113: How Podcasters Can Hit a Million Views on Instagram Reels

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This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast. And today, you are going to be learning about Instagram Reels. Specifically, we're going to talk about how to go viral on Instagram Reels. Now, unless you've been under a rock for the last five years, you know that short-form video is now the main medium for virtually anything to go viral on the internet. And as podcasters, going viral can be a fun way to draw attention to our show. But what you might not know is that each of the three main short-form video platforms, so TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, are all slightly different and require a different level of understanding in order to engineer virality. Sure, you can post the same thing on all three platforms and have success on all of them. It's totally possible. But if you can really understand the intricacies of each one, you're going to have an easier time going viral. Now, today, we're specifically going to dive into Instagram Reels and how to engineer virality there. And we're going to learn how to do that from somebody who has actually already been a guest on this podcast before. But last time he was a guest on this show, he had roughly 9,000 followers on Instagram. And we talked about how to build a business around your content. Well, this interview was recorded six months after that original episode aired. And in those six months, purely from engineering virality, this guest now has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. So from 9,000 to 100,000 in six months, his name is Travis Brown. And today he's going to share with us a masterclass on how to hit a million views on Instagram Reels. Now, before we get into that, just a word of caution. Going viral on Instagram is certainly a fun and interesting way to grow your audience. However, your podcast growth strategy should not depend on going viral. That would be like trying to start a business by winning the lottery. But if you're already on Instagram, you're already publishing content there, and you do have your targeted podcast pitching going. So you're getting new podcast listeners where they already listen to other podcasts, then now is the time to add virality into your short form video strategies. So without further ado, let's dig in and learn how to get a million views on Instagram Reels with Travis Brown. My name is Travis Brown, and I'm a coach at Social Boom, and I am here to help you get a million views on Reels. Boom. Let's hop in. First of all, when we last chatted, when you first were a guest on Grow the Show, which was like, I want to say less than six months ago, you had 9,000 followers on Instagram. I look this morning and you have 102,000 followers. Yes. So your account has grown essentially by the amount that it is in the time since we last talked. Your account has grown by a hundred K. So what the heck? Where did that come from? Yeah. So a lot of people, when when someone blows up, the response that I got from most of my followers in my community was like, wow, you just blew up overnight. And I responded them and say, yes, I am a two-year overnight success, right? You know, you don't see the behind the scenes of not quitting and studying and building. And so when I first started off on social media, I was making carousels. I loved carousels as a carousel creator. And then Reels kind of came into the play because of TikTok and short form video is really just the king. There is no future of video. This is it. It's short form content that drives people to different places that are potentially long form or offers or communities. And so first, I resisted it. I'm like, you know, I'm a podcaster at heart. I like hiding behind the microphone. I like hiding behind my carousels. Do I want to put myself out on video? And so I kind of made this commitment to myself that I was going to figure it out because I am not a person who dances or points at bubbles or does trends. And I wanted to figure out a way that somebody could, who was potentially in business or had a mission, could actually utilize this to grow a huge audience without selling their soul, right? Without having to do wacky, hacky tricks and things that I think most people think they need to do to be successful. So I went into this really big research and testing phase. And you can actually, if you go to my account, you can see there's this period between carousel travels and current travels of me really just testing different topics and formats and trying to find my way into what's working. And that little test was probably six to eight months of looking back, refining and trying to figure out what people really want from short from content, which ended up working out really nicely because I figured it out and got two million views on a video, a million here, a million there and my account just exploded. And more followers doesn't necessarily equal more money, but it does equal more opportunities for you to share your mission, to get brand deals, to get on stages and do a bunch of stuff that's really great for your overall business. So what I've dedicated myself to now is showing people that you don't have to be a celebrity. You don't have to be an influencer. You don't have to be beautiful. You don't have to dance. You don't have to lip sync in order to reach massive audiences with short form content. And I'm a little bit Instagram centric, but what I'll share with you today is going to work for TikTok. It's going to work for YouTube shorts. It's going to work for every other social media platform that's just basically going to be going all in on short form content. What is it over that six to eight month period that you discovered? Yeah, so I am a very creative person and I always thought that what I woke up in the morning as a daily creator, that people wanted something new and exciting for me at different angle, a different format, different information. And what I've learned, this is probably the most important thing I've learned for all creators, is that virality comes from predictability, not creativity. And so I thought becoming a little more predictable in my content, which actually just cause all kinds of chaos for my followers. They're like, you know, they followed me for a reason. And I'm doing all this crazy different stuff. And it's kind of like tuning into like discovery channel, right? I want to go watch a documentary about the great pyramids. And I turn on the discovery channel and there's a baseball game on. And so the first thing I'm going to think is, oh, I must be on the wrong channel. Then when I realized that the discovery channel is actually playing a baseball game, I'm going to be angry, you know, and I'm going to go somewhere else, right? So if you think about the opportunity of social media being you have a prime time feed and whatever you promise your audience from an outcome, all the content should relatively meet up with that. And where creative people like myself get stuck is we think that, well, I'm repeating myself or people have already heard this. And the way that social media works is you have new followers and you have existing followers and then you have people who lead. So there's constantly this rotation of new people coming in. And so when you say something that you've already said, what you're actually doing is reinforcing it to your existing community. And then showing that information to your new followers, okay? So through this process, I was able to realize that I could go all in on a topic and the creativity came from the back end of the video. It wasn't new formats. It wasn't reinventing the wheel. I thought I had to reinvent the wheel to break through. And the truth of the matter is is that through some simple research, okay? And this is probably the the biggest thing that keeps people from actually getting success is they're guessing, right? I would be willing to bet 90% of creators are just guessing, will this work? And then if it does work, they don't really look at why it worked. They just keep guessing the next day and they have this like this crazy wave of like some views, a lot of views down and then it's a roller coaster. And it doesn't have to be that way. So here's the analogy I use. Kevin, I have two lottery tickets that you can pick from to win a million dollars, okay? One of them has five of the seven numbers already filled out and you only have to guess two. The other one, you have to guess all seven numbers to win a million dollars. Which one would you pick? The guess two. Correct. So this analogy plays right into research by researching topics and hooks that are already working is the same thing as having five numbers filled out on your lottery ticket. But just guessing and making up your own thing is filling out all seven, right? So by doing a little research and seeing what people are resonating with, what kind of hooks are getting viral views and then being able to take that and apply that to my content, I have the ticket with five if not six numbers filled up. Yeah. And then as a creator, I can say to myself, the only content that I post is going to honor the outcome that I've provided, right? I hear so many people say, well, I'm multi-talented. Listen, I'm as multi-talented as they get. I do so much stuff that you'll never see on my Instagram account. And there is a reason for that is because you have to hone in on one thing that people want to achieve, one transformation. Social media used to be, look what I'm doing. Now social media is look what I can do for you. It's completely changed. It's no longer look at the food I'm eating, look at the where I'm on vacation. Nobody cares. People want their own transformation. So by doing that research, I can ensure that the only things I post on social media have a high probability of success. And when you change the game for people in that way and you say only post things that you know work, I always ask people, do you think you'd get more views if you only posted things that you knew based on some super fast research? And I can tell you how to do that. Do you think you get more views? And the answer is always yes. But for some reason, it's the one thing that people won't do. The research is what they won't do or the fact that because of my question was going to be like, I imagine you probably get a lot of that resistance that you felt as a creator from the creators that you help when you tell them, go with the formula, like the creativity is on the back end. So for those that are being particularly resistant, what do you say? I basically have to say you're in a process and you have to trust that process. And the process isn't instantaneous. You're not going to research one high performing video, create one video and get a million views. It's a process of finding those topics and hooks and then testing them with your audience to see which performs the best. And then once something starts performing the best, then you double down on that topic. So for me, my entire career has been helping other people potentially to go full time with their passion, right? With their knowledge, with the thing that they really want to do, get them out of the cubicle. And that boils down to two things. The two questions I get are, how do I grow a following and how do I make money? So I knew those two questions. Now I tested content around growing a following. It didn't do well. But when I started talking about how to build a side hustle, how to make your first $1000, how to make your first $10,000, that exploded. And so when it did, you know what I did? I said, no more talking about growing an audience, no more talking about podcasting, no more talking about all these other things that I was testing. I went all in on the thing that worked. And what happened was I compounded my efforts. So people came back the next day and they got something that they expected. So they followed, right? And then they told people. And then when people come to my account, I'm willing to bet they can almost guess what I'm going to talk about, which is the predictability that creates the virality. Yeah. So how do you do research? Because I know people are like, well, you just told me you were going to tell me how to do research. There's three ways that you can do research today. And this is not like, I'm not talking about spending eight hours researching. I'm talking about spending 15 minutes to put you ahead of the competition. So the first thing that you can do is just TikTok. It's so easy. They have a great search feature that I wish Instagram would steal. They steal everything else, but the best part. And so you can type in a keyword into TikTok. And then there's a little filter button in the right hand corner. When you tap that, it will give you some options on how you want to filter the content. You're just going to go to the last three months because we want to know what's working now and most liked. And what it's going to do is it's just going to show you all the most liked most viewed videos, like instantaneously in your niche. Whoa. And then you can look at those videos and you can say, okay, what's the first thing they say or the first thing I see in the video? That's a hook. And I don't care if you're podcasting YouTubeing, writing songs, making social media. If you can't stop the scroll, if you can't stop and get people's attention, it doesn't matter what you say after that. It's basically just nothing. And so if you if you really think about the main thing we need to do is learn how to get the zippers and zappers. Those are the people the analogy I use is we're just flipping TV stations until something catches our attention, right? And once it does catch our attention, then we need to deliver the goods. But we need to stop the scroll. And the fastest way to do that is to use something or something similar to what is already working. Now there's proven hooks like marketing hack, you need to know or secret websites, you need to know that those are proven hooks. Now you can augment those and you can say like cheeky websites, you need to know or you know, whatever your vibe is. But the idea is that we're creating off of something that already works. Now the next thing you can do when you see a video with a good hook is just see what the format is. Are they pointing at bubbles? Are they talking to the camera? Are there camera changes? Is it really raw? Is it really produced? And we can get some clues, okay? And all we need to do is take those clues and sort of plug them into how we make content, all right? And so that's a quick way. Number two is YouTube. YouTube is one of the greatest search engines that ever lived. You can start typing in a question and it'll finish the question with things that people actually typed in the search bar. You can also filter most viewed videos in the last month. And what I look at is the title of the video and what's on the image card, okay? Those are the two things that get people to watch YouTube videos. So anything that's on an image card that catches your attention is likely going to catch other people's attention. And before you worry about stealing, as long as you're not copying people's content, verbatim, stealing things that they're saying, using a hook or a format is not theft. It's emulation. And the fastest way to, first of all, find your own style and to get people interested in what you're doing is by emulating, not imitating, okay? We don't imitate, we emulate. And by emulating people, you're going to start to get into a flow where you figure out your own style and you're going to be able to make your own little tweaks in order to be able to reach massive audiences. Now, third for research, just look at a creator that inspires you. If somebody's getting you to stop the scroll, there's a reason, okay? Your thumb has its own little brain when you're looking at content. It just kind of does its own thing. You're not even really thinking about it. So if you pay attention to what you stop on, you can also use those as clues in what to use for your own video. Yeah. So, okay, the research, first of all, we want to check TikTok, use their really, really robust search capabilities to see what types of hooks are working right now. We want to look at YouTube to see what types of titles and thumbnails are working for folks right now. What about the content itself? You've got somebody hooked. Now what do you do? Yeah, so there's different formats that work for different people. And there's really just a handful of styles that I think are the biggest performing. One is some type of like, I call it like mean culture where you're not really saying anything. You might be pointing at something or showing something that has like a relatability factor. That stuff does really good if you pair it with trending audio and you actually do the tread. But in my experience, then you're stuck on a treadmill of having to chase the next trend. And I've never bought anything from someone who I've never heard speak, right? So I'm a big fan of talking to the camera. And I think this is the opportunity that ties into your TV station. It ties into your authority. It ties into the value-based content that creates buyers, that creates subscribers, that creates raiding fans and community members. So I love to just talk to camera. And people love one format, I think the most, which is it's called, I'd see their paws or paws, I don't know which one it's called, but it's a problem, agitation solution, right? So the key, if you are somebody who is a coach or a consultant or you have a course or maybe you're teaching people, you show people their problem and then you solve it. But we want to be concise. We don't want to, it's not a 10 minute YouTube video. We just want to go, okay, you have this problem. You can't make any money. And it's really starting to bother you because now you can't even pay your bills. So I introduced a problem and then I agitated a little bit. And now I'm going to give you the solution. Step one is to do X, step two is to do Y and step three is to do Z. And then I'll tag on a call the action, which is whatever I want people to do, follow for more tips, hit the link in my bio, send me a DM, your call the action is simply what you want people to do the most, right? Leave a comment. And so if you combine that PAS method with the rule of threes and remember that short form content is short and concise, you can quickly share lessons. And if you're a coach or a someone who's teaching, I challenge you to just pretend that your audience is your clients and coach them, give them the information. I see too many coaches that are like kind of worried that what they have to sell won't sell if they give people value. It's actually the opposite, right? People want to work with someone else. They don't want to do it alone. So I think the key is once you find something that works, let's say you find a great hook, right? Then to follow it up, you want to try to concisely give them the information that they could take immediately instant gratification in 30 seconds. And that is the magic kind of recipe that works for speaking to camera. Now, trends only work with trending audio. If you do the actual trend, you can't just stick trending audio on a video and expect that it's going to do well. So what I want people to avoid is worrying about trending audio, hashtags, all the stupid crap that these guru people tell you to do to get more views. People love value and they love to learn something and be able to go apply it. And I think that's the key for most people in the education industry. Yeah. What about calls to action? Is that something that factors into your content at all? If you're a creator, especially those who are like course creators or you know, coaches or whatever, like are we CTA on the content itself? Yes. Okay. So I'm glad you asked that question. So first of all, if people are zipping and zapping and I would be willing to bet that there's lots of people that see your content that don't do anything with it because they need a prompt. Okay. Just like in a podcast, right? We need to remind people to subscribe. We need to remind them to review. YouTubers are constantly like hit the subscribe button. There's a reason for that is because if we don't tell them what we want them to do, they're probably not going to do it. They're just going to keep zipping and zapping. So there's two mindsets you need to think of. There's growth mindset and there's sales mindset. Okay. And that plays into the content. There's growth content and there's sales content. So it really depends on what you're working on right now. Let's say you're in the middle of getting ready to launch a program, your content is going to start to fall into that sales content where you're you know, sharing testimonials and sharing things behind the scenes and getting people interested in what you have to sell. In that call, the action would be something like, you know, go to the link in my bio to get your one million view roadmap, right? Something that's actually tangible that they'll actually book the call. Do not say DM me for more information. You're putting the work on me for something I have no idea what I'm going to get or book your free discovery call. So I can discover how much money you have and if you can afford my product, no, we want to lead with value book your whatever roadmap book a blueprint book your free, you know, weight loss consultation. Something that's like the person goes, okay, like there's something in it for me. But you're called the action really is just tied into what you want the most, okay? A lot of people tell me, well, no one comments on my videos. I said, well, did you ask them to? Did you tell them? Hey, I want to hear what you have to say. Did you give them the opportunity? Well, no. Okay. Well, we need to lead the witness here, right? If you want more followers, follow for more tips. If you want more comments, let me know what you think below. If you want people to click the link in the bio, make sure that you tell them to click the link in the bio. So we want to be as prescriptive as possible, right? I want to catch your attention. I want to blow your mind with something that you can immediately take action on. And then I want you to do the thing I want you to do in that order, right? So a lot of people try to jam the call to action in the beginning of the video. They'll let they'll start off. They'll introduce themselves. They'll say, make sure you've already lost people. If you don't get into the value, you are one little thumb swipe away from never be seen again. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Thumb swiped into the void. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit more? I really, really love the distinction that you made about those two stages. Growth and sales. Yeah. Sure that you get questions all the time. Like if you were to ask, like, I feel like if I were to ask a client, so which stage are you in? Growth or sales, they would all say, both. I need both. I want it all now. Oh, wait. So can you talk a little bit about why the answer shouldn't be both? Yeah. The answer should never be both because you can't ride two horses at once. And there's all kinds of cliches I could drop. You know, if you confuse them, you lose them. And if you chase two rabbits, you catch none, right? It's true because it's true. So I go through different phases, but I'm very clear on what I'm trying to do, right? So growth mode, I am going to be creating content that is super valuable. But I'm also going to remind people to follow me. Then I'm going to do a ton of engagement. And engagement is not just commenting back on people who commented on your post. I'm going to go to their page and I'm going to look at their content. I'm going to leave a relevant comment and let them know that I'm actually a part of their community. Because when you do that, people come back to reciprocate and it's this kind of reciprocation world. And when Instagram or any other algorithm sees all this activity, they say to themselves, something's happening here. We should continue to show this to more people, right? That's how the algorithm works. It doesn't look at you and go, I don't like this guy. I'm not going to show his content. They look at a few things. They go, are people watching this video? How much of the video are they watching? Are people commenting? Are people sharing? Are people saving, right? So in growth mode, I'm going to encourage people to do all those things. Save this post. Share this with someone who needs it. Drop a comment. I'm going to comment on theirs. I'm going to like their posts. I'm going to get really engaged in the community of social media. And that's going to create opportunities for growth. More followers, more comments, more engagement, more likes, all that stuff. Now when I'm in sales mode, I am going to be producing a different kind of content. And that content is going to be still value-based, but more around what I'm doing right now. The results I've gotten for people, the offer to be included in something like Reels Millionaire, which is an accelerator program, right? Different things that show what I'm doing for the people that work with me. And my call to action will of course change to something like, if I want to get people on a discovery call, I'll offer them a blueprint call, or I'll give them a lead magnet, or I'll invite them to my community, or I'll try to get them the DM me so I can nurture them that way. And it's a completely different mindset. So I don't think you can do both effectively at the same time, which is why people get stuck going, well, I'm not growing, and I'm not selling. It's because you've completely confused people on what's happening right now. I talked to a PR firm the other day, and they said something to me that really blew my mind. I said, yes, I'm sure you can get me on all kinds of random websites, but how do the big boys get on New York Times and all these giant outlets? Or even on TV? And they said to me, it's this simple. You have to have something that is top of mind right now, meaning if you are a hurricane recovery expert in Florida, they can get you on TV while there's a hurricane. But after that, there's no real reason to put you on TV. And so it really hit me in a way of thinking about my content and thinking about how I could try to be as topical as possible and what people care about right now. So if you're in entertainment, everyone's talking about Kanye, right? If you're in finance, everyone's talking about the recession, right? You need to be thinking about what's happening right now and what's going through people's heads in order to be top of mind. And that really, instead of just looking for hooks and formats, add it on a third heat. And I don't think I've shared this anywhere else. This is an exclusive. But tying in that what's going on right now to the topic will elevate your views and elevate the excitement around what you're actually talking about. So for somebody who, okay, his body and hasn't made reels before is like, I get it, the hook got to make some content, you know, have this call to action and grow sales, what actually do I talk about? What content do I make? So the content that you make is pretty simple. And this is also a part most people skip where they're guessing. And if you're guessing, you need to go leave a review for this podcast right now and say, I used to be guessing and now I know exactly what to do. I love grow the show. Okay. So what kind of content do you produce? Well, there's a couple of thought processes. One, what do people ask you about all the time, right? Your DMs, they ask you for help, they ask you for questions, you can simply answer those questions. Think of it as a rolling FAQ, right? People ask me, how do I get a million views? Well, here's the breakdown. You're going to do research. You're going to refine that content and then you're going to go all in on what works. It's a three step method, right? Don't ever buy anything from people who don't have a method. I've seen too many people offering me like 10 to 12 weeks of coaching calls. And I'm like, well, what are we going to do on the coaching calls? They're like, I don't know, we're just going to talk about your business. What questions do you have? No. Okay. So you can answer questions. You can also try to save people from making the mistakes you made. So check this out. It doesn't matter where you are in your game. You only have to be one step ahead of your students. Okay. So think about it like this. At one point, you had questions that you needed answers for. You need to revert to your old self before you had made the transition into what you know. And think about all those problems that you encountered. The questions you had and you need to make content around that. Okay. You really need to get back into the headspace of where you started out because the reason you have your knowledge is because you overcame those obstacles. And now you're such a cool person that you're sharing it with everybody else through your products and your services, right? So think about what the person's starting at square. One needs to know, even though it's basic information to you, it's so funny to me how much basic information I think is just basic that people are like, this is groundbreaking for me. And so we forget as we learn and accumulate knowledge that the things that we just know off the top of our heads is not common knowledge to our audience. So that's another place that you can go. So there's the value-based content FAQs. There's the thinking about where you used to be. And then the other thing that you can do is just simply think about your method, right? So Kevin, I know you have an accelerator for podcasters. I'm sure you have a method. Each piece of that method, whether it's two steps, three steps, four steps, are your content pillars. Now underneath those pillars are topics. These are like, think of it like a topic that you could come up with 10 ideas from. There's a scientific method called bounded creativity where they measured two people. They gave one person a page that had a list of topics and one person had blank piece of paper. And as you know, the person with the sparks on their page always had 10x the ideas that the person with the blank piece of paper had. So in each of your steps of the method, there's going to be topics, right? So research, okay? The topics under research are where do I, you know, what platforms do I research on? Maybe it's just hooks in general. Maybe it is, what do I talk about in my content? Maybe it's scripting. There's all these things that I could quickly look at this and make content from, okay? So if you really just do a little self-reflection and say, what is my method? What is it? Somebody called me up and said, I want to hire you. What are we going to do? You need to have that ready to make the sale. First, I'm going to do this. Next, we're going to do this. And finally, we're going to do this. That's your method, right? Well, in those steps, there's probably a bunch of topics you're going to need to cover. That's the content that you can talk about. Now, I'm sure there's one dude listening right now who's like, but I don't teach people anything, right? Yeah. I don't have a course. I'm not a guru, right? So the way that you have to navigate that is you have an overarching theme, right? Let's say it's baseball or wrestling or I don't know why I went straight to sports, comedy, things like that. That's when you go all in on what's happening now, okay? Kanye's news, wrestling news, right? In sports, there's trades, there's drama, you know, you have to be the person who talks about what's going on right now. There's a distinction between what people want on different platforms. And through my research, what I've noticed is the kind of content that I create on Instagram, my philosophy is simply this. I'm going to try to make a 10-minute YouTube video in a minute, okay? I'm going to try to give all the steps, all the information to get you going, all right? That content does well on YouTube shorts. It does not do well on TikTok, okay? And I don't think that the content that I produce on Instagram and YouTube will ever do good on TikTok because TikTok is more people jumping into the conversation. It's not as much polished content, it's not necessarily as much value-based content, but you're basically jumping into the conversation of what's happening right now, okay? A lot of relatability, a lot of what the trends are, what's happening in the world. And so you have to be cognizant of this when you put content in different places, right? You need to know like, okay, TikTok's going to want something different for me. Does that mean you need to make different content? No. But you need to be kind of aware of your strengths and your weaknesses, right? So my content does, you know, 20k views just out of the box. It doesn't really matter what I post on my Instagram. I'll TikTok it'll get 200, right? Because it's just not what people want. They want that raw camera, me, you know, I guess commenting on what's going on in the world right now. And so that's also something you need to consider when you choose a platform in order to start posting content. But I think it's healthy for you to start with one. And that being your favorite to produce on and mastering that before you try to master all the different platforms. Yeah. So specific to Instagram, I'm curious if you have any recommendations for, and I actually suppose this could apply to TikTok as well for like, what to make your profile look like? Does that have any sort of impact on being a real millionaire? Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing people make a snap decision on you is your profile, okay? And historically your profile is consistent of a picture of you, right? And then in that picture, a lot of people don't maximize that, right? So you want a picture where it's like, just like I am in the camera, shoulders up, you want to take up as much real estate in that circle as you can. Because once it gets onto a phone, it becomes really tiny. And faces were biologically programmed to look for faces. If you look at the moon, you see a face, you look at a tree, you see a face, it's just what you want to see. So your face being there creates a connection and you can even use that to create a vibe, right? Like if you're wacky, make it a wacky profile picture of your super serious, make it super serious, show them the vibe of your page, then you have a couple other elements. And I'm going to speak specifically to Instagram because they have, I think the best bio platform. You have an opportunity to put a bunch of information in there. Most people think their bio is about them. And there's only one element of your bio that's you. The rest is what you do for other people. So in a perfect profile in my mind, we bullet it out so it's easy to consume. So if you look at my profile at Travis Brown, you see what I'm talking about. It's four lines that use emojis to bullet it out so that somebody can see it and make a snap decision if I'm the account they want to follow. They know exactly what I'm all about. So the first line of your bio is the outcome. It's the outcome you want to help people achieve. If you want to help people lose 15 pounds and 90 days, write that. If you want to help people double their sales, write that. But it needs to be something tangible. You can't just say, I help people find their passion because my passion right now is going to be laying on the couch doing nothing, right? Can you help me find that? It's a specific tangible outcome. Like you grow the show, what is your outcome? You help people hit a million views or a million downloads. What is the outcome, Kevin? So we help podcasters get their first thousand listeners. Great. Helping podcasters get their first thousand listeners. Boom. That's what everybody wants. They want their first thousand listeners, right? So the next line is your method. How you do that? So my outcome is helping you make your first $10,000. The next line is by sharing easy side hustles. That's my method. That's the way I'm going to present that information to you, right? So that could be anything. If it's lose 15 pounds and 90 days, it could be with or without without going to the gym. Yeah. Great. I don't want to go to the gym without losing carbs or with only the weights you have in your house, right? We're showing them that we're going to give them this transformation and how we're going to do that. The third line is about you and you can do one of two things. You can either make an authority statement. Like I've helped, you know, how many people have you hit a thousand with Kevin hundreds? Oh, I haven't counted. We should probably count, but yeah, hundreds. You know, hundred plus podcasters serve, right? Yeah. If you have an award, five-time award-winning podcast host, if you are an author, you know, best-selling author, that's authority-based, or you could go the other way, which is fun. My bio says no guru bullshit, because I'm against gurus in selling people's stuff that'll never get them the results. So it's kind of cheeky, right? Yeah. You could say something like anything that's fun about you, right? And you could use that as your authority or unique selling proposition statement. Yeah. Then the fourth line is going to be a call the action to get people to click the link that's under it, okay? And this is very important. Do not say check out the latest podcast. No. You need to have a tangible outcome of clicking that link and you better bet your buns that that link goes directly where you can't send them to a link tree where there's 50 links. Just send them directly where you want them to go. If you want them to buy a product, send them to the product. If you want them to subscribe to the podcast, send them to their best episode. If you want people to book a discovery call, tell them what they're going to get in that call of value without buying from you, okay? Very important. I see way too many people just say like, DM me for more info. And I'm like, I'm never doing that. I don't want to. I never DM you for more information. It's just not going to happen. So the word I want people to walk away with today is tangible, okay? And the way to figure out if you have tangibility is to continue to ask yourself this question to what end, right? So let's do an example. I help people lose weight to what end? Well, I helped them lose 15 pounds to what end? Well, I helped them lose 15 pounds in 90 days to what end? I helped them lose 15 pounds in 90 days without going to the gym. Boom, tangible outcome, right? The vaguer you are, the harder it is for people to self identify that you're the account they've been looking for. It's about self identification. And when we put the person who's the audience, the future follower as the hero of the story instead of us, we help them self identify why they need to follow because social media, just like podcasting and every other platform is an exchange of time. I can't buy more time, manufacture more time. Time is the most precious element to me. And if you show me you're not going to waste my time, I'm much more likely to show up and hang out with you than if you're like, well, like, you know, kind of help people lose weight. Okay, great. I have no interest in spending time with you because you're not going to be focused in concise. Yeah. So how do you recommend that folks get feedback on their content? Because it's one thing to hear the structure and be like, okay, I'm going to do this, but you got to get feedback. So where does that come into play? I think the first thing people can really do is just self reflection. That's where all of my growth came from is like, okay, I'd post a video. I'd let it do its thing. Then I would rewatch the video and kind of look at like, okay, did this get a lot of comments or likes or views? What do I think was the big thing in the video? And my whole goal, I still don't even think I'm that great at content is to just make each video one percent better, right? And by one percent, I mean, okay, maybe the first video I'm just talking to camera. Now, one percent better to me would be I'm going to add in a couple camera angles, right? I'm just going to move the camera. You don't even need multiple cameras. You just literally move your camera and you'll have a different background. Maybe I need to add music. Maybe it needs to be more exciting. Maybe I need to add captions. These are all little 1 percent betters, okay? So if you really look at your content and say in your right mind, like, is this meeting my expectations? Is this like, is this good enough or can I level this up? Then you're going to continually make better content. Awesome. The other thing that you can do is simply find an accountability buddy that's not going to bullshit you and say, listen, I made this video, like, how could I improve it? And one of the hardest things for creative people to do, I think it's hard for everybody is to take feedback without emotion, right? I've finally gotten to a place where people can give me feedback where I don't get like upset about it or feel like it's in a personal attack. Like, here's my video. How do you think I can make this better? Or before you post the video, send it to somebody and say, does this make sense? Because most of the time people, well, first of all, they're winging it. So they just set up the camera and they just kind of talk and they just go off on tangents and they just lose you completely. Yeah. By having a couple bullets in front of you to keep you on track, you're going to make much better content. But send it to somebody and say, what do you think is the main point of this video? And if they can't tell you, then there's obviously some refinement that needs to happen. And it's all about just either finding a group to do that with, a person to do that with. It's a combination of self-reflection and finding that accountability partner that's not going to just say, that's great. Because that's great. It doesn't get us moving forward. I like that butt. Or this is great butt is my favorite phrase because you're leading with a compliment. But then you're giving them something that they could actually do to make this video better. So it's just a combination of what I started off telling was people are guessing because they're not reflecting or analyzing their content. And that's a big part of business, podcasting, social media is you do something and you analyze it. And I think why people don't want to analyze it is because they don't necessarily want to see the leak and they feel like it's their fault because as creators, we're on solo island trying to do this by ourselves and they feel it's a self-reflection. Travis, if anyone wants to learn directly from you about how they can go viral, what can they do? Listen, I am a huge fan of learning and mentorship and coaching programs. But I am not a huge fan of how a lot of these courses are rolled out, which is why I created a program called Reels Millionaire. So you can go out there right now and buy any Reels course for $500 and they're just going to throw you behind a paywall. They're going to show you a bunch of videos. You're never going to talk to the person that made that and you're probably not going to get any actual real feedback on your content. So when I thought about that, I said, how can I make the best program ever? So Reels Millionaire is a 10 week accelerator program where myself and my business partner, Dan Thomas, worked directly with you to coach you, give you real-time feedback and tell you exactly what to do next so you can hit a million views in 90 days. So unlike other programs, yes, we do have a little portal with a few videos because we don't want you spending all your time watching videos. What we want you to do is start using our method of research, posting content, and then we actually give you our personal feedback on what to do next, how to refine that content, how to optimize the hook, how many times you should be posting, giving you the actual coaching that you never get in a course. So we meet once a week, everybody gets their own personalized video feedback each week. We have a private Instagram chat. And if that sounds like something you'd like to do, if you'd like to stop guessing, if you need that accountability, the link is in my bio. You can watch it just a quick eight minute video about what we do. We've helped people in all backgrounds, woodworkers, martial artists. I mean, we did it with our own accounts too, right? So I know I can show you how to do that. And I've said this before, I shouldn't have gone viral. I'm not smart. I'm not handsome. I'm not, you know, an influencer. I don't dance. I don't sell my soul. It's not reserved anymore for Kim Kardashian, right? And you can do it too if you follow the steps and you actually are interested in refining yourself. And I want to help you do that because let's be honest, you've probably been on social media longer than I have. You deserve to get the reach and the views that you want. You deserve to have people see your message. You deserve to grow your business. And the analogy I use is like, listen, like if you're a podcaster because you're probably listening to the show because you're in in podcasting and Kevin is a beacon of great information for podcasting. People don't wake up and look at their podcast app. They wake up and look at social media. So we need to get you in front of those people so we can get them to your podcast. We can get them to your business. We can get them immersed in the impact that you want to deliver to the world. And so it's really a non-negotiable at this point. If you want to do this thing, you're going to have to figure out social media and social media right now. And as far as I can see it until we get like augmented reality locked in, short form video is the pinnacle of what people should be making. So I want to help you do that. And I'm very passionate about elevating other people and making people more successful than I am. It gives me more joy than any dollar that goes in any bank account. Awesome. Travis, thank you so much, man. If you want to connect with Travis and see his most recent reels that have gone viral, simply check out his Instagram at Travis Brown. The link is in the show notes. This episode was produced and edited by me and Jeremy Grader with post-production by podcast boutique. And a very special thanks, of course, to Travis Brown. For Grow the Show, my name is Kevin Schmidland. I'll see you next time.