Modern Creator
Caleb Ralston · YouTube

How to Become Disgustingly Good At Personal Branding

Caleb Ralston — 17 years behind the biggest personal brands in business — makes the case that virality is a trap and trust is the only currency that converts.

Posted
1 months ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
79.7K
2.9K likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

A personal brand is built by pairing yourself — consistently, over time — with a contrarian belief your industry ignores, not by optimizing for viral reach or packaging tactics.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • You have been making content for 6–24 months and feel like you are doing everything right but nothing is compounding.
  • You are a coach, consultant, or agency owner who wants content to generate inbound clients, not just views.
  • You are early in your career and want a framework for building credibility before you have big case studies.
  • You already have a track record in your industry but have never systematically turned it into a brand.
SKIP IF…
  • You are optimizing for follower count or virality as the primary goal — this framework will feel frustrating.
  • You are a consumer brand or e-commerce company; the advice is squarely aimed at personal brands built on expertise.
  • You want tactical production tips (lighting, editing, hooks) — this is almost entirely strategic and philosophical.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Most personal brand builders start with content strategy when they should start with brand foundation: a clear goal, what you need to be known for to hit that goal, what you need to do to earn that reputation, and what you need to learn to do those things. From there, the single highest-leverage move is identifying one contrarian belief — something your industry widely accepts that you fundamentally disagree with — and repeating it relentlessly across every piece of content. Trust is built by pairing your brand with client success stories, not by chasing virality. Enter the game expecting no economic return for 36 months and set absurdly low expectations on individual pieces so you stay in it long enough to compound.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:0000:47

01 · Cold open — foundation before content

Ralston drops the thesis: brand foundation comes before content strategy. Most people skip this.

00:4705:28

02 · The brand journey framework

Four-question framework: goal → what to be known for → what to do → what to learn. Gives a multi-year roadmap.

05:2810:27

03 · Branding defined — intentional pairing

Branding = intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently. Nike/Jordan as the proof of concept. Do epic work first.

10:2716:06

04 · Credibility before posturing

If you don't have case studies yet, be a learning proxy — share the journey, don't fake authority. Going from doer to teacher requires deliberate deconstruction.

16:0625:05

05 · The contrarian belief — the biggest lever

Your contrarian worldview is more important than any tactical content decision. The two-column exercise. Cody Sanchez as case study.

25:0530:11

06 · Visual identity and copying your way forward

Brand aesthetics matter but have zero ROI in year one. Copy to get basics, then differentiate using preferences. Borrow formats from outside your niche.

30:1135:14

07 · Trust vs virality

Virality and brand are not the same. Trust is the currency that precedes the transaction. Case study on how chasing virality traps creators.

35:1439:47

08 · Scaling trust through case studies

The majority of educational content should be case studies. Trust compounds when the audience acts on what you say and gets results.

39:4744:12

09 · Content ratio and injecting personality

75% deep content, 20% niche wide, 5% personal. Personality is injected into content, not siloed into its own piece.

44:1247:26

10 · Timeline expectations and defining your win

No economic expectations for 36 months. Set absurdly low benchmarks per piece. Define width vs depth plays and measure against the right metric.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Branding is the intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently — the byproduct of that practice is brand, not the practice itself.
  • Your contrarian belief — the one thing your industry broadly accepts that you reject — is a bigger competitive advantage than any thumbnail, hook, or title.
  • Most creators fail not because they lack skill but because they have never articulated what they believe differently than their peers.
  • Virality and a strong personal brand are not the same thing — many creators with millions of views have no brand because no one searches for their name.
  • Trust is the currency that precedes the transaction — not virality, not views, not followers.
  • The potential of your personal brand is predicated on the success or lack of success you have had in your career — you cannot shortcut credibility.
  • If you are new, do not posture as an authority — be a proxy for the journey and share the trial and error in real time.
  • Ninety-nine percent of great educational content is just case studies: we did this, we got this result, here is what we learned.
  • Set your expectations ridiculously low on individual pieces so your ambition does not kill your consistency.
  • Enter the game expecting no economic outcome for 36 months — that is the frame that lets you survive the nothing-nothing-nothing-pop-nothing cycle.
  • Visual identity (colors, aesthetic) has zero impact in year one — anyone building a brand style guide in month six is wasting their time.
  • The two-column approach: list everything being said in your space that you find cringe or wrong, then write the exact opposite — that is your positioning.
  • Borrow formats from outside your niche so you can look different from everyone inside it.
  • Being really good at doing something and being really good at teaching it are two completely different skills — the gap between them requires a deliberate deconstruction of your natural process.
  • Your disadvantage is your competitive advantage — lean into the insecurity, the quirk, the thing you are tempted to hide.
  • Every piece of content is either a width play or a depth play — most people fail because they try to do both in the same piece.
Takeaway

Your worldview is the brand. Everything else is packaging.

WHAT TO LEARN

The biggest brands in the education space did not break through because of better thumbnails or hooks — they broke through because they held a fundamentally different worldview on their industry and said it out loud, repeatedly, until the audience associated them with it.

01Cold open — foundation before content
  • Brand foundation comes before content strategy — most creators invert this and pay for it with wasted effort.
02The brand journey framework
  • Start with the end state: know your desired outcome before you touch content, because the outcome determines what you need to be known for, which determines what you need to do, which determines what you need to learn.
03Branding defined — intentional pairing
  • Branding is the intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently — the brand is the byproduct of repetition over time, not a one-time creative decision.
04Credibility before posturing
  • If you do not have case studies yet, do not fake authority. Position yourself as a learning proxy — share the trial, the error, and the real-time lesson. That is a legitimate and compelling frame.
  • Going from practitioner to teacher requires deliberately deconstructing what you do naturally into skills others can learn — that process takes time and intentional effort.
05The contrarian belief — the biggest lever
  • Your contrarian belief — the thing your industry broadly accepts that you reject — is your most durable differentiator. Identify it, name it plainly, and repeat it on every platform until it is what you are known for.
  • Use the two-column method to find your stance: write down everything in your space that feels cringe or wrong, then write the exact opposite. That right column is your brand's voice.
06Visual identity and copying your way forward
  • Borrow formats from outside your niche to look different from everyone inside it. The tier list, the vlog format, the comfort-creator tone — all are available to any niche that hasn't tried them yet.
  • Brand aesthetics have zero measurable impact in year one — build them after you have an audience, not before.
07Trust vs virality
  • Virality and a strong brand are not the same thing — the test is whether people search for your name, not whether the algorithm served them your content.
08Scaling trust through case studies
  • Trust compounds through case studies, not viral clips. The majority of educational content should show a before-state, the intervention, and the outcome — framed in a way the audience can act on.
09Content ratio and injecting personality
  • Personality is an injection, not a category. The 75/20/5 rule: 75% deep expert content, 20% niche wide, 5% personal — and the personal shows up as texture inside the other 95%, not as standalone pieces.
10Timeline expectations and defining your win
  • Enter with no economic expectations for 36 months. Set absurdly low benchmarks on individual pieces. Define every piece as a width play or a depth play before you publish, then measure only against that definition.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Brand journey framework
A four-question planning sequence: What is your goal? What would you need to be known for to hit that goal? What would you need to do to earn that reputation? What do you need to learn to do those things? Designed to build a roadmap before touching content strategy.
Contrarian belief
The one idea in your industry that most practitioners accept as true that you fundamentally disagree with. Ralston argues this is the single biggest driver of brand differentiation — more than production quality, titles, or hooks.
Intentional pairing
The deliberate and repeated association of your brand with a specific concept, value, or result. Ralston's definition of branding itself — Nike paired with Michael Jordan, done every night for a career, created the brand.
Two-column approach
A positioning exercise where you list everything in your niche that you find wrong, cringe, or hollow in the left column, then write the exact opposite in the right column. The right column becomes your brand's default stance.
Comfort creators
An emerging category of creators who deliver advice in a softer, lifestyle-integrated tone as a reaction against the aggressive, shame-based content that dominated the previous era of business education online.
Width play vs depth play
Two different goals for a single piece of content. Width = maximize reach and new audience. Depth = build trust and connection with existing audience. Ralston argues most creators fail by trying to do both at once without defining which game they are playing.
Niche wide content
Content designed to serve your ideal customer but accessible enough to bring in adjacent people in your niche who are not yet buyers. Sits between deep expert content (75%) and personal content (5%) in Ralston's 75/20/5 content ratio.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

14:10productRalston Select
39:50channelCasey Neistat
22:50channelCody Sanchez / Contrarian Thinking
17:30channelGary Vaynerchuk
17:40channelSavage Fenty (Rihanna)
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

30:25
Trust is the currency that precedes the transaction.
Short, self-contained, zero context needed — a maxim.IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
16:06
I believe that there are really like three different levers that you can pull to stand out. And the most important one that has the most amount of outsized returns is your contrarian belief.
Classic setup-reveal structure with a surprising answer.TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
10:27
Don't posture as an authority. There's nothing more disgusting than someone who has no reason to be speaking like they know what they're talking about when they don't.
Direct, uncomfortable, widely relatable in the creator space.IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
45:20
I don't care how much effort I put into it. Effort means nothing to them. That's the reality.
Counterintuitive and blunt — cuts against the effort-as-virtue narrative.newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
35:14
There's a difference between virality and a strong brand. They aren't mutually exclusive, but they do not mean the same thing.
A distinction most creators have not made explicit — clarifies the core thesis in one sentence.TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map

Where the conversation goes.

00:0005:28denseBrand foundation before content
16:0625:05denseContrarian belief as differentiator
30:1135:14denseTrust vs virality
35:1439:47denseScaling trust through case studies
39:4744:12steadyContent ratio + personality injection
44:1247:26steadyTimeline expectations
The Script

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analogystory
00:00Most beginners building their personal brands think that they need to improve their content. But after seventeen years of building personal brands, I can tell you the most important thing is to get your brand foundation correct before you ever touch content strategy.
00:13This is some of my favorite advice to get you started.
00:18So where do you start if someone comes to you and says, look, Caleb, I've heard and I've seen a lot of people having success building a personal brand, putting out content to grow their business.
00:28Like, what what what should they be doing? What's the first step? Well, I think a lot of people are talking about building a personal brand right now.
00:35It's the buzz. It's what everybody's doing.
00:38And I think what a lot of people are falling into the trap of is they just start making content to check a box. They're like, well, I gotta, you know, sell people.
00:48I gotta market. I better make content. And I think that a lot of people would be better served in making content if they start with the end in mind.
00:58And so I use what I call the brand journey framework. Mhmm. Four very simple, very basic questions that gives you an immense amount of clarity.
01:06And so we start with the question that is our end destination. And so I always ask, what is the goal? What is the outcome that we want to have happen on the other side of building this personal brand?
01:18Because, you know, if you're gonna do that, you're investing a lot. Yep. Money, time, vulnerability.
01:24Right? Like, you're way more transparent with the audience and public than if you choose not to do that. So there's a lot that you're investing.
01:32So I think you need to know why you're doing this. Otherwise, I think a lot of people actually probably don't need to make content.
01:38Mhmm. I think a lot of them probably shouldn't. But, anyways, you start with that question.
01:42And then the next question that you ask is, what would I need to be known for in order to get that outcome that I desire? Right?
01:51The third question is about doing. We become known for things not by what we talk about, but by the actions that we have taken and the results that we get.
02:01And so it's what would I have to do in order to be known for the thing to get the outcome that I want? The last question brings us to today.
02:10Mhmm. Which is what would I need to learn in order to do the things to become known for the thing to get the outcome I want?
02:18So, like, if you, for example, wanna speak on stages to inspire young women to build a successful business, you probably need to be known as a woman who has built a successful business and helped other women build a successful business. Okay?
02:33Well, in order to be known for that, you gotta build a successful business and help people. But then within that, business has so many different departments.
02:40Right? Marketing, sales, HR. And within each of these departments, there are millions of little skills that you need to learn.
02:48And that gives you the road map of how you go from right now to your desired outcome. I have the ambition, and it's a little audacious, but I would like to work with the number one industry experts in whatever category I find interesting at the time. In order to have that happen, I would need to be known as somebody who has helped scale personal brands that convert in the way the personal brand desires in multiple spaces.
03:12Yeah. Right now, I've only done it in entrepreneurship. Mhmm.
03:16I haven't worked with a scientist. Yeah. Right?
03:19I haven't worked with a musician. Right? And so in order to get my desired outcome, I need to be known as being able to do this in multiple spaces.
03:28Mhmm. So then the next the third one becomes very clear. What do I need to do?
03:32I need to work with a scientist or a whatever. Right? I'm just using that as a random example.
03:36It could be a painter. It could be anything. Uh, because I just wanna work with industry experts.
03:41Mhmm. Right? And then what would I need to learn?
03:43Well, when I decide what industry I'm gonna jump into and work with a personal brand, need I to learn that industry. Sure. I need to learn the viewer, the customer, all of that.
03:52And so that gives me a very clear path for these next, call it, five years. I don't know what the timeline actually will be.
03:59As someone who has built some of the biggest personal brands that we know, what do you hope that they take from the conversation you and I are about to have?
04:08A practical no bullshit approach to building a personal brand that allows you to get closer to your goals, not further. Not one that is obsessing over trying to get a ton of views and go viral and hacking the algorithm, but one that actually takes the problems that you are already solving for your customers and allows you to do that at scale through content.
04:33You know, you know, because you, uh, you have such a great way of, like, simplifying things. And so for me personally, like, I'd heard so many definitions of what a personal brand is, but when I heard your definition, it clicked.
04:48So to begin, can you give that to people? Like, what is a brand? Absolutely.
04:54Well, I believe that branding is just a pairing of things. Now if you wanna do good branding, I think it is a intentional pairing of relevant things, and this is the key, done consistently.
05:09And if we do that over and over again, we get the byproduct of branding, which is brand.
05:16And that is when your audience inherently associates you with another thing, ideally that thing that you are intentionally pairing yourself with. The example that I like to use is Nike and Michael Jordan.
05:28That was a pairing, a very intentional pairing of relevant things. Nike was entering the basketball market. Michael Jordan was the basketball god.
05:38Right? And the key, though, is he didn't wear them one night.
05:43He didn't wear them two nights. He wore them every night for his career. That's the consistently part, which I'm sure we can get into in a little bit.
05:51But, like, that's why you want to say the same things over and over rather than that being the reason why people talk about not making content. That's what you should do. I believe the potential of your personal brand is actually predicated on the success or lack of success you've had in your career or life.
06:14And so the point being, we need to do epic shit so that people want to follow and actually listen to what we have to say. I think so many people are trying to, uh, force a personal brand in, you know, Instagram, YouTube, whatever, and they're wondering why people aren't listening to them, and it's because maybe we haven't done the thing that the people who should be following us want to do.
06:41And so I believe that there needs to be a a focus on doing epic shit. Right? Like you mentioned some people that I've worked for in the past.
06:49I believe that is a big reason why we have had the success in building my personal brand the way that we have in the first year. Like the fact that we have almost 90,000 subscribers on YouTube within the first year or 53,000 people on our email list.
07:04This comes from the fact that I have the credibility in my background and then I continue to do epic shit. We released a six and a half hour free course.
07:14I don't know if any wild characters in here have seen that, but we put out a free six and a half hour course on YouTube in I think month three or four of making content. And the number one thing that I get asked on almost every podcast is about that course. That crazy thing that we did.
07:32Right? The majority of the industry is selling that behind a paywall. We put it out for free completely for anybody to consume on YouTube.
07:38And then that thing generated 53,000 leads. Yeah.
07:41It's crazy. I mean, it's still cranking today. Like right now, if we looked at it, think Trevor and I noticed in the last forty eight hours, it still has gotten 3,600 views.
07:50Like, it's almost a year old now. I also think a lot of people think they got more game than they do. If you haven't done dope shit, you are less likely to have a dope personal brand.
08:03Right? It's just how humans work. Yeah.
08:05And so I think there's a lot of people that, uh, it's not that they're afraid to give out free game.
08:12It's that when they try to, it's really not that deep. Yeah. It doesn't actually hit for a lot of people.
08:18And I think what it is is, uh, I know for me, I can speak to this very clearly. It's they might be an expert, and they might be really good at executing. But just because you're really good at doing doesn't mean you're really good at teaching.
08:31Mhmm. And I had to go through a very, very intense period where I learned how to take the things that I was naturally doing.
08:38Mhmm. Right? My normal MO, my way of operating, and figure out how do I chunk this down into actual skills, activities, tasks in order to be able to teach other people.
08:50Right? That's what I'm describing is the process of going from individual contributor to leader. Mhmm.
08:55And then from leader to public teacher. If someone wants to build a great brand story, but they don't have those case studies yet and they're kinda starting from scratch, what advice do you have for them? Don't posture as an authority.
09:08Yeah. Like, there's nothing more disgusting than someone who has no reason to be speaking like they know what they're talking about when they don't.
09:17And you're you're entering a terrible competitive landscape if you do that, by the way, because you will get beat out by the people that actually know what they're talking about. Your competitive advantage when you are coming up is being a vessel for the learning to your audience.
09:31You're trial and airing and sharing those things. I'm the proxy for you guys. Come on my journey.
09:36I'm gonna spend the money and the time. I'm gonna make the mistakes. I'm gonna burn the bridges.
09:40I'm gonna figure this shit out and you're gonna learn from me and avoid all of those things. That should be the frame if you're on your way up. Like, don't be the fucking 23 year old in the basement on TikTok.
09:54Not a good move. You see, dude, Miami breathe those guys. Yeah.
09:58Got lot. Dude, if I had a dollar for every McLaren 19 year old in a mansion
10:04That's rented. That's rented. Yeah.
10:08I believe that there are really like three different levers that you can pull to stand out. And the second two are really great. They're awesome.
10:19But the most important one that has the most amount of outsized returns is your contrarian belief.
10:26And I believe this is the catalyst. This is when you see something in your industry that a lot of people believe to be true that you fundamentally disagree with.
10:36So for me, for example, uh, the majority of my counterparts and people that talk about the shit that I talk about, they talk about going viral. That's a huge thing. That's the majority of the industry.
10:47And I think going viral is great. I have no issue with it. I just think it is not a healthy way to build a personal brand optimizing for virality.
10:57I believe you wanna optimize for trust. And so that's something that I see in my space that a lot of people are preaching that I think is fundamentally wrong.
11:07Another example is the man, the myth, the legend, Gary Vee. He came onto the scene in a time where Fortune five hundreds and one hundreds a lot of them still are doing this today, but at at scale at the time, all of them were spending their money on TVC, billboard, uh, direct mailers, all these traditional forms of media.
11:25And he's like, hey, guys. There's this, like, crazy thing out there called Facebook, and I think it's gonna be a big deal.
11:31Right? Wildly contrarian take. He saw what was in the industry, what everybody was saying, and he had a wildly different take.
11:41Another example of this, not on the personal brand side, is Savage Fenty, Rihanna's lingerie brand. Right? They did an amazing job of looking at the market and realizing, you know, Victoria's Secret dominated the market, and they marketed to, like, one body type, and that's it.
11:59And they decided, okay. We're gonna go with body type diversity. We're going to pair ourselves to show that women of all shapes and sizes should be able to buy lingerie.
12:08And so what do they do? In all of their imagery, they show that. And then they become worth over $3,000,000,000 in, like, less than three years.
12:16It's, like, fucking crazy. They grew so fast, and I believe that's because they spotted something in their industry that they believed differently on, and they felt they could have a different impact on.
12:28And so what I encourage people to do is either at a really high level, it might be something big like what I'm talking about, or it might be something small. It might be something basic like, uh, you know, a videographer.
12:42Everyone says that you should be using zoom lenses for vlogging, and you believe that it's just better to do the craft with prime lenses. And so that is your take in.
12:53That's what you're bringing to the industry, and that's what you're doing. Okay. Cool.
12:56I gave a wildly niche, uh, example there. All the videographers, shout out to you. Like, that is what I believe causes people to stand out the most.
13:04I believe this more than your thumbnails, your titles, your hooks, like, even the ideas of the individual pieces of content itself. I don't believe that's why brands blow up in a powerful way.
13:16I think people get views that way. But a strong personal brand, I believe, is established by seeing this thing in your industry that you want to see done differently. And then, like we said earlier, over and over and over sharing that.
13:33That's why every podcast, every piece of content, I try to push optimize around trust, not virality. It's something that I wanna be known for. So 100, like, if if nothing else actually from this podcast episode, if literally nothing else, if you walk away and you figure out what you believe differently about your industry and the key is don't make something up.
13:56Don't be contrarian for contrarian's sake. It needs to be something that you believe at your core. When you speak about it, there's a certain level of passion, whatever way that comes through with you, but there needs to be a passion and conviction around it.
14:10It needs to be real. But if you figure that out, that is your differentiating factor more than anything else. How do you decide what your POVs are?
14:19Like, um, lot of people, when I ask them this question, you know, what do you believe different? They have a very tough time answering the question.
14:27People that are really, really in it and have been in it for a long time, they have no problem answering it. But the people that are a little bit newer, uh, I'm talking like less than eight years in the industry you've been in, you probably couldn't articulate it on the spot.
14:39So what I encourage people to do is, uh, there's a very easy way to do this. It's called the two column approach, and this applies to a lot of different things, but we'll use it in this example. What I want you to do is if you've defined okay.
14:51I'm gonna talk about marketing. On the left side of this, the left column, you're gonna write out all the things that current content creators in the marketing space are doing or saying that you disagree with, find cringe, disgusting, right?
15:07All the different complaints that the audience may have with them. And then on the right side, you're just gonna write out the exact opposite of all those things, and that's what you're gonna do. If you are getting into real estate content and you hate the cringe real estate agent that's making content dancing and pointing at copy on screen, well, then you know you're not gonna fucking do that.
15:30If you identify that that feels very contrived and fake, cool. You're gonna be very, like, authentic and relaxed, and that's gonna be your frame. Right?
15:37If you like me, for example, one of my big things is I don't believe that views is what people should be maximizing for only. I think views are important, but not the only thing. That's contrary to a lot of what is being said in my space.
15:50Right? That's one of my things. I speak about the opposite of that.
15:54In my opinion of my things as well too about it. Yeah. I'm glad.
15:57I believe this is the way that you stand out in what people would quote, unquote call a saturated market. It's literally doing the exact opposite of everyone in your space. There is not only is it what other influencers or other people are saying, but depending on what industry you're in, there's a lot of industry tropes.
16:15Yeah. Statements that people write another one that I hate is all press is good press. People have been saying that for years, but it's like, I could give you a million different examples of how that is not true.
16:27Right? But that's a typical trope in brand, in media, and marketing that everyone says. And so I would also argue if you can't think of, like, influencers or people that are creating, what is something that is said repeated like it's just like it's doctrine, and nobody's questioned it that you could question.
16:45I think what people don't realize is the brands that really pop in the education space specifically, they don't pop because of their titles, their thumbnails, their hooks.
16:57They pop because they have a fundamentally different worldview on their industry than any of their counterparts and that's why their content works.
17:05Their content will work. It's why they even pop early on before they have a team that's packaging their content well because it's not about the little tactics.
17:15Those are great. Those are awesome. And if you're not very interesting, that's where you gotta start.
17:19But very quickly, you need to figure out what do you believe differently than most people. What do you what what's a concrete example in the present world of a brand or a personal brand
17:29whose worldview is really cutting through the noise? As Cody Sanchez.
17:33So around 2020, we were at the peak. Really, would say 2018 to, like, now even.
17:40Uh, we were at the peak of the only way you get rich is by being a founder of a tech company. That was it. Yeah.
17:46Everyone was like, I got the Uber of blank, the Facebook of whatever. Right? Like the Airbnb of such and such.
17:52And Cody came onto the scene and was like, hey, there's actually this like crazy thing. You could become rich being a plumber. Boring businesses.
17:59Exactly. Wildly different than what everybody else in the market was saying. And it wasn't I really do not believe it was her videos in general.
18:10It was the videos wrapping over and over and over this fundamentally different worldview.
18:16Yeah. This was a recent, like, unlock for me that I had and it sounds so obvious, but I've been doing this for almost seventeen years now and it just hit me the other day because I was looking at our clients, the clients that are getting the best results and the clients that are getting good results but not as good as I would like.
18:33And I realized the ones that aren't getting as good of results, it's not that they're not doing the right things. It's that they we haven't identified what their worldview is that is different than their peers. That is what will cut through.
18:46Everything else like I am not the most articulate person. I am definitely not the best looking person.
18:54There's that is not any reason to watch my content. Right? We are not titling and packaging our YouTube content with traditional best practices in mind.
19:03We're actually going the exact opposite. We're not doing the game of having know, I put out a six hour and twenty two minute free course on YouTube. All my YouTube buddies are like, that's 13 videos, brother.
19:12Right? We're doing everything contrary, but the reason why I think it's resonating is because I'm coming onto scene in a world where the majority of people in my space are saying one thing, I'm saying something fundamentally different. It's looking at what people are doing not only from, like, what they're saying and preaching.
19:27Yeah. How they're showing up. Mhmm.
19:29You know? Mhmm. Like I said, I I casually mentioned it.
19:33Maybe some people caught it. Mhmm. Everybody every bro online shows up with a blue and red light in the background.
19:39Yep. Yep. Just don't do that.
19:42Yep. Don't put a fucking fake plant in the corner. Mhmm.
19:44A a bookshelf full of shit that you've never read Mhmm. And, uh, red and blue light in the background, and that's, like, the beginning right there.
19:51Right? Like, look at how we make our videos. It's pretty different than what a lot of people in my space are actually doing Yeah.
19:57Visually. We just released a video where I'm sitting in the back of my fucking pickup truck in the mountains. Yeah.
20:01Yeah. So it's also on the Harley and, uh, with your green tones. Yeah.
20:05I see. How important are these visual
20:09metrics
20:10in building a personal brand? Like, visual, what you what your colors are, what your clothes are, the the language that you speak not not important. It it's it's so important, and it's not important at the same time.
20:20Mhmm. Meaning, in the beginning It's like an easter egg. Yes.
20:23Like, in in Marvel movies, there were easter eggs in it. Yeah. Yeah.
20:27It's it's like that. It's what it is is it's an element of branding. Mhmm.
20:31And everyone thinks that that is brand Mhmm. And that's branding, but it's an element of branding. Yep.
20:36Right? Yep. Uh, by me intentionally pairing myself with our green over and over and over again Mhmm.
20:43The audience who's consuming our content regularly is gonna start to now see that green and go, is that Caleb? Yep. Right?
20:49Yep. And so that's the importance of it. Mhmm.
20:52It has no effect in the beginning. Mhmm. It has zero impact for you.
20:56And so anybody who is overthinking a brand style guide Mhmm. In the first year of their personal brand is wasting their time. Yep.
21:04Yep. It's important, but it's not the thing that's gonna move the needle for you.
21:08Mhmm. Understood. Again, the reason why I did that at the beginning is just because I've been in this for a very long time.
21:14Mhmm. I have a I have a stupid subjective bar that I hold ourselves to on the aesthetic. Mhmm.
21:20That's only because I have a production background. Yeah. It's not because I know that's gonna move the needle.
21:24Yeah. It doesn't. The way you present information is also a competitive advantage and can be a hole in the market that you can fill.
21:30So maybe everyone in finance is using big boy language that, like, people like Caleb do not understand. Maybe you talk to people like me that don't understand anything with finances, and you have a very lay approach, and you speak to it like one of the boys.
21:46That's also, in my opinion, a really great way to stand out is just to speak to very similar information with a different rapper.
21:54Yeah. For us, you know, we're looking to one thing as aesthetic.
21:58We think that we can elevate the whole entire space. We only think a couple people are doing it like this. And then secondly, is I think that the conversations that I could have with that 20% with specialists like you, it's unique because it's from an operator's lens.
22:11It's not you talking to another brand guy. It's an operator talking to a brand guy.
22:18And if my customer persona that I wanna serve as an operator, it's gonna serve them very well. So that's kinda where my brain goes What about just we're talking about positioning and finding the gap in the market.
22:30How do you not get too bogged down by, like, copying other people and staying authentic to your to who you are and what you wanna be?
22:39Like, where do you guys get your infer like, your inspiration from? In the beginning, you do kinda have to copy. So I'll use myself with photography as an example.
22:47When I first got into photography, after years of doing video, I had to copy the Dylan Furst, the Aaron Brimhall's of the world. Right?
22:56These were two photographers that I was just like fucking obsessed with their style. And in the beginning, I literally was just trying to duplicate exactly what they were doing.
23:04Right? Like, almost to a t.
23:07Never nearly as good, but was trying. And then I think you go to a phase where now you you get the basics. You understand how to get close to, in this case, a look or whatever outcome you desire.
23:20And that's when a lot of people, I think, get lazy and they just continue to do that.
23:25And they're always gonna be the type of people that copy whoever the top dog in a space is because it's the easy route. It's proven that this works. I think where the winners come into play is this is where they start to go into honing in their preferences, and they use their preferences to create their own style.
23:43In photography, it'd be my own look. In content creation, it'd be my own voice. Right?
23:48Right now, especially in the business creator educational space, we have a disgusting problem where everybody looks like one character, and they're all copying this one character.
24:01And that's because there's a lot of great success that has happened there. But the problem is is then you will always be number two at best. And so what I would encourage people to do is in the beginning, look at the top dogs and replicate.
24:13But very quickly, you wanna start looking at success outside of your niche. You're still wanting to have ideas informed by data.
24:22I I I'm not encouraging people to just like come up with subjective calls in a corner office and be like, this is gonna be great. Like, no, you want proof that this is gonna be a great video for example, but you should get that proof outside of your industry so that you can look different than everyone in your industry.
24:39Because the reason why we're making content is to stand out. And if we're doing it to stand out, but we replicate and look like everyone, we're defeating our purpose.
24:48What other spaces or industries are you inspired by? The first one that comes to mind always is video games. I think, like, if we talk, like, YouTube, for example, if we're getting granular for a second, YouTube packaging.
24:59I love looking at the video game space. I think they do an incredible job. I think tech review channels, car review channels.
25:05I was actually just having a conversation around this where and I please forgive me. I can't remember the industry.
25:11But he was saying, you know what's so funny is in my space, no one has ever considered doing a tier list video. Like, I think it was they were in HR, and they were literally just talking about different HR programs or whatever.
25:24But by doing a tier list, they're identifying these different programs that they use that they think are the best or whatever, but it's it's borrowing a format that they know works for many different industries. They haven't seen it done in theirs.
25:37They do it. It was like a two or three x multiplier for them. That's what I'm talking about in borrowing from other industries.
25:43Another one that I really like is there's like an emerging trend right now of these comfort creators. They're they're more like, you know, doing these like new style of vlogs that are emerging that you've probably seen.
25:56What do you mean by comfort creators? So we've been in the day and age where a lot of people yell at you telling how wrong what you're doing right now is and how you need to change and be this certain way or whatever. And comfort creators are kind of the answer to that.
26:11Think I a lot of people got tired of being yelled at or being told what they're doing is wrong, blah blah blah. And so these are individuals that are still giving advice, but in a softer tone way, and they're more appealing to the lifestyle of the individual.
26:24And I'm not saying that you need to take the messaging from their content, but the way they're packaging it, I think, is very unique and very different and is an answer to what I would call a slight oversaturation of, like, hard ass kind of content.
26:40We could probably all relate to this. There's a lot of creators that we consume on different platforms. Right?
26:46Yeah. Like, the team that you have here. Like, we all consume on the different platforms.
26:49Mhmm. And there's a lot of creators that we are not subscribed to. We do not follow.
26:54It shows up in our feed. We consume it, but we could not tell you what their name is right now. Yeah.
26:59There's no brand. No. Right?
27:03And I believe that is the case because we live in a world right now where all these content gurus and fucking assholes are telling people to just download the transcript and then make it for themselves. Yeah.
27:15AKA don't have an actual opinion on anything. Mhmm. Just regurgitate what you're hearing.
27:20Yeah. Just information, AKA the commodity. This is the only thing that everybody can do.
27:24Right? And so I believe that the best thing that you can do is figure out what do I believe about my industry or the world that is different than everybody else. I've already shared it at least five times in this podcast, mine.
27:37Right? I haven't said it directly, but I've alluded to it. My belief, my contrarian view is I think personal brand should be built off of trust and optimizing around trust, not virality.
27:48The majority of the industry talks about going viral. All of them. And that's great.
27:52Uh, to be clear, there's nothing wrong with going viral, but I think optimizing around it is the problem. And so that's my contrarian belief, and I think it's the only reason why we're having, you know, a semblance of some success on YouTube, Instagram, whatever, Is it's not because people wanna hear me talk.
28:09That's definitely not it. It's that they're seeing, oh, wow. There is a wildly different take than what everybody else in the industry is saying.
28:15I'll I'll share. I am not a life philosophy person, and nobody should take life advice from me. But my philosophy for life is and I I figured this out really early on, uh, because I have a lot of disadvantages.
28:28A lot of people would probably assume differently, but disadvantages. Yeah.
28:32And I quickly learned that in jujitsu, there's this saying which is you roll, then I roll. You roll, then I roll.
28:42Whatever you give me, I'm gonna use as my advantage. Whatever you identify right now as your disadvantage can be the very thing you lean into as your greatest advantage.
28:53My massive, like, brutal level of insecurity of being in front of the camera right now Mhmm. Like this, I decided to lean into that and making content.
29:03I'm gonna share that with everybody. And I'm gonna be very like, anytime we're filming and I feel like I look fat on camera, boom.
29:10I'm gonna call it out. Yeah. Right?
29:12Like, I'm going to lean into the thing that could be a disadvantage for me and I'm gonna turn it into my greatest asset. And one of the things that we're starting to notice is like people are resonating not only with the content we're putting out but like and this sounds so weird to say about myself.
29:27So please hear this through a humble tone. But they're resonating with me, the human. Totally.
29:32As like a good human that they can relate to. Yeah. And the the comment that I'm getting a lot right now is like accessibility and relatability.
29:40And I think Yeah. It's because I'm leaning into what could be viewed as a disadvantage.
29:46The more in my content right now that I put out who I am, my quirks, my isms, all of it, I think that is my competitive advantage. And I think that's what a lot of people's competitive advantage is.
29:57So as we're going through this time where I think people are starting to realize, like, goddamn, I've been fake as fuck online. It's time to really lean into the real you
30:08because that's not something that is gonna be replicated. Yeah. And that's a way that you can build trust.
30:13You talk about that brands and people with personal brands should think about scaling trust. So can you go a little bit deeper into that and talk to us about how can someone scale trust and why is that so important? Trust is the, uh,
30:27the currency that proceeds the transaction. You need trust before a purchase is made. Now trust, you know, looks different.
30:34Right? Like, you bought this liquid death because you trusted at some level that it'd be good. Right?
30:39Like, that it just works that way across the board. Um, if we're talking within the the space of, like, educational creators, that's that's what I'll speak to in in scaling trust here.
30:51What I like to do is a lot of people will say, like, what do I make my content on? And what you wanna do is you wanna share w's that you've had with clients, customers, whatever. Okay?
31:01And what you do is you just share case studies, but in a modern way. The majority of the content that I've worked on for other people for the last five years, 99% of it is just case studies.
31:14That's all it actually is. It's breaking down. We did this and got this result, whether it's for us or for a client or a company that we own.
31:22Right? And so by doing that, what you do is you start to pair yourself with those success outcomes, thus creating the brand.
31:32Okay? And when that happens, your audience starts to trust you more. When your audience starts to trust you more, they stop just hearing you, and they start taking action on what you say.
31:43When they take action, if you're good, they're gonna get the good results. And then they go from associating you with success outcomes to associating you with their success outcomes, and their trust in what you have to say goes through the roof.
31:58They've seen time and time again that they get more back than what they invested with you.
32:06And so when you make them aware of an offer that you have, it's a no fucking bringer for them. Right? Like, I would argue if you guys put out a really long form piece that everything that you guys teach behind a paywall, you put it out for free, you would have more people sign up,
32:27not less. The final lie, and we're talking about the five worst lies creators and business owners still believe about content is I need to go viral for my brand to grow. Super not the case.
32:36Uh, again,
32:38I I don't want this to come across like I am antivirality. Obviously, that can be very, very good.
32:45What I am anti is having that be your North Star that you optimize around. The people that I know that optimize around that actually, I'll I'll give an example here.
32:57If you have a creator who has been going viral on their own content for a very long time and then they go into the world of educating people on how to go viral. Right? It is my opinion that what got them the virality is not going to get them the trust as an educator.
33:15If Billie Eilish tomorrow was like, Caleb, I will teach you how to be an incredible musician. You gotta pay me x amount. I have zero belief that she's a good teacher.
33:27I think she's a great executor, but the difference between a great executor and a great teacher is like or sorry, massive.
33:35It's huge. And so what happens is in these instances, because you called it up at the top, there's a ton of people that are doing this right now.
33:44They go viral and now they're teaching people. The problem a lot of them find themselves in is the content that is necessary to make and put out to build trust in them as an educator isn't gonna go viral.
33:58Mhmm. They've set this bar now for themselves that they always have to hit that, but that's not gonna convert.
34:05And so I think for a lot of people I mean, we I'm sure you have met plenty of these people that have one viral pop and now suddenly they're just trying to recreate that.
34:17Yeah. And that is the completely wrong strategy. Right?
34:20Like that that is the worst thing that you can do. The best thing that you can do if you have your fifteen seconds of fame is not keep trying to go wide, but actually go deep with the people that came in and earned their attention. How would you do that?
34:34I mean, what what niche are we in? Like, is it, you know This is how you would follow-up on a viral video, which is a question that comes in. I had a breakout video.
34:42What do I do next? Yeah. What is your offer?
34:46I would start talking about that. I would just I I would just do what I'm doing. I would just give away all the game on how to do what your offer accomplishes without ever engaging with you.
34:58By doing this, you increase trust. Right? Like, you guys have an extremely trusted brand.
35:04I search for anything having to do with video and y'all are gonna show up whether it's on the main page or I click on a video, you guys are suggested like everywhere. Right?
35:14Yeah. You've built a lot of trust in that. So then I have a high likelihood of believing that your offer is gonna provide me even more value.
35:22And so that's what I would do if you're if you have a viral video. But the thing is is virality is not bad. Trying to optimize around virality in an educational space is the wrong thing to optimize around.
35:34You wanna optimize around trust. It's not virality that'll convert. It's trust.
35:38Trust is what proceeds the transaction, not virality. It's everything. It makes everything move way faster and smoother in business, both on the front end and the back end.
35:48That means customer acquisition and talent acquisition. And so ultimately, if we are trying to scale trust and we believe that branding is the intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently, which then creates the byproduct brand when the audience inherently associates those things together, then what we're wanting to do with our educational content in the beginning is we want to intentionally pair our brand with success stories.
36:16If you're making educational content, you should probably have clients, customers, community members, whatever that have had success off of what you're sharing. And so what you want to do is your volume, your percentage of content should be overwhelmingly case studies, customer testimonial stories, but not in the boring way that lives three tabs deep on your website that nobody watches in a 2025 contextual way.
36:38So what you wanna do is you wanna share those stories. And what happens is as you do that consistently, your audience will start to associate you with those success stories.
36:49And the cool thing that happens there is then they begin to trust what you have to say more. And they go from just passively consuming what you're saying to starting to take action. Education is actually occurring because they're changing their actions.
37:02They're no longer doing things the same. And when they do that, they're going to start to get the results.
37:08Their desired outcome starts to occur. And when that happens, the intentional pairing changes.
37:15They no longer associate you with general success. They start to associate you with their success. And when they associate you with their success, they trust you an immense amount.
37:26And what they start to realize is, wow. I get so much more in return for what I invest. Whenever Jay says something, I'm investing my time in consuming it, acting on it, and look at the outcome I get.
37:42So then the moment that you make your audience aware of an offer you have, they have an incredible belief that what you're offering is going to give them far more than what they invest in it.
37:54And so you're essentially teaching your audience, hey, when I say something, you get far more value acting on it than what you invest.
38:04All of a sudden, now your team is no longer trying to do this, like, woo woo mysticism in making content. It's like, okay. Cool.
38:10If we're making educational content, our whole goal is how do we make it easier for the audience to change what they do after consuming this piece of content? There's a lot of people right now that are making what I would call commodity videos. They're getting millions of views on YouTube and TikTok.
38:26Millions. Tons. They're not building a strong brand though.
38:31Because the moment that the platform algo changes and no longer serves those clips, nobody's looking for their username. Yeah.
38:37And that's a strong statement, I know. But, like, there's a difference between virality and a strong brand.
38:44They aren't mutually exclusive, but they do not mean the same thing. And I think a lot of people right now are really hot on getting millions of views. But have they built that connection with their audience to where, like, their audience will search them out?
38:58Or is it just convenient because it's showing up in their feed?
39:02Who had another question over here? So you say to package, uh, your content with something that you love, but what about package it with something that you're maybe doing a journey of, like, a seventy five day hard or,
39:16uh, training for a marathon or something like that? Do you think that would still work the same? I love doing it.
39:23Here's the key. I think a lot of people and actually I'm so glad that you said this so I can clarify. A lot of people may hear what we're talking about here and think they need to make an entire piece of content on their interest.
39:34The big thing that we're talking about here is injecting the interest into the content. So I have a ratio that I talk about that I think a lot of you should do. 75% of your content should be deep content.
39:4420% should be niche wide. 5% should be personal. But it's not that 5% needs to be a solo piece about it.
39:51It's just that you're injecting it. So for example, whatever you're teaching or educating your audience on, I think that absolutely could happen vlog style, Casey Neistat style throughout your day as you do 75 hard. If you guys study Casey Neistat, if any of you do like vlog style content, I really recommend looking at Casey through this lens.
40:13What a lot of people don't realize is Casey is communicating one core message throughout his whole video. But it takes place when he's in his office, then he goes for a run, then he's at a meeting, then he's, you know, in the back of a cab or something like that.
40:28Right? Traditional vlogging would just have all of those be their own moments, but the best version is taking the one core message or problem that you're helping people solve and carrying that throughout your day.
40:39And if 75 hard is something you're doing, then when you're going rucking or whatever, you could be having a a, you know, an Osmo camera and do a selfie moment like that. That could be something very interesting. I love things like that.
40:51Niche wide is it's going to service my ideal customer and customer adjacent individuals.
40:57Let me give you an example. The content the video that I mentioned earlier, if you struggle with making content, please watch this. That is a niche wide video.
41:06All of my ideal customers struggle with this. I'm talking like the big dog CEOs that are making the big videos that are getting millions of views, they struggle with making content.
41:17And so the video serves them, but it also serves a much wider person in my niche. It also serves the dad and mom who are posting photos for their friends of their family and they're afraid about that.
41:31And so it's it's clearly gonna serve my ideal customer, but it also serves more people within that niche that maybe aren't gonna be customers right now, but I want them in my world for when they will be. Does that make sense? It was a great question.
41:44Thank you.
41:46Can we talk about how long it takes to build a brand though? Because people might see that you put out this six and a half hour course and say, got 200,000 views in a few months.
42:00It happened so quickly for you. But the only way you were able to put out that video is if you spend sixteen years working with other people and learning brand. So can you talk about
42:11the process and how long it actually takes to build a successful brand? I can't give you a timeline because it's gonna be very dependent on so many different factors. Sure.
42:19But what I do tell people, and this will probably sound kinda shocking, is I say enter this game not expecting any economic outcomes that you desire for the first thirty six months. You will have the proper expectations to stomach the ups and downs because what will happen for the majority of people here is they will get nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
42:39One thing will pop, and then it'll again be nothing, nothing, nothing. And that's where people get fucked. Yeah.
42:47And so, like, if you go into it saying, I'm gonna do this for three years and I don't need anything from it, that's when you win. That's how we entered this.
42:56I could never have imagined that we would have I think it's like '21, 22,000 subscribers on YouTube off of three videos, and we released our last one a week ago.
43:08So four videos. The fourth one has only been up for a week. Like, 22,000 like, that's fucking absurd.
43:14And I didn't go in with those expectations at all because I knew if I did, I'd give up immediately. I actually I'll give you my move, and you can borrow it if you like.
43:26I did this back when I competed in powerlifting. I do it in everything. I set my expectations ridiculously low.
43:33So, like, when we were doing the course, like, I spent probably $16.17 grand on putting that together.
43:41I was literally stoked if we would have gotten a thousand views in the first month. And I told Trevor, I told my girlfriend, Kat, I told everybody in my life. I just want a thousand views.
43:52That's it. And I think that if you do that now the caveat is is I'm a highly ambitious person.
44:00So I think that's the tension that you need. If you're lazy as fuck, that is a terrible way to approach it for sure. But if you are the ambitious person, I would argue sometimes potentially sandbagging your expectations can be very helpful.
44:12And it sets you up to win. Yeah. Because it it blows your expectation out the water if you're like, yo, we're just gonna do this, we're gonna do this awesome thing, we're gonna let the market decide and then like not let it hurt your feelings.
44:22Because I think specifically when we're starting out in like a creative journeys, when you put so much time and effort into something and the market decides that it it it just didn't go off or for whatever reason you post the wrong time, your thumbnail sucked, your hook wasn't there, you're like, you get so down on yourself and it's so easy to let those thoughts creep in like, man, am I am I not good at this, you know, what's the reason this thing isn't performing well and when you lower those expectations, something I I need to practice more of because I get I get like very excited.
44:51And it's easy because you're very fired up about the things that you do and you put your time into and you're like, this time is so valuable now especially now that you run your own thing, it becomes exponentially easier to flip that and say, you know, I put so much time and effort into this, I've quit my job, I'm doing this damn thing, I know this information is solid, why the fuck did this not get more than x?
45:10And I think that's a really good way that you're looking at it. It's not having the audacity to assume that people should listen to my shit. Yeah.
45:17I don't care how much effort I put into it. Effort means nothing to them.
45:21That's the reality. Like, it sounds impressive for a second, but it's like, who gives a fuck what my effort was?
45:28Right? And so I always it like, if that course would have gotten 200 views, I would have been like, okay.
45:37Cool. I did not do a good job. Plain and simple.
45:41Now I wouldn't beat myself up for it. The the other thing that I would say to to add a little bit of a depth to it is do this strategically.
45:50Meaning, we just released a video last Friday, two hours on how to lead a media team. The TAM is tiny. The the audience that is that is relevant to is like, yeah, zero.
46:04Right? So I don't expect it to perform like the first three videos.
46:09I wasn't gonna say zero. I was saying smaller. But I didn't think it was zero.
46:12But smaller group for sure. Yeah. You're like CMOs at companies.
46:15Right. Yeah. Which is basically zero if you look at the population on YouTube.
46:18Right? Like, it's like, it's so small,
46:21and the likelihood that that's gonna catch on is low. So, again, what I like to do, we're going really deep on this, but I would set up other metrics or ways to define winning.
46:34So for us, when Trevor and I were releasing this video, I was like, I'm going to measure the success of this video based on the DMs that I get and the caliber of people that reach out to me. If I get a bunch of creative directors that are leading the teams for all these personal brands being like, dude, this was fucking fire, win.
46:51I don't care how many views. So I believe that typically, again, in the educational space, you're either playing a width or depth game with every piece you put out.
47:02I would argue the reason why most people are not successful is because they try to do both. Define which one you're trying to accomplish and then measure against that. If it's a depth play, don't look at the ranking.
47:14Don't look at the views. That's not the game you were playing on that. So we've built the foundation for your personal brand.
47:20Now, it is finally time to learn about content strategy. Click here to watch.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

After seventeen years behind the biggest personal brands in business, Caleb Ralston has a blunt opener: the thing you think is the problem — your content — is almost certainly not the problem. The foundation is. This conversation is a systematic teardown of every assumption most creators are optimizing around.

CTA Breakdown

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