I just spent a little over $700 on a bet that I’m making with myself: that I’ll spend the rest of the summer posting on a new platform.
I ordered a DJI Osmo Pocket 3. And when it arrives next week, I’ll hit the ground running and see how far I can push myself.
For the next three months, I’m doing something I’ve never done before.
Have any of you seen the rise of “yap content” on socials? The low-budget, filmed-in-the-car videos where people just talk for a few minutes?
I LOVE that kind of content. With the right hook, it’ll have me until the end.
Until very recently, I couldn’t really see how short form content would fit into my business. But as I continue to explore running paid ads on Meta, and automation tools like Manychat dramatically improve the conversion rate of short-form content… The value became clear.
So I’ll be posting on IG at least twice a week for the next three months.
Here’s my plan:
- I’ve created HUNDREDS of YouTube videos over the past five years, so I’ll be leveraging those. More on that in a second.
- I’m posting a combination of high and low effort posts! Not everything will require me to be at 100%, or even appear in front of the camera at all. Which brings me to…
- You know what the best part of having created content for over six years is? The MASSIVE library of selfies, random photos, and b-roll. We’re using that shit as much as possible.
I feel like everyone always thinks that carousels or Reels have to be high effort.
But what if something low effort would perform even BETTER for your business, and you just haven’t tried it?
These are the two main carousel formats I’m testing right now.
On the left, we have what I’m calling the “high effort” carousels, where there’s a TON of design work involved, lots of photos, thoughtful text, etc.
My lead video editor Beatrice is creating these, and they’re gorgeoussss.
On the right, we have something MUCH simpler.
Just exported stills of my videos with captions that essentially convey a point from the original video, be that the thesis, a short anecdote, or a quick tip.
As I was thinking about creating for Instagram, one of the core things I thought about was how to best leverage my YouTube videos.
Because (1) I make between 2-4 of them a month, and (2) I have hundreds of them in the library.
And this format essentially allows me to get more pieces of content per content, without requiring me to change anything about my YouTube recording set up.
The core thing driving this change is that I want to scale.
Over the past year, I’ve gone from “lol no what do you mean, I’m not drowning, I actually LOVE doing everything by myself” to “FUCK this shit dude let’s build a team” and it’s been great.
We went from ~$100K in revenue to guaranteed $250K+ this year.
A team of one is now me + a small army of incredible contractors (all paid more than a livable wage, mind you).
And I want to see how far we can push this thing.
I’ve always been an incredibly ambitious person. But reality has continually forced my dreams to get smaller, more achievable, more doable with a team of one.
But free from that constraint…
We’re making moves.
Let's get shit done this summer,
