SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

?? Main Topic: How Tom Got 656,000 Views on a Video
Tom shares how he achieved 656,000 views on a short TikTok video by using a technique called "stacking hooks." He emphasizes that while he doesn’t consider himself a social media star, using proper attention-grabbing techniques can dramatically improve a video's performance.
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?? Key Points:
? What Is a Hook?
A hook grabs attention in the first 1–2 seconds of a video. Without it, users scroll past — and retention drops.
?? The 4 Types of Hooks Tom Used ("Hook Stacking"):
1. Visual Hook: Something eye-catching (in his case, his face, but you could use visual effects).
2. Audio Hook: A compelling opening line — his was:
"I couldn’t stop the money coming to my checking account if I tried."
3. On-Screen Text Hook: Same line appears above and below him so it’s seen even with sound off.
4. Caption Hook: Video caption includes:
o The main keyword: residual income
o The same hook phrase
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?? Video Performance:
• Views: 656,000
• Likes: 22.3K
• Comments: 663
• Shares: 11.7K
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?? Why This Works:
• Retention is key to going viral: platforms boost videos with high watch percentages.
• Multiple hooks increase chances that any type of user (with or without audio) will get pulled in.
• Keywords in captions help with discoverability.
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?? Educational Offers:
• Free automation e-book: screwthecommute.com/automatefree
• Mentor Program (1-on-1 digital marketing training): GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com
• Licensed Online Marketing School: IMTCVA.org
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?? Fun Fact:
Tom jokes that he used to be a real-life "hooker" — his summer job at a U.S. steel plant had the official title of “Hooker,” attaching cranes to steel beams.
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?? Final Tip:
To see the video and example hooks, visit the link in the show notes and pause the video to observe each technique.

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Episode 1017 – 656 Thousand Views
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1017 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to get 656,000 views on a video. Okay, that's what I did on one of my videos and I will tell you, break it down to show you how that happened. All right. Hope you didn't miss episode 1016. That was called in-camera editing. That's when you shoot a video. Everything is in the camera, and by the time you're done shooting, it's done. Ready to distribute. So that's episode 1016. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was 1016. Pick up a copy of my automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Pick up version 3.0. In case you're just checking in lately, we've for a month we've had a episode or a version 3.0 instead of 2.0. So if you got 2.0 before trade it in, just go screwthecommute.com/automatefree and download the new one. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com. The longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. And I triple dog dare anybody to put their program up against mine. And they won't do it because they'd be embarrassed. And also check out my unique school IMTCVA.org. It's the only licensed dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world certified to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's distance learning.

[00:02:06] So check it out and save yourself a couple hundred thousand dollars of getting a worthless degree and then competing for jobs at Starbucks. All right, okie doke. Let's talk about this episode. Now, I don't claim to be any kind of some social media star. In fact, you've probably heard me claim that I don't even look that great on social media, even though I make a fortune online because I get people the heck off of there. Onto an email list is where I make the bulk of the money, which most people at my level do. But you can make money with lots and lots of views, and you can make brand deals and all kinds of good things like that. But today I'm just going to talk to you about the mechanism I use to get a viral video. So if you follow the directions that I give you here, I can't guarantee you'll go viral, but I can guarantee that you'll probably see that you'll do better than you. I was going to say probably, if I'm guaranteed, you'll probably do better with your videos and you'll increase your chances of actually going viral with it. All right. So the mechanism I'm going to talk about today is called stacking hooks. Now you may have heard the term hook. And that means you have to grab somebody in the first like 1 to 2 seconds in various ways, which I'll talk about the 3 or 4 hooks that I use to go viral on this one video.

[00:03:35] But that's what a hook is. You got to grab them right in the beginning. There's plenty of training out there on creating hooks, and you know how that works. Now the video I'm talking about, I'm going to give you a link to it in the show notes. Got so far as 656,000 views 22.3 thousand likes 663 63 comments and 11.7 thousand shares. So that's spread my name around quite a bit. This was on TikTok by the way. All right. So that's the the video. You can see it's very short I think it's about 35 40s roughly. And it's about residual income. So in that video there's or anytime you want to do a video if you can think about four main types of hooks. First you got a visual, you got an audio, you got on screen text and you got captions. So let's talk about that. So the visual is something. In my case it was just my ugly face was the visual. So that really wasn't I got a I got to assume that was not the hook. I mean, uh, you know, my big fat face was right in the the center of the video. But you might have some kind of other interesting thing you can show. I know I'm working on some fancy video editing stuff where I can snap my fingers and make money disappear or appear and just, you know, I can jump up and land in a coffee cup. There's a lot of visual effects you can use for hooks.

[00:05:18] That's the visual part of it. So next you have an audio hook. This is what you say in the beginning. It could be a provocative question. I happen to say, and this is one I've used to get major publicity on podcasts, radio, TV all over the world. And here's my hook. I couldn't stop the money coming to my checking account if I tried. And that sounds like b.s., I agree, but I've been on television with that, and the producer was almost not going to let me on thinking that I'm just full of it until I explained to her How it actually works, and she's almost ready to quit her producer job and go do what I'm telling her, right? So I use that as the hook, and then I explained how that works. All right. So that's you'll see this if you go to the link in the show notes. Okay. So that's an audio hook. But here's the thing. What you really have to keep in mind is most people scroll with the audio off. So no matter what you say, if the audio is off, there isn't going to be a hook. All right. You should have it just in case their audio is on which a lot of people do scroll with audio on, but you can't count on that. So that's where we come into on screen text. In this case you will see in the beginning of the video there's two. There's actually double exactly what I'm saying in my audio hook.

[00:06:53] You see it below me and you see it above me. The same text. So no matter where they look, they're seeing that text, even if their sound is off. So that's on screen text. And then the last one to pay attention to is your caption. So in my case, I put a keyword, the main keyword I was concentrating on in that video, which was residual income. And then I repeated my hook. I couldn't stop the money coming, check it count if I tried. So that was there in audio. It was two times on the screen as text and it was in the caption. All right. So it was hook, hook hook hook. All right. Plus keyword. So there's lots of other things you can do to hook people. But you know, if you don't master this, nothing else you do in the video matters because they will not see it. And one of the main and most important things on earth for your video to go viral or to get lots of views is what we call retention. So the the platform that you're on, all of them do it. If people are watching 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 some percent of your video, then the platform shows it to more people, either your followers or just to general people that aren't even your followers so that they can become followers. So you don't get to that point of retention unless you hook them in the start to get them to watch. So if if they scroll and watch three seconds and you haven't hooked them, then you have like a almost, you know, 4 or 5% retention rate.

[00:08:43] That's the end of it. Nobody's going to see any any of it ever. Okay. So you got to pay attention to the hook. And then I suggest you look at other ways to increase retention, and I've got tricks to teach you on that too. Again, I don't claim to be a super expert and have millions of views on everything I do, but 650,000 is not bad. 40,000 is not bad. I have another 144,000 views. And using these kinds of simple techniques, if you just think, think it through of the way people are using their cell phones. And I mean, it's almost always on cell phones and tablets when they're scrolling, it's hardly ever on desktop, but you got to think about hooking them. And there's a, you know, you have to be a hooker. In fact, this is actually true. One of my few jobs on earth was a college summer job where I worked at U.S. steel plant in Homestead, up outside of Pittsburgh, and I was actually my job. Class number five was called a hooker, So I was a I started my career as a hooker in Pittsburgh. And that's the absolute truth. So I would hook the overhead cranes onto these big I-beams with these chains and stuff. So I was a hooker in Pittsburgh. So anyway, make sure you take a peek at the link in the show notes when you get somewhere where you can look at it and you'll see what I'm talking about, and you stop it, just pause it and say, oh, okay, there's his on screen text.

[00:10:20] Then turn the volume on. You say, oh, he's saying the same thing. And then look at the caption which is saying the same thing plus a keyword, my main keyword, and you'll see 656,000 views in climbing. So anyway, that's how you get 656,000 views. Maybe you'll get a million. Who knows? These short form videos can really go crazy on you. And this, like I said, was TikTok, which is considered a short form video. You also have YouTube shorts. You got reels. Stories, all kinds of stuff like that. So. So check it out. And also check out my mentor program where we teach you all of this stuff. One on one. And we'll evaluate your hooks and your your retention and show you how to shoot video and show you how to do email marketing and all this stuff one on one. So it's the longest running, most unique ever program in internet and digital marketing because nobody at my level even talked to you, let alone teach you anything. So so check it out at GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And then think about my school for yourself or or your loved ones and save them a couple hundred grand and and actually get a skill that's in super high demand by going to my school IMTCVA.org and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.