Kasey Brown recently shared something that caught my attention: iShowSpeed touched down in Ghana for the first time and left with a passport offer. That story was wild on its own, but Kasey used it to make a sharper point about what actually builds a modern audience moat.

iShowSpeed landed in Ghana a few days ago. First time.

He left with a passport offer.

Kasey’s argument is simple and uncomfortable (in a good way): the advantage is not views, not impressions, not follower count. It is hours. As Kasey put it, those teenagers have spent more hours with Speed in the last month than most audiences spend with a founder in a year.

That framing changed how I think about personal branding and content strategy, especially for founders, executives, and consultants who want trust, not just reach.

The real moat is time, not distribution

When thousands of kids show up chanting someone’s sayings, wearing their merch, and crying at the sight of them, it is tempting to explain it with scale: huge platform, huge reach, huge hype.

Kasey’s point is that the deeper driver is exposure time.

Speed’s audience does not just see him. They sit with him. They watch 6-hour streams that include boredom, frustration, randomness, and joy. Nothing is edited into a perfect highlight reel. That much unfiltered time does something short content usually cannot:

It turns familiarity into relationship.
It turns entertainment into identity.
It turns attention into trust.

Trust is not built because the creator is always impressive. Trust is built because the audience has enough samples to predict how the creator thinks and reacts.

If your content is only highlights, people know your outputs.
If your content includes the process, people start to know you.

Why most founder personal branding stalls at a resume

Kasey contrasts long exposure with how many founders build a personal brand today: 45-second clips, polished carousels, and posts that feel optimized by committee (or by AI).

The result is often a lot of surface area and very little depth.

Think about your best potential buyer:

They might see 2-5 pieces of your content in a month.
Each piece might take 15-45 seconds to skim.
Total time with you might be under 5 minutes.

That is not enough time to create the feeling of knowing you, even if your ideas are strong.

In practice, it becomes a resume: impressive, skimmable, and easy to forget. A resume can earn you a meeting. It rarely makes you the obvious choice.

Steven Bartlett as the counter-example: long-form creates liquidity

Kasey name-checks Steven Bartlett for a reason. Bartlett’s podcast is long enough to create companionship. People do not just scroll past it. They spend 90 minutes with it, then do it again next week.

That repeated time creates what Kasey calls being liquid in options.

This is an underappreciated advantage of audience trust:

Deals come to you because the audience already believes in your taste.
Speaking fees rise because you feel lower-risk to book.
New offers work faster because the market already understands your worldview.

Meanwhile, a private Fortune 500 executive could be richer in net worth, but they often start from zero when they want a new opportunity outside their current role. No public presence means no stored trust.

Rich is good. Rich plus they already trust me is leverage.

The Hours Ladder: a practical model for building trust

If hours are the moat, you need a way to earn them without becoming a full-time streamer. Here is the model I use when applying Kasey’s idea.

1) Discovery content (seconds)

Short posts, clips, and carousels are still useful. They help people find you.

But treat them as the top of the funnel, not the whole funnel.

Goal: earn the next click.

2) Depth content (minutes)

This is where the relationship starts to form.

Examples:

A 6-10 minute video explaining one decision you made and why.
A detailed email that includes context, not just takeaways.
A case study post that shows tradeoffs and constraints.

Goal: let people see your thinking, not just your conclusions.

3) Immersion content (hours)

This is where Kasey’s moat lives.

Examples:

A weekly 45-90 minute podcast.
A live session where you workshop a problem in real time.
A long-form YouTube video that keeps the messy parts.
A recorded client call (with permission) that shows how you diagnose.

Goal: accumulate time together until you feel familiar.

The key insight: you do not need millions of followers to win with hours. You need the right people to spend enough time with you that hiring you feels obvious.

What to change if you want to build for hours

Kasey said he is changing one thing, not five: building for hours.

That constraint matters because most people respond to this idea by adding more content types, more platforms, more editing, more tools. That usually breaks consistency.

If you want to apply the lesson, pick one durable hour-building format and commit for 90 days.

Option A: One long-form pillar per week

Publish one 30-60 minute conversation, solo episode, or teardown.
Slice it into 3-7 small pieces for discovery.
Point everything back to the long-form.

Option B: Weekly live office hours

Same day, same time.
One theme per session.
Take real questions and think out loud.

This is the unfiltered part Kasey is leaning into: letting people watch you think.

Option C: A simple email that is not overly polished

Kasey mentions leaning into rawer content, even with imperfections. That is not laziness, it is a trust signal if the ideas are real.

A good rule: optimize for clarity, not gloss.

Measure what matters: hours, not vanity metrics

If you switch your scoreboard, your strategy changes.

Instead of only tracking:

likes
impressions
follower growth

Also track:

average watch time per video
total minutes watched per month
podcast downloads with completion rate (if available)
live attendance and repeat attendees
replies and DMs that reference something you said in long-form

Hours are harder to grow than impressions, but they compound differently. When someone has spent 10 hours with you, they often need less proof, fewer referrals, and fewer calls to decide.

The question Kasey leaves us with

Kasey closes with a challenge that is worth sitting with:

If your dream client binged everything you have ever posted, how many hours would they actually get with you?

And more importantly: is that enough time to make you the obvious choice?

If not, the fix is rarely another hack. It is a commitment to depth, repetition, and real time together.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Kasey Brown, when one of us dies, millions of stories die too • I help leaders tell their story, build brand, and leave legacy • Forbes 30 U 30 • ex - Stripe, Accenture Strategy, Goldman Sachs. View the original LinkedIn post →