0:00:11.1 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jord.
0:00:12.1 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael?
0:00:15.2 Mike Vacanti: How are you?
0:00:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Good, man, what are you talking about today?
0:00:20.8 Mike Vacanti: We are… So I just told you what I think we should talk about and you thought it was a good idea, and I think it’s gonna be a really good discussion, but I’ll pretend that I didn’t just say that and let you know again, basically, The GaryVee Content Model. So we’re talking about content creation, and this is gonna be a little bit different podcast than either a Q&A or the type of podcast where Jordan and I are explicitly instructing the listener on how to do X, based on all of our experiences over the past decade, all of our personal failures in the process, and it’s gonna be less teaching, but more a discovery, meaning both of us are gonna be spit-balling on the best ways to… The best content production system. And when I say the GaryVee model, his… Remember when he made that 200-slide slide deck or 300-slide deck of basically having that core pillar, that one piece of main content, whether it’s a vlog, whether it’s a podcast, whatever it is, and then figuring out the best way to not only make that piece of content succeed, but also make hundreds of pieces of micro-content for all other platforms based on that one piece of content, so we’re gonna spit-ball on that, talk about our own thoughts on that and basically try and find the… Or optimize for ROI on the time you spend creating content to make the best and most helpful result.
0:01:50.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so we should probably start off by sort of breaking down what his… The pyramid was, what that content model was, just so people have a general idea of what that looks like. Do you wanna start with that and then… ‘Cause I sort of… No, you don’t want to?
0:02:07.9 Mike Vacanti: I don’t remember it… No, we can start with that, but the only concept I remember was at the top, some main piece of content, and then micro content for other platforms from that main piece.
0:02:21.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so the way I remember it was, and it’s basically the same thing, but we’ll make it more practical. The first thing you start off with is a big piece of content, like a long form piece of content, whether it’s a YouTube video or a podcast, or even if you’re giving a seminar and you record the seminar or a website article, whatever it is, a long-form piece of content. An Instagram caption does not count as a long-form piece of content, a TikTok video does not count as a long-form piece of content. We’re talking about something that probably takes at least 10 minutes for the viewer to get through. From there, from that long-form piece of content, you can then make micro pieces of content from that, so let’s say you have… Let’s say you have a 10, 15, 20-minute YouTube video, for example. There are probably at least three to five clips within that video that you could then cut down to about a minute long or so and put on to your Instagram, your TikTok, you can make some smaller form, you could put them into your stories, you could tweet them out, whatever it is, there are all these ways to take a long-form piece of content and then chop them up into smaller, more individual pieces of content for shorter form platforms.
0:03:36.8 Jordan Syatt: What I did is I followed that model, but I actually did it in reverse, so what I did was I used Twitter, which is the ultimate short-form piece of content. I used Twitter as a testing ground for pieces of content to see what people were interested in. So what I would do is I would tweet three to five things out in a day, see which one got the most, not only likes, but also, especially retweets, ’cause to me a retweet is far more indicative of what people agree with and are interested in. So I would tweet something out, and which everyone got the best response, then I would put that tweet on my Instagram and/or TikTok, and/or Facebook, and then I would see how good of a response that got. And if that got a good response on those platforms, then I would make a long-form YouTube video about it, or a longer form podcast. And then from there, then within that longer form YouTube video or podcast, then I could then chop down more from that long-form into subsequent short-form pieces of content around the same topic anyway. So it was sort of like… Instead of it just going straight down, like in Gary’s model, mine went sort of from the bottom to the top, back down to the bottom. Does that make sense?
0:04:49.0 Mike Vacanti: Interesting, it does. It makes complete sense. And that is… We’ve talked a lot about how to come up with content ideas, and I think that is a very good way to get a… Take the temperature of your audience on various content ideas and then build something bigger based on the response. What’s interesting to me is on the way back down, and how to make the way back down as productive and effective as possible, because I think you and I have both… We’ve both tried to delegate and outsource micro-content creation on the way down, and I would, just to put a blanket statement on it, say that, it wasn’t as successful as we hoped in the attempts that we’ve made, and we can go into detail on that if we want to, but… And maybe I’m just hopeful or too optimistic or maybe just trying… Maybe lazy, trying to think of a way that that could work, maybe I see Gary with however many person team and making… The amount of time he spends making content relative to the amount of content he makes, there’s a huge discrepancy there. And obviously, if you’re starting out, and you’re trying to build an audience, like, even I don’t like giving the advice of hire and then delegate and have someone else doing, but it’s still an interesting discussion and something that I’m curious about exploring, just because it could be a way to make a lot of content without actually spending a lot of time recording.
0:06:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so, well, here’s one of the great things right now is, when… And it’s actually very recent, but when you and I were making our own micro-content from these longer form pieces of content, we had to manually type in the captions, and like type in the captions for people, which that takes a really long time, and it’s super tedious. Now, they automatically do it for you, Instagram, Facebook, literally, not only that, Facebook… When I do a live on my Facebook Q&As for the inner circle, they literally live caption it for me, like the captions of my voice come out immediate… It’s crazy to me, and it’s super accurate, ’cause it’s funny, I was on yesterday and people were like, “Hey, I’m at work, so I can’t actually listen, but I’m just reading the captions,” I’m like, that’s crazy to me. And that in and of itself, that was one of the main reasons why I wanted to hire a videographer, was because…
0:07:29.8 Mike Vacanti: That was the number one thing that, in 2016, with weekly videos, was having the captions on there, I think that was the thing that I liked the most about having a videographer.
0:07:36.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s like, ’cause for me, even with the videographers, it’s very hard for them to know exactly which piece of content is gonna be a good piece of micro-content, you have a 20-minute video, and it’s, you know what’s gonna hit home most with your audience and with the people who are interested in what you’re talking about, whether it’s weight loss or strength gain, or muscle gain, whatever it is, you know what they want to hear and what they need to hear. The videographer might not. So you might say, “Hey, pick out two to three different pieces of micro-clips from this 20-minute video,” and they might pick something out where you’re like, “What the fuck were you thinking?” Like that number… That is not interesting at all, this clip isn’t gonna do well, and people don’t need to hear this, so that’s actually sort of the process of almost training that person you have to go through, but the major benefit was, they would caption it for you once you got… And once you’ve got it, which was very tedious and time-consuming, but now you don’t even need to do that. So if you’re gonna film a 20-minute YouTube video or whatever, I’m throwing out the 20-minute, it could be a seven-minute video, could be 10, could be 15, could be 30, but if you’re in the 20s…
0:08:37.7 Mike Vacanti: For the anchor piece though, or it could be an hour like the podcast we’re doing that we’re very close to moving on to video as well as just podcast. It could also be… There’s three-hour podcasts, think of how much micro-content comes from an individual Rogan episode.
0:08:53.9 Jordan Syatt: Exactly, so the most time-consuming part now is gonna be scanning that piece over again, and then going through, and then maybe you have a clip that is 2 1/2 minutes long, but you might be able to cut it down to 60 seconds by doing jump cuts and all of that, like that, the editing process there is gonna take a little bit more time, but I think the most tedious part is really the captioning, which is now done for you automatically, which is great. And the other thing is… I just completely forgot what I was gonna say is, so I’m gonna keep talking like I’m really confident in what I’m saying, the other… What was the other thing I was gonna say about this? Dammit, I forgot, I’m sure I’ll remember in a second.
0:09:32.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s my fault, I interrupted you.
0:09:33.7 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s all good.
0:09:35.0 Mike Vacanti: It’ll come back, it usually comes back to you. What has been your most success… So I get that we save time by having that improved technology, there’s still the effort of, let’s say it’s a 60-minute podcast video, and we’re gonna pull 10 clips from it, there’s still a tremendous amount of time that goes into sitting down with that video, using the software, maybe you have to… It’s not just a straight 60 seconds, there’s not only jump cuts, but you’re pulling together different parts of the episode to make that one clip. What is the most or the closest to a successful arrangement that you’ve had, where you’ve delegated that responsibility, and do you have any hope that you could delegate that, and maybe it takes two years of building trust and working with someone back and forth, but is there any piece of you that thinks that that delegation could be… ‘Cause we’ve talked about, if you can delegate something 80% as good as you do it, you need to be delegating that thing. Is there any world where you see someone could be doing that well enough to delegate it.
0:10:43.5 Jordan Syatt: So yes, definitely, and I’ll talk about that, I remembered what I was gonna say. I was gonna say… And it sort of goes into it, and let’s say you’re doing it by yourself, you don’t have someone delegated, you don’t have a videographer or anything like that, is, as I’m recording a video or a podcast, if I say something that’s really good, I’ll write down the time that I said it at. So if you’re video and you don’t know what time it is, what you could do is you could just do a really loud clap, and then when you upload it into your video editor, you’ll see the sound spike, and then you can go to there, okay, cool, so I know that’s where I said something really good. But if I’m doing a podcast and I’m having a conversation with someone, I’ll have a pen and paper next to me, and I’ll say here, at this time, is where I said something really good. So in terms of going back to your question though, yes, you can. For example, I think Rico was the best example of me having a really good videographer, video editor, who knew the types of clips that I wanted, and all of that. It took a while though. That was not an easy process. I’d say it probably took about a year of about five, six days a week of filming and getting to know each other before it was like, okay, he had a really good handle on it.
0:11:50.8 Jordan Syatt: And that wasn’t his fault, that was just like, that’s just… I’d been making content for how many years at that point, so it’s like, he didn’t necessarily know exactly what I would deem a really good clip yet, and that took about a year of effort there, and then even then, he would have to watch me. It’s not like he could just set up the camera and go off and do whatever while I’m doing a podcast, ’cause he would have to watch me while I’m doing a podcast, filming it, and then after I said something good, I would look at him. I would look at him and just be… And point, and be like, “This was a good part.” I wouldn’t actually say that, but we had a look that I would give him, where he would know, “Okay, clearly, this is where he wants to… He wants me to mark, this is a point where we can then go back and edit, so I won’t have to sit down for an hour and re-listen to the whole podcast.” So whether you’re doing it, you’re on your own, or writing in pen and paper, or interacting with a videographer or whatever it is, like having those moments demarcated as like, “Okay, cool, this is a moment that I need to go back to,” can be very helpful, ’cause I’ve done the other way where I have to re-watch the entire podcast, and sometimes in my mind, as I’m doing it, I would think, oh, I’ll remember, and then, no, I don’t remember. I have no idea where it actually was, so writing it down is super helpful.
0:12:58.3 Mike Vacanti: Demarcated, tell me about this word.
0:13:00.9 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know, as I was saying it, I was like, “Let me Google this real quick.”
0:13:02.8 Mike Vacanti: No, I think it’s right, and it’s… Language is funny because sometimes we use words, oftentimes we use words correctly because we’ve heard others use them and we know how they fit without having the definition.
0:13:15.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, demarcate, separate or distinguish from, yeah.
0:13:20.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:13:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:13:20.9 Mike Vacanti: From the rest of them, cool.
0:13:21.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, set the boundaries or limits of, plots of land, demarcated by barbed wire, yeah, cool, so I used it properly, but I didn’t realize it.
0:13:28.5 Mike Vacanti: We’re learning… No, you knew what, you knew it intuitively, ’cause you used it. Now, I’m thinking for someone who doesn’t want to. Selfishly, let’s say, if someone hypothetically didn’t want a videographer to show up to their house every time they were making a podcast…
0:13:48.3 Jordan Syatt: Which is where I’m at now, I don’t want that anymore.
0:13:48.5 Mike Vacanti: Which is where I am at too. And, by the way, I’ve had… Ben and I did three straight months of daily uploads, traveling all over the world, like literally three different continents, all over the place, and it was a grind. It was fun, but it was a grind. So what you’re saying now is, literally, you say something, you go on a little rant, it’s a banger, or you’re like, “Oh, 11 minutes, 13 seconds, boom.” And then if you have some kind of remote working arrangement with someone who’s doing this, and that person can be part-time, it doesn’t need to be a full-time position, you’re literally just sending like, “Alright, four times with this video,” and obviously there’s gonna be a little bit of back and forth like, “Maybe include this, don’t include this,” but it’s still gonna save you a tremendous amount of time. Like if you have to spend an hour on the back and forth compared to the five hours that it would have spent making it yourself, that’s a massive win right there.
0:14:47.4 Jordan Syatt: So this is something that I’ve been debating with back and forth, right?
0:14:51.8 Mike Vacanti: For yourself?
0:14:53.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Well, for myself, but also in general, because I’ve done the back and forth with people, like I’ve tried hiring people remotely to do this stuff, and you know me pretty well. If I don’t wanna do something, I really don’t wanna do it. So I don’t know what the total time investment is, but sometimes if I send someone something to do, in my mind, it should be done, by the time that I get it back in my inbox. I don’t wanna have to go in and edit it again and say, “Hey, you missed this. Hey, you missed this,” and then have that back and forth. That grinds my gears. You know what I mean? Where it’s, “How’d you… I told you, like I want these jump cuts, da, da, da, da,” and it can take a lot of back and forth, so for me, sometimes it’s easier for me to just to do it myself. But, on the other hand though, to play Devil’s advocate on that side is, if I’m not even doing it, if I’m not even putting that content, even though it would be… I would rather just do it myself. Am I actually doing it? In which case, hire someone, you know what I mean? Like it’d be easier if I just did it myself, but here I am not doing it myself, because…
0:15:54.5 Mike Vacanti: And maybe there’s back and forth for the first 13 times, but then after that, they get better.
0:16:01.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and then they find… They figure out what it is you want and all of that, yeah.
0:16:04.5 Mike Vacanti: But you’re making a good point, it’s… I don’t wanna do the back and forth, but if the back and forth pushes me to actually do it when I wouldn’t do it myself, maybe it’s a win, even though it pisses me off, like…
0:16:14.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct, yeah.
0:16:14.7 Mike Vacanti: At least, it’s happening.
0:16:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Because especially recently, and I just haven’t really been interested in posting on Instagram in general, but I have… I will record myself doing podcasts, just as I used to, but then I’ll have a whole hour, and then even if I’ve written down the spots where I know a good clip is, I know it’s gonna take me probably at least, probably 25-30 minutes, just to get that one good clip, which is like, cool, I just did an hour podcast. I’m gonna spend another 30 minutes or so, getting this one clip down, exporting it, uploading it, all that stuff, like, dear Lord, it’s a lot… I think people don’t realize how much work it is, so it is important to make sure people understand that.
0:16:50.5 Mike Vacanti: Well, and especially, you have to look at your individual situation, right? What are you doing right now, you’re doing a… Like on the content front, you’re doing, call it five different things, and those five things are leading to your businesses growing. So if you’re in a good place and you’re seeing growth, then it’s really like… Then why add something that you don’t wanna do. It’s like I can only do an hour of Zone 2 cardio or I could make two clips, it’s like, well, everything’s going how I want it to go, why would I do that?
0:17:19.3 Jordan Syatt: Exactly, yeah, yeah, that’s a good point.
0:17:20.8 Mike Vacanti: You need to ask yourself what outcome you want, when…
0:17:24.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:17:25.0 Mike Vacanti: For, speaking for me personally, I’m very close to capacity where I feel good with one-on-one online coaching clients. So the motivation to go make a lot of content from a business perspective, outside, we’re banging weeklies here, we don’t miss weeks, we might even do two this week, who knows, but for my own content, it’s not happening because there’s no business upside for me, there’s no scalable revenue, there’s no product, there’s nothing like… If I would make it if I wanted to for fun but when you… Yeah, it depends what’s on the back end.
0:18:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Before we had reached this point though, like we were grinding and spending way more time making content. Five years ago, it would have been no question for me, it’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna do these three podcasts for now, then I’m gonna edit each one, and I’m gonna get 20 total clips for Instagram over the course of the next week.” Absolutely.
0:18:20.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and that’s where it’s just, you’re in a different place in your business and you’re in a different place in your life.
0:18:28.8 Jordan Syatt: And it’s pretty cool though, ’cause now I re-post clips from a couple of years ago on a consistent basis, like I just have 50 clips, that, 50 banger clips, really good ones that I can just re-post over and over and over and over again, and they always will do well.
0:18:47.4 Mike Vacanti: And the majority of English speakers in the world, have not stumbled across those pieces of content.
0:18:52.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly.
0:18:52.7 Mike Vacanti: So it doesn’t matter that it’s four years old, if it hits, it hits and like…
0:18:57.8 Jordan Syatt: Right.
0:18:58.9 Mike Vacanti: And like you taught me, people hear an idea once, they don’t internalize it.
0:19:05.1 Jordan Syatt: They need to hear it over and over and over… Yeah.
0:19:05.2 Mike Vacanti: And people need it, dozens of time to… Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what do you think is the… You just talked about your build-up. Let’s start at the top of the pyramid. What is the best, in terms of how much micro-content it creates, and maybe even from an enjoyability perspective, I guess, what are the options and how do you rank them?
0:19:32.5 Jordan Syatt: In terms of…
0:19:34.2 Mike Vacanti: For the long-form piece. So I guess the option… And what should it look like? It needs to be… When Gary told me to do Equals and Alternatives, the reason he had me do that is because there’s an infinite number of foods to review, so it requires no thought, there’s no like, I’m not gonna do the video today because I can’t think of what to make, it’s very easy, same thing with The AskGaryVee Show, it’s like people always have questions, you just sit down and you answer the questions. It’s from an adherence perspective, to relate it to a fitness coaching client, it’s very easy to adhere to, and also something that produces a lot of micro-content. You got a daily vlog which I have no interest in doing, but for people who do… That really… You didn’t like vlogging either, I liked it more than you, but at this point in my life, I’m not interested whatsoever. But that really works. People do, if you can educate plus be entertaining in a vlog, look at the… But vlogging has such a short lifespan because it is non-stop and takes over your personal life as well.
0:20:43.5 Jordan Syatt: There are a number of reasons that I don’t like vlogging. Here’s the thing, in order to… It depends on how you wanna be seen, and what you want your business to do. If you want to be a… To run a profitable fitness business, there are some people who do really well with vlogging, but if you look at their content, they’re usually doing crazy shit, everything is about just doing… Like they’re clickbait headlines, and it’s like they’re living a life that isn’t normal in order to entertain you. And if you wanna be a fitness professional, I think that it makes more sense to be educational than entertaining, and you can incorporate both, and that’s why I wear wigs and fake cigarettes and all that stuff in my content, but it’s not the majority of my content, the majority of my content is educational.
0:21:39.4 Jordan Syatt: And vlogging, I think, inherently forces you to try and be more entertaining than educational, and I think that often… Well, it can over the long term, if you’re one of the lucky ones to build a huge audience based off of just your life and your vlog, which I think is much harder to do, I don’t think that has as much staying power as educational content. For example, I don’t see people going back to a vlog I made four years ago and checking that out and being super interested in it. But a video that I made four years ago on how to count your calories or how many calories you need for fat loss, people will always go to that and no matter what. It’s like it has more staying power than vlogging. And vlogging, I think, honestly, takes more time and effort. I think vlogging takes takes way more time and effort and probably more money in order to actually make a video that’s worthwhile that people really… And to create a stream of content that people will continually be interested in, I feel like educational content is much easier to do and has more staying power.
0:22:36.0 Mike Vacanti: Completely agree, on both SEO ability, staying power, and on ease of making it, like a vlog takes so many hours of a day, even if you’re just documenting, it’s kind of like you’re always on. Whereas, educational, you’re not, you’re filming, and then… Although the, one, to play devil’s advocate, thing that I would say about vlog content are the people in the fitness industry who, their vlog is primarily about their own fitness.
0:23:03.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:23:05.2 Mike Vacanti: And then you get into the situation where if you’re jacked and if you’re good looking, then you just have a massive advantage there, and I’m thinking of… What’s the… Bumstead, bodybuilder, jacked out of his mind, insane physique, but like hundreds of thousands of people watch his vlogs and from what I’ve seen, which is maybe like 20 minutes in total, but it’s like, his meal prep, his full days of eating, his workouts, his…
0:23:29.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:23:31.1 Mike Vacanti: So you can be educational there, but it’s still… The staying power isn’t necessarily there, and the education perspective, or a piece of it.
0:23:43.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and it’s so funny ’cause I will watch a really boring, awfully done video, if it’s educational. I’ll watch a video that’s very educational if it’s something I’m really interested in. If the sound quality is bad, if there are no jump cuts, I’ll watch for hours, if it’s about something I’m really interested in. I’m not gonna watch a shitty vlog. Like I’m just, I’m not… If it’s not keeping my attention, I’m not gonna watch a 45-minute vlog or a 20-minute vlog if it’s not really, really well done and well edited. I could watch a terribly edited video, as long as it’s something that’s gonna educate me that I’m really interested in, so I feel like the barrier to entry is so much lower with the educational stuff. That being said, on the other hand, now I’m playing Devil’s advocate, in order to be a vlogger, you don’t have to be educated, you just have to be entertaining. So if you could just vlog your life, and if you’re super good looking or really funny, you’re out there, and you have good editing skills, you could be a great vlogger, but I think it really comes down to, I’m assuming, the people listening to our podcast and definitely the people in the mentorship, they wanna be great coaches. They’re not in it just because they wanna be famous, they’re in this ’cause they wanna help a lot of people, and they wanna be smart, educated coaches.
0:24:50.9 Jordan Syatt: And with that in mind, I think you can incorporate vlogs into educational pieces of content, but I wouldn’t try and make vlogging your main source of content at all. Let’s say you’re making a video about counting calories, right? You could go to the grocery store and sort of vlog what you do going through the grocery store and explain what you’re doing, but you have to remember that’s mostly educational, but you’re just making it a little bit more entertaining by actually taking them to the grocery store with you. So it’s like you can incorporate vlog-style content into your education, but I really think the vast majority should be education.
0:25:25.0 Mike Vacanti: And part of the reason it works so well for Gary is because he was vlogging 12-hour workdays, and the vlog is about business, so literally, documenting, and obviously the team made them really great videos, but just hearing him in meetings and without him even talking to the camera, but just seeing what he was doing, was educational from a business perspective, and for the things that he was trying to teach.
0:25:50.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and even though, even then, his early videos, Wine Library stuff, that’s all education, it’s wine education, all that stuff, even some of the business videos. My favorite videos are when he’ll… Old videos, from 2009, 2010, where like, he’ll be just talking straight to the camera, and I’ll be like, “Alright, you’re like, you wanna know how to get ads done, here, I’m gonna show you to do this,” and he calls the company, he’s like, “I’m now like, hey, you wanna advertise?” He literally does it for you right there, which is sort of a vlog, but also massively educational. So yeah, I really think that the way to build an audience that is really gonna care about you is through education first, and then from there, you could also transition more into vlogging if you want to later.
0:26:30.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, so we both agree vlogs are not the play for the primary…
0:26:34.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Whiteboard videos, I think, are great or exercise video tutorials, I think…
0:26:38.8 Mike Vacanti: So let’s go into the… Alright, so basically, educational videos is the next.
0:26:43.6 Jordan Syatt: Yep.
0:26:45.3 Mike Vacanti: And let’s keep in mind that I do… These are all good things, an exercise tutorial video is a good thing, but it isn’t the main stay, long-form, top of the pyramid that is gonna get you 10 pieces of micro-content from it.
0:27:01.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct, correct. You’re not gonna get 10 pieces of content from one exercise video, no, you’re not.
0:27:05.5 Mike Vacanti: Let’s call it like a video/podcast, long-form educational Q&A, just kind of like what we do here.
0:27:13.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. But even then, so for example, instead of doing… There’s a bunch of thoughts going through my head, let’s say we’re doing a video on hip thrusts, for example, you could do one video on hip thrusting, and realistically, if you’re breaking down the hip thrust, that could be a 10-12 minute video, like if you’re really breaking it down, in which case, you might break that, alright, how to hip thrust for us? How to barbell hip thrust? That could be a super long-form article, that could be a 10, 15-minute video or so.
0:27:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re right, it could be a 20-minute video. Yeah.
0:27:46.9 Jordan Syatt: And then from there, but, it’s… Depends on the exercise, so barbell hip thrust, barbell back squat, barbell bench press, kettlebell swings, you could have all these things. But a bicep curl is probably not gonna be a 15-minute video, but you could probably make it like a four to seven-minute video, right? And so from there, let’s say you have one part of the video… Like let’s say you’re going over the technique for a bicep curl. You’re going over the technique for a bicep curl, and then you’re trying to distinguish between the difference between a seated bicep curl, and a standing bicep curl, and why you might do one over the other, and this could just be one part of this seven-minute bicep curl video, well, that could be one piece of micro-content, when you’d want to sit down for curls, and when you’d want to stand up, the pros of sitting down, the pros of standing up, the cons of each as well, that could be a 60-second clip that would do really, really well, and that’s just one small part of that longer exercise video tutorial.
0:28:41.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s also cool because there are, not infinite, but hundreds and hundreds of exercises.
0:28:49.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.
0:28:50.5 Mike Vacanti: So from the perspective of adherence to the content, you’re not gonna… Like, you spend one day, you make a list. You got 400 exercises, cool, start at the top, and just do one every single day. It’s easy from the perspective of thinking about what to do.
0:29:05.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, or like barbell hip thrust, someone is like… Throughout the barbell hip thrust video, you are definitely, if you’re worth your salt at all, gonna be talking about how some people feel their quads or their quads instead of their glutes, and then you’re gonna go over, “Hey, if you’re feeling your hamstrings, your feet are probably a little bit too far out, if you’re feeling your quads, your feet are probably a little bit too close in, here’s what you wanna do, that’s a clip, right there, for Instagram, or TikTok, all that, or a micro-content.
0:29:28.6 Mike Vacanti: If… Yeah, yeah.
0:29:29.5 Jordan Syatt: You don’t need the whole video, you just… Like one 60-second clip and you jump cut it to make sure it fits, but like…
0:29:33.7 Mike Vacanti: And the last 15 seconds, YouTube shorts, you can… Yeah.
0:29:38.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:29:38.2 Mike Vacanti: Cool. I like that. I actually hadn’t even thought of that. I’m not gonna do it, but someone listening should.
0:29:43.0 Jordan Syatt: That was the majority of my content when I first started was exercise videos, and they still do really well for me.
0:29:49.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, if you’re going to do them now though, I think what you just described, which is very in-depth, very thorough, very comprehensive, is the way to do it, not like a two-minute, how to barbell back squat for YouTube.
0:30:05.0 Jordan Syatt: Right. I’ve never understood the… I think some people just try and make these videos really, really quickly, and some people don’t even speak in them, they’ll just show the technique without any guidance whatsoever, but what I really think is important, especially with online coaching…
0:30:18.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s just not gonna SEO.
0:30:20.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s not gonna SEO well but also, no one is gonna look at a video of you doing a squat completely, with no weight on the bar, and just like a 15-second clip of you doing it, no one is gonna be like, “I want them to be my coach,” at all. No one is gonna look at that…
0:30:35.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s… By the way, that’s 90% of my exercise technique database, not the Barbell back squat, but with everything else, and then for many of them, I’d put cues in the note section. But when I was filming them, I had David for a day, I was like, “Alright, bro, we’re banging out 115 videos, let’s go.”
0:30:52.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but you weren’t trying to SEO those. That was just for your clients.
0:30:56.6 Mike Vacanti: Correct, correct.
0:30:58.2 Jordan Syatt: So if you’re trying to make content, that whether it’s a long-form content or micro-content, and you’re trying to get in people’s face and show them why you’re a good coach and why they can trust you, you wanna talk to the camera, you want… Like the camera is them. And in a world where this fitness, the industry is so saturated and everyone can put out a new exercise and whatever, the way you stand out as being a great coach, ’cause anyone can show an exercise, but if you can explain the exercise, explain the common mistakes with the exercise, explain how to correct those mistakes, explain where you should feel it, explain how many sets and reps you should do, explain where in the workout you should put this, explain why you shouldn’t do it on certain days and you should do on other… That’s a 10-15 minute video for every fucking exercise right there, and you have all that content. So if you really wanna be a stand-out coach, then you’ve got to coach in your videos.
0:31:48.4 Mike Vacanti: Have you ever thought about making Inner Circle podcasts into micro-content? Or, and if you have had that thought, is it just like, I’m not interested in spending the time to make micro-content right now, like I’m good with my current content production. But has that ever been a thought?
0:32:09.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s been a thought and it actually… And what I started doing was, ’cause in my current office right now, I don’t like the way it’s set up in terms of where I put the camera, so what I actually started doing, and you’re gonna laugh ’cause I haven’t done anything with it, but I’ve started screen recording myself, so taking a video on my computer of me as I’m talking to them, so I have hours of conversation with Inner Circle members from my podcast that… And I can micro-content… I can piece those into micro-content. I have them all, I just have done nothing with them because I’ve just been like, “I’ll go do Zone 2 cardio, I’ll do your Jiu-Jitsu,” whatever, ’cause for me right now in my business, I’m not that interested to go through and spend all that time, but yes, it has been, and it realistically, I think it would be very smart for me if my main focus was to build my audience continually on Instagram and TikTok.
0:32:56.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, which isn’t right now, and that’s great.
0:33:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Right, it’s just not, yeah.
0:33:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, you’re choking dudes out…
0:33:01.1 Jordan Syatt: Which I do feel guilty about it sometimes, but I’m just trying… I’m about to have a kid and like… I don’t know.
0:33:06.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, dude, stop… Make less content long enough and the guilt fades. I felt guilty too in 2018, 2019. When did I feeling… ‘Cause I don’t feel guilty at all. But I’m trying to… But I definitely did, and there was… I don’t remember when, if it was a gradual thing or a sudden thing, but the guilt fades. But that’s where it is still interesting to me where that hour that you’re gonna go do cardio or you’re gonna do anything else, like I’m just picturing an employee, like a way to outsource that, and maybe, again, maybe I’m just being optimistic that that is… That that can end up as a better result than it actually can in practice.
0:34:01.4 Jordan Syatt: No, I think it can, it’s just it takes a while. I’ve never… I mean, even you know, Gary, we would watch him in the office with people there, with a team of videographers and video editors. I’ll never forget, sometimes he would have to go in there and he’d have to really lay down the line, and be like, “You guys are not getting this right,” I’ll never forget one time that happened, he’s like, “You’re missing so much good content,” he’d have a whole meeting around it. And they were having logistical issues where they weren’t uploading to the right place or they weren’t uploading the videos that he actually wanted.
0:34:31.6 Mike Vacanti: Lot of headaches.
0:34:34.5 Jordan Syatt: There’s a lot of headaches with it, and he puts out like three, four, five pieces of content every day on Instagram and TikTok, but he was saying, “We’re missing 40 pieces of content a day.” And so… And if those pieces of content even aren’t 100% for him, he’s still posting them. So if… We’re not gonna make anywhere near as much content as he’s making, so you might really struggle to get one good clip, whereas he’s getting four or five good ones, but that’s… The percentage-wise is still the same.
0:35:01.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna ask him. I’m gonna ask him how many… Because I don’t know, maybe you have an idea, but how many pieces of content that are sent to him compared to how many get posted. Like is he rejecting 50% and posting 50%? Is it like five get created and one out of five gets posted, I’m very curious. And we’re having these… He’s been having these banger weekend workouts when he has more time and doing a lot of soft tissue work during his warm-up, and it’s like a really nice opportunity for me to just kinda grill him on business stuff if I’m feeling it, so I’m gonna find out.
0:35:35.9 Jordan Syatt: I remember when I was with him in person, there were times where… He has these big text threads, with a bunch of different videographers and editors, and they’ll send… They have just a thread, threads with… They sent him videos, and he’ll watch it, and he used to do it while he was doing his soft tissue work with me, like he’d watch a video, and then he would write back, and he’d be like, “Change this, change this, change this,” and he would go back and forth, back and forth. It’s not just one final piece, he’s going back and forth. It’s a lot of work, yeah, exactly.
0:36:05.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:36:05.7 Jordan Syatt: And I’m just not in a position where I wanna do that.
0:36:07.7 Mike Vacanti: So Jordan, what you’re telling me is that it takes actual time and effort to make great content.
0:36:13.1 Jordan Syatt: I know it’s shocking, man.
0:36:14.5 Mike Vacanti: Who would have…
0:36:16.9 Jordan Syatt: I know.
0:36:20.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That makes sense. Okay, so should we talk maybe briefly about articles as the main piece, or let’s come up with a list? So vlogs are an option, but probably not a good idea, educational video/podcast, long-form website article.
0:36:36.9 Jordan Syatt: Those are all the long-form ones.
0:36:40.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s all I can think of.
0:36:42.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s educational videos.
0:36:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Or seminar, you mentioned, like if you’re giving a lot of in-person talks, like recording those, which end up being both podcasts and video.
0:36:52.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yep. Or I’m just thinking now even though, we just sort of said vlogs probably aren’t a good idea, let’s say you’re coaching people in person, let’s say you have some in-person clients, and you spoke to a couple of them that… “Hey, would you mind if I got on camera?” You could see if a videographer would come and record a couple of those sessions a week, and then as if, hey, you’re correcting their technique on something, you show them, cool, now you have the videographer catching you coaching your client on how to do that movement, and then once that set is over, you tell the videographer, “Hey, that’s something I wanna clip,” and then that whole bit, and then maybe they break that down into something that’s seven minutes, and then you eventually work it down, work it down, work it down until it’s a one-minute clip you can put on Instagram and TikTok or something. But that would, I think, be really cool as well, which is sort of a mix of vlog and educational content.
0:37:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, ’cause it’s documenting you doing something that is educational.
0:37:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:37:47.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s a great idea.
0:37:49.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I would say, I think… So we have educational YouTube videos, podcasts, and website articles, those are the three long form pieces of content. And if I had to break it down into the best from an SEO perspective, it would be YouTube videos and articles. I would say podcasts are not, at least not right now, good for SEO, but I would say from the perspective of creating micro-content, especially video micro-content, YouTube videos and podcasts are better than website articles. Now, the cool part about website articles is if you have a long-form website article that’s 2000 words, 3000 words, whatever it is, easily, you could get 10 videos and 10 podcast ideas just from that one article, ’cause you’re gonna have all these different sub-sections from it.
0:38:36.4 Jordan Syatt: So it’s one of the cool part, they all play into each other, and even though you might not get micro content directly from your article, you could get ideas for more long-form content and ideas for more micro-content just from that article. When I first started making Instagram content, I would just go back to my old website articles and say, Cool, so I have this whole article on the glycemic index, and here’s this one section on it, I’m just gonna make this one section into an Instagram post. Or I have this whole article on how to improve your deadlift performance, I’m gonna make… We’ll just take one of these sections and turn it into an Instagram post. That’s the benefit of long-form articles, aside from the SEO and the staying power, is you get so many ideas from all of these articles.
0:39:16.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, the ideas, and you already have the core of your caption right there, where you just copy paste, you can re-write it, craft it, put a little sub-intro into it, but you already have the micro-content written out.
0:39:28.0 Jordan Syatt: Exactly.
0:39:29.0 Mike Vacanti: Cool, yeah, those are the big three. And then I guess what are… And then you have… You can Instagram clips, Instagram story, TikTok, you have…
0:39:40.1 Jordan Syatt: Facebook.
0:39:41.1 Mike Vacanti: Facebook, YouTube clips.
0:39:43.8 Jordan Syatt: I still think Facebook is… People under underestimate Facebook still, man. I’ve been doing a lot on Facebook recently. Everything I put on Instagram, I put on Facebook, and I’ve been boosting them, I’ve been boosting posts recently, just like I’ve been spending 100 a week just on boosting posts on Facebook, and the reach is pretty freaking crazy.
0:40:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Who are these human beings that consume content on Facebook?
0:40:06.0 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know, man. I have no idea who they are. But they’re there, they’re there. Dude, there are people just hanging out on Facebook, like it’s 2010.
0:40:15.7 Mike Vacanti: But not like in groups, they’re hanging out in their main Facebook feed.
0:40:20.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, just looking on their newsfeed, liking and commenting.
0:40:24.6 Mike Vacanti: You know what I think…
0:40:25.0 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know.
0:40:26.0 Mike Vacanti: You know the mistake I made, I think was just like, when everyone in the finest industry friended everyone, and so you’d get 50 friend requests a day and you just accept them all until you got to that limit, I think… I just don’t know. And if I go on my Facebook main feed, I don’t know anyone, anyone, so maybe that has skewed me away ’cause I haven’t been on there on the main feed in years.
0:40:49.3 Jordan Syatt: I never look at my main feed, I go on for the Inner Circle Lives and then for when I post something on my SyattFitness page, but the reach… If you go on Google, if you check Alexa, Facebook is still… It’s Google and Facebook are the two… Are like the top websites, you know?
0:41:05.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, so Facebook, YouTube clips, like these clips, channels, that’s the other cool thing, if you’re doing a long-form like Q&A, you’re just talking… Even if you’re having guests, if you’re doing a two-hour podcast with a guest, you can just have a conversation, you can do some planning, but you don’t necessarily need to. So the content creation time is the amount of time you record, unlike an article that you’re sinking 20 hours into brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing, etcetera, two hours, you’re making a two-hour video, and within that two-hour video, you might have 10 YouTube clips, and you can make those very SEO-able, so if the title is just like episode 26, Jordan Syatt, but then from there, you can clip 11 different things and make three to 10-minute YouTube clips for a separate YouTube channel, you can make 15-second YouTube shorts from that. There are a lot of places that that content can go.
0:42:08.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and then I think… ’cause I guarantee some people are like, “Well, shit, they just gave us infinity options. So what do I do?” And Mike and I have spoken about this before, but just pick one, like just pick one and be the best at one. So it’s like you don’t have to do all of it, and if you’re looking toward… If you’re looking at what I’m doing right now, it’s basically just Instagram and podcast that’s really all I’m doing right now. And they go hand-in hand. Gary is obviously trying to blow up TikTok like crazy right now because there’s so much organic reach on there, but for whatever it’s worth, I’ve seen people doing crazy stuff on reels on Instagram, and they’ve been blowing up as well. It really looks like TikTok and Instagram reels are just reaching massive amounts of people right now, so if you wanna make… I would say it seems like right now, video content is the best content to make, just in general, which honestly sucks because it’s also the most difficult to make, but just making video content is the most difficult to make, especially if you’re not comfortable on camera, which a very few people are comfortable on camera, but it’s also the most time-consuming, ’cause I think for a podcast, you can sort of mess up on a podcast and still talk, and it’s not a big deal ’cause you’re just having a conversation.
0:43:25.2 Jordan Syatt: But when the camera’s on you and you’re doing a video people, they’re super critical of themselves, they say one thing, and it sounds slightly odd, they’re like, “Oh, what was that? It didn’t even… That didn’t make sense.” And they start all over again. I think the video content is the hardest, but it’s the easiest to build a real connection with, and right now it’s the one being favored the most.
0:43:43.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s definitely hard to get started, it’s definitely hard to get over that initial fear of putting yourself out talking and the video being on. What’s interesting though is, I don’t think anything’s gonna change when these go on YouTube, we’re just gonna be hitting a record button.
0:44:00.6 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:44:00.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s still gonna be one take, there’s not gonna be like, there’s not gonna be a restart.
0:44:03.5 Jordan Syatt: But I think for you and I it’s different…
0:44:05.7 Mike Vacanti: Yes.
0:44:05.8 Jordan Syatt: ‘Cause we know that. I think other people might be, “Hold on, can we start over again?” And for whatever, it’s worth I think it’s good for coaches to know people like it when it’s not perfect, and they enjoy it, when you say… You used to say all the time, “This is a one-take show.”
0:44:19.8 Mike Vacanti: Dude…
0:44:20.1 Jordan Syatt: And that was a huge thing that people loved watching you.
0:44:23.1 Mike Vacanti: I shattered that glass with that margarita all over.
[overlapping conversation]
0:44:25.0 Jordan Syatt: Margarita glass. Was that a strawberry margarita? Was it a frozen alternative?
0:44:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Frozen strawberry margarita all over that office in Vayner.
0:44:35.6 Jordan Syatt: I’ll never forget, ’cause you’re looking right in the camera, “This is a one-take show,” and you’re drinking from the broken glass, but there’s something endearing about watching someone who’s not trying to make it perfect, they are as they are, and so… I know it’s super easy to be looking in the camera, and thinking you messed something up and wanna start over again, so that’s “perfect,” but sometimes best pieces of content are the ones where it’s not perfect, where it’s like… It’s deliberately not perfect, you just are who you are, you make mistakes, and that it is what it is.
0:45:10.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s authentic, it’s real. They are terms that have been cliched over the last few years and used to build clout and build fake depth, but cliches become cliches because they’re true at their core.
0:45:25.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:45:26.1 Mike Vacanti: Cool, man. This is fun. This is a good chat.
0:45:29.3 Jordan Syatt: Is that it? Are we done?
0:45:31.7 Mike Vacanti: Anything else we wanna jam on?
0:45:34.0 Jordan Syatt: I spilled cereal all over my carpet.
0:45:36.0 Mike Vacanti: What kind of cereal?
0:45:37.9 Jordan Syatt: It was a mix of Grape Nuts and something else. I was really trying to get my fiber in.
0:45:45.7 Mike Vacanti: I love it. No, I feel like that’s… You know what? I understand what you mean when you say that video content is more difficult because it is more difficult in some ways. In other ways, it’s faster just because the amount that you produce and the time spent on it, and not for a well thought-out like a YouTube video where you’re doing their own editing, but something like this, that is just… Point, shoot, record. Pause, upload. The other interesting distinction between writing and video, and this is in favor of writing, when you’re having a conversation with someone, most of what you’re discussing are things that you already know or that they already know, you’re not… And sometimes in a very stimulating conversation, like we’ve had many of, you learn new truths through conversation, but I think that happens even more in writing. And especially when you’re doing research, when you have 25 tabs open, when you’re really thinking, when you’re really like… Not over-analyzing, but you’re spending a great deal of time on every word, every sentence, every paragraph, putting it together and researching while you’re writing, you’re also becoming that much smarter in the process, and that benefit doesn’t exist in recording a video or a podcast.
0:47:13.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I agree, 100%.
0:47:15.7 Mike Vacanti: Well, cool, man. Great episode.
0:47:17.9 Jordan Syatt: That was good.
0:47:18.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:47:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that was a good conversation.
0:47:20.5 Mike Vacanti: Our price for the mentorship is going up very soon. Inflation, cost of living… Unfortunately, it’s just time.
0:47:29.8 Jordan Syatt: Gas prices. Holy shit, these gas prices…
0:47:32.1 Mike Vacanti: Are insane, and it’s just… It’s time, like that’s how over time, businesses raise their price, and that’s happening within the next couple of weeks, so that’s just a heads up to anyone who’s been on the fence about jumping in and joining the mentorship. We wanna give you ample time and fair warning. So that’s all. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you have a great day and week and weekend, and we’ll see you very soon.
0:47:58.4 Jordan Syatt: Have a good one.
