How Gregory O’Gallagher Used Video Content to Become an Internet Fitness Sensation

(The transcript is here…)

Yuri: Thanks for agreeing to speak with us, Greg. I wanted to talk to you about the importance of content in helping you build your online business. Over the last couple years you’ve really exploded online.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen Greg’s videos on YouTube or other places.

But before we get into all that, Greg, please tell our readers in your own words what your website is and who you help.

Defined Bodies, Balanced Life

Greg: My website is Kinobody.com and I teach men and women how to build a lean, chiseled Hollywood physique while enjoying life.

They don’t have to be obsessed with going to the gym six days a week, allowing them to have a balance in their life. I create content speaking to them, and I create workout programs around that model.

Yuri: What did life look like for you before you started your online business? Were you training clients?

Greg: Yes, I was doing personal training. I was young when I started, so I wasn’t charging a lot. I was charging $50 or $60 an hour. I trained four or five clients a day.

After about six months it wasn’t fun for me. I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t building something and I was trading my time for money.

I knew there was something I had to do that was bigger. I saw these people doing Internet marketing with online fitness blogs, and they were actually successful. I was like, “This is what I need to do.”

Yuri: For you, what was the dream? Instead of taking your business online and developing one-on-one coaching programs for people around the world, why did you decide to go into the information product route, and create what you’ve done with Kinobody?

Creating Info Products

Greg: That’s the model that I learned from Rusty Moore, who was my first mentor.

He was doing affiliate marketing and writing his own programs. I didn’t have a mentor that did online coaching so it made sense to follow Rusty’s model, and then also, it’s more scalable.

If you’re doing coaching, you get capped at a certain point. When your business builds up, it’s hard to put the effort into blogging, making videos, and working on improving your sales pages when you have to handle coaching clients. Unless you can create a system where it doesn’t take up much time.

Yuri: Yes, that’s the big problem. I think many wellness and fitness professionals come online because they want to enjoy the lifestyle that we have, which gives us time off to travel, and still allows us to impact a lot of people around the world – without being tied to creating programs or seeing people individually on a regular basis.

Helping More People Across the Globe

Greg: One of my buddies does very well with online coaching, but when we were in Vegas together, he had to wake up early to do his coaching stuff. He left the club at 1 a.m.

It was hard for him, though, to build his brand because when you’re spending six, seven hours a day on the computer or writing emails and all that, building the business is much harder.

Yuri: You’re now impacting far more people than you were one-on-one.

Greg: Oh yeah, beyond, it’s just ridiculous. Every night now when I go out to a bar or anywhere, there’s five or six people saying: “I’ve seen your videos,” or “You’re awesome.” It’s nuts.

Yuri: It’s pretty crazy.

Greg: I’m still getting used to that aspect.

Yuri: That’s awesome. When you were getting your business started, was there a period of time where you felt there was some type of fear or frustration or a moment of insight that was like, “I don’t think I can push through this,” or, “This is holding me back”? Was there something that got in your way initially that you were able to overcome?

Greg: It was funny. It all felt so new and fresh to me. I was young when I was building my business. I was 19 so I didn’t have any stresses. I wasn’t like, “Oh my God, I have to get to 5 grand a month very fast.”

I had no stresses. I was having a lot of fun with it. It was exciting to me. I wasn’t focused on the big goals at the time. Instead, I was would think: “You know what, let’s get to a hundred visitors a day on my blog,”or, “Let’s try to get one affiliate sale this week.” And it started to happen. I had small goals so it happened pretty fast.

Then I got more excited and I started to go a little bit further with my goal setting.

Small, Sustainable Goals Build Over Time

I learned about Facebook pages. I liked the idea being able to put out a video or a blog and people reading it, and seeing the comments I received.

I never had that pressure of wanting to get a million subscribers in six months or anything like that. I was reasonable.

There weren’t any huge challenges. Although, the challenge for me at the time was I was focusing on blogging in the beginning.

I was figuring things like how to get my posts to rank on Google. You have to do this whole game where you build one article and you do six more articles linking back to each other, and you have to do all this research.

That was the big challenge for me. I hated doing it, but I did it enough so that my site got good traffic and I started blogging about what I really wanted to talk about.

And then I realized if I created videos, I could take a blog that would take me four or five hours to write and I could just flesh it out in a video that would take me 20 minutes to film.

That’s when I decided to focus on videos. Over time, I got better, and when I started posting videos with good titles frequently on YouTube, I started to gain momentum.

Some of these videos would get 50, 60, 80,000 views, 100,000-plus, especially the ones really speaking towards intermittent fasting and getting to a low body fat.

And I was like, “This is way easier than blogging.”

So, I kept going with that model.

Publishing Content in Different Outlets

One of the things that worked well for me was getting a double or triple bang for my efforts. If I was put a lot of thought into a video, we would create a blog post or article from the video, and then create a podcast from it, too.

If it takes you a lot of time to create one piece of content, it’s going to be a lot faster to also create the other two.

Yuri: It’s smart.

Video has risen to the top of the totem pole in terms of leverage, because you can always go from video to podcast to an article. It’s smart. I know one of the biggest problems our fellow health and fitness entrepreneurs have is coming up with content, and having the time to spend creating it.

Believe me, Greg and I are the same. We’re not big writers. We’d much rather do video. There’s definitely ways you can automate the process as Greg has shown.

Greg, for you, why content? Why has content been so powerful for your business?

Don’t Worry About Perfection

Greg: Before I answer that question, I want to add one quick thing.

Some people are really skeptical about video, because they don’t have a film team to create their videos or they don’t have an expensive camera.

When I was blowing up on YouTube, a lot of my videos were shot on my iPhone.

People have no idea what you’re using to create your videos.

Why is content marketing so important to building successful an online brand? I think one of the biggest reasons is because for the last five years, the internet business has changed where people are more skeptical. They’re less likely to open their wallet.

There are a lot of people who are – I don’t want to say scamming people – but they’re ripping people off a bit online.

It’s About Building Relationships

People have to know you, like you, and trust you first. When you share your content, that gives people a chance to read it, understand it, see what they think about it, and put it to the test.

If your free content is working well for them, and they start to follow it, then they’re going to want to buy your full program.

Most people are not going to buy from you  as soon as they discover you. They might be reading for a couple weeks. They might go into one of your funnels where you follow up with them, and then maybe after a week or two, then they’re ready to buy.

But if you don’t have content, they’re buying off with no knowledge of you – like a sales page which is a little bit vapid, just going for the sale.

I think content is huge. And then the more people listen to you, whether it’s on a podcast or on a video or an article, the more attached they get to you. The more they feel like they know you, your product offers become much more powerful.

Content is free marketing. It costs a lot of money to advertise online. If you can get some views and build an audience with free content, that’s the best way to go.

Struggling with Newfound Celebrity

Yuri: I couldn’t agree more. As you mentioned before, people notice you all over the place. It’s not that we’re in this game to become celebrities, but there is a level of celebrity status that’s achieved when you’re putting your content out there.

Whether it be on Youtube, Facebook or Instagram, we’re in a day and age that the Hollywood celebrities are becoming less of a big deal. Now, personalities online like yourself and other people in our space, are becoming the new age celebrities – which is inspiring to anyone else who wants to do what we’re doing.

Greg: There are people who aren’t watching TV and movies as much anymore. They’re watching YouTube. It’s weird to me. Now, I think movies and TVs are awesome. But no, they watch YouTube.

They’re more excited about some Instagram or YouTube stars that they follow.

I never expected to get the reaction I get when I bump into some people. Some people are like, “I love your stuff.” But other people react with,”Holy cow. Oh my God, is that you?”

Yuri: The real Greg O’Gallagher!

Greg: Wow, I didn’t think it would be like that for people that do YouTube fitness content.

Yuri: There are a lot of people in the fitness and wellness space creating content, but there’s plenty of opportunity and room for everyone as long as they carve out their space.

What one piece of advice would you give to a health or fitness professional coming online, looking to build their brand and presence to help more people?

Find Your Voice

Greg: Really find a strong central theme that fits with you. People like that consistency.

If you’re too all over the place, if you’re talking about being a vegan one month and then paleo, and then doing this type of fitness and constantly switching gears and changing, people don’t trust that.

That’s one of the things I’ve done well. I’ve been very clear what my approach is over the past three or four years.

People trust that and they buy into that.

Otherwise you’re going online just to have the same message as everyone else. What’s the point? If you’re going to say the same thing as someone else – unless you make it unique from your own voice – what are you offering people?

Really focus on that, and then find the content setup that best works with you.

If you’re great on video, then really focus on video. Experiment with the content that works and then experiment with the way you shoot and create your videos.

Some people might want to do a video with a camera set up a few feet away, and stand and talk to the camera. Others might want to hold the camera in front of them and talk to it up close one-on-one. Or you might want to go really over the top with some other technique.

Have Fun with It

Find your style of writing. For example, one of the challenges of my business was I was trying to write two articles a week. Because I don’t love writing it just didn’t happen.

But doing two videos a week was fun. It was easy for me.

If you find your theme and really focus in on it, then find the style that best works with you to do content, those two forces together create a powerful message.

Eventually you want to get into split testing and making sure if you’re doing sales pages that it’s all converting to its absolute best.

Putting in the effort there matters because if you send thousands of people to the sales page, a little improvement can make a huge difference.

Yuri: You’ve offered us several important nuggets of information. That’s great.

Picking up on one of the most important things you said was taking that stance, that position on whatever it is.

Having a Stance Sets You Apart

For example, some people say intermittent fasting is amazing, other people say that it’s terrible for you. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever it is for you, state your claim and be that person that really stands out. That’s great advice there.

And split testing the conversion rates on your offer pages, and focusing on what you’re great at doing in terms of your content, that’s also awesome advice.

If you’ve enjoyed this interview, check out kinobody.com to learn more about what Greg is up to.

If you’ve enjoyed this, please share it with your friends. Let’s get this message out to more people so that you, the health and business professional, can make an impact in this world by sharing your gift, your message, and your awesomeness.