Josh Watkins

A lot of what looks like a content problem is really a leadership problem.

There are people making things, usually capable ones, and nobody senior deciding what gets made or holding a standard. The founder fills the gap until they can’t. Not always, though. Sometimes the product, the offer or the distribution is the real issue, and part of the job is saying so.

I’ve spent six years in content strategy, worked with more than a hundred creators, and contributed to content that has generated billions of views, across YouTube, short form, X and the rest. Much of it in finance, trading and investing education, which is a harder place to make content than people assume. The compliance constraints are real, the audience is sceptical by default, and a lot of standard growth tactics don’t work with a regulated product.

Most of my working weeks have gone on decisions like these: which ideas on a long list are worth making, what a title promises and whether the video keeps that promise, what a thumbnail needs to show, where an edit loses people and what to cut, and who to hire and how to brief them. I’ve made those calls across YouTube, short form, X and Instagram, and directed the creative teams carrying them out.

Finance is my specialism, not a limit. What Viral Concept does is help people build media companies: creators who have outgrown doing it alone, personal brands ready for a team behind them, and business owners who want an audience of their own. The work is the same in each case. Decide what is worth making, build the team and the systems to make it, and lead it until it runs.

What I’ve learned is that content rarely fails for lack of effort. It fails earlier, in the decision about what was worth making, how it was framed, and whether anyone had a reason to care in the first ten seconds. Those are the decisions I’m hired to make.

So Viral Concept isn’t an agency and I’m not a production company. You’re buying judgement, creative direction and leadership. When you need people to make the content, I’ll help you hire them.

Most of the work happens in writing. Decisions are documented where your team can find them later, and reviews are recorded so people can go back to them. We still talk whenever a conversation is the quickest way to sort something out.