What Yapping Teaches Us About Trust

Speaker A: I'm Nola Simon and I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast. And today I'd actually like to talk about um, the Yap, ah, challenge. So just to give you some context, in case you haven't heard of, this is a creator in the United States. Her name is Jessie Jean something rather. I don't even know her name. Um, she actually had a really successful launch. Uh, essentially what she's selling is ah, challenge to get people comfortable with talking online and creating like short videos for 30 odd days. And the first cohort that she sold it raised $1.2 million. So she ran a second cohort which uh, brought in over $6 million. I think she's only charging $297. And for that many people to sign up and bring in that much money, um, when there's been a common narrative that courses and online, um, work isn't really working the way it used to, it's a really fascinating phenomenon to watch. And so I wanted to look at it from not a perspective necessarily on how she successfully did the launch because there's a lot that went into that. I mean she didn't come into it without a following. She had over uh, 400,000 followers that she had created. She's been working in online, the online space in some format or another for over 12 years I think I saw. So she doesn't come into this type of launch unprepared. She also had been working with funnel experts and she, you know, had private coaches on tap that she was actually able to pull in when the challenge became so entirely successful. Um, so she was well supported, which is something that I don't think a lot of people have given her credit for. But what I'm interested in, in this challenge is the trust aspect of it. So why would people join this type of program and why her? And one of the common narratives that's been going on the Internet is, you know, there's a lot of people who sell uh, services to teach people to speak online and to do video online and get more comfortable with, with posting and creating online and being an expert. Um, it's almost unheard of to sell that amount of, uh, raise that amount of money for that type of product, especially recently. So what is it about her specifically that people trust it? And I'd argue, you know, it's probably not necessarily her, but how it made them feel. So, you know, she's, she's blonde, she's presentable, she talks well, she's credible. Um, the course itself that she was offering the challenge is only $297. The risk is low. I mean, even if you join and you get nothing out of it, you're losing less than $300 US. It's a privilege of course, to be able to have that, to be able to spend and not get anything out of it. But again, if you're doing this type of thing, that's not an unreasonable amount. I mean, I'm seeing courses for much more. I've paid much more for courses that are online. So one of the things with her is the way that she's created this challenge. It was, uh, her own method that she had rectified, but she'd been doing um, tests on it. And as soon as she saw a beta tester actually get over a million views with one of her YAP videos, that's when she launched the cohort. So she's uh, creating this program to be responsive in real time. She's demonstrating mentorship. So she's doing what she does herself and she's mentoring people. So it's not necessarily a top down coaching, teaching, uh, kind of thing, um, but more of a mentorship. So I am testing this out with you. We're going to adjust it in real time. So she's seeding it, um, and then adapting to the feedback from her learners in real time. Um, and she's got incredible social proof because what she's doing is having people post their work, their homework that they have to do online. So she's automatically created network effects. Right. So even if you don't necessarily trust her, what you're doing is you're seeing people in your feed that resonate with you. And if they're posting their work and you're watching this and seeing, you know, their feedback, their improvement, their changes, it's social proof. And so I'd argue that, um, it's the flexibility of what she's designed, that it's not based solely on her own credibility, but that of the network that she, she's, she's created with the interest of this. So what she's teaching is really low lift. It's actually in demand because everybody is sort of a little gun shy about AI slop and how they're present, how they're showing up authentically. And how do you prove that whatever you're creating isn't necessarily based in AI, um, but is something that, you know, represents a skill, a point of view that speaks specific to you, that can't be replicated in any other way because the video and the opinions that you're expressing are solely based on your own experience. She's not telling you what to say. It's based in your own niche. What she's encouraging you to do is build out the skill of speaking your mind and posting it and being comfortable on camera and demonstrating improvement, warming up your own individual audience, um, whatever that topic may be. So in that case, it's kind of genius because she's not specifically tying herself to a niche that is marketing or, you know, anything in particular. It's anybody who really wants to show up online because they want to have people see, see them and they want to be perceived by people and they want to, um, own their presence, really. And that's how you can convey it, you know, and how you look, how you sound, what your voice is, what your hand gestures are. Video captures that in a way that audio doesn't. And I mean, I love audio. Um, I can do video I choose especially because I like longer content. I choose more audio more often. Um, but the interesting part of this whole challenge is why so many people trusted it. And that's, I think, what we can look at if we were going to actually bring this sort of thing in corporate. So, um, if you were a manager or someone who is actually trying to get people engaged in your company and you are trying to build reputation, you are trying to improve trust, engagement. Um, if you're in charge of communication or marketing, all of this type of challenge would actually be kind of cool to run in a corporation because when it comes to trust, your employees are actually more trusted than executives. Um, personal employee profiles that are posting authentic, unscripted content are incredibly valuable for trust and reputation. And that's something that I've talked about for a long time. I've interviewed many different people, Cher Jones, in uh, particular, about, uh, personal brand and how to create that. And video, um, is a huge part of that. Right. It's something that I did in my corporate career was how do you engage online in social media and get to, uh, be well known by employees across the organization, across the world, but in the context of that corporation, and quite honestly, you know, I've been gone from that position for over five years now. And for the longest time, I'd say three and a half years, anytime anybody left that company, a lot of times what they did was reach out to me because they trusted me. And that I solely attribute to the work that I had done, um, online to build a personal brand, but also internally to build that brand as well too. And so this type of change Challenge, although she designed it for, you know, small business or, you know, people are building up thought leadership, academics who are looking to, um, you know, be more approachable, executives even to be more approachable and be more comfortable with that type of online presence, um, it can be really repurposed into a corporate initiative as well. Because what that does is it raises your profile, it allows you to demonstrate your expertise, um, and why, your point of view and how you actually see the world and apply that expertise is so valuable. And so when people are feeling uncertain about what the world of work is, what employment opportunities are going to look like, how AI is affecting everything, if we are leaning into a challenge that demonstrates that we're invested in developing skills, we, um, understand the value of personal brand, we understand how that can impact career and your confidence level and it's an investment that's relatively low lift. Um, that would be an excellent thing to invest in for your employees and to run a challenge on. Some of your employees are probably already in that challenge and, and um, you know, they're developing those skills anyway. Right. Whether you approve it or not approve it, um, but is it actually benefiting your company? How do you repurpose that and what does that do say for trust? You know, um, now this can be run on any, you know, social media platform, but imagine the impact of your employees posting something like this publicly on LinkedIn. What does that do for your employer brand? And you know, when, when potential people are looking to work with your company and they see a whole bunch of employees who are really active in quoting your brand online, which you can then feature on your employer profile, um, that's valuable. And again, it comes back to trust. Right when people are looking for testimonials, clients, stakeholders, um, you know, potential employees, any, anybody who's interested in working with your company. That is all publicly available information that you can then feature, um, to build up your employer brand. And if you already have an employee advocacy program where you're teaching people how to use, um, online reputation tools, and you've got social media sharing and you've already invested in that, how cool would it be to actually be topical and run a challenge? Somewhat similar, similar that's designed to demonstrate. Skills in video and presence and um, point of view, developing thought leadership. And how does that actually improve engagement and trust? I think it would be a fun experiment to run anyway, you can test it out because people are very uncertain with what's happening. And so this also, this type of skill development gives them something that they feel they can control. And if you're running it and sponsoring it from a corporate aspect and they feel safe to do it in the context with your blessing, I mean, it doesn't have to be public, I guess you can make it all private, um, and run it on corporate internal systems. Right. If you use Slack internally, for example, you could run a Slack challenge across multiple different teams and do it internally, uh, so it doesn't necessarily have to be. And then choose the best of the best and then run a competition to see what actually happens publicly. Right. You could do it in many different ways, but I think that that would be kind of a cool initiative. That is very optimistic for the future and it wouldn't cost a lot, especially if you already have some of the foundations in place to be able to invest in those skills and uh, you know, as I mentioned, employee advocacy. See. So do. Are you planning to do your own YAP challenge? Have you signed up personally for it? And what are the transferable skills that you're seeing? Um, even from like the social media proof that, that it is being shared about the challenge. What, what are you admiring about it and what, um, what are the drawbacks? I'm interested in it because I also looked at, into all the systems that are supporting it as well. And that's where it's like, I'm interested in the groundwork that she laid to be successful and envision a future that, um, exceeded her expectations. And that's kind of cool. Right? So I'm not participating in the challenge itself, but I am interested in what we can learn from it and how that builds for the future. Finding yourself in orbit.