Today, we are gonna talk about the art of yapping. How to talk on the Internet, why it's so powerful, exact frameworks on what to say, how to write, where to edit, all of the different styles of yaps, a complete playbook for talking into your phone to change your life. And thank you for HubSpot for sponsoring this video. I just got back with the fam from Coachella.
You'll notice if you look at my content, was doing a lot of yapping there. Just talking on the iPhone, minimal graphics,
about what I saw, why it matters for brand strategy in pretty long two or three minute videos. I thought it'd be a great time to tap into this strategy and explain how to use it. But fuck it. So the other week, my boy JT dropped this video called I really think you should become an influencer. And in the video, he details that even though you see all of this contents like the end of the influencer age, where AI is gonna replace creators. In reality, everyone we know that's done it has gotten this like massive
outsized
value. And it's not just about, hey. I'm gonna make all this money or I'm gonna get this huge following. Talking on the Internet. And yapping is, like, the simplest version of that. Right? Yapping is just putting a camera on, an iPhone camera, not caring about anything else, and just talking. Easiest, most straightforward way. But I think it's important to understand, like, the repercussions,
like, how this impacts all the other things in your life. Right? So the primary method of business and personal communications now is short form video. We see it in all the feeds. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Netflix is introducing vertical video. X wants more original video creation. And when you go online, you're being shared with your friends in your group chat with your wife or your husband. You are sharing reels and TikToks. This is an innate part of our culture, and it's the same thing in business, in Slack groups, in team groups, people are sharing content. And so if you ever, you know, work in marketing or as a creative and you wanna make a good ad, even if that's on TV, even if it's like a text design,
it comes down to understanding video and this attention complex. If And you ever wanna market your business or build your career, having the ability to do that yourself or manage others becomes really important. And what was interesting to me is the number one value I got as someone who started making content at like 37
was becoming a better communicator. So I'd always been quieter,
more introverted, and in the right scenario, I could spit out a lot of quality information really quickly to give people context. But my mind always worked faster than what I would say, and so it'd just be this like stream of consciousness. But when I started making content, it allowed me to think in a more compelling way. I mean, what message am I trying to get across? How do I get this person's attention about it? How do I dispel the limiting beliefs they have around what I'm saying? And how do I present a story they're gonna pay attention
perspective to the finish line of whatever I'm explaining. And now I think of all the conversations like that. It's made me a better salesperson. It's made me a better marketer. It's made me better at articulating ideas in important scenarios and just more personable overall. And that's such a huge
impact from simply talking on the Internet. And the last impact is the ideas it's facilitated in my life. Right? So if you watch a lot of my short form content, it's about ideas.
I am fascinated with putting out original concepts. And so I'm constantly workshopping those bits with the people around me. Like, I have one right now about how your ZIP code over indexes as a factor as to where you go in life. I have another one about how people don't really need, like, McMansions and these big homes. The ideal home size for almost everybody is, 1,700 square feet. And I have all these ideas I'm kind of workshopping. I have these conversations with people where I bring it up. They know I make content. We talk about this idea. They share their opinions. We facilitate just kind of more interesting valuable combos because I'm able to think through so many of these, because we're articulating ideas. It's just led to a more thoughtful life. Speaking of yapping, if you want that content to do even more for you, LinkedIn is an extremely slept on platform. What I love about LinkedIn is it doesn't matter about the views. The quality of the views is so high that because you're reaching actual
professionals, potential clients, those who might hire you at a job. Even if you get a handful of views and likes, it's gonna be people that can make a real career difference. That's exactly why HubSpot put together this free starter pack. It's called the 10 x your LinkedIn game starter pack. Inside, you get Adam Biddlecombe's growth guide, the exact playbook that he used to go from zero to a 100 k on LinkedIn under a year, which is also what led to a HubSpot acquisition, so it clearly worked. You get Mindstream's one page cheat sheet. This kind of thing you can print out and keep next to your monitor to remind you to be attacking LinkedIn each week. And you get a LinkedIn profile playbook. Covers the fundamentals how to optimize your profile and build content that performs there. My favorite part is the personal brand section. It's about building a consistent perception of what you're known for across your photo, headline, summary, and the content you post. If you've been yapping anywhere else and neglecting LinkedIn, this is your sign to start, and especially if you're making brand content. Do not sleep on LinkedIn. The link to HubSpot's 10 x your LinkedIn game starter pack is in the description. It's free. Grab it. And thank you for HubSpot for sponsoring this video. But if you wanna start, let's tap into types of yaps. And I'm gonna go into how you actually write and make the takes. And so this is so important for vernacular.
You wanna have the right terminology. We'll talk about and explain it, the right examples.
So this is an example, uh, for Brandon who's great on TikTok. He is just talking. He doesn't even have captions. This is a standard yap. He turned his iPhone on. He's added a graphic, like, at one point in here, but he is literally just talking to camera. Same thing with this. She's going through the best chicken Caesar wrap in Orange County. Simple enough content, but she is literally just on camera and talking. That is the most basic yap. You do not need anything else. Else. Now I highly recommend for almost everybody that you put the actual captions of what you're saying on it, but this is a standard yap. Nothing else required. Now slightly more advanced is the walking yap. Here's my friend Christian. He's a a yap king. We'll talk about some of his techniques later here, but this is when you are literally just in motion talking to the camera versus just sitting there, which I don't recommend to start out as you have a good understanding of what Kanto moves. It's too many variables, but it's a common technique people will do is you're able to kind of stay in motion. You're talking. It seems more like a FaceTime with a friend. Then this is Tom noted cut 30 grad. His handle is bonus footage. He's doing a car yap. That's when you're in the car. He's not even looking at the camera a bunch. He's kinda going back and forth with that very candid environment of just sitting down as a part of your day and talking. And those are the base yaps. So if you before you even get into graphics, before you get into overlays, any of that, if you just wanna start talking on the Internet, you basically pick one of these. Standard app where you're sitting down, walking app, car app. It was just worth having inside your purview. And why these matters is about the candid setting. It's about the easy scenario, the ease of recording, about not making yourself have to worry about, I need a set. I need this. I need that. All of these are just a simple tripod.
Mine is literally right here. It's in the Tumtech from Amazon. It expands out, legs on the bottom, Bluetooth remote. It was, $50. Or one of those little dash cameras that connects to the MagSafe on your iPhone. Then you get into the next level yaps, what we call graphic yaps. These are yaps where you're actually placing stuff over your video to make it more compelling to watch. Because you'll notice if you just talk, you need to be pretty compelling to get your value prop across, but still great practice and great to do. But graphic gaps help keep attention by just providing examples of what you do there. Another cut 30 grad, she's doing what we call basically a chaotic graphic gap. Well, you don't care about the production at all. You just put the graphics over. And she is using the overlay function in edits or CapCut. Literally, you just put stuff on your camera roll. You just hit overlay. You can put it over, and you can adjust the length of the clip to do roughly a clip every two seconds, which is what we recommend for people in cut 30. And all this does is it makes it that her story is more compelling because you always have something to look at, this video ripped for her. And a great thing to do is you're planning a video and you think it's gonna be about sixty seconds, get 30 images. That takes way less time than you think. So if you wanna think out your framing slightly more, it's another cut 30 grad. He sets it up really well where he frames himself on camera and knows he's always gonna have a graphic above him, and he gives himself space to do that. Note his head placement, the caption placement, and the graphic placement. This is if you are the kind of person who the the chaotic one gave you a little bit of didn't feel great about it, this is an awesome one where you can really copy his framing. Always make sure your graphics are verticals or easy to overlay, and it's easy to both look at him, read the what he's saying, and look at the graphics roughly at the same time, which is how you keep a really compelling Yap going. Now I do a full screen overlay a lot because visually I like it visually. So you'll see I am talking. This is a slightly more professional camera, but I'm putting full screen nine by 16 images that I edit in Canva. They go over the screen while I talk and again, I am shooting for that one for every roughly two seconds that the video is going. And you will see a lot of the more design focused creators, people who get really into it, do these kind of really cool setups where they'll bring graphics in and out of video. And you can get as advanced as you want, but it does not matter. The key to the app is you just do it. The whole thing is set up to make you want it to be easy. So now that we know what formats are, what do you actually talk about? I'm gonna give you five frameworks to use for your yaps. The first one is a strong take. So Christian, whose videos I showed, he's the king of this. He can make a strong take about anything. He will be in Orlando, and he'll be like, Orlando is the best sports city in North America. He will be in Philadelphia, and he will be like, Champions is the best sports bar on the East Coast. Blank pizza is the best in wherever. Basically, you have a strong take. You say something is the best or you say something is the worst, and then you defend it. And this is a really easy way to get your yaps going because it forces you to have to have a really strong opinion, and then people are gonna respond to that opinion positively or negatively. And conversation is what drives videos. So if you feel passionate about something, you can put it inside that. It's something worth talking about. And to put this in in perspective of anything you can yap about, and we'll talk about the things in your life, etcetera, later. Every beauty product. This is the absolute best concealer for people with x skin. This is the superior energy drink versus that one. This is the best choice for your influencer marketing software, whatever it is. But forcing yourself into a strong take means you have to have conviction, and you basically have to make something interesting, and it's gonna generate conversation. Now a second, a variation of this that I do all the time is strong take into education where you say something, but you're just using it as a hook as a setup. So I did this with Coachella where I was like, there are way too many Coachella influencers. The brands can't possibly be getting value out of this as a strong take. But then I immediately go, well, let's actually break down content supply and demand. So I immediately pivot education where then I'm talking about, well, it's not actually too many influencers because the demand for the content's so high and the content outperforms it typically, and I break down the difference between evergreen and current content. So that hook is literally just leading me into something educational. That's a great way to think about your content is whatever you use to get people's attention. As long as you're providing value and not being super clickbaity on the back end, it's about starting the conversation. The third style is a small epiphany. It's like a relatable thing that you see all the time. Do you notice how husbands always do this? Do you notice how East Coast people are always doing that? Notice how we like just basically going into the things that happen every day and finding something funny and relatable is an awesome way to look at this. What are the things you always see yourself doing or unexpected or funny or shared experiences
that you can talk about? Because people peel some kinship with that. They either go, I've never noticed this or they go, oh my god. That's so funny. I hadn't thought of that. They're like, oh, yeah. I do that too. And it builds camaraderie in the content. Then we have humor yaps, just saying something funny or a funny scenario that happened or making fun of something. Like, there's a yap who goes around critiquing all these different places in LA that are, like, overrated. And then we have story time where you're actually gonna tell a narrative of something that happened in your life. Hey. This thing happened. I just got rear ended at blank and blank, and I can't believe that z happened. Strong cakes, small epiphanies, and story time is like the foundation for 90% of the content you can make yet. You notice why I didn't say. I didn't say my top three favorite whatever. I didn't say three ways on an e com or this is my motivational speech. None of that. These are all narrative arcs for strong opinions.
If you are thinking outside of that box and it's generic, it's not gonna work. So how do you actually come up with the ideas to do this? What I call a yap map. So how do you start a yap map? Yap map is basically, let's say it's a whiteboard or a piece of paper or a note app in your phone where you're writing down stuff. And usually what I recommend is you take some time out of your day. It's a commute, time you'd normally be scrolling, and you just map out things that that happened to you. And so first is the touch points of your day. What happened at work? What happened in the morning? So did you what kind of food did you get? Any conversations that came up? Any meetings that happened? What are the little things that happened? And so this was the constant source of my content. It's more more business content focused. It's a question that came up that I had to explain. Why do people do influencer marketing at Coachella? Should we be doing that as an accounting brand? Answer it. You're like, you know what? This is actually a good content topic for a video. Oh, I'm at lunch with somebody, and they're talking about how depreciating their g wagon through their business. Jokes that came up, movies that people saw, whatever it is, you'll be surprised how small it is. And people are all talking about watching the same TV show. Do you have an opinion or perspective on that based on your background? Same thing with your personal life. What are those interpersonal things happening? Dating is an awesome source of, like, maybe noticed guys are always doing this. Why is it so hard to find, you know, a trad wife in Minneapolis? Whatever it ends up being. Then the media you ingest. So if you're reading tweets, if you're watching stuff on Instagram, is there stuff happening that you can respond to? I don't like this trend. This news thing is crazy. Another big one is your shower workout thoughts. A lot of people will be, like, processing things in the background. It's one of the few times in the day they're not on their phones. You'll start to notice, oh, there's, these little things that are coming up that I'm thinking about. Would that be a good video topic? And so with all of those, your goal is to get three or five ideas down a day. That's always what I'm trying to do. And I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds now. And then on top of that, once you have an idea, you need a take. What is my take? Do I have a strong opinion about this one way or the other? Do I have a story I can tell about this, or do I have a relatable thing I can break down? And that is literally a map of content that you're gonna be able to make. I recommend just doing that every day. You'll be surprised even if you put one down and three down the next day. You're gonna start having a big list of topics. So then how do you script it? How do you script it yet? So a couple frameworks for this. I'm just gonna give you a few and you start experimenting with your own. But the first is hook story point 1.2. So how does this work? Hook, you say the thing that you're gonna talk them in the video about. Kit Coffee is the best coffee shop in Newport Beach. Then you tell a story. So I was getting a latte the other day with two friends of mine who are realtors. They want to go to this shop. I want to go to this shop. X happened, y happened, and begins to wrap the narrative of why you think this is the best coffee shop. But do have an anecdote from your actual life, or do you have a story of somebody else? When Steve Jobs was 19, he did x and y. My friend has blank happened. So, basically, you hook them. You tell a story that keeps them retained, and then you get into your two points. This is the best because of this, and this is the best because of that. Awesome framework for a yap. The next one, which I like to call the eight mile
you do your hook, and you call out the opposite argument. Then you make your point. So for instance, if you are taking a strong position about something and you wanna talk about a great piece of software or why companies shouldn't do x or y, you say it and you say, now people might say this or that. You basically explain all the things that people would argue against you and disprove them and then get into why I say this because of that. And so then you're basically getting rid of all the objections people have, like, right up front. And it keeps people retained because they're probably thinking these things and you're explaining them and then you get to your reasoning. And this all works exactly the same if you're doing, a personal anecdote. Hook it, you tell the story. Hook it, you talk a bit about the scenario, and then get into your points. Another version that I like to use all the time is the last one I mentioned here for frameworks is the the four things or the five things. So I'll say something like, hey. Here's observations I made at Coachella as a brand strategist. Now I'll basically make four mini videos. I'll say, I saw this thing. I'll have a strong take about it. I think Nike's falling off because I didn't see any Nikes on feet. I think Gap is doing a great job because the lines were out the door and everyone was buying extra wide. I'll do, like, three or four of those, and people will stay through to the next one. That's all you need. All you need to get started doing this is to take those frameworks, take that style of yap, any of the ones I call out, write down some of those ideas, and fill in these. And that's how content works, how everyone makes content. And then I wanna remind you, you are there to light people up. You're there to get people excited,
to make them laugh, to have them be thrilled. So be excited, be passionate, care, have fun with it because that really comes through in the phone. One of the advice I give a lot of my friends who try to make content, they just look like they're not having fun. And if that's the case, it's probably not gonna do very well. People are gonna feel that. So quick notes on recording, few things there, just to get tactical on this. IPhone with a mic. I use a Rode plug in USB c mic for the phone. You don't need anything more than that. You should get a mic to do it. You can also use the Apple EarPods. AirPods do not work. Couple ways to do it. One is just record and talk and talk slowly enough that you can just keep it going. The other is what I do, which is called the recut method. So I will talk. I will take a breath whenever I need to think of something or look at a note. I will just stay quiet. I'll make sure I maintain eye contact with the camera until I'm quiet. I'll take as long as I need to think about my next thought, and then I'll go look back at the camera, make sure I'm looking at it, and then speak again. And then you can use I use an app called Recut. It's like $20 or something. You can do it inside a lot the editing software, but you can just basically kill all the silences in between and edit down your video. It's a really effective way to do it. You might end up with a six or seven minute clip because you're taking a bunch of pauses, but it allows you to think and get your bearings before saying the next thing. And the last piece of advice I'll give you on recording is that redo the start at the end is always a crucial one because usually when you start and you begin your recording, it's the most important part of the video, but you're the most awkward, especially when you're new. But by the time you're done talking for three minutes, you're in a much better mood, you're in much better flow, and I would just redo that intro a time or two, and you have a really easy time editing it. When you do this, you can do this directly in the TikTok app, but I would recommend doing it in CapCut or edits. And you can bring it into any of those, and you can add the captions
that you have and then add a title. These are really important to do. I'm not gonna get too deep into them, but I will have a cheat sheet down below that you can grab on this. I will remind you, no matter what your age is, your expertise is, if you haven't seen any of my videos about this before, people wanna hear from people that are at their level or a level right above them. It doesn't matter how experienced you are or not. It's about sharing that journey. And also on the opposite end, there is nobody who is too old or in too weird a niche to do this. It's just about getting through it. We have this month's community call coming up in the first few days of May. I have to sign up down there below. If you wanna workshop any of this, any questions you have, we do live q and a in all these after we do some training. And it's a great time to connect with myself and with anyone else in the community who's dealing with the same stuff. A lot of people meet in the chats, that community calls below. The next cut 30, if you wanna do this with a group, I'd recommend just go and get started with what I have here. If you wanna do this with thirty days of accountability, the next cut 30 starts early May as well, and we do them roughly every six weeks. So you have thirty days of doing this with a team and coaches and curriculum. But overall, I cannot overstate what I said in the beginning, what JT said in his video that I really highly recommend that you become a creator. Even just to learn the skill set, to learn the communication, begin thinking about the things around you, to understand how the modern world works, and then on the high end, to significantly change
your career trajectory, be able to make money on the side if that's something you're into, and to participate in this new economy that we have a once in a lifetime opportunity of getting free attention on the Internet from. Thanks for watching.