The Tequila Challenge Setup – Why The Rock Outearns Wrestling Legends

Max: Why is The Rock a billionaire while someone like John Cena or The Hulk isn’t, even though they all started their career the same way and were all equally famous? Well, the answer lies in what The Rock does on his Instagram and TikTok, and I’m going to show you what that is.

By the way, throughout this video here, in honor of The Rock’s billion-dollar tequila brand, I’m going to take a tequila shot for every single mistake I make in this video, and we’ll see how I end up by the time we’re done. Let me get up a little bit just to walk it off. Ah!

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – ex-wrestler, then actor, now entrepreneur, social media influencer that’s frequently going viral with content. But what really sets him apart is not as impressive… Yeah, there we go, cheers! I usually don’t drink, so this is going to hit me really, really hard. I think the last time I drank hard liquor was 2021 when I saw The Rolling Stones live in London.

The Psychology of Viral Content – Four Principles That Hook Audiences

Max: But what really sets The Rock apart is not his impressive physique, also not his acting skills, but he’s actually adhering to four psychological principles across his Instagram and TikTok that makes people, including me, love his content. And you can steal these four psychological principles yourself to kind of brainwash your audience and therefore grow your brand and go viral without having to be a Hollywood superstar like The Rock.

So have a look at the first three seconds of this viral TikTok: “The real, the real, the real, really, the real, The Rock!” Damn, are these double-shot glasses? That’s not a regular shot, right?

So have a look at the first three seconds of this viral TikTok that The Rock posted: “This kid challenged The Rock to rock paper scissors.” Now look at this one: “POV: Your Target order gets delivered by The Rock.”

You notice what these two intros have in common? It’s a social dynamic marketing term that I call “staking.” You’re establishing the stakes in the first three seconds, and that makes people want to watch till the end. So for example, it’s not just The Rock playing rock paper scissors against someone else – it’s like someone challenges The Rock. Well, I want to know what happens and who wins. Or “POV: Your Target order gets delivered by The Rock” – oh wow, I want to see what happens, I want to see people’s reaction.

I mean, you can see this live in action with this video right now. That’s why I have this bottle of tequila here. I hope I don’t get demonetized, but you want to see if Max gets drunk, if at all.

So anyways, the way you can implement this staking in your own content is like this: Whenever you’re creating content, try to think, “Can I add stakes into that?” Instead of saying “Three red flags that you can see in potential women that you’re dating,” you can say “The top three worst red flags you can see in a woman, starting with number three.” That’s in and of itself a little bit of a mini stake.

Why is this so key? Because one of the most important indicators of whether your content will go viral or not in the eyes of the algorithm is watch time. If you have an average watch time of 70% of your reel, the algorithm will say “70% people are not interested, it’s not good enough.” If you have an above 100% watch time, meaning the average viewer watches your reel more than once, that is where you have a very, very short freeway to going viral.

The Relatability Factor – How Superstars Stay Human

Max: Now this is a pretty common psychological trigger many viral content creators are using, but there’s actually one that’s pretty specific for The Rock himself, something he absolutely excels in. And you can ask yourself that too, by the way: What’s the number one problem with very famous superstars when it comes to being on social media? Relatability, right? Like, these people live in mansions, they make millions of dollars a year, they don’t have the problems us common folk have, right?

So here’s what The Rock does so extremely well to counteract that and boost his brand. Let me show you this reel here that got a whopping 61 million views, and let’s see if you can guess what it is:

“Dad! Dad, you’re all good! Wow, guys, thank you so much!”

There’s no crazy video editing, there’s no text, no headline, no jump cuts, only… much… There you go, cheers! I swear to God, I literally already feel it. I’m recording this in the morning too, it’s like 11:00 AM. What was I going to say?

Only one much more important thing, and that is relatability. So you got to understand that when parents watch this video of The Rock playing with his daughters, all mommies and daddies are going to relate to this. They’re going to share with their partners, share it with their aunt, with their sister, with their kids, with themselves, with each other. They will share this because they can relate to us, and that racks up the sharing metric on The Rock’s social media, and it racks up views like this.

Now, a huge part of social dynamic marketing is a concept I call “the viral tree.” Remember, relatability leads to sharability, which is at the tree stem of our viral tree, from which all viral content grows, so to speak. So whether you want to do educational value viral content… what am I saying? Remember, relatability leads to sharability, which is kind of like the tree stem of our viral tree. Whether you want to do educational viral content or humorous viral content, whatever it is…

And all, by the way, there’s a simple example of sharability through relatability. Have a look at this: How many business owners do you think will relate to this, whether they hear their spouse having a cute but not really economically viable business idea, or whether they are the spouse? A lot of people are going to share that, which racks up views for me.

So as a little action step for you, ask yourself: What are some situations that your viewers find themselves in their daily lives, right? How can you address those? Maybe you can film yourself in a situation like that, or you can create a simpler text version like this one here, for example, in case you don’t want to show your face.

The KISS Formula and Subtle Selling Mastery

Max: So if you look at such viral content, one huge advantage for us regular folks becomes very, very clear: Viral videos are usually very simple to make. You probably heard the KISS formula – you know, “Keep It Simple, Stupid” – coined by Kelly Johnson, an engineer at Lockheed Martin. Thank God I got that name right, so I don’t have to drink anything.

That’s exactly what you can learn from a lot, quite a lot, from The Rock’s viral content, like this one here, for example, with 88 million views. There’s been a trend lately, in fact, where people are being sold on “Edit your videos so your videos perform better,” when in reality, the editing doesn’t matter. Okay? What matters is the content.

So you can write this down: You can’t compensate for lack of creativity with editing. It’s the modern-day equivalent of the easy diet pills – sounds good, doesn’t work. Look, keep it simple. If you want your TikToks and Instagram reels to perform and your brand to grow, then make sure you’re prioritizing relatability, humor, quality of advice, hell, even your charisma if you have it, over complicated editing in your videos.

The Rock posts simple but interesting content like this all the time, right? He even sets up that expectations in his expectation… Why does it say expectations? I don’t know. Cheers to that! Let me get up a little bit just to walk it off.

The Rock even sets up these expectations in his Instagram bio, right? Even though he probably has an epically paid social media editing team, he still just posts simple but relatable videos like his “Smell what The Rock is cooking” cheat meal videos. They’re super famous if you look at them: “Good morning! Smell what The Rock is cooking! Smell what The Rock is cooking!”

So action item for you: A trick to create simple content is asking yourself, “What does your brand stand for?” Right? You should have at least three things you want to be standing for, just like he stands for, you know, fatherhood, entrepreneurship, right, building things, tequila, cheat meals. My brand, for example, stands definitely not for drinking. It stands for freedom, lifestyle, nerd stuff, health, business content. So I always make sure that most of my simple content revolves around that, right?

And by the way, with that, don’t limit yourself to the things that you teach or that you offer, right? Like, just show some personality beyond you being an XYZ coach, all right?

By the way, you noticed anything in the previous video? And this has brought away the biggest takeaway that you can get from here today, and it’s how to monetize your content so only the subconscious of your viewer registers it. I call this “subtle selling,” which is another powerful social dynamic marketing tool.

So look, The Rock often positions the things he’s selling somewhere in the background or somewhere in the video, so you don’t always have to be all direct with the products that you’re selling, whether that’s your own product or you’re affiliate marketing someone else’s product. So sometimes it’s absolutely enough to just show the product in the background or mention it in a byway manner, and people will either Google the product out of curiosity…

“Have some great burger meat here. You got a big weekend planned?” “I’m making tacos.” “You’re making tacos? Taco night tonight?” “Well, may I put this in your trunk?” “My back seat.” “Back seat, you got it.”

Oh, I wonder what The Rock is giving out here? Or they’ll just recognize it subconsciously whenever they see it again from an ad. That, in combination with the relatability that we talked about earlier, right, that makes us have no problem with giving The Rock – literally assumed to be a billionaire – our money, because we don’t see him as the rich business owner. We see him as a human being, as the friendly guy next door, and that’s why his brand is so powerful, right?

The Third Wave of Wealth – Personal Branding as Survival

Max: But wait, hold on a second. By the way, most important lesson saved for last – pay attention. You might have been thinking the entire time, “Why the hell is a Hollywood superstar like The Rock even bothered to be on social media and sell his own products?”

Well, if you look at what’s happening out there with our modern world economy, you’ll realize that having a personal brand is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s become a necessity. And even if you’re already a movie star, and especially if you’re just a regular person like you and I… Warren Buffett already realized that in the 1960s when he became a personal brand by starting his annual Berkshire Hathaway reports.

We’re in the third wave of wealth in modern history. Wave one: The rise of government-based wealth – people like Christopher Columbus. Columbus! Cheers to The Rock and Columbus, all right? People like Christopher Columbus – he partnered with the kings and queens of Europe to create his own wealth.

Then wave number two was the rise of corporations, right, in the late 1700s, 1800s. That’s people like Rockefeller, Carnegie. And then roughly, I would say like 2020 – my mentor says this a lot – we’ve entered the third wave of wealth, which is the rise of individuals, right? People like MrBeast, Alex Hormozi – they have what it takes to become billionaires simply through their personal brands.

So listen up: You either build your own personal brand, or you become extinct.

Now, I actually have a secret video where I break down the weird tricks that I stole from massive influencers like The Rock or MrBeast. I put the secret video for free over on my website. I didn’t post it on YouTube because I want to make sure only action-takers are going to watch it. So I’ll leave a link down in the description below. You can open it in a new tab to watch it next. It’s only 10 minutes long. See you soon!