The argument in one line.
Daily short-form video works not because of algorithmic luck but because a repeatable series format builds audience habit, compresses the learning loop, and makes consistency structurally easy rather than willpower-dependent.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You have a topic you're passionate about and want to build an audience around it without a production team or large budget.
- You've tried posting short-form video inconsistently and burned out — this is the systems conversation that explains why consistency failed.
- You have existing long-form content and want to understand how Shorts can reach an entirely new audience rather than just clipping your old stuff.
- You're debating whether to start a new channel or build on an existing one — this covers the decision framework in depth.
- You want to understand how to build brand culture (recurring language, in-jokes, rivalries, lore) that turns casual viewers into fans.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for platform-specific algorithm hacks or growth tactics that don't require consistent daily publishing.
- You need to grow fast — this is a 30-to-60-day-experiment mindset, not a viral-overnight playbook.
The full version, fast.
Pat Flynn's daily Pokemon Shorts channel reached 12 million views per day by accident — or rather, by system. The core argument: a repeatable series format removes the daily decision of what to make, compresses the editing cycle, and generates 30 days of performance data in a month instead of a year. Hook construction, voiceover crafting, sound design, and brand lore (rival characters, recurring sound effects, inside references) all layer on top of that base. The episode also works through a clear framework for when to start a new channel versus build on an existing one: replace the word 'algorithm' with 'audience' and the answer becomes obvious.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
01:00guestPat Flynn
00:00hostSean Cannell
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 02:00
01 · Cold open + tease
Clips of Pat's viral moment — 750K views, 12M daily — teased before the interview begins.
02:00 – 08:00
02 · The 60-day Pokemon experiment
Pat explains why he started a separate channel, the no-face / no-link launch, and the count-uploads-not-views philosophy that kept him going past day 30.
08:00 – 15:00
03 · The secret is in the series
Episodic format, the 'guy kicking rocks' inspiration, in-store purchase as a hook, the jingle origin, and how long-form storytelling compressed into 60 seconds.
15:00 – 22:00
04 · Applying the series model to any niche
Framework for building a daily series around your audience's goals: target audience → urge/goal → reverse-engineer into a challenge. Public speaking example.
22:00 – 28:20
05 · New channel vs. existing channel
Should I Shorts-ify my existing channel or start fresh? Pat argues for fresh, with the heuristic 'replace algorithm with audience.' Sean uses his own Bible channel idea as a live case study.
28:20 – 35:00
06 · Going solo — batch recording, cross-posting workflow
Pat still does the whole show himself: edit in ScreenFlow, master template, 2-minute cross-post to all platforms. Batch records episodes before travel. 20 minutes total per day.
35:00 – 41:40
07 · Hook tactics and production craft
Hook = attention-grabbing moment (not just a sentence). Curiosity + visuals. Voiceover as post-production hook tool. Canva designer 'bet you didn't know' example. Sound effects, jingle, price pops.
41:40 – 45:00
08 · Brand culture — lore, rivals, subseries
Club thumbs → Diglett identity. Burning Shadows Sunday. Friendly rival Alex. Steve the timer with googly eyes. Inside references as a 'secret menu' that superfans share.
45:00 – 48:04
09 · Biggest mistakes + closing advice
Mistake #1: paying attention to views too early. Mistake #2: over-perfecting production. Sailing with Phoenix story. Consistency + courage is the real playbook.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A repeatable series format is what makes daily publishing sustainable — it removes the decision of what to make every single day.
- People follow a channel not because they liked a video but because they want to know what happens next.
- Short-form video is like fishing: every cast is a new chance at the lunker, and you learn the pattern by casting more, not by studying the water.
- Publishing daily compresses feedback loops — you get 30 data points in a month instead of 12 in a year.
- When a person says 'I'm too busy,' what they mean is 'it's not a priority' — a 12-million-view-per-day channel takes 20 minutes a day to produce.
- The hook is not just what you say — it's what you show, what's happening, or the most interesting moment of the middle of the story shown first.
- Voiceover lets you craft the story after the fact and insert the hook retroactively — it's a post-production superpower for short-form.
- Start a video in the middle of the story, not at the beginning — educational content dies when you introduce yourself before showing the problem.
- Inside references, recurring sounds, and brand language create a 'secret menu' that superfans share with strangers, doing your distribution for you.
- A 'rival' doesn't require beef — a friendly rival who both audiences watch creates mutual investment, cross-pollination, and event energy around every upload.
- Paying attention to views too early is the number one thing that kills short-form channels — what you can control is the upload, not the view count.
- Over-perfecting production is a trap: the content that goes most viral is often the most raw.
- When you build a niche on a personal brand channel that's already confused, starting a new channel is almost always the right call — for the audience and for your own mental clarity.
- Short-form clips from long-form content are not funnels into the long-form — they reach people who will never watch the long version, and that is the value.
- Brand lore compounds: a throwaway detail (club thumbs, a meme sound, a kitchen timer with googly eyes) becomes merchandise, identity, and audience vocabulary over time.
Build the system before you chase the views.
WHAT TO LEARN
Consistent short-form growth is a systems problem, not a talent problem — and the system that works is almost embarrassingly simple.
02The 60-day Pokemon experiment
- Count uploads, not views: the only metric you fully control in the early weeks is how many times you publish, so make that the goal.
- Publishing daily compresses your feedback loop: thirty uploads in a month gives you 30 data points to learn from, versus 12 if you post monthly.
03The secret is in the series
- A repeatable series format removes the daily decision of what to create, which is what makes consistency structurally possible rather than willpower-dependent.
- People subscribe to find out what happens next, not to reward a video they liked — so the format must create anticipation, not just deliver value.
04Applying the series model to any niche
- Start your video in the middle of the story — introducing yourself before showing the problem is why educational content loses viewers in the first three seconds.
- Identify your target audience's core urge or goal, then reverse-engineer a daily challenge or series that documents progress toward it.
05New channel vs. existing channel
- When deciding between a new channel and an existing one, substitute the word 'audience' for 'algorithm' — if the audience would be confused by the mixed content, start fresh.
06Solo production workflow and cross-posting
- Over-production is a trap: the content that achieves the widest discovery is often the most raw and unpolished.
- Viewing 'too busy' as a valid excuse is a misdiagnosis — a channel generating 12 million views per day costs 20 minutes a day to produce.
07Hook construction and production tactics
- Voiceover is a post-production tool for inserting the hook after the fact — you do not need to nail it on camera in real time.
- A hook is not just what you say — it is also what you show in the opening frame that stops the scroll before a single word is spoken.
08Brand culture, lore, rivals, and superfans
- Brand lore (recurring sounds, inside references, friendly rivalries) builds a 'secret menu' that superfans spread for you, turning passive viewers into active advocates.
Terms worth knowing.
- Series format
- A repeatable structure for short-form videos where each episode follows the same setup, so the creator knows exactly what to make every day and the audience knows what to expect.
- Episodic short-form
- Short videos designed to be watched in sequence over days or weeks, building anticipation and habit rather than functioning as standalone content.
- Voiceover
- Audio narration recorded after filming, layered over footage to craft and refine the story — used to insert a strong hook retroactively.
- Open loop
- A narrative device that poses a question or creates anticipation at the start of a video, compelling the viewer to stay until it's resolved.
- Brand lore
- Inside references, recurring characters, sounds, or language that regular viewers recognize and newcomers wonder about — self-spreading cultural currency for a channel.
- Rival
- A friendly competitor whose audience overlaps with yours; you publicly spar in a low-stakes way, generating investment from both fanbases.
- Burning Shadows Sunday
- A subseries within Pat Flynn's daily Shorts show where every Sunday he opens a pack from the same rare Pokemon set, hunting a card he has not yet pulled after 400+ packs — a serialized running storyline.
- Superfans
- Pat Flynn's book on building deeply loyal community members who advocate for, and participate in, a creator's brand rather than passively consuming content.
Things they pointed at.
11:40bookLean Learning (Pat Flynn book)
36:00toolScreenFlow
36:40productMusic Radio Creative
38:20toolCollector app (Pokemon collection tracker)
40:50toolManyChat
45:00bookSuperfans (Pat Flynn book)
48:10bookChoose Your Enemies Wisely (Patrick Bet-David book)
01:00channelDeep Pocket Monster (Pat Flynn YouTube channel)
01:00channelShort Pocket Monster (Pat Flynn YouTube channel)
Lines you could clip.
00:45
“The whole goal wasn't views or subscriber counts. It was to count uploads, not views.”
08:00
“The secret is in the series.”
42:10
“When a person says I'm too busy to do this, it's just not a priority for you.”
44:00
“I love shorts because it's to me like fishing. Every day is a new cast to potentially catch the big one.”
51:00
“Some of the stuff that goes most viral is just the most raw.”
26:20
“Replace the word algorithm with audience. Would the audience be confused?”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 08:00denseOrigin story — 60-day Pokemon Shorts experiment
08:00 – 15:00denseSeries format design and episodic structure
15:00 – 22:00denseApplying the series model to any niche/business
22:00 – 28:20denseNew channel vs. existing channel strategy
28:20 – 35:00steadySolo production workflow and cross-posting
35:00 – 41:40denseHook construction and production tactics
41:40 – 45:50denseBrand culture, lore, rivals, and superfans
45:50 – 48:04steadyBiggest mistakes and mindset closing
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
00:00Thirty days into the sixty day experiment, I wasn't getting very many views. Normally, would have given up by then but the whole goal, again, wasn't views or subscriber counts, it was to count uploads, not views.
00:11Right now, you're getting 12,000,000
00:13views per day on YouTube Shorts. And climbing. Day 35 rolls around.
00:18One of those videos hits 750,000 views.
00:22All those previous videos all started to climb as well. When a person says I'm too busy to do this, is it's just not a priority for you.
00:28Total time every day it takes then right now. Twenty minutes because I'll open a pack. And hitting it on every platform.
00:34And hitting it on on every platform. Oh my goodness.
00:37One of the biggest opportunities for growing a following right now is YouTube shorts and short form content. And we have really the leading expert on the podcast today, breaking down tactics, breaking down the mindset, the philosophy. So if you wanna get views, if you wanna grow subscribers, and if you also wanna earn more money in your online business or get known, you're starting from zero, lock in because this podcast with Pat Flynn is an absolute game changer.
01:02Pat Flynn is an entrepreneur, author, and content creator who's built millions of subscribers and generated billions of views across his platforms. And today, he's breaking down how you can apply the lessons he's learned to grow your own brand. Pat Flynn, right now, you're getting 12,000,000 views per day on YouTube shorts.
01:18And climbing. It's crazy. And climbing.
01:20It's crazy. And this is on a new channel that you started just a year and a half ago. Yes.
01:24So I need to know all your secrets, all the things you never shared, and your whole short form playbook. I'm here for you, man. But first, tell tell me the story.
01:32What is this channel? What's the vision? How'd it start?
01:35Yeah. So I have a Pokemon YouTube channel that was all long form. In fact, I was here at this event a couple years ago and talked about how short form is kind of a waste of time.
01:42Right? You can't build relationship sixty seconds in in just sixty seconds, but I was wrong. You can do that
01:48if sixty seconds happens every day. Right? Across an entire month, that's a whole half hour of time with somebody, and you're building a routine.
01:55You're building a habit of showing up daily. And if you can do it right, you become a part of a person's daily routine, and you show up in ways that you never thought possible. So although I had a long form channel already, it would have made sense for me to just insert Shorts into that channel.
02:09But again, I wanted to experiment, and myself, I always use myself as a case study to try to teach other people. So I created a separate channel, didn't link to it from anything I had, didn't even put my face on it. And it was just the whole goal was to go sixty days of opening a pack of Pokemon cards daily and I record the voiceovers after and whether it's a good card at the end or a bad card, I always just share it anyway.
02:29You know, lot of other creators, they'll only show the good hits. But I wanted to be relatable. That was a big part of this.
02:34The r word relatable is so important today because everything is so fake and manufactured. Right? So I said, okay.
02:40No matter what happens, I'm just gonna go daily. Thirty days into the sixty day experiment, I wasn't getting very many views.
02:46Normally, would have given up by then because I'm like, oh, this is not working. But the whole goal, again, wasn't views or subscriber counts. It was to count uploads, not views Mhmm.
02:54As my buddy Alex says. And so day 35 comes around. Now by the way, day 30, although I didn't get a lot of views, there were a lot of things that were already happening.
03:02My editing time for these videos went from forty five minutes per video to about fifteen. How do you do that?
03:08Go deeper on that. Just the more you do something, the more you learn how to be more efficient with and optimize that. I learned the shortcuts.
03:14I started to build a library of all the sound effects and all those kinds of things. The other thing that was really helpful in this case versus the other experiments that I tried on TikTok and and Reels and and Facebook is that I had a format that was repeatable. I had a structure, and I made it episodic.
03:30And that is the secret. The secret is in the series. In fact, this even goes back to the first time I really got interested in in a in a weird TikTok, and it was this guy named guy kicking rocks or guy who kicks rocks, think is the name of the channel.
03:46I saw a video, and it was literally a guy just kicking a rock and said, day one of kicking a rock until it becomes a sphere. I was like, this is the stupidest thing. Little did I know, sixty days later, I was watching this thing transform, and I was so emotionally invested in this rock becoming a sphere, and he would kind of track its weight and all this stuff, and it's just like, what is happening here?
04:05Why am I so interested in this? It's because there was something to look forward to, because there was anticipation, because I wanted to see what the end result was.
04:12And that's something I wasn't incorporating into my previous shorts. But this time, I mean, kinda inherently in a pack of Pokemon cards, there is a mystery in each one. You don't know what you're gonna get.
04:21So that was kind of helping me. But again, I wanted to continue to try to get to sixty days. Also, by day 30, I had 30 pieces of data from 30 previous uploads to tell me, well, what kind of worked and maybe what didn't.
04:33Such as? Such as I noticed that when I was in person at a card shop and I had that transaction to purchase the pack that I was going to then open, those videos often performed a lot better because there was something different.
04:47Most people would just start at their desk. Me, I was starting in an interaction, and you were kinda there with me as it was happening. And then we go and see if it was worth how much I ever spent.
04:56Usually, by the way, spoiler alert, it's not worth it to open it. But it's entertaining and and it's funny. I love Pokemon and and I'm deep in that space.
05:03Day 35 rolls around. One of those videos hit 750,000 views.
05:10Kind of just I mean, it wasn't like anything drastic that I changed. It just so happened to catch that day, and it did incorporate those changes that I made previously.
05:17It was done in a card shop, and I, you know, started to get familiar with getting quicker to the hook and retaining people. 750,000 views.
05:25All those previous videos all started to climb as well because a person would find that new one,
05:31and then they'd go back and find the older one. And it's very scrollable. It's it actually is a short show you could watch daily, but you also could binge the show Right.
05:39Really easy. And people were telling me they were doing that. After a couple days later, they said, I have watched every single one of these.
05:44I want I can't wait till tomorrow. Right? And that is the secret to growing followers and subscribers on these channels.
05:50It's what happens next. I wasn't providing that opportunity to wonder what was gonna happen next or that curiosity before. This time, it was baked into this.
05:58And then by day 60, I was like, okay. I'm gonna keep going with this. And today, I'm on day 647 straight and we are seeing about 12,000,000 views per day across all platform.
06:09Cause it's not just YouTube shorts anymore. I take that same video and I publish it on Instagram as a reel.
06:15And that same video also goes on now Facebook. It also goes on TikTok. It also goes on Snapchat and across all of those platforms.
06:23It's funny because sometimes a video will do really well on one and kind of not perform extra well on the others. Sometimes it goes well on all of them, and sometimes it bombs. But that's the cool thing about shorts and short form.
06:35Every day is like a new opportunity. Right? Whereas before, especially with long form video and I'm creating one video per month or one video every other week, it's like, if you miss on that video, you kinda have to wait a while till you get another chance.
06:48Not to mention, you were slower to collect that data that then tells you what's working and what's not. So that's why for anybody starting any short form content, I say go daily because that's gonna teach you faster what's working and what's not. I wrote about that sort of effort in my book, Lean Learning.
07:01You just like the learning comes from the action you take. So in the world of content, publish faster. You'll learn faster.
07:06You know, you can adjust. There's very little risk in publishing a video that bombs because you have tomorrow and then the next day and the next day. And then over time, optimizing the storytelling within these sixty second videos.
07:17Actually, think a big thing that happened was I took a lot of my podcasting brain and my kind of episodic show brain and put it into this series. And I created a little jingle at the beginning and it's should I open it or should I keep it sealed?
07:30Very inspired by like the Empire theme song or you know, all those like little old fifties kind of jingles. Shout out to Music Radio Creative by the way. I gave them that tune.
07:40It's it's an audio file that nobody will have ever hear because it's terrible but they made it sound great after my after my little wave file I gave them. And that is at the beginning. So I flipped the pack in one second.
07:52Should I open it or should I keep it sealed? A question that I now propose to the viewer that sticks them around that keeps them stuck to wonder, well, should you have opened this or not?
08:01Right? So so the long form storytelling that I've learned is now shortened
08:07and compacted into a sixty second In the show name itself, the concept itself,
08:12the idea itself is a question that creates tension. Yes. And it's a question that a lot of collectors ask ourselves all the time.
08:20Mhmm. But it's also relatable for anybody who's maybe not even into Pokemon. That's the other thing.
08:23It hits a general audience because it's so quick that you're not quote unquote wasting time watching somebody open Pokemon, but it opens a question that then I deliver on and that and and I yield that result for them at the very end. Right?
08:35The the the secret is in the series, and and I have an acronym. It's it's easy.
08:40Right? It's episodic. It's authentic.
08:42Right? Just like right now. You're you're seeing me struggle with this, but it's real life.
08:46It is something that is structured so that format, again, makes it very easy for me. I know what tomorrow's gonna be like because it's the same video, just a different pack every time. It's the same structure.
08:56People are expecting that.
08:58And then, uh, why it yields a result. I got so many questions and so many strategies to get into. But first, for listeners that would be like, okay.
09:10Cool. I wanna follow that format, but I'm in insurance. I'm in real estate.
09:15I'm an online marketer. You know, I'm a coach. What would you recommend?
09:19How could that look or how has that looked for anybody you coach? If you give a couple examples. If we just now get stuck, like, see the idea, but you're tapping into giant IP Pokemon, And you you tap into a lot of deserves all the respect in the world, but there's a certain level of scale to it.
09:35So what is the format to get a owner, entrepreneur,
09:39or content creator all the way to their concept for what they might do daily for short form. Yeah. I got you.
09:45So you wanna think about what is your target audience because that's important. You don't just kinda create randomly because it's one thing to go go viral and get millions of views, but then, like, so what? Yeah.
09:54Right? So for your target audience, think about what is a goal that they have, what is an urge that they that they that they have, um, and how do you reverse engineer that into a challenge or a series.
10:05Right? For example, I know somebody who's teaching people, uh, how to public speak. So he's got students of his recording themselves daily, talking to the camera, and the hook is day one of speaking or of trying to learn how to be a public speaker without any filler words.
10:23Day two, day three, and it gives you something to look back on to see like And is he the speaker or he's got videos of his students? Speaker. Oh, okay.
10:29But he's got his students there and then he gives a tip at the end. Right? Whereas traditionally, a person who is maybe teaching that would start a video by saying, hey.
10:36My name is so and so. I'm a professional speaker and I'm gonna give you a tip on how to be a better public speaker and remove filler words. And then they go and, like, by then, people are gone.
10:44Yeah. That's such a long Right? Yeah.
10:46Start the video in the middle of the story. That is the big secret with educational content.
10:52Don't set it up. Just go right into it. So already, you're seeing somebody going through a transformation and maybe struggling because it's in the early days.
11:00Or especially with that hook, it's like, well, let me see. Are you gonna add any filler words today? I don't know.
11:05Yeah. So now I'm stuck and I'm gonna stick till the end because I'm gonna see if this person's doing what they say they're gonna do. And then the educator comes in at the end and says, oh, you did a good job of those kinds of things.
11:14Right? So that's a really cool way to feature a student to then come in with some education in the middle of a story that that builds. Right?
11:22And then after thirty days, they they can go back to the content from day one and go, here's how much you've improved. Yeah. And now, of course, with any marketers, we wanna show the transformation.
11:32It just took sixty second spurts for thirty days to show it versus one long video which people don't have the time and attention for. Interesting. So
11:40I'm curious. Your story is so cool, but you went in with a lot of clarity. It became like a second channel.
11:47You've started multiple YouTube channels. Got the whole smart passive income business side of things you've all done. This whole new era, you're like taking over the Pokemon world.
11:55You have your long form channel. You start your short form channel. You go into it though with the name of the show.
12:00With the No. Oh, you didn't? No.
12:03So It took six days to Okay. To discover the should I open it, um, format. So what did you name you named it all Short Pocket Monster?
12:11Yeah. Because I have Deep Pocket Monster, which is my main channel. So you're on the same brand?
12:14And then it was like, well, these are shorts.
12:16Related to that. I'm kinda short. Got it.
12:19So so the channel name the show name be was discovered actually after some experimentation. Six days, you're figuring it out. But I guess my question is, how would you recommend somebody who already they have their preexisting social media or accounts.
12:33Maybe their channel is named Pat Flynn. Their first and last name, Sean Cannell. And I'm seeing some people do, like, a hundred days.
12:40So also maybe, like, I don't know if I wanna commit to this for six hundred and fifty five days of the same show.
12:45Do you recommend, like, spurts of common themes to open loops and close them? That's a that's a great idea and often what I recommend because, you know, you don't wanna commit forever. And Yeah.
12:54Again, I didn't know I was gonna do this for this long. Just so happened that it worked after the sixty day experiment. But you do need to give something an amount of time.
13:01And the time is a tool that can help you and your audience know, again, what's coming and and what to do at least within that certain time frame. So perhaps you wanted to try to lose weight for example, like, and I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna work out every day for thirty days. Come follow me on this transformation.
13:18But again, don't start by saying that. You were literally on the treadmill sweating. Alright, guys.
13:24I'm gonna be I don't know if this is people are very bumpy on on my treadmill. But, you know, you're in the middle of the story. What's happening?
13:29And then now I have to to see what's what this person's gonna do. Right? Um, it could be something like that, something transformational.
13:36It it could be kicking rocks. Right? Whatever it is, you just have to do it for a period of time Got it.
13:41Let your audience know that you're gonna be,
13:43you know, documenting this journey. So we've helped thousands of people go full time on YouTube here at Think Media. And one of the things we discovered from analyzing their channels is that there's five stages of YouTube success.
13:55So our team got together and we actually created a free resource. You can check it out at mycreatorquiz.com. And what it does is it will walk you through a series of questions that will get you fierce clarity on where you're at on YouTube right now, what's holding you back, and what you need to do next to unlock that next level of views and subscribers.
14:17So it only takes about three minutes. It's entirely free. Just go to mycreatorquiz.com or click the link in the show notes.
14:24Alright. Let's dive back into the podcast. Are you
14:27a proponent of starting fresh channels?
14:31If somebody's debating if they wanna start a new channel or not, you started a second channel. I did for experimental purposes because I knew if I put it on my existing channel, people would go, well, this is only successful because you're the one. What's really funny is I started the second one, and that one is now outperforming the long form in terms of views and subscribers.
14:49We're at 2,700,000 subscribers now in a year and a half. Yeah.
14:52Uh, 2.2 in the long form one. It's different audiences, though. There there there is some overlap, but there is a large number of people, a large population who do not even know I have a long form channel.
15:02Interesting. And and that makes sense. Because there are people who will only consume the short form stuff.
15:07Right? And this is really, really important to understand. The content, especially for educators who have long form content, you take these clips out.
15:13Right? You're trying to get people to watch these clips and then subscribe to the bigger thing Yeah. At the long form podcast, whatever it might be.
15:20That is the wrong way to think about why you do those clips. Yep. You do those clips because you're able to now get parts of your show in front of people who would have never listened to the full thing otherwise, who who who can discover you from that clip.
15:31Right? The content is in the clips now. When I get recognized in public now, most of the time, it's like, I watch your shorts, not the longs.
15:39Hang on, though.
15:40Are you doing shorts of your long form videos as well? No. I am now.
15:46Okay. I am now. So, like, any special moments What do you mean by the content is in the clips?
15:50Meaning, the special moments of long form content is where people could discover you, but your show of opening packs is different than that. It's different than that. Yeah.
15:57I just went on a tangent for those who maybe have an opportunity to do short form with pulling from existing long form forms. And the big idea is that if we wanna reach new people and strangers, strangers need, a low commitment.
16:12That's why thirty seconds. That's why these short form these gives and and if you do it well at scale,
16:18not everyone's gonna move over, but it's a chance for them to get to know you. For sure. Yeah.
16:21And, again, they wouldn't have found you otherwise. Yeah. So you have that content already.
16:25You could publish a clip daily and maybe use a tool like ManyChat to grab those people who are interested in what you have to offer and move them from, like, Instagram
16:35or something. Yeah. Exactly.
16:36Okay. So I'm curious if you were to do a case study with your advice, algorithmically advice to me, and I think that every listener I'm shocked how much I get this question.
16:46It happens a lot. Okay. Sean, I already have a YouTube channel.
16:49It's been three years. It's been five years. It's been ten years.
16:52I haven't really done anything with it. The channel's maybe kind of confused. And and do I start a new channel?
16:58I've already uploaded 400 videos on the other channel though, I started it. Do I start it there? And then my traditional advice is, well, if you were going to start, you were doing gardening channel.
17:08And now you've moved into real estate. And you have subscribers. It's too different.
17:12The algorithm would definitely be confused there. But if it's a personal brand or something, so like you've always kinda talked about the same thing, the channel's aligned. But now if we use me as a case study, I'm curious.
17:23And this kind of is a tangent into short form in general. Do you think I should start a new channel if I was to start focusing on, let's say, something like, uh, something related daily to the Bible?
17:36I'm a Bible nerd. Read the Bible all the time. Leadership principles from the Bible, the faith principles.
17:43And I have a YouTube channel that has over a 100,000 subscribers. That is my first and last name, Sean Cannell.
17:51It is total chaos. Like, it's whether it's, like, cooking videos. I interviewed Benjie's daughter, Juliana.
17:56It went viral. It's, like, all over the place. Not bible related stuff.
18:00Those things. There's one or two bible videos on there. There's random I vlogged for sixty days.
18:05It is a lot of things. And it's, you know, 16 years old. Okay.
18:11So there's that channel. Then there's, like, my personal Instagram that, you know, bio is like, help people grow on YouTube.
18:20Get my book, YouTube Secrets. And I do personal stuff there. And so the the question then becomes is, I don't wanna launch anything new at this exact second, but that what I'm describing is something I will 100% do someday.
18:34And my thought would be, would you start, like, a new feature account if you were me? And if you were to start short form or long form but the the intro actually, you got me peeked.
18:46I would do short form videos because that makes a lot of sense. I think people would take short hits of maybe what does the bible really say or like something from the bible. Okay.
18:55You have maybe enough context to say, yeah, you could build it up on your personal brand channel. You could go all in on your Sean Cannell.
19:03You might wanna do something else with that. Or would you start a fresh account? And for listeners, it's also kind of dovetails over to how you see algorithms and how algorithms learn now if they've got baggage from the past versus fresh accounts?
19:16Uh, I'm not anybody who works at YouTube.
19:19I know and happen to be in a Discord with the people who work on the algorithm, but I don't have access to that. Like, what and how that works exactly. From everything you've just told me, it would be a new channel a 100%.
19:32And it and it would be like a new Instagram account. A new Instagram account. YouTube channel.
19:35Correct. You can reference this new account on your existing platforms Yep. Right, for those who within that group are interested in that.
19:42And I think that's the way to go about it. The major thing to think about here is from the audience's perspective and how like, you can just replace the word algorithm with audience. Would the audience be confused if you talked about all these kinds of things?
19:56Especially when it comes to growth, you can't expect a person to go in and start to, like, read your history and look at everything. Right?
20:02They're just seeing what's popping up now. Yep. And so a new channel, Sean Cannell Faith.
20:07Yeah. New video every day. I'm gonna and and for thirty days, I'm gonna pull out a verse in the Bible, and I'm gonna ask a random person on the street what they think that means.
20:17Yep. Oh, yeah. Right?
20:19Boom. You have thirty days of content. You have this interaction.
20:22It's different. We're getting you to help a person or the audience understand maybe or how to interpret these things, then you can relate it to something personal if you'd like. Yeah.
20:32That's how I'd go about it. Yeah. It's a genius idea.
20:35Now,
20:36on my Sean Cannell channel, there's probably there'd be subscribers that are disengaged. There'd be subscribers that actually would be interested in that because they did just subscribe to me, and they would either unsubscribe or not.
20:47But there also is a lot of confusion. So even if you replace algorithm with the word audience, I feel like in some cases, there's almost this argument like subscribers don't matter.
20:55They almost become like inactive. And and then I guess my point is if you wanted to leverage that asset, like as that sits there, I sometimes wrestle with. And I think this is the exact thing people feel.
21:07Even if it's 300 subscribers or 300,000, I've already posted hundreds of videos. It's already a personal brand channel.
21:13And if I just push it hard, do I unlist videos and pivot that channel to leverage that as an asset to build from? Or would you still say start fresh? I would still say start fresh.
21:22I I wouldn't do anything with older videos and trying to remove things to kind of, like, change Yeah. The perception
21:29in most cases. I mean, there's gonna be edge cases and maybe opportunities to do that in some some cases.
21:35But in general, I think not only for the audience and the algorithm, but for you Yep. Having a separate channel where you know these kinds of content exists. Structured videos about this particular topic.
21:46It's just gonna help wrap your head around Yep. Where that goes and then silo that in terms of production and all those kinds of things. Okay.
21:54I really wanna get into some tactics still, and there's so many already. But
21:58continuing on that a little bit with people starting second channels, this might be news to you. I'm just curious your take.
22:05I caught that Gary Vee was doing some kind of a talk, and then they screenshotted some b roll. And he talked about there's a reason why we started Gary Vee wine on Instagram and Gary Vee jets, as in the football team. Yeah.
22:18And he he started these niche accounts even at the expansion of his personal brand. Do you think that's an extension of
22:25what you're describing here to build up, like, fandoms or audiences around niche? Potentially, Gary is an anomaly. Yeah.
22:31I went into his office a couple years ago, and I saw, like, 40 people who manage his social media accounts. So So there you go. You know, you see how many people are working behind the scenes there, and you're like, oh, he's not actually the one doing all of this.
22:43So he He can cast the vision, but then he puts somebody on it, lets them go through footage all day long for their full time. Like, to try to attempt to do a percentage of what he does, which is actually not just him, is you're gonna drive yourself nuts.
22:56So I would focus on one thing at a time. But to your point, creating separate siloed platforms for different audiences or different messages may make sense.
23:06But I think I would only worry about that after figuring out one. Yeah.
23:11And you might not even need the others. And would you when we first talked, when I first heard about this Shorts Pocket Monster channel, you said you shot this all by yourself, edited it all by yourself.
23:22You were a one man team. Still. And that's still true.
23:25Still true. Only me. That's important for me for a couple reasons.
23:28One, to continue to be able to share an example of somebody who's busy and who is managing all this stuff and has a family. It's like I'm still able to find time to do it.
23:38This is why optimizing the production of it was really important to me because I don't have a lot of time. Yet I was still able to make it happen and now get to a point 600 episodes later where I've kept up daily. And I do batch process that helps me to for Hang on.
23:49Hang on. Hang on.
23:51Now do you
23:52take that final export and you're personally posting it on all those platforms? Correct. How long does that take?
23:58Not very long. Very quick. I've gotten it down to two minutes.
24:01And you upload it to Snapchat and title it and you upload it to YouTube shorts Yep. Title it and upload it Instagram and do the caption. Like, wish I could just show you.
24:09Do you just do it on your phone? Uh, I do it on my laptop.
24:13I edit on my laptop. I use ScreenFlow just because it's a it all these editing tools eventually get you to the same result. It's just what works for you.
24:20Doesn't look clean. Does it yeah. Whatever.
24:22So I have my library of sound effects, my library of of GIFs that I use. I have the jingle with the text that pops up in a master template that I just copy and paste into the new one. I have the structure down.
24:34It's kind of the same thing repeated every day. Yeah. But that's what people want.
24:38Totally.
24:39And so then so total workflow, now that you know and you've built momentum, and it's actually insane.
24:46The the headline of like solo busy dad business owner builds, you know, 12,000,000 view a day channel.
24:5640 year old opening cardboard with cardstock. Year opening pieces of cardboard with no AI None.
25:04No help, and a simple phone and laptop.
25:08And a passion and a dream. And passion and a dream.
25:11And grit and, uh, and the hustle and the love builds channel.
25:16So it it's kind of inspiring. And it I mean, it proves it done. Like, for anybody who said, you know, I'm too busy to start a YouTube channel.
25:22I'm too busy to do so social media. You all really are it actually is inspiring to hear your story. Can see why you're doing that.
25:27You're finding a way to do it. Yeah. I just interpret when a person says I'm too busy to do this is it's just not a priority for you.
25:33Sure.
25:34That's it. That's really what that means. Yep.
25:36How can you make it a priority? How can you get yourself to get off your butt and just do it?
25:43Total time every day it takes then right now to do Twelve minutes. Total time for the whole no. The whole show?
25:48Oh, uh, twenty minutes because I'll open a pack. Right. And hitting it on every platform.
25:51And hitting it on on every platform. It takes a twenty minute turnaround to do your daily show that's getting 12,000,000 views. Before I came here to social media marketing world, I recorded three episodes because I'm gonna be gone for I was gone from home for three days.
26:03I am gone from home for three days, and I just scheduled them. So they're all they're all ready to go. They're gonna go up On every platform?
26:08Every platform. 08:30PM Pacific. Oh my goodness.
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26:19You know, years ago in my life, I was experiencing chronic pain in both arms. It was up to a level 10. It was so frustrating.
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27:16There's a link in the show notes. You could use that as well. And with that, let's dive back into the podcast.
27:21So okay. I mean, there's a lot of that that the systems you're breaking down, the simplicity, the time it takes to get there.
27:28It's cool to start and tweak it in. I wanna hear now then, uh, tactics.
27:33Yes. For anybody that wants to get views on Shorts, any platform, maybe the nuances of different platforms.
27:38And you recently did a thirty day challenge, and you did a fourteen day challenge for Shortform. Mhmm.
27:44You could take this however you wanna start it, and I just wanna pull it apart. But, like, what is working? What are the tactics for getting views with YouTube Shorts and short form videos right now?
27:53Hook is everything. K. I mean, it's the most important thing.
27:56And with the students of mine, we had thousands define hook?
28:01Attention grabbing moment. Because it's not just what you say. It's not like a hook is necessarily a sentence, although it's part of could be what you see or what's happening or some interesting kind of part of the middle of the story that then you kind of go, well, here's how I got here.
28:15Yeah. Right? You share those moments that are interesting up front because people are literally flipping and instantly moving on until they find something that captures their attention.
28:23What have you learned that makes a great hook? Uh, curiosity, visuals.
28:27Right? I had a friend of mine who was opening packs too of Pokemon in his own way and he was just starting by showing the pack and talking and then opening it.
28:37And it took him like twelve seconds to get to the point where he was opening the pack which is what we all want to see. But we said, well, what can you include visually up front that would stop people and then give you permission to now talk for twelve seconds and then open the pack?
28:51Well, he started filming himself going to Target and every video starts with him pulling something off the rack. And now that very relatable moment, the thing that we all hope to see at Target, the pack coming off becomes a start and he uses a voiceover.
29:07Voiceover is a very big tool that we could use to fine tune and craft that story and insert a hook after the fact. You're a big fan of voice overs.
29:16That show is a voice over. That show is a That you do. Entirely a voice voice over.
29:21On my long form videos, much of the video is voice over. It's like voice in my head, kind of Dexter style. Yep.
29:26Less bloody. But yeah. That is great.
29:30Different target audience. Different target audience. Yes.
29:32That allows us to craft the story after everything's captured. On the long form, which I know is gonna be a separate topic or or discussion, we capture hundreds of hours of content across multiple cameras.
29:43Then it's about pulling out those best moments and putting them into a story and the voiceover becomes the glue between that.
29:50So it's less vlog and more you're with me here and you get a voice inside my head. Mhmm.
29:56The voice inside my head. Anyway, going back to shorts. Um, the the hook.
30:00Right? So practice the hook every day until you get that framework and structure that is repeatable because that is when a person will now start to follow because they follow not because they like the video. I think there's a big confusion here.
30:12A lot of people go, hey, you like the video, please follow and subscribe. It's like that's what a like is for. People follow a video because they wanna know what's coming next or they want the same thing that's gonna happen tomorrow.
30:22And this is why daily is important too. .
30:28I love fishing. I love to go fishing. Imagine going fishing.
30:32You put the perfect bait on the perfect hook and you cast the perfect cast and the perfect conditions with the perfect retrieve, and then you don't get a fish, which is pretty often. What do do? You pack it up after that one video?
30:42Then cast again. You cast over here. You maybe try a faster retrieve, a slower retrieve.
30:47You never know that next cast could be the lunker. Right? Yeah.
30:51And that is what is so fun to me about short form video. Every day is a new cast to potentially catch the big one.
30:58And then eventually, in fishing, for example, you learn the pattern. Oh my gosh.
31:02They're biting the purple margarita colored robo worm today. Okay.
31:07I'm gonna stick with that here because that's what's working in these conditions, and then you just like, you're just crushing it. Yeah. Okay.
31:13So
31:14do you have any favorite business examples or just of of hooks
31:19that could inspire listeners? There's a guy who, in our challenge, he he's a Canva designer. Yep.
31:25Drew, I think is his name. He started a series.
31:28Was like, bet you didn't know you could do this on Canva. And and he also did a little jingle. He got inspired by my stuff.
31:33And it just starts with him showing bet you didn't know you could do this on Canva. Takes two seconds, which opens up a question like bet you didn't know what. What are you what are you gonna teach me?
31:41It's a good that headline is the hook itself. The the show name is a So after starting that series in our challenge, he's getting an average of about a 150,000 views per video.
31:54Some of them have gotten millions. Right? Because sometimes you get the longer.
31:57And every video starts the same. You scroll through. It's just like, bet you didn't bet you didn't bet you didn't bet bet bet bet bet.
32:05It's the same hook every time. But the education comes after that and it's masterful. It's great.
32:11And now it's getting clients and now Canva knows who he is and it's like all this stuff is happening as a result of Right? It's just removing the complication not just in production and what to film but for the consumption.
32:21It's easy to know what's coming. So therefore, you subscribe especially if you're in that world and that's something That's great. You want.
32:28Okay. So what would be the next thing? I mean, is it what comes after the hook, is there other tactics
32:32for crafting? Yeah. I mean, there's a there's a lot of, you know, adding visuals when it makes sense, right, not going overboard, sound effects, and little, like, pop.
32:42Like, when I put a price on the screen, it goes right? Yep.
32:45And then I've built this bank of, like, sounds that people recognize, and they didn't come right away. Right? I've slowly added over time.
32:51I've I've just continued to refine
32:54daily. If your videos take you twenty minutes to edit, you put the price of every single card you show.
33:00Uh, not always. Not always. On a more vintage pack that's slower to open, yes.
33:06Because Okay. Yeah. Those are ones I watch.
33:07Right? But if I'm opening one stuff, it's the last one. Yeah.
33:10Okay. So does that take a little bit longer? You have to use some sort of a way to source the info?
33:14App, and it just I mean, I even
33:17this is an app called Collector where you can kinda track your collection and stuff. Um, I'm friends with the founder, I was like, hey. Can you build a a screenshot feature for me that you can, like, just take the price and put it on screen?
33:29I think a lot of other creators and myself would enjoy that. Nice. They built that in two days, and it's, like, what I use now.
33:34It's just like That's so that's cool. That's like a detail of working on your workflow to get an element dialed in. Yeah.
33:40Okay. If you describe
33:41one of your shorts and you were to just say or maybe you could say, what am I missing? What we're talking about here for those who haven't watched the channel, and they should just to even get inspired for their own niche, their own content. But you've got a music jingle.
33:55Does music play under it? Uh, it does. And I have three songs that I use every time.
34:00One is more of, like a stickiness to that. Stickiness to it. Yep.
34:03Not just the jingle, but there's music. There's sound effects. Sound effects.
34:06There's visuals if, when necessary, what I would see the price price pops up on a certain card, what other visuals or words, I'm sure. I will also so I again, I learned this over time. It's like, okay.
34:17Well, I'll talk about what I hope to see. Right? There's often, like, a very expensive card that I hope we get.
34:22Right? Again, that opens that loop. I then learned to show that card so that people can see it and look out for it at the end.
34:30So in the middle, when I'm like, oh, I hope we get the mega Charizard or whatever. Which is a screen grab from somewhere else of the card you're hoping for. Yes.
34:37From collector. Yeah. Yes.
34:38I mean, I would just pull that from eBay or So then that cuts in. That cuts in, then it swoops out, and I have Yeah.
34:45Like, little swooping noises that I started to add and all this kind of stuff. Eventual one day, I randomly added this meme sound from a vine long time ago where a guy was doing this Who's That Pokemon game? You know, you've ever watched Pokemon, they show like a silhouette of a Pokemon and then you have to guess who it is.
35:01There's a there's a meme from a five second vine of a Clefairy being shown, but the guy goes, it's Pikachu. Yeah.
35:08It's like really loud and obnoxious and it's funny. I I added that when I pulled a Pikachu one day, and then the next day, people were like, you should always do that.
35:17Like, commenters. They're like, where's the it's Pikachu. So I just now I add that sound effect whenever I pull a Pikachu.
35:25And when I forget to do it, people get upset. They get pissed off Wow. Because they expect that.
35:30Right? When I change the song something completely random one day, they notice that. Yeah.
35:35Why is the song different? Why is the song like, some other things happened, like, over time. This is this is gonna be really important for those who might be a little scared to do this and put themselves out there.
35:42So the the camera is really close to my hands. Right? Because I'm opening these packs, which means you can see my fingers.
35:48Yeah. And I have very weird, strange looking thumbs. They're club thumbs.
35:52They're like, I just saw your eyes go down real quick. Was curious. Checking them out.
35:55Yeah. Uh, they're I I call them Megan Fox thumbs because they look a little that that makes me feel better. I call them Nintendo thumbs as well.
36:00Yeah. Okay. I'm like, oh, they from it's all the gaming.
36:02No. They're just club thumbs. It's the thing.
36:04Okay. Um, they're short and kind of fat. K.
36:07And then in the beginning days of this video series, people started making fun of them. They're like, oh, this guy's thumbs are nasty.
36:14Puke emoji. And I was like, oh, like wanting to hide. Right?
36:17But I was like, you know what? I wanna embrace this because this is me. Like, great.
36:22You're pointing out something that's uniquely me. I'm gonna I'm gonna lean into that. Yeah.
36:26So I literally call them out one day and I say, yeah. I know. I got nasty thumbs.
36:30They're kinda like Diglett thumbs. Diglett is a Pokemon that kinda looks like my thumbs. K.
36:36Fast forward to today, when I go to a card convention, I am signing Diglett cards all day long. Okay. It's like a common Pokemon that nobody really cares about, but now when they see a Diglett card in a pack, they think of me.
36:49Yeah. That's deep. Um, and, like, people are like, you should tattoo Diglett on your thumb.
36:54And it's just like you know, one time I was at an event, and they're like, wait. Are you the should I open it guy? That's what I'm called now.
36:59Yeah. I'm not even big pocket monster. I'm like, you're the should I open it guy.
37:02And they're like, let me see your thumbs.
37:05To to verify. You. Yeah.
37:07To verify. That's amazing. So I mean, there's so much there.
37:12Like, I I would recommend listeners that are new to you, your book Superfans. Thank you.
37:18Yeah. Because there's so much genius that you do, things you've learned in terms of community building.
37:24What would you almost call those? You'd almost call them like, uh, lore? It's, uh, it's it's part of the culture of our brand.
37:31Right? Culture of your brand. The brand language.
37:33Brand language, moments, audio. And what I want people to hear, and I don't know if I'm missing anything, but it's like over time, that and that's another layer.
37:42It's not just sound effects, jingle, music, the editing, sometimes some other things. But you're making the short form show also have reoccurring themes or reoccurring elements?
37:54Characters like Your thumb becomes a character. Exactly.
37:57Yeah. Exactly. Um, it is it is amazing to see what has happened in the elements and principles of storytelling still mattering here.
38:05The other thing that, uh, there's so much to unpack with just the six sixty second short.
38:11Right? Um, are they always sixty seconds less?
38:14Sometimes they're longer. In fact, they they because platforms allow you to go ninety seconds. Three minutes now.
38:19Is three everywhere? Uh, three everywhere now. Yeah.
38:21Snapchat's three I mean, TikTok, it could be ten or an hour, but Instagram's three. Yeah. Just all three.
38:27Yeah. So, I mean, I've done ninety seconds, hundred and twenty seconds sometimes if there's more packs to open. But generally speaking, it's sixty to ninety seconds.
38:34Yeah. Um, I've I then started a subseries within this series. K.
38:39So on Sunday, I have what's called Burning Shadows Sunday. Burning Shadows is a is a set of Pokemon from 2017.
38:46Was released. It has, like, the worst pull rates. Okay.
38:50And it has a particular Charizard, a rainbow rare Charizard in that that is very hard to pull. And I got inspired by a creator from a long time ago who did the same challenge, but not in short form. It was, at the end of every video, he would try to open one pack to find this Charizard.
39:02How much does one of these packs cost? Uh, like, $20. Okay.
39:06That's expensive, though. It's expensive in the world of Pokemon. Yeah.
39:09But everything $80 a month to do a deficit. $80 a month for so 20 times four? Well, I'm opening, like, four to six packs per week.
39:16Of the black guy? Of of the, uh, the burning shadows. Burning shadows people.
39:22So it is now I'm on pack 416 Of burning shadows.
39:29Series without yet having found this Charizard. Sure. Every Sunday.
39:34But how rare is the Charizard? Super rare. You might be doing this for ten years.
39:36That's what a lot people do. May never pull it. But I'm doing exactly what I wanna do.
39:40I'm building anticipation. I'm I'm here. I need to know when It's disappoint people have renamed it burning wallets Sunday.
39:47Yeah. They say it's never gonna happen. The card worth?
39:49Like, $400. It's like Oh, five minutes. I could have bought 20 of them by now.
39:53Interesting. Right? And, yes, I know I have a little advantage because I have access to these cards and I can pay for them.
39:58But, again, the whole point here being a subseries Yeah. That people can expect on Sunday that I gotta tune into my show.
40:05Like, hey, honey. My show's on. Yeah.
40:06Right? I literally get that comment. My show is on.
40:09So good. The other thing about this and and and something in a brand and in storytelling is you have Arrival. Yes.
40:15I have Arrival.
40:16Okay. Hang on. So I've also heard like, there's a good book from Patrick Ed David called Choose Your Enemies Wisely, and it's been said in marketing that you should have an enemy.
40:25Is that the same as Arrival? Uh, Arrival is maybe a friendlier enemy.
40:29Right? Where with Arrival, you might have beef with a
40:33This is different then. This is different concept than what I'm saying. Yes.
40:35A marketing enemy or the thing that you're against Maybe is not your enemy is AI. Right? So that's your positioning.
40:41When I watched one one of your recent long form videos, recommend people subscribe and and and that'll be coming out on the channel as well, and we'll have a whole separate conversation. But I feel like your rival is your son.
40:51Uh, he has become a rival. Yes. On that.
40:53Right? Because he's he's quote unquote stole, uh, Charizard from me, and we're just go passing it back and forth. Yeah.
40:59Uh, another rival on the long form channel is Time. And we personified Time by buying a kitchen timer and putting googly eyes on it and naming it Steve. Yes.
41:07Why Steve? Because that's kind of a name you can get angry at. Right?
41:10Steve. It has that, like, sting on its side of Steve's out there. This character around with Yeah.
41:14And now we have merch. But Steve merch. We sold out, in an experiment, 500 plushie Steve's, which, again, is just a soft version of a kitchen timer with googly eyes and eyebrows.
41:25What time did you set since they were printed all the time? Uh, 02:31, which is a hundred and fifty one minutes, which is a callback to our finding a 151 Pokemon challenge.
41:34K. They sold out in two minutes. Yep.
41:36The plushie Steve's. Crazy. Another part of the brand culture in the in the character.
41:40Anyway, on the short form channel, I have Arrival, which is sort of like a friendly enemy, um, where with an enemy, you might have beef. Arrival, you might have pork, and that's what we call it.
41:49My buddy Alex and I, we kinda go back and forth, and we kinda dig at each other in our own because he does a daily channel as well. So you're just you're any reference to him would be like an insider reference? He's not actually on the channel?
42:01He's not on the channel at all. No. But the reason why we have this quote unquote pork, if we wanna call it that, is there is a set of Pokemon out there called, uh, Team Up.
42:09And in this, there is a very, very expensive card called Latios Latios. They these two Pokemon make like a heart shape. So we've he's he's named this card the lovebirds card.
42:19Right? That's just like the nickname for it. Um, and he's like, I'm gonna get it first.
42:23I was like, no. I'm gonna get it first. Well, I ended up getting it first, and he still has yet to get it.
42:28So every time I reference anything related to that set or this card or those Pokemon, I I do a little dig at him. Put a screenshot of his face crying, or I just kind of mention it, and then he has now called me deep diglet monster and talks about my thumbs in a kind of kind of not a really nasty way, but like he just again, we pass it back and forth, and the comment the the the crowd loves it.
42:51Yeah. Makes sense. They love this back.
42:53They're like, I live for this rivalry. It's like that this is the friendliest rivalry, and I can't wait to see what the next part is gonna be. Right?
42:59And we've even gone on stage in person together now because of this rivalry. We've been invited together to speak and talk and teach about YouTube and Shorts, and we talk about our rivalry. And again, we'll do a little digging and kinda elbowing each other when we're there kinda thing, and it's just become a friendly rivalry that people can enjoy and another
43:17insider thing for people who watch daily. Right? It's powerful.
43:20I mean, I think I think, I don't know if you'll love these examples, but I think they they they, uh, illustrate. I think, uh, Jake Paul and Logan Paul as controversial as they are have used rivals rivalries against their each other to hack.
43:35Casey Casey at KSI. Right? Yeah.
43:37And and then they went together in prime. And then if and then you start thinking about that. You think, like, you know, I'm sure there's a level of authenticity to it, but they're also master media people that they sometimes structure.
43:49And and UFC and WWE has thrived off that. That as people start ramping up to a fight Right.
43:55How yeah. So then there's that rivalry or even in, like, maybe Drake versus Kendrick. And any kind of rivalry makes both you know, it gets people invested.
44:05It gets people interested.
44:06A minor detail is that see what I did there? There's a test.
44:10Yeah. It is that it doesn't have to be a rivalry. Just I think the important thing are these the the the brand language that you create over time that people who are on the inside know about Mhmm.
44:22People on the outside wonder about. Interesting. It's just like the secret menu at In N Out.
44:25Yeah. If you ever come to the West Coast and you somebody takes you to In N Out, they're gonna tell you about the secret menu because they wanna be the one to tell you about the secret menu. And getting your fries animal style with onions and cheese on it, like, all that kind of stuff.
44:38Those things help the brand because people talk about it because they know something that others don't, which is a chapter out of Superfans. Like, this whole Pokemon thing is literally a case study for everything that I taught in Superfans.
44:50Superfans was written before I even got into Pokemon. I'm just I'm just And you had already done it, but now you're doing it, like, a 100 x. You just keep building on it.
44:57Yeah. It's powerful. Okay.
44:59Uh, kinda lightning round talking about short form. What's the biggest mistake most people make that's killing their views on short form content? Uh, paying attention to the views too early.
45:08Mhmm. You think, oh, I'm I'm a failure. This is never gonna work.
45:11You have to stick with it. You have to give it time. This is why a thirty to sixty day experiment works really, really well because it doesn't matter what happens to the views, you keep going because that is what you can control.
45:22You can control the uploads. You can't often control how those uploads get seen or perceived or how the algorithm treats them.
45:29Right? And if you base your success on something that you cannot control, I mean, that's a that's not a great place to be.
45:36Right? So you can control how much you upload and then give yourself a chance at least to get to the point at which you can then assess whether you wanna keep going or not because you've stuck with it for that many days. And like I said, day thirty five is when things took off for me.
45:49Um, so just get started. Get out of your own way. And the other thing is over perfecting and trying to make it look really nice.
45:57Yeah. Right? It's like that's a I need the best camera.
46:00I need the perfect editing. I need like, the some of the stuff that goes most viral and sees the most discovery are is just the most raw It is super raw.
46:09Stuff. For sure. There's a guy who had a channel called Sailing with Phoenix.
46:16This guy who worked a corporate job at a tire company, he quit. In his first video, he like, I'm I'm quitting my job. I hate this life.
46:23I'm gonna cash out my $4.00 1 k, and I'm gonna buy a sailboat. I don't even know how to sail, and I'm just gonna I'm just gonna sell to Hawaii. Well, he did that.
46:31And he had the whole world watching. He gained 2,000,000 followers in a week Yeah. Cross platform because day one of sailing to Hawaii with my cat.
46:41Day two, his cat's name, Felix. Gnarly. I mean, the thing too is, like, uh, you know, uh, at some point, that's no longer a shorts tactic.
46:50It's, like, just an incredible story. Correct. Yeah.
46:54And everybody was so inspired. And, I it took the clearly, it took the risk and the time and the energy for him to do it. They actually did it.
47:01But his videos weren't perfectly produced.
47:03Whether you're kicking rocks or literally having a life changing moment, that could all be captured in short form. And as long as it's consistent right?
47:12You can't build a relationship with anybody if you're not consistent. Yeah. Uh, and you have that courage to show up, then you have at least a chance Yes.
47:20For things to happen.
47:21Genius advice. If people wanna build a relationship with you,
47:25where can they find you? I'll put links in the description. Like Pokemon cards.
47:28Can if if you wanna start a relationship with me, just, uh, send me over some Pokemon cards. No. Just kidding.
47:34Um, long walks on the beach. Um, Deep Pocket Monster and Short Pocket Monster on YouTube, probably the best places to go to literally see a lot of this in action. Yeah.
47:42Right? Um, and then Pat Flynn on all social media channels. Amazing.
47:46And Think Media Podcast,
47:47like, rate, share, review this one for sure. Subscribe because there's gonna be a future conversation with Pat Flynn all about long form, and he crushed it in the short form here. I wanna just thank you for being a part of this community.
47:58Until next time, my name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. Keep crushing it, and we will talk soon.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Pat Flynn opened a pack of Pokemon cards every single day for 647 straight days — no team, no AI, no viral strategy — and built a channel that now gets 12 million views per day across platforms. The secret, he says, was deciding before day one that the only metric that mattered was uploads, not views.
How they asked for the click.
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