Week one is an audit, and two formats are never up for testing

The first week is immersion. The current state of things. Usually I come in to build systems, processes and teams, so it is about who the people are, what everything costs, where the weak points are, where money can be saved, which tools are in use, what the output looks like, and what has been tried before and how.

Then, most importantly, I sit down with the founder and understand why they are doing this. A personal brand at the scale I work at is very expensive: hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. So: why, what they want from it, what their commitment looks like, and the runway and expectations.

What can move fast, and what cannot?

Processes and output move fast. Getting to two to three a day is easy. What takes time is the why, the enemy, the moat, and then the formats. Formats are iterative: shoot every week, film a new format based on outliers in similar niches, deploy it quickly through trial reels and feed posts, keep the winners, refine them, and keep testing new ones.

Which formats never get tested?

A podcast clip daily and a selfie clip daily. The selfie video is a low barrier to entry, cuts through, and does not feel like being sold to. The podcast is authoritative middle of funnel. Everything else changes with the platforms, because social media is a game where the goalposts move every day.