How Regular People Are Making Millions from Social Media

[00:01] change forever, and that's because regular people have figured out how to use content to build generational wealth. And I want to be specific here. I'm not talking about influencers. I'm not talking about professional creators

[00:13] with massive budgets. I'm talking about normal people, regular business owners scale with content without it taking over their life. Now, I've spent the last few months obsessively studying this archetype of content maker. And

[00:28] normal business owners are playing the content game completely differently than So, in this video, I'm going to break down the secret sauce for how they're doing it. These are the six non-obvious principles for how regular people are

[00:43] winning the content game without spending hours making videos. By the I have a million followers. I've done billions of views, and content is all I do all day long. All right, here's non-obvious principle number one. Most

[00:56] people think to win with content, you've got to be everywhere all at once. Every platform, every content type, heavy volume, machine-gunning insights 24/7. But regular people are not playing the content game in this way. They do the

[01:09] exact opposite. Normal people understand they don't have 28 working hours in a day. They accept that building a business and making content is like having two jobs in one. And doing both full-time while balancing their life is

[01:23] unsustainable and will lead to burnout. So, to minimize their effort on content but still maximize their results, they narrow their focus and minimize the set of unknowns. They pick one content type, either short-form or long-form video,

[01:36] one content platform, either Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or YouTube, and they focus obsessively on cracking just that for 6 months in a row. Only when that first content type is figured out and systematized do they pick their head up

[01:49] and look to add something else to the plate. This is one of the secrets for how regular business owners are making millions from social media. They start by doing less on purpose because they know doing more will lead to everything

[02:01] fall into. They study the biggest creators in their industry, see that they're on every single platform across every content type. Stories, posts, short-form video, long-form video, live streams, podcast, Twitter, newsletter,

[02:15] and on and on. And when they see that, they assume they need all that in order to win. But here's the truth. You don't need all that in order to build a To build a hundred million-dollar personal brand, you definitely need to

[02:28] be everywhere all at once. But most real business owners aren't after that. They probably a relief to hear, but it's actually easier to grow bigger when you narrow your focus and only play on one platform at a time. Because by doing

[02:42] this, you get much better, much faster. And this is what the non-professional, regular business owner creator has figured out. Imagine spinning five able to keep all five up, but it's inevitable that the speed those five are

[02:55] rotating will always be slower than the one that you're just hammering every day. Now, personally, I've lived this. I started with just short-form only for loops were tighter, the feedback was faster, and I could compound the

[03:09] learning curve quicker. And I used that as a bedrock to build my content skills to then eventually add long-form later. But I spent literally 12 months on just adding YouTube. The regular business owners that are making millions from

[03:22] social media, they aren't trying to boil the ocean. They focus on one spot obsessively until they crack it. Now, the second most obvious learning I figured out builds on this first point. Because the next logical question is, if

[03:34] I should only focus on one platform, what should it be? Normal business super simple. They just focus on the platform where the highest density of They don't pick the platforms they personally like watching the most. They

[03:48] what the data says. Where does the highest density of my customers live? In other words, they fish where the fish are. If you're a B2B services company, you're not going to have strong lead gen

[04:00] on TikTok. So, don't even worry about spending time there initially. Are your Do you have proof that a high density of than anywhere else? If not, you should completely ignore that platform for now.

[04:13] resources like every business owner does, tradeoffs are a relative game. It's not that zero customers in total spend time on TikTok, but relatively speaking, it's just not the highest leverage place you could be focusing on.

[04:27] should be spending all of your time on either LinkedIn or YouTube, depending on consumer products company, well then TikTok or Instagram might make sense. example. Now, I made another video breaking down every social platform and

[04:42] exactly which business should prioritize playing there. I'll link it below if you want to watch it. But the takeaway is business owners focus solely on the platform where the most of their customers live. That is what you need to

[04:54] do. All right, the third non-obvious learning is about formats. And this one is really interesting. Normal business owners just don't have the time to spend editing these crazy fancy formats. So, what we're seeing is a mass migration

[05:06] from the fancy, heavy visual formats down to the simpler ones. Lots of business owners have found a niche in between the super unedited, rambly, raw yaps and the highly edited, crazy visual cinematic pieces that we typically see.

[05:21] middle. And these types of visual formats take way less time to make but this is happening because we've officially entered the storytelling phase of social media. If you haven't noticed, storytelling formats like

[05:35] first-person point of view, are absolutely outperforming almost anything else on social right now. And this is happening both because of an increase in AI content as well as the commoditization of lower-value

[05:48] educational content. This combo, a shift to storytelling as well as a constraint for bandwidth to edit, has given birth to lower-lift formats that are crushing. I'm talking about things like scenarios, ranking, tier list, three levels. These

[06:01] are lower-lift formats that can be one-shotted and edited fully on an of business owners are winning with right now. Now, if you're someone that format you should go with, I actually built a visual database of all the top

[06:16] 20 formats that we're seeing across educational and storytelling content. out where to experiment and which formats to try. It's completely free. access. All right, non-obvious learning number four is all about how these

[06:29] normal business owners are turning views into dollars. Because them crushing on social media is both about their content systems as well as the monetization playbook they're using. Specifically, how are they so effective at turning

[06:41] probably the most important point in the entire video. Business is actually extremely simple when you boil it down. It's just traffic, funnels, and offers. You got to get someone to know you exist, take that person down a path, and

[06:55] something. Most business owners understand this deeply. And so, before they make content, they focus on dialing in a validated offer with proof. This is critical. Validated offer before content. By doing it in this order, they

[07:11] which platform because they know who their customer is. This results in a much tighter content-offer fit. The truth is, you can figure out how to make content work for almost any offer, but you can't always make any offer work for

[07:25] any audience. So, the takeaway and what all these normal business owners crushing on social media have done is that they built a validated offer first before laying the content rails. Now, most people don't do this because the

[07:37] offer validation part of business is the boring part. They want the dopamine, so they tell themselves, "I'll just build an audience and can figure out the offer later." But from personal experience, this is the wrong order to do things in

[07:49] So, here are the exact tactical steps I recommend for helping build and craft news is, this doesn't actually take that long to do, maybe a couple weeks if you hustle. If you're struggling to figure out who to sell to, start with any

[08:04] domain expertise that you have. If you have unique knowledge about any industry, go to the players in that space, interview them, and try to figure they say, go develop your skill set

[08:16] it. If you have skill set but no domain knowledge, you're going to have to pick some industry and then also go talk to people in that space. So, either way, knowledge about a domain, you're going to need both, and both lead to talking

[08:31] to someone in the industry to figure out what they want. From there, when you willing to give up in order to get that result. Is it money? Is it time? Is it coached, and they'll do the majority of the work. Other times, they want a

[08:45] done-for-you service, and they'll spend no other time on it. Even other times, leave them alone. You need to figure out which delivery model best drives value for them and maps to a lifestyle that you want. People don't talk about this,

[08:59] but business model-lifestyle fit is actually important for the average a done-for-you services agency, well then don't. But there's only so many either charge high, medium, or low, one-time or recurring, and then you

[09:13] either tell the customer what to do, do it for them, give them a tool, or some combination of those three. Those are the three axes of business model construction. Now, once you craft the three combinations of those things that

[09:25] out, you then need to go actually deliver it for real customers to prove that it actually works. This is the validation part. Once you have proof of getting the results you claim, you now have a validated offer. And only then do

[09:39] you start making content because now you know the exact type of customer, what they need, and what they'll pay. This what I just described is how regular people approach business and marketing. It's offer, then content, not the other

[09:51] non-obvious learning for how these normal business owners are winning so big on content is about mindset and expectations. The common wisdom from most business gurus that you'll hear is to think in decades. And the truth is,

[10:04] media doesn't really have the patience for that, but they've still acknowledged they need to play in years instead of weeks. The reason you haven't gotten to where you want to go yet can be most simply explained by just you not having

[10:17] starting to sound a little Hormozi-ish, but he's right about this and it's the truth. Most things we're doing require 1 year to get average, 3 years to get good, and 5 years to get world-class. Now, with AI, those timelines are

[10:30] expect to go from zero to amazing in like 6 weeks. You never expect to learn why do you expect to build a in 6 weeks? The problem is that most people set their expectations for

[10:44] success comparing against somebody who's actually spent 5 years doing the thing under the surface. My point by saying this is that the regular people, the on social media, they've accepted this fact and they jump straight to the

[10:57] looks like a hockey stick for a reason. Never has there ever been an entrepreneur that's been able to go through the flat part of that curve without losing over and over. Once you accept that the notches on the graph of

[11:09] the hockey stick are years instead of weeks, the game becomes a lot easier and the content game is just tricking yourself into not quitting and as soon as you accept this years versus weeks dynamic, things get a lot easier.

[11:21] Another biggest non-obvious learning I had when studying how these regular business owners are printing millions on social media is this. They are all aggressively building content systems. [music] If there's one thing to

[11:33] few years, it is this. Because systems are how you actually free up your time without giving up the result. Let's be really honest. Very few people watching this actually want to spend all day making content. They're the artists, for

[11:47] you want to spend minimum effort on this, get your business to grow, and and the rest of your life. The only way to get off the content treadmill while still getting the results it brings is by building what I call a content

[12:02] these regular business owners have figured out. This is the secret sauce to their success. A content machine is a system that is specifically using data because it has the highest chance of turning views into leads. Essentially,

[12:16] you put time into one side of the factory and cash flow comes out the other. What happens in the middle is content creation. Now, the reason I've personally had so much success with content on every platform I've tried is

[12:28] because I obsessively pursue setting up these content machines. It's the only way I can produce this much output. And here's the playbook that I run every manually learning how to make content at

[12:40] a seven out of 10 quality on whatever that platform is. Then, once I have the foundation, I obsess over reducing the time per rep at a seven out of 10 quality as low as I can go. And this is with a combination of systems, AI

[12:52] workflows, and humans in the loop. Once I have the base system set, I then push quality up to a nine out of 10, often breaking the system. I then rebuild the system so that it works pumping out at nine out of 10. Then, once it's at nine

[13:04] out of 10, I twist the knob to ratchet up volume while still staying at the nine of 10. That's how I build a system. My last step is to open-source that you don't have to waste all the time figuring out how to do it. Now, I've

[13:17] could do for the business and marketing world is to make those content systems finally have them available for both short-form and long-form. If you want to get access to my entire short-form content system for free, it's at

[13:31] shortformsystem.co. I'll link it below. If you want to get access to the YouTube calloway.co/youtube blueprint. We'll link that below as getting one of one tactical value in this video, I'm just going to summarize

[13:43] right here. It's very simple and straightforward. You can tell I like to atomic unit, but I do recommend taking notes on this because this will be something you can put to work right away after you watch this. For short-form

[13:56] out what content works so you can build the machine around it. Ultimately, the answer we want to get to is what content formula or recipe seems to outperform at a 5x or more outlier for consistently driving leads. That is the only thing

[14:11] we're focused on. The system is building a structure to get to that answer. So, approach this for short-form content. First, you need to accept that you're Single videos have too much volatility and it's way too hard to predict trends

[14:25] off one, so instead you're going to make batches of 10, not one. In the first batch, you're going to pick 10 outliers from other channels in your space that have already outperformed well. An outlier is any video that's a 5x or

[14:37] better in terms of views. So, if the average views is 1,000, any video over 5,000 will be a 5x or more outlier. Now, when you find those outliers, you're going to keep everything the same except change the substance of the video to

[14:50] swap in some non-obvious point of view that you have. Everything else the same. story structure, editing as close as you can. Now, the best way to find these outliers in the first place is to go to sandcastles.ai. Go to the channels tab

[15:03] and first build your watch list of the 20 to 30 channels that best approximate the audience you're going for. Who is the best in the niche at making content those channels in your watch list. Now, you can either paste in the channels

[15:16] manually if you already know who they are, go up to that link icon in the upper right, click it, and then paste them in. Or, you can describe what type box and Sandcastle will proactively suggest channels for you to add in.

[15:31] channels, that's critical. Now, once you have that list dialed in, go to the videos tab. You can now see all the videos from just those channels in one place. You can then sort on the upper right by outlier score, which will bring

[15:44] videos to the top. That little green number with the X on it below every you're looking for 5x or more. Now, if you've used Sandcastle before, there was a brand new update out in the last week to make this next part insane. For any

[15:57] look interesting, hover over it and click save to vault. You'll notice that anytime you do this, the vault does a deep analysis of those videos. Once the vault tab, you will see a complete breakdown of everything about it. Full

[16:12] transcript, explanation for why that idea worked so well, the hook format, analysis, the visual analysis, everything you would need. Now, if you analyze it, and you want this to be one of your first 10 in batch number one,

[16:27] click shortlist idea or type S on your keyboard. This will add this video as inspiration for your idea shortlist. You want to do this 10 times on 10 different videos to represent your first batch. Now, when you go to the ideas tab, you

[16:39] will see those 10 videos that you shortlisted in order for you. You can now make your own version of these videos either using any AI tool you want or Sandcastle's built-in script flow. If you want to remix these in Sandcastle's

[16:51] create script. It will bring that outlier over as inspiration and you can tweak based on your description on what you want to change. If you'd rather just workflow you like, go to the original video analysis in the vault, click more

[17:05] actions, and then click export to LLM. This will package all the analysis about can drop into Claude and it will own version. If you tried Sandcastle in the past, it didn't have a lot of this

[17:17] new. It is now the Ferrari of content research. Now, to zoom all the way back out to our system, the whole goal of this process was to get the 10 videos for batch number one. So, using Sandcastle is the best data-backed way

[17:30] of hitting. So, let's say you found those 10, you made those 10, and you posted them. Now, based on those 10, you want to look at the metrics in whatever platform you posted and you want to see were any of your versions also a 5x plus

[17:44] outlier based on your average views? If so, then you've created your own outlier. And in your next batch of 10, the second batch, three of those 10 videos should be replications of the winner you made. The other seven, you're

[17:57] going to go back to Sandcastle and run this again. The goal is to keep making batches of 10 until you get three viral winners, three recipes of videos that are at least a 5x outlier that you replicated. Once you do this and have

[18:10] three recipes, you will essentially have built a content machine that takes very new videos and drive leads for your business. This is really how you build a content system that is data-backed. And

[18:22] that are crushing, they're all doing this. They're not taking eight hours to make a video they're just guessing on. They're using data to de-risk their effort and increase their hit rate. Now, tools like Sandcastle did not exist even

[18:34] as early as 2 years ago, but now normal people can win on social media with real data-backed strategies because of this tool. So, that kind of was in a nutshell how you attack the content system part of it using data with Sandcastle. Now,

[18:48] recap. What is the playbook from these six learnings? What really did I take away when I analyzed these normal business owners? What are they doing that works so well? This is the playbook in a nutshell. It's one offer, one

[19:01] content type, one content platform for one customer avatar. They start by making the offer before they make content. They build and validate it with real customers. Then they make one type of content on one platform, either

[19:13] short-form or long-form video, and they focus obsessively on growing that, figuring it out for 6 months. They choose the platform they post on based they want spend the most time. When they do start making content, they use a

[19:26] content system that is data-backed to reduce their risk and increase the hit content system because it's based on data and not intuition. They do this day they have a seven-figure business. This is actually how regular people, regular

[19:42] million-dollar businesses on social media. If I told you all you had to do there was a very high probability that you would have a six- or seven-figure reason you haven't is because you're trying to chase these shiny objects that

[19:56] That's really not how business works. There are millions of regular people genuinely want you to be one of the next ones that does it. If you want help, videos. If you want direct access to me, I've got some stuff below, you can check

[20:10] it out. But, either way, this is the playbook. All right, guys, that is all trying my absolute best to just cover stuff in marketing and business that you this video, I broke down the framework

[20:23] to the six most non-obvious lessons for how regular business owners are crushing playing the same game as influencers or pro creators, they're doing it a and more data-backed. [music] If you're a business owner and you're struggling

[20:37] with any part of the content stack, whether it be skill stacking, systems of stuff in the description to help you with that. My goal, as I've stated, is to help 1 million business owners make 1 million in revenue. That's 1 trillion in

[20:50] to making that happen. Now, I have lots of resources in the description to help you with this, but like I said, the best one, and it's free, is my entire short-form, there's no reason to not get this. shortformsystem.co, it's

[21:04] all the steps you need to kind of run the system I went through, but All right, that's all I've got. We'll see you guys on the next one. Peace.