouTube does host But view for view the highest quality traffic like real traffic is lower barrier to entry.
[00:40:40] It’s it’s it’s lower attention span It’s just not as high quality that said reels are still an extremely extremely valuable content channel for many youtube when reels might be good for you I haven’t been in a position many times over where I’ve been like, okay, let’s do Twitter now. And so we started writing on Twitter for ages.
[00:40:59] And then we’re like, let’s do Shorts. Um, and then let’s, now let’s push Instagram. And we try to do all these things and build this team. But it’s always just diverted attention away from YouTube. And then we’ve just observed over the months that we were trying to do all these other things that our views were dying on YouTube.
[00:41:13] We weren’t getting as much retention because we only have a finite amount of views. Energy that we can expense on a daily basis. And so does our team. And so if you’re not completely pumping on one specific platform, then you shouldn’t be entertaining more than one. Just focus on one thing and keep it really, really simple.
[00:41:31] And I think that makes it a lot easier as well. When you’re just, you’re trying to research one thing, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re failing forward in one thing and you’re not trying to juggle and spin a bunch of plates, which just doesn’t work in my experience.
[00:41:44] Adam Stott: And then just a final question. What advice would you give to someone that’s sitting in the room, you know, they want to go and start creating content and they want to go and build their brand, but they’re fearful or they’re, they can’t start.
[00:42:02] What would you say to them? I mean, you’ve got a lot of experience in coaching and training people through that process. What would you say to try and get through to them to take the action?
[00:42:12] Jordan Platten: I suppose the question I would ask is what have you got to lose? Because if all you have to lose is time, and time is a resource that we all have a lot of access to, and time is something that we can also gain more access to through leverage over our team.
[00:42:26] And so if time is the only thing that is stopping you from actually doing the thing, then it’s just not a It’s just, it’s just not an adequate reason to, to, there’s so much upside to starting a brand, so much to gain. And even if you forget yourself and your longterm plan and what you want to achieve as an individual and you just purely think about it for the perspective of your business, like if we’re all meant to be the best marketers we could possibly be for our business, and if we know that people buy from people, but we’re not putting out content as a founder, leading from the front, showing that we can do what we say we can do, then.
[00:43:01] we’re really just letting our team down and our business down. We’re really not maximizing on our true potential and, and, and, and pushing ourselves to our limits. And so I think one thing I would say, just kind of progressing from the kind of emotional side of it and the motivational side of starting, I just want to kind of give a little, just a little point in the right direction on some of the things that you can do that are really the highest leverage points in, in actually having success with, with organics.
[00:43:28] Um, and I think certainly on YouTube. Your thumbnail and your title arguably are more important than the content itself. And I say that on the presumption that your content is going to be valuable. If the content is valuable, then the thumbnail and the title are more important. Um, because all content has to be valuable.
[00:43:48] If the content isn’t valuable, that’s like 101. Like, it has to, it has to provide value, or at least just provide insight, or
[00:43:53] Adam Stott: just be entertaining. How do you define value, Jordan?
[00:43:56] Jordan Platten: Um, okay. If Value is someone. Okay, let’s say we’ve got a packaging and we have a title. This is how to achieve X. Okay, it might be, um, how to get
[00:44:08] Adam Stott: content value.
[00:44:08] How would you define whether someone’s content was valuable? What would be your definition?
[00:44:14] Jordan Platten: Does it? Does it fulfill the promise that the person thought they were going to be fulfilled when they clicked on the video itself in the shortest timeframe possible and with the least fluff. So does it get to the point?
[00:44:27] Does it get and fulfill the promise in the, in the shortest timeframe? And, and that’s really the key. So the title has to promise something, and then the content has to fulfill that promise in the path of least resistance. Um, Just as a side note to that, your title is a huge amount of leverage, because it’s, that’s your hook, just like in an ad.
[00:44:49] The biggest mistake people make with thumbnails is they try and create a thumbnail that replicates the title, but it’s two different points of leverage. Create a thumbnail that compliments the title. It’s, it is a whole extra hook if it’s, let’s say, how to make $10,000 as a title. You don’t wanna have $10,000 in the, in the thumbnail.
[00:45:07] You might want to have step by step process, you know, or something else that compliments that there’s another opportunity and another way to hook. But when I click that, I need to receive it as in the shorter time frame possible, which is the fundamental reason why Alex or Mosey blew up so quickly because every piece of content he puts out is so incredibly valuable and fill fulfills the promise so quickly.
[00:45:27] And that guy out of anyone is a testament to, to how important it is to just fulfill on maximum value and just fulfill promise as soon as we can.
[00:45:36] Adam Stott: Look, has Jordan been amazing, everyone? Shall we give it up for Jordan? He’s been absolutely incredible.