22:52Shane Hummus · Tutorial
How To Beat The New YouTube Algorithm With Claude AI In 20 Minutes
A 23-minute playbook for using Claude as a research copilot to win the YouTube game that most creators do not know they are playing.
June 14thThe argument in one line.
A YouTube channel can run on under four hours of human time per week if a human stays the creative director at every step while Claude AI executes the idea research, titling, scripting, editor briefing, and upload metadata.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run or want to run a YouTube channel (faceless or personal-brand) and already have some system fatigue from doing every step manually.
- You're comfortable using AI tools like Claude for research and writing but unsure where the line is before it hurts your channel's standing with YouTube.
- You want a concrete, named workflow (idea sourcing, title/thumbnail congruence, script voice-training) rather than vague 'use AI for YouTube' advice.
- You're evaluating whether to hire an editor and want a model for how to brief them without being present.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for a truly hands-off, zero-recording faceless channel — this video explicitly argues that path gets demonetized or banned.
- You want the full, personalized version of any of these skills — this video gives simplified versions and funnels the rest into a paid coaching program.
The full version, fast.
The video argues that AI-assisted YouTube production works, but 100% AI-generated 'slop' gets channels demonetized or banned — so a human must stay the director at every step. The core mechanism is an eight-step pipeline (idea, title, thumbnail, intro, script, pre-production, post-production, upload) where Claude AI handles research, drafting, and metadata while the creator supplies stories, voice, face, and final judgment. Idea generation works by finding outlier videos from competitor channels rather than guessing; scripts are built from a 'yap session' where the creator talks through Claude's outline instead of asking for a cold script. The actionable conclusion: treat AI as a system builder, not a content generator, and always keep a real human recording, editing judgment, and story detail baked into the output.
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00:00 – 00:07
01 · Intro
Cold open on the AdSense revenue screenshot; states he spent under 4 hours/week on the channel thanks to systems and early Claude adoption.
00:07 – 01:06
02 · The experiment that changed everything
Explains the year-long experiment, reiterates the $333,080.07 AdSense figure, and clarifies it excludes affiliate, sponsorship, and product revenue.
01:06 – 02:21
03 · The faceless channel question everyone asks
Addresses viewers who don't want to show their face; cites a faceless video on his own channel with 1.4M+ views and $7,800 in revenue as proof the system works either way.
02:21 – 03:40
04 · The sneaky trick fake gurus use to fool you
Demonstrates switching YouTube Studio's currency to New Taiwan Dollar and Jamaican Dollar live to expose how faceless-guru scam videos inflate revenue screenshots.
03:40 – 05:35
05 · The one rule you absolutely cannot skip
States the core warning: AI-assisted production is fine, but 100% AI-generated, mass-produced, zero-effort 'slop' leads to demonetization or bans, including cascading bans across linked channels.
05:35 – 06:10
06 · The entire system revealed on one screen
Shows the full eight-step pipeline diagram: idea, title, thumbnail, intro, script, pre-production, post-production, upload, each mapped to a named Claude skill.
06:10 – 07:03
07 · The mistake 90% of creators make before they start
Argues most YouTubers guess at video ideas instead of validating proof of concept first.
07:03 – 08:37
08 · The proven method that finds winners before you ever hit record
Introduces the Icahn Method by name and analogy to investor Carl Icahn's approach to undervalued stocks.
08:37 – 10:34
09 · The hidden way to pick videos that actually take off
Explains sourcing ideas by money-per-video rather than views-per-video when historical data is available; gives the live-training pitch and niche-validator bonus.
10:34 – 11:31
10 · The framework that makes or breaks your video
Introduces the Holy Trifecta: title, thumbnail, and intro treated as one congruent unit.
11:31 – 12:41
11 · The secret most YouTubers never figure out
Uses this video's own thumbnail/title/intro as a live example of trifecta congruence.
12:41 – 13:52
12 · The skill that scores your titles for click potential
Shows the $62,306.43 video whose title was written by Claude; explains the title-scoring skill output.
13:52 – 17:21
13 · The tool nobody expects me to recommend
States Claude is weak at generating actual thumbnail images; recommends ChatGPT, Nano Banana, Pixlr, or 1of10.com instead, and covers hiring a designer with AI-written instructions.
17:21 – 18:41
14 · The intro angles that stop viewers from clicking away
Describes three to five Claude-generated intro angles (shocking number, myth attack, credibility) blended with the creator's own delivery.
18:41 – 20:17
15 · The trick that kills the AI slop problem instantly
Introduces the custom script-writer skill trained on his own voice/transcripts as the fix for generic AI scripts.
20:17 – 22:00
16 · The technique that's truly game-changing
Details the 'yap session' technique using WhisperFlow dictation to feed Claude an outline response instead of accepting a cold draft.
22:00 – 23:10
17 · The method that solves disagreements before they happen
Explains the anti-fragile scripting trick (ask for 15 items, keep 10) and the claim that every content format is structurally a list.
23:10 – 24:37
18 · The blueprint that saves your editor hours of guesswork
Covers the pre-production editor brief: Claude adds on-screen text and cut notes directly next to each script line for the editor.
24:37 – 27:25
19 · The one step this AI tool can never do for you
States recording is the one step AI cannot replace; argues against AI avatars/voice clones (uncanny valley, demonetization risk); cites a client (Wiz of Ecom) and a laptop-only client (Nurse Jen) as proof simple setups work.
27:25 – 30:15
20 · The hack for finding where viewers drop off
Covers post-production: Descript for rough-cut editing/audio cleanup, then feeding the transcript back into Claude for b-roll suggestions and retention-drop-off predictions.
30:15 – 33:18
21 · The secrets most people completely phone in
Covers the upload step: Claude writes SEO description, tags, chapter timestamps, and pinned comment from the final script.
33:18 – 36:32
22 · The real leverage that separates the pros from everyone else
Closes on 'the system, not the AI, is the leverage'; pitches Content Growth Engine 1:1 coaching with student results and application criteria.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The demonetization line isn't AI use itself, but 100% AI-generated, mass-produced, zero-effort output — YouTube's own stated target is inauthentic content, not AI-assisted content.
- A YouTube channel earning $333,080.07 in AdSense in one year can run on under four hours of human time per week once the surrounding system, not the AI, is doing the repetitive work.
- Multi-channel AdSense accounts can lose every attached channel at once if even one is banned for policy violations.
- Faceless YouTube automation gurus who show a currency-inflated revenue screenshot (Taiwan or Jamaican dollars instead of USD) are a known scam pattern worth checking for on any income-reveal video.
- Video ideas sourced from outlier videos on competitor channels beat invented ideas, because they carry pre-existing proof of concept instead of a guess.
- Title, thumbnail, and intro should be treated as one unit, not three separate decisions, because a mismatch between what the thumbnail promises and what the intro delivers causes viewers to click off in the first seconds.
- AI is currently weak at generating the actual thumbnail image, even when it is strong at generating the thumbnail's concept, text, and layout instructions.
- Asking an AI to generate more list items than needed (e.g. 15 for a 'top 10' video) and discarding the weakest ones produces a stronger final list than asking for exactly the number needed.
- Feeding an AI a creator's own past scripts or transcripts before requesting a new script produces output closer to that creator's real voice than a cold prompt.
- A single shared document containing on-screen text notes and cut suggestions next to each script line removes the need for an editor to guess creative intent.
- Every content format — listicle, tutorial, step-by-step guide, movie, or book — is structurally a list, which means list-style prompting techniques generalize across formats.
- Dropping a finished transcript with timestamps back into an AI and asking where retention is likely to drop can surface edit points a creator wouldn't catch by ear alone.
A human director plus an AI system beats either one alone
WHAT TO LEARN
The eight-step pipeline works because Claude compresses the repetitive research and writing work while a human supplies the proof, voice, and judgment YouTube's policies still require.
- YouTube does not penalize AI-assisted production; it penalizes 100% AI-generated, mass-produced, zero-effort content, so the line to avoid crossing is authorship, not tool usage.
- Multi-channel AdSense accounts can lose every linked channel at once if one is banned for policy violations, raising the stakes of the AI-slop line beyond a single channel.
- Sourcing video ideas from outlier videos on competitor channels replaces guessing with proof of concept, and using revenue data instead of view counts finds ideas that convert to money, not just attention.
- Treating a title, thumbnail, and intro as one congruent decision prevents the specific failure mode where a strong thumbnail promise goes unmet by the video's actual opening.
- Current AI tools are strong at generating a thumbnail's concept and text but weak at rendering the final image, so pairing an AI-written brief with a human or specialized image tool is more reliable than asking AI to finish the job.
- Feeding an AI your own past writing or speech before asking it to draft new content, then talking through an outline out loud, produces material closer to your real voice than a cold prompt.
- Over-generating list items and discarding the weakest ones turns disagreement with AI output into a selection task instead of a rewriting task.
- A single shared document with on-screen text and cut notes attached to each script line lets an editor work without needing verbal guidance from the creator.
- Recording remains the one step in a YouTube pipeline that AI cannot replace, and attempts to route around it with AI avatars or cloned voices carry both a viewer-trust risk and a platform-policy risk.
Terms worth knowing.
- Icahn Method
- A video-idea-sourcing technique named after investor Carl Icahn: instead of inventing ideas, an AI is asked to find videos from a handful of competitor channels that are massively outperforming that channel's average, and those outlier videos become the next ideas to make.
- Holy Trifecta
- A production principle treating a video's title, thumbnail, and intro as one congruent unit rather than three separate decisions, so the promise made by the thumbnail and title is immediately confirmed in the opening seconds.
- Yap session
- A voice-dictation session (via a tool like WhisperFlow) where a creator talks freely to an AI about what they want a script to say, used to seed or refine an AI-written outline with the creator's real voice and reasoning instead of accepting a cold AI draft.
- Anti-fragile scripting
- Asking an AI to generate more list items than the final video needs (for example 15 instead of 10) so the weakest ones can be discarded, keeping quality controlled by selection rather than by a single generation pass.
- AI slop
- Fully AI-generated, mass-produced, zero-effort content with no human creative direction — the category YouTube treats as inauthentic and penalizes with demonetization or bans.
Things they pointed at.
20:34toolWhisperFlow
28:03toolDescript
16:04toolChatGPT
16:12toolNano Banana
16:25tool1of10.com
16:25toolPixlr
33:48productContent Growth Engine
Lines you could clip.
03:47
“I'm the director. The AI is the tool. Every step that you're about to see, I am steering the ship.”
16:31
“The thumbnail is the window, the title is the sign, and the video is the meal.”
19:05
“AI is like a sous chef. It can chop all the vegetables, it can prep everything, but the head chef, that is still you.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
00:00Alright, guys. So this is how much I made in AdSense last year from my channel. And the craziest thing is I basically did an experiment last year where I spent less than four hours a week on my channel pretty much the entire year.
00:13Now the reason I was able to do this is because of systems that I've created over years of figuring out how to do YouTube correctly and the fact that I was an early adopter of Claude. So Claude is without a doubt the best AI tool for content creation. And I'm gonna show you exactly the systems that we use step by step and exactly how we use Claude to make videos like the videos on my channel.
00:35And so literally all I was doing last year for the entire year when it comes to my YouTube channel was recording the videos. Everything else was done for me, and this is how much I made just from AdSense alone. $333,080.07, and that is just an AdSense alone.
00:53That does not count the amount of money that I made from affiliate marketing, sponsorship, selling my own products and services, etcetera, etcetera. That was far, far more.
01:02And in this video, I am going to show you exactly how I did that. Now you might be thinking, well, Shane, I don't wanna show my face. This is a channel where you show your face.
01:09I wanna do a faceless channel with YouTube automation. And, yeah, I totally get it. And when I first started on YouTube, I actually started with a faceless channel as well.
01:18And even on this exact channel, I've done plenty of videos that are faceless, and they've done just fine. Right? This video right here for instance, I did not show my face.
01:27It got over 1,400,000 views and made over $7,800. And it is still getting about a thousand views a day even though I posted this over one thousand three hundred days ago.
01:38I posted this like over three years ago, and it's still getting about a thousand views a day. So this works whether it is for a faceless channel, whether it is for a personal brand channel, or any number of different types of channels out there. This is going to be useful for you pretty much no matter what type of channel you're doing.
01:53With that being said, I do have a specific approach to doing YouTube, I'll kinda get into that during the video, what I think is best. But it's gonna be useful no matter what type of YouTube channel you're making. Now before we get into this, I just wanna go ahead and kinda show you.
02:06This says $333,000, uh, or $80.07. Now first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and refresh the page, and you're gonna see that the same amount of money pops up.
02:17Okay. It is taking a little bit of time here, but, yeah, $333,000. Then I'm gonna go to settings, and, uh, you can see here that it's US dollars.
02:25So this is a common thing that I've seen on, like, Instagram and a bunch of these fake faceless YouTube channel guru marketing BS videos where someone will literally just select a different type of dollar, and it'll show a much higher amount than what it actually is. So I'm gonna go ahead and go here, and I'm gonna select new Taiwan dollar.
02:45And you're gonna see, wow. I made $10,000,000 last year.
02:48Yeah. It's $10,000,000, but it's new Taiwan dollars, unfortunately.
02:52And then if we select Jamaican dollar, it's gonna say $52,000,000 in one year. Wow.
02:59I am well on my way to being a Jamaican dollar billionaire. So, yeah, don't fall for those scams, guys. Make sure that you know that it's actually US dollars that people are making here.
03:10So I'm gonna go ahead and set it back to USD, and you'll see it is $333,000 just in AdSense alone.
03:19Okay. So now I'm gonna go ahead and show you step by step exactly how we make these videos using Claude, using systems, the parts that you need to do, the parts that you don't need to do, the parts that maybe you can partially do, and exactly how you can use Claude AI and create a content system that is going to make it to where you only have to spend four hours a week or sometimes a lot less than that in order to meet your YouTube goals.
03:40But rule number one, which is a warning, you absolutely should not skip because if you do skip it, you will get demonetized is this. YouTube does not have a problem with you using AI.
03:50But what they do have a problem with is 100% AI generated mass produced zero effort swap. So if you sit there and type, make me a video about online jobs, and you just take whatever the robot spits out, slap a robot voice on top of it and upload it, your channel is done. Okay?
04:05And all the goofball YouTube gurus that I see on here talking about faceless YouTube channels and YouTube automation, all these goofballs that I see that tell you to do this, that tell you that AI can do literally all of the work for you. In ninety nine point nine percent of cases, that's just not true.
04:20You're just gonna create AI slop and it's not gonna get any views or any traction. But even if it does get views and traction, in ninety nine point nine percent of those cases, it's gonna be very easy for someone else to just come in and copy you immediately. And even if they can't copy you immediately for some reason, right?
04:35So we're talking about the 0.00001% that are actually successful and can't be copied, almost all of those people are going to get demonetized and or their entire channel banned.
04:46Or in some cases, if they have multiple channels attached to an AdSense account, they're gonna get multiple of their channels banned. Okay? So YouTube is not messing around with this.
04:54If you try to create AI slop content, what YouTube calls inauthentic content, it is just a countdown clock until you get banned.
05:02Do not do that. Anybody who tells you to do that is an absolute bull and do not believe them. Okay?
05:08So let me be crystal clear about what I'm doing here. I'm the director. The AI is the tool.
05:13Every step that you're about to see, I am steering the ship. I'm making the calls. I'm adding my own stories, my own data, my own face, my own voice.
05:20Claude does the heavy lifting, but a human being stays in the driver's seat. Either me doing it directly or indirectly.
05:28So get that one thing right and you will never have a problem. But if you get it wrong, no playbook on earth will save you. Okay.
05:34So here is what the entire system looks like. It's all on one screen here. And it's basically gonna be the idea, the title, the thumbnail, the intro, the script, the preproduction, the postproduction, the upload, and that's it.
05:46Right? That is the whole machine that made $333,080.07 last year just in AdSense alone.
05:52And the best part is I'm either using a custom Claude AI skill for this or a really good well fine tuned Claude prompt for almost every single step of the process. And more on what that actually means here in a second. So we're gonna go through them all one at a time.
06:06So grab a notepad or honestly, just rewatch this part later and let's start at the top. Alright. So step one is the video idea.
06:13And this is where ninety percent of people lose the battle before it even starts. Okay? Because the brutal truth is most YouTubers are just guessing.
06:22Okay? They're just throwing stuff against the wall in the dark. They don't even know if it's stuck or not, and they have no idea why a video did well or not.
06:30Right? They sit there going, what should I make a video about? Right?
06:33And they pull something out of thin air that nobody is searching for, and that is how you make a video that gets 47 views and kills your motivation. So do not guess ever. You always need to have what's known as proof of concept.
06:47Now, this proof of concept could come from other people who have already made videos on YouTube or if you already have a business or something like that and you're interacting with clients or you do incredibly deep research on the internet, the proof of concept could come from that. But honestly, it's way easier to just get your proof of concept from other videos, and this is something that I call the icon method.
07:07And we have made a simplified version of the skill, which we will put in the description and the pinned comment below for you. Now you might be thinking, but Shane, why don't you just give me the full version, man? Stop being so cheap.
07:17Well, the reason it's a simplified version is because it takes some time to actually personalize these things. So if you wanna personalize it to yourself, a really easy thing to do is to just have it interview you and basically say what outcome you want and then have it interview you and ask you for information that will allow it to achieve that outcome.
07:35Right? So this is the process that we go through with our community members that makes these skills even more powerful. But you're gonna get over 80% of the way there just by using this skill.
07:43So definitely check it out. Click the link in the description and the pinned comment below if you wanna follow along. So watch this.
07:47I'm gonna open up Claude, and I'm gonna run my video idea finder skill, and it is built on something that I call the icon method. So quick analogy here. You know how the smartest investors don't gamble on random stocks?
07:59They hunt for proven undervalued companies and they pounce. Right? That is literally what Carl Icahn built his entire fortune on, and that's what I named this method after is Carl Icahn.
08:09So we do the same exact thing here, but with YouTube. So instead of inventing an idea and praying, I have Claude go find videos that are already proven winners, small channels pulling massive views, and then we make a better version of them. Okay?
08:21So AI isn't coming up with a random idea. It is handing me an idea that's already proven to print. And that right there is the difference between posting a video that gets 47 views and posting a video that takes off and changes your life.
08:33Now there's definitely other ways of doing the icon method. For instance, if you have sort of insider data, like if you already have a channel that has a bunch of videos, you're gonna have more information and you're gonna have better proof of concept. Additionally, if you already know how much different types of videos make, not in terms of views, but in terms of the money that you make from the videos, then you can do the icon method with money instead of views.
08:56Right? So that's typically what we do. You might notice that sometimes on my channel, I don't have the highest views and that is because we are choosing videos that we know are gonna make a lot of money.
09:04We don't really care about how many views we get. Right? We don't care about views, we care about getting the right views.
09:10Right? So this is a simplified version of the icon method, but generally speaking, this is the best place to start especially if you're a beginner. With that being said, this is a simplified version.
09:18We teach more advanced versions inside of my community. So what you wanna do here is open Claude, use that skill that you downloaded in the description in the pinned comment below, and then paste in three to four channels in your niche and ask to find videos that are massively outperforming each channel's average. And those outliers are going to be your next videos.
09:36Now you might be thinking, but Shane, I don't have a niche. Quick break. I'm gonna be doing a live training this week on how to start YouTube step by step for beginners.
09:43This is gonna be for people who want to start a channel but they don't know what niche to pick, what videos to make, or how to actually get started the right way. And it's a completely free training, no strings attached. In fact, I'm giving away even more bonuses at this training.
09:55Just as an example, I'm gonna be giving away my niche validator, which works for Chatuchipity as well as Claude Skills, which is a super valuable piece of software where you can finally figure out what the best niche for you is.
10:07So do not miss out on this training. Make sure you sign up for it down in the description and the pinned comment below because you only get it if you join the training. So if you don't join now, you might miss out on it forever.
10:17But that being said, in the workshop, you'll get to meet me and you get to ask me questions directly. So I look forward to seeing you. So click the link in the description and the pinned comment below this week.
10:26Make sure you put on your calendar. And if for whatever reason you missed out on it or you weren't able to attend, make sure you still click that link because we might be having workshops in the future as well, and you'll be the first to know about it. So, yeah, hope to see you there.
10:38Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. With that being said, step two is the title. And listen, your title and your thumbnail are basically gonna be 90% of the game after finding the idea.
10:48So finding the niche is kind of like the foundations for your channel. You need to make sure that you have the right niche. The niche is incredibly important.
10:55And the ideas are sort of like the little building blocks that make up a niche. So it's kind of like if the niche is your body, the ideas are the little cells, the little building blocks of your body. Having And the right niche and finding the right ideas are like 90% of the game.
11:08It's incredibly important. However, you need to express your idea with the title.
11:13And when you're picking the title, I actually like to think of the title, the thumbnail, and the intro or the hook of your video as one thing. And I like to do all three of them at once and I call this the holy trifecta.
11:25And not only is it important that the title, the thumbnail, and the intro are good, but even more important than that is that all three of them are congruent with each other. Now, let me give you an example.
11:36This exact video that you're watching right now, you might have noticed that on the thumbnail, I'm showing my YouTube studio. The YouTube studio shows a number amount, $333,000. And then on the title, it says $333,000.
11:50And then in the intro of the video, I'm showing my YouTube studio. So the intro of the video literally looks like the thumbnail and what does it say? $333,000.
12:01So is that the best thumbnail title or intro that's ever been made? No. The thumbnail title and intro were all probably about, you know, seven or eight out of 10.
12:09However, the thing that's important is they were all congruent with each other. They were all pointing in the same direction.
12:16If I would have started off this intro with a talking head video and I don't share my screen for the first three minutes of the video, tons of people would have clicked off. Why? Because the expectation that the title and the thumbnail set were not met by the intro.
12:31Okay? So this is why. This is a perfect example of why the holy trifecta is so important and it's so important to have a title, a thumbnail, and intro that are not only relatively good, but more importantly congruent with each other.
12:44So here's what I do. I take that proven idea and I run it through my holy trifecta skill. It spits out a batch of title options and it scores each one for a click potential, and it is not throwing spaghetti at the wall.
12:55It is matching the title to the exact thing that made original video pop. Then I read through them. I pick the strongest one.
13:01And maybe I tweak it so that it sounds like me. Sometimes I don't. My best ever videos on my channel were literally written by Claude.
13:07Like, the titles for the videos were literally written by Claude. So just as an example, this video right here, nine boring but high paying online jobs always hiring. This was probably one of my most viewed videos last year and it's really the most viewed video on the entire channel.
13:20And it made $62,000 just from AdSense alone. It's still getting about a 500 views a day.
13:26And the title for this video was made by Claude AI. Okay? So basically what I did is I had it make five to 10 titles and then I selected the one that I liked the most and that was this title.
13:37Okay? So I'm not kidding around when I say to use Claude for this. Like, it is seriously good.
13:42So like I said, it's gonna give you a few suggestions and you're gonna go ahead and pick your favorite one. And if you're totally clueless on how to do this, then probably just go with its first suggestion because usually the first one is the best. Alright.
13:52Step three is the thumbnail. So this is the same skill by the way, the holy trifecta. It is gonna hand me the title, the thumbnail concept, and the intro all in one shot.
14:01So for this video, the concept was dead simple. A screenshot of the actual revenue, 333,000, slapped right on the thumbnail because nothing stops the scroll like a real specific, slightly insane number.
14:13Vague doesn't sell. Specific does. So Claude gives me the concept.
14:18It tells me the exact text to put on the thumbnail and the layout idea. And then the next part is where Claude is still a little bit weak, and that is actually making the thumbnail itself. So I do not recommend actually making the thumbnail itself on Claude.
14:30You've got two different options. One, you can have an actual thumbnail designer make the thumbnail. It is going to be very quick and easy for them to make the thumbnail if they already have instructions on exactly what you want.
14:41You can even ask Claude to make like a rough sketch of what they want as well, and that makes it super super easy on them to actually make the thumbnail. The second option is if you wanna do it yourself, I recommend actually using ChatGPT. So you would copy and paste the exact directions for making the thumbnail into ChatGPT.
14:58Then you would ask it what it needs in order to make the thumbnail for you. It would tell you. And for one, it's probably gonna want you to put in a good photo of yourself just as an example and any other types of things that it's gonna need to actually make that thumbnail for you.
15:12And then it can literally make the thumbnail for you. And honestly, ChatGPT right now at the time of recording this is the best out of all of them. I would say Nano Banana is probably the second best.
15:21Now there are specialized companies that literally, like, what they do is thumbnails. And these are AI companies where literally the only thing they do is make thumbnails essentially. Right?
15:30So two of them that I've had an experience with that I think are pretty good are Pixels, and the other one is one of ten dot com. So ChatGPT is honestly pretty good.
15:39You can just use ChatGPT directly or you could check out Pixels or 1of10.com if you wanna use other AI tools that are specialized for this. Now the advantage of using Pixels or 1of10.com is it can actually make many different thumbnails for you at once.
15:51This, of course, costs a little bit more, but at the same time, it's gonna save you some time. Whereas with ChatGPT, typically, it's just gonna make one thumbnail at a time.
15:59And if you don't like it, then you gotta prompt it again, wait. And if you don't like that, you gotta prompt it again, wait, etcetera, etcetera. Okay?
16:05So I absolutely love Claude. The one weakness that they have in the entire production process is making the actual thumbnails. The thumbnails that Claude makes are usually quite bad.
16:16Hopefully, this changes in the near future. If it does, I will let you know. But right now, if you're gonna make thumbnails on your own with AI, I recommend ChatGPT.
16:23That's the easiest way to get started. If you wanna pay for different ones, you could use something like pixels or 1of10.com. Now the thumbnail is really important.
16:30Okay? It is like the storefront window. Nobody walks into a restaurant with a sad empty window.
16:36The thumbnail is the window. The title is the sign and the video is the meal. Okay?
16:40And you've gotta get people in the door first before they can consume the meal. Because you could have the best food in the world, but if people don't get in the door and try your food, they're never gonna know. So the way to get started with this is you can ask Claude for, you know, three thumbnail concepts for your title.
16:53I think three is a really good one. And then you can follow the instructions and make thumbnails in another way. Now, if for whatever reason you wanna make a thumbnail yourself but you don't wanna use AI, typically what we recommend to people is Canva.
17:05We actually give our community members a bunch of different Canva templates that makes it super easy for them to actually make the thumbnails. And they pretty much just have to replace my face with their face and these are proven templates that convert incredibly well on YouTube that have been split tested and tested in many different niches as well.
17:19Alright. So step four is the intro. Now, all of these are kind of done at the same time.
17:24I like to do all of these at the same time. With the thumbnail part, a lot of the time I'll just do the thumbnail concept. So I'll basically just say what text I'm putting on the thumbnail, what visuals I'm putting on there, but I don't actually make the thumbnail itself at that time.
17:36However, I almost always do the title, the thumbnail concept, and the intro all at once when I'm making a video. Cause you can have a killer niche, idea, title, thumbnail.
17:46You get the click and then you lose them in the first ten seconds with a boring intro. Okay?
17:50So again, same holy trifecta skill. It gives me a few different intro angles. Some of them are gonna be aggressive.
17:55Some are curiosity driven. Some are credibility proven. And the intro that you watched at this very video, it was basically a version of a Claude intro.
18:02Now I kinda added my own energy to it, my own personality to it. Right? I don't always go exactly what it says, but I generally speaking followed the idea or the concept of the intro that it recommended.
18:13So AI gave me the raw clay and I shaped it. So the way to get started here is to have Claude write three intros for your videos. I typically do three to five intros per video and then I just choose my favorite one when I'm recording.
18:26So one of them is gonna open with a shocking number, one that attacks a common myth, and one that leads with your credibility. And then if you want to, you can write another intro that just gets almost, like, straight into the content. It just it's a super quick intro that gets straight into the content.
18:38Just pick the one that fits your audience. Pick the one that feels right for you, and rewrite it in your own voice if you want to. Alright.
18:44So the next step is the script itself. Now, this is the one that everybody screws up on because this is exactly where the AI slop problem lives. Okay?
18:53So if you just say, hey, Claude, write me a script. You're gonna get generic robot garbage that sounds like every other faceless AI slop channel on the Internet, and viewers can smell it instantly. So here is the trick.
19:05I built a custom script writer skill, and I trained it on my voice, my transcripts, my phrasing, my energy, the way that I actually talk, etcetera, etcetera. So when it writes, it doesn't sound like a robot. It sounds like me.
19:16And then this part is nonnegotiable. I go through it line by line, and I add my stories, my client examples, my data, the stuff that only a human can bring. So again, I'm gonna give you a taste of this in the description in the pinned comment below.
19:29Every single step of this process, you get it in the description in the pinned comment below. But our community members, of course, have it more personalized so that it sounds like them. So a quick analogy here is AI is like a sous chef.
19:39Right? It can chop all the vegetables. It can prep everything.
19:42It can do the boring work in a fraction of the time, but the head chef, that is still you. Right?
19:48You still need to taste the dish, season it, and decide what actually goes out to the table. Right? You're doing the strategy of the restaurant and the strategy of like making the food really good, but AI carries out the actual manual work of making the food.
20:01So here's how to start. Don't ask AI for a script cold. Feed it either two or three scripts that you've already created or two or three of your favorite creators transcripts first so that it learns the voice.
20:11And then basically have it interview you and ask you what you liked about those videos and what you want your videos to be like. Then you wanna have it make a bare bones outline and then give it what's known as a yap session.
20:23Okay? So a yap session is literally where you talk to the AI. So you can either use Claude's in built audio functionality where you can talk to the AI.
20:31I personally don't use that because I think it only lasts a few minutes and it's also not as accurate with the language. What I like to use is WhisperFlow. K?
20:38Not sponsored, not affiliated or anything like that, but that's just what I use. And I will literally just use WhisperFlow and I'll talk to Claude, and I will give it what's known as a yap session where I literally just talk off the top of my head and tell it what I want the end video to look like. Now, during this time, sometimes I'll be looking at other videos that I think are good.
20:56Know, hey, I like the way they edit this video or I like the way they told stories in that video, etcetera, etcetera. And I'll give it feedback on its outline and then I'll give it that initial yap session and typically I'll have it interview me after that. So I'll have it ask me a series of follow-up questions, then I'll do another quick yap session, answer all of those questions.
21:14And then usually that end product is really, really good. Now if needed, of course, you can edit the end product. But typically that end product is going to be extremely good.
21:22So, yeah, check out the skill. Do this. Yap session is absolutely life changing.
21:26You literally just talk to the AI. Pretend like it's a friend. Pretend like it's a family member or a viewer or something like that, and just talk to the AI and tell it exactly what you want.
21:34And because of that, one, it's gonna know how you actually talk and it's gonna write the script in the way that you talk. And then two, it's also going to be a source of truth. Right?
21:44It's gonna have an origin of information that it comes from. Right?
21:47So a lot of people, for instance, if they have Claude write the script, they'll be like, oh, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that.
21:53And when you do it this way, typically you're gonna have way less of that. You still might have a few things here and there, but you'll have way less of that. And a pro tip here is to use what's known as the anti fragile scripting methodology.
22:04And basically what that means is, let's just say you're making a video like 10 best remote jobs or something. Okay? You actually wanna have Claude do 15 so that if there's a few that you disagree with, you can just choose your 10 that are your favorite.
22:17Okay? Because that's what almost always happens is if you have it do a list of 10 things, there's gonna be a few that you don't like. And so if you wanna do 10, just do 15 and then pick your 10 favorites.
22:27And if you're thinking, but Shane, I don't make listicle style content. I make how to videos. If you think about it, every single video is a listicle.
22:35Okay? In fact, every single type of content out there is a listicle. Whether it is an actual listicle video, whether it's a how to video, whether it's a step by step guide, whether it's a tutorial video, whether it's a book, they're all lists.
22:47Even movies are lists. Right? Think about it.
22:50Movies typically come in a 12 step story writing or movie writing formula. Right? There's different acts.
22:56There's different steps inside the acts, etcetera etcetera. Books are made up of chapters. What is that?
23:00It's a list. Right? It's all a list at the end of the day.
23:03So write your scripts in this way and if there's anything that you disagree with, just skip it. It's very easy. Alright.
23:10Next step, step six is preproduction. Now by the way, everything up to this point can either be done by you or you can actually just hire somebody else to do it. So if you wanna hire somebody else to do it, that is what's known as a creative director.
23:23But it really doesn't take that much time for you to do it yourself. It's basically just a yap session and a little bit of editing. Right?
23:28So the entire time it's gonna take me to make this video is probably about an hour, maybe an hour and a half max. And basically, before I record the video and hand it to my editor, I'm gonna have Claude write the creative direction, the on screen text, where the cuts go, which lines need emphasis, Basically, a full brief so that my editor isn't sitting there guessing.
23:48And no, I'm not talking about cheesy stock footage. Right? I'm talking about simple clean on screen text and cuts that actually add to the value of the video.
23:56So my editor opens one document and they see exactly what I say and what goes the screen at every moment. In other words, the AI gives creative direction to the video editor, which saves them a massive amount of time and effort.
24:08So a quick analogy here is it's kind of like instead of just saying, hey, build me a house, figure it out. The clearer the blueprint is, the less back and forth and the faster the house is gonna get built. So the way to do this with Claude is once your script is done, ask Claude to add editor notes.
24:25Right? Pretend like it's the best creative director in the world and ask it to add editor notes, on screen text, and cut suggestions right next to each line.
24:32And then share that document with whoever is editing your video. I typically just use Google Docs for this. Now the next step is the one thing that you can't have Claude do and that is recording the video.
24:43So obviously, we're not gonna spend that much time on this step. I'm actually not even making it into a step. But obviously, right after preproduction is done, you are going to need to just record the videos yourself.
24:52That is the one thing that Claude can't help with. Of course, you're gonna have every goofball AI guru and YouTube guru out there saying that you can just, you know, use Heijin to create an avatar of yourself and use 11 labs to clone your voice and then you don't have to record the videos. But then you'll notice that 99.9% of them don't actually do that themselves.
25:12And the reason for that is because if they did do it themselves, one, it probably wouldn't work because people can still tell if their IQ is above 80 that it's not a real person. And even if they can't 100% tell, they usually just get a little bit of a creepy feeling. This is typically referred to as uncanny valley, but they get a creepy feeling that it's just not quite right.
25:32And then they end up clicking off the video. So in the first place, it's not gonna work in ninety nine percent of cases. Second, even if it does work, chances are YouTube is going to demonetize you, possibly even ban your account, or they might just shadow ban you, and that's probably the worst out of all possible outcomes.
25:48So that doesn't work in ninety nine point nine percent of cases, and it really is better for you to just record your video because that's why people click on YouTube. If they wanted super high production quality with, uh, people that are just perfect at delivering a script and all that kind of thing, they would turn on TV.
26:05They would turn on Netflix. That's not what they did. They went on YouTube because they want to connect with other people.
26:11Okay? That is what YouTube is all about. They wanna connect with other people that have unique personalities and are interesting.
26:17Okay? So you just gotta record the videos yourself. Now you could technically have someone else, another real human being record the video for you, but but I think there's really just so many advantages to recording the videos yourself.
26:28When you build a personal brand, when you establish yourself as an authority online, I cannot even describe the power of doing that. You know, I've made entire videos about building personal brands and I talked about all the million different reasons why you should build a personal brand, but it just makes everything else.
26:42Literally everything else you do just goes on easy mode in your business if you build a personal brand and you become an authority in your niche. So I just can't imagine why you wouldn't wanna do that. With that being said, let's just say for some reason you wanna stay anonymous, I still recommend using your own voice, but you just don't have to show your face.
26:59In that particular case, you can do what my client Wiz of ecom did where he basically started off with kind of like a cartoon character that represented him, but it was still his real voice. And he actually got to 7 figures a year doing this. But then eventually, he realized the power of having a personal brand, and what did he do?
27:15He did a face reveal. He actually revealed his face. Okay?
27:18So you can do that if you want. You know, don't get me wrong. That is an option for you.
27:22You can definitely do it if you want, but I really recommend just showing your face. And now we're gonna move on to step seven, which is post production. So post production is basically after you record the video and you send it to the editor.
27:35Now a lot of the time what we'll do is the editor will of course edit the video. Descript is a great tool to do that especially for beginner. It does have an AI editing feature where it will take out all the silences, the mistakes.
27:46You can also just literally edit like as if you were editing a Google Doc. Oh, and by the way, Descript does really good job when it comes to your sound as well. So it'll automatically make you have really good sound even if your sound kinda sucks.
27:57So Descript is an incredible tool, especially for beginners when it comes to YouTube. Now, by the way, you might think that you need some incredible recording setup, but you absolutely don't. You can easily just record with your iPhone or if you just have a laptop.
28:10Let's just say you have a MacBook for instance. Like our client Nurse Jen. She just had a laptop and she would record by looking at the webcam.
28:17She used Descript to do the recording and the editing, and she absolutely blew up within the first couple months working with us. She's already had two videos reach over 500,000 views.
28:25She's making a full time income and she's absolutely crushing it on YouTube. And she did it all literally just recording with her webcam on her laptop. Okay?
28:34So you can use the webcam on the laptop. Descript does a really good job with all of the editing as well as the audio optimization. So do not let not having a fancy camera or a fancy set or the right lighting or the right lens or whatever the excuse is hold you back.
28:48But let's just say that first draft comes back and you now have a rough draft for your finished product. What you can do is you can take the transcript for that rough draft and then you can put it into Claude again and have it suggest different types of b roll or visuals or words you can have pop up on the screen at various different parts of the video.
29:06So we do this as well. We typically do have this post production process where we just put the transcript of the video into Claude with the timestamps typically. And then we just ask Claude what we should put in terms of b roll, visuals, etcetera at the different parts.
29:19And it gives us some really good suggestions. Now, I will say there are more advanced versions of this. They typically take a lot of time and they cost a lot of money as well, but you can actually have Claude literally read your video.
29:31So what it does is it'll take pictures every three seconds or so at various different points and it will see the visuals that you use at various different points of the video and then it can give you even more specific directions. So it knows what you're saying and it sees the visual at the same time it and can give you very specific directions on what you should put at those different parts.
29:50But that is really complicated. We also don't use it all the time. Typically, we wanna get our turnaround time really fast for videos, and a tool like that just makes it longer and harder to actually get the video out.
30:01So we typically don't do that. But, yeah, that is an option. So a simple version of doing this is just you have the transcript with time stamps, drop it into Claude, ask it where the retention is most likely to drop, and ask it how you can increase the retention for the video at those different parts.
30:14So step eight is the upload and most people grind for hours on a video and then they completely phone in the upload. Right? Huge mistake.
30:21So I have Claude write the whole thing. The SEO description packed with the right keywords, the tags, the chapter timestamps, even the pinned comment. That stuff can all be done by Claude.
30:30And this is the stuff that helps YouTube actually understand and recommend your video, which is especially important for a brand new channel. And now I know I'm gonna get some absolute genius in the comment section that's gonna say, well, are totally useless. Tags don't help you at all, bro.
30:45There's gonna be some galaxy brain in the comments below that has 13 subscribers that's gonna tell me, a YouTuber with 1,500,000 subscribers, that tags are a waste of time. And there is some truth to that.
30:56Right? Tags are not that important in my opinion. With that being said, you can do them in less than twenty seconds.
31:02In many cases, it might help advertisers tell what your video is about so that they can put ads on your videos more easily, and it helps YouTube tell what your video is about as well. Plus, there might be some update in the future where tags are important.
31:16Right? If they were completely unimportant, YouTube would not have them as a feature.
31:20So even if they technically are unimportant for some niches right now, it's possible that they could be important in the future. So you might as well just do them. It takes twenty seconds.
31:28And honestly, all of these things take like twenty or thirty seconds. So you might as well do them. Now additionally, if you're not sure that your upload settings are right, you can actually just screenshot your upload settings and put them into Claude as well.
31:39And it'll tell you if there's anything wrong on there. But yeah, an SEO description that is packed with the right keywords definitely helps. Chapter timestamps can definitely help.
31:47And then having a pinned comment, especially if you're able to make sure that that comment gets pinned right when the video goes live, that helps too because people know that you're there watching right when the video live, and they're much more likely to comment on your video because they think that you're gonna comment back, which you should right when your video goes live, if possible.
32:03But if you don't have time, it's understandable. So, yeah, all of this takes like two minutes to do. You might as well do it, especially since you're probably waiting for the video to get uploaded anyways.
32:12You might as well just use Claude and do this. So paste your final script into Claude and then ask for a keyword rich description, a list of tags, and chapter time stamps, and then copy, paste, and publish.
32:22Now, by the way, if you're wondering how to get your transcript, Descript literally automatically gives you your transcript. So it's the easiest thing in the world to just copy your transcript and put it into Claude as needed. Okay.
32:33So that is the entire system, the idea, the thumbnail, the intro, the script, the pre production, the post production, the upload. And that is exactly what I did this last year on one channel and it's done $333,080.07 the entirety of last year just in AdSense alone.
32:49And actually, I didn't even do it myself. My team did it. All I did was record the videos.
32:55That is it. So it was completely automated to the point where all I had to do is record the videos. Each one maybe takes me thirty minutes to record.
33:01So in many cases, was only spending about hour and a half per week on the videos, which is insane. But the maximum was four hours per week, and I did that for an entire year. Now if I was doing the other steps of the process, I probably would have spent a little bit more time than an hour and a half per week, probably about four hours per week.
33:17But to be honest with you guys, the AI was never the secret. The system that you strategically use AI within is.
33:23Think about it. Anybody can open a chatbot and type a prompt. Millions of people do this every single day and it makes exactly $0.
33:30But what actually made the difference were the skills. The custom trained up Claude skills that know my voice, know the proven idea method, know how to package video that actually gets clicks, etcetera, etcetera. That is the leverage.
33:40Right? The AI is just the engine. The system is the car.
33:44And building that system the right way so that you make money instead of getting demonetized is exactly what I do with people inside my program, Content Growth Engine. So we help creators and business owners build this entire machine, the skills, the strategy, all of it so that their channel actually prints. We felt people like Josh making all the way up to over a $185,000 in a single month and we help Nicole go from 85 subscribers to making over $80,000 in a single month as well.
34:07And they are not special. They're just running the same playbook. Now, one other thing that I'll say is there might be certain parts of the process that you don't wanna use AI for.
34:16Like you either don't wanna use AI for it in its entirety or you just wanna use AI as a helper or maybe you just don't wanna use AI at all and that is completely fine. Now, I know that 99% of people who watch my content are going to just consume my free content on YouTube.
34:30They're gonna get a lot of value from that. They might attend my live trainings and get a lot of value from that as well, which you totally should. Click that link in the description and the pinned comment below.
34:37But you're never gonna end up working with us one on one and that is completely fine. Our goal is to give at least 10 times, preferably a 100 times more value than we receive. But there's always gonna be that 1% or maybe 0.1% of you out there that do want a one on one experience.
34:53You want someone to one on one teach you exactly how to do YouTube or you just want us to literally do it for you. If that is you, go ahead and book a call by clicking the link in the description and the pinned comment below. We are very limited with the people that we work with.
35:05We're basically like the Harvard of YouTube coaching. So we accept less than 18% of people who apply. But the typical types of people that we accept are going to be business owners who want to grow and make money on YouTube and build their brand, YouTubers who are getting a lot of views but they're struggling with monetization, YouTubers who are crushing it but they wanna crush it even harder, or people who want to treat YouTube like a business.
35:24Typically, these people are a bit older. They're professionals. They're experts in whatever they do, and they want to build their YouTube personal brand on the side to get the indirect and the direct benefits of that.
35:35The indirect benefits are networking, becoming an authority in your niche, which can get you your dream job like it did Josh. And then of course, can start a side hustle, start making side hustle income. And eventually, it can be a full time thing, but you don't have to quit your job to do it.
35:48You can start it on the side, which is awesome. Okay? So those are the types of people we work with, but they all have one thing in common and that is they want to treat YouTube like a business.
35:57They're very serious people and they want to treat it like a business. So if that sounds like you, go ahead and apply to book a call by clicking the link in the description and the pinned comment below. But only do it if you're very serious about growing and making money on YouTube because we can only accept about three to five people right now.
36:10We are very limited in the amount of people that we can accept into the program at any given time. With that being said, check out this video right here to see an example of someone that we worked with, Sean, who we literally made a category king with his YouTube channel, and he made it to over $500,000 in a single month.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
He opens on his real YouTube Studio revenue panel — $333,080.07 for the year — and immediately proves it isn't a currency trick by switching the display to New Taiwan dollars and Jamaican dollars on camera, a direct jab at faceless-channel gurus who inflate screenshots that way.
Named ideas worth stealing.
07:04concept
The Icahn Method
Feed Claude 3-4 competitor channels in your niche and ask it to find videos massively outperforming each channel's average — those outliers become your next video ideas, replacing guesswork with proof of concept.
Steal forany content idea-generation pipeline where competitor data is available
11:13concept
The Holy Trifecta
Generate the title, thumbnail concept, and intro angle together in one pass so all three stay congruent with each other, since a mismatch between what a thumbnail promises and what the video opens with causes early clickoff.
Steal forany video or landing-page hook where a promise must be paid off immediately
22:36concept
Anti-fragile scripting methodology
- Request more list items than needed (e.g. 15 for a top-10)
- Review and discard the weakest items
- Keep only the strongest subset for the final script
Over-generate list content with AI, then curate down, so disagreement with AI output becomes a selection problem instead of a rewriting problem.
Steal forany AI-assisted listicle or step-by-step content
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
33:48product
“go ahead and apply to book a call by clicking the link in the description and the pinned comment below”
Layered CTA structure — two soft mid-video pitches for a free live training (with a bonus niche-validator tool as an incentive to attend live) followed by one hard pitch at the close for paid 1:1 coaching, gated by an acceptance rate under 18% to signal exclusivity.
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
