Team & Monetization

It's Your Turn to Take Action - From Knowledge to Implementation

~15 min read

Chapter 29 of 29

From: 6:19:11 - It's Your Turn to Take Action

The Implementation Imperative: Bridging Knowledge and Results

The Ultimate Goal: This entire course was designed not just for consumption, but for actual implementation. The true value of everything you've learned lies in taking action rather than simply acquiring knowledge.

Strategic Reality: You now possess a comprehensive framework for building a personal brand that creates genuine impact and sustainable revenue. However, knowledge without implementation produces no results. The time you've invested becomes worthwhile only through strategic execution.

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." - Walt Disney

Complete Course Framework Review

You've now covered an incredible amount of strategic content:

Section 1: Brand Foundation

What Brand Is and Isn't → Define Your Brand → Position Your Brand → Brand Story Framework → Pick Your Topics

Section 2: Content Excellence

Choose Content Medium → Choose Platforms → Posting Cadence → Storytelling → Community Driven Content → Scale Content → Create Experimentation

Section 3: Team Development

Define Hiring Needs → Streamline Hiring → Hire for Culture → Start Lean → Employment Models → Onboard Teams → Develop & Retain → Build Culture → Work Models

Section 4: Monetization Mastery

Trust Before Transactions → Define Monetization Model → Share Knowledge/Sell Execution → Build Offer Stack → Let Content Sell → Play Long Game

The Reality of Implementation: Choosing Your Path

For Some: This comprehensive framework may feel overwhelming for individual execution. The strategic complexity and operational requirements might exceed current capacity or available resources.

For Others: You're ready to implement this framework independently and build your personal brand systematically through consistent effort and strategic application.

Universal Truth: Whether you choose independent implementation or seek professional guidance, success requires taking action on these proven strategies and frameworks.

Your Success Depends on Action

The Knowledge: You now have everything needed to build the life, company, and business you envision
The Frameworks: These are proven systems that work when implemented consistently
The Variable: Your commitment to execution determines your results

Your Next Steps:

Download All Resources - Secure all playbooks and implementation guides
Choose Your Starting Point - Begin with one section rather than attempting everything
Create Implementation Timeline - Develop realistic schedule for systematic execution
Take Action - Transform knowledge into results through consistent implementation

The Final Truth: Success comes from implementation, not information. You have the roadmap. Now it's time to build your destination.

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

What will you build?

The goal isn't to work harder—it's to build systems that work better.

Chapter 13: Create Room for Experimentation - The Innovation Imperative

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." - Steve Jobs

The Comfort Trap: When Success Becomes the Enemy of Growth

Every content creator faces an inevitable progression: initial innovation leads to success, success leads to pattern recognition, pattern recognition leads to doubling down on what works, and eventually, comfort and complacency set in. This progression is so predictable it has a name in organizational psychology: "The Success Trap."

The Research Reality:
Studies in innovation psychology reveal that successful teams are paradoxically more likely to plateau because they develop what researchers call "competency traps"—overreliance on proven methods that blind them to evolving opportunities.

The Algorithm Evolution Problem:
While you're getting comfortable with what works, algorithms are constantly evolving. Research shows that major platform algorithm changes occur every 3-6 months, meaning yesterday's optimal content strategy becomes today's underperformer without warning.

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas Edison

The Neuroscience of Innovation Resistance

Risk Aversion Psychology:
Brain imaging studies reveal that successful content creators develop neural patterns that increasingly favor certainty over uncertainty. The anterior cingulate cortex, responsible for conflict monitoring, becomes hyperactive when considering unproven content strategies.

The Comfort Zone Neurochemistry:
When creators stick to proven content formats, their brains release dopamine from predictable rewards and serotonin from social status confirmation. This neurochemical pattern creates powerful psychological resistance to experimentation.

Innovation Anxiety Research:
Studies show that 67% of successful creators report anxiety when asked to create content outside their established formats. This "innovation anxiety" stems from loss aversion—the psychological principle that people fear losing existing success more than they value potential gains.

Psychological Safety: The Foundation of Creative Risk-Taking

Academic Research Findings:
Meta-analyses of innovation teams demonstrate that psychological safety is the strongest predictor of creative output, explaining 43% of variance in team innovation performance.

The Risk-Taking Paradox:
Research reveals that teams with high psychological safety take 89% more creative risks while simultaneously achieving 67% better performance outcomes. The key insight: perceived safety enables calculated risk-taking rather than reckless experimentation.

Error Risk-Taking Behavior:
Studies show that error risk-taking propensity mediates the relationship between psychological safety and innovative work behavior. Teams that feel safe making mistakes generate 156% more breakthrough ideas than those focused on avoiding failure.

The Netflix Experimentation Philosophy

The 10,000 Experiment Rule:
Netflix, Facebook, Google, and Amazon follow what researchers call the "10,000 Experiment Rule"—the principle that deliberate experimentation is more important than deliberate practice in rapidly changing environments.

Netflix's Systematic Approach:

Every product change goes through rigorous A/B testing before becoming default
Artwork optimization alone runs thousands of tests, with some variants showing 14% better engagement rates
Crisis response: When Netflix faced $200 billion market cap loss in 2022, systematic experimentation enabled recovery

Research-Backed Methodology:
Netflix's approach demonstrates that systematic experimentation reduces business risk rather than increasing it. Their testing framework has generated measurable improvements in user engagement and retention across all content categories.

Content Hackathons: The Systematic Innovation Framework

Organizational Innovation Research:
Studies tracking creative team performance show that structured innovation events generate 234% more breakthrough ideas than unstructured brainstorming sessions.

The Psychological Benefits:

Permission to fail eliminates innovation anxiety and performance pressure
Time constraints activate creative problem-solving mechanisms in the brain
Peer evaluation creates social motivation without business performance pressure
Cross-pollination effects occur when team members see diverse approaches

Case Study: Google's Innovation Time
Google's famous "20% time" policy, which allocated one day per week to experimental projects, generated major innovations including:

Gmail (now used by 1.8+ billion people)
AdSense (generating $100+ billion annual revenue)
Google News (serving millions of users daily)
Google Maps Street View (transforming navigation worldwide)

Research Validation:
Studies show that structured innovation time increases employee satisfaction by 73%, retention by 45%, and generates 67% more patent applications per employee.

The Content Hackathon Implementation Framework

Research-Based Design Principles:

1. Time Boxing Psychology
Studies show that 6-8 hour creative sessions optimize both quality and quantity of innovative output. Shorter sessions don't allow deep exploration; longer sessions lead to diminishing creative returns.

2. Permission Structure
Explicit failure permission is crucial. Research demonstrates that teams told "failure is encouraged" generate 89% more creative solutions than those told "do your best."

3. Evaluation Criteria Shift
Innovation-focused metrics rather than performance-focused metrics change creative behavior. When teams know they'll be judged on novelty rather than immediate results, creative risk-taking increases by 156%.

4. Social Learning Amplification
Peer presentation requirements activate social learning mechanisms. Research shows that explaining creative processes to peers increases innovation retention and application by 234%.

Strategic Implementation Process:

Pre-Event Preparation:

Context setting: Ensure all team members understand experimental nature
Resource provision: Remove financial and logistical barriers to experimentation
Psychological safety: Explicitly communicate failure acceptance and encouragement
Innovation metrics: Establish creativity-based rather than performance-based evaluation

Event Structure:

9:00 AM Kickoff: 15-30 minute orientation emphasizing innovation over performance
9:30 AM - 4:00 PM: Uninterrupted creative experimentation time
4:00-4:30 PM: Content upload and presentation preparation
4:30-6:00 PM: Peer presentations with innovation-focused feedback

Post-Event Integration:

Team voting: Peer evaluation of most innovative approaches
Recognition system: Rewards based on creativity rather than performance metrics
Learning extraction: Document insights and techniques for future application
Implementation planning: Integrate successful experiments into regular content strategy

The 70-20-10 Innovation Portfolio Framework

Research Foundation:
Originally developed at Google and validated across industries, the 70-20-10 framework represents optimal resource allocation for sustainable innovation. Harvard Business Review research shows that companies following this allocation typically outperform peers and maintain higher price-earnings ratios.

Framework Application to Content Strategy:

70% Core Content (Proven Performers):

Psychological function: Provides confidence and consistent engagement
Business function: Drives reliable audience response and revenue generation
Risk level: Low - builds on established audience preferences
Innovation opportunity: Minimal - focuses on execution optimization

20% Adjacent Innovation (Strategic Extensions):

Psychological function: Allows controlled creativity within familiar frameworks
Business function: Tests audience receptivity to content evolution
Risk level: Moderate - expands on proven concepts with new elements
Innovation opportunity: High - creates bridges to new content territories

10% Transformational Experimentation (Breakthrough Attempts):

Psychological function: Satisfies creative fulfillment and learning drives
Business function: Discovers potential breakthrough content approaches
Risk level: High - ventures into unproven creative territory
Innovation opportunity: Revolutionary - may redefine content strategy entirely

Research-Validated Benefits:

Risk distribution prevents over-dependence on single content approaches
Learning acceleration through systematic experimentation processes
Market position protection through continuous innovation
Team engagement through creative challenge and growth opportunities

Advanced Innovation Psychology Applications

The Creative Constraint Paradox

Research Finding:
Counter to intuition, creative constraints actually increase innovation. Studies show that bounded creativity problems generate 73% more original solutions than open-ended challenges.

Application to Content Creation:

Platform constraints: Specific platform requirements spark creative problem-solving
Time constraints: Limited creation time forces innovative shortcuts and techniques
Format constraints: Specific content formats require creative adaptation
Resource constraints: Limited tools or budget drive ingenious workarounds

The Failure Reframe Psychology

Research on Failure Perception:
Studies demonstrate that teams trained to view failure as learning show 89% better performance in subsequent creative tasks than teams focused on avoiding mistakes.

Cognitive Reframing Strategies:

Language modification: "Failed experiments" become "learning discoveries"
Metrics redefinition: Success measured by insights gained rather than immediate performance
Story collection: Document interesting failures as valuable team knowledge
Celebration rituals: Acknowledge valuable failures alongside successes

The Innovation Contagion Effect

Social Psychology Research:
Innovation behavior spreads through teams via social contagion mechanisms. When team members observe peers taking creative risks, their own innovation propensity increases by 134%.

Strategic Amplification:

Visible experimentation: Ensure team members see each other's creative attempts
Success story sharing: Highlight innovations that emerged from experimentation
Cross-team pollination: Share successful experiments across different content teams
Leadership modeling: Demonstrate personal willingness to try unproven approaches

Netflix Case Study: A/B Testing Everything

Systematic Experimentation Culture:
Netflix demonstrates how systematic experimentation becomes competitive advantage. Their approach includes:

Content Optimization:

Artwork testing: Thousands of tests on thumbnail and cover art selection
Interface experiments: Continuous testing of user experience elements
Content recommendation: Algorithm optimization through constant experimentation
Performance measurement: Rigorous data collection on all experimental variables

Business Impact:

User engagement: Measurable improvements in viewing time and session length
Retention optimization: A/B tests directly impact subscriber retention rates
Revenue protection: Experimentation helps maintain market position against competitors
Innovation pipeline: Constant testing creates continuous innovation opportunities

Chapter Implementation: Your Experimentation Strategy

Week 1: Psychological Safety Assessment and Development

Evaluate current team comfort levels with creative risk-taking
Implement explicit failure permission and innovation reward systems
Establish innovation-focused metrics alongside performance metrics
Create safe spaces for creative experimentation and idea sharing

Week 2: Content Hackathon Design and Implementation

Plan monthly or quarterly hackathon events with clear innovation focus
Design evaluation criteria that reward creativity over immediate performance
Establish resource allocation and logistical support for experimentation
Create presentation frameworks that emphasize learning over results

Week 3: 70-20-10 Portfolio Implementation

Analyze current content allocation across proven/adjacent/experimental categories
Redistribute content creation resources according to 70-20-10 framework
Establish tracking systems for innovation portfolio performance
Train team members on strategic thinking behind resource allocation

Week 4: Systematic Experimentation Integration

Implement regular experimental content within overall content strategy
Establish measurement systems for learning outcomes vs. performance outcomes
Create feedback loops between experimentation insights and content strategy
Plan scaling successful experiments into regular content production

Chapter Summary: Building Your Innovation Engine

Content experimentation isn't optional—it's a strategic requirement for sustainable success in rapidly evolving digital environments.

The content creators who build lasting competitive advantages:

Create psychological safety that enables creative risk-taking without fear of failure
Implement systematic frameworks like hackathons and 70-20-10 portfolios for managed innovation
Reframe failure psychology to view unsuccessful experiments as valuable learning investments
Build innovation contagion through visible experimentation and shared learning processes
Use constraints strategically to spark creativity rather than limiting it

Your experimentation strategy should be as systematic and intentional as your proven content approach.

The professionals who thrive in changing markets understand that comfort is the enemy of growth. They build experimentation into their processes not as occasional events, but as fundamental aspects of their content strategy that ensure continuous evolution and market leadership.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison

The goal isn't to avoid failure—it's to fail strategically while building the innovation capabilities that create tomorrow's breakthroughs.

Section 3: Building Your Team

Chapter 14: Define Your Needs Before Hiring

All right, so we've covered brand, we've covered content, and now we are on to team. And I would argue this is actually one of the most important parts of the whole puzzle. And personally, it is probably my favorite section of this entire course. This is where I get a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment for myself in my career—building teams and helping to develop them.

Why Your Team Is Everything

A couple quick things that I want to share with you before we really dive in on why your team is everything. Ultimately, your team is not just there to execute. They are a multiplier of the vision that you have. A strong team doesn't just help you scale. They are there to help you build something far bigger than you could ever do alone.

Now, a lot of people watching this probably have never built a team. Definitely not a media or content team. A couple things to keep in mind that will help us as we go through this section:

You don't hire just for skills. I actually emphasize hiring more for culture than skills. I find it a lot easier to train skills than culture fit. You want to make sure that they align with your brand, where you're wanting to go. So, where you are right now and what you're wanting to accomplish and the subject matter that you're going to be speaking about. They should be interested and curious about those things.
You want to make sure that you're hiring based off of platform goals that you have. And so you want to identify what are the different platforms that we are emphasizing this next year or years and build the team around that—not just your traditional videographer, editor, designer, audio engineer roles.
You want to make sure that they fit into your overall creative process. If you don't like a lot of preparation for film days and you like to go off the cuff, then you need to make sure you're hiring people that are comfortable with that and able to ask you good questions to prompt more information that comes out of you.
We don't hire just to fill roles. We hire to solve problems. So, if there isn't a problem that you can diagnose, then there shouldn't be a role that we're hiring for this non-existent problem. Ultimately, what you end up doing is bringing somebody on that ultimately has no purpose on the team. And that is shitty for both parties.

The Cost of Bad Hiring

Another one is that a bad hire doesn't just slow you down, it massively slows you down. It takes months to recover and you lose a ton of money in the process. And so what we're going to do in a little bit is we're going to walk through my entire hiring funnel. And I really encourage you pay close attention during this section because what we've talked about—brand, content—that's super important. But mistakes made on hiring your team are going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and are going to become a massive headache and ultimately it causes a lot of people to write off this whole team thing. "I'm just going to do it myself with one other person."

That's not the way that we want to do this. But we want to do it correctly from the start so that we build the correct foundation. And lastly, the best teams aren't built overnight. They require patience, intention, and investment in people who align with the desired outcome and the brand that you are building.

What You Need vs. What You Want

So first, before we hire anybody, let's define what we need. There's what you need and there's what you want. We are only going to hire on the prior. What you need.

A lot of people hire way too quickly and they hire for roles that they think they're going to need. They've maybe heard people mention like that you need this, and what they don't do is they don't hire based on constraints. What you want to do is look at your process and what is causing the biggest constraint.

For example, before we dive into this, if you are filming a bunch of content but nothing's getting edited, there is a very clear and obvious constraint. It's editing. So, what would you hire? An editor.

If, on the other hand, you're always getting videos done in post-production, but you don't have enough in the pipeline. So, the editor is sitting there twiddling their thumbs being like, "What the fuck do I do?" Maybe you hire a videographer or a content strategist that can help you ideate and come up with new ideas to film.

We are hiring based on problems and constraints we have in the process, not off of some random perceived idea of what we should have on the team.

Three Critical Questions

Now, to avoid making the mistake of hiring just what you want or what you think you need versus hiring off of problems you have, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What tasks are taking the most amount of time away from high value work?

Okay, so an example of this is if you're a content strategist but spend 50% of your time editing videos, you might need an editor. That's probably not the best use of your time and skills, okay? Because ultimately, you were hired to be the strategist. And if you're splitting your time, sure, in the beginning, you're going to have to do that as you're building the team, but eventually we get to a point where we're going to want to specialize.

And so, if you are finding that you were hired or you hired someone for a very specific role and they're fulfilling multiple roles, the way to scale up or improve efficiency is to hire somebody to do that role. In this case, hiring an editor to relieve time for your content strategist.

2. What's slowing down execution?

And I hit it already at the top, but I'm going to hammer it again because it's really important. If you're finding that you're filming all of this content and then it's just not going out, it's not getting done, you need to hire an editor. If you are always ready to film, always ready to edit, but you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs, not knowing what the fuck to actually film, than a content strategist or ideation strategist, whatever you want to call them, that is going to be the critical role to bring into your team.

Whatever the bottleneck and constraint is, that is what you want to hire around. This is how we actually scale rapidly.

3. What content opportunities are currently being missed due to lack of resources?

So, for example, if we identify that YouTube is your number one most important platform and you're posting one video a month and your goal is to get to two, but the current bandwidth of the team only allows for one. Well, then we're going to go up to the question above and we're going to find out which part of the process is our constraint and then we are going to hire for that.

Ultimately, it's all boiling down to hiring around the problem, the bottleneck, the constraint that you have on the team. This is how we're going to scale fast. If you hire five editors, but editing isn't your constraint, you just brought on a lot of cost for no gain because you don't have enough input to match the output the editors can accomplish.

Hire for Leverage, Not Convenience

Please prioritize hiring for bottlenecks over convenience. Just because you're really good at hiring videographers doesn't mean that you need to hire five of them. You want to make sure that when you're hiring, you're hiring to create more leverage, not just offloading busy work.

In fact, oftentimes what you can find is as you bring more people on, you can actually eliminate the busy work because you start to recognize the big tasks that actually move the lever for the team. Ultimately, we're not just trying to lighten everyone's load. We're trying to accelerate execution and the impact that each individual has for the collective team, which drives bigger impact for the brand at large.

Platform-Specific Skills Matter

Now, a huge mistake I see a lot of people make is they hire for general skills, not platform specific needs. What do I mean by that? Well, there is this very interesting split in our world that is occurring right now. You have great DPS, people that are great at filming beautiful videos. You have editors that are incredible at editing these beautiful commercials or these long form films that you see going out on Netflix, etc. And they are incredible editors at their craft.

But what a lot of people don't recognize is a great editor for a Netflix film is not a great editor for a YouTube video. They are very different skills and very different needs. Same for the videographer. A DP that works on some like Amazon or Hulu documentary is going to have a very different set of skills than somebody who is filming, let's say, a vlog for one of the YouTubers, one of the big YouTubers online. Okay? Completely different needs.

And right now we're still in the early stages of really understanding the nuance and difference between those kind of creatives. And so what you get a lot of times is people hiring somebody who is a great graphic designer and they make amazing brochures. They're so good at designing your logo, your website, but they fucking suck at YouTube thumbnails because it is a totally different skill set.

And so what we want to do is identify what are the platforms that you are focusing on, which we've already done. And once we've done that, then we want to build the team around those specific needs. If you're not doing a lot of graphic design work, brochures, business cards, flyers, website updates, then you don't need a traditional graphic designer. If all they're doing is YouTube thumbnails, then actually typically those individuals do not have a traditional graphic design background because a lot of YouTube thumbnail best practices slap in the face of traditional graphic design best practices.

The Social Media Manager Trap

Now, another version of this is, and this is the funniest one, people being like, "All right, we're going to post some content on social media, so we're going to hire a social media manager." This is the fucking worst thing in the world.

If they're a generalist, if they are great at all of the platforms, they suck at all of the platforms. The reality is in 2025, there are very few people on planet Earth—I would say less than .001%—that actually understand at a master level all of the different platforms. It'd be fucking impossible. They're evolving all the time.

And so, what you're going to actually find that you want is you want channel specific managers, not a social media manager. So instead of hiring a social media manager that oversees all your different platforms, maybe what you're going to do is in the beginning because you can't afford to hire a manager for all five of the platforms that you're on. Maybe what you do is you make sure that your creatives that you bring in emphasize one of those platforms so that they have a greater understanding than you do of how YouTube works or Instagram or LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever the new one in 2026 is.

My LinkedIn Strategy Example

Now, on the contrary, if LinkedIn is where the majority of your business results occur, where a lot of conversions happen, where a lot of your customers are, and a lot of interesting conversations happen, well, I would actually recommend hiring a LinkedIn writer. Again, notice I didn't say copywriter, just general. I said LinkedIn writer. Hire them before a video editor.

Like, if you look at how we approached content for Rston in 2025, we started posting on LinkedIn before any other platform. And so we emphasized that. We started working with a LinkedIn writer—a freelancer—and instead of making video content right away, we actually emphasized that because I had a feeling that that would generate a good amount of leads for our business. And it did. We made sure to align our hiring with our actual needs.

So as an example, instead of hiring a generalist, you might hire a YouTube editor and immediately get 2x the content output. You might then bring on a short form video editor to maximize repurposing that long-form content. Ultimately, a lot of the times we're trying to build a scenario where the individual, the talent on camera isn't spending all their time creating content.

So maybe for a while you have the long form that you're doing and the editor does that. They 2x the output and then the short form editors are just utilizing that same media, that same footage and repurposing it, but you're getting two, three, four, five times the amount of impressions you would if you were just doing the long form. Then maybe you hire a platform strategist. And notice I'm saying a platform strategist, not social media strategist, because what you want to do is you want to make sure they are specifically tailored to the platforms you're prioritizing.

Now what you might find in the beginning is you need to hire somebody who is a gangster at YouTube. They understand LinkedIn and you know they dabble with Instagram. That's fine. But you just want to make sure that they are prioritizing and more proficient in one. The generalist is not what you want.

If it's not fucking obvious by now, the key takeaway is always hire for the highest impact content first. Whatever platform you're getting the most traction on, make sure you hire around that. And whatever platform you're hiring around, hire for whatever the biggest constraint in the process for creating for that platform is.