Watch This if You Want to Go Viral in 2026 [Adley Interview]
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Summary
In this episode, I sit down with my good friend Adley and her husband, Ryan Megan, to talk about how they built a YouTube channel with over a billion views a month. We talk about the secret sauce that allows them to do what they do, why they do it, and how they manage their expectations at scale.
Transcript
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we're doing over a billion views a month it was like printing money a lot of people think that
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we only go viral because of our personality it is a formula not a personality i was waiting for a
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suit behind a desk to give me permission to be successful if you have a karen and she takes a
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giant slurpee and throws it on somebody's car that's gonna grab you and then if she takes
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chalk paint keeps shaking it but doesn't do anything but she's just yelling at you you're
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like what is she about to do with that that is the difference in good creators and the best creators
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and their ability to hold suspense 2017 to now 2024 who did you need to become to deal with this
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level of success adley thanks for having me and you're beautiful beautiful what do you guys call
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it a creator house or viralish house viralish house that makes sense of course it's viral
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ish you know not every video but ish at least ish that's so cool well i mean obviously do we first
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meet on clubhouse is that back yes yeah 2021 where that was it was clubhouse yeah 2021 um i
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remember after i don't even know what the conversation was but we messaged each other
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on instagram afterwards and kind of i always knew i wanted to connect with you and we were coming to
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nashville and um i think sam had saw something and connected us through ryan megan i believe
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so i'm pumped i'm here right off the bat you guys do a billion views a month do a billion views a
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month that's conservative i'd say really yeah because i mean with with the content you're
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putting out there i mean you can you know go up 20 30 percent like it's just it can fluctuate
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based on the day based on supply and demand of ads yeah you know and so it's it's very
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unpredictable but we've learned how to manage our expectations and manage that at scale so i asked
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you earlier off camera about you know because i knew you were a cheerleader did you always feel
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like you'd be an entertainer and i know you there's there's because your videos go viral
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because you're trying to figure out what in the culture can we do what is the formula for you
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to create a viral video like can anybody do or do they have to be somebody like yourself that has
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that kind of personality this may sound cliche but a lot of people think that we only go viral
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because of our personality i've taught people to make faceless videos people who are have terrible
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anxiety because it is a formula not a personality a personality is just icing on the cake but
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ultimately it's your authenticity that has to come through i'm silly i'm very very goofy a lot
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of people will see that and be like i couldn't make viral videos as a job and then i just want
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to show them all of our other channels that you would not even know are ours my face just so
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everybody knows what they are what are the other channels oh you could look at my husband's
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my husband, we gave him a challenge. My husband, Blake, we gave him a challenge to grow a million
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followers on Tik TOK. And this is a great example of just the formula at work. My husband is
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terrified of being on camera. He doesn't like to speak. He has camera. He just has anxiety
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about being on camera. So we said, all right, you're going to grow a million followers on Tik
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TOK and you have to use the formula and you can't speak. So you box them into like,
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this is the creative form. It's what we teach people. Yes. You have to use it and you can't
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talk because we want to that's the the the challenge forcing function yes and so that
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anybody can do this and you have to pick a smaller niche like diy okay and he did it in 29 videos
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come on 29 how much time did it take him to a million followers about five months 29 videos
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five months 29 shot 29 videos i don't have a million followers on tiktok i want a million
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followers we got you let's do this like collab with blake is how i gotta do
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like let's hang um but do you mind sharing the formula or pieces of it no not at all okay cool
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i want to know yeah so it sounds it sounds simple right this is storytelling 101 but we've adapted
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it in a really unique way for social so first obviously there's the hook always and we have
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seven elements of a great hook then we go into suspense and suspense tension create tension and
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that is the difference in good creators and the best creators in the world really is their ability
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to hold suspense and then we have the payoff we have engagement tactics and we have what's the
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other one probably called action stakes and raising the stakes and so those sound so surface level and
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people are like that's that's it yes but it goes in really deep of how you're going to hold the
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psychology of attention second over second over a second how you're going to emotionally anchor
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somebody and we see this in sitcoms we see this in the best movies you see it in mr beast you see it
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in mr beast yeah if you actually know what you know because like i love this i think everybody
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listening is going to get a master class today and how to create better content even if their desire
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isn't to get a million views or followers on tick tock or go viral it's just better like if you're
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a presenter you should learn this stuff you know if you're even oh my gosh i would actually enjoy
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listening to boring powerpoint presentation if you understood hey kick it off with a great hook tell
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Tell me what the payoff's gonna be to create the suspension.
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But it's interesting because I've been doing content
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or do you sometimes shoot and then have the person prompt
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Am I losing the precision by not scripting everything?
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Is there a way to not script and still nail the hook?
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I would say if you want to go predictably and sustainably viral, you script it.
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You increase your chances at bat every single time.
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And you're just a little bit more well thought out.
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Because even if you have your boundaries, you can play inside those.
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But you know that you've anchored the emotion within the first three seconds.
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so golden rule is in the first three seconds you're going to create an itch that does not pay
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off until your last three seconds and your suspense is the bridge in the between and that
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holding that tension is what separates good creators from we're going one creators in the
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world two three and it sounds like a lot to do but if you can accomplish 90 retention on your
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first six seconds you're off to an incredible is this where people say things like uh these are
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the four things that most people get wrong and the fifth one's definitely the thing you're not
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doing that's one way to do it yeah okay what's other examples of that um let's use the oldest
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trick in the book if somebody's sleeping on a couch and i put shaving cream in their hand
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you immediately know what you're waiting for and i could hold that moment 30 seconds we did that to
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each other growing up so yes and you can choose hold that moment for 30 seconds hold it for a
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minute in our case for optimizing for facebook monetization policies currently we're holding
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that moment for three minutes or 18 minutes which is how if you've ever watched a video and wasted
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three minutes of your life that's what that was our specialty but you would do it too if you knew
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how much it paid well yeah no shame in the game it's so it's so interesting you but what's funny
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talking to adley is that you say you know it's the oldest trick in the book and and i'm like uh i'm a
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kid in a candy shop like i'm like oh i didn't know that like it's it's so good what you're sharing is
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so good and you talked about like kind of the concept of entertainment and also education
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yes kind of the mr beast meets a hermosi how do you do that what are you looking for hooks that
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are similar in a business context or do you still do something as silly and then fill with the
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business lessons i think if you're gonna go here's how i would do it if so you do a lot of thought
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leader content if we're gonna why if we're gonna unleash ourselves and that's really what we teach
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people how to do i don't care if you're a small candle company you have to unleash yourselves to
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get past your existing audience so say i was a small candle company and we wanted to use the
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oldest trick in the book of shaving cream in the hand sleeping guy waiting for him to hit his face
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i would have sleeping guy here and i would have the candle company right here and his face is here
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and as you set up that shot you get the branding of the candle but it's very seamless yeah and then
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this is our first hundred million view video yeah and here's how i would advertise a small
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candle company okay we're making this up but i would have my head here uh for the actor here
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and then the narrator the person who's filming um they're going to get that candle there okay
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so it's established it's a piece of it and the candle is lit so you're adding a moment of tension
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with a candle burning by somebody's hair and head right here oh the hair too see you just got me
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with the hair a little bit of tension and putting by the way you're filming you're increasing a
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possibility that that could happen because this person is sleeping we're obviously playing with
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them right so then me as the actress back here i would maybe pick this candle up over the sleeping
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guy and he'd be like and he goes no no that's my favorite candle whoever's holding the phone
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this one essential say the brand he goes yes i just got the two for one at target i just got
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30 of them put it down you know and this is the person behind the camera oh my gosh that's getting
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the messaging out there so good saying there's social proofing because you stocked up on it
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telling me where to get it yes did you want to target i just got 30 set it down now wow so then
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that's somewhere in the middle of a three minute video then later as i'm messing with this guy i
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have a fly app so i'm just buzzing over his head so he thinks there's a fly and we he's about to
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slap himself any moment but then as i'm doing this above his head i would be like god this
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smells so good. You know, just to edify, this is the best smelling candle out there. Then that's
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how it would get a hundred million views for free. Then if you have a media buyer, you can retarget
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viewers of specific videos. So then they're going to see that again and attach a coupon for where
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to go get it, advertise the sale, use mini chat to put in the caption or the payoff of the video
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where they can go get that candle. And you just hijacked a hundred million views for free. That
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would have cost you a fortune that's interesting so i love the product placement and i'm going to
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come back because i got a hot sauce question for you it's kind of my new passions i eat a lot of
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plain food but i got to get some locale hot sauce um what how would you do content that is viral and
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like thought leadership like how would you do both like a little bit more i feel like i'm a little
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to education and not enough entertainment so where where does that balance come into play
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i think you could do so we have different formats and different buckets that we but would you start
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with the education part and then try to figure out the entertainment angle no you have to start
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with the viral entertainment yes because if you start saying here's how to save 30 on taxes
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most of us are out right i mean the large part of the population this is why i paid 1.2 million
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in taxes and then people like what's that or here's how i lost one more two million taxes or
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right yeah and i'd say i mean this is how viral she does it so we most people when they describe
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a video they're describing the outcome we do every video in reverse if you're going to pitch a video
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to me you're going to pitch the first game with the end in mind or sorry you're going to pitch
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the first three seconds you're going to say i'm going to crack an egg into a thing of quaker oats
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If I'm pitching you an idea, I would say I'm going to crack an egg
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into a thing of Quaker Oats in the middle of the aisle at Target.
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and then I would say, okay, now I'll hear the rest of your idea. But most people say,
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here's my idea. I'm going to show people how to save 30% on taxes. I'm going to show them the
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best three ingredient brownie recipe. With all due respect, even if you make the best video out
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there, less than 20% of people are maybe making it to the end. So they're never going to see that
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amazing tax strategy. They're never going to look at the amazing brownies. They're never going to
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learn how to save money in real estate because they're not making it to the end. So we have
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people describe a video by the opening shot. If we like it, they can continue telling us the video
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in sequence because that's the viewer's experience so good it's so interesting because um i think i
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spend too much time on like how can i help people so i want to create inner educational content
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but i would help a lot more people if i could figure out that because then i get more views
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and more people learn more cool things what if you did we've done this before for an educational
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piece it was how to save money on taxes yeah and it was a paper towel roll because that's interesting
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and it has writing on it and it says the first paper towel says if you saved a penny
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dot dot dot then you pull the next thing down it reveals the second piece of the paper towel
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every day for a year no first one it says first paper towel roll says would you rather
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oh yeah okay would you rather have a penny every day for a year i need to know what the second one
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is or whatever that other stuff is yeah you know and you just take them line by line through this
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paper towel roll um of laying out a story and you educate them but it's something visual 82 percent
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of people are watching without sound it's interesting because i even watch like some
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of these tiktokers that are sitting there making tea and singing yes and i'm like they could just
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sing but there's something about watching them make their coffee or their tea that it's kind of
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like i'm curious what they're drinking today yes it's so i'm like why why am i that it's just some
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visual it's a part of our brain that wants to know yeah or a part that represents a piece of
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you like i like tea it's giving you some emotional tangible thing to be like i'm like that person
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rather than just sitting in a chair hearing somebody talking and a lot of people are
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substituting sitting in a chair talking they know they need visual so they're just substituting with
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editing but if you can create a physical anchor yeah that has suspense even better say you were
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a trauma psychologist yeah how would you do that you could have a balloon filling it i'm making
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but you could have a balloon fill it up with shaving cream with a great verbal hook second
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sentence has a ton of suspense and you're like what's she doing with the shaving cream though
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it's a visual demonstration that's the thing it's like i heard what you said but what are you doing
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with that yeah and so i'm continuing to tell you and i'm never going to let my voice drop down like
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this and finish a sentence because if you finish a sentence then people have a second to swipe away
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so you're never going to just end it and leave a moment where somebody could swipe away because
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then they would so you it's how you speak to and where they like can't find a moment to to get away
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and they're anchored with a visual the whole time it's interesting because you keep bringing your
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g like the genius that you keep saying is like even the suspense and the anger the the the emotional
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second thing or the hook and it's fascinating because i went down the rabbit hole of studying
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mr beast videos okay because if i'm gonna create youtube videos i gotta study the best and i found
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a lot of people that have dissected i mean to the level of edits where they show how he raises
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all the stuff you said yeah and i'm like watching this and to normal person to my 10 11 year old
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boys they're just like this is a cool video and to me now i cannot stop seeing the jump cuts the
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the the frames like whatever these things are called and it is a master class in just what are
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some of these things people could consider even language patterns like words you don't say i think
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it was like don't say but say and or something like that like yes so talk to me about some of
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the ideas around creating high retention through a video because at the end of the day that's one
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of the metrics that kind of tell the algorithm to you know the kind of completion rates yeah
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how do you how do you create tension suspense engagement it is creating that itch i mean
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number one thing is creating that itch in the first three seconds that isn't going to pay off
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and then relatable moments like say that's why politics works so well or controversial
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things a protagonist and an antagonist and these are things that you can plant in your video karma
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videos karen's it's a whole psychological play of say more what do you mean by karen's you know
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karen's like in a i know karen's i had an hr person named karen and she was right she was
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the karen i don't even know how she got the job but yes it's good to have a karen if she's your
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Karen she wasn't a good Karen okay sorry Karen it's all good bringing you into this
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but if you have a Karen and she takes a giant slurpee and throws it on somebody's car that's
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gonna grab you and then if she takes chalk paint or something and then just keeps shaking it but
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doesn't do anything but she's just yelling at you you're like what is she about to do with that
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you know you're creating a moment that you're not waiting out you're gonna hold on for that moment
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the entire time but she could be saying something that you want to learn that you're educating being
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educated about politically so say she's taking the you're saying this is my political the videos do
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well is because she's acting doing a thing that psychologically speaking we will want to watch
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play out but she's screaming a point of view that we're indirectly not realizing that we're absorbing
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that and you're either gonna hate her and you're gonna want to see her fail and you're gonna
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to want to see karma so we'd always introduce karma to a karen or we either identify with her
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like yeah she's right you did take her parking spot you did you are in the wrong so we would
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create videos that cause tension and who's right who's wrong and we would pin two characters against
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each other but you're going to see yourself in one of those characters so good in my husband
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and i's videos you're either going to see i you're going to identify with him or you're going to
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identify with me and we lean heavily into those characters they're real to us but we lean into
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because we're representing audiences that are bigger than ourselves the level of sophistication
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is awesome like you're really it's very thoughtful like you're literally saying these are the audience
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we'll appeal to and we got to say these words and roll them into this narrative that we're creating
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tension around um and then to me it's the payoff because i mean you say you got to pitch the first
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three seconds but there needs to be a purpose and eventually you got to release the tension
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and if you do that well do you get a second view if you don't do that like how does because what
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if i don't do it what if i never do the payoff am i penalizing myself in the future for like do
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people get mad and like oh and then thumb it down until part two yeah yeah yeah everything's
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followed for part two and then all your search is like i've done this i'm on tiktok and in my
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search it's like third video and i'm like oh i don't have the third video because sometimes i
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can't they do that now they got me now i know why they do that they cut up a 15 minute video
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in these shorter ones to make me keep looking for the next one and they have a winning piece
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of content they know it so they're just they know they're gonna take one it could have had one video
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but now they have five and they're gonna make more money they're gonna get more followers milking
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a winner instead of just all right i did it once yeah that's so crazy so so is is there any downside
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of not doing a payoff well i think it depends on what you're optimizing for are you optimizing for
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people to like you? Or get follows? Are you optimizing to
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get followers and earn most money from the platform? Are you
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optimizing conversions? I don't know that I would do that, then
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I think you need to be lazy. You want to make sure the payoff
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actually gets delivered. Sometimes I start stories, I
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forget to finish them. All the time. I've done it three times.
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It's like, I want to buy a bike. What? squirrely brain. But you
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know, when you think of the metrics, as you mentioned this
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a few times, and I'm a software guy, so I'm a bit nerdy on
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this like obviously well maybe not i'm not gonna assume anybody knows this stuff but i've gone down
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the rabbit hole i studied what are the numbers that the algorithm or you look at on a video to
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know this is a banger a marriage of watch time and percentage completed say more if you do a six
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second video of course you're gonna have a high percent completed you may even have 112 percent
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completed because they re-watched it but there's creators that are better than you that are making
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minute three minute long videos that are not just getting six seconds they're getting 15
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they're getting 45 second watch time so they're trumping your six second all day so we teach
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people at viralish to hold attention for longer so take that six second and we'll show you you
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could have paid off that fly prank smack yourself in the face you could have done that in 30 seconds
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we're going to hold you for three minutes and we're going to have a higher percent completed
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maybe not a higher percent completed but relative our watch time is going to be significantly higher
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interesting i wouldn't do a three minute video if it was going to have 90 completion at a minute 20
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yeah that makes sense yeah you just it's kind of like the average watch time per viewer has to be
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the highest because then you know that there there's engagement on the video yes so that's
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interesting and then what about like um click-through rates because obviously the hook is
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gonna get at least i mean is it do you look at three second pass like what's the percentage of
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people that watch more than three seconds and know you had a good hook like do you test i know on
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youtube we have click-through rates yeah because there's thumbnails but with a lot of your social
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content it's more of a scroll right so we're not playing to dedicated audience it's like rolling
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it's yeah it's like yeah i'd say 35 million followers 99 of our views come from non-followers
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yeah so we don't play to dedicated audience because we're trying to get more we know that
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they like us we're trying to get outside of them and find more new ones so we're constantly
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unneaching ourselves to where if we were going to sell a tie-dye kit you're not going to know
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that i'm selling you a tie-dye kit until the very end i wouldn't lead with here's five things you
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should know about tie-dye yeah you're out yeah yeah it's very you know yeah we would find a
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totally different and engaging way to back you into caring and then by the end you're like oh
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my god i love that tie-dye kit where can i get it you know yeah i could buy for somebody else even
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if i'm not in the market let's talk about the business of viralish in this this house like
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how big is this team because i met so many people as soon as i walked in and this is a calm day
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yeah this is a i know i don't know where you park i mean it's a big house but i mean do they go into
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the street and stuff like no i would love to have a batman thing where you pull into that circle
00:22:24.860
under the house yeah our neighbors would love that too yeah they would um we've had as many as
00:22:31.060
20 in the house but right now in and out of the house we have staff creators yeah and then we
00:22:37.640
have creators that we manage so depending on the day anywhere from 6 to 15 in this house how does
00:22:45.840
the business let me stay on your business then we'll talk about the business of managing creators
00:22:50.000
so how long you've been doing viralish for publicly a year we've been in business so
00:22:57.760
content creation and distribution i'd say since 2020 yeah that's so crazy congrats that's amazing
00:23:03.560
i love it and then um uh how do you monetize what's the is it brand deals no it's completely
00:23:10.400
opposite than every creator influencer that we know and and we're switching this model a little
00:23:15.880
bit but all of our money to date 90 of our money to date has been made from platform revenue and
00:23:21.520
just dominating the news feeds and recommendations and what's interesting about these platforms like
00:23:25.760
a meta like my understanding is they don't really give you a rep right do you have no so like we do
00:23:31.400
at an enterprise level but i don't specifically as a creator so i mean there's things that could
00:23:36.260
happen that do happen yes and do you ever feel like concentration risk of the business like is
00:23:41.660
yes how does how do you resolve that in your mind how do you deal with those emotional swings so my
00:23:46.240
main 10 million follower page has had a penalty wrongfully yeah for a year and a half so we have
00:23:52.560
40 pages now you know and some of our brand new pages because the content knows how to hold
00:23:58.880
attention we have brand new pages making more than my 10 million follower page and that was
00:24:04.060
in a response to somebody you know obviously wrongfully um penalizing you guys but it's
00:24:09.460
interesting because in that what probably was a moment of like oh no you said let's go diversify
00:24:16.380
which today is a better business is a much better much better business because we didn't always my
00:24:21.520
husband and i we didn't want to dance for our dinner yeah and during covid we were having the
00:24:26.600
time of our lives we went from averaging 20 million views a week to 200 million views a week
00:24:31.260
and all of our friends and family were really struggling there's the music industry down here
00:24:35.420
yeah you know it shut down and we were like we can teach you how to make videos we can teach you how
00:24:39.740
to hold attention people need levity and comedy right now so let's teach you and they started
00:24:44.740
making millions of dollars and we're like holy crap what have we all stumbled upon here so that's
00:24:49.580
how it started and then but you can't but even on the back end of a global pandemic you found
00:24:55.220
this thing attention so everybody was here so we were like we got to be there the consumption went
00:25:01.640
just through i mean everybody's numbers netflix everybody clubhouse i mean it's just yes people
00:25:07.580
wanted like entertain me i'm home entertain you got nothing to do we got you everybody used to
00:25:12.140
work stop working start consuming and so you had this kind of like not artificial but enhanced
00:25:18.860
demand which probably made it easier at first to have these hits right that in the past might have
00:25:24.740
only had a fifth of the views but it gave you the confidence to be like hey this is really cool
00:25:30.200
it gave us speed yeah it gave us quantity and i quantity breeds quality talk about this say what
00:25:35.980
you want to say but quantity does breed quality because if i sat here and i was like i'm putting
00:25:39.680
out a video this week i'm gonna put out a video every week one then i have so much emotional weight
00:25:44.840
on that single video, and it may or may not be good,
00:25:49.820
And so you had all emotional weight on that video
00:26:09.000
And we're studying 40 pages of data to see what's working.
00:26:13.620
we create double of that the next day and we're just learning at a scale that most people couldn't
00:26:19.420
replicate and that's what we still do today is let the quantity lead so so i'm just curious we
00:26:25.360
go back four years and and you you know publish what was the first viral video
00:26:30.060
this was pre-covid but i put chickens in a bathtub um it was a 19 second video i was a touring
00:26:38.480
musician at the time i put chickens in a bathtub and it blew up it did okay 2017 why did you did
00:26:45.140
you was it planned or you just happened to record some chickens in a bathtub both okay so i was
00:26:50.540
creating it never occurred to me i should put chickens in a bathtub oh you should totally
00:26:53.820
but like this is what's beautiful about your mind is that you you're just like i want to be
00:26:58.060
so you must have had some previous experience with how crazy chickens are this was my first
00:27:06.340
It was 2017, and I was creating content for a meme page at the time.
00:27:11.260
I had no idea how to work a camera, lighting, do anything, or act.
00:27:15.660
And I was doing it all on a GoPro, so I couldn't even see what I was doing.
00:27:18.580
And I had to turn around a new video every morning by 6 a.m.
00:27:31.520
Just trying to figure it out while I was a touring musician, but I was waiting for a
00:27:35.060
suit behind a desk to give me permission to be successful.
00:27:38.100
And they were saying, ah, you're good, but not now, not entertaining enough.
00:27:43.200
So I was like, I'm going to do this on my own terms.
00:27:46.340
I think that's why God put me here is to represent who I am.
00:27:51.240
Not because I'm so cool, but so other people can see pieces of themselves in me and this
00:28:01.000
yeah but my footage was destroyed one night it's one in the morning and I got to turn something in
00:28:04.960
by six and I was just crying I was like what am I gonna do and my boyfriend at the time was like
00:28:10.600
go get those chickens in the backyard and do something with them they make you happy
00:28:14.080
and I was like I have no other option so okay I went and got the chickens and I put them in a
00:28:19.420
bathtub and I pretended like I was curling one on the counter's hair and we had him bust them go
00:28:24.220
what are you doing why is there a chicken in the bathroom and I'm like he was lonely and then I
00:28:29.240
pull back the curtain and there's all my chickens in the bathroom and they had funny names like
00:28:33.440
chick norris ellen de henris oh come on uh kim kardashian shakira shakira they look alike
00:28:40.260
and so people were just like i want to be this girl every comment was just a tag and this is so
00:28:46.460
me this was so relatable yeah we just become best friends like they're just like i want to hang out
00:28:51.140
it was that and so that was did 19 million views overnight whoa which in 2017 was huge
00:29:00.940
I quit trying to do what everybody else was doing
00:29:21.780
And I said this to him on the flight down here.
00:29:24.240
i said sam every person is one creative project away from being a superstar i believe that and
00:29:31.340
and the only way that ever happens for them is if they allow themselves to actually listen to
00:29:36.000
their heart which is a scary thing to do it is though and it's it's like scary because it's the
00:29:41.160
hardest you literally have to say i want this i love this i don't know why i know my family's
00:29:49.260
going to judge me i know there's a chance that everybody else is going to hate it but for some
00:29:54.580
reason i just keep thinking about this thing and i'm going to do it what would you say to somebody
00:29:58.180
who doesn't know what they want to do i ask them what they don't want to do and when they tell me
00:30:04.760
that i go it's the opposite of that because that's how everybody wants because everybody
00:30:09.860
tell you what they don't want yeah and if they tell you what they don't want it's actually what
00:30:14.340
they do want right so what are you not like what's the opposite of that perfect go do that i don't
00:30:20.460
know i just i just find that like such a fascinating concept and i've studied this because like the
00:30:24.660
oliver anthony's oprah with color purple you know all the music a lot of the musicians there was
00:30:29.620
always john maxwell's book 21 year for all laws of leadership number 13 for him okay every and it
00:30:35.740
became the number one he's the goat of leadership like everybody that is the tip of the spear from
00:30:40.760
the rock to whoever what we admire about them is they allowed themselves to absolutely honor their
00:30:47.380
personal preferences and i think it's interesting because we can sometimes get caught in after that
00:30:54.800
incrementally improving and we get away from the creative part right and we don't have the collabs
00:31:00.240
like a lincoln park and a jay-z for me personally that yeah that that album i was like i needed that
00:31:06.440
my life and that's like that numb encore is like one of my favorite songs in the history of the
00:31:11.240
world i knew i liked you i like you so much more because i shared with you who i am isn't that
00:31:16.740
crazy yeah and i think that's what happens a lot of people walk around the world they're actually
00:31:20.680
fascinating people but they're wearing a mask yeah they love chickens let's see i love yeah i
00:31:25.420
like you more tell them about the shakira shakira that's funny shakira shakira shakira that's just
00:31:30.280
they're great yeah so you do that that brings you into the world and then covet is this beautiful
00:31:35.660
blessing for you now i don't know about you i'm in software software went awesome and i had to feel
00:31:41.980
a little bit of guilt because while the rest of the world was melting so i'm just curious like
00:31:47.160
you went from a touring musician and most people music don't make money i was bankrupt okay actually
00:31:52.760
perfect so you're there and now you're making money like like how did that feel were you worried
00:32:01.040
it would stop tomorrow did you did you put it away did you carpe diem it a little bit like how
00:32:07.220
did you respond invest it immediately is the real because you just got so nervous this may not last
00:32:11.620
yeah and i still had that bankrupt mentality if this isn't gonna last so i need to make hay while
00:32:15.920
the sun is shining and then past that i feel like this is just the human experience that once
00:32:20.820
you have your immediate needs met the immediate next thing you want to do is go show everybody
00:32:27.200
else how to find the level of joy that you found, especially because my success was tied
00:32:31.160
intrinsically to who I was as a person. I'm pranking my husband every day and I'm playing
00:32:35.580
with my chickens. And I was like, this is the best, most authentic gift I could ever be given.
00:32:40.120
And I want everybody else to learn how to make videos, learn this formula so they can make
00:32:43.940
videos around whatever makes them shine and have authentic, like have just trust in their own
00:32:49.780
authenticity and their own abilities because they see me living out mine and mine's way sillier
00:32:54.020
and less meaningful than yours my mission is really silly you know but you have important
00:32:58.680
missions and important messages and products and services that need to get out in the world so let
00:33:02.700
me tell you how to storytell them let me show you this formula that works seven out of ten times
00:33:08.060
that's a pretty good batting average that's crazy i don't know baseball but that seems i don't know
00:33:11.900
it either but it sounds good i don't even think they do seven out of ten i think it's out of a
00:33:15.240
thousand and it's got a zero point something in it yeah okay seven hundred yeah seven hundred we
00:33:20.220
just got people watching me they're like that's not even a thing dan adley what do you guys stick
00:33:25.240
to your chickens yeah um but let's let's talk about because a lot of people following me know
00:33:29.940
about the concept of buying back time yeah you don't build this if you're doing everything and
00:33:34.880
i met some i think i met some of your staff so like how did you who is the first hire like how
00:33:39.640
did you think you're making money and you're obviously like i got more creative projects i
00:33:43.480
want to do i'm assuming were you editing the videos at the beginning i still edit the videos
00:33:47.860
because i'm so particular yeah but what were some of those first hires first hire well so we were
00:33:53.640
we started managing creators i taught my brother and taught my friends how to do this first so we
00:33:57.720
could change their lives and then i was like i can't make my brother work more make more videos
00:34:02.580
that doesn't work too well not to family members not to family no so that's not scalable so that's
00:34:08.080
a definition of not scalable so i was like can't make my family member work more right and so we
00:34:13.420
taking a percentage so that was not scalable then it was higher staff creators uh we saw security
00:34:19.260
footage popping off well i can't pretend to be a robber or an amazon delivery driver at this point
00:34:25.500
but i could hire someone to be to take advantage of that opportunity tell me what that means what
00:34:30.380
you see you just said it as if you think what what do you mean staff creators and security footage
00:34:35.100
good point okay so have you ever watched a video of you mean like an uber camera yes yes
00:34:41.420
Uber camera, ring cameras, porch pirates, restaurant security footage.
00:34:46.460
You catch someone doing something they shouldn't be doing.
00:34:48.860
People love watching CCTV because you're getting to watch people do things
00:35:07.300
Because that, it just takes formats that people love watching in movies or sitcoms, repackage
00:35:12.580
them for social, and people think they're real, or at least they used to.
00:35:19.020
But you know what's crazy to me is people will get so mad at us for scripting videos,
00:35:23.620
but we watch scripted reality TV, we watch scripted entertainment like WWE, and you're
00:35:29.880
But I think we were so early to scripting social media entertainment, but that's what
00:35:39.680
Now that you say that, I know you're just like, oh, poor you, Dan.
00:35:46.140
So don't break my heart, but what percentage of videos do you think that I watch it go viral that are fake?
00:35:56.740
What about the one, the police officer and the other person?
00:36:06.120
no yes it makes so much sense i know because the entrepreneur in me is so proud of you
00:36:12.120
but the consumer is like my life is a lot but it works so you can play on themes like
00:36:20.600
unboxing videos are super super hot so we're like all right what's a new take on an unboxing video
00:36:25.360
cops finding something strapped to a girl's leg like maybe we don't know we have to unbox
00:36:32.240
her everything we do is pg pg 13 but it was a cop pulling somebody over and saying what are you
00:36:38.380
hiding so it was ripping open the gene oh my whatever and unboxing a body because we love
00:36:43.860
the human body creative and we would just have very is this your concept i don't remember your
00:36:48.520
husband just take credit one of us very good it all happens you know awesome but we would just
00:36:52.660
unbox a human body you know but it's same thing but just more of what people we just try to blend
00:36:59.020
three boxes together so so when you say staff creator you hired them put them on salary and
00:37:05.260
then worked with them on scripts and they would just produce yes because we need them to be an
00:37:08.820
amazon delivery driver i've never heard this but my you know my boys watch is darman do you know
00:37:13.600
darman i love darman we tried to do darman and it was just cool for me because i knew darman before
00:37:18.700
he actually the the previous version of who he was really right yeah the internet guy and then he
00:37:23.180
came out with these darman videos and they all have a great message and my boys now and they
00:37:28.200
were like eight seven eight years old wanting to wanting to watch it yes i was like oh everyone
00:37:33.560
does exactly what you said they have like uh you know tension and then they've got the karen and
0.99
00:37:38.780
he's like you have no money you can't buy this car and then it's like and then he realized he
00:37:42.820
didn't know who he was and you know and it's just i don't know i think it's cool that that darman
00:37:47.840
created content for my kids that they actually wanted to watch and learned important life
00:37:52.640
everyone has a cool life lesson it actually watching that video sounds funny and even
00:37:56.560
watching paw patrol it made me realize that growing up i was being taught things through
00:38:02.160
astro boy and he-man and like instantly it never occurred to me it like isn't that crazy it never
00:38:08.980
occurred to me as a kid the shows i watch were all teaching me life lessons they were wrapped
00:38:13.820
up in entertainment and you can it's still wrapped up in entertainment it's still that's the format
00:38:17.880
look at the taken series we it was you learned about trafficking and what a problem that is
00:38:53.080
and 100 people in the process yeah so we take stakes we take timing we take suspense the way
00:38:58.260
that we traditionally know them but pack them in a way for social media and make them relatable
00:39:02.340
make yourself be able to see yourselves in the character even if it's really dumbed down it's
00:39:06.940
so great yeah i heard one time somebody say the quote they said the bigger the monster the bigger
00:39:12.420
the hero i think that's what it was i like that yeah because essentially the the bigger the monster
00:39:17.120
the bigger the villain yeah the bigger the hero has to become so it's like that's why when i watch
00:39:22.380
like uh x-men or whatever these movies are like a dc movie and it's like whatever the guy the the
00:39:28.360
bad guy's name is like you know dom and you know it's like this crazy multiverse bad guy it's like
0.62
00:39:33.440
he's got all the powers ever created it's like it's gotten a little silly like he's undefeatable
00:39:38.860
and then they're like you know then all the x-men have to get together to fight him but again it's
00:39:44.060
like the bigger the tension the bigger the evil then the more the transformation has to occur
00:39:48.880
yes so i think it's a fun concept when when i tell stories i i i try to remember to talk about
00:39:55.460
how bad it was yes because if i do a good job there i guess when i'm getting the tension yeah
00:40:01.320
because it's like a meaningful thing an obstacle that has to be overcome yes and every story has
00:40:06.040
a villain kind of whether you want it to or not you got to develop the villain in our stories
00:40:09.980
our old selves were the villain yeah my past but if you don't tell how bad you were in the past or
00:40:15.900
the thoughts you had in the past it actually doesn't make the story as interesting as it could
00:40:19.620
be right that's you're undervaluing your testimony and why did you go through all that to be here
00:40:25.380
and the people who are still stuck in that need to hear that you were there too because look at
00:40:30.020
where you are now and that's the light they're looking for so on the staff creators do you have
00:40:35.580
any that you produce that are their own creators and you do the percent fee or you don't do that
00:40:39.760
at all we give them a percentage of the video's earnings because if we just said hey you're going
00:40:45.020
to be an amazon delivery driver in this video you're gonna be pregnant in the next video third
1.00
00:40:48.360
video of the day you're gonna get evicted then they can just run through them and not care not
00:40:53.300
say stop restart and i'll stop and restart you eight times yeah i'm crazy if i'm behind the
00:40:58.020
camera and i need them to have that level of consideration for the psychology yeah and so
00:41:03.320
we started incentivizing them based on the videos okay so but you've never done like an agent model
00:41:08.040
where you you produce other people and they do it and then that you take care of some aspect of the
00:41:12.240
business you still do the stuff that's the only model you guys currently do no we do have staff
00:41:16.000
and management so for some of our managed creators and how does that typically look okay so youtube
00:41:21.220
do you do the facebook do you manage all their social channels they do no they do the uploading
00:41:25.580
still because they need to learn it they need to learn the editing because if you learn editing
00:41:29.480
it makes you a better creator because you're seeing wow i shot that horribly or i should
00:41:34.060
have said this then you're going to get way better if you have to look at what you did yeah if you're
00:41:38.380
just in front of the camera and then phoning it in for someone else to deal with you're never
00:41:42.060
going to see all the mistakes so that's fascinating and i was you know obviously i'm all about buying
00:41:46.320
back my time i've never edited a video yeah but i realized i got a great sam and a team of
00:41:52.160
bodybuilders though but um what but i'm not learning like you just said because what you're
00:41:57.940
getting is you're seeing where you had to edit around you to know next time hey complete your
00:42:03.800
thought yes annunciate your words yes sam has to probably feel i'm sorry dude like i know how bad
00:42:09.440
i can be sometimes where he'll be like bang oh we forgot to close the story and i'm just like
00:42:15.520
all right well so we go volume game but um when when you work with these other creators where
00:42:22.360
you're doing the management side that starts to look potentially like what the music labels
00:42:27.720
do with their artists right yes so how do what have you done something different around that
00:42:32.500
the way you do it is it traditional like is it like i don't know because i've seen i've seen a
00:42:36.580
lot of people like a bradley martin and he had a person he produced and got pissed off because they
00:42:40.660
built them up and they left yeah and they get in a lawsuit like that part's always fascinating to
00:42:46.100
me when you work with other creatives because we're all crazy i'm just a little crazy i don't
00:42:50.480
know if you would okay cool we're all i'm totally normal i don't know yeah what my business
00:42:56.360
um but what do you what is the model like what do you do is it how do you do it so that everybody
00:43:02.660
stay as friends if somebody doesn't want to do business with us anymore we we let them go it's
00:43:08.860
that plain and simple okay you don't worry too much about it no no one's left yet like we'll
00:43:13.260
cross that bridge when we get there but i in the music industry i always wanted a seat at the table
00:43:18.160
yeah always and now i have a table yeah and i want to pull up as many chairs as possible so i'm
00:43:24.420
going to create the best table where everybody's invited you have to be really good but once you're
00:43:28.840
here we want to see what do you need how else can we serve you how do we build that out and if we
00:43:32.920
don't have that model yet go elsewhere or if we're not serving you as good as so and so could
00:43:37.720
then go go figure out that and see if that makes sense to you but so far we're still young we still
00:43:43.620
have a lot to learn but if we take care of our people they take care of us that's the way to do
00:43:48.140
it yeah my philosophy as long as i help my team members achieve their dreams i've learned a lot
00:43:53.080
from you you want to know the biggest thing i've learned from you recently i would love to hear
00:43:55.820
the difference between traditional and transformational leadership you said that and
00:44:00.040
i oh it rocked me i was like i'm what is it traditional leadership uh transactional is
00:44:06.920
transactional leadership and i am such a transactional leader i have a big problem delegating
00:44:12.480
yeah and so i would just task oriented task oriented which just kept me you're having to
00:44:17.980
do the work and not buying back my time you get maxed out and then you get burned out on the work
00:45:05.500
I love, you know, you put work out in the world
00:45:26.820
But the business side, like when you look at advertising versus brand deals,
00:45:38.540
So we were like, we're doing over a billion views a month.
00:45:41.980
Why are we not putting brands into our content?
00:45:50.700
and that's doing really really well and our blue ocean with that is mass visibility and mass
00:45:56.700
awareness so what kind of products yeah land rover charman yeah like real brands hp drumstick tool
00:46:02.500
companies yeah who aren't looking for the immediate click through yeah in revenue it's great straight
00:46:07.280
to transaction our cpas that is so cool um what do you think like 10 years from now what happens
00:46:15.960
i want to create shows yeah i want to create what we do now but i want to verticalize some of our
00:46:23.920
youtube channels we have youtube channels with three two three million subscribers yeah we've
00:46:28.520
been on youtube 11 months and we have almost 10 million followers i don't know what's happening
00:46:33.680
or what i'm doing so looking to figure that out and get into long form because we're very good
00:46:39.380
at top of funnel but i want to take all this attention and really understand why did god give
00:46:44.140
us this unique ability to grab and hold attention and make people watch videos they don't even want
00:46:48.580
to watch what a superpower so why don't we use that for good and actually put more meaningful
00:46:55.060
content back into the world because for the two years that we ran we ran a fantastic experiment
00:47:00.180
on facebook for two years yeah nailed it learned it grabbing attention and and getting people to
00:47:05.520
watch videos that they didn't even want to be watching yeah so how do we translate that now
00:47:10.680
how do we step out of that amazing experiment and the difference between what people say they
00:47:15.720
want to watch versus what they actually pay attention to so now it's taking that attention
00:47:21.740
currency and knowing how to translate it for people who have messages missions or amazing
00:47:26.440
brands so good i got two questions left the first the first one is who are some of the
00:47:34.500
i will say women because my wife's also an entrepreneur and i know a lot of women um you
1.00
00:47:40.080
don't have as many role models to look up to that's true yeah because like for you know i know
00:47:45.400
why there's a bunch of men that are top of the but the you know if you actually look around the
00:47:49.220
women that run the companies i'm not an idiot my whole team um what who are some of those women
1.00
00:47:54.400
for you like when you think like entrepreneurial role models where you're like i love the way she
00:47:59.240
does business i love the way she does life i love the way she is with her friends who are some of
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those people that come to mind it's sad that you say that now because a lot of my role models are
00:48:07.440
dead um but we can go we can go dead lucille ball okay a lot of people just know her as the
00:48:12.840
silly goofy entertainer but they don't know that she ran a content empire let's go with her husband
1.00
00:48:17.600
yeah but it was that dynamic that was the top of the funnel and the fuel and the attractant
0.92
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to that allowed her to produce and scale and get people jobs and all that so she's a big role
1.00
00:48:28.720
model for me that's amazing and then lately the last several months oh now i'm curious our life
00:48:34.040
has just it's been transformed since we literally started running ads it's been a whole different
00:48:39.780
level of introductions and people that were some of those i'm just curious are any any specific
00:48:44.220
names it's like i think sarah blakely is one of the coolest i was gonna name sarah i don't know
00:48:48.140
her personally but we'll get to know her i don't know her either i'll get to know her i'll make
00:48:52.020
sure you get to know her i'll race you yeah if you get there first send the elevator back down
00:48:58.780
i'm just saying but um yeah i mean i just posted on instagram recently about the thing i do with
00:49:04.140
my boys every night where i ask them what they failed at and that came from that came from sarah
00:49:08.120
really 100 she said her dad used to do that with her every day hey what'd you fail at today
00:49:11.860
i love that yeah we celebrate our failures what a simple frame change that i think will have a
00:49:18.040
profound impact on my two boys i have i have no doubt so one say it's okay it's expected and
00:49:23.520
we celebrate it and you celebrate and and when they don't have something i'm like oh that sucks
00:49:27.860
yeah you didn't try enough yeah what next time what do you think you could try what did you know
00:49:32.420
um is there anybody else i just want one more uh laurie grenier all right you got to be close
0.86
00:49:37.600
with laurie during quarantine like we talk every night for three hours on the phone type of friends
00:49:42.920
whoa and blake when he still had a real job he would come home from his corporate job and i was
00:49:46.940
like and then he's going to bed five hours later he's like i guess good night what do you guys
00:49:52.240
talk about everything we talked about business a little bit but we talked about shows we talked
00:49:56.620
about attention we talked about you know how the qvc journey um customer journeys we just talked
00:50:02.420
about family about kids that's so beautiful it was a really really wonderful friendship
00:50:07.120
and she loves comedy enjoyed oh yeah i'm going to andrew schultz tonight are you really yeah i'm
00:50:13.000
i'm like comedy is my jam anyways uh last question adley when you look back at like you know 2017
00:50:20.180
when you first viral video let's start there 17 2017 to now 2024 who did you need to become
00:50:27.260
to deal with this level of success you can't be a people pleaser and do this business
00:50:33.360
and i was a people pleaser when i first started making videos and the comments would tear me apart
00:50:40.580
because they would misunderstand who i was what i was doing i was like no i'm not that person i
00:50:44.760
didn't say it like that you took it like that so i would change my next video to do everything
00:50:49.880
right, that nobody could have any room to be condescending towards me. And then I would still
00:50:57.280
get torn apart. And there would be two comments back to back. This is the best video you've ever
00:51:01.200
done. The second one was, you're absolute trash. This video is trash. Take it down. And I was like,
1.00
00:51:06.140
I can't please everybody. And now I'm just getting more and more inauthentic. And even when you try
00:51:11.480
to do everything right, you're still going to upset people. And so learning how to just care
00:51:17.000
about what I think what do I think of me because if I think I'm doing okay and I'm happy then
00:51:22.240
that's going to resonate and then other people the right people are going to be attracted to that
00:51:26.320
and that's who I'm doing this for that's who I'm trying to represent possibility for so that's been
00:51:32.140
the guiding north so beautiful I love that where should people follow you where's your favorite
00:51:35.860
platform to get to know you I say Instagram perfect same I think Instagram is my fave
00:51:41.940
um everybody go find adley on instagram give her a follow she's incredibly creative and here's the
00:51:48.460
deal if i was and i haven't bet if i could buy stock i'd buy stock in her she's going to create
1.00
00:51:52.580
a massive portfolio production company shows i have no doubt i have no doubt i like know it i've
00:51:57.920
already i can kind of already see it and it's because of the people you're talking to the
00:52:03.060
mindset you've built the willingness to take risk and build out the pieces of the empire and that
00:52:08.860
you stay close to the creative which is just awesome so thank you for having me thank you
00:52:13.260
so great a lot coming from you appreciate it means a lot have an amazing day