Who Are You Talking To? The One-Person Rule for Business Content
By Armando J. Perez-Carreno · Featuring Jake Isham
I talked with brand strategist Jake Isham about why you should make videos for one real person instead of the algorithm, why a B2B business needs the right thousand views, and the cheap gear order that makes content look professional.
Before you post anything, answer one question. Who are you talking to? The honest answer is one real person on the other side of the screen who could become your customer. Jake Isham has built over a billion views of content for entrepreneurs, and he kept coming back to that single idea. You're talking to the one prospect watching the video. The algorithm is a side effect of getting that right.
In this episode, I talked with Jake Isham, a filmmaker turned brand strategist who runs a creative agency in Los Angeles. He grew up as an actor, then moved behind the camera and fell in love with it. He went through film school before he ever touched marketing. He told me 26-year-old Jake would have called the idea insane. Now he helps entrepreneurs build their personal brand through content, mostly top-of-funnel work, and he's worked with names like Grant Cardone, 5.11, and Callaway Golf along the way.
The part I want every small business owner to hear is the B2B math. You don't need a million views. You need the right thousand. Jake put numbers on it. If you have a thousand views and a tiny 0.1% conversion, that's one lead every thousand views, for free. And if you sell a $5,000 or $10,000 service, one sale is a big deal. Picture 600 people in a room with you. That's a lot of people. So when you post consistently and pull 50,000 views a month, even a handful of buyers puts you in business.
Jake's other belief is that almost every company is turning into a media company now, even the quiet ones. He was consulting with a CPA firm that's about to break a million followers on Instagram and is doing a full studio buildout. He pointed to a landscaping company that did over 15 billion views in a month and started selling a course on how to do social as a landscaper. Nothing about accounting or gardening is naturally cinematic. They learned the skill anyway. His framework for that is to be competent. Look at the thing, learn about it, then put in the reps. The repetition is where it clicks.
We talked a lot about controversy, because the clipping tools push you toward it. Jake's rule is to pick topics you'll defend. He has a buddy in the filmmaking space who hated on a new GoPro camera, with a sound argument that it was the same as a camera another company flopped a decade ago. He took a lot of heat, stood by his point, and GoPro themselves ended up commenting on the post offering to send him one. Jake stays out of politics and religion online because he doesn't care to fight there. But if you tell him quality is the only thing that matters, he'll fight you all day. Stand strong on the topics you want to discuss, and be willing to say "I was wrong" when you learn something new. People respect that more than doubling down on a bad take.
Consistency is the whole game, and Jake compares it to the gym. Going three or four times a week for 20 minutes beats one four-hour session. Posting works the same way. He coached a couple from 20,000 to nearly 100,000 followers in about three or four months. Their system was simple. Every Wednesday they get their son to school, sit at a whiteboard, come up with seven ideas, shoot all seven, edit, and schedule them out. One of those videos hit 50 million views. When something pops, Jake says repeat the formula and double down until it stops working. And stay on topic. Back in 2020 his dog went viral and he ended up with 200,000 followers who only wanted dog content. He didn't want to be a dog influencer.
One thing I loved was his take on originality, which he calls the Burger King model. McDonald's spends tens of millions finding the perfect location. Burger King spends nothing and parks right next to them. Do the same with content. Follow the structure of the people winning your niche until you have enough data to start your own testing. Most people want to iterate before they duplicate, and that's backwards. On gear, his order surprised people. Buy a microphone first, then a light (a softbox, please not a ring light), and worry about the camera last. He shoots this whole podcast with his iPhone as a webcam. Good audio and good light make a phone look professional. A $5,000 camera with bad audio still looks awful.
At the end of the day, content for a small business comes down to showing up consistently and talking to one real person who has the problem you solve. Answer the questions you already get asked. Block the time like a doctor's appointment. Start at a pace you can keep. Do that, and the right views will find you, and a few of them will turn into clients.