Justin Flom 00:00
The opening shot for me has to make people in themselves go I care about what's happening.
Ben Kaplan 00:09
This is the show about the people who create, amplify and influence our culture and how they do it. Want to capture lightning in the bottle? want your content to spread like wildfire? I'm Ben Kaplan, and let's Break The Internet.
Tom Cain 00:28
Justin is an illusionist and content creator with 21 million subscribers on YouTube.
00:34
Are you ready for this? Please welcome Justin. Justin. Here you hold the camera now. He's got over 20 billion views. It was at this moment my wife knew I messed up.
Tom Cain 00:46
This is how he breaks the internet.
Ben Kaplan 00:51
Justin, you are a prolific content creator now and I'm talking about 21 million followers on YouTube 9.4 million on TikTok you regularly get over a billion views in a month as your sort of baseline first of all, how did you have this magician turned SOCIAL MEDIA CREATOR presence. How did you get here? And did you imagine you'd be doing this with your life right now?
Justin Flom 01:16
Ben, thank you. Prolific is my favorite word. So to have it applied to me is the coolest thing ever. And I'm it is not lost on me. Because I want a mountain of material. I just want the most material possible. And the journey from magician to whatever I am now is just based off of so desiring a large audience to entertain. That's just what I want. When I was doing magic. The goal was how do I get to arenas because that was the most fun thing I ever did was doing magic in arenas opening for these bands, Florida, Georgia Line and Thomas read these Giant Country Music superstars. I got to host their concert show with magic tricks. With this, just 20,000 people out there was amazing. And now on social media, I was doing magic and getting the 20,000 people watching with magic. But then when you expand beyond magic and start to look at the data of what people are actually watching, I was like, Oh, I can do that I can come up with creative ideas there. So then it really went beyond magic into home renovation and cooking and is cool mechanics engineering building a secret passageway or just really silly ideas like putting a foam pit in your house. No. Gonna be so good. Okay, haul here, you hold the camera. I'm serious. I really don't like this 123. So that's, that's where everything is now and the transition to it was all based on what's the audience watching? And where do I find them where they're at?
Ben Kaplan 02:49
And it's interesting, because, you know, people have asked you I mean, when you have the second most watched content on TikTok, I think you know, when you're doing things at that level, people assume that you are a great manipulator of the algorithm, like you know how to make the algo bend to your will and show your Iron Man painting to everyone because you know how to do it, you've cracked the code and the formula you actually say that's not the case. Now, the opposite of that. What do you mean by that?
Justin Flom 03:16
I don't manipulate the algorithm I let it manipulate mean, first of all, algorithm big scary word. Like what is it? Is it a bunch of ones and zeros and knobs and switches? Now, the algorithm is just people. Okay, I think I heard Mr. Beast say that famously, just, anytime you hear the word algorithm, replace it with audience or people. And that'll give you what it is because the tough truth that I've given other entertainers, because a lot of entertainers are coming from stage, and they want to come online, and they go, Hey, I got this video. How do I get people to watch it? The rough secret is the only way people will watch your video is if people watch your video like that. That's not helpful, Justin? No, the point is, it's all watchtime based. If the first viewer isn't finishing that video, then it's not going to see a second viewer. And that's just the way that it works. It's such a hard concept to grasp for the older generations, including myself, you know, I've got YouTube videos from 17 years ago, that you would not understand the strategy behind what I was doing posting these things. Because there was no strategy. I was just like, oh, this is a clever idea. I'll put it up and go viral. No, no, please no. But there is a calculated way where anybody can go viral. And that's because of this wonderful, amazing invention called the swipe feat. That is the best thing ever. Because when that algorithm is pure, and just looking at what are people engaging with, then you can hack that algorithm. And I mean, hack is a rough word there. But really what you're doing is you're just creating something that everyone wants to engage with, and then you end up at the top of the feed, and that's what I've done for the last four or five years. So what is
Ben Kaplan 05:00
the difference between something that is say interesting, but doesn't get 10 million views like your song a baby and half, but it's interesting, but it doesn't capture people like what is the difference between that because there's a lot of people who like make interesting stuff, but it doesn't have the life on social, right?
Justin Flom 05:18
It's a great example. So, song a baby in half, okay, we got 10 million views on YouTube, which is not nothing. But over on the other platform where there's a swipe feed, there is 200 million views on that video. Okay, so what's happening here? Well, in a swipe, feed, watch time is king. And in the YouTube name we're going to look at, it's going to be thumbnail and title. It's got a banger thumbnail and title, there's a baby cut in half, and it's called song a baby in half. So it's gonna get 10 million clicks. Awesome. However, over on the other side, on the swipe feed,
Ben Kaplan 05:54
we're talking TikTok, correct. Yeah, at this time, it
Justin Flom 05:56
was actually Facebook at this time. This is a Facebook video, I think. But yeah, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, these are swipe feeds where you have to stop the scroll. So all of my ideas now, I've got ideas on the board that we're not going to do right now. Because we don't have an opening shot. We've got this killer diehard painting, where it's going to look like Bruce Willis is coming out of the vent with the lighter. Get together of a few lifts. Just that iconic shot, but we don't have an opening shot right now. So it's been on the board for six months. It's still on the board. We've got everything for it. We just don't know how to open it. And we're not going to do it until we can open that video with something that's eye catching.
Ben Kaplan 06:45
So people listening or watching can understand what is the opening shot you're looking for? What is something else where you didn't know the opening shot? And then you got it? What makes a great opening shots if you're in this kind of swipe fee mystery
Justin Flom 06:56
mystery we need so check this out. You want to drop some gold? Here's the
Ben Kaplan 07:02
gold. Okay, okay, I got my buckets out. Ready for the gold? Here we go. This is it. Okay,
Justin Flom 07:05
I coined a term in 2020 called barrier to exit. All right, we all know barrier to entry, the barrier to exit is how hard is it for someone to leave what you're doing. Now, if I'm doing a live show, or Let's even say a movie theater, pretty high barrier to exit, you drove to the theater, you got to babysit, or you're parked, you bought a ticket, you're sitting there, you had this on the calendar. So that movie would have to suck really bad for you to get up and leave. However, if if you're on TikTok, the barrier to exit is one inch, just a swipe of that finger one inch and you're gone. Not only that, we've incentivized that exit because one swipe up, and you have the entire history of human knowledge, and an algorithm that's going to feed you exactly the dancing blonde girl that you want to see. So people are highly motivated to swipe as soon as they're not into whatever that video is. So I think when a video has 100 million views, that is the metric of people like this, it has to be because the only explanation is they're watching it doesn't get to 100 million, unless people are watching it. So the opening shot for me has to make people in themselves go I care about what's happening. And this is why magic died for me in 2020. A traditional magic traditional magic because magic ends extraordinary magic
Ben Kaplan 08:39
is more about delayed gratification, right? It's more about the punch line, right?
Justin Flom 08:43
The beginning of a magic trick is look at this coin, make sure it's normal. Look at this paper bag, make sure it's ordinary, everything starts ordinary. And then we'll end extraordinary. Well, this is a terrible recipe for something trying to stop a swipe. There's nothing interesting to look at. However, if you can start with the extraordinary which in Magics case is oftentimes the secret then you can actually hook them and make them state Hangout. So my opening shots that I really love are like me upstairs, I chainsaw through my banister, and people swipe up, they see a guy in a house sawing through a nice banister and they're going What is he doing? And then every moment in that video should be first of all enticing to watch so it should be oddly satisfying to look at. It's edited the music it's cool looking and it should make you go but why that the why that and then as soon as you have the question why you should want to see it play out. So for this as soon as you understand the why I cut my banister on the upstairs railing you go, Oh, he's gonna jump off his balcony. Now we want to see that happen. Then we end up with a high watch time. So anything that goes in between Matt, if I go, Hey, everybody, I'm Justin, this is my house. No, that cuts watch time, because instantly people start swiping away. So it has to be an opening shot. And I will film multiple opening shots to a piece to see which one works best. So for my painting of The Incredible Hulk bursting through the wall, I had two opening shots.
Ben Kaplan 10:23
And just to give people a sense of them, and this is a video where you like you make a hole on your wall and say, like, Oh, what if you had a hole in your wall? What could you do with it, and then you basically spray paint a stencil of The Incredible Hulk, but then there's a fist coming out of the wall, and you take people through that just that people haven't seen it. That's what happens. Description.
Justin Flom 10:40
Absolutely. So it's going to end up with a painting of the Hulk, and it's going to look like his fist is coming out of the wall. The start of it is how to fix a hole in the wall. That's, that's the bed. So I've got to make a hole in the wall, I had two ways to do it. I actually had more than that. But these are the two ways that got posted. One, I do this crazy fall off a ladder and the ladder falls into the wall and makes a hole. I was betting on that one. I was like, that's great. Look at that fall. That's crazy. But then the other one was like this Laurel and Hardy bit, where I'm going to try and hammer this wall and in my backswing, I knock a hole in the wall behind me that one, it one to the tune of 400 million, as opposed to the other one, which got 2 million. How
Ben Kaplan 11:23
did you catch that we actually posting both on the full platform, we're using some limited audience first to measure this.
Justin Flom 11:31
The reason I love YouTube is I feel that they are not penalizing you if you're playing around and testing things out. So that was both posted organically right there on the platform.
Ben Kaplan 11:43
Oh, I saw on YouTube you went for and you were trying to use YouTube as a testing ground for what you're going to do on a swipe driven platform that would penalize you. Exactly,
Justin Flom 11:51
exactly. Yeah. Because Facebook now will penalize you for breathing. So I don't mess with anything over there until it's until I know what is going to happen. But there's lots of different ways that you can test I've heard it called Dark posting. I've heard it called a lot of different things. You can even do it on the advertising side, you know, purchase an ad for a video, and then figure out if you know, look at the watch time on it there. But what I'm looking for is how long are people engaging with this video. And if I can't get 60% of the people to finish this video, then I gotta go back to the drawing board and redo it. So oftentimes, man, dozens of times or even more, there's videos that are not posted. Because in a test, nobody watched it, nobody cared. So I go Alright, well, it's not going anywhere. And really, what most often happens is we do go back to it, we just refilm it and figure out where we lost people, because you can track all that data. But the reason social media creators don't often do this, is they love their content, and they're doing the content they want to do. We've heard it from musicians, the radio station goes, Hey, we need a radio edit, we need to cut this solo. And the artist goes, No, I'm an artist. And that's what's in there. I'm not an artist. I mean, I know I play one on video, but I just want to entertain people, people are my priority. So if they would enjoy it more if that guitar solo was cut out, which in this case would be whatever Joker bit was important to me, but not to the audience. I say cut it out, I say put the audience first. That's my opinion, take
Ben Kaplan 13:35
me through the mechanics as people might look at your content and say, Wow, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of thought, and oh crap, Justin is now telling me that I might do all of that work and all that thought and then be like, Nope, it wasn't good enough in terms of serving the audience. And now I got to scrap it and redo it. So how much content do you create? How long does it take? So here's what
Justin Flom 13:55
I say. Don't start with destroying your house. Okay, I've got five years in the algorithm side of this thing that really educates me to where I go, all right. Look, I'm going to drop 20 grand into a trampoline room. And we don't know if it's going to make its money back. And to me, I go, Look, I think this is probably the bit that's going to do really well. We don't have a way to test out a lesser version of it for cheaper. Let's go like I've got the experience to say that but that is built off of 2020 through 23 Where every video I did was free like nothing costing anything. All I was doing was buying a couple smoke bombs and painters tape or, you know, just like I was doing cheap spray paint, cheap stencils, whatever I could do, just to learn, okay, this is how users interact with content. And once you know that, then you really start to learn what sends people swiping, and what keeps people engaged and just yourself, just you when you're swiping any feed, TikTok YouTube shorts, reels on Facebook, whatever, pay attention to what makes you leave, and just stop and go, Oh, why did I leave? At that point? What did she do? Or what did he do? That made me go? Nope, I'm done, my guess would be is that creator communicated to you, we are a long way off from a payoff. And that payoff is not worth the amount of time that it's going to take. That's my guess. And that's what it usually is for me. And the payoff is anything and everything. It could be the end of an arts and crafts piece. Or it could also be like dancing girls on Tiktok. Okay, they built these dances where the thing that you want to see in the dance is at the end, okay, maliciously, they did this. Because then when it becomes a trend, everyone's watching and they go, I know, I know, at the end, she's going to do that little shaky thing. And I want to see that and then you sit there and watch the whole thing. I don't know, that's other people's news feeds. My feed doesn't look like that, I swear. So the thing is, everything is just building that content towards, they have to see the thing at the end. And oftentimes, people don't know that they want to see that thing at the end until the mystery is introduced at the beginning. So that's a mysterious unknown. What
Ben Kaplan 16:19
are some biggest mistakes that you think other content creators make even successful ones that interrupts and helps them lose? Audience? Yeah,
Justin Flom 16:28
look, I would never say it's a different game. Okay, so let's say you want to be Logan, Paul. Okay, so man, I like watching Logan Paul content, I think it's awesome. You know, whether you love him or hate him, you watch him. That's what's great about a guy like that. So the mistake, it's not a mistake for him to do this, because he's doing a different thing. I know that the job of making people like me and want to watch me, just for the reason of me, being me, is a real uphill battle. But for Logan, Paul, he goes, No, no, that's the end game, I need people to like me. I want people to watch me for me all of that. So the mistake would be depending on your goals, if you want to be at the top of news feed, and you want to make your money from views, or brand deals that come from views, then saying your name and looking for brand recognition and talking to the viewers as though they care. That's a mistake. Nobody cares. Just they don't care about anything. And we can see that in our most beloved celebrities stepping into social media, and getting less views than the Emilio twins, or sisters or whatever. Like how is that possible? We love celebrities, our culture is obsessed with celebrities? And the answer is the celebrity comes on going well, obviously, you guys care about what I say. So I'm going to say, oh, gosh, swipe, I can't I can't hang out there to hear what you have to say. I don't care. And that's why those videos don't take off. However, if you're Jason Derulo, and you understand what's up, he is playing the game perfectly. He's got great opening shots, great concepts, zero ego. And he's never saying, by the way, I'm Jason Derulo and album out this Thursday. He's not doing any of that. He's going Nope, this is a different game. This is social media. And my job is to just get high watch times high engagement rates, and let this go and do it's it's a different thing. And the result of that is his music has sold more than if we were to just do videos promoting his music. And
Ben Kaplan 18:38
who else do you think celebrity wise gets it? Like, what is your view? I mean, I can throw out a few names for you. There's other ones kind of like what if you have like, Kim Kardashian, the rock, other people that have their own distinctive styles and niches? Yeah, they get it on
Justin Flom 18:51
the level that they're doing it you can't critique Kim Kardashian, She's a beast and she knows exactly. Look, she just did the the Tom Brady roast.
Ben Kaplan 18:59
Sure. The roast of Tom Brady, right. Yeah, you know, what was
Justin Flom 19:03
epic to me there and why I know that she's good at social media is the way she's able to ignore the haters. She walked up and was booed. Now they kind of you can't really hear it as much on the broadcast
Ben Kaplan 19:17
because they edited it out. But in the initial live stream, yes. It wasn't well received in the arena. And
Justin Flom 19:23
you know what she did? She took it, she ignored it. And she did her thing. She comes off way better for that. And the same thing is on the common side, with celebrities in particular, and artists in general, because I work with a lot of people who are singers, dancers, magicians, and then they do social media. They can't ignore the comments. And I go guys got to look at the numbers here. Okay, it's got 1000 comments, and let's say all of the comments are negative. I don't care because it's got 10 million views. So the commenters are like point oh 1% of the viewer. And again, I don't Don't watch Brooklyn nine, nine, all the way through. Unless I like it. I don't get to the end of a series or the end of an episode, unless it was engaging me and doing something in me.
Ben Kaplan 20:12
So you're saying 1000 negative comments, but 10 million people getting through to the end, it means it's liked a ton, even though we're just reading the comments and say, Oh, this this was hated or something like that. And now
Justin Flom 20:24
I can see it on the shorts feed with YouTube, because the ratio of likes to dislikes is always 96%. Like, like 96%. And I meet people, you know, now, it's a really fun thing. I used to be grownups coming up to me and saying, Hey, I like that silly stuff you do online. Now it's kids. YouTube has a lot more kids watching. So I'm getting parents coming up to me, hi, my daughter says she knows you. And I'm like, What's up? What's video like, and they'll trapdoor you know, whatever, whatever the BID IS. So I know that even if there's hate, I know it's not true. And I can ignore it. And it would be really bad. If I let the comments dictate my content. Oh, that'd be terrible. I love people who engage with my content. And I love fans. And I love the people who are fans, but I can't listen to them in terms of what the idea is to do. Steve Jobs Senate, he doesn't go to the user base to say, what new products should we develop? Because he said that they would have asked for a faster, big, giant computer, or I forget exactly what it was. But he was like, nobody was asking for the iPhone. No one was asking for the iPod. So no one on the internet was asking for layered stencil art. They just weren't, they didn't know what that was, I had to go and find that. I had to really crack how to film it. And that was the big thing, you know, was cracking the filming strategy to make that interesting.
Ben Kaplan 21:54
We've done the opening what you need for the opening, let's do the other two parts of this. The second part is the middle, which could be the most intimidating because people have a sense, like, you know, interestingly, I gotta get someone's attention. And maybe the end, they know, they gotta have some kind of good wrap up. But the middle is daunting, because that's like the Abyss where you're gonna lose people.
Justin Flom 22:12
The middle. Yeah, that's the rule. That's it, you nailed it. The middle is don't lose them. That's it. Now I know that sounds oversimplifying, but the way to not lose them is to avoid all of these lasers. Okay. And those lasers are things like, Alright, we're going to do this. Okay, well, that's not present tense. And that says it's coming in the future, who, if you put any timeframe, like in three minutes, we're going to take this out of the oven, oh, I'm gone, I'm gone. Just at the terrible risk, that maybe you're actually going to take three minutes of my time before this thing comes out of the oven, boop gone, like that's. So you want to stay away from all of these buzzwords that tell people the payoff isn't here yet. And it's a ways off. Now, maybe that's okay. If the payoff is like the greatest thing they've ever seen, and they believe it's going to be the greatest thing they've ever seen. And that's the other important thing. I don't care what the end of your video is, okay? The viewer doesn't know what the end of your video is. This is why magicians suffer. They don't know how impossible the thing is, that's coming. So unless you can really communicate it, and not just clearly communicate it, but get the viewer to believe that it's going to be worth it to be until the end, then then you're snowed, you're screwed. So the middle part is just don't say anything that's going to send them away. And, most importantly, never move backwards, only forwards. Meaning if I'm doing a painting, this is probably a good way to illustrate it. As the painting is happening. Everything should be moving towards revealing that final painting. And where I've ever failed, has been something in that process, repeated a step. So we did something that we did before. And now we're going to do it again. That's not great. Or we were right about to reveal and then I switch tactics. I had a hard time with this Harry Potter painting still did double digit millions. But what would have been, I think a 100 million hitter, I made a mistake. And it's just biometric of where the painting was. So for the listener at home, it's a painting of Harry Potter on a broomstick and the broomstick is protruding from the wall 3d And you can hang your coat on it. Cool. Well, for this to happen, I had to go into the closet behind the wall with a broomstick and shove it through the wall. I lost viewers right there. I lost them because I walked away from the thing they wanted to see. Ah, no, like everyone was there. I had 70% of viewers up until that point, but then a big enough chunk left at that moment to go Alright, well he He just walked away from the painting. I have no idea when he's coming back to the painting. What if he has to do like a whole bunch of stuff in there?
Ben Kaplan 25:06
He's on a bathroom break. Justin has to pee. He's gone. I don't want to wait around for him to pee. I'm just gonna go on with my business not his business, right? Because
Justin Flom 25:15
again, the barrier to exit on this thing is one inch just swiping what
Ben Kaplan 25:19
should have the Edit been? Should it just cut to the broomstick coming through the wall and don't show the walk back? Would that have been the edit?
Justin Flom 25:25
Nailed it? Yes, it should have just been like I should have stayed with the painting handed the broomstick to someone else and said all right, now this hole right here, the broomsticks gonna come out here, Google put it in. And then here's the crazy thing. I could have stood next to that painting for 30 seconds with nothing happening, just with the promise of the broomstick about to pop through. Because the viewer wants to see that. And we're standing right in front of the thing where it's going to happen. We see this all the time, maliciously done with building implosion videos. You ever watch a building implosion on the swipe? Shed? sure these guys have the footage, they could edit that footage to where the building just explodes. Like, obviously, why do I have to watch a minute of the building just standing there before it falls down? Well, they're they're hacking the algorithm. They're saying now I need a watch time on this thing. Because I can get a high percentage viewed by having a seven second video. But this is then where you start to look at different platforms. Okay, so now we're getting into the nitty gritty, you pull me back if I need to pull back, but yeah, how you edit differently for different platforms. So we got two different things, we got watch time, and we got watch percent. So I can get much higher watch percent on a shorter video. So I've got a 1 billion hit video, and it's got a 140% watch time. It's only 17 seconds. So that's why people are able to loop it really nicely. It's 17 seconds. It's a cool magic secret, changing dress thing. We've seen them at fashion shows we've seen them on America's Got Talent, and you get to see this thing actually operate. Cool. Not only did most people finish the video, almost half the people watched it more than once. That's what we see the metric as
Ben Kaplan 27:19
Is this the one where the woman is changing her outfits really fast as at that video, she goes through like three quick changes run. You see how she's doing it? Yeah.
Justin Flom 27:27
Three dresses. Yeah, I want you to look at three different types. So that was oh, gives the last one Oh, I didn't see it. I didn't wear whatever you think this one's where's the other dresses. So it's at 1.4 billion billion views. It's wild. So you look at that and you go okay, even though the watch time on that at 140%, I think the watch time would still be, you know, less than 30 seconds, I think it'd be about 30 seconds, that's gonna be a 32nd watch time on a one minute video. Because now we're down to 50% watch time, that's now rough. However, the platforms want their viewers to stay on the platform as long as possible. So you can get a much longer so as soon as you get watch times in the in the 45 seconds, or whatever. Now, it doesn't matter that the watch time isn't over 100% I see
Ben Kaplan 28:22
sorts of bounces. If I was going to paraphrase what you said it's like, the longer you make your video, you're placing kind of a bigger bets and the platform respects that you're placing a bigger bet, wow, just as going for a five minute video. Even if you don't get all people all the way through, they're like wow, you made a pretty bold bet there that can have some benefit compared to the shorter bets, which is the short video where you might require a much higher completion
Justin Flom 28:45
rate, right. And sometimes I'll make the wrong bet. So I put 4000 bouncy balls on my trapdoor. And I released them and I wanted to see them all bounce around like crazy in a room. Now my initial bet was people would really like this, and they would watch it for a minute. Now at a certain point, it was just repetitive. And even though it got a million views, I was like now this was worth this was worth double digit millions. Let me let me try another edit. And I'll just I'll make it 20 seconds instead of a minute. And that was the right bet. Because now it's already at 10 million views or whatever. So it's already better. So you go, Okay, how much can this idea sustain a viewer? And you've got to just kind of figure that out. And the truth is, actually, if you're doing the right thing, you can sustain a viewer for 20 minutes with one promise. Now I don't suggest that you do that all the time, because the viewer would rather be happy with the payoff. And the sooner you give it to him, the happier they are. That's why in my opinion, my short content at 60 seconds is the best way to view the content. It's better than the same concepts that live on other platforms a little bit longer. Which brings me to I don't do the same edit for all platforms. Facebook gets an edit TikTok gets in edit, YouTube gets an edit. And they're all different. And they're different. Because whatever the platform is giving you in terms of time, take it. What
Ben Kaplan 30:08
would be the generic rule of thumb for those three platforms? What would you do what would be like the time difference or just be we're going to describe the Edit Cut difference.
Justin Flom 30:16
Facebook is the only platform that has long form in a swipe feed. Great, love that because then we can get long for money with swipe feed content, love that that's me. I'm I'm swipe feed content. Nobody's ever chosen to watch a Justin Flom video ever. They swipe up and there's my big dumb face. That's how I win. So if I can do that with long form on Facebook, I'm going to take as long as I can, with making this still a good piece of content. So Iron Man on Facebook is four minutes long, because I'm going to talk a little bit more about the light and his chest piece and things like that. I don't want to drag it out too much. Because that's where you start to see diminishing returns, I want to make it as enjoyable as possible. For the time that Facebook has determined. This is our playing field. And Facebook said our playing field is three minutes and up. So take what you can on TikTok, they've said our playing field is upwards of a minute. So I go for two minutes if I can, because Tiktok I said here's the time, you can take up to 10 minutes. So I start with an edit, I do a Facebook at it. And then I copy that I duplicate it and Final Cut Pro. And I go Alright time to cut the fat and make this as an enjoyable of an experience as possible for TikTok. And that usually lands around two minutes, two minutes, 30 seconds, something like that, then I gotta kill some loved ones here, I gotta I gotta go in and just take some shots that I adore in this video, and I gotta lose them. Because I gotta get this fat monster down to a 62nd cut. That's hard. But by the time I get to YouTube shorts, that content is humming. It is humming fast, and it's it's flying. And then it actually feels slow when I go back and watch the Facebook at it. But that works out because the youngest viewers on YouTube, the oldest viewers on Facebook. So it all evens out and I think works for each algorithm. And that's the process. That's the different platforms.
Ben Kaplan 32:17
So we've talked about the opening, we've talked about the middle, the Abyss not losing people. What about the ending, if you kept someone for the whole thing? In some ways, you've already got kind of the benefits, you've already you've kept them. If you're a creator, like you, you've made a bunch of money off that is there any responsibility to deliver a satisfying result. So they'll come back and want to watch or what is the goal besides being as fast as possible. So
Justin Flom 32:40
when I pay off, I want them to feel satisfied that they got it. So I want it to be good. Also, it feels like a man I can just hang out here at the end. Let's show them all different angles of the painting, or let's show them the reaction of my daughter's looking at it. And the problem is people have gotten the dopamine hit, they want it and they're gone. That's the problem. So every second you have at the end of your video is taken away from your watch time, because you have to look at it like this, that viewer got to the end, you can have them a 100% viewer or every second you extend that video, the percentage of watch time is going to go down. Now, here's the challenge the algos are going to shift. And at different times they're going to prefer time versus percentage. There was a time on Facebook where it was, who cares the percentage we just want time watch time, this man. And this was a real thing. Like in 2019, you would do your video, you would pay off the video at one minute, and then you'd hang out and talk for like four minutes at the end of it. And someone is watching the hole for minutes. And enough people were that if you had a good enough watch time up to a minute and a high percentage of people doing that, add it in with the people who are just hanging out and not swiping away because those there are some then you'd end up with a really good watch time. But the platform's are not doing that right now. So could change as always, these things can change. But right now, percentage watched isn't very important to every single platform. So get out while the getting's good, everyone gotta pay off, get out
Ben Kaplan 34:23
of there. A lot of talk, obviously, over this past year about Taylor Swift tour her eras the evolution of her what has been your evolution, I think the other part that kind of trips people up is just because you've been successful with one thing doesn't mean you can just keep doing that thing and have the same level of success. So what has been the evolution from like, really, you embrace this as the pandemic started, right, like circa 2020, this approach what has been your evolution since then?
Justin Flom 34:51
I really love what I've been able to do. We're coming up on 100 billion global views just total around all the platforms. It's really why Hold when you when you look at it that way, and all of it was anonymous, I'm not actually that famous. I get recognized a lot when I walk around. And magicians certainly know who I am because they're I'm enemy number one in magic right now for revealing magic secrets. I just got on Criss Angel shitless. That was a fun one. This week, he was going to sell me one of his old props. And then he found out what I do. Because he doesn't pay attention to the internet, really. So he didn't know who I was totally fine. But then someone was like, hey, that's the guy who tells secrets. And then it was like, okay, sign this contracts, and you'll never reveal the secret. And I was like, I can't sign that. And everything fell apart. I was fine. It was it was great. Chris is actually a really nice guy. And I like him a lot. And I think that he has done the most impressive thing and magic in terms of how much he did in the last two decades. But he's a traditional guy doesn't want to see magic Secrets Revealed. I think he's wrong about that. I think people love magic, even if they know the secret. If the secret is interesting, Boy, that's a tangent. Where did I Where did I come from? So having all of the views relatively anonymously, was really great, because I got to explore all of these other cool new things. And I'd encourage creators to do that. Don't dive in, and try to get that Logan Paul audience right away. Because if I would have done that, I'd be trying to build a magic audience. And I'd be missing out on this fun house that I have with firemen, Poles and trapdoors. I'd be missing out on all of this new painting stuff that I've done it and I just love now getting to create cool pieces of art that just destroy my house. I'd miss out on all of that.
Ben Kaplan 36:46
When did the art come into play? When did you realize I think what you've leveraged Justin is like, the creative magicians mind as a creative experience brainstorm. And then you've applied it anyway. So it's so it was the art your most recent like evolution of a lot of the kind of like multi layered art and multi dimensional art that
Justin Flom 37:04
you do. So the house is the most recent evolution that I really put the pedal to the metal on the house, starting in fall of last year, okay,
Ben Kaplan 37:14
which is basically you are doing all kinds of interesting, crazy things to your house to make the house that you actually live in your fun house, that's been the most recent, we've got
Justin Flom 37:23
three or four different secret passageways more to come. We've got a trap door, a foam pit, a trampoline room, we've got this spring snakes thing out of the wall. It's crazy. That's one of my most recent YouTube shorts, check that one out. And then prior to that the art came in, in the mid 2021. So it's been a couple of years now. But I didn't jump on it immediately. Because it almost missed me. I was getting like the views were just so crazy over on Facebook, back at that time.
Ben Kaplan 37:56
And you were like really one of the beneficiaries of like this like pandemic, what are people doing with their time, they're exploring more things digitally, you are part of all of the people who've kind of figured out how that might work in a business for
Justin Flom 38:07
me and my buddy, a guy named Rick lacs. So he has a company called network media. And he represents a lot of creators who do this on social media, kind of with this style of like, hey, nobody cares about me as a person. I just got to create good content. And he and I had a discussion, march 14, right during shutdown, we probably weren't supposed to be talking to each other in person. But there we were. And we're like, you know, we could do a vacation for the first time in our lives. Because we're both workaholics. We both love doing what we do. And we've never taken days off. Or we could buckle down just one last time really hard and do a video every single day because all of the production companies are shut down. Movie studios are shut down. Even five minute crafts is shut down. We can finally get out ahead of five minute craps. Here we go. And that's what we did. So I did videos starting March 14, every single day, all the way up through the end of 2020. That's the first time I'd ever done something like that. And the first month was $40,000. Whoa, that's crazy. I've never made $40,000 on the internet the next month 80,000 Holy, whoa, what is this? This is all Facebook money. And then the next month had doubled again. And look at one point we did a $1 million month. That's insane. So with the views being as high as they were, I missed a lot of concepts because I was just moving moving moving.
Ben Kaplan 39:32
I see so you're just going for productivity and quantity and leveraging what you have you weren't spending a lot of time thinking about long payoff, not video. I was
Justin Flom 39:42
only looking forward I was inventing new magic tricks presented a new ways. I invented recipes for cooking I had a new way of exploding milk for your cereal. I invented a donut cake and I did this painting stuff and we're just looking forward Getting all these views. Then when that slowed down on the Facebook side, I was like, hey, you know, these painting things did millions of views. Let me try that again. But instead of on Canvas, because really what happened is the canvases stopped working. A painting on canvas didn't work well, okay. What's wrong there? Oh, it's not. It's a big white square as the opening shot. And we've seen that. All right, what if I start with smashing a hole in my wall, Tom and Jerry with a hole in the wall, where I smashed a hole in the wall with a hammer. And I was like, here's how you fix a hole. And I painted Tom and Jerry around him. That changed everything. In fact, an insider told me that Mr. beast and his team, I don't know if it was Jimmy himself, but someone on his team actually scripted that video out and they could see how analytical every single shot and peace of timing was. They even called me an NPC, they understood Oh, this guy is doing is totally anonymously. He doesn't need his brand or his agenda in here. And they called it the greatest YouTube shorts ever been made. Wow, that's really nice, because they just were able to see this is oddly satisfying to watch. It re engages the viewer, right at the moment of threshold where we're kind of bored of the painting, and then has a good payoff. It's clever. It's kind of a punch line, shareable, blah, blah, blah, that one changed everything. And then kind of just changed my trajectory. And suddenly, I was like, Alright, let's do that. Now we have a product where we're going to sell these stencils to kids so that they can do it in stores coming up this October. I'm so stoked about it.
Ben Kaplan 41:37
It is that your if I was gonna give that sort of the Justin Flom timeline, it was sort of the reinvent redo magic tricks reveal sort of the secrets of some magic, then it was the rise of the sort of art period and doing kind of clever ways of multi dimensional art that have an interesting hook and pay off. And then it was the house and the home and expanding that. And using that. Are those the three errors? Or did I miss anything in the home? Ma'am?
Justin Flom 42:00
This is the I'm slow. This is the question that you're talking about. As I go off on every change of the eras of Taylor Swift? What are the areas of video? Yes, they're even more nuanced, if you want to know I mean, we started with barbettes, these little puzzles, because during pandemic, everyone was at home. So the very first thing we did is, here's something you can do with grandma. And we saw that on TikTok with like whipped cream on the back of the hand where you'd launch it into your mouth, people loved anything that you could do as a family. And that was okay, that was pandemic very beginning. And then pretty soon it became Alright, let's do stuff in public, where things are embarrassing and public, okay. And then it was wasn't until the end of 2020, where I was like, Alright, I want to reveal a magic trick. Okay, there's that. And then 21 We ended up in, I was doing eight videos a day with the team that I had here in Las Vegas. And all the videos were live streamed on Facebook, all the videos were crazy long. And they were weird, the strangest concepts ever. Because I was in like this Andy Kaufman like sketch period. And it was really fun. It was the best ever. The money was amazing. But this the sketch writing was really wild. This is a more nuanced look at it, of course, but my wife Anna, she was writing these really wild ideas like what if we had a wedding, and it was crashed by a pregnant lady who was like, that's the father of my baby, you know, stuff like that. She was she was writing based off of Jerry Springer stuff. And then we would do a sketch comedy version of that. And we made it social media style, where it was like, Okay, we've got a friend of a friend who's going to pretend she's a baby mama. So we're going to show the pregnant belly being put on. So it was very meta. And it was on meta, so it makes sense.
Ben Kaplan 43:53
I said, it sounds like a big production, a lot of time a lot of people involved, what did you evolve from that into?
Justin Flom 43:59
So when that went away, it went away, because that was a group of all of us being creators. And as it became more important to do more videos, then all of us creators were like, well, we got to do this alone, because I can't help you with your video. I got three more videos to do today. So we all boom, separated out. And then suddenly, we're all doing stuff in our kitchens. And then it became the DIY stuff. Now my wife she was creating and she did now she's all cooking. Same with my sister who does the job as well. Me That's when I went time to paint and and I was able to supplement cast members by just making it about the project I was doing, and the painting led way to secret passageways, and the house and all that and really what's expanded now is bringing my daughters into it and doing this more family fun thing and now my daughters come to me with ideas and Haven my seven Your old, she's like, Hey, I want to pull out my tooth this way. And we pull up YouTube videos and watching other kids pull out teeth. And she's competitive like me. And she's like, we can do way better than that.
Ben Kaplan 45:11
Well, to make it to the end here, I was going to ask you, what is the next evolution for you? Is there any other ideas, you're toying around with other things, you're thinking about little hints of things to come.
Justin Flom 45:23
The fun thing is, is when you get the views, like, so I was number one, couple of weeks ago on YouTube, most viewed us creator, wow, it's crazy. Then you get some phone calls from like, money, people. And they're like, hey, what do you want to do if you had money to do it? So now we're looking at okay, do we want to do a game show? Do we want to like I have some really cool ideas of what is next? The idea board is so full, there are so many cool things. Because I just get to be a big kid, I get to go, what if we had a tight rope across there? Or slackline? And what if we put it in a net below it, and you could just jump off things? I just get to have crazy ideas and make them happen. So it's gonna be more crazy stuff in the house. I think we're gonna let people from the public come to the house sometimes, maybe take part in some of the crazy stuff. And I have a house in Minnesota, I might start doing crazy stuff to that house to I don't know, we'll see. It's, it's why
Ben Kaplan 46:26
do you think all of those things? Is it that you are, you know, social media, and these platforms are your medium? Or do you start getting lots of other things at a certain point where like, Oh, do you want to do a TV show or another platform or a thing? Or do you think like, No, those are all distractions, focus on your core area.
Justin Flom 46:42
It's so interesting, even as you're saying that my algorithm in my brain is going nobody cares about you, Justin, stay on something that can up the watch time of this thing. Don't talk about yourself and your own desires, like that's the way that your brain starts to work when you think of it that way. But the truth is, I like doing what I'm doing. And if I can make money from social media and continue to fund these silly ideas, I'm into it. I think the next step is I want to give the public the same ability not to make videos and stuff like that, because I don't think truly most people want that, you know, there's a select few crazy people like us who are like, Yeah, we want to do that. What's the work great I'm in, I want to give people the ability to do these silly things at their own house. So if I've got an exploding safe that hides behind a picture frame, let me give that to the public or so I've got some pretty interesting original gags, if you will,
Ben Kaplan 47:39
I say in ways that you kind of make it and that's what you said, like, oh, you might have stencil art that you can the stencils, you can use yourself for other ways to sort of bring what you've experienced.
Justin Flom 47:49
That's the first one. The look, I've got a stage behind me that's This is my house, just above me is a rappelling system so that you can come down from the ceiling. It's really crazy. But I grew up this way. My dad had a stage in his basement, there was three secret passageways in my childhood home in Minnesota, because my dad was a carpenter, not by trade, but he just, you know, he knew what he was doing. He built the stuff. And it was the best way to grow up, it was the most fun. So there's a lot of knowledge I have in what it's like to be a high schooler and invite friends over and have something impossible happen that nobody was expecting because you're in somebody's house. That's the stuff I really like. So I want to give to you. Hey, what if I told you you could float in somebody's Instagram picture, and it's just a thing that you can purchase. And it's not a magic trick, because everyone is going to know the secret except for the people watching on social media who don't when you start to think about magic, or entertainment or DIY builds in a different way new doors really open up and I want to open up those doors for the public. I don't know if that's too esoteric or mysterious, but I'm sticking to it that
Ben Kaplan 49:02
makes it makes a ton of sense. And I want to actually I want to do a quick lightning round and then one final question to the quick lightning round is Justin Flom, favorite video you've done of all time? What's your personal favorite favorite
Justin Flom 49:14
is probably Iron Man on the ceiling Iron Man on the ceiling. That's what I'll say. most
Ben Kaplan 49:17
watched video of time. What was it and how many views? It's
Justin Flom 49:21
a quick change. It's cool magic secret of address the changes three times 1.4 billion views most
Ben Kaplan 49:27
money you've ever made in a month? What video was it and how much money did you make?
Justin Flom 49:33
There's two answers for this. Cumulatively over a ton of videos. My biggest month was a million dollar month. But I do have one video that over the course of time has generated a half a million dollars and it's a painting on a hoodie using pendulum paint and a spinning hoodie. It's a crazy thing. average
Ben Kaplan 49:51
income generated from all of your platforms. What is it a typical month from this creation work that
Justin Flom 49:59
you do? Oh as up and down all over the place, low months
Ben Kaplan 50:02
versus high month what's the range on that and typical month,
Justin Flom 50:06
so a low month is rough if we're at $30,000. Cumulatively, we've had a really bad month and we have hit those bad months. We tried to cross six figures my monthly goal is six figures a month. That's that's what we want as long as we crack 100 We're doing the right thing. Most
Ben Kaplan 50:23
Admired creator not yourself that you look to for inspiration video
Justin Flom 50:28
editing style, Casey Neistat love that guy conceptual thinking Mark Rober? Yeah,
Ben Kaplan 50:35
someone on social media who is under the radar now but you think is doing great stuff and is gonna blow up that you would bet on that.
Justin Flom 50:45
There's this guy named Dwayne The Rock Johnson. He's, I see big things for him ahead.
Ben Kaplan 50:49
He's got you sick, so he might do some things out there. Okay. Okay, fair enough. And finally, if you could help all the people out there that want to have your level of success or something like it and you only have 30 seconds to give them the thing that's going to change their future and creating content enjoying it, maybe making it a business, maybe making a career. You got 30 seconds
Justin Flom 51:13
from close. Okay, close, right. Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna talk right to listen,
Ben Kaplan 51:16
I say here, I'm gonna move my mic here. Okay, here we go. I'm listening. Just
Justin Flom 51:19
start. Just start. You're gonna be bad for a while. And you just gotta start. Okay. You got to put in a decade into anything that you do. The reason that Justin Bieber's good So Young as he started so young, okay, so just start your first videos are going to be really bad. You're going to learn everything, just by starting. Don't think about it. Just start posting. Don't be precious. The Beatles did not write Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, knowing it was going to be the greatest album of all time. And it is. They wrote it just because that was their day. They just that was what they were writing that day. Only time will tell when something is great. So don't waste time. Just start. That's the answer.
Ben Kaplan 52:03
Okay. Well, there you have it from Justin Flom. Few people have the type of views audience that you do. Sounds like you've figured out the formula. But then you keep evolving the formula and find the new and exciting thing. Thank you so much for joining us on Break The Internet. And we can't wait to see how you Break The Internet yet. Next.
Justin Flom 52:22
Thank you, Ben.
Tom Cain 52:25
So here's what we got from Justin Flom. One experiment with different ideas. Always try new types of content to see what resonates with your audience to adapt to audience preferences. Pay attention to what your audience likes, and tailor your content accordingly. Three, start small and test again with low cost simple ideas and then test them to understand what works for learn from each attempt. use trial and error to refine and improve your content continuously. Number five, hook viewers immediately creates a strong opening shot to grab attention and stop viewers from scrolling past six focus on watch time. Keep viewers engaged throughout the video to maximize watch time, which is crucial for algorithms seven tailor content to platforms edit your content differently for each platform considering unique formats and audience behavior. Eight avoid self promotion early on, build trust and engagement first, rather than seeking personal recognition or pushing products. Nine ignore negative comments focus on overall engagement and not individual negative feedback and 10 stay current and evolve continuously adapt and evolve your content strategy to stay relevant and engaging. This episode was brought to you by TOP Thought Leader go viral with TTL check out all our shows at topthoughtleader.com Like and Subscribe
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