Modern Creator
Brenda Turner · YouTube

Grow on YouTube With an Anti-Instagram Style

A 20-minute argument that the energy you learned on Instagram is the exact thing killing your YouTube results.

Posted
3 months ago
Duration
Format
Talking Head
sincere
Views
9.6K
849 likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

The look-at-me motivation Instagram installs in every creator is the silent saboteur of YouTube results, and replacing it with a service-first director's note is the only fix that actually works.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • You have been posting on Instagram or TikTok for 1+ years and the content is not converting into paying customers.
  • You are a coach, consultant, or educator who wants to shift your primary marketing channel to YouTube but have not gotten traction yet.
  • You have a YouTube channel that is underperforming despite consistent effort and you cannot figure out why.
  • You want the philosophical argument for why YouTube compounds — not a tactics list about thumbnails or SEO.
SKIP IF…
  • You are already on YouTube and want optimization tactics — this video does not cover titles, SEO, or posting frequency.
  • You are a pure entertainer with no product to sell; the ROI framing throughout will not apply to you.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Instagram trains every creator in a look-at-me energy — shock, scroll-stopping, trending sounds — that has nothing to do with why people buy things. When that motivation transfers to YouTube, videos underperform no matter the quality. The corrective is a single director's-note reframe: before hitting record, picture the specific person who needs to hear your message and can only hear it from you. Paired with the real skills YouTube demands — public speaking, copywriting, thumbnail design, concept development — that shift turns each video into a multi-year compounding asset rather than a 48-hour attention blip.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:0001:19

01 · Cold open — credentials and the problem

Intro establishes YouTube credibility (since 2009, first 6 figures in year two), frames the problem as bad habits migrating from Instagram to YouTube.

01:1909:19

02 · Concept 1: Motivation

Theater/cinema metaphor — a director gives actors motivation before a scene. Instagram motivation = look at me. YouTube motivation = what does this person need? Live-scrolls Instagram feed to show examples.

09:1914:03

03 · Concept 2: Skill building

YouTube demands patience, discipline, copywriting, thumbnail design, and premise-building. Instagram sharpens none of these. The monkey-and-banana trap: holding onto viral-clip dreams instead of building compounding skills.

14:0315:41

04 · Concept 3: Investing in every video

YouTube videos have a multi-year shelf life. Each post is an investment. Practical notes: flip to horizontal, get a decent mic, flesh out ideas before filming.

15:4118:23

05 · Concept 4: Life's work

Teaching, creating, and learning are the three pillars of lasting entrepreneur success. Instagram crowds all three out. YouTube compounds all three. Ends with a woo moment: run the experiment and watch magic unfold.

18:2319:48

06 · CTA — YouTube Breakthrough Challenge

5-day live challenge, March 2-6, at brendaturner.com/yt. Waitlist available. Outro card for Applied Non-Duality (For Profits) channel.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Instagram's entire premise is look at me — even creators who intellectually reject that stance are energetically locked into it by the platform's mechanics.
  • The people watching your Instagram reels are gawkers, not customers; the platform optimizes for attention, not purchase intent.
  • YouTube motivation is inherently service-first: the best videos start from what does this person need to hear from me, not how do I stop the scroll.
  • Thumbnail design, copywriting, and premise-building are skills Instagram and TikTok never develop — YouTube sharpens all three simultaneously.
  • A single YouTube video can generate thousands of dollars in sales every quarter for years; a reel's active window is measured in days.
  • The monkey-and-banana trap: short-form creators hold on hoping one clip goes viral and delivers the jackpot, which prevents them from building the skills that actually compound.
  • YouTube forces a higher daily standard — what message do I want to deliver, how do I want to help this person today — that Instagram never demands.
  • Being un-copy-able comes from finding a unique voice and delivery, not from posting more or going viral; YouTube is the only platform that develops that.
  • Every minute spent feeding the Instagram machine is a minute not spent on the three things that build lasting businesses: learning, creating, and teaching.
  • The hardest part of the motivation shift is that look-at-me energy is invisible to the person broadcasting it — it has to be actively unlearned.
Takeaway

The motivation you bring to the camera is the product.

WHAT TO LEARN

Platform posture is invisible but decisive — the same talking head delivering the same words converts completely differently depending on whether it is oriented toward being seen or toward serving a specific person.

  • Instagram conditions creators to optimize for attention first; that posture migrates to YouTube and makes content feel hollow even when the information is solid.
  • The director's note reframe is the fastest fix: before filming, picture the exact person who needs to hear this and can only hear it from you — everything about your delivery changes.
  • YouTube demands skills Instagram never touches: premise-building, thumbnail copywriting, concept development. Each skill compounds into every other part of your business.
  • A single well-made YouTube video can generate sales for years; a reel's active window is measured in days. The investment framing changes how much preparation time feels justified.
  • Treating YouTube as a body of work rather than a content calendar shifts the emotional relationship with the platform — from performance anxiety to craft development.
  • The creators who feel untouchable in their niche got there through unique voice, not unique tactics. Voice only develops through the discipline of long-form, repeated over time.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Motivation (theater sense)
In acting, the internal emotional premise a director gives a performer before a scene. Used here to describe the unconscious energetic stance a creator brings to content — service-first vs. attention-seeking.
Look at me energy
The creator posture Instagram and TikTok reward: prioritizing visibility, shock value, and scroll-stopping aesthetics over genuine service to the viewer.
Non-duality (for profits)
Title of the creator's other show, blending spiritual non-dual philosophy with business strategy. Visible in the end-card outro.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

14:30productHollyland Mic
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

02:46
The motivation behind the content on Instagram is: look at me. That's the motivation.
Dead-simple thesis delivered with full conviction — no setup neededTikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
06:50
You're getting gawkers. They're not your customer.
Six words that reframe the entire vanity metrics conversationIG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
08:24
We're all sprinkling ourselves with Dorito dust.
Unexpected metaphor that lands the commoditization argument viscerallynewsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
11:48
There's no competition when you have a unique way of speaking to your audience.
Clean standalone argument for niche voice over viral tacticsIG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
14:44
Every video that you put up is an investment.
One-liner that reframes the ROI calculation for long-form contentTikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphoranalogy
00:00Hey. Today's episode, I wanted to help you to grow your YouTube channel and your online business by letting go of some bad habits that you probably picked up from social media, Instagram, TikTok, and all the other kind of offenders. I've been on YouTube since 2009, and I'm really happy that I have grown my business with YouTube.
00:17It is solely through YouTube that I hit my first 6 figures by year two of my business, selling a $27 ebook, by the way, that people loved. It was a good ebook. People loved it, but I wouldn't have been able to do that if it weren't for YouTube.
00:30And I also wouldn't have been able to enjoy the last fifteen years of having very good success in multiple products and multiple niches and multiple kind of business models if it weren't for YouTube. So a lot of people are waking up to the fact they don't wanna be on Instagram chasing the little hearts.
00:45People aren't buying your stuff. You know? You're not getting all that much sales.
00:49Your content's not lasting all that long. You don't wanna be posting. You don't wanna be on the platform just in general.
00:54And then they're coming to YouTube, which is awesome. I love, love, love when I see business owners getting onto YouTube.
01:02But, uh, this happened recently where a colleague, I kind of heard about her program through the zeitgeist. She helps people with their tax stuff.
01:11And I'm like, oh, I wonder if she has a YouTube channel. And she recently started a YouTube channel, but she's been doing Instagram for so many years that she doesn't have the muscles that I'm gonna teach you today.
01:22And she also is holding on to some bad habits that even after a year and a half of her trying to grow it, it's not really getting much traction. And here's why. Concept number one is motivation.
01:35Now I want us to think about motivation in terms of cinema and theater. Motivation in theater and in movies is when the director goes up to an actor or an actress and says something like this.
01:47Okay. John, I want you to look at Linda as though she just came in here.
01:54You found out she was cheating. You smell a man's cologne on her, and don't say any words.
02:00Just act and go. Okay? That's motivation.
02:04That person's gonna act in a totally different way than if they were say the if they were directed to say something like, okay, John. Linda's gonna come in, and Linda smells like flowers, and you just found out that she turned down one of the most handsome men in the world because she loves you so much.
02:25Don't say any words. Just act and go. Two totally different motivations.
02:31You could give them the same lines, and they would be acting in a totally different way. Now we have millions of business owners getting onto Instagram and TikTok, and they have been for the past decade or so.
02:45And the motivation behind the content on Instagram is look at me.
02:54That's the motivation. And even if you're listening to this and that's not your your forward thinking thought, that is and can only be ever really the motivation as in the energetic stance as in how you show up on those platforms.
03:08It's only ever a look at me energy. That's what the that's what the vibration is. That's what the energetic stance is.
03:17That's kind of the concepts. That's the premise. The whole thing is one big giant party of look at me.
03:23I think you'll be set free once you understand what I'm saying here because this is life changing stuff. This is really major. It's getting down into the deep, deep underbelly of all of this stuff, and it's gonna help you to really anchor your business into something more solid.
03:39Okay? Now the motivation when you come on to YouTube. I want you to think about the videos that you've watched over the past couple weeks.
03:48The ones that you've really loved. When you come on to YouTube, the motivation behind a video that that you love could be education.
03:55The creator might be trying to educate you, help you to build a skill, cooking, gardening, acting, drawing, whatever.
04:03You could be getting current events. You could be getting spiritual teachings, practices, meditations.
04:09You could be getting a whole wormhole of all kinds of motivations. So people who create on YouTube that make good content that you love and that I love and that we love, their motivation is here it is.
04:23What does that person who's watching this video, what do they need to learn? What do they need?
04:29Even entertainment. Even the entertainment on YouTube is completely different from the entertainment on Instagram. It's not about look at me on YouTube ever.
04:38YouTube is this beautiful energetic exchange. I don't even like to call it content.
04:43Now the problem that a lot of people do when they come on to YouTube is they bring that look at me vibration unintentionally. They don't they don't even realize they're doing it.
04:54Let me just show you what I'm talking about, and we're gonna peruse Instagram just for a couple seconds. Okay? So let me open my Instagram app.
05:02I was gonna put on some kitchen gloves because I hate going on Instagram. I have a hazmat suit and everything, but I'm gonna keep it over there. And I'm just gonna go in without any protection.
05:19Okay. The very first one I land on is girls, be honest. What's wrong with my content?
05:25I've been doing it for almost two years and still don't have even two k. Perfect example. I mean, this is a perfect example.
05:33What is this except for? Look at me. What is this except for?
05:37Look at me. Okay? Now we're gonna rapid fire through the Instagram feed, and I want you to assess.
05:44Is this look at me,
05:46or is this in service of any of the things that we talked about on YouTube? So update part two. I refuse to train my replacement, and here's what happened next.
05:54And it is exactly what I expected. Two days later
05:58That's look at me. It's here's a story time. Look at me.
06:01This person bought a house in Italy and a car in Italy, farmhouse in Italy to live mortgage free actually works.
06:09This is look at me becoming the first US figure skating champion since 2002. This is look at me. So anyway, we're not gonna spend too much more time on, you know, the Instagram feed, but I want you to just scroll on Instagram for yourself, and I want you to start looking with your eyes as a creator in this world.
06:24And I want you to notice that most of it is look at me stuff. And people love look at me stuff. Obviously, love it because otherwise people wouldn't be watching it.
06:33Right? People would not be watching Instagram if they didn't want to look at you. But if you create a dynamic where you're creating thirty second to three minute reels that are basically for the sake of having people look at you, they're not your customer.
06:50They're people looking at you. You're getting gawkers. Okay?
06:54Please, um, shift all the way out of being held captive.
06:59A lot of people are have been held captive in the look at me kind of paradigm where we don't even realize we're in this. So one last time, people take that motivation of look at me because it's been normalized, a k a chasing views and trying to stop the scroll and trying to be highlighter yellow and trying to be as loud as possible and trying to look as beautiful as possible.
07:24Nothing wrong with, you know, any of that stuff if you wanna do that. But shock value, story time, just trying to get a bunch of attention instead of turning the light of your consciousness out there, which is really what YouTube is all about. So when you shift out of Instagram land and you start to start to make YouTube videos, your profits increase by default because you're no longer going like this, which is energetically not gonna get anybody to see you as a kind of person they wanna give money to.
07:56Do you know? Because you're not shining the light on them. We've created this weird dynamic on these short form platforms where we're tap dancing for people, and they're you're expected to show up and they give you those little hearts, and you're feeding the meta machine.
08:10And the creative process, meanwhile, has been degraded and bastardized into some weird tap dancing, um, you know, trend chasing bag of Doritos.
08:21Just we're all sprinkling ourselves with Dorito dust. Just a quick rapid fire on this first kind of concept is we're always creating with the motivation of if I put my director's hat on and I tell you the motivation from this point forward in your life's work, your motivation is I want you to imagine there's somebody that really needs to hear something from you.
08:42They can only, for whatever reason, hear it from your voice. They need to hear your your frameworks. They need to hear your ideas.
08:48They need to hear your experiences. They need to hear your solutions. And do you see how now that takes the whole thing off of trying to get the scroll stopped and stop people from scrolling so that you get their attention enough for the thirty seconds that you got them?
09:04Now you can actually spread out with a good message. Now you don't have to talk quickly. Now you don't have to come with that weird, you know, there's just a weird delivery, a weird vibration that comes with people who are used to that look at me energy.
09:19So keep in mind just before you turn the camera on, I want you to just think about the people who need to hear your message today. They're really needing it. The second concept that I wanted to offer here is skill building.
09:33Skill building. K? We wanna focus on when we're posting to YouTube.
09:39Um, this is something not a lot of people like to hear, but this is the god's honest truth. This is the best platform to grow an online business in my opinion. And the reason for that is because it it requires for us to be at a level that's much higher than than we than we would normally be if we were just posting short little, you know, stories all the time.
10:03I'm never saying, by the way, that I'm a better business owner or a better anything than anybody who wants to focus on Instagram. I'm just saying being on YouTube, I need to really focus my mind every single day on what message do I wanna deliver.
10:18How do I wanna help these people today? How do I wanna help this listener?
10:22How do I wanna show up? What are the concepts that would be really helpful? How can I promote my new x y z and really serve my customer?
10:30These are questions that we have to really figure out when we're promoting on YouTube. So I'm talking about skills instead of on Instagram.
10:39A lot of it is sales focused, getting as much money as possible, and that's great.
10:45That's I mean, I'm here. This is the deep riches podcast with Brenda Turner. But if we make that our focus instead of the skills that are required to get that thing, this thing becomes like the banana that that that, um, idiom about the banana that the monkey's holding onto this banana won't let it go, and it gets stuck.
11:06A lot of business owners who are in the short form kinda game, they are holding on to this banana a k a the the hope that one of these short little clips that they post on on Instagram will hit them a jackpot one of these days, and they're not letting go of that idea of getting sales through the short form, like, shortcuts.
11:24It's the ultimate dream. You're posting a bunch of stuff on Instagram. You go like this with it.
11:28You post it. It's it took you three seconds to make it, and then you make a million dollars a year. Well, that's not gonna work like that.
11:34So if we let go of that and we step into building our skills, like, really building some solid skills that make you un, uh, un I was gonna say unfuck withable, you know, that make you untouchable.
11:48There's no competition when you have a unique way of speaking to your audience, when you have a unique kind of take on your expertise, when you have a unique way of delivering your solutions, when you understand how to serve your people in a way that only you can do it, you know, when you really find your voice, talk about an important part of this whole process.
12:09So we're no longer focused on that really shallow waters of getting the sale. Okay? So the skills that we really wanna focus on are the skill of patience, um, diligence and discipline, copywriting, thumbnail design, um, premise, and thinking up a good concept for your videos.
12:33These are some skills that are not nourished in the Instagram game and the TikTok game. There's no thumbnails on any of these platforms. You know?
12:41There's no thumbnails. There's no headlines. There's no premise.
12:45Not really. Um, it's just not it's just not doing much for sharpening your skills, and these skills translate to every other area of your business. So this is why it's kind of like a ninja level move to to get on YouTube and to make YouTube your primary focus.
13:01So you're building the skill of public speaking when you get on YouTube, and you're gonna have a better experience with your clients. You're gonna have a better experience in your webinars. You're gonna have a better experience on your sales calls if you're still doing sales calls, which I don't recommend, but that's a whole another video.
13:15You're just gonna be an overall better speaker. Okay? You're also gonna get better at writing.
13:20Your headlines are such an important part of this process. So this means you're gonna have email headlines are gonna get better, and these email headlines are gonna be opened by people. K?
13:31Your headlines on your landing page are gonna get better, so on and so forth. Your thumbnail design.
13:38If you get better at your thumbnail design, it really helps you with your creative direction of what you do and don't like for your for your overall, like, brand, you know, for the look and feel of your stuff. What does and does not work for you?
13:50These are the skills that we really wanna be building up. The next concept I wanted to lay out for you is investing in every video, and I'm not talking monetarily. I'm talking with your patience and your time.
14:00So if you take the rest of this year to be diligent about every time that you have an idea for a video, you're gonna take a little bit of time to really flesh out that idea, to get it properly planned out, to deliver it in front of a camera, you know, to turn your iPhone horizontal for crying out loud.
14:25Get out of the vertical and get it into horizontal. Get your audio quality decent, you know, get a $70 Hollyland mic, and invest in the fact that this is the mindset shift.
14:36The fact that every time you post a video onto YouTube, the life of that YouTube video could be years and years to come. That one video that you post could be getting you thousands of dollars of sales every quarter.
14:49So every video that you put up is an investment. And I'm saying this because a lot of people who kind of come to the YouTube game, they think, wow.
14:59This is a lot of work. That's because they're not used to posting a video and having it get thousands of views every quarter and getting them sales every single day. So if you create this mindset shift that, yes, is YouTube a little bit more work?
15:12Yes. And I love it. And I love it because it's like you're digging a little moat around your castle that's impenetrable and nobody's going to be able to, you know, copy you.
15:24They can certainly try, but they can't really do it because there's a lot going on in here and in here and all around and the whole thing. So it's a little more work, and that's worth it because each one of these videos is an investment.
15:41The last concept that I wanted to kind of offer you is this is your life's work. This is a body of work. This is the creative process.
15:51And what's nearest and dearest to my heart in this lifetime is the creative process, teaching, and learning.
15:59See, these three things have been paramount in my business success and in the business success of almost every mentor and entrepreneur that I know that's successful.
16:12So if we want to be creative and passionate about life, which is one and the same for me, and if we want to be an excellent teacher, of what your business is, We come to YouTube in a way to teach and to transmit and to demonstrate your products and services.
16:32And if we wanna be effective lifelong students, which is essential for any entrepreneur, we're not going to be able to do those things on Instagram.
16:40It's one big giant distraction mechanism. It's we're we're cogs in the meta machine.
16:48Okay? But when you come to YouTube, there's no getting around the fact that when you invest in the YouTube game, when you when you say, okay.
16:55I'm gonna promote my business on YouTube with a couple videos every month, and I and you're gonna do that in perpetuity. I'm gonna post a couple videos a month for a couple years, And as I do that, my business will continue to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow.
17:11Um, that mindset shift, that's just something that we have to get used to because what we've been trapped in is, like I just said, the meta machine, which has got us all on Instagram, millions of beautiful business owners wasting their time on Instagram, and they're neglecting.
17:27And I'm not saying that's you, but I'm saying what every time that we waste time contributing these look at me videos into the meta machine is time that's distracting you from learning, creating, and teaching, and doing your life's work.
17:45And when you start doing your life's work, by the way, I don't know if you realize this. I'm pretty sure you do, but there's no accidents here.
17:53So I believe that when you start actually doing your life's work the way that you've been built to do it, that you really are rewarded and that you really are taken care of. And this is getting into a little bit more of the woo stuff, but I don't want you to believe a word I say.
18:09I want you to run a little experiment. Okay? Take a couple weeks to just start posting onto YouTube and watch the magic unfold.
18:16Very, very few people have ever tried this experiment and came back to me without magical experiences. Okay?
18:23And by the way, I wanted to leave you with this. I have a five day YouTube breakthrough challenge. I only do this a couple times a year.
18:29It's March 2 to March 6. So if you're catching this episode after that period, you're still gonna wanna join the wait list, and you can get your tickets at brendaturner.com/yt.
18:41This is my five day live experience. Everybody who comes to the challenge is taken through frame by frame, day by day, creating a YouTube video with my favorite frameworks to help you to break through your resistance, break through your fear, break through your hesitation, get all the foundations of YouTube all laid out so that you can actually do your life's work.
19:01And I'm super excited at this point in my life to really get everybody who wants to get to work. I'm really here for getting into action and helping you to really, like, get past your fear and just start taking massive action.
19:13And if you wanna learn all about how to be in the oneness and apply whatever spiritual principles you already are practicing in your life, whatever they may be, to actually just do your life's work in a way that feels effortless, you're gonna wanna check out this video where I cover that.
19:29And if it's not up there, it it hasn't been posted yet. Thanks so much for hanging with me today, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye, everybody.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Fifteen years on YouTube and a six-figure ebook sold at — the creator behind this video did not chase Instagram virality to get there. She is here to explain the invisible poison that short-form platforms inject into your creative posture, and why washing it out is the prerequisite to everything else.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

01:35concept

Director's Note Motivation Reframe

Before filming, give yourself a director's note: imagine the specific person who needs to hear your message and can ONLY hear it from your voice. This replaces look-at-me with a service orientation at the source.

Steal forPre-recording ritual; repurpose as a daily prompt before any content creation session
12:15list

YouTube Skills Stack

  1. Patience and diligence
  2. Discipline
  3. Copywriting
  4. Thumbnail design
  5. Premise and concept development

The five skills YouTube develops that Instagram and TikTok ignore entirely. Each skill transfers beyond the platform — to webinars, sales calls, email headlines, landing pages.

Steal forSkills gap analysis for any creator considering a platform pivot
CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK
18:23product
I have a five day YouTube breakthrough challenge. I only do this a couple times a year. It's March 2 to March 6.

Soft lead-in through the life's work section, then clean direct pitch. Wait-list option mentioned for post-date viewers. Followed immediately by a next-video suggestion card.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

open
hookopen00:00
motivation
valuemotivation01:19
IG scroll
valueIG scroll05:05
skill stack
valueskill stack09:19
investment
valueinvestment14:03
life's work
valuelife's work15:41
CTA
ctaCTA18:23
Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

Watch next

More from this channel + related breakdowns.

43:09
Brenda Turner · Talking Head

Love Beats All Business Strategy

A 43-minute impromptu live where Brenda Turner argues that fear-based business motivation silently kills profits and that love, used practically, is the fastest path to sustainable income.

June 13th
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