Kickoff Sessions
Weekly podcast episodes with the sharpest minds in the world to help you live a richer & more fulfilling life.
Previous guests include Luke Belmar, Justin Waller, Sahil Bloom, Gad Saad, Peter Schiff, Stirling Cooper, Jack Hopkins, Sadia Khan, Matt Gray, Daniel Priestley, Richard Cooper, Justin Welsh, Arlin Moore and more.
Kickoff Sessions
#270 Jun Yuh - How Anyone Can Become a 6 Figure Creator
Watch This NEXT: https://youtu.be/dkixSG4hVRI
Most content isn’t built to make money.
It’s built to go viral.
And that’s why most creators stay broke.
In 2025, content needs to do more than just get views.
It needs to build trust, attract leads, and convert into real revenue.
That’s exactly what I sat down to break down with Jun Yuh.
This guy has built an audience of 8M+ followers across platforms—without relying on trends, cheap tactics, or going viral.
We got into:
- The system behind consistent, profitable content
- Why most creators never break past $10K/month
- How to structure your content ecosystem to drive revenue
- The mindset shifts you need to actually scale online
This isn’t theory.
It’s what’s working right now.
For creators with millions of followers and business owners, using content to scale.
If you’re trying to build a content business in 2025, you need to hear this.
(00:00) Introducing Jun Yuh
(03:08) Breaking Free from the Content Rut
(06:14) The Power of Consistency & Daily Execution
(09:45) Understanding Your Audience for Maximum Impact
(14:04) How Viewer Psychology Drives Content
(18:07) How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market
(23:28) Overcoming Fear, Judgment & Self-Doubt
(29:11) Why Most Creators Fail (And How to Avoid It)
(34:17) Playing the Infinite Game in Content & Business
(41:16) The "CREATE" Framework for Content Growth
(47:54) The Student vs. Expert Approach to Authority
(52:21) How to Inspire & Influence Through Content
(58:51) Finding Meaning & Avoiding Creator Burnout
(01:07:38) Repurposing Strategies to Scale Content
(01:14:57) Systematic Approach to Growth & Monetization
(01:17:14) Jun Yuh’s Idea Generation Strategies
When I first started creating content, I had no creative background whatsoever. Prior to it, I was the type to post once a year. I felt that social media was toxic and I thought that it wasn't something I would ever do. So that's, I think, where my content started to perform a little bit better when it became more selfless and selfish. And then you start to build businesses around it that feel genuine to you while helping others, and I think that's where my confidence comes from in the business world. It's like I know that I'm new to the space, but I think if I could think audience first, like I have my content, then I'll have the success that I'm looking for in the business world too. I speak to many people my age that struggle with this exact fact. They tell me how do you be successful in business? How do you be successful in content? How do you be successful in school? And I tell them well, day light, it's going to bleed in everything that you do.
Darren Lee:The creator economy is exploding, but how do you actually stand out, build an audience and turn content into a thriving business? June Yu has done it 8 million followers, multiple successful programs and now he's launching Creator College to teach the next generation of creators how to do the same. This is your roadmap to building, scaling and monetizing as a creator.
Darren Lee:How do you ensure with your content that you don't get caught in like the same cycle, to the point that things won't actually get better because they don't get better? You just stay in the same six months, 12 months, year on year every year.
Jun Yuh:I think that there's two parts to it. I think the first part is that you need a willingness to post consistently so you have a body of work. And then, once you have that body of work, I think you're exactly right to evaluate and iterate. So I have this content system that I always speak on. But that last step is exactly what you're talking about and there's that definition of insanity that it's doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. So I think this willingness to experiment with different styles of content and then working backwards from there whether that's reverse engineering a piece of content, but it doesn't work unless you have the body of work right. So I think it's both parts. I think if you can have that body of work long enough and then you can start to reverse engineer, then I think you start to see common threads and I believe that's how I've been able to constantly evolve so do you think you have to do the first 100 reps?
Darren Lee:that are awful for you to be able to look at refinement after a while. Yeah.
Jun Yuh:So I actually have my own version of the 100 video rule and it's that you post 20 videos without limiting yourself, you understand the top 20% performed videos and you repeat that five times. So to your point. No, I don't think you have to go 100 videos before you actually start to evaluate and iterate Absolutely not. I think it's about having at least a sub-cohort of a body of work so that you can work with, because when you are looking at data in general, having one point in data is not enough for you to take a judgment on. And also, if you look at the mindset of a creator, usually, and if they come from a background that they have no content creation experience usually, and if they come from backgrounds that they have no content creation experience, it's really difficult for somebody to overthink something that's so complicated.
Jun Yuh:It can be when you talk about evaluating, iterating. So I always think about all right, how do I make it as easy as possible for somebody to start? Because that's exactly how I did it. I think once you can lower the expectation and then have a sub-quarter body of work, I don't think it has to be 100. But I think if you can evaluate, evaluate, iterate ongoingly without making it so complex. I think that's where the goal is.
Darren Lee:Whenever I hear like these concepts, I always think about like the mean curve. Yeah, the mean curve at the bottom, it's like make good content, sell simple stuff. The top, it's like make good content, sell simple stuff. And in the middle, that's when people get super overly analytical to the point that they burn out. Okay, so like what would what some of those like limiting beliefs people have when they start?
Jun Yuh:yeah, as a creator, that are just simply not true, like they're just not correct yeah, the first one that I can start with is people have this preconceived notion of what quality is, and when you are somebody that's just beginning content, your preconceived notion of quality derives from cinema or other successful creators that you've seen. Now what's the problem with that? There's a lot of resources that they can expend to make that content look that way. I truly believe quality is derived from what your audience wants, it's getting a good understanding of exactly what it is that their pain points are, and if you can generate content that's directly towards that, then I think that's quality. So I have a perfect example for you on my flight here.
Jun Yuh:So I've never missed a day of posting in five years with this mindset, and on that plane I was extremely tired, I was stressed and I was thinking I need to get a post out. So I simply put my phone there and I put an extremely large amount of text above it. If amount of text above me, if you think about quality, probably somebody would look at that and say that's not quality. Well, I got a million views in 48 hours and I have a ton of comments to it, ton of engagement, and I look at the DMs is a ton of people that's inspired by. Why? Well, it's because in that text, everything do with their pain points. Why? Because the people that watch my content also come from an underprivileged background people that have a chip on their shoulder, people that are ambitious.
Jun Yuh:And that text was all about how, in my entire life, traveling was never even considered an option. And then it went from that to then traveling to four countries, eight cities, in less than six months. And then now I'm on a flight to Dubai in business class in pursuit of creating the biggest business that I've ever had. That's aspiring to somebody. Because I understand my audience really well, I think people forget that there's an individual behind the screen, so that's one really major misconception that holds back so many people. Sorry, I didn't mean to go on about this, but it's the idea that people lack consistency that kills every brand. Right, but they lack consistency because it's derived with an understanding of false pretense and of quality. I think when you can start to streamline the process where you understand the audience better, it makes content a lot easier to create.
Darren Lee:But just want to take one quick break to ask you one question have you been enjoying these episodes? Because, if you have, I'd really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can see these episodes and be influenced to build an online business this year, thank you. I describe it as how do you solve a painful problem for a specific user that's easy to find online? Yeah, and then the modality and the vehicle and the vessel you do it is almost irrelevant. You can be on YouTube. You can be on LinkedIn, like dude. You could be on Quora, like there's Quora writers. Yeah, people have become famous, right, and they're like diehard cult, tribalistic followers, and it's on a platform that mean you would never click on unless you were trying to fix the socket right on the side of our house.
Darren Lee:So it's almost doesn't matter, yeah, but you have to get the right thing correct. Which is the specific user? Yeah, and that can almost. Which we'll get on to is reverse engineering, the business component, sure, but there's, there's two sides to this, because I see a lot of creators coming into space and they're they want to like express yeah, so they're not thinking of like solving problems yet. It's almost like a self-expression.
Jun Yuh:But then you see, the guys like you, ali abdallah, all these guys like like explode because, oh, they were solving a specific problem yeah, and I mean I can double down with exactly what you're talking about, because, having created content now for the last five years, I've seen creators start and finish and never post again for probably every single year. Hundreds of them, right. And why does that happen? I think it's because exactly what you're talking about. I think it works for certain individuals, but if everything is about you, you will quickly burn out because the type of engagement that you attempt to curate online, it's not as easy as people think. You know, if you can really start to understand I think to your point the audience's perspective, then you can solve a problem. Then you start to really recognize. Well, usually people don't have just one problem, right? Usually people have a ton of problems that's expanded upon that one singular one.
Jun Yuh:So for me, when I was looking at my previous background in biomedical engineering as a student yes, did somebody have struggles with evidence-based study strategies?
Jun Yuh:Absolutely, because I knew that that could potentially be a solution to their poor grades, right, but more than that, well, as a student, what else do you have in your life?
Jun Yuh:Well're not just a student, you are somebody. As a son, you are a daughter, you are somebody that has hobbies and passions. You have all these different things that you want to do, but time management becomes a problem, right? So a lot of kids my age struggle with that and I start to recognize it and I was like, okay, well, that's another problem. So then a lot of the youtube videos that we ended up doing productivity tips and things that we could help them with in terms of my own system and so when you start doing that, you recognize okay, let me discover this individual and what they're currently struggling with. And oftentimes people share their own problems and there's like a likelihood where if you have something that you're going through, likely someone else is going through a similar thing. So that's, I think, where my content started to perform a little bit better, when it became more selfless and selfish, and then you start to build businesses around it that feel genuine to you while helping others, and I think that's where my confidence comes from in the business world.
Darren Lee:It's like I know that I'm new to the space, but I think if I could think audience first, like I have my content that I'll whole point is that the next wave for you is just another iteration of, like you, the hermit crab has to break its shell before it becomes the next evolution.
Darren Lee:Right, I like that, but the way you described it is very funny, is very interesting, because it's the problem solution continue Everything we pops up, right. So, like, not having leads is a problem, fulfillment is a problem. Retention is the next problem. Right, it's a continuation, but the way that you're describing it is more like constraint theory, yeah, which is like the initial constraint is hitting record as a creator, the next constraint is managing and they're offloads. So how have you walked through that? Because the consistency is something that you have, like, absolutely nailed to the point that your inputs, which is you putting out the videos, but that's right putting in the effort has contributed to the output of the five years of videos, which is considered, which is contributed to a non-linear outcome, which is, abstracts, the eight million followers you have on different platforms. How do you break down those three different components?
Jun Yuh:I mean it's tough because anytime that we have a conversation today, it seems like I knew that I would have this type of audience. And I never did. And that's me being completely honest. When I first started creating content, I had no creative background whatsoever. When I first started creating content actually prior to it I was the type to post once a year and at most I felt that social media was toxic and I thought that it wasn't something I would ever do. And then, when I started posting content, it became as you put it I love the way that you phrased that, by the way, the idea of the inputs and where, when you are at a beginning stage, it's all you can control. And I think once you can start to get better at the skill set, the more predictions become accurate, and I think then it becomes more of a holistic cycle. But that's how I've always envisioned it.
Jun Yuh:So when I first started creating content, I mean all the fears that every creator has gone through I've gone through. I didn't know how to be on camera. I hated the idea that. I thought I always looked weird. I was afraid of looking cringy. I was afraid of me not having anything to offer. I was afraid that my posts weren't going to perform well. I had all these different fears, but I think fears sometimes are associated with a feature that's unknown. So every time that I feel that way, I kind of just think about all right, what can I do today? What can I do tomorrow?
Jun Yuh:And it was hard, by the way, because, coming from my background by the way, because, coming from my background, by the way an immigrant parent is not going to support you doing content on the side, right, it's just not something that they do. Moreover than that, when you're in the biomedical engineering space, your digital footprint is everything. Everyone sees everything, and so I used to be in these online classrooms during COVID, and I would have individuals literally link my videos in the chat making fun of me in front of everyone, right, and so that was extremely difficult. Because when you videos in the chat making fun of me in front of everyone, right, and so that was extremely difficult, because when you're in that moment, you feel like there's nobody that has belief in you and that support system isn't there. But then, if you think really hard about it, then I was thinking okay, I'm overcomplicating the process. All I know are the inputs. At the current stage, I'm just going to keep up with that.
Jun Yuh:And then I kept doing that over and over again and then I started to understand, all right, what is quality? So in the very beginning, I was in my basement doing fashion videos. By the way, I thought that I knew about fashion, I thought that's what you had to create, and I used to change all these different outfits and I spent probably like six, seven hours per video. Then I started to realize, okay, that's completely the opposite, because busy, because those videos were getting what like 100 views, 200 views. And it wasn't actually until I picked up my phone and started doing encouraging messages to the phone where those videos started to perform a bit better and I started to realize, yeah, that video took me 20 seconds to make and it made a large impact.
Jun Yuh:And so that's where I think my first aha moment was, where, okay, quality is not derived from what I think it is. Because I'm new to the content game, I'm going to stop for a while, but I know the quality is derived from what the audience thinks. And so I started to create more content that addressed that pain point. And then, over time, I think you become a better predictor of like what actually works. So then I started to actually reverse, engineer the pieces of content to okay, obviously there's certain storage formats that work better.
Jun Yuh:Obviously, when you're looking at Instagram versus TikTok, versus YouTube Shorts and this always is an evolution you start to realize this content performance better, this content performance better. But I think it starts off with the understanding that input matters first. Right, I think people, as you put it, overcomplicate the process, that they lose the sight of the fact that the thing that's running the entire train is the content, and so I kept up with that. I think as you start to go into more of the system base, I started to like break it down. I have this thing called the creative vision, where it's the what, the who, the uniqueness, value alongside the manifestation, and that's how I start to really understand content from a larger game. But in the very beginning I could promise you I had no idea I was gonna fit you in million go deeper on the, on those stuff vision yeah, I'm so happy they said that.
Jun Yuh:so, with the creator vision and if anyone's watching that, we can do this alongside us as we do it. But I always think of the creator vision as the very top. So if, if you're looking at a piece of paper, at the very top would be the creator vision alongside your name, and then the four branches that stem underneath it are gonna be your what, your who, your uniqueness, alongside your monetization. I think every creator, in order for you to have longevity in this space, it's no longer pigeonholing yourself into one category, because you, as a human being, evolve. You, as a human being, evolve. You, as a human being, are multi-layered. You, as a human being, have different things that you can offer the world and most people don't understand that content creatorship is a long-term journey. So when you do evolve and it's really hard to create content about something specific anymore, then you lose that audience, right? So, for example, if I was to be stuck solely creating content about study after I graduate, how relevant is that to me, right? How much am I going to be able to evolve as a human being?
Jun Yuh:So, as I have those four categories, I then further break it down. So you have your what. Underneath that I call it my message. It's a message I want to present to the world across all the various content pillars of my life. These are all just various interests that I have. So that's pretty simple. I think people understand that. Then it's the who Under, then it's the who Underneath that I think about the target avatar who I might actually speak to through my content. Underneath that, that's my demographic and my psychographic. I think everyone thinks about demographic, but I obsess over psychographic. It's about what the individual's actually thinking about, their pain points. And then when I think about-.
Darren Lee:You explain the psychographic more.
Jun Yuh:Yeah, so psychographic is more about what is that individual currently going through? What are they experiencing? And that individual currently going through what are they experiencing? And if you can really deep dive into the conversations that you have with the audience members that go way beyond just a response to somebody's comment that your video performed well, they're like, hey, this video helped me. You say thanks Instead of just doing that, actually going a little bit deeper as to say why didn't it help you, like well about it actually resonated with you. You start to realize, okay, well, this person that's, you know, the age of 21,.
Jun Yuh:Sure, that's a demographic, but these are the things that they're consuming, right, on a regular basis. Maybe they have elements to David Goggins that they like and aspire to be like. Right, they share his mindset. Maybe there's things about different creators of Chris Williams and that there's an element to how he speaks that people aspire to be like. Maybe there's an element to a singer and you start to realize that they have all these different personalities that they're consuming content of. That's like the psychographic of an individual. It's the pain points they're going through. It belongs to the content that they're continuously consuming. If you understand that, it's so much easier to package your info. It's so much easier to teach people because everything that you teach becomes relevant. So that's what I always say, and I come from that educational background where I know that relevancy matters so much, and I think that's what psychographic boils down to be.
Darren Lee:Explain the relevancy in terms of that? Because the challenge I often find is that when you have like a creator business and a creator program, you get people from different aspects of life. So I interviewed Rokit Ngeste, which is an e-com guy, but in his e-com program, which is $6,000, he is a 40-year-old guy who's disgruntled in nine to five. He also is a 21-year-old hustler who tried trading all this other stuff. So it's hard for him to be able to frame that in either his marketing or even specifically in his program or even in his content, because the 40-year-old has much different interests because he's trying to bring his kid to Disneyland but he can't afford it than the 21-year-old dropshipper. How do you frame that in that context? Because people are multifactorial.
Jun Yuh:Yeah. So if I was to further break down all the branches, basically what happens is at the very bottom of that are all sources of inspiration, of content that fit your creative brand. So that's the whole idea of a creative vision, right? So if I was to all the way go to the very bottom of this and we can do this, you start to see that all of them becomes experimental content. But it doesn't mean that they'll all perform the same way. So to your point.
Jun Yuh:My first question that individual would be all right. Sit both those individuals down and tell me their pain points very, very specifically, and let's see the common third across them. Both right. And then there's got to be something right. I mean, in our discipline, mentorship. This has been just a cool passion project of mine. We have our own course and we have our own community where we teach upon my own four wins it's something that I'm super adamant about is, on a daily basis, having a mental win, a physical win, spiritual win and self accountability. And now it's become this trend where tens of thousands of people are doing this alongside us, right, but in that group we had individuals that are 45. We have individuals that are 55. We have individuals that are 19. We have individuals that are 33.
Jun Yuh:And that never mattered to me, because those are all demographics, but underneath it, every single individual has a drink. Every single individual, when they were younger, once aspired to be somebody, and as life got in the way, it distracted them. As life got in the way, they were told that they weren't good enough. As life got in the way, discipline became that much harder to accomplish, and so when I was in that, that's where I could feel it. It's a solution to a completely wide audience, and that's why we're able to do what we do. So I think that becomes experimental content. So I didn't know that at first, but as I started to understand, okay, my audience yes, are they mostly 18 to 34? Yes, are they mostly 18 to 34? But why do I have a person that's 50 years old? I don't want to outcast, I want to see what they're going through.
Jun Yuh:And so then I did that and I started to experiment with the content. I'm like, okay, discipline actually works because it's a messaging that people can resonate with. But my approach is very different from other people. It's not a very extreme hard. Look at it. I think about. Can you show up on every single day in these four categories, you'll have full listed display. So that's what I would tell that individual. It's like actually fully have a conversation, even Like I used to get on calls with that audience numbers, people that really showed up in my community and say what is it that you're going through? I write those things down, no matter what your demographic was, I didn't care and then across that I will experiment with content. I would find things that work.
Darren Lee:I would always practice with different ones, but that's what I would say. What's so interesting here is the five years that you've spent right now like you can condense that down for someone super, super quickly. But what's even easier is if someone was using those transcripts to hop on those calls.
Darren Lee:You could use ai to find the psychographics, because if you can't articulate, this you could transcribe it, which I know my friends have done, from their sales calls or their demo calls, do turkey calls and then separate out from demographic, psychographic, different components. So it's almost like you don't need to be able to have to do all of it yourself. Yeah, because, like you've done the hard yards. Of course I'm like that's put you in this position that you're in, but it's almost like we can accelerate that pace, yeah, and utilize the frameworks that you have to be able to leverage that outcome right?
Jun Yuh:yeah, I think that's a beautiful way of doing it in a way in which you leverage current technology. I'm always a fan of that. I think what the current struggle, though, when people are thinking about how can you maximize situations like that, is asking the right questions is a skill, and I think that for me, I had so much practice in the span of five years I didn't have to always ask the right question, and I truly believe in that. Right, it's like I threw out as many questions over the span of five years that I ultimately got the right answer.
Jun Yuh:But it's hard sometimes where people will tell me and I've seen this so many times people will tell me hey, june, I understand the demographic and psychographic of my audience because I had an hour call with them, right, and it's like cool, tell me what you, etc. And I started to realize human beings and their interactions are much more complex than a simple base of questions, right? So once you can remember that and if you were to tell me that, okay, we can transcribe this, we can pull this data, and then we would do it 10 times over I would say great, that's an awesome plan. But I think people struggle because they stop at step one and they realize that their content is produced well and they're like oh, I understand the psychographic, but I'm not performing well. It's like I don't think you actually did the first step thoroughly enough.
Darren Lee:And that's where people share information on different modalities. Some might be direct to you, some could be in a comment, some in text message, some could be in a feedback form, like there needs to be a way for you to aggregate information, yes, but what's important there is you have it, you've done this and you're helping people do this, but there's a variable with the outcome of time, and time is the only variable you can't fix because it's quite literally a variable. However, you're able to fix the outcome for you because you've done that process over and over again. You, like, you can expect certain amount of engagement, but time is often an expectation. So people want to become their first thousand subscribers, 10,000, first million get monetized. How do you manage someone's expectations around time?
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Jun Yuh:That is such a great question. I actually think when somebody comes to me and says I want to be successful in X amount of time, you first have to ask them where's that time come from right? Genuinely, where did you get this expectation from right? Because some people will say I want to be a millionaire by 23. And they'll look at me and say, oh, june's done it. How do I do it? Let me ask them, and I will tell them very straightforwardly I never thought that I'd be a millionaire at 23. Never did I have that goal.
Jun Yuh:But it's the idea that we get so lost in the output of the goal that we start to forget the actual initial basis that got us there, right. So when you think about expectations, I start to recognize that it's probably an expectation that wasn't derived from their inner self, like it's an expectation that was given to them. But, moreover, usually an expectation is quote unquote time-based, because they don't know the output and if it's guaranteed right. So what I mean by that is people are so focused on getting to somewhere at a certain amount of time, but what, in reality, that they're currently struggling with is they have no idea if the input that they're doing will actually pay off. And so they'll use time as just kind of a mask, as to like, if I get it done in five years, it'll be well worth it. But in reality I think it's just that they don't know if what they're doing right now will actually pay off. So when I'm in those conversations I tell them very, very clearly I have no idea how long it's going to take you. I'm not going to sit there and lie to you and say it's going to be done for you in six months, because I have no idea if you're going to show up for me every single day. But I can tell you that this framework, this roadmap, works and that alleviates so much stress. Because then you realize okay, I know, if I put in the work and I do it this way for long enough, it will work.
Jun Yuh:Then I think, out of those conversations that I have no longer, are they figuring it out as time-based procedure. They're figuring out as all right, well, june has a system. All I have to do is, on day one, do this system and I think once you can teach somebody in that fashion, you become a very genuine teacher, right? Like?
Jun Yuh:I don't feel very confident when somebody tells me hey, june, in six months time you're going to be able to get to X solution right, x output. I have seen on the back end of that how many people actually fail at that, so that doesn't give me any confidence. But if you actually told me, hey, june, I've had the success because I've done it this exact way. This is the framework, I know that if you follow it, no matter how long it might take you, you'll figure it out right and I'll be like all right, cool, I'll do it. And that gives me the overly sense of confidence. So I believe in a different way that it's not always so time focused. It's an unknown of what the output actually looks like, and if than that, I think it kind of absolves that issue well in in many regards.
Darren Lee:People think that they're going to get the outcome invariably like they. People think they're going to become millionaires, no matter what. Like they have this expectation themselves but they're not doing the inputs to get there. Like the input may not be running the funnel or creating the video. The input could be like getting up yeah, like genuinely it could be getting up. It could be doing the most basic level of input and that's why I asked you earlier about what do you for fitness, because the traits that you have in your own fitness and your own interest with it and what you want to do with it contributes to the content, contributes to your workload. So it's 100 like how you do. One thing is how you do.
Jun Yuh:I love that I have said that so many times and people think I'm crazy, like I am so serious was in school. People would say why are you trying so hard in your senior year, Like, why are you doing your master's? You don't need to do your master's. I was like, how I do, one thing is how I do everything. If I give up on this one thing because I can't use social media as populated, how do I know that at one time when social media might not be my, I can't use something else populated, that I won't treat it like that. I've always thought the way you do one thing is how you do everything. I love that you said that.
Darren Lee:And also that should give you confidence, because if you, let's say, your background was in school, right and you were good at school, you got it done, everything. Then you went into running and then you're nailing 5K PBs, 10k, right, that's a good barometer, that when you want to start something new, yes, you may not be an expert at it, but at least you have the trade. Like there is an underlying trade that sits between everything you do right, and that trade then may not contribute to how you create a TikTok video or how you run an ad or how you create a landing page, but you will have that ability for you to go and execute it. I'll give you a simple example.
Darren Lee:I recorded a podcast the other day and the file got corrupted when I recorded it and it was like this it was such a mess and I've really pissed off about it. And I rang a bunch of companies. I rang a data recovery company in LA. They recovered hard drives that were thrown into the river. You know when people try to get rid of evidence and I rang them and I gave them the file and they couldn't fix it and I was like I was like I can, I was like we can fix this. Yeah, and I spent two days fixing it and I got it fixed last night. And it's not to do that.
Darren Lee:It's not to do it like, oh, like there's a specific way and you have to learn it and you have to do this. It's just like you have to have a level of competency to be confident in that regard. Otherwise you know you have a you're stubborn, right. You've never stubborn. You're ignorant because you, you don't really know the path. So there is obviously caveats to this.
Jun Yuh:Mind, your ears but it's so beautifully said and I don't think that this message is popular enough. So please keep speaking on it time and time again, because I'm telling you. Right now I speak to many people my age that struggle with this exact fact. They tell me how do you be successful in business, how do you be successful in content, how do you be successful in school? And I tell them well, if you have poor habits in your day-to-day life, it's going to bleed in everything that you do. And so the four wins became an epitome of what I've done.
Jun Yuh:So when people look at the external successes that I've reached, people always ask how were you able to do all of that simultaneously? And I thought I never even ever imagined it to be in that context ever. For me, it was. If I can show up and learn something new every day for at least 15 minutes.
Jun Yuh:If For me, it was, if I can show up and learn something new every day for at least 15 minutes, if I can move my body intentionally for 45 minutes, if I can do my spiritual win for 15 minutes, if I can do a self-accountability for 15 minutes, good things will happen. I've literally done that pretty darn consistently for the last five to six years and it's transformed everything that I've done, not because that has taught me how to be an incredibly successful business person, because I have all the skill sets for it, because I'm willing to actually stick through it and figure it out to your point, and I think it comes from the individual and it's the difference between internal strength and external success. If you have an individual that is strong internally, the likelihood of success, I believe, 10-folds, 20-folds and it's way more than a course could ever teach you right.
Darren Lee:It's like once you can combine that with information. I think that the apps is let's talk about more the internal state. So, because, even when I looked at your program, one thing that I observed initially was it's amazing that so much people are in that. But why do so much people need so much accountability? It's like a deeper thing, right, it's like a wide and like that's a big driver. It's a big problem that you solve. But what is it at an internal level that makes people need to need so much accountability, like what's happening there internally? Because you're giving them skills, right. Eventually they go into the world and they can do it themselves 100%. So what's happening there? What's happening for you? Maybe specifically like when you were quite young, right, because a lot of these traits are developed. You know you had immigrant parents, you didn't grow up a lot of money, you had a lot of struggles, but that internal state is now a driver for how you do everything.
Jun Yuh:Everything. And you ask such a good question of why do people need accountability? Why do people not show up for themselves? Well, I think we have lived in this digital world and I think the outcome of that has been this external validation that we receive, and it drives all of the success that I often see right. What I mean by that is people have no problem showing up for the bosses, people have no problem showing up for their parents, people have no problem showing up for their friends. I know some really, really awesome people in my life that are so good at that.
Jun Yuh:When I say, hey, let's go on for a run at 8 am because it's before our classes and it's so hard for that, I wonder why, like I wonder why you're not able to show up for yourself the same way that you show up for other people? And I think it's because the validation comes from a completely wrong place, because if you think about it, your consequences aren't shown to people, right? So if you don't show up for yourself, if you don't go on that run, who actually sees that? Who sees the repercussions? Only you, only you feel that right, and I think that it's hard to drive that message home because people care so much about the athlete, people care so much about the validation. I think it's fine, I think you can be a driver, but if you don't have that internal stuff checked out, you will absolutely burn out, and I think about it time and time again. People ask like how do you do all that stuff without ever burning out, without ever taking a day off and feeling like everything's too overwhelming? It's like like perspective right, like it's. Everything's based on perspective. Perspective drives your performance. I know what my parents have gone through. I know what that immigrant background looked like. More importantly than not, I know what it feels like to show up for myself, so I'll just do it regardless. So I think it's beautiful that you've said it that way, and I think more people need to hear it.
Darren Lee:I think a nice way to frame it as well is what's the opposite right.
Darren Lee:So what you're doing now is amazing. That's it. Tomorrow you wake up and you're like I got money in the bank, my program is running, I don't need to do this shit anymore. The opposite is, things start to go downhill. You might have to go back to your job, you might have to go back and do additional studies because maybe your degree is maybe not as relevant anymore. Right, it's like what actually is the opposite to you doing this and like that should be almost a driver too. Right?
Darren Lee:Because what I find is I find it very and I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people that they work with a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people that they work with they struggle to just do, to have commitment, and I want to ask you to commit to that, that a cause of whatever that is. And I always struggle to understand why someone doesn't do something. You know because, let's say, they've put everything into it, they burn all the bulbs. You have no other choice but to get up, work on that offer, work on that business. You know you've been in here for 72 hours recording and I've caught you at the end of the 72 hours, so that's a level of commitment that people need to make for themselves. How have you seen that play out? Because people will use your discipline program to become more disciplined. They'll make a financial commitment, which is damn important. Then they'll make a commitment themselves. How do you see that play out?
Jun Yuh:It's the only thing you can do. I've seen this time and time again where people try to control so many factors in your life and I genuinely, genuinely and I love the fact that you're stripping away of somebody's success, because I think people tend to lean on their own success as a level of confidence right, but what you've done so incredibly well is like if you flip it and you say, if that went away, what do you become? If you tell me you completely lose all of your confidence, then was that real confidence? Were you faking it till you made it? So I always think about commitment is all you can do.
Jun Yuh:I guarantee if somebody had looked at my life when I was age of 13 or 14 and saw what I had seen with my parents getting divorced, the mental health issues, the financial issues, everything that we suffered as a repercussion of that nobody would think that that kid is going to be a millionaire at 23. Nobody would have said that kid would make a million followers before he graduated. Nobody would ever say that and I definitely didn't say that. I'm not sitting here thinking that I could ever do that on my own. I think my faith plays a really large role in this. I am truly, truly somebody that pursues a relationship with God, because I think that that has helped me get to where I am, because that gives me the utmost confidence. But more importantly also is the idea is like how does that transcend into the life that I'm living? It's the commitments all I have.
Jun Yuh:Like if any of this got stripped away, I'm not going to sit there and say that I will get this done in 24 hours and I'll become a millionaire again. I would never say that because I have no idea. But I will say that I'm committed to the fact that the effort is all I can control. You brought me on after the 72 hours. It doesn't mean anything to me. It's like I'm here for you. I've committed to this. I'm going to give you everything that I got, because it's all I can bring. I'm not going to say that I can bring you the most and be present and hopefully that's good enough and throughout my life that has been. I think if people can realize that effort is that number one thing, and of course, effort, I think, is combined with discipline.
Darren Lee:But the idea is that if you can show up, you realize that's all you sometimes need it's more playing like an infinite game, right, like what you're doing right now is like for you what you can do infinitely yeah versus a finite game is putting a variable of time.
Darren Lee:I like that. A fixed level, right, because then you're always working against the clock, like everything is like a. It's like a backside right, it's like I'm not there yet or I'm 7% complete. But the logic is, if there's no percentage, then you're just always playing a continuous time.
Jun Yuh:I love that.
Darren Lee:But that will feed into your content, which then will feed into different verticals you might want to get into as time goes on.
Darren Lee:You want to try something new because you're more of like an evolution to what you're doing, versus I need to get to 10 million a year doing this business and if I'm not there, I'm going to be like so pissed off and I'm going to be resentful.
Darren Lee:I come from like an individual sport background, like primarily athletics, and the problem with individual sports is that you're always a loser until you're the winner, and then, while you're the winner, you're only there until you're the loser again. So it's a really wrong framework, especially for someone who wants to do this forever. But that's why it's. It's almost good to get off your ass, because when I ran 100 meter track, yeah, I didn't want to come eight, seven, six, fifth, all the way up to second. You want to to become the winner, right. But then I think as you become a bit more mature, you're like okay, there's more variables here that contribute to the outcome that I want and that's why you can lift up that, put into a different business, put up that thought, put into a different content system you need to clip that.
Jun Yuh:I need to take that out, plaster it on. That's everything that I stand for. I truly believe in it. Right, I truly believe in it. Right. People overestimate what they can do in a month, but they underestimate what 10 years could do for you, right, and we've now been in this world where, unfortunately, a lot of the content online that you see is of individual promising something at a certain given time period. Right, because it sells, right, and I think that if you have that further emphasis, that might seem okay from the business perspective.
Jun Yuh:But when you're 18, being told that 40 different things are going to give you the dream life at a certain period of time and you're already impressionable it feels extremely overwhelming. So I always, always, love that type of perception. It's like it's okay, like you have so much time, not that you should just sit there and not do anything, but don't discount what you can do in 10 years from now. Actually, I think if you overestimate what you can do in a year's time, you have no guarantee that that's going to be sustained. Like, how many people in your circle have you seen Because I've seen a lot where people will reach a level of success and falter. Because, yeah, tell me about that, because I genuinely want to know, because I know that you have this big circle of really successful people, which is awesome, but I think people don't understand what the opposite side of success looks like. You know, to write a goal.
Darren Lee:So there's two sides. There's the guys that got in for the wrong reason, got the 10k a month, 100k a month, 100k subscribers, okay and then fell off because they were in it for the wrong reason. However, I've interviewed many people in 2020, 2021, who are making 100K a month, 50k a month, and now they're doing two and a half million a month and they're getting ready for a eight-figure exit on their software company. They've never built software in their entire life. Okay, because they were looking at as much more of like a decade or multi-decade thing and they're just playing much more of an infinite game that it's not really about the numbers on the screen on youtube analytics or the stripe account, because it's much more of a thing that they want to pursue. They don't have other interests and that's why, for these people, they might go into a valley of despair when they do sell the company or whatnot, because they need to reignite it within themselves.
Darren Lee:But I've quite literally single, single-handedly seen those guys that keep on pushing on, like I've seen sean's work from 2021, all the way up to 2024 and 2025, and it's almost it's an element of relentless. You know, and I think some people have that again, it's an underlying trait, yeah, you know, and it's like it can be nurtured, but it has to come from a position of I need to make this work and that's why I get on so well with, like American people. Because there is no floor board, you can fall and fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, as you will, you know. So I think having that expectation for people is important. But for creators that you're working with now, as they're scaling up their content, how have you seen them kind of go through like different iterations, so let's say, their first video, because you've got the them kind of go?
Jun Yuh:through like different iterations, so, let's say, their first video, because you've got the audience you've built is obviously insane, but how can someone replicate that success by not thinking about the end goal? Uh, seriously, because I mean, if I went into the game of content, it's even interesting that I'm calling it that but if I thought about content as the eight million goal to your point, though and I love the way that you said that I really hope that my audience hears that, because I always talk about it, but it's awesome hearing your perspective on it, because you have a lot more examples too but the truth of the matter is, I probably would have said something along the lines if I wanted my first 50,000 followers right, because when you have zero audience, 50,000 is a huge amount of people, and think about 50,000 people in one room. You would need a massive room, right, and so if I had thought like that, I probably would have stopped. I probably would hit that number and completely stop, and I think that you're absolutely right, though. It's the difference between the initial goal at hand, right, and so, when I was creating content, all I was thinking about what is the input that I can get? The input is the system. The system is something that I can continuously interwork after a ton of trial and error, and I can try and figure out what works and what doesn't work and try to maximize each post right.
Jun Yuh:But the idea was never the thought of. Like I'm going to hit 10,000 or 100,000 followers to 200,000 followers, to the point that actually a lot of my close friends know this. Every single time my social media would come up, I would block out my homepage. And if I had to go on my homepage for any reason, I would block out my homepage. And if I had to go on my homepage for any reason, I would block out the number of followers. Why? Because I did not come from a creative background. I just heard horror stories of people having so much ego that it ruined their content. So no lie.
Jun Yuh:For the first six months I had no idea. I just knew the number of views per content. I had no idea how big my audience was getting. I didn't care, and so the idea then became if I can solely fixate on the inputs, I think good things will happen. Sean knows this very well. He was actually one of the first individuals that gave me advice that led me to the stage that I'm at, simply because, coming from the biomedical engineering space and fell with Delphi, there wasn't many other creators that I could lean on. However, I had asked Sean, with his experience, what should I do? Should I focus really on my content? An agency at that point as well, where I was helping small businesses with their social media content and I was making close to 8,000, 10,000 dollars a month.
Jun Yuh:And that's when Sean told me the power of actually fixating on content. It's when I went all quote unquote, all in on content and I just showed up daily with the input in mind that he saw my growth Like. He saw me literally the very first call that we had, I probably had like 200,000, 100,000 followers that were maybe engaged, that were kind of engaged, and then the next time we had spoken, I probably had 3 million, 4 million, right. It was this really big chip on my shoulder, by the way, when I heard the things that he had said in regards to challenging me for the content, but it really boiled down to the fact that I have no end goal in mind.
Jun Yuh:I don't know if I'm going to hit 10 million. I have no idea if I'm going to ever hit anything beyond that I could stay here and I think I would still do the exact same thing. Right, because I understand the power of showing up and I just love the way that you phrase that, because I really hope more people can take that message home, because I think they would be successful in content, I think they'd be successful in business, I think they'd be successful in their jobs, I think they'd be successful in their relationships. Because if you keep that mind where it's not always an end thing, it's a constant evolution then I think great things happen. Actually, do you feel a duty to your audience More than I could ever describe? Does that hold you back? I think it drives me.
Jun Yuh:Why do you think many people get stuck with that Because they don't know what their audience is?
Darren Lee:And that's a contributing factor to them pulling out of the market Always.
Jun Yuh:It's the reason for everyone to quit right, Like people don't realize if you do everything for yourself, you will never win. And you know there's a great example of this. There are people and you've probably noticed this because you've had success in your content Sean talks about this all the time there are people and you've probably noticed this because you've had success in your content Sean talks about this all the time Once you get to a certain stage of creative content, you start to realize that emulation is the greatest flattery, right, but in the beginning it doesn't feel that way. So when people are imitating your content completely, it feels like somebody has stolen your work, right, and it feels a little bit personal to you. But you start to realize they all fizzle out. And to realize they all fizzle out and that's something that Sean told me in the very beginning that I didn't believe, but it's just true Like in a year span time, they weren't there anymore. Why? Because they do everything for themselves. They had no idea who their target audience was. And so when I stopped creating content about studying, interestingly enough, they might not have any content to post anymore, right, but it became that idea and I started to see, not just from my own content. But Sean was showing me different examples of creators that you know get imitated and how those audiences never actually persist. Why? Because that audience doesn reservoir of inspiration.
Jun Yuh:I always talk about research what's working. And in research what's working, it's all about understanding what has algorithmically worked right. But you combine that with your creator vision. You don't just take a piece of content that works well and imitate it completely. You take the framework of it. You combine it with your own unique message and your target audience, your unique disvalue and your monetization routes, and that becomes a powerful piece of content that has its best chance of success.
Jun Yuh:So, to your point, I think everyone loses the game. If you want to call it a game, it's because they never understand the content isn't about you, it's about the other person that's watching the content. If you do that, man isn't the greatest driver. Like I wake up and yes, I'm tired, Sure, I mean I haven't slept much and that might seem something I can complain about. But like, how lucky am I?
Jun Yuh:Like if I ever told my dad, hey, you would be able to not worry about your debts because your 23-year-old kid had paid it off, he would never believe me, right. Like I understand perspective because I saw what my dad and my mom had gone through right Showing up when you're tired. It's so easy. And when you can do that with the understanding that you're not in service of your, up in your service of others, and then take that and then build a business around it, so then you can have longevity in the space and it feels true to you, then I think then it's so easy to persist. I think people don't realize any of those prior steps and they lose the game because they never understood the game in the first place. They thought it was about that.
Darren Lee:On your YouTube strategy specifically, how have you consistently hit amazing videos, top performing videos, but then had a unique mechanism in it for people to fall in love with you? Right, Because these videos are consistently top performing and they're very unique. And then other people then are ripping these ideas, technically right.
Jun Yuh:Yeah, and I think that it just comes from understanding that creator vision. Right, so I can just break down really quickly my create framework and so that every time I explain it I think it'll make a bit more sense. So when I think about create, c is commit to your creator vision. R is research what's working. E is engineering your content. Plan A is actualizing your plan. T is telling your audience about it. E is evaluating and iterating. Hopefully we can have that on screen.
Jun Yuh:The idea is simple. It's like I always, always, always, go back to my creative vision. That's simple. The research what's working is understanding algorithmically what has performed well, that's the easy part. Right, like you go to that. You constantly look up content pieces that perform good. Well, right, you think about. All right, that hook probably worked well because it addressed a specific pain point. Great, let's run with it. Okay, let's look at exactly how the story was told. Great, let's run with that. But let's go back to exactly who my audience is. Right, let's go back to what my message was. Let's go back to exactly who I'm targeting my content towards.
Jun Yuh:Let's think about am I building a business? My business is probably very different from the other creators and their businesses right and I think, naturally, when you get really good at saying, all right, here's an algorithmically proven video. Let me combine that with my own unique creator vision. It just becomes subconscious, almost so. Like anytime I see a content piece and I bet no-transcript what do they do with their body movements? You view it completely differently, I think. When you become a creator, you start to recognize that. So the research what's working kind of combines you the I was to ever do another platform. I think I have confidence just because I'm willing to do that seems at work. But that's how I would answer that question.
Darren Lee:What's the underlying elements of psychology you're tapping into?
Jun Yuh:That most people struggle with something and most people feel unheard.
Darren Lee:So that triggers an emotion of likeness, relatability that you have for people. What other components would you kind of leverage or lean on of psychology?
Jun Yuh:Credibility, right? I think people need trust and nobody's going to actually listen to you if you're not somebody trustworthy, and that I think people forget. I think people get so warped on the idea of making money they forget the other people watching the content are pretty darn smart and I've seen this in real life, where people can see scams a mile away nowadays. Yes, can you start to monetize and scam maybe 15-year-old boys into buying something? Probably right. Are you going to be able to carry that over into legitimate businesses? Perhaps Are you going to be able to have that emulated success across all the different businesses if that audience member can be a bit more intentional in their purchasing decision, right? So I don't blame that 13-year-old, 14-year-old for purchasing that thing, but that 18-year-old, 20-year-old is probably not, because they have a good understanding of what feels like a scam, right? So I always think credibility is so important. It's like why should somebody learn from you? And if you then go online and you try to teach from a standpoint of expertise, it will never work because no one will believe you, right? But I always think of content in two different perspectives and this is my value framework that me and Sean work with, but it's the idea that value can be derived whether you're an expert and you've already done the thing or you're in the journey of actually getting that expertise right. So I think if somebody was to say to me hey, june, I like the fact that you're creating content, I like the fact that you could teach on content creatorship because you've done it for five years now and you have so much to add and pull from. You have the audience. You are considered an expert.
Jun Yuh:I would say, well, that's very kind of you. And I would look directly at him and I say well, the fact that you posted for two months and you post every single day and you got zero views for two months, I think that's so impressive. I think it's awesome because people can learn from that. People can learn from your peers just as much as you can learn from an expert. And there's this whole thing about curse of knowledge, where if you are somebody too ahead of the game, it's really hard for you to be relatable to the person that's just starting. You usually learn from somebody that's a little bit ahead of you. So if somebody would come to me and say, june, I have no expertise but I want to create content, I would say great. We think about value is done either through an expertise lens, but also a journey POV lens. Tell people about how you're getting there, tell people about the mistakes that you're making, and even that is just as valuable as what I'm producing.
Darren Lee:The majority of my guests run content businesses. They've used content as the main element of their business to drive more revenue and build their influence online. We've been doing this through a podcast for many years. We have many guests, clients and even customers use a podcast as their main source of driving more revenue for their business and building their influence online, and we're offering a handful of spots to book in a call with our team to learn how you yes, you can leverage a podcast to generate more revenue for your business and drive your influence online. Many of our clients and customers start from nothing, but each one of them are action takers and they want to learn more about how to build a podcast and a brand right around their business. So if you want to learn more and you're really interested in building a podcast, check out the link down below and book in a free call with our customer success manager and he will guide you into how you can build and generate more revenue from your podcast this year.
Darren Lee:The way I explain that is the expert versus student. So a student is someone like Chris Williamson, tim Ferriss these guys had these amazing interviews like Arnold Schwarzenegger all the top people in the entire world because they never positioned themselves as the expert. They were the curious child in the instance and they were always open to learning. And in a world of mediocrity, people love people who are obsessed, so you're willing to sit across the table and that person will give you the light of day because they'll see characteristic traits in you, as they did when they started. I understand, but most people think that you can't be the student. They think they'll be looked down on, whereas no one can strip away your experiences, because when you're 21, you can just tell people not to do something, but you can share your experience in that, whereas the flip side is the expert, someone like Peter Thea, andrew Huberman, who says in this book, this line, it says this and they have a different level of credibility. Yes, so you can equally do it.
Darren Lee:That was a genesis of me, right? I would interview people all the time and I'd be like, yeah, I'm just getting started. I haven't really a clue what's going on, but I was asked questions that would intuitively be things that I would be struggling with. Someone who was young, dumb, no idea what I was doing. It was just getting into the space, yes, but only at the point whereby I had built my own offer, building my own business, I was like, oh, that's interesting, you're doing it that way. I've actually I can share some experience as to how I'm doing it over here. I love it.
Darren Lee:So it's like it's almost like a combo of the student and expert. I'm not an expert, but I'm trying to say that that allows me to have credibility in my small slice of the internet. And it's just an interesting situation, right, because the problem for young people is they see like an E-man, they see a lot of these guys at the very top of the game and they think that they have to be the expert, right, and that holds them back and constrains them, whereas if you just share your experiences, no one can like fuck with that because it's just your own experience. And I think that the best thing for me to help me the most was, even though my podcast looked like shit and I was recording on Zoom and I had my like integrated camera and the mic was terrible, the other guys that were shitting on it didn't start, so they hadn't started and no one that was ahead of me looked down on it. If anything, they were encouraging more and people think it's the flip. People think the world works the opposite way, but it's actually not.
Darren Lee:We come into the room today.
Darren Lee:I'm at charm, we're talking about different things. He's like yeah, do this, do this, do this Because if you're in the game, you get an element of credibility already, so you don't need to pretend to be above what you are, which is how you again perceive to have a scam product right. And if you think about it this way, you can also help people if you're a step two out of ten on the ladder. The way it was explained to me from a good friend, will brown, was that if you're trying to learn golf, you don't ring tiger woods exactly.
Darren Lee:You go to your local golf club and you find someone who's average he used used to play golf. Whatever. He teaches you to go from a one out of 10 to a two out of 10. And then you want to get someone who's actually good a four out of 10, you move up and then you might do a few competitions. You still don't need the 10 out of 10 guy, and that's the irony of the scenario. You only need to be a couple of rungs ahead of the ladder to help millions of people, because everyone is a beginner at 99.9% of things in the world, but they can be an expert at their smallest slice of the internet.
Jun Yuh:There was so much gold in what you just said. I hope that people will take the time to dissect it. If we're looking at one part of it in terms of the judgment from others and it's a fear, right, like everyone goes into context, it's a mirror, exactly, exactly. But guess what? You will never be judged by somebody doing more than you. It will always be those that are doing less, and I've seen this time and time again.
Jun Yuh:There's periods of my time where I look at the people that judge me and, to your point, it never started creating content. I've done enough surveys on my channel, with millions of people on those surveys, to know that a large portion of my demographic wants to create content. I know for a fact that my data shows up to 75% to 80% every single time I do that survey. Do you want to start creating content? Is always a yes. So you're telling me that your friend Joe, who is telling you that you suck, you love cringy and that was a joke that he said in the group chat make fun of you didn't ever think about creating content themselves when they're on their phones just as much as you are Highly unlikely. What's the reality of the matter? You start in the exact same place as them and if you succeed, you know what that tells them. They did it wrong, so they're trying to kill your start. They're trying to show you that you shouldn't do it. They're trying to cast all their judgment on you so that you never persist, because if you make it, it will be the worst wake-up call for them. I've seen it time and time again.
Jun Yuh:I think another really really important aspect to what you've said and it really highlights because I think we could just sit down and go through the creative vision, because I love to learn from you, like I feel like the student this. But in that where I talked about how it's the creative vision, you're what you're, who, your uniqueness, the uniqueness that we stand that down, it's your truth and it's the creative vision your what, your who, your uniqueness, the uniqueness that we stand. That down, it's your truth and it's everything you just mentioned. Your truth is your passions, it's your pain, it's your experience and your skill set. In other words, you're always most powerfully positioned to speak on your past experiences.
Jun Yuh:Nobody can emulate that and I think that that lowers the bar. It's like hey, john, hey James, I know you want to create content, you feel like you're not an expert. Guess what we just learned that you don't have to be an expert. You can create content. Hey, you haven't gone through anything special in your life. Cool, that's fine. Talk about the previous experience. I bet there's someone that can common threads across how you view content, how I view content, and I think that's how you have longevity.
Darren Lee:And the only people that are actually going to be criticizing you, as you said, are people that know that they could do it too, but they have too much fear internally. They're looking internally at themselves and I felt this a lot because I think, like asian culture, asian parents is quite similar to ireland, where I know like it looks down on you in that regard, like you should get a safe job, go get a 40k a year job, and if you want to do that, that's fine, but that was just never my kind of path. And the irony of the scenario was I was dyslexic, but I am dyslexic growing up. Right that I was terrible at school, awful, I missed a ton of school. I was really sick as a child as well, so I was really far behind in everything. So when I had started and everyone was kind of taking the piss out of it, a couple of months later they were getting frustrated because they were like, well, I was smarter than you in school, right, and how can? Like this doesn't work, right, this shouldn't work for you, because you were really bad at science, right, and they tried to meet you in your past life, that they tried to meet you in your past life that they try to meet you where you were, whereas now where you are now, I know for a fact that every quarter you are a new person. You are literally a new human. But the irony is and you're going to find this interesting so I'm a couple of years older than him. When you're younger, everyone is basically the same Same school. You wear the same clothes, in even some schools. You have the same interests, you watch the same cartoon shows.
Darren Lee:You go to high school. You take the same classes. There's a delta which is grades, but actually what'll happen is you'll go into the smart class and it'll be even closer, so the delta is actually less. You'll leave university and you'll split into two different demographics. One will go for working jobs or continue education. They kind of stay the same.
Darren Lee:Some guys get promoted, some guys don't. The delta between the salaries largely the same. The guys that go off and do their own thing, content creators, entrepreneurs they have a nonlinear relationship, so they can have an exponent of 100x, 1,000x, 10 million, x, which we've literally seen creators do because of the inputs that they do. So as years go on. The delta is a is a massive difference and it only compounds, which shows people where they could be at. So now, where I am at for four years out of college, 10 years out of high school, people are talking about high school, uh, reunions and they're looking around and thinking, well, I haven't done nothing in the past 10 years because unless you change the first thing I said to today, then unless you improve that feedback, luke, you're still stuck in there.
Jun Yuh:But nothing like it only works when you work, quite literally I have a question, because this, I believe, is something that I grapple with often, and this is me being completely honest in the sense where to to your point, there's a lot of people that once judged me back then that potentially look for jobs. Now, right, you start to see people who are at ass for certain things and I do my very best, I believe, to ensure that my character is never challenged where, although they might have wronged me in the past, that I do my very best to forget, and I try to look out for them, to try to explain to the things that I've learned now. I'm curious, though from your perspectives, you probably have experienced the exact same thing at a different scale. How do you respond in moments like that, where you could still try to help those individuals that might not see the light right?
Jun Yuh:Because I do believe sometimes all it takes is to take somebody on their shoulders and just shake them and wake them up to the reality of the world, where it's like your fears are holding you back from everything that you could potentially achieve in life. How do you get that message across? Because you do such a good job as a communicator, you do such a good job as a personable individual. So you have this superpower that most people can't do. How can you present the message to other people that their fears are limiting themselves, and how can you get them to actually start making change?
Darren Lee:If you look at the evolution of like where you've gone on, right. If you looked at the DM flow, the first DMs are gonna be like huh, you're a loser, or why are you doing that? The next ones are oh, you still do that content thing. Six months later they're asking. They're asking, you're like oh it's, it's looking pretty good. And then two years later they're asking for advice. That's the evolution of someone, right?
Darren Lee:But your content is enabling people to take that first step in the journey, whether it's content, whether it's a podcast, whether it's building offers. So you have so much free content in the world. That's their baseline. But you can't. It's common in sales. People say you can't change someone's beliefs. People think that's true, people don't think that's true. I don't have an opinion on it exactly, but ideally that has to come internally, right. They have to take that first step Because, unfortunately, if you hold someone's hand, unless you're willing to really make that important change, they can never do it. The reason I'm saying that to you is because you have, if you imagine, an energy bar, 100 energies in a day. You need to put it towards your loved ones, your family, your dogs, whatever, as well as your business and your content, because, remember, your content has a nonlinear relationship. So you're going to be able to help tens of millions of people through your content, but people have to come and look at that content, to start that journey with you and then, as time goes on, because you are a valuable person, they have to almost pay to get access to your knowledge and your time, because you don't have unlimited time. It's constraint theory. You're constrained on how much energy you have and how much hours are in the day. So it is very much up to the individual to take that next step. Because if someone watched I've noted, if someone watched your videos, dude, they wouldn't even need to buy your program, because if they had the action, action underneath, they could just go and do the thing. That's why you have 15 year olds who watch youtube and then build businesses because they have it in them.
Darren Lee:I interviewed daniel bitten recently. Uh, you fantastic guy for you to connect to it. The dude is 18. He's making a million dollars a month. There's two software companies one software company he's a coaching program and um he's 18. He's from um, cyprus. You know tough upbringing, all that kind of stuff he found to make money online space. He was 14, you know that is a certain characteristic trait and for the other people, there is enough information there out there that they just need to almost reprogram what they're looking at right.
Darren Lee:I spoke to lara earlier about like what does our feed entail you? You need to create your own world, and one of my mentors, james Kemp rule number one of his program is called the Sovereign Way is you have to create your own world. Who are the characters in this world? Who are the people? Who are the avatars? What's the things you do on a daily basis, your health, wealth, relationships, spirituality, what's the activities you do to yield a high return for you, your family and your generation? That's what you create and you nurture that world. And then everything else. Everything else will just happen in the world.
Darren Lee:So you can't like, in theory, you can't just go around changing everyone's beliefs because you're already doing that across your content. You know you're already giving people that access. So it's it's unrealistic and it's unfair for someone to try, like, extract time and value from you because you're already helping people, and so it's unfair for people to like, oh, let's hop on a zoom call. It's like, man, the path's already outlined and you've done that across content discipline in 10 years time or in five years time you'll be helping go with their offers. You know, because you've done that, because that makes sense, yeah, and that's the uniqueness and that's that's how I see people evolve, right?
Darren Lee:Because you look at like an e-man. He had his agency, he helped people with the agency, he educated info business, he helps people with info businesses. It's the evolution of that individual. How much people has he helped? 10 million, five million? Or at least start the journey, because a big difference between my generation and your generation is the fact that when I started it, dude, there was no youtube channel on how to, how to start a podcast. There was one guy, pat flynn, who I had on my podcast two weeks ago and he was the reason why I started my show, whereas now, younger people have more access to information and then, as they kind of figure things out, they can get into a school group and so on and so forth. So that should take the pressure off you to carry that burden. And I know you don't have the burden, but that's what happens People. Sometimes they carry a burden because they're like well, we need to figure out a way to help people. So yeah, dude, you're already doing that.
Jun Yuh:I think I actually struggle with this a lot, being completely honest, because anytime that somebody asks for help and it could be literally anybody, it could be somebody that's wrong in the past I will get on a call with like no hesitation.
Jun Yuh:There's like a part to me where I think it could be a fault, I think where I can't necessarily help, that, where it's like I don't think about the number, I don't think about the fact. Sometimes it's strange, because when people announce the fact that I have 8 million people in my audience, it just sounds insane, because I was just at the Tokyo trip where I was the judge for Red Bull Baseball World Final and that had like 300 plus people, and that was insane amount of people that I felt like in one close room. So for me, when I look at somebody and I see that they're struggling, I can't get out of the fact that it's an individual that I can help, and so it makes me. But you're right. From a business perspective, though, it's really hard to scale that way when your time is so valuable and your effort could be poured into different initiatives that carry much leverage.
Darren Lee:Take a bit of this way just to kind of relieve the pressure for yourself, right, because you have an audience of eight million people and the reason why you can't articulate it is because it's actually very difficult to visualize it. Let me give you an analogy. If you hear someone got hit by a car, you're like jesus, that's like really difficult, and you it's visceral, you can see it, you can almost imitate it and it carries a lot of weight, whereas if you heard like a plane crashed, you can't imagine the 360 people, you can't do it. So that's how things, that's how numbers scale. Because humans weren't designed to have like 8 million followers. You know it wasn't. We weren't designed with those tools to be able to articulate that. Okay, but through your content, if someone is struggling, it's not about making money from the audience. So the reason why you're successful is because you've helped so much people, which is how you've accumulated 8 million followers. You didn't have that nature, that empathy nature in you, you wouldn't have got to that point. But having said that, if you want to be able to kind of solve this at scale, if someone's like, hey, man, I'm struggling with, you know, getting up early in the morning, it's like oh, I have a YouTube video from it's like here, here, here, because that's kind of what I do, is like, if someone's like, oh, I don't know how this works, I don't know how this works, I help people in that regard, whereas in my own example, I quit alcohol, it was like a big thing for me. It's really big in Ireland, big issue in Ireland alcohol. And I have a lot of young guys who would come to me and look for still fulfilling for me, instead of having to fly to ireland because, like, as what time goes on, you know you spend three days in this, in this room. This thing will only repeat, right, the intensity of what you do.
Darren Lee:And the reason I'm saying that about the constraint theory of time is because you know one day you have a family and then that will be the focus. And then if you're like not helping you know your family because you're on the phone with someone, like it's not congruent and it's to your highest point of value and daniel priestly really broke this down for me which is you have your origin story, you have your mission, which we've you know, which people know of. You have your mission and then you have your vision. So the vision is what you want to see differently in the world. So more people become creators, have more autonomy in their lives.
Darren Lee:The mission is how you actually help people to get there. So if you truly are about the mission, you will do something with an asymmetrical return, which is like a program content and so on. So that's actually how you enable that versus the one-to-one. I can only help six people in a day. Vibe right. No, absolutely. It's actually take the pressure off, because before we didn't have that Right, it wasn't available. Like this stuff wasn't available. I would say this wasn't available eight years ago. Sure, you know the level of content being made and the intention to help a specific user on a specific issue.
Jun Yuh:And it's beautiful too, because even with this passion project of our discipline, mentorship, where it's genuinely about can we get in people that want help, no matter what demographic, no matter what? We'll have a small entry fee of the $39 that we usually discount anyway, so it's like people that are just joining and in that it's like it's really cool to see their faces. It's really cool to actually put a face to the people that you potentially make an impact on, and that's one thing that I have a huge, huge plan for in regards to 2025, 2026, as we build out more and more projects like Crater College is like, I want to be in the weeds and see those individuals, whether it's events that we're doing, whether it's once in many things that we're doing virtual. But I definitely want to start seeing that, because I think it makes such a big difference when I see even eight people in a room versus, you know, eight million marker, because it's really hard to create the visual, as you told it, this visual perception of the impact and I hope that I can do more of it, because you do it much better where you're actually able to travel and see the people you speak to and all that stuff.
Jun Yuh:I've never been like that. I've always been somebody that is at my desk the majority of the day, that does my work and that's like all I can fixate on. But when I do go and I meet people and I go and see people, I look them eye to eye, they tell me their story. It makes like the greatest fire in me and I think that that might be why I keep falling into like the one-to-one thing, because I see it visually. I just hope that I can start to do one-to-many scale, but in person or something that's visually I'll underscore it do a mastermind?
Darren Lee:yeah, do a conference. I Do a mastermind. Yeah, do a conference. I'm running a mastermind next week probably, and you could do a conference. I'm speaking at a conference in June and the guys are looking at how they can get a bigger area to bring 250 people. And if you want to make sure people have access, you can do it for something relatively cheap, like $400 or $200 or whatnot, because I completely agree with you, you will realize the impact you make when you meet more people in person.
Darren Lee:And I've one of the best stories and most outrageous stories about this was we're working with an older gentleman in our media company. We've been building his podcast, monetizing his show, getting sponsorships, and last year we did like 350K for him. The year before we did like 150K, and we did a dinner in New York when I finished a podcast tour out and we did a dinner in new york when I finished a podcast tour and there's people all different ages 19, 25, 35, 21, 60. This guy was 60 and his wife came at the very end and she sat down. I mean, she was like you don't realize how much of an impact this has had for a family. We're now able to retire with the money and, I guess, taught like sponsorship just throw it on, literally, dude, I'm like, throw it on a show, throw it'm like, throw it on a show, throw it on a show, throw it on a show. But again there's users on the other side and then that was a big thing for me, which was like fuck, like we've enabled that, me, the team, everyone.
Darren Lee:So that's why, in person gives you that emotional connection, that you probably can't viscerally feel when you see the 8 million number on a screen. Yeah.
Jun Yuh:To be honest, the first time that I got a chance to experiment this was when I was in Tokyo, right when I was part of that Red Bull event. It was incredible because there were 40 different teams from 40 different countries and a lot of them knew my content. That was the strangest experience ever, when I was there and speaking to them about their business ideas and they're talking about how a particular piece of content in their past that I don't even remember creating by the way, they've told me things like hey, you remember your video, like a year ago, and you did X, y and Z thing. I was like, to be honest, I have no idea. I was probably incredibly sleep deprived during my exam season, but then again that made an impact on me and it starts to really create meaning behind the work.
Jun Yuh:And again, I think that goes back to our very first point of why creators tend to burn out. It's for all the different reasons that people initially think it's like oh, I'm afraid of what I look like on camera, I'm afraid of being cringy. All that stuff is not the reason why people struggle. It's exactly what you just said. They don't find meaning in the work because all of that meaning is derived solely from that individual and not from the actual person consuming the content. As it was beautiful that you said that, and that's something that hopes get more of like. I think that's incredible that you're doing it for 2050.
Darren Lee:I can't imagine what that was but think about how, when you, when you help someone, like you're doing right now, where they will be in three years, five years, nine years, that's the evolution, right? And it's like, yeah, you're helping people wake up and do a morning routine, but in two years' time they'll have left their job and now they're going to be helping their entire family. In five years' time, they could have built a new software company and that software company could have enabled 10,000 more people. Yeah, that's a good point. So it's a butterfly effect. It's a good point, the effect that you have right now, and that should be enough of a reason for people to get into this.
Darren Lee:Because I'll never forget, when I started my podcast, I was terrible. It was audio only, it was awful and I got a voice note from a guy, just like a random person, which is strange, and the person was like, oh, like I really related to, like your scenario, like how you felt, like I, I feel, like how you feel, and it's ironic because many years later, this guy has a sales training program and I was mentoring in the program. Like, five years later, it's interesting, right, because I'm not the reason why, but every piece of information, data, is a contributing factor to your current situation, and you said this earlier about the beliefs that you have. You start off with the beliefs being instilled with you, right? So, like you know, your parents' indoctrination, school, all those different things, but you need to find a way to put in more data.
Darren Lee:You know, and the biggest thing for me was like these interviews yeah you know, like the only way that we're having this conversation is because of this interview, right? Does that make sense? Yeah so it's. And it's not about like, okay, you know, I need right down this and I'm doing six more things. It's the small, nuanced things that accumulate to make the person better. Right? Someone's walking in the street, they hear something in their ear and then two years later they're like oh well, like actually I'd run my content like this and they won't even remember that it was from you.
Jun Yuh:Yeah, so that like that should be the motivating factor, though I have such a similar story that I think you'd love so when I I was first creating content and this was in that duration of time where I was just simply picking up my phone and literally recording in my car and posting it, and yeah, I got a few thousand views, which for me was amazing at that period of time. But I remember one of my friends in my freshman year of college. He had come back from holidays. He's based in California and he had mentioned that one of his friends in California had said something about how a creator was really helpful during a hard period of her life, in the sense where she was struggling with something and this creator reached out and had just a normal conversation with her. But it made a large impact. Who it was? And it was me.
Jun Yuh:And that was the first time I've ever been a quote unquote recognized by somebody that was outside of my inner circle, and that was the first time I ever saw that your impact goes way beyond what you can see. Your impact is so real. So when I first was doing my contact and somebody would DM me with something that they were struggling with, as a normal human behavior I would just respond. I would say stuff along the lines of hey, are you doing okay? Like, can I check in on you, like things of that nature, like we would do with each other.
Jun Yuh:Right After this, I'm going to go and message you in probably two weeks and say I hope that you're doing well. Like simple things like that, right, and I had no idea how much of an impact that was making on that individual at all, I didn't even to more people. I think you would ignite a lot more people to start creating content, because it's again completely separate from the idea of hey, what can it do for you to what can it do for other people, and I think it's just so much more powerful when viewed with that perspective. So I appreciate you sharing that story because I think there's a lot of conflict between that.
Darren Lee:I'm curious to find out about what piece of content did you think was just, you know, average, you know wasn't even bothered putting it up like, oh, it's such an effort, and then it had such a big impact for someone who messaged you, so I. And then it had such a big impact for someone someone messaged you so I remember distinctly a very early on podcast I had. I was like god, that was all over the place and then I came off published it and that was a feedback I got from people being like oh my god, that really helped me. Right, because what you perceive to be valuable may not be valuable and, on the flip side, something you might throw up randomly ignites that within people. And the reason I'm saying this is because it's all contextual. You don't need to have 8 million followers, you don't need to have a podcast, it can just be those throwaway statements, right?
Jun Yuh:It's such an awesome question and I think it does play to the idea of, again, people assume what quality is. I always used to do that, but in reality it's the idea of how does the audience view it, and you do more of that. So I bet that one piece of content that you had no idea would perform well and you got that message. You're like, ah, there's something in here that I can double down on because it actually does make an impact. Right, you probably learned how to best optimize that content, so we've got more viewership, et cetera, but the core idea was the same. It was like you had no idea, based on your assumption of quality, that that would actually perform well. The reception of it was that it was really good. That means that there's something in that medium between your assumption of quality and what they felt was quality that is easily packageable so that you can create content consistently right. So I always think about that. It's like and, to your point, I remember my exact video that you talked about. I remember exactly what sweatshirt I was wearing. I was wearing a gray sweatshirt that represented my high school.
Jun Yuh:I was in my car and I had gone from reading the Bible and I shared a message and it was all about Philippians 4.13. I could do all things through Christ, who strengthens me, and I was talking about how that was such a misquoted verse in the Bible. And I was talking about how it's not necessarily like taking a lamp and rubbing it like it's a genie and asking for wishes right, like I was talking about from the fact that, in the context of that verse and everything to do with having content during any hardship of your life, right, like Paul was writing that in jail and he was telling everyone that I'm good, like I'm good, I'm content because I know God's got my back. That's what Philippians 4.30 was about. So I was inspired to just say that on camera, like I just pulled out my phone and I just looked horrible, I just did it. And then I saw the messages and response and I was like whoa, there's something, there is like there's actually meaning.
Jun Yuh:When you could present a message that hits home for your audience and I think, to your point, if you could start to, to your very first point, evaluate on that, right, and you iterate and do that better, right. So then I started to realize, all right, these simple messages work well because the pain points are addressed, and that is what quality is for me. But as I learn more, better content, then I can actually produce it in a manner that's even more effective. Right, because you have more data like that. You've said it, so it's really cool to hear you say this, because I think we come from very different backgrounds, but the way that we view content, I think, allows us to be successful. It's selfless, it's with a vision in mind and it's an understanding that qualities derive from the audience's perspective, which is really cool.
Darren Lee:How do you or do you recycle ideas? Because, like that idea now, that's amazing, right, and when you did it in your phone in your room and it got like 10,000 views, it's fine. But you could redo that idea now with a new YouTube video and a new thumbnail and new title.
Jun Yuh:Yeah. So this is where I always talk about idea generation. I'm telling you, people shoot themselves in the foot all the time when they say things along the lines of this is my next YouTube video idea. I say no, like, just think about the idea. Like, think about the idea in its basic format and how it could potentially be a message that can be presented to the world. Once you do that, then think about format and stop. Then the repurposing becomes so easy, right? So what I end up doing is I have a idea and I test it in the low friction standpoints because it still is data, right? So let's say that I got some messages about how students are struggling with procrastination, right, but I don't know if that's like an overarching struggle that my entire audience will experience. So what do I do? Well, I need something low effort because I'm busy.
Jun Yuh:So I posted a story of like a simple poll and survey and said hey, are you struggling with procrastination? A little bit more detailed, obviously, package it in a better way, but the idea was simple, right? So that idea was still the idea of procrastination may be the issue at hand. Could I package that better? Sure, but then, after the results were shown. I saw that the story had a lot of engagement. The viewership was higher than normal. The amount of people that were DMing me were a lot higher. That's new data that I then package in a different format so that, yes, it's so much easier to repurpose that into a YouTube video, into a reel, into a TikTok, because each of those formats are better for each individual respective audience, right, and what they're thinking when they're consuming that content on that particular channel. And when you get really good at content, it just becomes subconscious to you. But that's the idea it's like don't ever, ever say this is a real idea or this is a YouTube idea. Ideas that they're good should resonate with an audience blank period. It's up to you to then actually structure it appropriately per platform.
Jun Yuh:But if you have these low friction areas of your content that you can start to release, where you don't have to overcomplicate it, right, like I could have totally spent like six hours on creating a reel about procrastination, making this perfect thing, and I could potentially get the result that people don't really care about procrastination. I'm like, oh man, I just spent six hours. Or I could post a story, figure that exact same idea, do a multiple, do the series of stories, then post a reel about it, then do a YouTube video about it. But I love the way that you're thinking about it. It's like if you see success, double down on it because the idea is good, like the messaging will carry through.
Jun Yuh:So I love the way of repurposing idea. I think there's other ways that you can be considered. You can literally just repost content, especially the short form realm, not so much the long form realm, but the idea is like I always give my videos two months before I repost the video because it gives a new life while not feeling redundant. There are like small things that you can do like that, but repurposing is huge to your point, and that's how I view it.
Darren Lee:From a systematic perspective, do you do anything in terms of an overarching long form piece of content that then feeds the other aspects? Because in a writing context, people will write, let's say, a newsletter, and those newsletters could become LinkedIn posts, they could be a thread, they could be tweets individually, or you could have like a long form podcast or individual video, and they become subsections. So let's give an example. If it's how to improve productivity, first step could be like environment design, environment elimination. The next step, then, could be like nutrition. It could be like you know your nutrition influences it, and then like your rest and recovery. So there are three subsections which sit on top of productivity, but they will enable you to produce more content, if you want. We're going for a volume. So how do you think about that in terms of the success of it as well as the system that's built within it?
Jun Yuh:It's a really good point and, to be honest, I think about it again from that creator vision standpoint. So all of my ideas are generated based on those very bottom branches as my genuine own ideas, right, so it's the idea of, like I look at any one of those pillars and if I was to even focus on, let's say, the monetization one, because people always worry about, like, how do you create content about building a business and how does it look like when you build a business in public, what does that even mean, right? So when I think about the different branches and monetization, I think about all, right, I probably have some form of one-off offer. I got something that's going to be a lot easier for people to attain the market. It's easy for me to test on, right? What I could do that is create content about the struggles experienced with creating that type of offer when I've never done it before. That's exactly what I did with my first product, the Guide to Academic Success.
Jun Yuh:It was a literal PDF, but I created content on my stories, even about how, the fact that there's so much issues regarding students and their grades, how can you potentially improve upon that?
Jun Yuh:So I would do different story polls and things about what students were struggling with, and so even stories became where I first started to kind of test out material. So that's one area. But I tested that with carousels, I've tested that with even reels, I've tested it out with TikToks, I've tested out with even lives. Like I go on live sometimes and I'll just say a topic idea and receive questions about it and if it does well, then I'm like cool, maybe we can recycle that for a different piece of content. So I actually don't think I have like a particular format that I start with. I simply start with my creative vision, all the different ideas that are generated from there, and I've gotten so good at understanding the format and style so I think, all right, the stories would probably be good for this reason, but real would be good for this reason, and it's going to take the x amount of time.
Darren Lee:Let me put that on my schedule the way that that explains to me is that it sounds like your stories are almost like a comedy dive bear and you're going to that dive bear to show out different ideas and then see like what literally the the world says back to you yeah, some there. Then you can build upon it and that's how some of the best comedy shows are built. Yeah, so six months, 12 months in the trenches man, I want to say a massive thank you, absolutely. I could have done this for an hour, four hours, I would think.
Jun Yuh:I wish we could. I was trying to be your top record breaker. I was trying to get to three hours and 31 minutes.
Darren Lee:We'll do it. We'll do another one in my studio in Bali. Awesome, sounds good.