03:17Mike and Matty · Essay
If you think you're too busy, watch this
A 3-minute YouTube essay where a med-school dropout dismantles the busy excuse using social reinforcement and an iPhone-battery metaphor.
May 1stThe argument in one line.
The fastest path to YouTube growth is engineering content-market fit by picking one specific transformation, validating ideas against real outlier data, and treating the first 20 videos as algorithm calibration rather than polished content.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You are starting a YouTube channel from zero and unsure what to make or how the algorithm decides who sees your videos.
- You have been spending weeks per video on production quality and seeing little to no growth in return.
- You have real skills or lived experience and want to turn that into a channel that eventually earns income.
- You have heard the advice to pick a niche but sense it is missing something and want a more complete framework.
SKIP IF…
- You already have clear algorithm fit and a returning audience -- this is an entry-level system, not a scaling playbook.
- You are building a personality or entertainment channel with no educational core.
- You are looking for monetization tactics; this video ends where traction begins.
The full version, fast.
YouTube's algorithm matches content to people, not topics, which is why picking a niche misses the point. The real starting move is defining a specific transformation your audience goes through, then reverse-engineering which video ideas have already proven demand via outlier research. Execution follows an MVP pyramid: idea and packaging carry 80 percent of the weight, while script, film, and edit matter far less at the start. Post one video per week for the first 20 videos, treat each as a data point, and when one outperforms stop and study it before replicating its structure on a new topic. The back catalog lifts when the algorithm finds its match.
Members feature
Chat with this breakdown.
Modern Creator members can chat with any breakdown — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment. Unlocks at T2: refer 3 friends + add your own API key.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:20
01 · Cold open -- credential hook
Four channels built, one to 1M+, exact road map promised.
00:20 – 03:06
02 · How the algorithm actually works
Dominoes as videos, emoji tokens as audience segments -- impressions, clicks, and the calibration loop visualized on a chalkboard table.
03:06 – 05:13
03 · Step 1 -- Transformation over niche
Define who goes from A to B. Sushi restaurant example introduced as the running thread.
05:13 – 07:57
04 · Step 2 -- What videos to make
Problem-ladder framework; the tree method; format permutations.
07:57 – 08:43
05 · Sponsor -- 1of10
Outlier discovery and AI thumbnail tool, 30-day dollar trial.
08:43 – 11:48
06 · Step 3 -- POV as differentiator
No competitors on YouTube; POV examples (Hormozi vs Ferriss); POV must come from lived experience.
11:48 – 14:40
07 · Phase 2 -- MVP introduced
Minimum Video Process: Idea, Package, Script, Film, Edit. Order mirrors how viewers consume.
14:40 – 16:49
08 · MVP Pyramid -- 80/20 rule
Inverted pyramid drawn on table. Top layers carry most weight.
16:49 – 17:07
09 · Minimum Idea -- outlier research
Find 3-4 blown-up videos on your topic; pair them to transformation steps.
17:07 – 20:25
10 · Minimum Packaging -- title and thumbnail
Design packaging immediately after the idea. Consistent style beats variety.
20:25 – 21:32
11 · Minimum Script
Only write the hook word-for-word. Outline the rest.
21:32 – 23:01
12 · Minimum Film
Audio first, soft lighting second, 4K third.
23:01 – 24:17
13 · Minimum Edit
Front-load effort; half the audience is gone by 30 seconds.
24:17 – 29:17
14 · Optimization loop -- first 20 videos
Post weekly, one at a time, no batching. When a video outperforms, stop and reverse-engineer. Back catalog lifts when algorithm locks in.
29:17 – 29:47
15 · Wrap and CTA
Free AI transformation discovery tool; next-video end card.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- YouTube does not match videos to topics -- it matches videos to people, which is why broad niche content confuses the algorithm and stalls growth.
- Defining a transformation is more useful than naming a niche because it tells the algorithm exactly who should see your content.
- The order in which viewers encounter your content -- idea, packaging, script, film, edit -- is also the order of what matters most when you are making it.
- Coming up with the video idea is more important than editing it, because if nobody clicks, nobody watches what you spent hours polishing.
- Half of everyone who clicks your video has left by the 30-second mark, so front-loading editing effort is not optional -- it is math.
- The first 20 videos are calibration, not your best work -- their job is to train the algorithm to find the right audience.
- Batching your first videos is a mistake: if video one points the algorithm in the wrong direction, you just made five wrong-direction videos.
- When a video outperforms the rest even modestly -- 30 views versus 1000 is real signal -- stop making new videos and reverse-engineer what worked.
- Once one video takes off and the algorithm locks in, the rest of your back catalog gets lifted too, which is why consistent transformation focus from day one compounds.
- There is no such thing as a competitor on YouTube -- every other channel covering your topic is a co-conversationalist, and your job is to add a distinct point of view.
- Your POV must come from your actual lived experience; you cannot just adopt one that sounds good because the audience eventually feels the difference.
- Thumbnails are one of the hardest parts of YouTube, but consistency of style beats constant variety -- familiar thumbnails build pattern recognition.
- Only write the hook of your video word-for-word; outline the rest -- perfectionism in scripting is a major reason people never publish.
- Audio quality is the single most important production investment: viewers tolerate buffering video but click away immediately from bad audio.
- The 80/20 rule applied to YouTube means idea and packaging are the 20 percent of effort that delivers 80 percent of results.
Why most new channels stall before they start working.
WHAT TO LEARN
The algorithm cannot calibrate to your content until it knows which specific person keeps coming back -- and that only happens when you build every video around one transformation, not a broad topic.
- YouTube matches videos to people, not topics, so a channel trying to serve multiple audience types will confuse the algorithm and see inconsistent distribution even with good content.
- Defining a transformation -- who goes from what starting point to what outcome -- gives both you and the algorithm a precise filter for every video decision.
- The order you make a video (idea, packaging, script, film, edit) is also the order viewers encounter it, which means steps skipped at the front matter far more than polish added at the end.
- A title and thumbnail should be designed immediately after you pick the idea, not after you finish filming -- framing the video in your viewer's language, not niche vocabulary, determines whether they click.
- Only write the hook of your video word-for-word; for everything after the first 30 seconds, a structured outline and natural delivery outperforms a fully scripted read.
- Audio is the single production investment that will drive viewers away if neglected -- people tolerate a low-quality image but click away from audio they cannot comfortably follow.
- Front-loading your editing effort is a retention reality: half of every audience has left by 30 seconds, making the opening minute worth more than all the minutes that follow.
- The first 20 videos should be posted one at a time without batching, because each is a data point -- batching before you know what direction works multiplies wrong-direction output.
- When one early video outperforms the others even modestly, pause new production, reverse-engineer exactly what made it work, and replicate that pattern with a new topic before moving on.
- A back catalog built around one clear transformation gets a compounding lift once algorithm fit is established -- every older video reaches new viewers when the algorithm locks onto your audience.
Terms worth knowing.
- Transformation
- The specific change a viewer undergoes by watching your channel -- from a defined starting condition to a defined outcome. More precise than a niche because it names the person, not just the subject.
- Outlier
- A video that dramatically outperforms the average for its channel or topic, used as a signal that demand for that idea is currently elevated on the platform.
- MVP (Minimum Video Process)
- A five-layer pyramid -- Idea, Package, Script, Film, Edit -- that prioritizes steps by how directly they affect whether a viewer clicks and stays.
- Content-market fit
- The state where the algorithm has identified the specific audience whose behavior signals they want more of your content, triggering consistent distribution to that group.
- The Tree Method
- A content planning approach where four core problems your audience faces become branches, each supporting an unlimited number of sub-topic videos while keeping all content algorithm-coherent.
- POV (Point of View)
- The distinct perspective a creator brings to a shared topic -- the thing that makes one channel feel different from another covering the same ground, rooted in the creator's actual experience.
- Calibration period
- The approximate first 20 videos a new channel publishes, during which the algorithm learns which audience segment consistently engages before reliable distribution kicks in.
Lines you could clip.
01:42
“Your job when you're making videos for your channel -- basically the same job as the YouTube algorithm. Your job is to predict what is the next video that this group of people are going to want.”
09:09
“It's not why should they watch your channel instead of these other channels. It's why should they watch your channel as well as these channels.”
14:40
“Coming up with the idea is way more important than editing the video. If people do not click on your video, they are just not gonna watch it.”
24:17
“People do not normally just get up and leave out of a movie theater after they pay for the ticket. It is so easy to just click away from a video.”
Word for word.
analogy
00:00We've built four YouTube channels, one to over a million subscribers, and we're helping dozens of creators build channels that actually make money. If I had to start over with zero audience, knowing what I know now, this is the exact road map I would use to launch a profitable channel.
00:17So step one is when we develop our channel strategy.
00:20I think that the worst advice out there is to just pick a niche and start posting content. And to understand why that is, we have to revisit how the algorithm actually works. So if you're a brand new channel, your channel has no data before.
00:32So YouTube doesn't really know who's gonna watch your content yet. So the first thing that it actually does is picks a few people based on, like, the metadata of your content of who to show it to. So let's say you're making a channel that helps business owners.
00:46We have the blue people here. These people are the restaurant owners. So they run like a brick and mortar physical location trying to get people in to buy their food.
00:53These pink people, SaaS founders. Right? They're building software.
00:58And then these yellow people over here, they sell online courses. They're all running a business. So YouTube suggested this video to all three of them.
01:07That's an impression. They saw the video on their page, but only one person actually clicked on it to watch it. So this was a good match, and that sent signals to the algorithm like, hey, we need to find more people like this.
01:19We need to find more blue people. So what happens when you publish your next video? Right?
01:23Let's say your next video is about how to get customers into your restaurant. It's gonna try to show it again to this person, and now it's gonna think, can I find other people who are like this blue person? And so YouTube is gonna try to show the video, maybe this crowd.
01:39The blue people, they both own restaurants, so they're gonna wanna know how to get more customers into their restaurant. Whereas this person, what was this, a a SaaS founder?
01:48The SaaS founder doesn't have a restaurant, so he's not gonna care. So they're not gonna click on the video. They're gonna fall off.
01:52But now YouTube is seeing, oh, I'm getting more signal that this is probably the better fit audience for this channel. And it it just keeps going like this. Now there's a third video, and now it's gonna show it to these people and all these people are gonna click on it on-site.
02:06This that's just perfect content market fit right there. And it's not even gonna really try to show it to the SaaS founders or the online business or the online course creators or whatever because it knows that they're probably not gonna click on it. So your job when you're making videos for your channel, basically the same job as the YouTube algorithm.
02:21Your job is to predict what is the next video that this group of people are going to want. So if you understand how the algorithm works, it actually makes creating a channel strategy so much easier. Because all you have to do is just make videos for this person, right, like this exact person, which is opposite of what a lot of advice out there, to pick a niche and make content.
02:41Everybody here is in a business niche. These are all business owners, but not all of them wanna watch your content. And so if you try to make content that's very broad and for all of these people, it's not likely that they're all gonna keep coming back.
02:53The algorithm's not gonna really know who actually wants to watch your content. So the more specific you can get, the faster your channel actually grows. It's also a lot easier.
03:00If we had to start over, I would not think about the niche at all, and I would focus instead on what is the transformation of the person you're trying to reach. Right.
03:08We throw that word around a lot, but people ask us, like, what does it mean to focus on a transformation?
03:13You're basically teaching someone how to go from point a to point b. Yeah. Basically, the way I think about transformation is that you wanna transfer something in the form of either skills or beliefs.
03:24Right? You wanna change their mind about something, and you wanna give them skills so they can do something different. So transformation, really, you're helping someone do something differently.
03:30That's the whole point. So quickly, some examples of that. Let's just use this one really quickly.
03:34Instead of saying I make content in the business niche, right, I'd help sushi restaurant owners Mhmm. Get more customers. That is very clear transformation, what they're gonna be able to do, and how they're gonna think differently about where do I get my fish from.
03:45That channel is so clear. And if I was a sushi restaurant owner, I would come back there. This is, like, the most important piece about YouTube is really knowing who your content is for.
03:54And we actually made a free AI tool, which you can find a link in the description below. Ten minutes. It's gonna give you a very clear transformation based on your skills and your experiences.
04:01So now that we know the transformation of our channel, the next step is what kind of content do you make for that person? Right? Which brings us to step number two.
04:08So if these are stepping stones to go from point a to point b, then what these all represent are big problems that people may run into if they're trying to go down this journey. If this channel is for restaurant owners, then what are the big problems they're gonna encounter on their journey to building a profitable business?
04:25They're probably gonna need customers. Definitely should make videos about how they can get more customers. Yeah.
04:29How to make better tasting food. Yeah. I probably have them make videos on how to make better tasting food.
04:33They probably need to get ingredients at a cheap price. I guess what you're trying to say is each of these people who are watching this content, if they are actually trying to build a restaurant, they're gonna run into, oh, crap. I need to get better customers.
04:45I need to make my food taste better. And so if they see your videos, they're gonna watch them because you're helping them solve that problem. So all of these steps are actually just problems that they have, and your videos just help them solve that problem.
04:55With that in mind, I think that the smartest type of channel, if you wanna make money from YouTube and you also wanna find the algorithms fit for your content, is to make educational content. Because educational content literally is designed to teach someone something to help them solve a problem. It's the easiest kind of channel to make too.
05:10And I think this is, like, a really good, like, filter to run through. Only make videos that help in one of these steps. Clients do this all the time.
05:17Like, hey. I wanna make the video about, like, a vlog of my time going to this event and talk about my experiences. And I gotta reel them back.
05:23I'm like, does that solve one of these four problems? If it's a no, then don't make it. Otherwise, you're gonna like, again, going back to the algorithm.
05:29You're gonna confuse the algorithm. You're gonna be like, is that video for this person who wants to vlog stuff? If it then you're gonna get them in to watch now, and then the algorithm's gonna try to show it to more of those people, and then it's gonna be confused.
05:38The smartest thing you can do is to just keep hammering the same stuff over and over and over. And to your point though, like, you're making YouTube videos, you are on some level a creative person Mhmm. And so you want to have more variety.
05:50You wanna show that you're a more well rounded person. Mhmm. Right?
05:52So then what do you do in that case? I mean, like, I'm totally okay with being creative and exploring different formats, but you have to give them the solution to the problem they have.
06:02As long as it's doing this job and this person still would get value out of it, then you're on the right track. But if it doesn't do that, then it's not. Like, if this business owner here made a wanted to make, like, a I wanna help these business owners be more productive, they can do a video about being more productive if it helps this specific person be more productive.
06:19Now a lot of people do wanna be creative though, and they're gonna get bored with making the same thing over and over and over. So what would you do in that case? Just because these are the four steps doesn't mean that you only talk about four things.
06:30It actually means that these are the four starting points. Something we teach in our program called the tree method. These are like the four starting branches, but underneath these, there is unlimited topics.
06:42So let's say this first branch here, how to get more customers for your restaurant business. There are so many different videos that you can make on this branch. How to get more customers
06:50through YouTube, how to get more customers using AI, how to get more customers through word-of-mouth. The list goes on and on. If you're really good at what you do, you can talk about this topic for hours and hours and hours for hundreds and hundreds of videos.
07:03And as long as it's still connected to this main branch, then it's still helping this target audience. And even to that, there are multiple permutations for each of those that you set too. If you wanna help someone get more customers through YouTube, there are many different types of videos that you can create that show someone you can help them get customers through YouTube.
07:20You can bring, like, one of your clients onto your show and then help them, like, with a coaching session. We call that, like, a fixer. This is the best kind of video editing style to get customers.
07:30This is the best YouTube channels to follow
07:32for getting more customers. There's this infinite amount of content in every horizontal that you can make too. But not all content is created equal.
07:39The better question to ask is which content would your audience actually click on? And that brings me to the sponsor of today's video, one of 10. I have been using one of 10 religiously on this channel and all of our other clients' channels for the past two years.
07:51It allows you to discover videos that are over performing right now on YouTube, which are called outliers. More on that later. Let's say, for example, like that sushi restaurant owner in one of 10, I can search the keyword best way to make sushi and find only the bangers.
08:06I can also click on filter and organize it by outlier score, views, subscribers, and how recent the upload was, and narrow my search even further. This is my favorite feature by far. If you find a cool idea, you can click on similar titles or thumbnails and find more similar ideas to that one, or use Niche Explorer to see other similar channels and become an expert in your industry for what's hot right now on YouTube.
08:29So if you wanna spend less time guessing what actually works on YouTube, then check the link in the description below. You can get a thirty day trial of one of 10 for just a dollar. So this is the backbone of your content strategy.
08:41What transformation you're helping your audience achieve, and what topics should you cover. But there's still one more piece in the strategy that we have to get right if we wanna make this successful, which brings us to step number three.
08:53So in 2026, it's never been easier for anyone to start making content. And that being the case, we're seeing a lot of new channels pop up. There are probably going to be several other competitor channels, as you call them, also helping this exact person.
09:06And I think that's the wrong question to ask. It's not why should they watch your channel instead of these other channels.
09:12It's why should they watch your channel as well as these channels. There's actually no such thing as competitors on YouTube. Everybody is working together.
09:20We're all friendly channels. Right? We're all allies in this.
09:23So let's say all these people are joining in on this conversation
09:27about how to build a good sushi restaurant, but they all have different opinions. Right? And then this person says, oh, you have to you have to serve tuna.
09:36Right? Or this person, you you have to serve albacore or whatever it is. So everyone's got their own point of view.
09:41Right? Their own POV. Now you,
09:44as someone who is joining in on this conversation, right, this is you, you can't just go in there guns blazing and just copy what everyone is saying because that will, a, like, that's not ethical to do, but that will just make you blend in with everyone else. What you need to do is come in here and actually contribute something to the conversation.
10:03And by contributing, this means that you're adding something new. Yeah. So you may ask, like, what are examples of POV?
10:09I consume a lot of business content. So, obviously, I know a lot of different POVs on business in this space. I will say for one example, one extreme, you have the business guys, the gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk or Alex Hormozi, who their POV is you just have to outwork everybody.
10:22You just gotta hustle. You gotta wake up at, like, four in the morning, and you just gotta do way more reps than everybody else if you wanna win. That's their POV about how to be successful in business, and a lot of people are gonna resonate with that.
10:32But then you have on the other side people like Tim Ferriss who says, oh, no. He wrote a book called The Four Hour Workweek. You can work way less and live this nice nice lifestyle and still make this big positive impact.
10:42A lot of people are gonna resonate with that too. And so they're also gonna build a different kind of following around that idea, that perspective. There's probably, like, 20 different more POVs just in, the business space.
10:51You know, Cody Sanchez has a different one. Dan Martell has a different one. Dan Coe has we have a different one.
10:55Those are all different POVs for helping a business owner, a specific way, solve their transformation. Your POV is the main differentiator
11:03for your channel for how people are gonna remember you. And the way that you come up with your POV is you really have to look back and study who you are and where you came from. Like, what is the reason why Alex Ramosy talks about hustling all the time and suppressing your emotions and all that stuff?
11:19Because that's what that is the life that he lived. So he has the right to talk about that. But you can't just show up and just adopt any random POV.
11:26Your POV needs to make sense with the life that you lived, who you are, what your credentials are, what you've gotten results with. There's a whole list of things that you need to think about. And so, again, I'm gonna call back to that that free tool that we that we built.
11:39In just ten minutes, you can dive into your entire backstory and figure out what is the transformation and what is the POV that you can be known for. So phase one was all about strategy.
11:49But obviously, we can't just have a strategy. You actually have to execute on that strategy. So phase two now is all about making the actual content.
11:56So the biggest reason people fail here is that they try to go from zero to a 100 way too fast. Like for example, we did this ourselves. Right?
12:04When we're first starting off, we didn't really know how to make videos all that well. Like, I was watching Peter McKinnon a lot. You were watching Matt D'Avella.
12:12Right? Dude, those two guys have been making films for a very long time. And so we thought, oh, the only way to succeed is if we just go from zero all the way to 100 what they're doing at that time without even thinking that they took years to even get to that point.
12:27But we didn't know any better. I spent months just watching like all these obscure tutorials about like how to get, like, you know, rolling pan shots and how to get, like, cinematic lighting and all that stuff. In the grand scheme of things, that doesn't really matter for YouTube.
12:42I wasted
12:43so much time learning all that stuff. I wouldn't say it doesn't matter. It's just in the wrong order.
12:48Right. And that's not what we need to learn at that time. I mean, there are many times when I thought about just giving up.
12:53Right? Like, this is way too hard. Why are we spending weeks just filming a single video and then weeks more just editing the video?
13:01If you're starting from zero, that's not the most important thing you should focus on. And so the goal actually is to make more videos at first to train the algorithm before you know, do I invest in going from, like, 50 to a 100? How do you just go a smaller step to start validating that this channel's gonna work?
13:16Right. So if we had to start over, we would start our channel by only making simple videos. And the best way to do this is to follow this process.
13:25This is something we call MVP, which stands for minimum
13:29video process. Okay. So what does the minimum video process actually look like?
13:34First, we want to list out all the individual steps that it takes to actually produce a video. So you come up with the idea for the video. Next, you package the video.
13:45Next, you script the video, and you film, and then you edit. That is the order that all videos are created in. Now the interesting thing is this is actually the same order that someone consuming your content.
13:56If someone sees your content and they don't like the idea of it, it doesn't seem interesting to them, they're obviously not gonna click and watch. If the title and thumbnail, the packaging doesn't look interesting, it's low quality, they're not gonna click. If the script of the video, the hook of the video, the actual story you're telling isn't interesting, they're not gonna stick around.
14:12If you filmed it in, like, a dark room and they can't even see your face or hear you, they're not gonna watch it. And if they didn't edit it well, it's not gonna retain them either. But those steps also go in order for how someone interprets and consumes your content.
14:23And that order is the most important part of the MVP. It means that coming up with the idea is way more important than editing the video. If people don't click on your video, then they're just not gonna watch it.
14:34So the steps at the top carry way more weight. That is why we visualize the MVP like a pyramid.
14:41The top here is the most important, and then each subsequent layer is less important, which is kinda backwards to how a lot of people think about YouTube because you're making videos. Right? So everyone thinks, oh, how am I gonna edit my videos?
14:53What am I gonna my videos to look like? Right? That's all I always say.
14:56How should they look? Should they be cinematic? Should they be whatever?
14:59We're And always like, dude, who cares? What is it about? What is the idea of the video?
15:02What what what's the title thumbnail gonna be? And they're like, oh, like, I'm I'm gonna go film this and do this. I'm like, I don't care.
15:06Like, what is this? These are the most important pieces because if they don't click, they don't watch. So what this pyramid allows us to see is a concept called the eighty twenty rule.
15:15What are the few things that you can do for your video that will get the most results?
15:19And those few things, that 80%,
15:22is right here. So, yeah, so if you were starting a new channel, I would just focus all my effort on the minimum video process right here, making a lot of videos with good ideas and good packaging. And the whole point of doing that is, if you call back to the first part, to train the algorithm faster, to start calibrating it to the type of person that they actually wanna watch.
15:40And when we get that signal that people like the content, then you can start boosting some of these other areas up. So let's go ahead and break down what does
15:48minimum
15:49look like for each of these steps. So the way that I would approach and the current way that we approach YouTube is in a very data driven way. We've found that creators who focus on data driven approaches grow way faster, make way more money, and also build good systems so they keep doing it for for the long haul.
16:05When you're coming up an idea, don't just guess. So from the first part of our strategy, we already know what topics or these steps, remember, we're gonna make videos about. They're all gonna be about some of these steps here.
16:16We shouldn't just make those videos yet. This is still, like, a hypothesis. Now we wanna go out and look for content from other channels and other creators about those topics that have done really, really well.
16:26These are called finding outlier ideas. So you're gonna find, let's say, like, three or four videos on YouTube from other channels that, like, blew up, that did really well, and they're kinda recently uploaded. If those ideas exist, you know right now that there's signal on YouTube that those ideas are hot.
16:40Right? Those ideas are worth pursuing. Your job now, once you found those ideas, is how do you kinda like match them up or pair them up to some of the steps that you've already identified?
16:49If this works, if you can pair them up like this, that's a good video to pursue. And if you can't match it up, that's probably not a good idea for you to explore. And I would only make videos if you compare them up like that.
16:59That's how you find ideas for your channel. What does minimum packaging look like? And packaging meaning title and thumbnail.
17:05You wanna do packaging
17:07immediately after you come up with the idea. Right? Too many people, they create the entire video, and then they go back and retroactively try to come up with a title and thumbnail for their video.
17:18Why is it that some videos have terrible looking thumbnails, like, just objectively ugly? Or, like, they're just not following any design or principles and yet the video is still doing so well.
17:29Like what is the reason for that? The most important part about the packaging is that tells the viewer this video is for them. If you're already finding topics that you know your viewers want, you still need to package it in a way that they would be receptive to it.
17:45So sticking to the example of these sushi restaurants. The most obscure, like, how to flash freeze your salmon and get it across the Atlantic Ocean or whatever.
17:54Like, there's there's some special framework
17:56that you wanna make your title and thumbnail about. People are probably not looking for that idea. They're probably not scrolling through and be like, oh, shoot.
18:02I need to learn about this method now. They're not waking up in the morning thinking this is gonna solve all my problems. What they're actually thinking in their head, how do I get more customers?
18:12How do I make my food taste better? So you gotta speak their language as well. So what you're saying is when you find those outlier ideas on YouTube, you don't wanna just copy them directly.
18:20You wanna frame around the problems that you're trying to solve and if you don't know how to take good photos of yourself. And so really what I would do is not try to create too many too much variety in the types of thumbnails that you do. Just if you can, even, like, get a friend or someone to just take a whole bunch of headshots of you in one day, in one spot, and then just kinda reuse those same ones over and over and over.
18:40What we do now, we just have this nice background, and we basically all of our thumbnails look the same. You know? Even though our channel's at 1,300,000 subscribers, we still use an MVP process for our thumbnails.
18:50We don't use any, like, crazy editing. We don't go outside or, like, try to get, like, this drone shot of us doing anything special. They're all kind of the same.
18:56And the cool thing is they all keep working. Because if you start to keep doing that over and over and over, then people start to become familiar with the style of your thumbnails. Now also to be honest, thumbnails are one of the most difficult things about YouTube, because if you don't have any design skills, it's gonna be tough.
19:10Now if you're not a designer and learning Photoshop seems harder than astrophysics, which trust me, it is, you're in luck.
19:18Tons of creators have already mastered the psychology and art of thumbnail design. And with one of TEN's new AI thumbnail generator, you can steal those and add your own personal flavor. My favorite way is upload reference image of yourself and then tell the AI, let's say I'm working on a video about becoming a sushi chef.
19:34And so make me a sushi chef in thirty days, and what kind of thumbnails would you get from it? Not so bad. And I love how it also understands your channel because it sees your data, so it puts you in the right environment.
19:45I guess our studio kinda looks like a sushi restaurant. You can also use a reference image of yourself and then sketch out a crude idea, as you can see, I'm a very talented artist, about what you want your thumbnail to look like, describe it exactly in words, and then see what it comes out with.
20:01And look at this, a beautiful image of me with a YouTube logo. Or let's say that you found a different thumbnail from another creator, you're like, man, this looks amazing. I want that for myself.
20:11You can actually upload both images and face swap yourself into that original thumbnail and have it have your own background. No Photoshop skills needed.
20:19This is a fast and efficient way to get ideas out quickly, especially for focus on that MVP process. Out the link in the description below to get thirty days for just $1 of one of 10. So now what is the minimum
20:31process for scripting?
20:32In this whole process, I would say that the one that perfectionists get stuck at the most is with the script, because they think that they need a word for word to write the entire script of the YouTube video out before they film it. There's only one place that you do I do recommend word for word scripting, and that is the hook of the video.
20:46Those first twenty, thirty seconds of the video, just to make sure that the video is actually for the person that you're trying to reach, Write that word for word, memorize it, and then say it to the camera. For the rest of the video, I would just do, like, a structured outline. Get the ideas out that you wanna cover, and then you can even have bullet points.
21:01You can have, you know, an iPad next to you or, you know, your notes next to you, and then just be yourself
21:07on camera. Yeah. I totally agree with that.
21:09And I think another big reason why people get so stuck on the script is because they want to just include everything. And so instead of giving, like, just five talking points, they wanna cram everything into their video.
21:21They don't wanna miss a single thing, and so they cram, like, 15 talking points in there. And then the video gets way too long, and then when they get to filming, they dread it. That is way too much work.
21:30Focus on just answering
21:32what the main idea is of the video. And the reason this works really well, for the fact that YouTube is moving in a direction now where authentic creators or being more human is an advantage again. So that's the script of the video.
21:45Now let's move on to actually filming the video, what we call, like, the video production. So, again, focusing on just minimum video process, what does that look like? I would say three things.
21:53First, most important, audio. Your audio has to sound good. I know everyone says YouTube is a video platform, but if our goal is to make educational content, we are helping someone solve a problem, they need to understand you.
22:04I mean, I tolerate watching, like, slow buffering videos on YouTube on my phone at, like, 07:20 p or, like, 05:40 p. You know? I'll still watch it because I can understand what's happening.
22:14But if I can't hear it or the audio is bad, I won't even tolerate it. The next thing to invest in is lighting. Two ways to do lighting.
22:20I would just highly recommend getting a softbox light or, like, some soft lighting. Soft lighting is just way more flattering for your face, makes you look beautiful, makes you look pretty, versus using hard lighting or natural lighting. Natural lighting is just unpredictable.
22:33If you're sitting outside and filming and then the sun moves throughout the shot or something, the lighting's gonna change on your face. And so it's very noticeable in edits. Like, if you wanna move a section around, now the whole lighting's just screwed up.
22:44If you just invest in a light, block out all the windows and stuff, you can get pretty far with just that. And the last thing, you wanna be able to film at four k. That's all I'll say.
22:51It doesn't matter what kind of camera. Honestly, nowadays, most iPhones and most phones can film at four k, so I would just start there. Don't worry about investing in a, like, a Sony FX three or six thousand,
23:01you know, dollar camera yet. Alright. Now on to editing.
23:05What does the minimum process look like for editing? Because you can really get carried away with this process. Unfortunately, it is the smallest layer in this pyramid too.
23:15Yeah. I would say for editing, again, same thing as we're seeing as a pattern for all this. Start to finish is where the effort should go.
23:22So most of the effort in your editing should go in the hook, in the front, in the first minute or two, and it can get less and less grandiose as you go throughout the video. A 100% of the people who click on your video are gonna watch the first second. By thirty seconds into the video, the average retention on YouTube, half of them drop off, which means that everything you do after thirty seconds in the video, less and less people see.
23:42So it doesn't make any sense for a lot of people we work with who do this crazy animation motion graphic or find all this b roll for a five second moment at the end of the video, they spend hours there, you know, trying to make that perfect. But no one's gonna see it because when you think of big like, I I don't like Lord of Rings, for example.
23:59The most epic part is near the end of the video because it's building to this climax moment. So we think that, oh, our videos need to do the same thing. They need to, like, start slow and then get more epic and intense.
24:08Yeah. We wanna respect the the person watching the channel.
24:11We need to give them the good stuff up front. Yeah. Well, the difference is that people don't normally just get up and leave out of a movie theater after they pay for the ticket.
24:20Right? Like, very, very few people do that. It's so easy to just click away from a video and instantly go to a different video.
24:26That doesn't cost you anything. And in fact, people are thinking in reverse. My sunk cost fallacy says I don't wanna waste any more time with this bad video.
24:32Mhmm. So I'm just gonna click on the next one. So this is the exact minimum video process you should make to launch your channel.
24:38And I would actually keep doing this, let's say, for the first, like, 20 videos on your channel. And I'm saying 20 videos because this is about the average we've seen it take for the channel to start working. And what what I mean by start working is the algorithm has now found the right person to match your content to, and they're coming back consistently to the channel.
24:56But if anytime during that process you do get a video to, like, take off, you know, and it starts working, it's really, really important what you do next, which is what brings us to the next step of the process here. So during the first 20 videos that you make, you're gonna start posting content. Let's be honest.
25:12If you're new to this, most of the first videos you make are gonna be bad. That's just reality because you're not good enough yet, you don't have the skills, and also the algorithm is not matched. But I promise you, if you followed the minimum video process that we showed you, some of them are gonna start working.
25:24And I would say, like, a good cadence to shoot for here would be a video per week. Right? That gives you enough momentum and gives enough content so your audience doesn't get bored and forget about you.
25:34If you can do more, great, but don't don't push it. I would just take a a video a week. Right?
25:38Yeah. And also, if you're taking longer than a week to make one video, then I would say you're spending too much time. Okay.
25:44So let's say this one tanked, this one flopped, this one didn't do well, but this one did well. So of this first sample size of five videos that you made, you had one that did pretty good. And pretty good can also be relative.
25:58I'll say that. If your channel is getting, like, 30 views and then this one gets, like, a thousand views, that's enough signal to say, okay, something about this video did well. The smartest thing you can do, if you remember back to our strategy, if people liked something that we did, we wanna do is just give them more of what they like.
26:13So the smartest thing you can do is kinda stop making more videos if you have more videos already planned out in your strategy. Figure out what was different about this one here. That's the whole point of this step, which is like the optimization of your strategy.
26:25So optimizing a strategy means when things start working, we wanna understand why they did well so that we can kinda repeat that success. It comes back to the minimum video process. Right?
26:34You go through each one of those steps. How did you package the video? Maybe the way that you packaged it resonated.
26:39How was your hook? Did that hook really speak to your audience, the way that you filmed, the way that you edit, all those things were good enough. And so that is like the baseline of what your video should be, and your videos should only go up from there.
26:51Try to figure out like, what was the structure, what was the format, what are the techniques that you used in the video, and try your best to just replicate that same thing. Yeah. Replicate like what the video looked and felt like, but you can do it for a different topic, a different one of those steps that you identified, but just recreate that similar style of video because that's what people liked.
27:08So what you do is you try to evolve from that video. And let's say this one also did pretty good. This is literally the game of YouTube.
27:17And not only are you giving your audience what they want, you're also, again, just training the algorithm further that not only does this channel cover these topics, but they do it in this particular way. When you can get both those axes right, the topic and this style, this format, that is when we see channels really start to take off.
27:33But obviously, you're not just, like, making videos and then crossing your fingers and praying that you're gonna get something to take off. There is something you should be doing in between each video here. If you're treating this as like a trial period.
27:42Right? Like, think about it like like a science experiment.
27:46You want to make sure that something is improving from video to video, and that's why we usually don't recommend that people batch their first videos.
27:55Right? Because you probably don't know what you're doing yet, and you probably don't know what direction to go yet. And so if you batch five videos, and the first video just happens to be like completely in the wrong direction, then what did you just do?
28:07You just made five videos in the wrong direction. So do one video at a time and really optimize for each MVP process. Now if you follow all of our steps up to this point, there's something so underrated about finding the right transformation, and we did not take advantage of this when we first started out.
28:23Here's what not to do. What we started out was just doing a bunch of topics that we wanted to do. Right?
28:29So we had a video about blood pressure. We had a video about magnesium supplements.
28:34We had a video about note taking apps. Like, it was really all over the place, and we thought we were improving. Once our first video started taking off, all these videos were still just dead in the water.
28:45So that's what not to do. Right? So what you should do is from day one, decide on a transformation and try to match it up as best as you can.
28:54So one of our clients, we had the plan of just make 20 videos. And by video number six, that video just started taking off. Right?
29:01It finally got some traction. But the cool thing that happened was that all his other videos that he made prior to were also getting pushed by the algorithm. Yeah.
29:11That really just goes to show the sequence here that we laid out. You have to go in these steps in order. And if you do this strategy,
29:17it's only a matter of time in those first 20 videos that if you get something to take off, the rest of your back catalog is just gonna see this huge lift. And that's how we've seen so many channels build like a real business and asset because everything is so clear in who it's for. The first thing you have to do after watching this video is go check that link below and figure out what your transformation's gonna We I made an AI tool.
29:37It's completely free. Ten minutes. You're gonna know exactly where to start.
29:41And once you figure that out, then definitely check out this video right here. It's gonna give you the next step to making really high quality videos.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Two people who built a channel to 1.3 million subscribers sit down at a chalkboard table with a bag of dominoes and dare to answer the question everyone is actually asking: not how to optimize an existing channel, but how to start correctly when nobody knows you exist.
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:06concept
Transformation Framework
Replace niche thinking with transformation thinking -- who goes from what starting point to what outcome.
Steal forChannel positioning, About page, pitch to sponsors
07:10model
The Tree Method
- 4 core problem branches
- Unlimited sub-topic videos per branch
- Format permutations for each sub-topic
Map your audience transformation into 4 core problems, each branching into unlimited video topics.
Steal forContent calendar planning, channel architecture
13:47model
MVP Pyramid
- Idea
- Package (title + thumbnail)
- Script
- Film
- Edit
An inverted pyramid where top layers carry 80 percent of the growth weight.
Steal forPrioritizing where to spend time per video
16:49concept
Outlier Matching
Find 3-4 recently blown-up videos on your topic; map them to your transformation steps; make it only if they match.
Steal forWeekly video ideation process
24:17model
Calibration Loop
First 20 videos are algorithm training. Post weekly, no batching. When one outperforms, pause and reverse-engineer.
Steal forAdvising new channels, setting realistic early-growth expectations
How they asked for the click.
29:17link
“The first thing you have to do after watching this video is go check that link below and figure out what your transformation is gonna be.”
Soft close directing to a free AI tool that generates a transformation statement from viewer background in 10 minutes. Low friction, high perceived value.
Visual structure at a glance.
