Viral Creator Reveals How To Quit Your Job and Be A Content Creator WITHOUT Going Broke | Kallaway

Kane Kallaway 0:00 A lot of the videos that I've field off, like Messi, 30 million views. Taylor Swift, I've done 30 million views

Calum Johnson 0:04 So if you were gonna put words to what that formula is, what would you say?

Kane Kallaway 0:08 This might rub people the wrong way, but like the key is I ... This is my first ever real YouTube video.

Calum Johnson 0:14 We got my guy Kane Kallaway in the building, 430,000 followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat. Close to a billion views across social media. You've gone viral over 50 times.

Kane Kallaway 0:26 Let's get into the story framework. There's five pieces: the hook, the context, the conflict, resolution, and then last dab. So I'll go through each of them. The hook, everybody hears the hook. They're like, "The hook, the hook." Everyone's talking about the hook. But the way to get videos to go really viral, the last thing you leave somebody with needs to hit them with like-

Calum Johnson 0:43 You've now quit your job and you're a full-time creator. There's a lot of people out there that it makes sense why they should leave. They still struggle. I'm curious, was there a difficulty in handing in that final like notice of like, "I'm out"?

Kane Kallaway 0:55 No, not at all.

Calum Johnson 0:56 Really?

Kane Kallaway 0:57 I wanted out of there, dude-

Calum Johnson 0:57 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 0:58 ... from the second. I think if you have between 6 and 12 months reasonable expenses, that's all you need to go.

Calum Johnson 1:05 So like people are getting all these views, but it's not making them money. Talk to me about the brand deals.

Kane Kallaway 1:10 If you really wanna know the behind the scenes, this is what I think is going on. Not to like blow anyone's spot, but like, fuck it. I think what happens-

Calum Johnson 1:17 I think there's a lot of people out there that it would be a dream, an absolute dream, if they could use their personality and their interests and combine that to make a living, build an audience, um, and just get cool opportunities from those two components. Not only are you doing it, you're being completely transparent with how you're doing it. And so when I texted you and I was like, "This is what the episode's gonna be about," I'm like, "The blueprint of product- kind of productizing yourself and your interests, um, in an excruciating level of detail-

Kane Kallaway 1:56 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:56 ... that no one really does."

Kane Kallaway 1:57 Almost too much, you could argue. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:58 Too much detail. But it's good, right? Because I think, and y- and we even, you even said this when we spoke earlier, it's like, um, so many of the people that you look at on, who are on like a really high level, they can't really speak in any level of detail to someone who's starting out. Um, and it's because they're so far removed from that stage.

Kane Kallaway 2:19 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 2:20 Um, so here's where I wanna begin. Let's go back 12 months ago.

Kane Kallaway 2:26 All the way back.

Calum Johnson 2:27 All the way back. You have not created a single piece of short form video content. What gets you started? What makes you start doing that?

Kane Kallaway 2:35 Yeah. So maybe I'll take it back even a little bit further to like set the context for that.

Calum Johnson 2:38 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 2:39 So basically I, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Went to school, didn't know what I was gonna study. Studied all types of different business, basically. Accounting, finance, entrepreneurship, you know, you name it. I was like, "I don't know what I wanna start, but let me just get a smattering of different skill sets."

Calum Johnson 2:55 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 2:55 So started there. I co-founded a company my senior year of college. We raised angel funding. We chased that for like a year, failed big time. But it was like enough to give me the entrepreneurial itch where I knew, like this is what I should be doing. I had gotten a job offer to go to Deloitte Consulting before we started that company.

Calum Johnson 3:12 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 3:12 And so I kind of had that in the back pocket. First lesson is if you're going in, you wanna go all in. You don't really wanna hedge and have a backup plan. So I had a backup plan, which caused me to make certain decisions along the way in that early startup that were more conservative or like I didn't have a long-term mindset at that time. I was like, "All right. We'll give this a year, and if it doesn't work, I'll go to Deloitte Consulting," which is like the opposite mindset you wanna have. But it is what it is. So we f- we failed at that. Sold the, sold the assets of the company, but like the sale wasn't, like we didn't benefit huge financially from it.

Calum Johnson 3:42 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 3:43 Went to Deloitte Consulting, like first hour in I was like, "I hate this. This is not

Kane Kallaway 3:47 for me." And at that time, like a lot of my early 20s was untraining a lot of the like training, the conventional educational training that you get. So I'm from Ohio, so a- everything I had gotten piped into my brain at that time was like, "Go get a good job. Be on the job path. Stay at the job for a long time. Climb the ladder," right? Like that's what, that's what society's designed to pump into you.

Calum Johnson 4:09 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 4:09 And I hadn't really been exposed to this entrepreneurial content at the time, so I'm kind of, there's kind of this like, you know, pull, push and pull of like do the conventional path, you know, from parents and friends versus me inside like, "Don't do it." So I think it's helpful to like have that context. So went to Deloitte Consulting. I gutted it out for two years, which, you know, I would've loved to have left the second I, you know, the first h- second hour.

Calum Johnson 4:33 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 4:34 But I gutted out for two years. Uh, tried to leave, and ultimately was between like just leaving and going on my own or, uh, finding something else inside Deloitte that was more entrepreneurial.

Calum Johnson 4:46 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 4:46 So I stumbled upon this like, this small kind of group they incubated, and through fortuitous bounces I ended up like running that group. Like basically I had control of a startup that was just me inside Deloitte with like full backing and budget starting from zero with no like ingrained ideals for what it had to be. So it was kind of like a dream scenario if you wanna build something inside a company. At that time, like I didn't really realize the benefits or, or not of doing that. So kind of for the, for the next year or two I worked hard on that to try to grow it. I grew it from like zero to six million in revenue over three years pretty much like by myself with a team of two or three people. And, you know, for all intents and purposes it was like a pretty, pretty good swing at like internal entrepreneurship. Along the way though, I was always doing stuff on the side. So my whole goal was like as long as I'm at Deloitte, let's try to minimize the amount of time I'm spending at Deloitte and maximize the amount of time on side projects and like get something working. And my, my plan was always like once something's working, leave.

Calum Johnson 5:44 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 5:44 And so, and am I allowed to curse on this or do you-

Calum Johnson 5:46 You can say whatever you want.

Kane Kallaway 5:47 Okay, nice. So I was like, yeah. So I was like, "Get the fuck out of there."

Calum Johnson 5:49 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 5:49 So that, that was my plan. So the, the-

Calum Johnson 5:51 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 5:51 ... first thing I tried was, was music. So like we were talking about before, I used to freestyle in college. I kind of self-wrote, produced, mastered every- my first album my first couple years at Deloitte. So kind of like was working, traveling crazy consulting hours, would come home at the hotel at midnight, write a song. I did that like every day for 100 days and then put together uh, an album that I released. So that's kind of the first like should I be a musician? And kind of took that as far as I felt like emotionally I could go. I started getting like pretty depressed with the whole music thing, which we can go into. But, so that was my first attempt. Um, I launched a podcast where I was interviewing founders, so went, went down that rabbit hole a while. Tried to build a Morning Brew for wellness. So like imagine everything Morning Brew is, but I tried to s- reskin it for just wellness content. Worked on that for a while. Um, I even went in the Web3 wave. We tried to build a lifestyle brand on Web3 rails. So we tried a bunch of things, but the reason I, I go into those things is my plan was always work at Deloitte during the day, use the money and free time to fund the side pursuits, get something working, and leave. That was always the kind of the blueprint, we'll say, up to that point.

Calum Johnson 6:55 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 6:55 And it got to a point, um, after like four or five failed projects where,

Kane Kallaway 7:02 you know, variety of execution, we'll say, but like some of them were good swings but went nowhere. I kinda took a step back and I was like, "Okay, what's not working? Is it me not going all in? Is it bad ideas? Is it bad execution? Like, what's not working?" And the answer was that when you think about product and distribution, I had no distribution. I had no owned distribution. So for any of those projects, I never got to the point where I wanted to pour money into ad dollars, so like paid a- paid acquisition, because I felt like they weren't ready yet. But I had no earned distribution, no free acquisition channel. So there was... I wasn't really getting good signal of like, are these even working or not, before I would churn out.

Calum Johnson 7:42 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 7:42 So I kinda thought, "Okay, let's..." This was 12 months ago, right? So I was like, "Let's pause, back up. Let me go build the distribution first," which is through content, right? Let me build a huge audience that trusts me, that likes the things I like, and then I think that will bear fruit and show what product I should actually build.

Calum Johnson 7:59 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 7:59 Which sounds like now in today's everybody's building their own media company and trying to funnel that traffic to businesses, like that sounds obvious now. But even a few years ago, that wasn't really that obvious of a, of a playbook. So that's what I did. So 12 months ago I was like, all right... And we can go through the, the framework of like evaluating which media channel to go down, 'cause it was really between do I make shorts, do I go back into the podcast realm, do I make medium form YouTube, do I try to like write with a newsletter, do I make short form writing Twitter? Like there's a lot of channels you can go down. I picked short form video for a very specific purpose, and that's kinda what I did. So I was like, I had never really used Premiere ever before. I had filmed myself on podcasts and like had been freestyling, so I kind of understood how to like tell a story verbally, but I'd never filmed a short form video. And then, yeah, it was like, let's just, let's just run at this. Like what would it look like to actually run at this hard? And I was like, let's do a video a day during the week and just pump them out. And I think it took me like 30 videos before one got to a million views.

Calum Johnson 8:59 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 9:00 And then all it took was one video, I think like 70,000 views, my, my first one that got like any bump. That's all it took, just one signal that I was onto something, and then we've been at it since then.

Calum Johnson 9:12 Yeah. I love it. Okay. You know what? Before we get into all of the content stuff, uh, you introduced kinda like an interesting point, which is I think a lot of the times when we think about entrepreneurship, um, we literally think starting my own company. The intrapreneurship thing is actually kinda, it's interesting, and I think there's not as much discussion of it. Um, and I'm sure it could be like a, an applicable route or a suitable route for a group of people. I'm curious, like, let's start with that. Like, how did that even... If I'm like inside a big company and I wanted that look, because I think to a lot of people that would be like the ideal.

Kane Kallaway 9:54 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 9:54 Like it's almost like I have the security of like this big company and like a playground where I can just try stuff without being like homeless-

Kane Kallaway 10:02 Yeah

Calum Johnson 10:02 ... um, and making no money, but I can still kind of scratch that like entrepreneurial itch of like I'm leading something, ton of responsibility, it's kinda my direction. How... If there's any lessons from that experience, like how could someone even get that look? Like how did it come about? This episode is brought to you by Free Agency. If you wanna take your career to the next level, Free Agency is a company that you should check out. They manage and represent talent in the tech industry, and they provide you with a dedicated talent agent to help you find, engage, and win top of market roles that will maximize your earning potential. No more leaving money on the table. Stop job searching alone and start building your dream career today with Free Agency. Anyway, back to the show.

Kane Kallaway 10:47 And I can kind of frame like the truth is if you're really entrepreneurial, like if you have that dog in you-

Calum Johnson 10:53 Mm

Kane Kallaway 10:54 ... intrapreneurship is just procrastination.

Calum Johnson 10:56 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 10:56 And the reason why is 'cause it's just a hedge, right? The idea behind intrapreneurship, you're really s- when you go work for a big company, if you're entrepreneurial and you wanna do that first, there's only two things you're really looking for. One is a network, so like other smart people that happen to be there that you can have like free access to. The other is skill development. So like can I sharpen the skills I need to go do this on my own?

Calum Johnson 11:17 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 11:17 The truth with intrapreneurship, unless you do it at like a real tech company, is you're, the skills, you're learning really bad habits. 'Cause like the product people at Deloitte, for example, are not real product people. So I wasn't really learning the... I, it wasn't the truth about how you build product and like iterate and go get customer feedback. This was more like corporate product, which is not, like to be, to be fair-

Calum Johnson 11:36 Mm

Kane Kallaway 11:36 ... it's not really real.

Calum Johnson 11:37 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 11:38 So the skills I was learning weren't that applicable. Like there was some overlap, but not really. And from a networking perspective, most of the people in a big company don't want to go and do entrepreneurship, so you're not... You know, at Google you can find good people, but like-

Calum Johnson 11:49 Mm

Kane Kallaway 11:49 ... at, at other companies you're just not gonna find the type of people you want as an entrepreneur. So those are, that's like what you tell yourself is like, "Hey, this is a perfect hedge. I can get paid 150 grand a year, earn skills, and meet people. Like it's perfect, and then I'll go do my own thing." What ends up happening is you don't get the skills you want, you don't meet the people you want, you earn the salary, get golden handcuffs, and never leave. Like that's the truth.

Calum Johnson 12:09 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 12:09 So I would say though, if you're at like a Google or a huge tech company that actually fosters like true entrepreneurship via product, then it's a really great way to like dip your feet in. I think that's where Google's like 20% rule comes in. I don't know if they do it anymore, but they used to have a program where- Four days a week you work on Google stuff, and then the fifth day, 20% of your week, you can kind of like come up with any project. I think it still has to be like for Google tangen- tangentially, but you can work on whatever you want. That's pretty dope because there's so many Google, technical Google engineers and product managers that you can collaborate with.

Calum Johnson 12:40 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 12:40 And then you can spin it out on your own, right? So that's like a good like hack to try it out before you go.

Calum Johnson 12:46 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 12:46 But what I had-- It was really helpful 'cause when I was 24, I had no-- I didn't know anything, and so having to own something from my own and grow it from zero to six million, even if the revenue I earned was like internally routed, not necessarily me going to the market, but like me selling internally-

Calum Johnson 13:02 Mm

Kane Kallaway 13:02 ... it was still like a really good way to earn skills-

Calum Johnson 13:04 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 13:04 ... or grow skills. But I quickly tapped out on that after maybe a year.

Calum Johnson 13:08 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 13:08 So I would, I would advise anybody who's like wants to jump but is holding onto this like golden scenario hedge, it's not really what

Kane Kallaway 13:16 you think.

Calum Johnson 13:16 Yeah. You know what's actually, uh, interesting? It reminds me of, um, Kamaru Usman, a UFC... He was a champion. He's not anymore. Um, but he's like a Nigerian fighter, and he... There was at some point in his life, he went all in on like, "I'm gonna be UFC."

Kane Kallaway 13:33 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 13:33 Uh, get into the UFC, and he says this thing. He's like, um, "I decided that I had plan A, and then I had plan B, and plan B was to make plan A work."

Kane Kallaway 13:44 Yeah. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 13:45 And like that's kind of like the thought process is, um, there's a certain risk, I guess, that comes with being an entrepreneur, and so you can't like half-ass it. Like you kinda have to be-

Kane Kallaway 13:56 Exactly

Calum Johnson 13:56 ... all the way in. Um-

Kane Kallaway 13:58 On that point, like you, you need the fight or flight instincts to kick on-

Calum Johnson 14:02 Mm

Kane Kallaway 14:02 ... for certain stuff to happen, for like your urgency to pick up. You can't... Fight or flight, like by definition, fight or flight doesn't kick on when you're not in a fight.

Calum Johnson 14:10 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 14:10 So if you're not all in, if you have a hedge, if you have this other thing, you won't be in fight or flight mode, meaning you won't be scrappy, you won't be urgent. You won't like, you know, work till 3:00 AM to finish the thing you need to finish to get the client when you're, when you're owning your own business and that's all you're doing. So a thing that I, you know, a big mistake I made was having the hedge. Now, like there's levels to it. Like if you're broke and have no money and you go all in and you end up failing, like you're gonna have to go move in with your parents or like find something to do. But if y- The level of money you need to actually go all in is much lower than people think. I was kidding myself with this before. I think a lot of people do as well. You really need to be all in because the other reason is the active ideas you have in terms of like, "I wanna solve X problem. I'm gonna channel my mindset to it," you can s- you can get those ideas whether you're hedging or not. It's the subconscious ideas that you don't get when you're hedging. Meaning, when I was at Deloitte, even if I was spending six hours a day and then I was spending my other six on whatever, my side hustle, there's six hours in the day where my subconscious can't run free and solve problems for my side hustle because I'm dealing with like corporate nonsense.

Calum Johnson 15:20 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 15:20 You have to go all in to free up every like brain cell, every neuron in your brain to just be like working towards this goal, your, your-

Calum Johnson 15:29 Mm

Kane Kallaway 15:29 ... your, your passion. So that's another thing, that you don't really realize that until you go all in once, and now I'm never gonna stop because I'll be able to compound the momentum so much faster now that I have all energy, all resources on this one thing.

Calum Johnson 15:43 Yeah. You know, actually the way that I would, I would... I agree with what you're saying. The way that I would put it as well is a lot of running a business is actually like self-improvement.

Kane Kallaway 15:52 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 15:53 And so it's just like, it's difficult to have the level of improvement you need when you're in a comfort zone. Like if you're comfortable, no one ever-

Kane Kallaway 16:04 Exactly

Calum Johnson 16:04 ... got better just being comfortable.

Kane Kallaway 16:05 Yeah, there's no urgency to improve.

Calum Johnson 16:07 Yeah, there's no urgency. And so, um, the beliefs thing is such an interesting thing 'cause I think people don't think about it enough. But like that's actually, if we're talking about where you should start, that's kind of where you should start because I'll hear a lot of people that will say things, or they'll ask me questions even about like starting a podcast or any of this stuff, and you can feel the procrastination in the question.

Kane Kallaway 16:31 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 16:32 Uh, like they have like, they want so much information, um, before there's any action. I'm like, "You're already kinda thinking about it wrong."

Kane Kallaway 16:40 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 16:40 "You need to go and do it."

Kane Kallaway 16:42 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 16:43 And then the questions, like the answers almost become obvious from the data, which is like your experience.

Kane Kallaway 16:48 And the reason they're doing that is 'cause they don't have the self-belief.

Calum Johnson 16:51 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 16:51 That's, they're trying to hedge and procrastinate because they don't want to come to the realization that they don't know what they don't know.

Calum Johnson 16:56 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 16:57 The truth is like success metrics are a lagging indicator.

Calum Johnson 17:00 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 17:01 The leading indicator is self-belief. So like you, like if you look at... A- anyone who's listening to this, if they look at what I've put together so far, like I'm like o- I'm less than 1% on the journey. Like you could argue like I haven't succeeded yet.

Calum Johnson 17:13 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 17:13 I've made a lot of traction, a lot of strides, and like a lot will come, but I have such delusional self-belief in myself already that it will come. It's just a matter of how long and what, what route I take of the tree.

Calum Johnson 17:26 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 17:26 But it's coming. And that, if you like hear me, you can hear this like calmness in my self-belief. It's not maybe it'll work. It's like it's going to work. Like and I, I know it will.

Calum Johnson 17:35 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 17:35 You have to have that self-belief before you go. Otherwise, exactly what you said, you're gonna end up doing the vanity stuff that doesn't actually move the needle forward, and you'll get frustrated.

Calum Johnson 17:44 Yeah. And the thing is as well, actually, I think that's such a good point, the self-belief, but it's also, I found for me personally at least, it's something that is compounding and building as I get more momentum. So like as I learn more things... And to be honest, um, I remember one of my mentors said this to me the day I quit my job. He said, um, "Your first goal is just n- to survive. Like you just don't wanna have to go back to your job."

Kane Kallaway 18:13 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 18:13 That, he said that's the number one thing that kills like entrepreneurs. They have to go back.

Kane Kallaway 18:17 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 18:18 So you just wanna stay in the game long enough that you can get good-

Kane Kallaway 18:22 Exactly

Calum Johnson 18:22 ... or the thing that you're doing can work. And every day that I keep on this path, it's like the belief is building And like the identity of like I'm this person is building. I think there is a certain foundation of belief that I was working off already that I thought I was gonna make it.

Kane Kallaway 18:39 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 18:40 But now it's like it's building like-

Kane Kallaway 18:42 Yeah

Calum Johnson 18:42 ... 0.1% every day.

Kane Kallaway 18:44 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 18:45 Um-

Kane Kallaway 18:45 Well, that's also like I think, I actually think it's really helpful to go work a job you hate for a year.

Calum Johnson 18:51 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 18:51 Because when you... I forget who said this. Someone said something along these lines, but like I think it was Hormozy maybe. It's like when a tiger's chasing you, you're gonna run faster. And for me, the tiger is I hated my job. Like I hated it, and I'm not going back there. I have the battle scars from it in my mind, and I'm like, "I will do anything to not go back there." You never took a job and you were kind of like spoon-fed growing up, and then you started your company right away like out of school. You never took a job. You don't really have like a fi- there's no, there's no Bowser behind you blowing-

Calum Johnson 19:22 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 19:22 ... fireballs, you know?

Calum Johnson 19:23 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 19:23 So it's super helpful to work a j- even for like six months just to like grow that, you know, hatred [chuckles] almost-

Calum Johnson 19:31 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 19:31 ... for the corporate jobs.

Calum Johnson 19:32 Such a good point. It gives you, you know what it is? It gives you like perspective.

Kane Kallaway 19:35 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 19:35 Which is sometimes when you're... I think if you're doing anything that's just not traditional, that's like a bit different, there's moments where the shit fucking sucks. Like it's not working, and it's frustrating, and you're tired, and you're not getting the validation of your regular paycheck to-

Kane Kallaway 19:51 Yeah

Calum Johnson 19:51 ... make it all seem good.

Kane Kallaway 19:53 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 19:54 Um, and in that moment, you need the perspective of having felt the alternative.

Kane Kallaway 20:00 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 20:01 Which is like no matter how bad this is, I've done the other thing and it wasn't it.

Kane Kallaway 20:07 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 20:07 So I'm gonna keep doing this.

Kane Kallaway 20:09 The fric- the friction to quit goes up proportionally to how bad your situation was before.

Calum Johnson 20:14 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 20:14 That's why like I think a lot of people will say like immigrants are the best startup founders because it was so bad for most of them before. Their friction is so high, they'll never quit. Their friction to go back is so high.

Calum Johnson 20:25 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 20:26 Versus like, you know, if you worked a medium job, your friction's not that bad. If you worked a really easy job, the friction's super low. You'll be like, "Okay, I'll quit this. It's not working. I'll go back." It's to your, it's, it's what you were saying before. You just need to not quit long enough for it to start working. That's it.

Calum Johnson 20:38 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 20:38 That's your only goal. And it, once it works, it works. You're good. Just let it compound.

Calum Johnson 20:44 Yeah. You know what? This is, um, I wanna get into the content stuff, but this is an analogy I think about. I remember, I think it was the, the 2018, uh, NBA playoff run. I remember being in the UK.

Calum Johnson 20:59 I think that was when, uh, LeBron had like a pretty bad Cavs team and he got them to the finals.

Kane Kallaway 21:03 Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm a huge Cavs fan. I'm from-

Calum Johnson 21:05 Oh, okay

Kane Kallaway 21:05 ... Ohio, so yeah-

Calum Johnson 21:06 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 21:06 ... I know, uh-

Calum Johnson 21:07 Uh, like his final-

Kane Kallaway 21:07 Was that when Kevin Love, Kevin Love got hurt in the early series? He got his arm pulled out, or was that the second?

Calum Johnson 21:12 I, it was the one, it was his final season before going to the Lakers.

Kane Kallaway 21:15 Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Calum Johnson 21:16 And, uh, the one where JR like messed up-

Kane Kallaway 21:18 Yeah, yeah

Calum Johnson 21:19 ... and all that. And I remember watching these Cleveland games as they were going through the East, and it was like every team they went against, because I think they went to seven games with the Pacers in round one.

Kane Kallaway 21:30 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 21:31 Every team they played, the opposing team was better than them, like completely-

Kane Kallaway 21:35 Yeah, yeah

Calum Johnson 21:36 ... outplaying them. But they would just stick around like long enough-

Kane Kallaway 21:40 For LeBron to do some go

Calum Johnson 21:40 ... get to the fourth quarter, and then they had the best player by far and he took over.

Kane Kallaway 21:45 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 21:45 And I felt like there was so much to learn from that, which is like just stick around. Like, and you'll see it even in the NFL. There'll be a team that, uh, they're outplaying in every aspect, offense, defense, special teams, the opposing team. But the team that's losing, they just stick around. Maybe it's like 10 to 14.

Kane Kallaway 22:07 Yeah, yeah.

Calum Johnson 22:07 10 to 3. They stick around.

Kane Kallaway 22:09 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 22:10 Fourth quarter comes, they have the best player or whatever.

Kane Kallaway 22:13 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 22:13 They make some plays and it turns. And it's actually very similar I think, um, on the business end, which is like just sticking around, just keeping the learnings going, and then when it's your moment, you can capitalize.

Kane Kallaway 22:27 Yeah, exactly. That, that's the, the Jack Butcher, uh, graph-

Calum Johnson 22:31 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 22:31 ... where it's like this is pointless. You ju- all of that until the spike is sticking around. That's it. It's just pick a lane, be consistent, stick around, stick around, stick around. And like you're getting punched in the face when no, meaning like no one's paying attention to your stuff. Just stick around, stick around, and you'll have a spike. The reason I tried short form video as like a maybe a transition into the content stuff is it was easier to get, it was easier to trick myself to stay because I knew it'd be faster to get a spike that something was working.

Calum Johnson 23:00 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 23:00 So I knew like I have enough willpower that I'll stick to something for a decade, but any human wants some, some feedback loop showing it's working. Like very few people are MrBeast level delusional where for three years this dude's getting no views or four y- how- however many years it was, and he's just posting into the void, posting into the void, nothing coming back. Very few people have the discipline to do that. So I thought, all right, why don't I hack my brain instead of trying to see if I have the discipline? Let's just pick a lane that's going to give me signal quicker, like daily posting, the algorithm's pushing me. There are a lot of like tailwinds too.

Calum Johnson 23:36 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 23:36 But that way, like I said before, as soon as I had one little glimmer that I was onto something, there was something that I was providing that the market wanted, that's all I needed to be like I'm doing this forever.

Calum Johnson 23:46 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 23:46 But until you get that little glimmer, it's very hard to be delusionally, you know, disciplined. So that's like another little, I guess little brain hack. The whole, the whole, really this whole game is just how do I hack my own brain to keep me in?

Calum Johnson 23:59 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 23:59 Like you were saying. We, we say the same, we're saying the same thing over and over, but it's true. It's like just stay in, and if you need to hack your brain, if you need to lie to yourself, if you need to create conditions where you can't get out, whatever you have to do to stay in the game, that's your only job.

Calum Johnson 24:12 Yeah. You know what? Here's the problem I, I see when people ask me, um, anything about starting even with podcasting. Um, and they'll ask questions like, "Oh, is it too late to start a podcast?" Or, "Is it too saturated?" Or, "Should I be doing short form or should I be doing Twitter or should I be doing LinkedIn?" Um- People have, like, this uncertainty of what to do, of, like, where to start.

Kane Kallaway 24:42 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 24:43 And all the advice-- If someone answers that question without any context, they're just doing you a disservice.

Kane Kallaway 24:50 Right.

Calum Johnson 24:51 And you actually made this point in one of your newsletter, um, posts, which is, like, there is not a universal playbook that, like-

Kane Kallaway 25:01 Yeah

Calum Johnson 25:01 ... I can just give you the steps, you can plug it in, and it's gonna work the same way it did for me-

Kane Kallaway 25:06 Yeah

Calum Johnson 25:06 ... for you. The playbook is figuring out your playbook.

Kane Kallaway 25:10 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 25:11 Um, and so I think it would be interesting when it comes to the question of, like, which medium of content do I start with? I think what's more interesting than giving a definitive answer of, like, do short form or do a podcast or do LinkedIn or do Twitter, it's what is the framework of thinking that you use to decide to do short form?

Kane Kallaway 25:36 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 25:37 And I guess it seems like in your case it was like, what's the thing that I would just keep doing?

Kane Kallaway 25:42 Right. 'Cause the, the real answer is-- which is, like, a little high level, so we can go even more tactical, but the real answer is pick whatever is the fastest path to where you can be authentically your-yourself and original, and whatever format that is, pick that. Now, each platform has pros and cons in terms of the feedback you'll get to determine if it's working. But for example, if you feel awkward on video and you just can't let yourself be original, be authen- not original is a bad, a bad target. Like, let's say be authentic. Like, if you can't look into a camera and be authentically yourself and it's very hard, then you shouldn't start with video because you'll give up sooner than if you were talking into a microphone without your face on it or writing. So that's, like, one way to look at it is just it's a little high level and, like, not super helpful to people because, you know, it's hard to know, like, what will I be authen- what will make me authentic?

Calum Johnson 26:32 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 26:32 Like, it's kind of a hard question to answer. But, like, that's one frame. The other frame is to be, like, super tactical and data-oriented with it. So I, I was talking about this on Bilal's, on Bilal's show too. It-- There's really four buckets. There's short form video, there's long form video, we'll say YouTube, like 15, 20-minute YouTube videos. There's audio pod- which is podcasts, and then there's written. You also have, like, images I guess on Instagram, but let's, let's say not to that 'cause Instagram throttled that away. So you kind of have four, four paths. We can go through each one and, like, talk about the pros and cons if you want, if, if that's helpful to people.

Calum Johnson 27:05 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 27:05 But really, like, the other way to look at it from a data-driven perspective is take each bucket and be like, "Okay, what are the pros of this? What are the cons of this? What is the time in required to make one unit of content? What will I get out of one unit of content? Am I okay with those trade-offs?" And you go through each bucket and you kind of create this pro/con and you're like, "All right. This, this is what I have in front of me. Let's pick one and go." And then you don't second guess that choice until you see traction from that one.

Calum Johnson 27:34 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 27:34 So the reason... One of the reasons short form video is so helpful is because, like I mentioned before, you can see traction faster, you can get signal back faster. Like with podcasts, let's say you're posting once a week. The longer between episodes, the slower the feedback loop for sure, and the harder it will be to grow. There's just, there's just less, like, informational context for people to consume.

Calum Johnson 27:54 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 27:55 So if you p- if you did a podcast once a month, that's gonna grow slower than once a week. That's gonna grow slower than daily, all things held equal, because there's just less for people to consume. There's less for people to share. The flywheel will just spin slower.

Calum Johnson 28:06 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 28:06 So you can go all the way down that sp- on that spectrum of, like, frequency. A Twitter-- A person who's just on Twitter can tweet 10 times a day. That's the most frequent. And then, like, writing a novel is, like, once every two years or, like, once every decade. That's the most infrequent. There's so much in between there. I think the most important thing, like we, like we've been saying, is fastest path to authen-authenticity and what's gonna allow me to get the feedback required to keep me in the game. So for me, I had done podcasting before and it was extremely hard to grow.

Calum Johnson 28:36 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 28:37 There was a lot of reasons I stopped doing it, but one of them was I wasn't getting any signal. Like, I was stuck at the same, like barely creeping up s- over and over. And that's why you hear a lot of podcasters say, "It took me five to seven years to, like, actually see a t- a tick up."

Calum Johnson 28:49 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 28:50 So for me, I was like, "All right. I've been down that path. I, I want faster feedback than a podcast, so I wanna do one, but I don't wanna start with one." So that's kind of how I ruled out-

Calum Johnson 28:58 Mm

Kane Kallaway 28:58 ... the audio format. That and, like, it's really hard to grow because inherently audio isn't-- there's no, like, feed. There's no algorithm pushing it. It's only peer-to-peer sharing is really the only way for audio to grow.

Calum Johnson 29:10 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 29:11 So that was out. Written, I also had, like, written newsletters, but again, those are really hard to grow because people don't sh- there's no algorithmic feed other than, like, the Substack homepage, but, you know, there's not a lot of people using that. So it-- there's no algorithmic feed pushing that. You can tweet about it, but every platform is shifting towards, like, de- uh, de-incentivizing people to post links.

Calum Johnson 29:31 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 29:32 So again, there's, there's, like, my reason for not doing the written first, except for Blueprint, which I can get into, like, why I did. I don't even care if that grows. That's just more of a documentation.

Calum Johnson 29:41 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 29:41 And then you're kind of left with the two video options. You've got YouTube, which is the golden goose because you can make a ton of money from it. You can-- You have the YouTube home feed, which is, like, actually how people get recommendations, so you've got an algo pu- pushing it. And then you have Shorts. So for me, I was like, if I look at making one-minute videos five times a week or one video per week that's 15 minutes, which would I rather do? And for me, I sat down and tried to make YouTube videos and it just didn't feel natural to me. Like, it felt-- I felt super inauthentic in front of the camera. So I was like, one reason I picked Shorts was YouTube didn't feel natural. The second reason is I was like, Shorts is gonna be the hardest to compete for attention in video-

Calum Johnson 30:21 Mm

Kane Kallaway 30:21 ... because there's so many. So I was like, if I can get attention in Shorts, I can get attention anywhere.

Kane Kallaway 30:26 So it's almost like run at the hardest thing possible from that perspective. And then third is I had the algorithmic tailwinds. Instagram t- like TikTok changed everything, and so TikTok and Instagram at the same time are pushing every short form that's coming on there. So it's like If I have, you can either swing a bat with a donut on it or you can swing a bat without it. Like, I picked the way without it 'cause I wanna s- I want my bat speed to go up.

Calum Johnson 30:47 Mm-hmm.

Kane Kallaway 30:47 So that's what short form is to me.

Calum Johnson 30:49 Yeah. You know what? You actually described it perfectly, and it's funny because I, I'd never broken it down like that in my mind. But that is actually the exact way that you figure out where to start, which is like number one, you think about, uh, what medium can I most authentically can convey my personality, whatever I'm doing.

Kane Kallaway 31:09 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 31:09 That has to be the most important. And then number two is how quickly can I get feedback.

Kane Kallaway 31:14 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 31:14 Because the whole game, and I remember s- I think it was, was it Zach Pogrov that said this? Um, he said, "It's not about 10,000 hours, it's about 10,000 iterations." Which is like the 10,000 hour rule is a thing we always hear, which is like you just need to have a lot of time spent doing the thing.

Kane Kallaway 31:29 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 31:30 If you do the wrong thing 10,000 hours, it's still wrong.

Kane Kallaway 31:33 Yeah. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 31:34 What you need is the 10,000 iterations. You need the small deviations in each test-

Kane Kallaway 31:40 Exactly

Calum Johnson 31:40 ... to get to the thing that's right. Um, and so you need both. I think the thing that's interesting for me when I reflect on my journey, um, is you're right about podcasting. So hard to grow and very difficult really to get good feedback, um, on a podcast.

Kane Kallaway 32:02 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 32:03 Um, and the feedback is just slower because also 'cause you're not getting as many views as like-

Kane Kallaway 32:07 Right

Calum Johnson 32:07 ... the video that blows up. Uh, the spikes aren't as exaggerated, so it's harder to see the signal.

Kane Kallaway 32:13 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 32:14 Um-

Kane Kallaway 32:15 But once you have it, it's extremely defendable. That's-

Calum Johnson 32:17 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 32:17 ... that's the, the other side of it.

Calum Johnson 32:19 It's a moat, yeah.

Kane Kallaway 32:19 Like, I, I'm about to launch a podcast as well 'cause I love the medium, it's just, I was like, I just can't start there because it will, it'll take too long to get signal.

Calum Johnson 32:26 Yeah. And you know, you know what's interesting? Uh, I w- we broke it down like one and two. So one is the authenticity, two is the, uh, how quick you can get signal. My one was so strong-

Kane Kallaway 32:39 Yeah

Calum Johnson 32:39 ... it like completely overwhelmed two.

Kane Kallaway 32:41 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 32:42 Where podcasting, 'cause I had tried to do like tweets.

Kane Kallaway 32:45 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 32:46 Um, like try to grow on Twitter. I hated the process of writing.

Kane Kallaway 32:50 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 32:50 Like-

Kane Kallaway 32:51 And, and that's, that's signal enough, right?

Calum Johnson 32:52 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 32:52 Like, as soon as you realize you don't like it, you're like, "All right, that's out."

Calum Johnson 32:55 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 32:55 Versus what most people do is like, "Oh, like this person on Twitter is making $500,000 a year doing it, so like this is the way," right? That's what most people think-

Calum Johnson 33:03 Mm

Kane Kallaway 33:03 ... is they look at someone they admire and they're like, "I need to copy their framework,"

Kane Kallaway 33:07 even though they know inside they don't like that medium.

Calum Johnson 33:10 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 33:10 That's never gonna work. Because even if it worked for one year and you made 500 grand, you won't have the dur- like durability to do it for 20 years, and so that money's gonna run out eventually. It's like you're not trying to satisfy a short-term outcome.

Calum Johnson 33:21 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 33:21 At least I'm not. I'm trying to play a really long game, and the only way you play a long game is to find a game you like to play.

Calum Johnson 33:27 Yeah. So it's so, it's so true. And the thing is, I think people think, they ask the question like what is working? That is irrelevant. It's about what is gonna work for you.

Kane Kallaway 33:37 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 33:37 Everything is case specific.

Kane Kallaway 33:39 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 33:40 Um, okay, you know what? Let's, let's, uh, move it on because I'm curious, so you do the short form thing.

Kane Kallaway 33:46 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 33:47 You're still w- you're still working your job at this point.

Kane Kallaway 33:49 Yeah, so I knew, I was like, uh, the first like 30 shorts or first 20 shorts, I was like just throwing them out and I was like, "All right, this is..." It's like, it's starting to become fun for me. Like I'm starting to dial in the process of like how to do it. And you gotta realize like I, I knew how to use a camera, but like I didn't know how to edit. I don't know how to color grade, which I'm not even doing still. I don't know how to sync the audio. I don't know how to use Premiere. Like it takes a while to like get those things ironed out.

Calum Johnson 34:11 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 34:11 So after 20, 30 videos I start like enjoying the process more, and I, and then I started to get signal. So I was like, "I think there's something here." Like I grew, I grew my, I think there was like a four or five week period where I grew like 75,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram. Like it was, it was nothing, nothing, nothing, then bam.

Calum Johnson 34:29 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 34:29 And then as soon as the bam happened, I was like, "All right, there's gonna be something here where I'm gonna leave and do this. I just don't know when." But I was basically throttling down my effort at the company and throttling up my effort on the side.

Calum Johnson 34:40 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 34:40 Basically until I couldn't do both, right? Like until my mind share that was at the company was inhibiting my ability. Like I had a few-

Calum Johnson 34:47 Mm

Kane Kallaway 34:47 ... long nights where I was working and I couldn't post a video, and that's all it took where I was like, "Fuck this."

Calum Johnson 34:51 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 34:51 Like I don't, I don't, I don't need to like, I'm peeling off all these views and like getting all these brands to reach out. I don't need this, this job anymore.

Calum Johnson 34:58 Yeah. That's funny. I had exactly the same thing. [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 35:00 Yeah. Mm.

Calum Johnson 35:01 Um, you know what? I wanna start with that, the nothing period.

Kane Kallaway 35:04 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 35:05 So those first... And you know what, actually? Let me pull up, I actually took down the stats.

Kane Kallaway 35:10 Yeah, take the stats.

Calum Johnson 35:11 I fucking, I fucking love this. So this is what you said in your newsletter. You said, um, [tongue click] "21st video on TikTok was the first to get 100,000 plus views."

Kane Kallaway 35:19 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 35:19 "41st video was the first to get a million. 121st was the first to get five million. 155th was the first to get 10 million." So it takes time and, and reps in the game.

Kane Kallaway 35:31 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 35:32 Those first 20 videos where like nothing was really popping, what... 'Cause, 'cause let's be honest, like that's the graveyard, right?

Kane Kallaway 35:39 Yeah, that sucks. It's-

Calum Johnson 35:40 Like that's where everyone quits.

Kane Kallaway 35:42 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 35:43 So like what are you even, what does video one even look like? Like what are you-

Kane Kallaway 35:46 Let's see

Calum Johnson 35:46 ... doing?

Kane Kallaway 35:47 Let's see.

Calum Johnson 35:48 Let's pull it out. [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 35:48 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 35:49 What are you, what are you even-

Kane Kallaway 35:49 I mean, to be, to be fair, I cringe, I cringe so hard at my early videos, which is a good sign, right? That's what people say is like you're putting stuff out before y- like it's ready.

Calum Johnson 35:59 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 35:59 But to me at that time I was like, "These are as best I can do."

Calum Johnson 36:02 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 36:02 And I was, I was like actually okay with it, which is surprising 'cause I have like a really high bar for quality. All right, while I scroll this down. Yeah, I think in, in the first, I, I, I don't know, there was something, something switched in my mind when I started doing this that was just like, "This is gonna work. Just don't stop." I don't know what it is, 'cause I've s- done a lot of things before and I let myself stop doing them.

Calum Johnson 36:23 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 36:23 For this, for, I don't know what it was, but there was some signal, some subconscious signal that d- that was just like chase this and let it go. And I think a couple of my like earlier videos did do decent. So all right, I'm back to the beginning.

Calum Johnson 36:36 You know, just quickly, this, that is like the perfect visual representation of what this is.

Kane Kallaway 36:41 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 36:41 Is like you were talking for like 30 seconds-

Kane Kallaway 36:43 [laughs] Yeah

Calum Johnson 36:43 ... and just scrolling.

Kane Kallaway 36:44 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 36:44 Like it takes fucking time-

Kane Kallaway 36:46 It took-

Calum Johnson 36:46 ... to get good

Kane Kallaway 36:46 ... it took time.

Calum Johnson 36:47 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 36:47 Basically like, so I- The business we were doing before I started making shorts was we were trying to build Kith on Web3 rails, which sounds insane, but our whole concept was, like, imagine a lifestyle brand, Kith, Aime Leon Dore, but instead of, like, a couple of founders, imagine there was a small group of, like, 50 to 100 people who were all co-owners in the business who all had, like, different specialties around apparel and fashion.

Calum Johnson 37:13 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 37:13 And could, like, come together to almost, like, crowdsource build a brand. That was our idea.

Calum Johnson 37:17 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 37:17 And we were gonna use NFTs as the way to, like, facilitate the ownership.

Calum Johnson 37:20 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 37:20 So we, we were working on that for a while. We were, like, in the fashion world, in the apparel world for, like, a year, year and a half, let's say.

Calum Johnson 37:27 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 37:27 So when I started making content, I was like, "All right. The thing I know the best right now is that." So I made, like, what makes Kith cool was a video I made that, like, did pretty well. I did, um, the legend of Aime Leon Dore. I did something huge happen with Starbucks, like a Starbucks news story. I did more on why the Starbucks NFT program might work. So, like, you can see, it's like it's still tangential to what I was thinking about at the time, and I kinda just started doing that.

Calum Johnson 37:54 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 37:54 And I was like, I don't know... I... It's not that I don't see other people doing it, but it was just, like, your... the, the unique intersection of the what I know, the way I tell it, and the way I edit, no one will be the same as that. So I was just like, "Let me just do this to sharpen the skill." Just at the beginning, it was like, how do I use Premiere? Like, how do I story tell? Because I, I believe storytelling online is the most valuable skill set you can possibly have. You can apply that to anything. You can sell your own products. You can sell other people's products. If you're a savant storyteller, you're infinitely valuable.

Calum Johnson 38:25 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 38:25 So I was like, "All right. Let's become a savant storyteller." And that's, that's how I, that's how I started. The one that peeled off first was about FTX. Basically, the n- a niche I found that was relatively untapped was I was taking super complex business happenings and distilling them down into simple videos. Now, on Twitter, there's a lot of people taking super complex business happenings and distilling them down into threads, but, but the overlap of, like, think boys on Twitter and the people making videos on TikTok and Instagram, there's not a huge overlap. So I was like, "All right. I can't get anything to resonate on Twitter because I'm basically just rinse and repeating what everyone else is saying."

Calum Johnson 38:59 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 38:59 But there's a huge audience that wants this content over here on TikTok and Instagram that has no one making it. So that's what I started doing is, like, FTX, what, what happened? Like, what the fuck happened to Sam Bankman-Fried? I broke that down. That video did, like, 2 million views. I think that was, like, the first one that got a million. And from there, it's not that every video I did was in that vein, but if you look back, a lot of the videos that I've peeled off, like Messi, 30 million views across both. Taylor Swift, I've done 30 million views across five videos. Like, all of these are taking culturally relevant companies and people, break... and something complex that happened to them, whether it was, like, a business deal or something, and breaking it down into simple terms that normal people can understand.

Calum Johnson 39:36 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 39:36 And for some reason, that works. Like, there isn't a lot of people doing that on short form video.

Calum Johnson 39:40 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 39:41 Now, we can talk about, like... And I've wrote about this in my newsletter. That's great for getting views, and, like, my engagement's super high, and people are starting to like me. But strategically, is it smart for me to become a news source? I don't want to be that. Like, I wanna be a product beast. Like, I, I wanna build my own Kith. Like, I wanna build-

Calum Johnson 39:58 Mm

Kane Kallaway 39:58 ... real product businesses. So, you know, I kinda feel like there's a little disconnect there, but in the beginning, all you're looking for is a signal, and there was a signal there that there was a market, a market need.

Calum Johnson 40:07 Yeah. Everything goes back to me for, like, what is the framework? Like, what is the way of thinking about it? And so I think a lot of people have questions of, like, "Where do I start? I don't know what to make videos about." And this is the thing that I think was very evident, um, with where you started with the Kith stuff. Just choose something that you're hugely knowledgeable about.

Kane Kallaway 40:29 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 40:30 There's something in your life that you can talk about for, like, centuries.

Kane Kallaway 40:36 Yeah, yeah.

Calum Johnson 40:36 Like, you could just keep talking about this thing.

Kane Kallaway 40:38 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 40:38 Like, you're like... Everyone probably has something that they're, like, in the top 1% in terms of knowledge on that topic.

Kane Kallaway 40:45 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 40:46 And to be honest, it might be something that's, like, a bit weird, like it's like, I don't even know, like the old trading cards or some shit.

Kane Kallaway 40:55 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 40:56 But, like, that is, that's kind of where you start, something that you can talk about easily. And then, um, I think the other way that I like to think about it now with my content is, like, every video, let's just try something new.

Kane Kallaway 41:11 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 41:11 Like, at least one thing is different, and it can be small. Maybe it's the way that we did, like, the thumbnail, or, like, the, the way that... like, which word we highlighted in the title-

Kane Kallaway 41:20 Yeah

Calum Johnson 41:20 ... we capitalize something. Like, just try one little deviation. Like, you wanna get the... I think the other thing that people do wrong, they don't experiment enough.

Kane Kallaway 41:30 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 41:30 Like, you need to get the iterations. In the beginning, and this is what I've seen actually when I've spoken to anyone who's very successful with content, they think about it as one huge experiment, and they are constantly, even the people at the top, are constantly experimenting. But to be honest, the people at the top, it's more difficult for them to experiment than the person who has no views because they have this audience that has an expectation on what they're gonna see. So literally, your competitive advantage as the new creator is you can iterate way faster, way, in a much more, like, crazy fashion. Like, you could have one video on fashion, the next one is sports, the next one is business, the next one is, like, work culture. Like, you could do whatever the fuck you want.

Kane Kallaway 42:18 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 42:18 And no one is gonna care because you're not known yet. And so you really have to, like, lean into that. Um-

Kane Kallaway 42:25 Yeah, and I even do that now. It's like a lot of the conventional advice is, like, niche down, get a niche, have a niche. I don't really believe in that. I think you are the niche. Like, I am the niche. I'm N equals one. There's nobody with the unique combination of interests and passions that I have. So I always thought, "Let me just make videos about what I care about." I still do that now. I have a big following, and, like, one day it'll be an AI tool I'm playing with, and the next day is a cultural icon, the next day is a brand. Like, I'm just, I'm just fucking around, to be honest. Like, I... The way I think of it is, like, whatever's interesting to me in the moment, that's what I chase because- I heard something on,

Kane Kallaway 43:00 uh, Rick Rubin's podcast. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's, uh, Tetr- Tetragrammaton, which I guess m- means God or something. Weird name, but yeah, Rick Rubin's like a legend in music, and he was interviewing John Mayer. And John Mayer was talking about the way he makes music, makes songs. Like a lot of times he'll go into the studio, he's hunting. Like he's got nothing. He's, he has, he has nothing. He's like playing little riffs and little diddles. And then the minute he gets something, he's like, "Clear my schedule. I'm not leaving the studio until I finish the song." Because he's like, "When I go out those doors and come back, I'm a different person, and the energy around that song is different."

Calum Johnson 43:38 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 43:39 I look at content the v- like making these videos the exact same way. So when I sit down and I'm looking for signal, whatever grabs me, my best videos are when I just rip the whole video right there-

Calum Johnson 43:49 Mm

Kane Kallaway 43:49 ... and I don't think twice about it. And that means whatever's grabbing me is not gonna be in a niche, 'cause I'm not looking in one... I'm not reading one publication. I'm, I'm looking all over. And so anytime I've like premeditated a video and try to like really plan it out and like really overthink it, it never does well.

Calum Johnson 44:03 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 44:03 Anytime I'm s- the messy one, I was just, I was in the sauna listening to, uh, this group chat podcast. I heard them talk about the messy deal. I went right home, peeled it off, 30 million views. Like that's all it, that's all it is, is just following your intuition for what's interesting. And then the hard part, which we can get into, is like translating why you think it's interesting into a story that people will actually resonate with. Like that's-

Calum Johnson 44:26 Mm

Kane Kallaway 44:26 ... that is the hard part. For me, like if there's one mystical, magical part about what I do, I can take a kernel of an idea and have it recorded in like 30 minutes and write the c- write the thing so fast. I don't know, I don't know what it is. I... my brain just works in that way. I've tried though, and we can go through like my storytelling framework or like one of them that works. I've tried to reverse engineer that so I can give it to people and be like, "Here's, here's the pattern that I..." Like after making 10 of these, I looked at it, tried to reverse engineer the pattern, and then handed the story framework in my email to people. And that works sometimes, but there's a little bit of an element of like magic. It's the same way like when you make a podcast, if your, your brain immediately is like, "Here's how I should package it," and you just know. You can't really tell people like how you did that. You could try to reverse engineer different ways to think about the packaging, but there is a little bit el- there's a little bit of special sauce there.

Calum Johnson 45:15 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 45:15 So that's, that's the only special sauce. Everything else, as we have been saying, is like formulaic and you can like really think through what to do.

Calum Johnson 45:21 Yeah. You know what it, it reminds me of? It's like, um, I wrote this in my notes. I said, "Ingenuity is at the edges." So basically like the... and I've kind of learnt this about the creative process. It's usually a combination of like a whole lot of factors all coming together in one moment.

Kane Kallaway 45:40 Yeah, yeah.

Calum Johnson 45:40 And it's like the intersection of all of these circles, and right in the middle is where like the magic is-

Kane Kallaway 45:47 Yep

Calum Johnson 45:47 ... is where the original thought is. And you know, actually something, um, while it's on my mind, something really interesting that you said in one of your newsletters because, um... And you know what? Let's talk about some of the, some of the common things we hear about content creation, and I even say some of this stuff, which is like the, the established content creator who's gotten the billions of views and whatever. If they get on a video or on a podcast and you ask them, "How do I get started?" or, "How should I be thinking about this? What's the mindset?" They 99 times out of 100 will say, "Just be consistent."

Kane Kallaway 46:27 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 46:28 And I think the thing is, part of the reason you're a beginner is because you don't know what truly matters yet. You haven't done enough experiments to know like, "Here are the things that I actually have to nail in a video-

Kane Kallaway 46:42 Yeah

Calum Johnson 46:42 ... for it to be good." So you're kind of just trying a bit of everything. I'm curious, where do you land in terms of like if you thought about what it took to be successful, like once it started working and it was clicking and the views were coming in, what was it that you were doing correctly? And, and maybe we can even bucket it out, like some of the factors that people commonly say, which is like, I guess the ideas, the packaging, uh, just being consistent and you just have to do a lot of it. Like where does it ladder up in terms of what do you actually need to be successful?

Kane Kallaway 47:18 Yeah. Well, I think the thing with consistency is what you were saying Zach said, which is the whole reason you wanna be consistent is so you can get more iterations. J- consistency for consistency's sake doesn't work, right? 'Cause if you're, if you're bad and then you're just bad a lot, you'll still be bad. So if you, if you read the email, a lot of what I write about is like... And, and, and I didn't start writing-- I wish I started writing that from week one, period, like of making content. I started writing it week one of going full-time, so at least we'll have that historically. But like a lot of what I write about is I don't know what to iterate on. So I'm like, I'm to the point now where it's like, okay, the little things of like the audio sucks or the video's not straight or the, the editing could be be- Like I've fixed all those and now I'm like sending it into the void and it's not like there's a magic fairy that's like, "Hey, by the way, like you should probably change this for next time." Nobody's telling you what to change. It's just do, does it resonate? Does it get shared? Does it give views or not? And so that's where like consistency, the whole point of consistency is that you're, it forces you to do it enough to where you can start to notice what to improve after the initial stuff. 'Cause the initial stuff you know what to improve.

Calum Johnson 48:22 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 48:23 You're just like, "I need to do it." But once you get to a certain level, that's what consistency's for. So I kinda, I kinda view consistency as like if you're gonna do something and you're not gonna be consistent, you'll never win. So consistency is kind of like table stakes. I don't really think-

Calum Johnson 48:34 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 48:35 That's like step zero. So I wouldn't even look at consistency as a what was the big trigger, 'cause if you don't, if you're not consistent, it's not gonna work. The big trigger I think is it really comes do- So I was writing about this last week. It's I- either originality of ideas or high execution. And we can go through the, the frame that I was-- I was just playing with that. I didn't think through it for like hours and hours, so maybe there's a edge case I didn't cover. But-

Calum Johnson 48:59 Mm

Kane Kallaway 48:59 ... I think originality of ideas is the crème de la crème. Like that's the most important thing. And so if you think about- Who comes to mind when you think the most original ideas? For me, it's MrBeast. Like, he comes up with the most original, crazy shit.

Calum Johnson 49:14 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 49:14 And it is big production, but it's also very original if you think about, like, putting a person aged 1 to 100 in a g- glass enclosure in, like, a warehouse. [laughs] Like, that's pretty original. And so, and there, it's no coincidence to me that he is the most followed, most viewed person on the planet, and, and he's the most original. On the other side, it's like there are people that are not original at all that execute extremely well. I'm trying to think of a good example without, like, ripping somebody, but-

Calum Johnson 49:39 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 49:40 You know, like, like there, there's examples where people execute so well and they're not really original and they do well. But I think the problem is when you're starting out, you're never gonna be 10 out of 10 execution. You're always, like, climbing your way up. So the way to, the way to get traction is to try to be more original. And-

Calum Johnson 49:56 Mm

Kane Kallaway 49:56 ... it's not like you can-- Most people can't just think, like, sit and think, like, "What original ideas do I have today?" You kinda have to just be authentic to, to your interests and try to, try to connect dots in a way that you haven't seen. So sometimes I'll make videos that after I make them, I find people who had those takes. But at the time I was like, "Damn, I haven't seen this anywhere. Like, this is a very original thought." And those are the ones that really resonate. Like, I made a Netflix one a couple weeks ago where I was like, "I think Netflix has a master plan to become Disney 2.0." Like, just that alone, that little kernel alone, I was like, "All right, that's a pretty original take." Like, I haven't really seen that by any analyst. I haven't read anything about that. You know, the video did how it did for a variety of other factors. But I think consistency allows you to train your brain to have more reps at trying to be original, and so your hit rate of originality goes up over time.

Calum Johnson 50:47 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 50:47 That's, that's, I guess that's a good way to, like, summarize-

Calum Johnson 50:50 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 50:50 ... consistency.

Calum Johnson 50:51 What you, uh, there was actually-- We did an episode yesterday. I don't remember exactly, I don't remember exactly how the guest said it. He worded it really well, which is like, um, great ideas aren't really, like, made. They kind of come to you.

Kane Kallaway 51:10 Yeah. It's true.

Calum Johnson 51:11 Like, you're just, like, doing something. And a lot of the times it's when you're not even doing the task.

Kane Kallaway 51:15 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 51:16 You're like in the shower, and then suddenly it, like, hits you out of nowhere.

Kane Kallaway 51:20 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 51:20 And it's like this moment of inspiration. And so the thing is, is that you kind of-- I think some people are trying to be original without being involved.

Kane Kallaway 51:31 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 51:31 Like, you have to be doing the thing. Like, that's where you

Calum Johnson 51:35 start to kind of see where the gaps are, is when you're actually... And I think that's, what you, the way that you framed consistency is actually really good. Which is like, that's the table stakes that, like, it gives you the foundation that you can then start doing things really well.

Kane Kallaway 51:52 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 51:53 Um, like it sets the table.

Kane Kallaway 51:53 It, like, channels your att- it channels your attention towards the, the, like, slice of stuff you want. And then the way the dots connect, that's where originality comes from. But you c- it's very hard to, like, purposefully connect on disconnected dots. Like, it's very hard to do that.

Calum Johnson 52:09 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 52:10 Only-- That's why you hear people say, like, there's only so many original thinkers in the world. Original thinkers can think about a problem and connect disparate dots really well from, like, other places. They pull them together. I can do that sometimes, but more often than not, it's just I'm channeling energy towards the slice and different things come to me at... And, and then, and then the key is I action them immediately.

Calum Johnson 52:31 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 52:31 So, like, as soon as I have it, I go to the computer and I make the video. Like, I don't, I don't mess around. Like, I don't, you know, buy a domain name. I don't plan about. I don't, like, try to do some designs and then get to it later. Like, as soon as that happens, I go.

Calum Johnson 52:44 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 52:44 And, and, and that's, that's another thing that's, like, a little bit... People don't, people don't really talk about that. I think Zach has had a good, uh, frame on this. It might have been on your show too. He's just like, "When, when the inspiration strikes, sprint at it hard, as hard as you possibly can. Work on it till it's done."

Calum Johnson 53:01 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 53:01 "And, and ship it."

Calum Johnson 53:02 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 53:02 That's, that's really it.

Calum Johnson 53:04 Yeah. 'Cause it's like, it's a moment. It's a moment. It's not always gonna be there.

Kane Kallaway 53:07 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 53:07 It can be fleeting.

Kane Kallaway 53:08 The confluence of all those ideas and you at that moment will never happen again. Maybe the confluence of those ideas will happen, like you could think about something three days later. But you in that moment, the amount of energy you have, the, you know, the passion you have for it, the schedule you have, the place you are in time, all those things will change three days from now, and the moment is probably gonna be gone.

Calum Johnson 53:27 Yeah. Okay. You know what? Let's carry, let's carry on building, building this for people. So, uh, carry on building the blueprint. I like that. Um-

Kane Kallaway 53:35 And would it help to talk about, like, what the blueprint is and, like, why I, like, it, uh, like, just, like, why I started writing it this way?

Calum Johnson 53:41 Yeah. You know, you know what? Before we get to that though, so I kind of wanna, I wanna build on the journey. So those first 20 videos, it's like you're just trying things.

Kane Kallaway 53:49 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 53:49 You're experimenting. You're looking for the signal. Like, what's the, what's the spike? Like, what's the thing that's out of the ordinary, um, that I can then use of, like, we found something.

Kane Kallaway 54:00 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 54:00 Like, we found gold. So here's my question

Calum Johnson 54:03 if we carry on. Once you found the thing, so the Sam Bankman-Fried video, where does your mind go next, right? Because it's like, okay, I had one video that worked, but, like, how are you kind of taking what worked there and then repackaging that into, like, a formula, like even your storytelling framework of like, okay, here's how we can do it again, and again, and again, and again?

Kane Kallaway 54:30 Yeah. Well, the first thing I did was make two more Sam Bankman-Fried related videos.

Calum Johnson 54:34 Okay.

Kane Kallaway 54:34 'Cause the, the thing is, like, when you're searching, if you... Like, think about if you have a metal detector in sand and you're like nothing, nothing, nothing, and then you find something in the sand. The first thing you're gonna do is look in that area again.

Calum Johnson 54:44 Mm-hmm.

Kane Kallaway 54:44 Like, so the first thing I did was-- And I'm looking at, I'm looking at the videos that I made right after. Like, very quickly after, I made two more about that. It, like, two of the next three were related, and one of those went viral again. So I was like, all right, am I just like a Sam Bankman-Fried guy at this point?

Calum Johnson 55:00 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 55:00 Like, right? So, so you, you, you don't wanna, like, s- but, and then I made a third one four videos later that went 2.6 million views. So, like, I had a lot of content on this. And so the- The thing you have to do then is two things. One, try to reverse engineer the story framework, and the other is reverse engineer the theme. So that theme is kinda like complex business simplified, we'll say.

Calum Johnson 55:23 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 55:23 Or it's crypto. Like, it could be a couple things, but, like, it ended up being complex business simplified. And the story framework was, "You're never gonna believe this. Let me tell you what happened." Bunch of mini conflicts inside, you know, "We don't know what's gonna happen. Stay tuned." Like, that, that was kinda the framework. So almost like news reporting, but in, like, an interesting way. So nothing too, like, crazy. But then, um, if, if I look at the, the list of videos in terms of, like, what next went viral, I had one where I was like, "I think a per- I think personalized vitamins could be a good business idea," which is completely different from Sam Bankman-Fried. That one went viral. Another one was like, "The Airbnb founder quit to launch a new startup." That one went viral. So it's kinda hard sometimes to see the signal-

Calum Johnson 56:04 Mm

Kane Kallaway 56:04 ... because things are working, but you don't know why. And s- and that's kind of the name of the game with shorts is, like, you're not gonna... I'm not gonna make 10 Sam Bankman-Fried videos over and over 'cause eventually that, that story's gonna get played out. And so once the news cycle was done, there was no reason to do that. But I can kind of take some... You know, it's, it's hard. It's like I can take some kernels from it and try to reverse engineer, but I think the key is that rep put an arrow in my quiver of like, okay, that story works. So when, then when I sit down to make another video, subconsciously my brain's like gravitating towards the thing that worked, right?

Calum Johnson 56:39 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 56:39 That, that's, that's what we're talking about with consistency is, like, because I had made 20, 30 videos before, I had a few arrows in my quiver of, like, things that could work, and then when I sit down for the Airbnb video, I pull a couple. And, like, those arrows get better as I get better, and so I get more dialed every single time.

Calum Johnson 56:54 Mm. I'm curious, like, how, how in the moment is it versus, like, purely analytical? So once you get one that works, how much are you, like... Are you sitting down and being l- and analyzing like, "Oh, I used this line as the hook, and then it-"

Kane Kallaway 57:11 Nah, yeah, none of that.

Calum Johnson 57:11 Okay.

Kane Kallaway 57:11 It's all in the moment.

Calum Johnson 57:13 Okay, fair.

Kane Kallaway 57:13 It's all intuitive, which, which is why it's hard for a beginner to hear me and be like, "Well, how do I do it then?"

Calum Johnson 57:18 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 57:19 Which is why I try to break things into these story frameworks after. Like, I don't go through the analytics to go through the analytics because I think it's all intuition. But to help others, which is, like, that's why I write the blueprint to give all of it away for free, wh- which we can get into. But, like, to help others, I kinda need to go into the analytics and figure out what the formula could've been and just present it to people. Maybe it works for them, maybe it doesn't, but I don't ever do that in the moment.

Calum Johnson 57:43 Yeah. You know, I was reading one of your, um, [lips smack] speaking of the blueprint, I was reading one of your additions, and you were saying, um, [lips smack] you'd done, like, a week of posting. You were like, "Several of the videos just didn't really hit."

Kane Kallaway 57:56 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 57:56 And you make this joke, you're like, "I still need to eat. Like, I need to put dinner on the table. And luckily for me, like, I know the exact formula for how to get something to go viral in short form video."

Kane Kallaway 58:09 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 58:09 So if you were gonna put words to what that formula is, what would you say?

Kane Kallaway 58:13 Yeah, let's pull it up.

Calum Johnson 58:15 Let's do it.

Kane Kallaway 58:15 Let's, let's pull up the... I'm just gonna pull it up so I have the notes so I can say exactly what I wrote before. Um, so this is what I use... This, you're talking about what I use for the Messi video?

Calum Johnson 58:24 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 58:24 So this is what I use for the Messi video, which I think this is the most consistent story framework that's worked for me. Now, you may say, like, "Okay, well, if you figured that out, like, if you found the gold, why, why has every video you've ever made after that not gone viral?" And the reason is a couple things. One, virality has a lot to do with what you try, but there's a lot of factors that are luck and, like, you can't control. When the algorithm will pick it up. Did it get shared by someone notable? So there's some things you can't control. Two, my job is to try to experiment and find 10 of these so that I have a, a whole backpack full of stories that work.

Calum Johnson 58:59 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 58:59 So I can't make every video the same exact formula because then it'll get dry. Like, people watching my stuff will be like, "Oh, it's, it's too predictable."

Calum Johnson 59:06 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 59:06 And, like, the unpredictable nature of content is why people stick around. That's, like, how, why the dopamine fires. So I'm kind of, like, messing with it. The good news is at any time with the right topic, like usually some pop culture related topic, I can peel off 5 million views. Like, if I want to, at the, at, at any time I can do that. Now, like we said before, there's strategically, like, who I want to become and what I want my audience to be doesn't necessarily overlap perfectly with the people that would resonate. So, like, I can make a Taylor Swift video and go 5 million right now, but Sw- Taylor Swift fans and, like, who I want my audience to be, which is entrepreneurs, creators, business builders, 'cause that's who I am, that's, like, what I wanna build long term for, those don't really overlap.

Calum Johnson 59:47 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 59:47 So every time I do the Taylor Swift thing, I'm just building more fandom in an area that I don't wanna double down in. So it's kind of like, you know, it picks apart. But let, let's get into the story framework. So this is kind of how I laid it out. It, there's five pieces. There's the hook, the context, the conflict, resolution, and then last dab. So I'll go through each of them. So the hook, everybody hears the hook. They're like, "The hook, the hook." Everyone's talking about the hook.

Calum Johnson 1:00:13 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:00:13 I hate, like, referencing it the same way everyone else does, but the way I think of the hook, there's three sub parts to it.

Calum Johnson 1:00:19 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:00:20 So at the beginning, if you go back to my beginning vide- my early videos, I would do something that's very common with beginners, where it's kinda, the first line is kinda like, "I'm gonna tell you about something cool today." And then the second line is when you get into it. Cut that. Cut, cut the, "I'm gonna tell you about something cool." The first thing you say needs to be, like, what you're talking about. So for the Leo Messi video, I forget exactly what it was, but it was like, "Leo Messi just said no to a billion dollars," something like that, right? So it's exact- like, the first sentence you hear is something happened interesting. Then the second p- second part of the hook is what I call the shocker. So you need to give some data point that supports that thing in a way that you'll never believe. So maybe the first sentence was like, uh, I think it was, "Leo Messi just changed the business of sports forever." That was the first sentence. The second was, "He said no to $1 billion." So that's the shocker, where it's like, $1 billion? Like, why would he say no to that, right? So your brain is like, Leo Messi said... Leo Messi sports, he said no to 1 billion. Right now you're like, I know what it's about. But why the fuck did he do that? And you're like, you're wondering.

Calum Johnson 1:01:18 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:01:18 Then the third sentence is the misdirection I call, which... And this works every time. You get them leaning. It's kind of like boxing, right? You get them leaning, and you hit them with the counter. Like, you get them leaning one way, and then you misdirect, so their brain is like, "What?" So for that video, it was like, "Leo Messi just changed the business of sports forever. He said no to $1 billion." Like, but it was, but he, but he made the best financial move he possibly could. Because you're leaning like, said no to $1 billion, he's probably gonna talk about why that was a dumb move.

Calum Johnson 1:01:44 Mm-hmm.

Kane Kallaway 1:01:44 And then I hit you with the misdirection, which is like, it was actually a really smart move. So now you're, like, so intrigued about it, 'cause you know what it's about enough to stay. If you're a Leo Messi fan or football fan, you know, but you're, like, confused. So that's, that, that hook framework works every single time.

Calum Johnson 1:01:59 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:01:59 So that's where I start. Then it's a

Kane Kallaway 1:02:02 dance between the context and the conflict, because this is, like, the meat of the post. You, you need to tell people what's going on, but you need to hide, like, mini conflicts inside, because the way your brain works psychologically is you, you wanna close loops. So if I say, like, "Leo d-" And I think Sean Perry said this. He said it very well. If I say, like, "Leo did this, and then he did this, and then he did this, and then he did this," it's just one loop that's kind of... And you can predict when it's gonna close, so you're not really interested. But if I say, "Leo did this, but then this happened, and why did that ha-" Like, then I'm opening separate loops, and you're like, "Oh shit," like, "I, I need these loops to close," and so you keep watching. And so it's really a dance between more contextual information and, like, little baby conflicts. The best way to introduce the conflicts is usually saying but something.

Calum Johnson 1:02:46 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:02:47 So... Or, like, you know, however something. So it's con- context and conflict. Then at some point you need to resolve, make sure all loops come closed. So, like, you, there needs to be a resolution. I think on the Leo Messi video it was kind of like, you know, he signed with Inter Miami, and that's good for him. It's good for Inter Miami. It's good for MLS. Like, I kind of closed all the loops. And then this is something most people don't do, the last dab, which is the way to get videos to go really viral, the, the last thing you leave somebody with needs to hit them with like a, "Whoa," like, "That was crazy," because their, your brain is so temporary that you won't really remember most of what I said, like, which is sad. [chuckles] But, like, you'll know it was about Messi. You'll know Messi did something cool. You'll think, maybe remember $1 billion, but you're not gonna remember anything else. So I gotta make sure the last line is just as good as the misdirection.

Calum Johnson 1:03:37 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:03:37 And so the videos that I've done that have done the best have some, like, crazy thing in the last line. Like, I, I made one, uh, where I changed my voice to Kanye and I, like, rapped the, rapped the verse.

Calum Johnson 1:03:48 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:03:49 Um, or actually... Well, I did that, but a, a different video. Because I knew I could do that with Kanye, I made a video about the music industry and AI, and it was all like, "What's, what's the music industry gonna do?" Like, "Why are they thinking about this?" And the last line was me changing into Kanye. Like, I did this, like, flicker thing, and I changed my voice, and that, that, just that little bit-

Calum Johnson 1:04:07 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 1:04:07 ... people were like, "Holy shit." And so many people commented and shared, 'cause they're like, "The last line was crazy. The last line was crazy."

Calum Johnson 1:04:12 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:04:12 So that's, that's how I break it down is a, is a good framework.

Calum Johnson 1:04:14 You know what's interesting? Um, [sighs] Steven Bartlett talked about it in his, spoke about it in his book, which is, um, psychologically it's proven that every interaction, like things that are memorable to us, we remember, um, how it started. We remember either the best or the worst moment, and then how it ended.

Kane Kallaway 1:04:37 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:04:37 And so he even gives this example. He's like, if you're going on a date, right, with someone, like a first date, the only things that you actually really need to nail so that it's memorable and they wanna go out with you again is, like, the pinnacle moment. So either re- like, obviously you want it to be really good.

Kane Kallaway 1:04:54 Yeah, yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:04:54 Like, they're gonna remember either it's really good, re- or really bad, and then how it ended.

Kane Kallaway 1:04:59 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:05:00 So if, if they had an amazing date, but then the ending was, like, kind of awkward, it actually in your brain, you don't even remember that much of the amazing stuff.

Kane Kallaway 1:05:08 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:05:09 You just remember, "Oh, it was a bit wei- kind of weird."

Kane Kallaway 1:05:11 You stamp it in, like, the weird category.

Calum Johnson 1:05:13 Yeah, it was a weird.

Kane Kallaway 1:05:14 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:05:14 It was just weird. Um, that's super interesting. Okay. So here's where I wanna go with the short, the short form stuff, and I wanna bring it to, um, what you were doing with your job, because I think there's a group of people out there who they've started doing the content stuff, and, uh, their dream is to go all in-

Kane Kallaway 1:05:33 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:05:33 ... on that business and the content that they're building. However, there's like, there's almost like a pull and an addiction to staying in the job.

Kane Kallaway 1:05:42 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:05:43 And so I kind of wanna draw on two threads actually. The first thing is that, um, I feel like with short form content, there's a tendency for there to be a lot of, like, vanity metrics.

Kane Kallaway 1:05:54 There is.

Calum Johnson 1:05:55 So, like, people are getting all these views, but it's not amounting to anything.

Kane Kallaway 1:06:00 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:06:00 Like, it's not building a brand. It's not, uh, making them money. It's not directing to a product. How, how kind of... What was the thought process of even being able to leave your job? Like, what were you seeing happen where you were like, "Okay, I'm not just getting views. I'm actually... I can leave. Like, I can... I know I want to leave, but practically, like, in a money sense, like looking at my account-

Kane Kallaway 1:06:30 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:06:30 ... I can leave."

Kane Kallaway 1:06:31 Yeah. There, I think there's a few things to this. One is, like, what your situation is already, and then two is, like, the signal of what you're doing and how money's coming in from it. So maybe I'll start with the second one first. So I was getting, like, five emails a week from brands being like, "We'll pay you three to five grand to make a short for us."

Calum Johnson 1:06:50 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:06:50 And I was getting those a lot, and I did a few. So I was like, "Okay, I can, like, do the math on this. Like, it'll work-

Calum Johnson 1:06:55 Mm

Kane Kallaway 1:06:55 ... if those keep happening." And I f- I figured if my following just keeps going up, the numbers will just keep, the money will just keep going up, and, like, those brands will continue to be there. So that was... One signal was, like, I did start monetizing, right?

Calum Johnson 1:07:10 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:07:10 So a lot of people will quit before they start monetizing or before they even know it's working. I wouldn't do that.

Calum Johnson 1:07:16 That's what I did.

Kane Kallaway 1:07:16 Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:07:17 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 1:07:18 I mean, you can do it. And p- podcasting's different because you know it's gonna take longer before... Like we said, you know it's gonna take a little bit longer before you get the signal.

Calum Johnson 1:07:24 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:07:25 But for me, I was like I guess once I made the jump, I was like, "I'm not going back. I'm never going back." So it was easier to make it a no-brainer if the money coming in was, like, gonna replace the salary or, like, even close to it or even part of it. So I think that matters. TikTok also launched their creator fund, which started paying me 60 cents per thousand views on qualified views. So for reference, like, if I have a video that goes 10 million views, I make six grand on that on one video.

Calum Johnson 1:07:56 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:07:56 So I had a few that peeled pretty good. So I was like, okay, a combination of, like, that and the brand deals and, like, I don't have any digital products yet. I don't have any- anything else, and it's like, it's gonna work. So that was helpful. But I think the other side of it, what I said is my situation already. Fortunately, like, my wife is in consulting, so, like, I had a rare situation where, like, she could support us both if, if we had to, which is, like, a good backstop, I guess. So I had that and, like, you know, random, random stuff that I had been working for eight years. So, like, I kind of built up to the point of getting to go.

Calum Johnson 1:08:32 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:08:32 If you're 22 with no partner and you have no, like... You know, that-- I understand that's... I'm privileged for that. So, like, if you're 22 and don't have that, take that off the table. But, but the other thing I said is really important, which is I made these videos with a full-time job for six to seven months before leaving, and I was ma- I was ma- I started making money before I left.

Calum Johnson 1:08:53 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:08:53 So that's one way to think about it. But to be honest, like, if you have even a little, I... It's tough to put numbers on it because everyone's situation's different. But I think if you have between six and 12 months reasonable expenses, that's all you need to go.

Calum Johnson 1:09:09 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:09:09 Because what, what you really-- if you really want it, like, if you want it bad, if you have that dog in you, then if it doesn't work, six months you burn through your expenses and you make no money, you'll just go get another job similar to what you had, save up six months, and go again. And just, you're probably better off ping-ponging through that in your 20s than, than, you know, getting tempted with the golden handcuffs where you, like, stick with a corporate job and, like, ladder up, and then your salary becomes, like, pretty good, and you're like, "Oh, now it's a lot to lose." If you're, if you're, uh, entry level and, like, you're not making that much but you, like, save aggressively, that ping-pong, it'll work, right? Because you're s- like we said, the fight or flight will kick in. You're so, like, so, uh, so determined to not go back that you'll figure it out.

Calum Johnson 1:09:53 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:09:53 So it, it's a combination. It's kind of like people don't leave soon enough for the money they have in the bank. If you have

Kane Kallaway 1:10:00 fortuitous situations like a partner or whatever, that helps too. But also, if you pick a vehicle where you can start monetizing more quickly, which I would say, like, YouTube short form would be that, then you can, you know, justify it.

Calum Johnson 1:10:13 Yeah. You know, I wanna get, I wanna get into the specific moment when you left. Before we do that, talk to me about the brand deals. I think people have a lot of questions around that. Like-

Kane Kallaway 1:10:20 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:10:20 ... how did that even come about? And was there-- Looking back, is there a way that you can do your content, your short form content, where it's primed for brands to want to work with you-

Kane Kallaway 1:10:36 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:10:36 ... and give you better rates?

Kane Kallaway 1:10:38 Yeah, I mean, well, this was, like, semi-intentional, semi not, but, like, my content niche I describe as, like, new tech and cult brands. So, like, if someone were to describe me to someone else, what I think they'd say and what I hope they'd say is, like, "If you wanna know about the cool shit going on, this guy will tell you in, like, a way that's fun and engaging." Which means if you're any brand with any product that you wanna be viewed as, like, cool shit going on, which is every brand, they're gonna want me to cover it. So, like, on this content side, I wanna be, like, one of the top five to 10 people that, you know, users, consumers, ideally creators, builders, entrepreneurs segment look to, to be like, "That guy knows what's going on and he tells it to us in a way that's unique and we like it." If that's true, every brand, every tech product, every whatever vertical I choose to pick will want to s- to work with me.

Calum Johnson 1:11:29 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:11:29 So I was kinda like, "That's helpful." Like, that's, that's a little closer to, like, directly related than if I was doing, like, comic book videos and I had to, like, stretch to find ways that brands could interact.

Calum Johnson 1:11:42 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:11:42 So that was helpful. That was, like, intentional. Like, r- when I realized that this was kind of where my content authentically was going, I was like, "All right, we're gonna be good." The second thing is basically before I left, I wanted two th- I wanted to prove two things. One, I could go viral at will, and two, I can get paid for doing this. Those are the two things. So I figured out how to go viral at will after, like, 100 to 150 videos. So that was, like, six months. And then a couple times I reached out to brands 'cause I wanted to test, like, if I just reach out and say I have 300,000 followers at the time and, like, I'll do a video for X, like, will they say yes? So I got that to happen a couple times. Also, I got inbound from a few brand, a few, like, big-- Like Adobe was one that came inbound, and they paid, like, really well. So I was like, "All right. I'm getting inbound from Adobe. I can go outbound and tell p- and, like, get money relatively easily, and I can go viral at will." It's like this is just, it's just too good not to bet on myself, you know?

Calum Johnson 1:12:34 Mm. So you know what? That's actually a really cool point, which is, like, in a way, I don't know if curator is the right way to say it, but if you're the person that can, like, look in a field and decide what's cool-

Kane Kallaway 1:12:46 Yeah, taste

Calum Johnson 1:12:46 ... then there's a m- Yeah, taste.

Kane Kallaway 1:12:48 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:12:48 Then there's instantly a money, like, value n- number-

Kane Kallaway 1:12:52 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:12:52 ... attributed to that.

Kane Kallaway 1:12:53 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:12:53 Um-

Kane Kallaway 1:12:53 All, all, all I want is to sharpen my taste to the point where th- my desired audience, which is builders, entrepreneurs, creators, trust the taste and it's, like, aspirational the way I tell it. That's all I want. If I can do that, which I'm, like, on the path but still have so, so, you know, so long to go, but if I can do that, if I can become... The way, like, I don't know if you know Peter McKinnon, but the way-

Calum Johnson 1:13:17 Sounds familiar.

Kane Kallaway 1:13:19 Anyone who's in ca- uh, photography, videography, like cameras, will know Peter McKinnon. The way Peter McKinnon's taste for what's dope and the way he tells stuff what's dope in that area, everybody in, in videography, photography ... worships this guy.

Calum Johnson 1:13:33 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:13:33 He can do anything. He's done crazy, like, he has, like, jewelry brands, coffee brands. He goes and shoots concerts with, uh, with, with huge bands. Like, he can do whatever he wants because of his taste. So I think what it, what, what being an influencer, which I fucking hate that word, but, like, it's really a tastemaker, right?

Calum Johnson 1:13:51 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:13:51 That's... If you're a tastemaker in whatever vertical you're in and authentically people respect your taste, you're set forever.

Calum Johnson 1:13:58 Mm. And then you would say the taste, if you had to almost define how you become a great tastemaker-

Kane Kallaway 1:14:05 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:14:06 ... you think it's the storytelling? Like, would that be the component which is like that's what allows you to have the influence. Like, that's why people listen.

Kane Kallaway 1:14:13 The story- the storytelling is not it. It's, it's like a two, two-piece package. The taste comes from identification, like finding the needles in the haystack. So it's like the scanning and picking is the taste.

Calum Johnson 1:14:24 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:14:24 The storytelling is the packaging.

Calum Johnson 1:14:26 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:14:26 So it's like I'll find what's cool and I'll tell you about it in a way you like.

Calum Johnson 1:14:30 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:14:30 You can tell people about stuff in a way they like, but if you don't find what's cool, you have no taste. You can find what's cool, but if you don't have any way to tell people, you're just like-

Calum Johnson 1:14:38 Mm

Kane Kallaway 1:14:38 ... you know, a cool tastemaker that nobody follows. If you put them together, it's extremely valuable.

Calum Johnson 1:14:42 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:14:42 So I was kind of like you can't buy taste. You can't wake up and have taste. You have to, like, cultivate taste over time, which a lot of it is just, like, looking at huge amounts of information and trying to pick out the interesting stuff. So I knew, like, I couldn't, I couldn't create taste in one night. But I knew the easier thing to create was, like, how to become a storytelling savant. So I was like if I can just become a storytelling savant, my taste will come over time. When they come, maybe it's two years, five years, and, like, it's iterative. But, like, when it gets to the point where it's people actually trust my taste, I'll have already become a storytelling savant. I'll s- I can sell anything.

Calum Johnson 1:15:15 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:15:15 Either my products or, or brands that I love.

Calum Johnson 1:15:18 That's powerful. Okay, I'm curious. When you get into those conversations with brands, what are they telling you the reason is they wanna work with you? So, like, I get the taste. I get the taste thing. But is there, like, a, a metric? Is there something they said where they're like, "Okay, this is why we're willing to give you this money"? Like, what's the thing that truly matters?

Kane Kallaway 1:15:36 Usually it's, it's, it's nothing definitive, to be honest. And I think that's why there's a lot of money out there for creators. Usually, the reason they reach out is either I made a video about their brand permissionlessly for free that went viral.

Calum Johnson 1:15:49 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:15:50 Or I made a video about their category. I made a bunch of videos about their category that went viral, and they're, they're doing their job, like the marketer PR person is doing their job, like scanning who's talking about this. And so because I can go viral-- Saying I go viral at will is, like, pretty egotistical. Like, that's not completely true. Like, if you look at my videos, I haven't had a mega, mega viral one in a, in a couple weeks. So it's not, like, really-

Calum Johnson 1:16:11 [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 1:16:11 It's not, like, really true.

Calum Johnson 1:16:12 That's hilarious.

Kane Kallaway 1:16:13 Yeah. It's not, it's not, like, really true. Um, I can go s- I can go viral at will with certain topics, let's say.

Calum Johnson 1:16:18 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:16:18 But, like, when those people reach out, they see all the times that I've gone viral in that category and then, you know, they, they see me as a t- as someone with taste who can storytell in that niche. So AI tools is kind of like the first one that really ripped, 'cause I, I d- I had, like, a phase where I was just like let me just hammer AI for a while and see if I can, you know, make, make content here.

Calum Johnson 1:16:37 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:16:38 So that's one thing, and then... But, but I, there's not really, like, a threshold of metrics. Like, these-- What really happens if you really wanna know the behind the scenes, this is what I think is going on. Not to, like, blow anyone's spot, but, like, fuck it. I think what happens is let's say Adobe's

Kane Kallaway 1:16:52 releasing a, a new tool. The Adobe will set a budget. Let's say it's like a million dollar PR budget. They'll hire a PR firm. They'll tell the PR firm, "Yo, go spread this million around the tastemakers in AI up to your discretion. We want..." And then, like, report us back the cumulative metrics of how the campaign did. So what the PR team will go do is they'll reach out to me. They'll reach out to a bunch of other people that based on how many followers we have and, like, how well our videos have done, we'll have, like, kind of like rates in a range. They're, they're adding those people up to get to the million. Then we all make our videos. Now, if mine doesn't do well in that one wave but someone else's does, it'll smooth out in the cumulative metrics. If mine does well, someone else's doesn't, whatever. So they'll run the campaign. Maybe they'll get 50 videos, and then they'll take some of the money and they'll run paid ads against the videos. So, like, let's say I, I was able to get 500,000 views with, like, pretty high engagement on my own.

Calum Johnson 1:17:46 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:17:46 They'll then take my video, put paid ads behind it, and then my video will look like it has four million views. But really it only earned like 500,000. They bought the rest. That really smooths out the cumulative metrics when they report back.

Calum Johnson 1:17:58 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:17:58 So, and I'm sure they're, I'm sure they're splitting it out like organic versus paid.

Calum Johnson 1:18:02 Mm-hmm.

Kane Kallaway 1:18:02 But at the end of the day, like, Adobe doesn't have time to know who every tastemaker is, negotiate every video deal, so they farm it out to a PR team. And I, what I think's happening is a lot of these brands are doing that. A lot of these PR teams have these huge pu- you know, buckets of money, and then they're, they're paying influencers with it.

Calum Johnson 1:18:20 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:18:20 And, and, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, that is how the industry works. But, um, I think there's more efficient ways for brands-- I'm actually working on with a buddy, I'm trying to build a tool that can, that can help do this more efficiently for brands in one way.

Calum Johnson 1:18:37 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:18:37 So I'm sure there's others, but that's kind of how it works. And then, yeah, they reach out. They're like, you know, to get super tactical, they reach out. They're like, "We like the content you made. We wanna do a deal. Here's how much we'll pay you per video. We wanna do two videos, three videos. You know, here are the terms." And the terms are just like you put our link in your-- Make the video, put our link in your bio, do the hashtags, and then that's it.

Calum Johnson 1:18:56 Yeah. The way that you broke it down, um, it reminds me something that I read on your newsletter as well, which is the creator in residence. The way that you broke down that whole process of how they do it-

Kane Kallaway 1:19:08 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:19:08 ... it actually clicks in my brain why the creator in residence makes sense for big companies.

Kane Kallaway 1:19:14 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:19:14 You wanna break that down?

Kane Kallaway 1:19:15 Yeah, that's what I want. So right, right now, and I, one of my, one of my, like, creator influences, Karl Shukur, he made a video about this a couple days ago where he's like, he's like, "This might rub people the wrong way, but, like, I really don't like brand deals." Because what, what happens with these brand deals the way they're constructed now is company reaches out. They'll say, "We want you to make a video about X." But you gotta send it to us a few days in advance, and, like, we review it, and we'll give you edits and notes, and we gotta negotiate the contract. By the time it's all said and done, like, it took so much creative energy and time for me, who I could've just sat down and peeled it off in one day and it would've gone viral if I had complete creative freedom. But instead, it's this, like, purifying of the message and, like, channeling it down to this average product. That's why brand videos don't do that well, to be honest. So he was like, "I don't really like these brand deal videos. I'm trying to monetize a different way." I kind of agree. Like, I, I wanna, I wanna work with my favorite brands, and I wanna help them sell a shit ton.

Calum Johnson 1:20:11 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:20:11 But I don't like the way that they go at it right now, which is very, like, hands-on curating the message. Uh, like, any time you say, "This is a collaboration with," no one's gonna w- engage with it. Any ti- like, you know, it just doesn't work that way. So what I was thinking would be better is this creator-in-residence idea, which is what I really want is I want five to 10 companies that I really fuck with. So, like, let's say Shopify, Google, you know, let's s- let's say Adobe, whatever, like, big companies that I care about. And I basically want a contract in place that says anytime you find something interesting that we did, you have full creative license to rip a video on it, and if it hits certain metrics, we'll pay you at this rate. If it doesn't hit the metrics, we won't pay you, and we'll only do, like, a max of X per quarter.

Calum Johnson 1:21:01 Mm-hmm.

Kane Kallaway 1:21:01 And, you know, we can renegotiate the rate every quarter, like, if my following goes up. But what that allows for me to do is, like, be creatively untethered to anything. And if I see something interesting, I'll be like, "Oh, sick." I'll have extra motivation because if it doesn't hit the metrics, I don't get paid. But it allows me to get branded deals that keep me alive without having to do the negotiation every time and the back and forth and, like, them take creative control and the videos not do well 'cause of that. So I think this idea of, like... Well, I, I guess there's that, and then this idea of where I have free range to do whatever I want and the deals are in place where, like, they automatically get facilitated so both sides don't have to deal with the overhead. That's pretty dope.

Calum Johnson 1:21:42 Yeah. It is.

Kane Kallaway 1:21:42 That's where I, that's where I want it to go.

Calum Johnson 1:21:44 Yeah. That's sick. And actually, um, from working-- I worked in marketing at a few startups and, like, that would, like, make so much sense.

Kane Kallaway 1:21:53 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:21:53 Um-

Kane Kallaway 1:21:53 Because then as, as a startup, it's almost like a, it's like a sponsorship for F1 or whatever where it's like Adobe's like, "These are our 10 people."

Calum Johnson 1:22:02 Mm-hmm.

Kane Kallaway 1:22:02 "These are our 10 guys and girls that, like, we have as creators in residence." They have full reign. Like, if you see something from them about us, it starts to build this, like, interesting creator brand dynamic and, like, as a creator, maybe I only have, you know, five to 10 of these. I get sent free product. I feel like part of the team, you know? Like-

Calum Johnson 1:22:21 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:22:21 Or as in golf where, like, you're like, "Oh, is this person a Nike golfer?" It's like there's only 10 of those, and they wear Nike shit all the time, and they talk about Nike, and they're in the commercials. Like, I think that's how creator brand partnerships should move, 'cause right now it feels extremely transactional.

Calum Johnson 1:22:34 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:22:34 And it's not fun for the creator.

Calum Johnson 1:22:35 Yeah. Thing is, you want the creator in their element, right, which is being creative.

Kane Kallaway 1:22:39 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:22:39 So you wanna create the system that allows them to be creative. That's the whole game.

Kane Kallaway 1:22:43 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:22:43 Um, okay, here's where I wanna move, and we can end here actually, which is, um, so you get, you get to a point where you have-- And I think it was actually making sense. It was aligning in a few categories, right? So, uh, in a practical sense, your ability to make money, your ability to get views on your content you were very confident about. And then in terms of your mindset, you would kind of reach this threshold where it was, like, negative returns you being at your job. Like, it was, like, detrimental-

Kane Kallaway 1:23:18 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:23:18 ...um, in terms of your creativity, your time, freedom, all of those things. Like, it was time to make the jump.

Kane Kallaway 1:23:25 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:23:26 I'm curious. So it made sense across both axes why you had to do this thing, why you had to leave. I think there's a lot of people out there that it makes sense why they should leave. They still struggle. Um, I'm curious, was that, like, a struggle for you in any way? Was it like, was there a difficulty in handing in that final, like, notice of, like, "I'm out"?

Kane Kallaway 1:23:51 No, not at all.

Calum Johnson 1:23:52 Really? [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 1:23:52 I wanted out of there, dude, from the second... There was, there was maybe, like, a 12-month period at the beginning of building that, like, little startup on my own where I was like, "This is cool. This is fun." But pretty quickly you realize you have no upside, and, uh, for some reason my brain doesn't work well when I don't have unlimited upside.

Calum Johnson 1:24:08 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:24:09 I just don't... Like, I can't bring myself to go all in when I don't have the upside.

Calum Johnson 1:24:13 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:24:13 Which I guess is, like, a good signal that I should be an entrepreneur.

Calum Johnson 1:24:16 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:24:16 'Cause most people don't-- Some people don't care about the upside. They're just like they want stability, and that's a really good candidate for a corporate role. So yeah, for me, I was like, "I gotta get out of there." And we were talking about this before. I think a lot of people overstate the risk of leaving, and they undervalue what they could get by leaving. So a way to think about it maybe in, like, a frame that if I would've heard this, I would've left a while, a while before. So, like, first of all, when you leave, let's say I was in Deloitte Consulting, right? When I quit, let's just say the worst case scenario is what I try to do doesn't work and I burn through all my money. There's almost 100% chance that I could go to any consulting firm at that level or one step below and get a job easily because I have, like, the resume cr- credentials to do it. It's not as though, like, it was rare for me to get that job. Like, maybe it was rare for me to get out of undergrad, but, like, once, once you're in the job for a few years, like, that check mark proves that you should be able to get that job. So, like, A, there really is no risk, career risk, let's say. Maybe you're, like, behind your peers, I guess, but th- that's some bullshit that, like, people just make up.

Calum Johnson 1:25:21 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:25:21 That's one. Two is, and this is, like, a really important point. When you-- Most people are mailing it at their

Kane Kallaway 1:25:29 job, let's just say. And when you mail it in, you're not really compounding your skills. Like, there are some jobs where you're, you're growing skills at a rapid rate, but let's just assume those people like their job. So for the majority of people that are mailing it in, they're working, like, five hours a day. They're on their couch dicking around. Like, they don't really care. When you leave your job, you have, or like, like at a corporate job, at the end of the rainbow you have no asset to sell. Like there's, there's n- there's nothing of value. And you could be like, "Well, the, my skills are of value," but you've been like mailing it in and not really compounding skills.

Calum Johnson 1:26:01 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:26:01 So you have no, you have no asset. Versus if you go on your own and you build something, even if it fails, you can sell that asset. Like for me, I c- I wouldn't want to do this, but like I could sell the Callaway channels to someone for some dollar. Like they're worth more than zero.

Calum Johnson 1:26:17 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:26:17 And so it's like even if you make the argument that you're compounding skills at a job, you are also compounding skills on your own. So let's just say the compounding skills are the same. At the end of the rainbow for the job, you have nothing to sell, which means there's no cash flow mechanism for you to continue earning. And t- that's why you're on the job treadmill forever. Starting your own thing, you earn the skills, but you also have some asset.

Calum Johnson 1:26:39 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:26:39 A lot of times that asset can be sold. Even if it's like a website, a blog, you can sell it for 15, 20 grand, 30 grand, 50 grand. Like that, there's an asset there. So like it's not even, it's ... That would be in favor for leaving.

Calum Johnson 1:26:51 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:26:51 So I think the combination of like you can get the job back whenever you want, and it's actually more financially beneficial for you to leave and have some- an asset that you could sell potentially versus not. To me it's like, we were saying this before. This is how I think of it. If you have ... W- where's my camera? [laughs] That, that was like a rapper thing. If you have the dog in you, you owe it to yourself and your family, and I would say the world, to take a swing. Because the way the world moved forward was pioneers and innovators bet on themself to build stuff to push it forward. Not everyone-- Almost no one has that in them. But if you have it in you, you owe it to the world and your family and yourself to take a swing. Like you really do. And that's how, that's how I view it. I, I, I... It's tough to s- sit here and say that when my actions for the first seven years were to like be in this corporate hell hole. But like I've now seen the light and realize that there's just, there's two types of people. There's either you can be an entrepreneur or wanna be, or you don't. And if you do wanna be, you owe it to yourself to leave.

Calum Johnson 1:27:59 Yeah. You know, you know what the thing is for me, um, and my opinions on it have changed somewhat because, um, I think the entrepreneurship thing, I think it is for a certain type of personality, but I think it is genuinely difficult. Like it is-

Kane Kallaway 1:28:14 Very hard

Calum Johnson 1:28:15 ... very difficult. And there are certain things, uh, and this would be interesting actually for a separate conversation, but there's certain things about a job that make your life a lot easier. Like you don't even realize that you-

Kane Kallaway 1:28:30 Like mouse mover by chance? [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:28:32 What did you say?

Kane Kallaway 1:28:32 Like mouse mover. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:28:34 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:28:34 Like you, you just sit at home with move... Like a lot of people have move mouse on, you know? Where like-

Calum Johnson 1:28:38 Oh, so it's just like they're active.

Kane Kallaway 1:28:39 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:28:40 I think the thing, you know what? If I was just gonna say it quickly, the thing that surprised me the most, uh, I actually learnt it about myself having left my job, is, um, I realized I was kind of addicted to validation. There's a lot of ways when you have a job you get validated in small ways that you're not even really cognizant of.

Kane Kallaway 1:29:02 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:29:02 So for example, just the fact that you get paid is validation. Like once you start doing your own thing, you could objectively, in terms of your inputs, in terms of your discipline, how you're committing yourself, how you're learning, the intensity, your productivity, you can be hitting tens across the board, make no money. Like n- no one care, like noth- no one cares. You're not getting paid-

Kane Kallaway 1:29:28 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:29:29 ... um, just for showing up and like being present. There actually has to be like a result. And so you have to start to validate yourself. And that's why a lot of, um, I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs have this intense self-belief, is like they need to be able to tell themselves that I'm doing the right thing. Because the world a lot of the time when you're an entrepreneur isn't telling you that.

Kane Kallaway 1:29:52 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:29:53 Like you're not getting paid. You're not getting the million-dollar checks and all the adulation that you see of the people that are at the top, especially when you're starting. Um, and so for me, I think what you said is correct, which is like if you have that dog in you though, like if you have that in you and it's truly in you, then it gets to the point where you're like you just don't wanna live with regrets.

Kane Kallaway 1:30:18 Exactly. Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:30:18 And that's the biggest one, is like you didn't have the heart to take a swing on yourself.

Kane Kallaway 1:30:23 That's the, the... And the other thing about the job is unearned validation makes you soft.

Calum Johnson 1:30:28 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:30:28 And at jobs you're basically earning, you're getting validation for un- for like not necessarily having skills that could make money in the market.

Calum Johnson 1:30:35 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:30:35 You know, like in, in the free market. So yeah, man, I think, I think that's a, that's a good message for entrepreneurs. The other thing I was gonna say before we leave, do you want me to, do you wanna talk about Blueprint, like what it is? Just so... 'Cause I think if, if someone's listening to this point, they probably would be-

Calum Johnson 1:30:50 They wanna-

Kane Kallaway 1:30:50 They would like-

Calum Johnson 1:30:51 They're gonna wanna follow, yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:30:52 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:30:52 Give the quick breakdown.

Kane Kallaway 1:30:53 So my whole thing i- with Blueprint was, A, like we said before, if people who have succeeded five, 10 years in the, in the future, they're not gonna have a, a grip on the tactics in today's time that would work for a beginner. Because they did it 10 years ago, so they probably don't even remember the tactics because there's so much time that's passed. But even if they did remember, those tactics are probably outdated. So it was really important that I documented what I'm doing from the beginning. Because I, when, in four years when this shit's working big, I want, I don't want someone to watch me and say, "Yeah, but you're four... Look at, look at everything you have. Like what do I do at the beginning?" What, what you'll be able to do is scroll to the top of Blueprint One and read my, not only like what the playbook, the money I made, the growth, but like my actual thoughts. Like there have been ... blueprints that I've written where I'm like sad and struggling and like don't know what to do and like trying to reason through a problem in words. And the reason people don't make documentative content at the beginning is 'cause it takes a lot of time. Like it's a, it, it takes four to five hours to write one of those every single week, and that doesn't show up on the stat sheet 'cause m- those aren't the kind of thing that are gonna get shared or go viral. But it's like really important that I write that down. In terms of like sh- so basically I, what it is, is every single week I basically write like an investor letter to myself that I want to become like a Bible for creators and entrepreneurs who can, you know, you can like invest in my story. It's not all like what have I done. It's kind of like lessons you can take out of it. I'm curious like how you would, you would frame it now that you've read a few.

Calum Johnson 1:32:29 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:32:29 But also like I'm being as transparent as possible with like the exact dollars I'm earning, the exact growth, what videos I made at what time, and what I thought about them. So I'm curious what, what you think of it after diving in.

Calum Johnson 1:32:40 Yeah. You know what? I think it was like for me the thing that I liked, and you know, let me, let me zoom out first, which is what you said is exactly correct. The people that are at the top of the industry, right? Um, whether it's business, athletes, um, I dunno, any industry, they're at the top. They're the names that everyone recognizes. When they do an interview they get millions of views. Here was the reason I got frustrated, 'cause I love listening to that sort of content.

Kane Kallaway 1:33:08 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:33:08 I love studying the greats. The reason I got frustrated was their advice is so high level it almost made me feel like they're like they're not sharing the secrets.

Kane Kallaway 1:33:20 Yeah, yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:33:20 But I don't actually think it's that. I think they're so far removed from the person that's just starting out, and so they kind of tell you the stuff which what they tell you is true, like discipline matters, being consistent matters, working hard matters. So they can tell you the high level stuff that got them to where they are. They can't tell you the, they can't give you the detail that will help you do it right now.

Kane Kallaway 1:33:49 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:33:49 And the reason they can't do that is because it's a different game. Someone that got successful in business 30 years ago cannot give you the blueprint on how to do it now because there's a bunch of different factors that are present now that weren't present then.

Kane Kallaway 1:34:06 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:34:07 And you made a really good point I think in your blueprint which is like it's not about reading it and then copying exactly what you did, but because it goes into such granular detail and it shares so much information, you can start to see the way of thinking-

Kane Kallaway 1:34:25 Exactly

Calum Johnson 1:34:25 ... which is way more important.

Kane Kallaway 1:34:26 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:34:26 It's not what you did, it's like how you went about it.

Kane Kallaway 1:34:30 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:34:30 And then you can take that framework, that way of thinking, start to implement that into how you're doing things, and that's it. That's the magic.

Kane Kallaway 1:34:40 Ex- exactly. That's why like to me advice, almost all advice is not helpful at all because even if it's tactical, it's given by someone in a different scenario.

Calum Johnson 1:34:49 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:34:50 Or even if they're the exact same age and, you know, income level, there's-

Calum Johnson 1:34:54 It's impossible that they're the same

Kane Kallaway 1:34:55 ... it's impossible. Exactly. So I, to me like giving advice is dumb. Instead, give me a window into what you're doing. Like let me watch you. And if you're at the le-

Calum Johnson 1:35:06 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:35:06 Basically all I wanted when I started was I want someone two steps ahead of me. Like if, if, if the game is 1,000 steps, I want someone two steps ahead of me with a window that I can just watch them. And I will pull myself from what they're doing. If they do that but I don't like it, I won't take it. If they do that but I do like it, I will take it. Nobody gives a window. Instead, they're trying to sell courses with high level advice or even tactical advice that isn't relevant. That's why courses don't really work that well.

Calum Johnson 1:35:32 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:35:32 Like there are some, but they don't really work. So I was like, all right, if instead of making a c- instead of going and making a course, which that's a whole nother thing, like I really don't wanna have to go on the info products train.

Calum Johnson 1:35:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Kane Kallaway 1:35:43 So like i- instead of going down that route, let me just, let me just take a, take a, a rag and clear the window so you can watch what I'm doing. And I'll be as explicit and detailed as possible. And those are points in time. So like five years from now a beginner can go back and maybe the advice or maybe what I did isn't relevant anymore. Like there might be a new platform. But at least for like this period there will always be something relevant for someone who's like two steps behind.

Calum Johnson 1:36:10 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:36:10 And that, and I don't really see that. I don't, I don't see anybody else doing it that way.

Calum Johnson 1:36:13 Yeah. And you know what I loved? I had exactly the same insight, and that's why right now, uh, my team and I, we're working on like a documentary which is like-

Kane Kallaway 1:36:21 Nice

Calum Johnson 1:36:21 ... here's the video window of exactly what I'm doing right now.

Kane Kallaway 1:36:25 Yeah, it's dope.

Calum Johnson 1:36:26 And the thing that really inspired it, um, I watched the Genius documentary on Netflix. It's like I think it's a three-part docuseries on Kanye's life.

Kane Kallaway 1:36:36 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:36:37 And I'm watching it. All the parts are interesting, but it's the first two parts and the first part in particular-

Kane Kallaway 1:36:44 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:36:45 ... that is the most captivating. It's way better than anything.

Kane Kallaway 1:36:48 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:36:48 And it was when he wasn't successful at all.

Kane Kallaway 1:36:51 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:36:51 Like he had just moved to New York. The guy's got the braces in, the jaw's kinda messed up, like he's a nobody.

Kane Kallaway 1:36:58 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:36:58 That is the most interesting content because it's relatable. It's authentic. Uh, it stands out because of those things.

Kane Kallaway 1:37:05 Once you're a somebody, you can

Kane Kallaway 1:37:07 never be a nobody again.

Calum Johnson 1:37:08 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:37:08 So you, you either have this chance to document or, you know, like if you're starting you have right now to document or you'll never be able to that, get that raw... Like I wish I was doing it on video. I wish I did it from day one instead of day like 270 or whatever. But like-

Calum Johnson 1:37:22 Yeah

Kane Kallaway 1:37:22 ... you know?

Calum Johnson 1:37:24 Yeah. You know what? Here's where I wanna end, which is if we went back in time, we went in a time machine 12 months ago, you would still be at Deloitte. You wouldn't have posted any short form content. We then fast-forward to where we are now. You have all of these views. You're a full-time creator. Uh, you have these viral playbooks. I want you to fast-forward 12 months from now. What reality are we looking at for Kane Kallaway?

Kane Kallaway 1:37:53 Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of paths it can go. Like I try not to look too far in the future only because all I can control is like, can I get a good rep in today? Can I get a good rep in tomorrow? But if I had to manifest it forward, so I'll have ... So the whole, my whole step plan was find something I was authentic- authentically interested in, start making content on it. Find, find that intersection that resonates. Earn money from that intersection. Take that money and start automating that content. Free up my time with the automation to launch more content. Eventually I'll have a whole engine, so like 12 months from now is, will probably be the shorts, a podcast, I'll be making YouTube videos, those three probably, and a lot of that will be, when I say automated, just like my ... It won't all be me editing every second like I'm doing now.

Calum Johnson 1:38:47 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:38:47 And then I, I think I'll be on the path to having clarity around like what my first product-based business will be, either physical or digital products. So I don't wanna, I don't wanna get too f- cart too far ahead of the horse, but I'm just gonna continue compounding this wheel. I think a- another like lesson I guess is a lot of people have success in one channel, and then they're like, "What else can I do?" And they take that effort and they allocate it back to something from scratch, but they forget the golden goose.

Calum Johnson 1:39:19 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:39:19 Like they, they stop nurturing the golden goose. And so what happens is their original thing plateaus, their new thing doesn't work, because it's really hard to get multiple things to work, and they go back and they're like, "Ah, what do I do? Like I'm stagnant." They're mad. So I, I'm not gonna let the golden goose get stagnant.

Calum Johnson 1:39:34 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:39:34 Which in, right now for me is short form video.

Calum Johnson 1:39:37 Yeah.

Kane Kallaway 1:39:37 So but who knows? Like new platforms could emerge, you know. I try to, I try to be, uh ... Someone's ... Who said this? I'm really bad at attributing quotes. I'm good at remembering them, I'm bad at attributing them. Like open to everything, attached to nothing.

Calum Johnson 1:39:49 Mm.

Kane Kallaway 1:39:50 So that's kinda how I look at it is like I don't know what will happen. All I'm trying to do is like sharpen the knife sharper, sharper, sharper. Every rep I take is like better, better, better, better, and we'll let the chips fall where they may.

Calum Johnson 1:40:02 Yeah. I love it, man. It's been a pleasure.

Kane Kallaway 1:40:05 Hell yeah. Thanks for having me.

Calum Johnson 1:40:06 Of course, man. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the channel. We're having fire conversations every week on the podcast. Before we end the episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Free Agency. What if I told you there is a good chance you're leaving money on the table in your career? It would kind of annoy you a bit, right? Well, Free Agency aims to stop that. They represent and manage talent in the tech industry. Here's how they do it. First, they provide you with a dedicated talent agent. Think about this as your career quarterback. They understand you and your career goals. Based on that understanding, they bring you suitable interviews at top firms. You focus on smashing the interview, and together with their network, research, negotiation expertise, they will make sure you get a top of market salary. Stop job searching alone and start building your dream career today with Free Agency.