#385 - BOOK: "1 Million Followers" & "Hook Point", By; Brendan Kane,

Want to grow faster without guessing what the algorithm wants? We break down two books that changed our creative and business strategy: Hook Point and One Million Followers by Brendan Kane. You’ll hear why the first two to four seconds of a post decide your fate, how to craft hooks that earn attention immediately, and the simple experiments that turn sporadic wins into repeatable growth.

We start with the power of clear, tight openings. By front-loading the payoff, we moved from slow setups to sharp lines that lock attention and buy time for deeper storytelling. Then we dig into the growth blueprint: testing multiple variations, aligning thumbnails and headlines, measuring saves and shares, and doubling down on what resonates. These are the same methods that helped us scale from a tiny audience to 30,000 and push a single post past 100,000 views.

There’s a hard truth at the center of the conversation: talent without attention often loses to attention without talent. That’s how teams, venues, and brands make decisions, because attention sells tickets and keeps the lights on. Instead of resenting it, we show how to use it. Whether you’re an athlete, local business owner, comedian, or musician, this approach helps you earn visibility that multiplies your opportunities and accelerates your craft.

We also get real about momentum. After a messy stretch, we needed a reset. Returning to the frameworks gave us structure, clarity, and wins we could stack. If you want a practical plan, start by writing ten hooks for one idea, choose the best, design a matching thumbnail, and publish. Then run weekly experiments with formats and posting times, and track retention as closely as likes.

If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend who is building, and leave a quick review to tell us what hook you’ll try next. Your feedback shapes what we test next and keeps this playbook evolving.

Chapters

• 0:07 Why These Two Books Matter
• 0:32 Who Is Brendan Kane
• 1:05 Hook Point And Short Attention
• 1:40 One Million Followers Blueprint
• 2:07 Proof: Growth And Viral Posts
• 2:47 Personal Setbacks And Reset
• 3:33 Marketing Beats Talent Without Attention
• 5:42 How To Read And Apply The Books
• 6:54 Closing And Commitment

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

What's up, everybody? So, on my last podcast, I was talking about books that can really help you like level up, right? Well, this next huge part of advice, if you care about leveling up as an athlete, as a local business guy, um, an actor, a writer, a dancer, musician, whatever, is for you. It's actually two books, both written by this guy, Brendan Kane, who essentially realistically helped make Taylor Swift famous. He was the one that did her social media and taught the philosophy, and he has been on Oprah and everything else. This guy wrote a book called One Million Followers, and with a brand new Instagram account, just to prove that he knew what he was talking about, he grew up from one to one million. Now, if that's impressive, keep listening to what I gotta say. So the first book, one was called One Million Followers, uh, and the second one is called Hook Point. Hook Point is basically talking about how everybody's um everybody's attention span is about two to four seconds maximum nowadays on Instagram, which is how and why you swipe. And also, indirectly and directly, why I changed my comedy, the beginning of it, to be very short, snappy, fast jokes to hook everybody on my information. Instead of telling long stories, they're very short stories, uh, one-liner jokes, and then they get longer as I continue. But moving on. So one million followers is pretty much the blueprint uh on how to grow your account with social media. And using this method, I have grown my account from about 100 to about 30,000. Um, and it made a world of difference, right? Uh, secondly, using the blueprint information, he historical references that this guy did, and you're following it, right? Of hook point, by making the most important capturing everything from the thumbnail and everything else on social media, uh, something that's gonna pop out and catch. Um, I've had a post reach over a hundred thousand uh viewers, right? Uh, whereas before I tried and tried to have everything go viral. What if what if everything? Okay, what if everything that you had on social media would go viral? That would really help you out, right? So it really does come down to advertising and strategy, but how do you simplify that in two to four seconds? Well, that's what hook point is all about. So um, I know I've been away for a while, and uh I've been extremely unorganized, and I feel like I need a mental win. So this is something I wanted to talk about, and I I wanted to get it out as a short little victory for my road back to uh being organized and my day and everything else, and without any excuses, I have just been um uh horribly backsliding. Horribly. Um, but this is the road to redemption, so to speak. It's nothing that dramatic, right? But in all seriousness, it is because I'm very, very regimented and um I've just had a lot of things out of balance lately, and still do, but I'm trying to work through it. Um, but yeah, so anyway, if you want to level up in your marketing, then you um should get two books, both written by Brennan Kane, the guy that essentially made um not because of her talent, but between her marketing, okay, uh Taylor Swift famous. Uh it was her, he was her direct marketing social media campaign manager. Um, and again, he's been on Oprah, all sorts of stuff, right? But he's phenomenal. And the book is called One Million Followers, and um the other one is called Hook Point, two completely different topics. One about growing your account to a million, but and then the the other book, which is how do you hook somebody to listen to that 60 second video or post or two and a half minute blog or whatever it is, pretty much front loading the most important thing, which again, I translated that and I kind of reverse engineered it, so to speak, so that I could apply that formula towards my comedy, and it's worked a hundred thousand percent. So if you have anything that you want to uh do as far as marketing goes, again, if you're an athlete, if you have more followers of an athlete, but you're less talented and your skill set, unfortunately, hypothetically, you will go further in life, okay, and between your marketing and your you being able to sell tickets, more than somebody that is a better basketball player, right? Who can shoot hoops better, uh, but attract but sells tickets, right? Because the manager of that uh basketball team and owner and of the company, etc., okay, they may not care about basketball, but if you're selling out the jersey and you're putting asses in the seats, they might not be going for your winning record. They could be coming for you. And that's essentially uh why everybody, if you need to multiply your business, which you always should, no matter what you're doing, right? You should always be advancing in everything. Um, you need to read um one million followers, okay, to learn how to grow your social media and also hook point to get them hooked so that they understand why it's like a formula as to how and why you make that post, um, which is like the beginning aspect. All right. Now, me personally, I actually went in verse order. I it might even be the correct order that the books came out in. Uh, and I w I read I go through audio and I bought the book too, so that I can make highlights and so forth and so on with one million followers first. Then I went through it again just to make sure I really comprehended and understood it, right? Because the second time around I have like memory recall, right? I remember reading this because I already read it before, so forth and so on. Um, and uh then I did a hook point. But to me that worked out best because when I have instructions on how to do something, and then I go back a second time and I understand it better, then I start something new that says, hey, do what you did at first, right? But here's how you get a really great kick start for this for this blueprint on how to grow your social media. That worked the best for me, and I think it'll work best for you. So with that being mentioned, binge well done. I'm back. Never left, always moved forward. I'm out. Peace.