How to Make $1,000,000 from Social Media in 12 Months – Transcript

00:00How do I make a million dollars in one year from zero? You don't have to get more than 25,000 views a video. You don't need a huge following. You just need to monetize a different way. Callaway is a creator with billions of views and founder of Sandcastle, a content strategy tool that has printed him millions. The way to make money with content is to have expert-level skills. Content is a vehicle to amplify attention on those skills and monetize around it.

00:21Callaway shares his screen and live on the podcast built out a winning content strategy from scratch. >> honest, this is the whole game. People pay like 10 grand to a strategist for weeks of working and we just did this in 30 minutes. >> He's got three separate seven-figure businesses. Stay till the end and we're going to go through how to stand out on social media.

00:49His AI machine and ultimately how he makes millions. Uh so you were on about a year ago and you said social media has completely changed. Where are we at right now? >> Yeah, so I feel like the environment is bifurcating or diversifying depending on what game you're playing. And so last time, I think the first thing we talked about was like the five content games, right? So if you're trying to go for mainstream fame, you're trying to go for category fandom, like you're trying to get brand deals and AI kind of like my first stuff was, you're trying to sell

01:16products, whether it's a commodity product or an explanatory product, or you're trying to accrue authority. It's like the games are the strategies are different. They're separating. And so you really have to be clear on like what is your intention, what is the goal you're actually going for, what is your offer, what game you're playing. Does it matter if authority accrues to you or not? Are you trying to go faceless or face? Like the basically the instead of one strategy or two, there's like hundreds now. And you you can win with any, but you have to pick and like align the right strategy

01:44to what you're doing. So maybe we can talk through like based on a scenario how you should attack social media. >> I remember very vividly that you were talking about just the media game as a whole, unless you are selling product is not a good game to play. >> Yeah. >> Has that changed?

01:59>> Well, it's a good game to play if the goal is like if I want to be famous because of all the things that come with fame. It's a great game to play. But if you're trying to build like an empire, you can't play just the media game. You have to have your own products, your own services. You want to build a world outside of just like relying on the brand deal stuff. So, I'm I'm I'm more nuanced now. It's not like good or bad.

02:18It's like everything is winnable, everything is good, everything is bad depending on what you actually want. So, you have to get very clear on like your end goal and work backwards on the strategy. >> How has these kind of AI avatars and these fake accounts and that kind of AI slop? That was something that, you know, we thought a year ago was going to be the downfall of creators given that it would be just so hard to break through.

02:40How do you think that has affected the marketplace, you know, currently? >> I do think it's it's getting harder to break through in certain niches, but it's actually a combination of the AI avatar stuff, but also just like we'll call it the the the human avatar stuff.

02:53So, maybe we could talk about that cuz I'm actually shocked at how hard the platforms are cracking down on the AI content. Like we're seeing YouTube if they understand you're using AI content, it's like immediate ban, immediate throttle. Meta's doing the same thing.

03:07So, all these platforms are like they're holding the line, interestingly. I thought they were going to be like, "Yo, any content is good content. If people want it, they want it and like we'll let everything like open platform." It's not really looking like that. The platforms are kind of cracking down. So, there are some AI avatar driven like flows happening, but a lot of people are getting insta flagged and banned and so there's less of that. What's actually happening more, which I'm shocked at, is like there are so many actual humans that are just ripping people's stuff word for word and literally just

03:35performing it word for word in every niche. Like you see this in social media growth obviously the most, but like most of the big niches, there are people just ripping and copying. That has the same kind of effect as like the AI slop. It's this slop layer at the bottom. So, maybe we can talk about this like I can explain how you get around that and like why people's content is not really working anymore because of that, but like that's kind of what I'm seeing these two buckets where it's slop on both ends, basically.

03:59>> Let's dive right into that right now because I feel like I see so many videos on Instagram of someone saying, "Hey, look at these 15 people that have copied me literally word for word for word." So, what are those? What are those kind of Why is content not working for people?

04:14>> Yeah, so here's the framework I kind of have is I call it the format pyramid. So, there's four levels. So, the bottom level is called facts. I'll come back and explain these. So, the bottom level is facts, then you have explanation, then you have application, and then you have stories. These are like the different types of content, different types of formats. And within those, there's a bunch of formats for each. So, if you think about a niche, if your niche is relatively open, like there's

04:40not that many people that make content in it, any of those four levels work fine. Like, the most people live at the bottom, like a base of a pyramid, the base is the biggest. So, like if you just make fact-based content, so things like I'm listing out [ __ ] I'm ranking things one to five. I'm not really adding a bunch of expertise or opinion, I'm just like listing. That's like fact-based content. That works when the niche is open.

05:01>> From a bottom-up perspective, we're talking about probably the least amount of talent living at living at the bottom. >> like you could you could go into ChatGPT or Claude, ask it for like a list of 10 things, and then say the 10 with no extra stuff on it, and it will work if the niche is open. So, that's like layer one. Layer two is explanation. So, this is you say facts, but then you also explain or break down like your opinion, your insight on it. That's like level two. So, that would be things like breakdowns, tutorials, how-to, stuff like that. A lot of the stuff I make is

05:28kind of in this second bucket. The third bucket, which I think is like the biggest opportunity right now and we'll circle back to that, is application. So, this is not only are you saying stuff and giving your opinion, but you're showing or proving how you can apply that to actually get a result. These are like case studies or scenarios or hypotheticals, like if I had to grow a plastic surgeon from zero to a million followers, here's how I would do it. You can't fake that [ __ ] You have to have real sauce to apply your own insight.

05:53And then the last at the top of the pyramid would be stories. So, these are like one-of-one you storytelling, actual experiences, actual things that you did, whether it's in your job or your life. Those are hard to make at scale, but like those are the most defendable, we'll say. So, this pyramid is like from easy to hard and from the most people that will watch to the least. Like, storytelling can work, but if I make an individual story on myself and you don't know who I am, you're going to have the smallest denominator of people that will watch. So, why is content not working

06:21now? Well, when the niche gets saturated, imagine there's like a red line that starts at the bottom and like slowly starts rising up that pyramid. If you're below the line, you're [ __ ] because that means there's way too many people making these like generic commoditized formats. What we're seeing now with this like human slop machine and like the AI slop machine fits in this as well, there's a lot of people in many niches making this like fact-based, list-based stuff with that has no

06:47insight. And so, new people come in and they they think that's the way to do it. So, they make those formats. They're below the red line, they're flopping. What you need to do is get above that red line. So, as things get competitive, that red line will slowly increase where it's going to eat all the fact-based formats so there'll be no alpha, then it will eat all the explanation or like the breakdown formats, and it will leave you with only application and stories. And so, one of my big DCs or whatever

07:12takes about how to actually cut through a niche, you just want to go straight to application content. Like, if you're entering and you're like, "How do I actually dominate a crowded niche?" The first thing you want to do is start making content that can show you have expertise and apply it to to prove that fact. So, when people watch one video, they're like, "Oh, [ __ ] this person actually knows what they're talking about." right away. It's not like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or like you're listing these formats out. This is kind of like base tier the pyramid.

07:37That's all junk food. And so, you're seeing like some niches are open, so you can still get away with the fact-based stuff if you're in like a an open niche, but markets are efficient. Like, arbs close, and so most big niches where there's a lot of money, that bottom of the pyramid is not working.

07:52>> I think that these big pockets, let's just call it like content marketing, content strategy, I would argue that those bottom two tiers are basically done for at this point. I think people are just starting to see that it's just >> completely regurgitated. Yeah. >> Yeah. As you can see, like I started my Cali Marketing account on Instagram like 4 months ago and I the goal was like can I speed run this to 100k without going viral cuz I want to prove to people like hey if you're a business owner and you're you don't think you can go viral, you don't need to. So I grew it pretty

08:19fast using this like second tier of content, mostly explanation. I'm pretty dialed with like my non-obvious [ __ ] and so even my stuff sometimes works, sometimes doesn't in that second tier. So you can see like in the social media growth niche that first thing is completely cooked and the second thing is almost fully cooked. So now I'm like going back to the drawing board where I'm like all right, I'm going to have to start going out on the risk curve to some of these like application and story-based formats because I'm seeing the the the base

08:45commoditization of this like junk food content is just nuking everyone's brain. Like they see anything about social media growth and if it's not like I did this, I can prove this, I have this result, they're gone and it's because of this like slopification.

08:59>> So in short, you would just recommend for anybody just to start at those top two tiers and obviously layer in three and four in conjunction with one and two. >> Exactly. So you you want to skip one altogether unless you're in an open niche. You want to start with two and three. Stories are really hard to like figure out how to make like the the ramp to go from zero to I have a good story if you have no idea how to do content is like pretty tough.

09:18>> Can't fake that either. >> Yeah, so I would I would try to it all goes back to like what is your unique expertise, what is your proof, what is your authority? Like have you actually done this [ __ ] or you kind of a beginner accelerating? If you've actually done stuff, you want to lead with the stuff you've done to get that application content flywheel spinning. Like again, I go back to the plastic surgeon example cuz I made a YouTube video that's coming out this week where I was like imagine I was a plastic surgeon, like how would I actually dominate this category? First it's like what have I actually done?

09:45Have I done a bunch of surgeries with like legit people that I can show in the content and like talk about all the cases I've done or am I like just starting my career and I'm or I'm in medical school and I like haven't really done it. Like based on that, you would decide to make certain formats. >> Yeah, I would argue too on the story side is almost like a 1A and a 1B and I think on the 1B side would would be to use kind of stories from third parties.

10:06I.E. if you're talking about entrepreneurs, you could just talk about like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, but I think the ultimate differentiator is the one A, your own personal your own personal experiences cuz that's literally one of one content that no other people can talk about. >> final moat. >> Yeah.

10:20>> Final moat is just like I did this. This is how I did it. I can do it for depending on the offer like I can do it for you as well, right? That's the final moat. >> Guys, we're going to get into that all things proof. I want to dive into You said there's four ways left to stay competitive once this kind of floor keeps flooding up. Let's just dive into that each one of those. I guess the first one let's start with with better ideas. Added simplest form, we know what better ideas means, but how would you kind of break that down?

10:44>> Yeah, so the the 80/20, 90/10, 95/5 of content like the the 800-lb gorilla is ideas. Like really that is the separator. Mr. Beast has always said that for YouTube, on social media for whatever reason like people always think edits and formats and hooks like that matters. They matter, but like ideas is the by far the most important. And so when I say ideas, it's the topic and the angle. So the topic is like what am I talking about? And you could say like the bucket of topics and the specific