In this episode of Talk Marketing Made Easy, John sits down with Brenden Kumarasamy of MasterTalk. Brenden explains how he grew his YouTube channel, and he provides listeners with tips and exercises on how to improve their public speaking skills.
John McDougall: Welcome. This is John McDougall with Talk Marketing Made Easy. And I’m here today with Brenden Kumarasamy and he is the founder of rockstarcommunicator.com and has a popular YouTube channel and has a lot of public speaking tips. And welcome, Brenden.
Brenden Kumarasamy: Hey, John. The pleasure is absolutely mine. Thanks for having me.
Effective Public Speaking
John: So share some things that contribute to effective public speaking that might even seem counterintuitive.
Brenden: Yeah, for sure. It’s a fascinating question. I think for me, the biggest thing is don’t focus on the fear. That’s very counterintuitive. A lot of people, when they think about communication, the first thought is, “Hey, you need to be scared of this.” Well, who said that? Who said that? We need to be scared of this? Why are we wired to think that way?
So for me, the question has always been a very different one, which is how would your life change if you became an exceptional communicator? Communication helps your life, John. It’s not just about getting a raise at work, building a company. It’s the way you raise your children. It’s the way you talk to your family and the way you make new friends. So I’d start there.
Dealing With Nerves When Making YouTube Videos
John: Yeah. And what about YouTube specifically? It can be nerve-wracking launching a YouTube challenge and putting your face out there and putting your voice out there. How do you deal with that?
Brenden: Yeah, for sure. I had a lot of insecurity around that when I started my YouTube channel. Just to list them off really quickly. Number one, I grew up in a city called Montreal where I’m still based in John. And for those who don’t know, Montreal is a city where you need to know how to speak French. And French is a language I didn’t know, but I studied my whole life in the French education system.
So growing up as a kid, every time I would go up to give a presentation in grade one or grade two, I would look at the crowd and go “Bonjour,” because I didn’t know the language. So I was really stressed out around communication. That’s one. Two is I have a crooked left arm of a physical disability in my left arm because of a surgery I had when I was younger.
So whenever I present, people always look at my arm, they don’t look at my face. So it always bothers me whenever I talk, even today. And then the third piece is you would think that a communication expert studied in communication. I got a bachelor’s degree in accounting, so literally the opposite of what you would think.
So for me, and obviously added to the fact that I was a 22-year-old kid when I started MasterTalk and I posted my first video in 2019, I was really nervous around communication. So for me, what got me through that was the most important one is to focus on who are we trying to serve? Even if my clientele today are execs and CEOs, and I love them to shreds, the main reason I started MasterTalk, John, was for the seven-year-old girl who cannot afford a communication coach and lives in a Third World country. What do we do for that person? And I realized that nobody was doing anything for him. So I pressed record.
John: Nice. So you got out there, there and now you enjoy it. It’s a pattern that you like, the process.
Brenden: Absolutely. I mean now it’s a passion. I love it. But to your point, the zero to one is way harder than the one to 100. And getting started is really I think the challenge for most of us.
Public Speaking Exercises
John: There’s a video that you made, I haven’t gone through the whole thing, the exercises, but can you share some public speaking exercises and that process that you have on your YouTube channel?
Brenden: Yeah, absolutely, John. So for me, communication is like juggling 18 balls at the same time. So one of those balls is eye contact. One of them is facial expressions, body language, storytelling, and the list goes on. But as you could tell, it gets really overwhelming. You’re like, “Oh my God, there’s so many things I have to keep in mind.” So for me, the question has always been, what are the three easiest balls to juggle in the air? And I’ll just give you one at the beginning then if you want the other ones I’m happy to talk about.
But the first ball is just the random word exercise. Pick a random word like light bulb, like guitar, like ceiling, like rooftop, and create random presentations out of thin air. And do this five times a day. Just pick like soap, give a 60 second presentation. Pick tissue box, give a 60 second presentation. And this serves two purposes. The first one, it helps you deal with uncertainty because life is filled with it, John. When you go meet somebody new at a party, you don’t know how that conversation’s going to go. And number two is if you can make sense out of nonsense, you can make sense out of anything.
How Often Should You Practice Public Speaking Exercises?
John: Nice. So how often should people be practicing and doing exercises for improving their public speaking and communication skills?
Brenden: So for me, the recommended intake is to keep this as simple as possible. James Clear calls us the two-minute rule. So for me it’s just a little bit higher. Five minutes a day keeps the doctor, at least for me, away. So for me, the key is really just going, in your shower, all of us got 5… Hopefully everyone showers every day, those who are listening to podcasts. You have 5 minutes in there, you’re not doing anything. So just pick shampoo, pick soap, pick sink, and just do five random word exercises. And if you do that for a month, John, you’ll have done it 150 minutes. Isn’t that mind-boggling if you do something for a small thing for an extended period of time?
John: Repetition, yeah.
Brenden: Exactly.
John: Atomic habits.
Brenden: There you go.
John: Is James Clear the author of Atomic Habits? Is that what I’m…
Brenden: That’s correct, absolutely.
Example of a Word Exercise
John: Yeah, yeah. I listened recently, last year to that. I think I have to listen again. And some books that I listen to on audible, I’ll listen at two times speed and get the gist of it. But then if I really like it, then I’ll go buy the book and even listen again. So what does that sound like? Can you do a word exercise real quick?
Brenden: Absolutely.
John: So how’s it go? Like microphone, take me with microphone.
Brenden: Don’t do microphone, it’s too easy for me. It’s too too easy. Make it harder. Actually, I’ll challenge you to even, so now people know I’m not cheating.
John: Platypus.
Brenden: Platypus. Can you give me a definition? Isn’t that animal with the big beak? Is that what’s a Platypus?
John: Yeah.
Brenden: Okay, cool. So I clearly don’t know much about platypus, but watch me do the random word exercise right now. Ever since I was a kid, John, my dream was always to go to the zoo. But my parents would never take me there until one day I pushed them so hard that eventually I got to go. And what’s so interesting about the zoo, John, is you get to see so many different types of animals. Lions, platypuses, koala bears, polar bears in some cases, depending on which zoo you go to, probably not the one I was going to.
Lions, and so cool about nature. And the reason I bring this up is you might not see a platypus or a lion in the wild, probably only in the zoo, but it pays for us to go outside of our comfort zone. What if we took that extra step, John, to just say, maybe it’s not a platypus today, but I should probably go explore the thing that I don’t want to see right now. The dream that I don’t want to accomplish.
And for me, the dream was to go to a zoo, but for you it might be to raise a family, it might be to go to a rock concert for the first time. It might be going to Antarctica. Even if all of your friends are calling you crazy. And I say, “Hey, why don’t you pursue that dream like platypuses would too.” There you go, just random.
Improving Communication About the Unexpected
John: Nice. That’s awesome. So it’s good storytelling exercise as well, right?
Brenden: Absolutely. The key is just to do it. I think that’s the key. Even me, honestly, I’ve done the random word exercise probably 3000 times at this point in my career, and I want to make sure people hear that number, 3000 times, not three times. But platypus is probably the hardest one. Because I actually don’t even remember what that is.
John: You nailed it. No, it’s a good question. If they’re actually in a zoo but how else could you phrase it? You’d have to assume that they’ve, they’ve got to be somewhere.
Brenden: That’s the key.
John: That’s cool. I’m going to try that. I’m definitely going to try that. So you’re building your muscle of being able to communicate better on things that are a little unexpected even.
Brenden: Exactly. It’s kind of like going to the gym. When we go there the first time, we’re thinking about all these things that don’t matter, calorie counting, “Oh, what’s my workout routine? What’s my regimen? What’s my exercises?” And the guy’s just looking at you or the gals just looking at you and going, are you walking 15 minutes a day?
It’s like, “Well, no. How is that important?” “Well, yeah, you should start there. Let’s step number one.” So in the same way, communication and the random word exercise is step number one for us.
How to Captivate a YouTube Audience
John: And what about in terms of captivating a YouTube audience instead of just being a little on the boring side or matter of fact content. How can you be a little more enchanting on YouTube?
Brenden: For sure, John. So let me start with this. You’re going to suck on YouTube at the beginning. There’s no way around it. Every great creator was terrible on YouTube. So good advice that I got from Jade Mac Garma is she said that your first year on YouTube, you should write off. In other words, if you don’t plan on being on the platform for at least five years, you shouldn’t start a YouTube channel.
So let me start there, because it took me two and a half years just to get to 10,000. So it was a grind. And most of those 10,000 subscribers were one-on-one conversations. I would close people to subscribe to my YouTube.
That’s how insane I was. So for me, that’s where I begin. The first year you write off, people can go see my first videos, they’re terrible. I leave them up on purpose. I’m just literally on my mother’s couch in a basement with the phone because I have no money at that point. And I’m just going, “Hey guys, I have this idea for MasterTalk.” I was terrible. So we start there.
Then the other piece is implementing a framework that I use and I teach clients called QIT, John, QIT. What does that mean? Q stands for questions. So when I got started, once again, I didn’t even have a business, I would just sit down with my university pals that I coached for free for years.
And I said, “Hey guys, I have this idea for a YouTube channel. I don’t know where this is going to go. I’m going to call it MasterTalk.” Like, “Oh cool name.” And I was like, “Yeah, whatever. What questions do you think I should be answering on this YouTube channel?” So they would start giving me questions. One example, “Brenden, how do I present in a second language?” Ah, that’s a smart question.” Nobody’s answered that on YouTube. I’ll be the first one. “What else?” So I would sit there over dinner eating dumplings that we bought for $10 and I’ll just write all those questions’ down. Is that good so far?
Questions, Insights, and Titles
John: Yeah.
Brenden: Awesome. Now let’s go to I. So I stands for insights. So what I did, I wasn’t perfect, I still don’t have all the answers today. Obviously I have a lot more today, but when I started I definitely didn’t have the answers. So I would sit there outside of my corporate job and I would book 90 minutes on my schedule, probably three to four times a week.
And I would just sit there and chew on the question, John. I would open a Word document on Microsoft or Mac, whatever the equivalent is, and I would just type out what my answer would be.
“Oh, well, if I was presenting the second language, because I’m fluent in French and Tamil, I would probably present with my first language first, write that out. Then I would translate it and then I would…” So notice how I’m not sure as I’m communicating this, that’s who I was. And you’re writing that down. That’s insights, I.
And then T is simply titles. How do you title the video so that obviously the obvious title is how to present in a second language, and that’s QIT and that’s how we crushed it on YouTube.
John: Nice. Yeah. So again, that was questions, was it insights?
Brenden: Yes, absolutely.
John: And what’s the third one?
Brenden: Titles. So titles just means-
John: Titles right.
Brenden: What’s a title that encompasses the question? Don’t overthink this. For example, “I’m scared of communication. What do I do?” How to overcome your fear of public speaking. So because I did it that way with the thumbnails, whenever somebody would visit my channel, because the algorithm definitely didn’t save me until I hit 10,000, honestly.
So a lot of my early users were people locally that I had already won over, and those were the people who grew my YouTube following. And they would go to my library and say, “Oh, well I need the answer to that question. Oh, I need to know how to speak more concisely.” And I grew really quickly because of it.
Using YouTube to Grow Your Audience
John: Nice. That’s awesome. And how can speakers and presenters use YouTube to grow their audience?
Brenden: Right. So let me start by saying who YouTube is for and who it isn’t. If you’re someone who just wants to get likes and impressions short term, I highly recommend you go away from YouTube because YouTube ain’t going to do anything for you.
YouTube’s the main piece where the ROI is really in the later stages of your career. So now I’m at year four of YouTube, I’ve invested over $30,000 in my channel. Out of my own money, at a loss. And it’s only starting in the last six months that now I’m getting a really high ROI for YouTube. So for me it starts with the mission. And this is why I believe YouTube is the most powerful platform. If your goal is to impact millions of lives, for the simple idea that people don’t catch, John, that YouTube has created the most amount of famous people out of all of the platforms.
So for example, if I told you who got famous off Instagram, it’s really hard to come up with somebody. You’d think and go, “Well, I’m not sure, I guess…” Then you’d name a famous actor. But then I’d counter and say, “But they didn’t get famous because of Instagram. They got famous because they got into movies and then they went on Instagram.” LinkedIn, you have trouble coming up. I don’t really know anyone who just got off famous Instagram, maybe Heather, but nobody even knows who that is. Shay Rowbottom, these words, nobody knows who this person is. Only I do because I’m on LinkedIn.
Then you think about TikTok, yeah, Charli D’Amelio, Dixie D’Amelio, a couple of them, but it’s not like a massive list. But when you get to YouTube, the list is very long. You can go forever, Casey Neistat, Dude Perfect, MrBeast, PewDiePie, you can do this forever.
520 Rule on YouTube
John: Justin Bieber, early examples. Hey, he did it, man. He’s driving Lambos and he started I guess a talented singer, but without YouTube, who knows?
Brenden: Correct. That’s why my philosophy from day one on YouTube was even if I don’t get subscribers and I have to pull each one individually, it’s very important that I am successful on this platform or else people won’t perceive me as a thought leader, I won’t be able to elevate my personal brand. And of course my thesis paid off.
But the point that I want to drive is a rule that I teach called the 520 Rule. So the 520 rule is really simple, John, and it’s simple advice, just something people don’t want to hear. And I had this mindset when I was 22 years old, imagine. So I thought to myself, and I said, when I’m 32, how do I win on YouTube at a guaranteed rate? I said, wait a second. If I post one high quality video, which I’ve done every single week for the next 10 years, I’ll win on YouTube. And 52 weeks times 10 years is 520. So just come with 520 videos and you’ll win On YouTube.
John: Nice, 520 rule. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. With SEO we try to get people to about 520 pages. 500 pages. But when you get to two, 300 pages on a website or 500 pages, it makes a big difference. And when you study writing, like authors like that, write novels and things like that, the number one thing they say is that it’s consistency.
Even if you have a full-time job, if you get up and write 15 minutes every day for the rest of your life, you could write hundreds of novels. So I think that’s what you’re saying is, even if it’s only one video a week, that’s still 52 a year times 10 years, you get 500 videos, you’ve got a channel.
Importance of High Quality Videos
Brenden: Oh, yeah. And even that once a week is very hard to do on YouTube because you’ve got to get the thumbnail right. You got to have really high qual… You can’t just post, this is a mistake lot of podcasters actually make
John: Yeah, it’s changed, I think. YouTube’s more intense now.
Brenden: Oh, yeah. YouTube is like the NBA. So when a podcaster asks me for advice, I always go, “The worst thing you could do is to copy paste an intro. You’re competing against Lewis Howes, Lex Friedman and guys who have full in-person studios. The person on YouTube would rather watch that video than watch a Zoom call to people. You can’t compete.”
Posting Podcasts on YouTube
John: Right, yeah. That is a big thing that I’ve been talking about on this podcast. How do people see YouTube as the outlet for podcasts? Because it is more popular than Apple Podcasts for podcasts. But like you said, if you’re not Lewis Howes or Joe Rogan or whoever talking to Elon Musk or Zuckerberg or something. Will people really want to see the Zoom meeting or this type of thing in full?
So one way that I’m seeing some people do it is like I have a separate clips channel that I just started. So I’m not overwhelming people with clips if I want to do lots of them. And some people could make a separate channel just for the podcast and put the whole thing. But what I’ve been doing lately is making summaries, eight minute summaries of interviews like this. So what do you think with your podcast on your YouTube channel? Do you take clips from it or make summaries, or do you just do all custom videos?
Brenden: Right. So there’s two perspectives here. Great question John one, I actually don’t have a podcast for that reason because in my head I was like, “Eh, I don’t want to compete against the big guys. I don’t think I could be number one in the world.” And I definitely didn’t want to do an interview show in person, which is the first way out.
You don’t need to interview Elon Musk, which is having that in-person footage makes people want to watch it more. Which is tough because not everyone can coordinate that type of thing because you got to schedule the guest in. Oftentimes if you’re getting A-listers on your show, you have to fly them out and pay all the accommodations. That’s what you see in the space… By the way, nobody talks about this. This is why you say in the space, most of the people who have really established podcasts in person are already wealthy.
So Ed Mylett is a great example. Andy Frisella is a great example of this. Lewis Lex, he made a lot of his money in ML and AI, so that’s why they have the cash to do this in person. So that’s one piece. The other piece, which is the cost-effective way to get out of this scenario, it’s still going to cost you money. Like I said, it’s cost me 30 grand, but it’s a lot less expensive than an in-person studio, which is you do solo episodes that are well produced.
And that could be on a range of topics. That could be just you saying, “Hey, these are the three lessons I learned from this guest.” But it’s really well produced, it’s not on Zoom call. Some guy’s filming you and it looks clean. And the other way to do this, or just you sharing knowledge. And if you follow the second path, you can just funnel people into the podcast. Ali Abdaal did that really well.
John: Yeah, he’s great. He’s great. I’ve watched his YouTube channel a bit. He’s really cool. Think Media has a podcast, do you know those guys?
Brenden: Yeah, of course, John.
Public Speaking Mistakes to Avoid on YouTube
John: Yeah. Really cool, Sean Cannella, got the YouTube Secrets back there on the shelf. But I just saw that yesterday, I was looking at the Think Media podcast channel, separate channel, and I did notice that he’s got a solo thing going, a podcast where it’s more like a traditional YouTube video.
He’s got the mic and he’s talking, but stuff’s flying around and the screen’s changing. His editing team’s going nuts on it versus like you said just popping up a Zoom call. So growing your audience on YouTube, you have to be cautious to also not make mistakes. So what are some of the mistakes you see people doing with public speaking or communicating on YouTube?
Brenden: Okay, with communication, I would say for comms, the biggest mistake on video is that they don’t structure their ideas carefully. So the I part in QIT is really, really important, John. Because I’m writing out the videos, I’m not using a teleprompter or anything when I actually present it, but because my paper is there and I’ve structured all my ideas, that’s why when you watch my videos on YouTube, it comes out really well. I don’t sit there in front of the camera and go, “Huh, let me think about this. I don’t really know.” It comes out really sharp.
And that’s why when you ask a question, I come out really sharp too because I’m trained from YouTube to get to the point. Because if you don’t get to the point, they just click off the video. Versus a podcast, most podcast listeners, if they start an episode, it doesn’t matter how quickly or how slow you go, they’ll generally listen to the whole thing in full.
So it’s a very different type of audience. So I would say really, especially for educational thought leaders, which is my expertise, you want to write out your thoughts in a Word document before you even present in front of a camera and do a YouTube video.
Organizing Your Presentation: Teleprompters and Other Strategies
John: So a little follow-up to that. Some people that are even high level people, I can give one example, Brian Dean, who’s a top SEO guy, he said he prefers to use a teleprompter. Now that’s a surprising thing because we use them sometimes with clients and it’s a little stiff, but I know doing some YouTube stuff myself and feeling like I’m going off on a tangent and watching it later, you’re like, “Oh my God, this has to be tighter.”
It’s tempting. But tell me a little about your process. You don’t use a teleprompter, but you do write a script and then you don’t really use the script you’re saying, if I understand you correctly, you might have bullet points or a whiteboard behind the camera. What’s your process?
Brenden: Absolutely, John. So let me start with this. I’m not against teleprompters, it just doesn’t fit my style per se because I just like being more natural in my delivery. But there’s a lot of successful YouTubers. John Coogan is a great example of this. His videos feel more like documentaries and most of it’s edited.
So you never even noticed the guy’s using a teleprompter. Even when he mentioned it, I was like, “Oh my god, you use a tele. I didn’t even know.” So there’s nothing wrong with that. It just doesn’t fit my style. I just don’t like it personally. So how do we circumvent this? Here’s what I do. I’ll literally walk you through the tiniest of details.
John: Yeah, nice.
Brenden: So I’m sitting in front of my camera guy, he’s got his camera in front of me, and next to it I have a table with a laptop open with the Word document. And it’s my Word document, my structure on YouTube is always the same. I keep it simple because for me it’s consistency and quality of content. I don’t need to be the best YouTuber on the planet. I just do what’s 80% that’ll get me the result. MrBeast crushes me every day of the week. The guy spends six figures just on a thumbnail. Okay, I’m not competing against this guy.
John: Really, yeah.
Brenden: It’s more just the people in my niche, like communication content, I’ll beat most people except maybe Chris Monkman, which I’m cool with. So for me, I look at the Word document and it’s always split into five areas. The intro, part one, part two, part three, and the close.
So intro, point 1, point 2, point 3, and close. Every single one of my YouTube videos either has three points or five points. That’s it. I keep it really simple. So what I do is I read the intro, I turn to my side and I read it and I read it, read it, read it, and I go, “Okay, I’m good.” And then I’ll take it two, three times until I like it. Because I’m good, obviously I have to be good at speaking if I teach communication. So it’s easier.
John: Yeah, yeah. You want good takes.
Multiple Takes to Strengthen the Presentation
Brenden: Yeah. So we film pretty quickly and when I started my first year of YouTube, I actually used to do one-take videos. So if I had missed five minutes in, I’d start all over because I didn’t want to edit any of the videos.
John: Yeah, yeah. Been there. Yep. Yep.
Brenden: So I was too lazy to edit. So I just did one take.? Obviously I have a team and I have the luxury of a forwarding one. So things have changed. So I do take one, John. Then after I go back to the paper and I look at part one, then I go back and I go, “point one is this, blah, blah, blah,” and I talk for two minutes. I missed it the first time I missed it this time, and I get it the third time. Then I go to part two, do the same thing. Part three, same thing, close. And then in 20 minutes we’ve done our YouTube video, we go to the next one.
John: So two or three takes of the intro and three to five points, and then two or three takes of the close and… Yeah, that’s a good process.
Batching Filming and Interviews to Boost Production
Brenden: Then my team will pick the best clip for each part and fill. I have a very high stamina. Even today I have 10 interviews in a row. So my stamina is very, very-
John: Whoa, yeah.
Brenden: Yeah, I’m pretty wild. So I stack them all up.
John: That’s intense.
Brenden: Yeah, it’s pretty intense
John: 10 interviews. Do you stack them all on one day? I hope this isn’t every day, is it?
Brenden: Yeah, not every day, but probably twice a week. Yeah, I did like 300 podcasts last year, but the reason I bring is not to brag or anything.
John: Interesting.
Brenden: It’s just my style. I like meeting new people. It’s fun for me. I don’t really get much business.
John: Yeah, that’s cool, man.
Brenden: But the point that I was driving with the 10… because my stamina is kind of like a Gary V type character that’s more like me. My stamina is really high. So I’ll do 10 YouTube videos in a single day. That’s how we batch content.
Recording Frequency and Target Length for YouTube Videos
John: Yeah, nice. And how long do you shoot for, for your videos?
Brenden: Probably 20 to 25 minutes on average per video. So what we’ll do is we’ll do a nine to five. So I’m lucky my production guy is also my barber, so he’ll cut my hair in the morning.
John: You’ve got to have B roll of that dude.
Brenden: Yeah, we have a couple of that. But he’s awesome. I’m so grateful. My friend is just really talented and I just work with him.
John: So you batch him and you do how many in a day?
Brenden: 10. We’ll do 10 in a day.
John: 10 YouTube videos in a day that are 20, 25 minutes. And then that gets you, what, two and a half months or one a week…
Brenden: Correct.
John: Yeah. So you’re doing it basically quarterly, more or less.
Evergreen YouTube Content
Brenden: Yeah. You got it. But the other part of the strategy, since we’re talking tactics here, is that people don’t know about my channel and why I’ve been so consistent. Because my goal, my thesis on YouTube is I don’t believe in current events content. It’s too hard. It takes too long for me because I’m running a business, so I don’t have time to do both. For me, the mission is just to get the content out for free. So I actually write my scripts years in advance. So I’m currently writing Q4 of 2024.
John: Wow, that’s interesting.
Brenden: So all my scripts this year are already pre-written, already done. Right? Because going back to 520, I’m really seeing, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. That’s why I won. So when I basically, what happened, John, let’s recap.
I’m a 22-year-old kid in my mother’s basement. I have no money. Why did I ever think I could win on YouTube? Very simple. I started watching all of the YouTube channels who were speaking about content and communication. I said, “That’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong.” I found 50 gaps and I was like, “I’m 30 years younger than all of these people. In 10 years they’ll be retired and I’ll be 32. For sure, I’m going to win on YouTube. The only way I don’t win is if I quit.”
John: Yeah. So you’re shooting forever green content largely.
Brenden: A hundred percent of my content is evergreen.
Sharing YouTube Videos on Social
John: A hundred percent, yeah. Do you use a Meet Edgar or something to share and re-share that on social?
Brenden: Yeah, so I don’t use a tool, maybe I should. So my thing’s not perfect.
John: Yeah, check out Meet Edgar because I’m just thinking you have so much evergreen content, it basically shares, but then puts it on a machine gun sharing and re-sharing all your evergreen content-
Brenden: I love that.
John: On a schedule over time anyway, it’s automation.
Brenden: So what will you do, which is similar because a lot of the apps, except for Instagram, already have that schedule tool built in. LinkedIn just released theirs a few months ago. So what we do is we do YouTube once a week then we… But now my YouTube stack is a lot more advanced than it used to be. This is my base stack. So once a week, then we’ll repurpose that.
We post daily on LinkedIn, daily on Instagram and daily on TikTok. And we also now post daily on YouTube. But I want to be clear with what that means. I’m not posting long form content daily on YouTube because that’s way too much. I would burn out really quick. We post YouTube Shorts because what’s interesting about this meta, John, the meta that we’re in right now is you could create one really good short form video like we’ve done with our shorts and you could post them across four platforms and get four times the reach for the same amount of work. So we’ve been posting daily on YouTube Shorts as well.
John: Was just talking to someone, literally that’s the call I was on just before this. We were just talking about that, taking your same YouTube shorts and putting them on Instagram and TikTok.
Brenden: Oh, yeah.
Reposting Shorts and Reels
John: So that’s working well. It’s not duplicate content like SEO would be. You can grab an article from one site and put it on three of your other sites unless you use a new index tag, because you wouldn’t want to piss Google off because of the Panda algorithm. You wouldn’t want them to think it’s duplicate content. But you see good results taking those YouTube Shorts and why not get the extra mileage out of them.
Brenden: Oh yeah, I’ll play it even better, John. I don’t even tell a lot of people this, our strategy to save money, for those of you who have less than $10,000 of budget, I’m in the multi five-figure range now. But for those who are getting started, and I’m super empathetic to that, we actually just created a hundred really good reels.
Not shitty reels, really good reels, but the trick is, is I replay them every three months. So I’ll post once a day for a hundred days, but now I’ll start reposting the same a hundred again in the same order, but nobody realizes it because reel content has a short fuse. So that’s how we’ve saved money and gotten a high ROI in our content.
John: Repost after a hundred days. Yeah, that’s cool. Yep. Yeah, if it’s good evergreen content, then that again is that Meet Edgar thing where it’s like, why not keep sharing and re-sharing content that if it just goes out on social and it’s gone and it’s about how not to be nervous when public speaking. That doesn’t go out of style. People would rather die than do public speaking. So you could share that 50 times in your 10 years.
Brenden: Literally, the only caveat is I need to retake the video every five years. Because I’ll look older since I’m pretty young in this game right now. Obviously when I’m 50 I’ll have to retake or else it would look really weird on social. But other than that, yeah.
John: Nice. Well, it sounds like you’re on a really good path. I like your tips and wish you the best on your journey. It sounds good.
Building a Social Strategy Over Time
Brenden: Thanks brother. Trying our best. Trying our best. I’m still figuring it out. And the point I want to drive here, because I know we went really tactical today, so I pretty much told you my entire stack, but I think the biggest point here is just get really good on one platform.
So I’ve been creating content for four years now, and the first two years was just YouTube, literally just YouTube. My only focus was how do I be really, really good? How do I get to 10,000 on YouTube? That was my only focus. I wasn’t trying to post on Instagram. I only even started doing that in the last six months of my four-year journey.
And then when I got really good on YouTube and I started seeing results and I was like, “Okay, now I’m really good at this and I’ve spent the money and I’ve spent the time. Then let me pick one other platform.” And I chose LinkedIn because a lot of my clients, my prospects are there. So I went there, I studied all the people, got all the help, got really, really strong on LinkedIn.
Now we have a year’s worth of content daily. So now we’ve crushed it on LinkedIn. Then I was like, “Okay, now I’m good on LinkedIn. Now let’s go to Instagram and TikTok.” Because the same content strategy, pretty similar, started making reels. And I’m on four platforms and then this year it might be like Twitter. I’ll add on top of it. I’m still not on all the platforms and that’s okay.
John: Yeah, years back, I took a blogging course, I bought this course from Jon Morrow, Smart Blogger, guy’s brilliant. Brian Clark of Copy Blogger hired him to help, I think he was one of the founders of Copy Blogger, one of the first bloggers that got that going, one of the top copywriting blogs in the world. But anyway, he said the same thing. He’s like, “People try and do everything at once and then nothing.” He’s like, “Just to get one channel to be really successful, a blog or YouTube, it’s going to take time.”
Brenden: He’s right.
MasterTalk on YouTube and RockStarCommunicator.com
John: Yeah. Those are wise words. All right, good. Well, how can people find you, your site and or sites?
Brenden: Absolutely, John, it was such a pleasure to be on the show. Thanks for having me. So two ways to keep in touch. The first one is to check out the YouTube channel. Just go to MasterTalk, in one word. You’ll have access to hundreds of free videos on how to speak.
And the second way to keep in touch is I do a free Zoom call every two weeks, which is a live 90-minute workshop of me speaking live on a Zoom, and it’s absolutely free. So if you want to jump on that, go to rockstarcommunicator.com.
John: That sounds good. Everyone should check out Brenden for communication skills, public speaking tips; and as you can hear, he’s amazing with YouTube and a bunch of different social channels stuff. So thanks again.
Brenden: Thanks, man. Such a pleasure.
John: All right, good. This has been John with Talk Marketing Made Easy. See you next time.