29:06Jake Trinder · Essay
Once You Learn Psychology, YouTube Becomes Embarrassingly Simple
A YouTube growth strategist breaks every video down into four sequential viewer decisions and shows how to find which one is actually broken.
August 26thThe argument in one line.
Most YouTube channels fail because they copy surface tactics without the first-principles grasp of viewer psychology that makes a title, thumbnail, hook or edit the right decision for a specific audience.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A business owner or expert who has posted real videos, gets a few hundred views each, and cannot tell which decision is killing them.
- A video editor, thumbnail designer or strategist who wants to move from executing tasks to owning a channel's results.
- A creator who had one breakout video, could not repeat it, and wants a method for diagnosing wins and flops.
- Anyone who has bought a YouTube course built on outlier theory and curiosity gaps and still feels like they are guessing.
SKIP IF…
- You want a quick checklist of title formulas. The whole argument is that formulas without the why behind them misfire.
- You run an entertainment or gaming channel. The examples are all educational and business channels, and the speaker says entertainment needs different retention work.
- You have under an hour. The useful material is spread across the full two hours with few shortcuts.
The full version, fast.
YouTube is a winner-take-all platform, so a channel that makes slightly better decisions than its competitors at every stage wins by a wide margin, and most channels lose because they copy tactics without understanding why those tactics work. The method is a chain of gates: validate that demand for the topic exists in your niche, borrow packaging from niches whose viewers share the same intent, hook with Promise, Proof, Plan and Persona, shorten time to value, and choose an editing style that matches the expectation the title set. After publishing, ignore click-through rate and retention in isolation; read the view-graph shape and the positive-comment-to-view ratio, then diagnose why each video won or lost before making the next one.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:11guestJake Trinder
00:26hostInterviewer (unnamed)
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 02:53
01 · Cold open and who should listen
Three pre-roll claims, then the guest's case for why existing YouTube advice is surface level and why a 1 to 2 percent edge compounds on a winner-take-all platform.
02:53 – 07:25
02 · Origin: a gap-year bet and a 60-pound website
First channel at age ten, a deal with his parents to skip university if a business worked, 100 hairdressers knocked for one sale, then a pitch video that offered to run a channel instead of just editing it. First client paid 1,700 dollars a month for three videos a week.
07:25 – 11:52
03 · Why most channels fail
Creators skip to guru tactics like outlier theory and the three-element rule without understanding viewer psychology, so they misapply them and cannot diagnose what went wrong.
11:52 – 19:55
04 · What makes a good video idea
Almost nobody validates demand; they guess from audience knowledge or ask an AI for a title. A good idea has proven active demand, packaging backed by data that wins the feed, and content that satisfies the click so the algorithm keeps pushing.
19:55 – 28:28
05 · A video is a series of decisions
One wrong call, such as polished editing on a video that promised rawness, can sink a video and then get misdiagnosed. Treat each stage as a gate and do not move on until it stops being a point of failure. You know an idea is right when you are nervous to waste it.
28:28 – 38:12
06 · Where ideas come from
The topic is validated inside your niche, with a floor and a ceiling on expected views. The packaging usually comes from other niches whose viewers share the same intent. Case: an insulin doctor borrowing fat-loss packaging went from near zero to a million views in a month.
38:12 – 50:43
07 · Titles and thumbnails from first principles
Getting clicked is a process: land on the feed, catch the eye first, get the click before eyes wander. The three-element rule, curiosity gaps and the Stripe-notification thumbnail all fall out of that process. Simulate being your viewer on the home feed.
50:43 – 56:32
08 · Case: Gary Vee from 15K to 700K views
Titles chosen on a whim and AI thumbnails were replaced with the New Rules of Social Media format, proven across SEO, LinkedIn and YouTube niches. The psychology: rules imply failure if ignored and status if known. First video hit 300K, the follow-up 700K.
56:32 – 1:04:48
09 · The hook: Promise, Proof, Plan, Persona
Viewers click looking for reasons to leave. The hook answers four questions in order: will you deliver, why you, how, and is this for me. Each P exists because of a specific objection, not because it is a formula.
1:04:48 – 1:16:30
10 · Keeping them watching
Educational audiences need fast time to value, not open loops. Format, whiteboard, screen share or talking head, and editing intensity are chosen by what the viewer expects, never by what retains. The retention graph diagnoses where value arrived too slowly.
1:16:30 – 1:33:14
11 · Reading the data after you post
Do not judge early. CTR and retention are noisy on their own; videos with 3 percent CTR or 6 percent retention made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Read the view-graph shape against your channel's norm, the positive-comment-to-view ratio, likes per view, then link clicks, leads and calls. One video produced 100K dollars of MRR in a week.
1:33:14 – 1:45:05
12 · The feedback loop
Diagnose every video, win or flop, for the bottleneck and the drivers. Even the 300K Gary Vee video was asked how it could have hit a million; the answer was a long-form video on his interest-media narrative that had already proven itself in short-form, assembled from existing footage.
1:45:05 – 1:48:28
13 · My niche is boring
Everybody who is online watches YouTube or receives its information through AI answers. Insulin and gardening are boring to outsiders and fascinating to the people with the problem. Make the right video and make it right; the algorithm finds them.
1:48:28 – 1:55:35
14 · Starting from zero: the full sequence
Define and deeply understand the audience, research outliers across many niches daily and verify the traffic is organic, then research your own niche for gaps. Carry over the execution structure that made a reference video work, hook with the four Ps, deliver fast, watch the signals, diagnose, repeat.
1:55:35 – 2:05:17
15 · Rapid-fire channel critiques
Grant Cardone has the authority but no research or packaging system. Neil Patel is hit or miss and splits his audience across topics. Sabri Suby proves the content works when the idea is right, so selection is his bottleneck. Dream client: Alex Hormozi, with ideas already in the drawer.
2:05:17 – 2:09:20
16 · Where the company goes
From 100K to over 500K dollars a month inside a year with a stated aim of a million a month, and a three-to-five-year ambition to be the company touching every successful YouTube channel.
2:09:20 – 2:17:43
17 · One word for his younger self
Speed. Decide faster, hire faster, delegate weaknesses, accept zero margin during aggressive hiring. The brand-building he is doing now is the one job only he can do. Sign-off points to his breakout talk video.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A 1 to 2 percent edge over competitors on YouTube produces a 10x difference in results because the feed is winner-take-all.
- Making a YouTube video is a series of decisions, and one wrong decision at a critical stage can sink a video that got everything else right.
- You know an idea is right when you feel nervous to mess it up. If you feel nothing, the idea is still a point of failure.
- YouTube is a quality game, but the quality that matters is the quality of decisions, not the camera or the edit.
- Pick the topic from inside your niche, but borrow the packaging from niches whose viewers click for the same underlying reason.
- The Stripe notification thumbnail worked because it showed business owners the exact picture they already dream about. It stopped working once everyone copied it.
- Fewer elements in a thumbnail means each element hits harder and the viewer processes it before the next video on the feed.
- The hook has to answer four questions in order: will you deliver, why should I trust you, how will you do it, and is this for me.
- Viewers do not have short attention spans. They allocate attention carefully, which is why the first minute has to re-sell the click.
- Educational audiences punish open-loop teasing that entertainment audiences eat up. Time to value matters more than retention tricks.
- Click-through rate alone says nothing. Videos with 3 to 4 percent CTR hit hundreds of thousands of views; videos with 20 percent CTR died inside the subscriber base.
- A video with 6 percent retention generated hundreds of thousands of dollars. Retention is information, not a verdict.
- The strongest early signal of a winner is organic positive comments per thousand views, not any number in the analytics tab.
- Subscriber counts are vanity, but a high subscribe rate per view tells you the video transformed people enough to act.
- Data does not tell you what to do. It tells you where to look.
- A flop with a known cause is a good upload. Marketing is testing, and YouTube is marketing.
- In short-form the message carries the whole video, so a short that goes viral proves the message, which you can then expand into long-form.
- If a title format fits one topic's psychology, forcing it onto an unrelated topic kills it even though the format is proven.
- One 30-minute talk, posted once, added over 100,000 dollars in monthly recurring revenue in its first week.
- The one thing the speaker would whisper to his younger self is speed: decide faster, hire faster, delegate weaknesses sooner.
Every video is a chain of decisions. Get each one right.
WHAT TO LEARN
Validate the demand, borrow packaging from viewers who click for the same reason, hook with Promise, Proof, Plan and Persona, deliver fast, then read the signals that actually lead.
02Origin: a gap-year bet and a 60-pound website
- When applying for a narrow role, pitch ownership of the whole outcome instead. Offering to run the channel beat every editor's portfolio.
- The first client paid 1,700 dollars a month for work the same team now prices near 15,000. Early underpricing bought the reps that built the skill.
03Why most channels fail
- Tactics like outlier theory and the three-element rule are downstream of viewer psychology. Learn the why or you will misapply them.
- Study current winning videos in your market every day. A great video from five years ago is not a model for today.
- Without fundamentals you cannot diagnose a flop, so you carry the real problem forward and drop what nearly worked.
04What makes a good video idea
- Validate that active demand exists on YouTube right now before making a video. Knowing your audience is not the same as proof.
- A good idea has three parts: proven demand, packaging that wins the feed with data behind it, and content that satisfies the click.
- The algorithm measures satisfaction, not effort. A perfectly packaged video that disappoints gets throttled no matter how good the thumbnail.
05A video is a series of decisions
- Treat idea, packaging, plan, record, edit and thumbnail as gates. Do not pass one until it is no longer a point of failure.
- Wrong editing style is a common hidden killer. Polished graphics on a video that promised rawness can sink it and get blamed on something else.
- A viral hit you cannot explain teaches you nothing. Know why each video worked so the decisions compound.
- Quality on YouTube means quality of decisions, not camera, studio or editing budget.
06Where ideas come from
- Pick topics inside your niche and estimate a view floor and ceiling. Only make it if the floor still pays for itself.
- Borrow packaging from niches whose viewers are the same people, or different people clicking for the same underlying reason.
- Gaps are only visible by comparison. The wider your view of what works elsewhere, the more missing formats you spot at home.
07Titles and thumbnails from first principles
- Getting a click is a process: land on the feed, be seen first, get clicked before eyes wander. Design for each step.
- Fewer thumbnail elements means each one lands harder and the viewer processes you before the competing video.
- Visualize the exact outcome your viewer already daydreams about. The Stripe notification worked because it was that picture, until everyone copied it.
- Simulate being your viewer scrolling the home feed. That rehearsal is the single most transferable skill in the method.
08Case: Gary Vee from 15K to 700K views
- The New Rules of X format works because rules imply failure if ignored and status if known first. Borrow the psychology, not just the words.
- A format proven across several adjacent niches with the same viewer intent is a confident bet, not a gamble.
- After a 300K win, the follow-up reframed the same psychology as The New Era Has Begun and doubled it to 700K.
09The hook: Promise, Proof, Plan, Persona
- Viewers click looking for a reason to leave. The first minute must re-sell the decision they just made.
- Answer four questions in order: will you deliver, why trust you, how will you get me there, and is this for me.
- Lay out the roadmap explicitly. Skeptics have been burned by similar promises, and a visible plan is what closes the gap.
10Keeping them watching
- Educational audiences want value fast, not open loops. Shorten time to value immediately after the hook.
- Choose whiteboard, screen share or talking head by what the viewer needs to follow, never by what you think retains.
- A flat retention curve after the hook followed by a slide means value arrived too slowly. Read the graph as a diagnosis.
11Reading the data after you post
- Do not judge or change a video in its first hours. Anxious edits often kill something that was going to work.
- Click-through rate and retention mean nothing in isolation. Videos with 3 percent CTR or 6 percent retention made six figures.
- Compare views against your channel's normal push curve, and read the view-graph shape: laddering up is healthy, a sharp flatline is a warning.
- Organic positive comments per thousand views is the strongest early signal of a winner. Likes per view and subscribe rate per view come next.
12The feedback loop
- Diagnose every upload for its bottleneck and its drivers, including the wins. Ask how a 300K video could have hit a million.
- A message that goes viral in short-form has proven itself. Expanding it into one long-form video is a low-risk, high-ceiling bet.
- Marketing is testing. A flop whose cause you can name is a useful upload, not a failure.
13My niche is boring
- Nobody who is online escapes YouTube, including through AI answers that cite video transcripts. Your audience is there.
- Boring to outsiders means nothing. Insulin and gardening are fascinating to the people with the problem.
14Starting from zero: the full sequence
- Define the audience first, down to how they think and what they resonate with. Every later decision depends on it.
- Research outliers across many niches daily, verify traffic is organic by comment ratio and view-graph shape, and understand why each one won.
- Carry over the execution structure that made a reference video work. Dropping it removes one of the reasons it succeeded.
15Rapid-fire channel critiques
- Authority without a research and packaging system leaves views on the table, even for famous names.
- Mixing unrelated topics on one channel confuses the algorithm about who to push the next video to.
- A proven title format only transfers to topics where the same psychology applies. Forcing it elsewhere wastes a good format.
17One word for his younger self
- Decide faster and stop overthinking past the point of diminishing returns.
- Hire and delegate weaknesses sooner, even at the cost of margin, so your time goes to the one thing only you can do.
Terms worth knowing.
- Packaging
- Everything a viewer sees before clicking: the title, the thumbnail, and the implied direction of the video. Good packaging makes one video get chosen over the ten others on the same feed.
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- The share of people who saw a thumbnail and clicked it. Inflated when a video is shown mostly to existing subscribers, deflated when it reaches cold audiences, so it is noisy on its own.
- Retention graph
- YouTube's chart of what percentage of viewers are still watching at each second. A flat start means the hook held; a slide after the hook usually means value arrived too slowly.
- Outlier theory
- A common growth tactic: find a video that did 5 to 100 times its channel's average, then adapt its format to your own niche. Useful, but misfires when you do not know why the original worked.
- Three-element rule
- A thumbnail guideline that limits the image to roughly three visual elements so a viewer can process it at a glance while scanning the feed.
- Curiosity gap
- The deliberate space between what a thumbnail shows and what the video delivers, large enough to make the viewer read the title but not so large that it feels like bait.
- Time to value
- How long after pressing play a viewer receives something clearly useful. Shorter is better because the viewer predicts the rest of the video from the first few minutes.
- Leading indicator
- A signal that appears before the outcome you care about, such as comment sentiment or view-graph shape appearing before a video's final view count or sales are known.
- Browse traffic
- Views that come from YouTube's home feed and suggested videos rather than from search or subscriptions. It is the colder, larger audience a video must satisfy to keep growing.
- Psychographics
- The attitudes, motivations and intent behind why an audience watches, as distinct from demographics like age and job title.
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
- Subscription-style revenue a business expects to collect every month. Used here to measure how much new retained client income a single video produced.
- Open loop
- A retention device that teases a later payoff so the viewer keeps watching to close it. Works on entertainment audiences and can annoy serious educational viewers.
Things they pointed at.
37:19channelDr. Tessa Dam YouTube channel
1:50:42toolFree YouTube browser extensions showing view graphs
2:16:54linkThe Most Valuable YouTube Training You'll Ever Watch (prior video)
Lines you could clip.
24:11
“The way you know you've got the idea right is you literally feel nervous to f*** it up.”
25:08
“YouTube is a quality game, not a quantity game. And when we say quality, it's the quality of decisions.”
36:20
“You can't find an opportunity that you can't see.”
57:31
“It's not that people's attention spans are low nowadays, it's that they pick where to place their attention so carefully.”
1:17:24
“Click-through rate on its own is not something that you can look at as a metric. Click-through rate is a noisy metric.”
1:21:41
“The positive comments to view ratio is one of the strongest signals I have seen that is a leading indicator of success before it happens.”
1:29:58
“The data isn't the thing that tells you something. It tells you where to look.”
1:34:11
“Marketing is really just another word for testing. And YouTube is just marketing.”
1:31:48
“We've added over $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue from that video from just a week of it being posted.”
1:48:28
“It just comes down to you making the right video and making the video right. The algorithm will do the rest.”
Where the conversation goes.
07:25 – 28:28denseWhy channels fail and what a good idea is
28:28 – 56:32denseIdeation, titles and thumbnails
56:32 – 1:16:30denseHook and retention
1:16:30 – 1:45:05denseAnalytics and the feedback loop
1:45:05 – 1:55:35steadyStarting from zero
1:55:35 – 2:17:43steadyChannel critiques, company vision, lessons
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The way you know you've got the idea right is you literally feel nervous to f*** it up. You can't find an opportunity that you can't see. We've added over $100 ,000 in monthly recurring revenue from that video from just a week of it being posted.
Jake Trend is 22 years old and he runs hundreds of different YouTube channels for many of the biggest creators on the platform, such as Gary Vee, Ali Abdaal, ManyChat, Instantly, and hundreds of others. With a team of more than 50, he's generating his clients millions of dollars a year. you've recently just posted the best performing youtube training video on the platform now with that in mind why should anyone sit through the next hour and who should stay and listen i think that the youtube advice that's already out there on the platform is very surface level i feel like there's a massive gap in the market for real tactical value on how to actually grow a YouTube channel that nobody else is giving.
I think from personally my experience of growing 100 plus YouTube channels in many different niches for, like you said, like Gary Vee, ManyChat, Instantly AI, Ali Abdaal, lots of these channels were helping grow. I think that I've got the experience and credibility to be able to give that value. And I think the evidence speaks for itself with me, myself, having the most popular.
youtube training on the entire platform right now as of the time making this and the response from that video very clearly shows that people feel there is a lack of real value for how to grow a youtube channel that goes beyond the surface level tactics of take an outlier from a different niche make sure you have a curiosity gap in your thumbnail and these things that a lot of these youtube growth guru spit out so i don't think there's anybody else that has the experience that i have evident from all the case studies and results i've gotten all the channels and brands that trust me to grow their youtube presence and also what i've now done for myself with the first video that i've posted and really taken seriously on this channel so i think if anybody wants to seriously grow their youtube channel and they want the real stuff on how to grow it That is what I assume this podcast is going to cover by the end of this video.
That is what the viewer is going to get out of this video is literally everything that they need to know on how to grow their YouTube channel end to end in the most deep detail as possible. There might be some advanced stuff in here. I'm sure I'll get into side tangents where I go really deep, but that's where a lot of the real value and the insights that make you one or 2 % better than the competition.
But that is what. gets you 10X results. If you can just make incremental improvements by 1 % to 2 % on your YouTube videos and your channel ahead of your competition, it's not just a case of your videos performing 1 % or 2 % better than your competition.
It's night and day difference because YouTube's a winner -take -all platform. So anybody who wants to grow their YouTube channel, whether you're a brand, business, creator, educational expert... Anybody who wants to grow on YouTube or help others grow on YouTube like YouTube strategists, YouTube agencies, thumbnail designers, video editors, anybody in the YouTube economy, this video is for.
And I truly believe that by the end of this, it will be the best video that they've ever watched on YouTube growth. I make that promise to you. That's amazing.
I'm really excited to get into it. Let's do it. How did you end up doing this?
What was the starting point that made you realize? there's this massive gap in the market and you're able to take it over. Yeah, so I had my first YouTube channel when I was 10 years old.
And so that's where I really got the experience of running a YouTube channel, not to like a super high level, but it taught me the basics. I then was in school and I went through the process of education, got my A -level results here in the UK. I got perfect grades, but I didn't get accepted from any of the universities because of a certain virus that was going around, which meant that a lot of the university spots were already taken for what I applied to.
So there was no room for me, even though I got great grades. It is an opportunity to explore my entrepreneurial side and start a business. And my parents didn't want me to.
They want me to go to university. So we went back and forth. Quite an intense argument.
We came to, okay, let's settle on this. I'll take a gap year. And if in that gap year, I can build a successful business to where I'm making more money than what I would be after three, four years of university, then I don't have to go to university.
If I can't do that, then I'll go to university. and them obviously thinking that i would not be able to do that and also me probably being very naive to the fact that that was actually quite a difficult feat and i was probably being overconfident they said yes because they thought i wasn't going to do it then i was like cool what business do i start now so i started with a web design agency because a lot of the online business gurus were saying that that was a good one to start and so i learned the skill of web design in two days and i started door knocking local hairdressers being like you should buy a website from me I started pitching basically the idea that they should go from offline bookings where it's just via the phone to online bookings.
via the website because these local hairdressers only took bookings over the phone they didn't have an online booking platform so i said i'd build you a website and then i'd implement online booking yeah i knocked probably about 100 hairdressers barbers one of them said yes sold the website for 60 pounds which is like a hundred dollars and i soon realized it was not a sustainable business model for me so i had to pivot and so i was like okay well i don't know what to start there and this is where things really came together i was just scrolling social media there was a business owner that was looking for a video editor to help grow their business youtube channel it was like a hiring post it was on x twitter at the time and as soon as i saw this i was like i just like felt the emotion of like this is my shot like i just felt it in my body of like this is the opportunity and like this might be my only shot literally within an hour i create a custom pitch video where i sat down i recorded it i edited it in an hour as well and i was basically pitching that i would not only edit his videos i would run his entire channel so i'd come up with the ideas i'd find the best topics for him to make videos on based on who's trying to attract his customers thumbnails posting everything and i did that because i knew
that i would stand out from the other video editing applicants because everybody would just be like oh yeah here's my portfolio for editing so that was the thought process behind that long story short he said yes to that and we started working together and that was my first client and that was how i got into what i'm still doing today because what we do now is just a complete evolution of what i was doing back then the same service but just levels and levels and levels better at that point i wasn't even really that good at youtube but i just had the foundational skill from running my own channel when i was a kid which I got bullied for.
Yeah. Like that's how I got into it. Amazing.
How much did they pay you to run the channel when you first started? Yeah. So it's quite different to what it is now.
And I'm sure we'll get onto that. But the first client I pitched. $1 ,700 per month for two to three, not even two or three, like two to three, I gave a broad range, which he took advantage of.
We did three videos per week, all done for you, editing, thumbnails, everything. If I charge that now, it'd be like $15 ,000 a month at least. And that was just you doing everything.
There was no team involved. This was literally just you doing it. yeah i was doing everything yeah so i was doing the video editing the ideation the thumbnails i was just a solo band 12 to 14 hour focus days literally waking up editing the videos which took five to ten hours at least depending on the video the thumbnails i had no idea how to use photoshop so i had to figure that out and so that took me ages not to mention the other pieces as well so yeah yeah That's amazing to see the evolution of literally being at the very bottom of the food chain to where everything's going now.
It's really interesting. A question that a lot of people have is why is it that most YouTube channels fail? Because the reason anyone will be watching this now is because they're having that same problem.
And so what are the biggest things that you see being as you manage all these channels and you've seen... thousands the biggest thing that would cause any channel to fail i think that most youtube channels skip to the tactics that are given by these youtube growth gurus like take what's working in another niche and then take it to your niche where it hasn't been done before or the tactics of how to make a good thumbnail that's almost like a little checklist of have a curiosity gap three element rule and like these tactics that sound sexy and attractive to people like an aha moment but it's just regurgitated advice from youtube growth gurus and they take these tactics and they misapply them because they don't actually understand the principles and the foundations behind why those things all the way that they are so they don't understand why sometimes and sometimes not taking something from another niche that has worked really well and bring it to their niche where it hasn't worked they don't actually really understand deeply why those things have worked and so
people are operating off these surface level tactics which everybody has access to without really understanding the true fundamentals and first principles thinking of how to actually grow a youtube channel how to capture somebody's attention on the youtube home feed over all of the other videos how to get them to click how to retain a viewer how to make sure that you keep them watching how to make sure that you actually meet their expectation of what you set in the title and thumbnail i don't think people really spend the time to deeply learn the fundamental skill set and understanding of viewer psychology and just the psychology of the audience that they're trying to attract to be able to effectively grow i also think that people operate not only with a lack of skill knowledge and fundamentals to be able to properly have control over the outcome of growing their youtube channel and what results they get with their videos and overall channel growth i think that people really lack visibility
over what makes a good video idea, what makes a good thumbnail, what makes a good title, what makes a good video structure for the particular video that they're making. Because I don't think enough people spend the time to actually study YouTube videos, find YouTube videos that are perfect examples of this was a great YouTube video in today's market, because the market's ever shifting.
So it was a great YouTube video five years ago, isn't necessarily a good video today. People don't spend enough time to find those and actually study and think about. why has this video worked really well?
And sometimes there's multiple reasons because from that studying is where insight comes from to be able to understand what makes a good video in today's market across YouTube, but also in these different specific niches with these different specific audiences so that they can use that to better understand when they step into their niche, what is a video title that their market would resonate with based on who they're.
audience is what is a thumbnail that will actually capture their target market's attention and get them to click over all of the other videos what is an editing style that is best suitable for their audience rather than just blindly taking what's working from a niche where the audience might be completely different and so it really comes back to the fundamentals and doing the real work and spending significant time and putting significant reps into like mastery of youtube instead they're just taking the surface level tactics so there's a lot of examples that fly off of what i'm saying there such as most people don't know how to actually do youtube research most people don't actually know how to take that research and do something with it to turn that into a video idea that's really effective in their niche they don't know how to come up with a thumbnail concept that logically would stand out on the feed and get the attention of their target market over the other videos and get them to click.
And they don't know how to structure the video and plan a video out to make it unreasonable that their target market wouldn't be satisfied by the end of watching that video, which then would lead to high viewer satisfaction and therefore make it unreasonable for the YouTube algorithm to not push your video. There's a lot underneath that scope of what I'm saying that I'm sure we'll get into and we'll give a lot of tactical value on, but that is the core issue and the root problem of what I see.
Interesting. It seems like there's a... there's a lot of factors that go into making a video actually win and it's far more than whatever the surface level guru advice people would give away yeah it's really interesting yeah thousands of videos go out every day on youtube and every one of them started as just an idea that someone thought of how do you know which ideas are actually going to work yeah so i would say like i was the thousands of videos that go out every single day probably about 0 .001 of those actually came up with the video idea to some level properly on YouTube.
I think 99 .99 % of those came up with the video idea from just thinking, what is a good video idea for my target market? What do my target market want to watch? Okay, they like this topic.
They want their interest in this topic. They demand this topic. What would logically be a good way to title this video that would make sense that they would want to click on?
And at most, the 99 .99 % of people, the very best of what they'll do when it comes to good YouTube practice is they'll be like, oh, i saw that this video worked really well that's got an interesting title let me take my topic and mesh it with this title and that seems like a really interesting cool title that's where the video idea comes from that is the vast majority of the entire market that is doing that but the problem with that is is that they haven't actually validated that people want that video on youtube they've just used their knowledge of their target market and assumed they want it on youtube that's number one mistake number two They're effectively operating blind when it comes to how should I package a video around this topic?
And when I say package, I mean everything around the topic in the title and then also the thumbnail. How are you representing a video around that topic publicly on the feed? People are just basically doing that blind because at the very most, as I said, they are just taking inspiration from what they've happened to see.
work on youtube when they're browsing youtube and most of them are probably using ai to generate the titles and just using claude chat gbt and they're asking it what makes a good youtube title they're using these free tools free youtube tools at most 50 a month to tell them what the right title to use is when those tools everybody has access to and we don't use those tools i'll say that and so that's what most people are doing so even though there's thousands of videos well tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands of videos that go out on youtube every single day a tiny tiny tiny speck of those videos are actually doing ideation to a level of properly and within that tiny fraction that spectrum of doing it properly is very vast it's from one side of they're using these tactics like outlier theory and they're using these surface level tactics which isn't terrible ideation but youtube's a winner take all platform and If you're going up against somebody where you're that person who's doing outlier theory and that's the most that you're doing, you're watching these YouTube growth videos that give you the service level advice.
Maybe you bought a YouTube course, but most of them are slop. That's the most that you're doing. And you're going up against, well, someone like me where I run 100 plus YouTube channels, some of which are the top channels in their entire niche.
We posted thousands and thousands of thousands of videos. Last year alone, never mind over the past four years, we're posting hundreds of videos every month, which are all highly strategic. We get the data from all of those videos.
And we also spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on YouTube. So we have more visibility than anybody else. You're going up against us.
You're not going to be able to compete. And that's the spectrum, right? What makes a good video idea is one that the demand of the topic that you're making the video around is validated.
And you know. that actively right now in this current moment in time, proven by the data on YouTube, there is enough active attention circulating around that topic where people are actually wanting a video around that topic. Right now in this given market, there is enough of that to which you would be satisfied with.
And you could logically assume that if you captured that demand being realistic, you would be satisfied. And if you're a business, you would probably get a client or so or a number of clients to which that would be worth it for you if you did get that number of views. So that's validating the demand.
After that, there has been the proper diligence to try and figure out what is the right way to package a video around this topic so that I can be confident it stands out more than the other videos that are around. that given topic so that my video gets clicked on more times than not over all of the competition because youtube again it's a winner -take -all platform there's 10 plus videos in the feed at once if somebody searches for a video around that topic you are actively competing against the other videos that are coming up in that feed and only one of those gets clicked on so you need to be the channel and you need to have the video that gets clicked on more than the other videos over a large data sample size and continue for that to be the case as time goes on and so You have to properly figure out and be confident in backed by data, not prediction, as much as possible.
Not always you can be 100 % certain, but as much as possible. What is the best way to package this video that will get more people to click on my video over everybody else's? Backed by data more times than not.
And then once you've got that, you obtain the click. If you've done both of those things correctly, you in theory should have the video. that captures most of the attention.
You should have the most successful video on that topic if you execute correctly, because you can have an amazing video idea, but if you don't fulfill on the vision of that video idea correctly and effectively enough, then the video is not going to perform. Because if somebody clicks that thumbnail, that title, that idea that you came up with, that beat every other video that it was competing against, but they feel like you bait and switch them because the video doesn't meet the expectation, whether that be...
they don't feel confident from the hook the first 60 seconds or so that you're actually going to deliver on that promise and therefore they click off before you even have a chance to give them that value or maybe you do sell them effectively in that first 60 seconds of the video but as time goes on as they make it through the video they realize this isn't giving me what i expected then the youtube algorithm is a very smart algorithm it's owned by google and if you don't trust that google knows how viewers feel about your video when they're watching it then you're Definitely mistaken.
And so Google knows, YouTube knows, the algorithm knows if the viewers that have clicked on your video are dissatisfied. Likewise, they know if they're very satisfied. And if they're dissatisfied, it's going to stop pushing your video no matter how effective the packaging is.
But if they're very satisfied, then the YouTube algorithm is going to push that to more people. And because you've got the best packaging, more people are going to click it than the other videos. They're going to be satisfied.
And it enters this flywheel where it goes through the cycle and it stops pushing it to more and more people when it begins to get pushed to an audience that starts to show signals of lower viewer satisfaction to where it's to the point where it doesn't make sense for YouTube to push your video as hard or at all anymore.
And that's where you'll see a YouTube video slope off. So if we take all of that good video ideas that perform really well on YouTube versus. the thousands and thousands of videos that yes are posted but don't see the light of day in the algorithm let alone see the heights of hundreds of thousands of millions of views are the ones that make sure there's enough demand to capture in the first place figure out the best way to package a video around that topic to actually effectively capture the potential demand and then fulfill on the demand in the actual content itself because the end of the day The YouTube video itself is the content and the algorithm is going to look at was this audience that we captured satisfied because their whole purpose as a platform is to keep people watching the videos and keep people on the platform.
That is literally what determines their success as a platform. It's what generates their money through ad revenue, but also a platform success is dependent on how much time people are spending and how much consumption is occurring on the platform. And that in essence is what separates.
the best video ideas and the best videos from the ones that don't succeed. Interesting. That was a big one.
Very deep. So in terms of the packaging, it's not always just having a good idea that's been validated. You found that there's actually demand for it.
You've worked it out. You've scripted it in a way. It's also the thumbnail, the title, the way it's been edited, the hook.
If you're getting one of these little pieces wrong. It could be the life or death of the video. The way that I think about it is growing a YouTube channel, but chunked down, creating a YouTube video is just a series of decisions.
If you make the wrong decision at any stage, it could completely ruin your video. You could do everything else right, but if you have one decision wrong at a critical stage, then it could ruin the entire performance. And you might just look at that poor performance and be like...
damn i just made a bad video but that might not have actually been the case for example you could have the best video idea you could pick a topic that has a lot of demand you could find an amazing way to package it you can make an amazing video that actually fulfills in that demand but you can have the wrong editing style for that video.
If your video is meant to have a raw editing style because the video idea and the way it is packaged sets an expectation of rawness and that homemade sort of feel to the video, and that's the brand feel that the viewer expects to get because of the psychology behind why they want that. For example, they want to be able to trust in what you're saying.
It's just what their expectation is. And if you then edit that video in a way which is... all these graphics, all this editing, all these effects, which traditionally in the past on YouTube has been good editing and what people would consider optimal editing for YouTube.
If you do that, your video could very much not succeed. There's plenty of videos that I've made that I know for sure, if we had have had good editing in that particular instance, because it needed raw editing, if we had have had good editing, the video wouldn't have succeeded. And most people as well would look at the video's performance afterwards and they wouldn't have thought that that good editing was the reason why the video didn't succeed.
They wouldn't identify that as the bottleneck and they would incorrectly diagnose that as the reason as to why the video flopped. And so their next video, they'd be like, okay, this video didn't work. It was probably because of XYZ reason that wasn't editing.
So let me not do those things. And the next video might have ignored the things that actually were. So close to making that video succeed and with the right things to do and they carry forward the thing that stopped it from succeeding This is why it's really important to understand the fundamentals and understand YouTube to a fundamental level because if you don't Then you're not gonna be able to Properly assess where did we go wrong?
Like where did my video go wrong? What stopped it from succeeding if you don't study YouTube enough and you don't question Why did those videos succeed or why did these videos not succeed? then you're not gonna be able to do that with your own videos and You're basically .
You might even get a viral hit. You might even get lucky and get a viral hit. And you might be super excited.
You might be thinking, oh my God, my channel is going to blow up. And then the next video flops because you didn't actually know why that video succeeded. And you didn't know why the ones that didn't succeed, didn't succeed.
So even if you get a viral hit, you don't get any information from it to be able to actually effectively compound the decisions that you made in that video that actually helped it succeed. You have to really see YouTube. and making a video as a series of decisions.
And your goal is to get every decision right and remove the points of failure from every process. You should have no points of failure by doing proper ideation, doing your proper diligence there, proper packaging, planning the video properly, and being certain at every stage as you move through the stage of planning a video from initial idea and concept.
all the way through to being ready to publish, feeling extremely confident to an airtight level that you're making the right decisions and that each stage is not a point of failure, and then tackling the stage ahead of it. Don't move on from the idea stage until you feel this isn't a point of failure. And the way you know you've got the idea right is...
you literally feel nervous to fuck it up. Like, this is a bang. I know this can succeed without a doubt if I do everything else right.
And so that should create nerves because you don't want to fuck up that idea and burn it. And then doing the same for the next stage and then the next stage and the next stage. Not recording the video until you're airtight confident in the planning.
Not editing the video until you are super confident that you've recorded it correctly, even if it means re -records. Not moving on to publish the video. until you are super confident that you've got the right editing style, you've made the right editing choices to maximize the viewing experience for the particular viewer and for what the particular viewer wants.
And then the thumbnail design as well, making sure that the vision that you had in the idea stage of the thumbnail, you actually fulfilled on that and you're not settling for less and lowering your standards of what you visioned. If you go through that, it's a lot of effort, but this is why YouTube... is a quality game not a quantity game and when we say quality it's the quality of decisions it's not necessarily the quality of editing it's not necessarily the quality of the camera and being in a nice studio it's the quality of the decisions that you're making and that's why youtube is a higher effort game and when we talk about putting effort into videos so yeah that was crazy insightful um yeah i think most people get it wrong where it's like oh you need to put more effort in oh it must be the editing it must be this but I mean, I think of someone like Sam Sulik, for example, he has the most raw, authentic page on YouTube because that's what it needs to be.
And so it's finding the demand for whatever it is you're doing and backtracking and setting all the steps in place to actually work out what do I need to do? What's going to work? And then, like you said, having it airtight.
So you're like scared to post. Yeah. And just nobody does that.
Like, I think I would say for most people watching, if they listen to that. and contrast it with what they're currently doing, the gap should be enormous, I would predict. But that is why there is such a massive opportunity for if you can close that gap, because nobody else is.
This is why we get the results that we get for our channels. We always take channels from a stage where they are not happy with where they're at. Most are at zero.
Most have tried and failed. Some are seeing some level of success, but they just know they should be way higher. You've got the guys like Gary Vee who are...
he's like top five entrepreneur in the world or something like that in terms of brand so he gets decent views but for what he should be getting nowhere near and we've got our clients and channels that we run who they were starting from companies here with no brand but the situation with them is all the same where they weren't happy with their results that they were currently getting and they had no idea how to grow as well right they were at this side of the spectrum and the gap was here as to what we do for the channels that we run but Their competition's also right at that side of the spectrum.
So it's like with YouTube being a winner -take -all platform, if you're better than all the competition, then you will win. Like over a long enough timescale, you will win. Your competitor might have a breakout video that does better than some of your average videos, but they're not going to be able to replicate that to the same extent that you're going to be able to.
And over a large enough sample size and time, you will . And that is why... If you can close the gap, the script flips because you will go from not being able to get any traction in the algorithm and being like, why are my videos not getting pushed?
To being the person who is dominating the entire niche, ranking at the top of the search results, getting all of the algorithm push on the YouTube home feed, et cetera. And that's why our clients succeed so quick when we step in because we're closing that gap immediately. The time is compressed to literally zero, but people can do it as well on their own.
You just have to be cognizant of it, of what I'm saying and do the work to close that gap as fast as possible. And that takes time. It takes reps.
But if you've got direction, you can learn quicker than anybody else who's not going to apply this because most people won't do the work and most people won't listen and be ignorant and will still copy the tactics that are easy and that feel nice because it feels easy and it feels like they can just take it and do it now, but you'll run them over, you know?
So that's what you want. So going back to ideas. Where do you actually look for those ideas?
Inside the client's niche or somewhere else? So there's two parts to this, and it's actually both. Idea is the topic plus the way in which it's presented.
So it's what are you deciding to make a video on and how are you deciding to present that video in terms of title, thumbnail, and also general vision of direction in terms of how the content will go, because that has to align with the expectation of the title and thumbnail that's being set. the way you decide on the topic is within the client's niche typically because what you're doing is trying to validate that there is enough demand to capture that you would be satisfied with around the topic of which you're making the video on and so naturally that's inside of the niche because you're looking at the videos that have already been made around the topic to understand how well they can do so you're assessing what's the upper limit of what this video can do if i make this video amazing and all the wildest dreams like if i make the video that gets pushed the most what could i potentially expect but then also what could you realistically expect like if you just made a good video as a kind of floor what you would expect so you've got like the ceiling and the floor so you're trying to determine what is the view floor if i make a good video what's really the minimum slash conservative case that i would expect and would i still be satisfied with that
Would it still be a profitable video for my business? Because I could reasonably expect if I get this many views, I'd probably convert this much and I sell at this price point. So would it be worth my time and effort and resources to make that video?
And what could be the upper limit? What could be the moonshot if you make the best video of that thing? So that's inside the niche.
And also using your logic and your understanding of the target market to be able to logically assume every single one of my target markets. wants this topic because i know my target market so it's the combination of validating that on youtube but also just off youtube and your knowledge of the target market that's how you decide on a topic for a video idea and what would be a good topic for a video the second part of the idea is how to package it which sometimes in rare cases you will still take inspiration from what's inside your niche and sometimes in rare cases you might actually do something that's already working in the niche because there might be a certain type of video that just works And that there's an opportunity for you to also capitalize on do.
Maybe there's a new way that you can do it. Maybe there's a slight way that you can differentiate. Or maybe you just think that this exact video with this exact packaging, multiple people have done it and succeeded.
But I think all these videos are terrible and I can make a way better video than that. And so your hypothesis is that you can win against all those videos and capture the demand that those videos are capturing instead of those videos if you make one. But in most cases, what you're doing is you're actually looking inside your niche to understand where the gaps are.
You're looking inside your niche to see what is everybody else missing and not doing that I know will work. But the only way that you'll be able to identify that is if you have something to compare to. Because how can you spot a gap in the market if you don't know?
what isn't being done in your niche that is being done elsewhere. And so this is where for packaging the idea, it's usually coming from having a broader view of YouTube from other niches because you can see what is working in these other niches and across YouTube as a whole macro that is working with every viewer on YouTube, but also in niches where viewers are similar.
They have similar behaviors. There are similar demographics and psychographics. So for example, age, job title, industry, behaviors, intent behind the view.
Like why are they watching the videos that they are watching in that niche? What is the reason? What is the underlying desire of why they're clicking that video?
And if you're understanding these things that are working for these different types of viewers, then you can look at that and see what's resonating with types of viewers that are similar or the same as yours. So viewers in your niche might also view videos commonly in other niches. And if you can see what is working in those niches and there's something significant there, like there's a distinct pattern between what viewers are clicking on in that niche and it's not being done in your niche, then there's an opportunity to potentially take that because you've literally validated that it works with that specific type of viewer and you know they are the exact same type of person in the way that they think, in the way that they consume.
and what they actually desire and what their pain points are. So this could be the same viewer where they're consuming videos in multiple niches because you know your viewer consumes videos from these other niches too. Or it could just be viewers that aren't the same, but they're similar.
So you wouldn't expect necessarily that the viewers of your niche would watch videos from that niche too. But the way that they think and the reason why they're watching those videos and all of these things is the same. So they're not the same viewer.
but the reason for consumption is the same. So for example, if I'm in a niche like Facebook ads, I'm making videos for businesses who want to scale with Facebook ads, then I know that viewers in a general business niche, the broader niche, are the same viewers. So the same viewers that are consuming videos in the Facebook ads niche are also the same viewers that consume videos in the business niche, because the viewers in the business niche are literally businesses.
the viewers in the Facebook ads niche have to be businesses because what's your other reason for doing Facebook ads? So that's a situation where you can reliably look at what's working in the business niche because you know it's the same viewer. So if stuff is working in that niche and there's a distinct pattern between the titles that are working, the thumbnail styles that are working, the type of language that's used, the video structures, if there are all those distinct things, you could reasonably assume they would also work in your niche.
Now, a situation where you might take inspiration from a niche where viewers aren't the same. but they're similar and so you can still reliably take stuff that's working from that niche and transfer it to yours or use it as insight as to what might work in your niche and identify potential gaps in the market is Facebook ads and YouTube growth.
Most people in the YouTube growth niche are not necessarily businesses. There are a percentage of businesses who want to grow their YouTube channel and consume those videos, but I would say 90 % of the consumers in the YouTube growth niche aren't businesses. But...
the intent behind why they are viewing those videos, if we think about it. They want to grow their YouTube channel. They want to grow.
They want to do it for the reasons of building a brand and achievement and success, right? Because they might want to generate ad revenue or they might just see success associated with subscribers or follower count, right? The same way that businesses want to use Facebook ads to grow their business.
for higher achievement, to make more money, the same way that people might want to do it for ad revenue and to achieve higher levels of success, the same way that viewers of the YouTube growth niche, despite maybe not being businesses and despite maybe not even caring about the money, they want to grow their YouTube channel because they see success that way, the same way businesses see success as growing their business, right?
And so the intent behind the view and the reason... as to why somebody would click and therefore what would make them click and what would grab their attention is the same. Those are like the two different relationships between a viewer in your niche and a viewer in a different niche and how you can use what's working in other niches to compare that to what's working but what's more so missing from your niche to identify.
gaps in the market you can only do it through comparison with us because we run so many channels because we have our own internal research team because we just have that unfair advantage because our company is centered around it we're able to see what's working across youtube to a greater extent than anybody else so when we step into a niche we are able to spot the gaps in the market straight away when somebody else would be completely blind to it and they would just not be able to see it you can't find an opportunity that you can't see good video ideas come from looking in the niche to understand the topic and what to make videos about but typically in terms of how to frame that topic in a way that actually succeeds it's a combination of understanding your niche combined with the knowledge of what's working elsewhere broad youtube for a general viewer and specifically in niches where viewers are similar or same to the viewers in your niche to make the comparison
between the two and see the delta and see what's missing to identify gaps that way you have more insight than your competition so you are better positioned to make better decisions than your competition on what title to use what thumbnail to use what structure to use because you have better information with better information becomes better decisions a really good client of yours that comes to mind with everything you just said there where it comes to finding what's working in other niches is uh dr tessa dam where she was an insulin doctor no one really cares about insulin or what it is or what it does but everyone's lose fat and so it's taking what's working in the fat loss niche over to her niece for insulin and because she's a world -class doctor and knows exactly what she's talking about you've like pulled this idea from there and then you've twisted it and then it's her channel in the past 28 days has got like what over a million views or something like that yeah went for like 10 or 20 views a day
because she was still trying YouTube, but basically zero to within less than a month, a million long -form views generated. Zero 30K subs in that timeframe. And she grew her business from zero to over 50K net profit after expenses, but also after paying us as well.
So that was her actual profit after every expense within that timeframe too. So that's like a, what, 10, 11X on the initial upfront investment of 5K a month, right? Yeah.
Yeah, that's ridiculous. All of that is just YouTube. It's just getting the idea and knowing the process of making a winning video.
Yeah, we'll get Omar to just put like a fake like stock image over the front of it. With like the white background and watermark still left on. So once a video is published and it's on the feed, how do you get someone to click on that over every other video that's available for them?
Yeah, so this is about the title and the thumbnail because this is ultimately... the only things that are on the feed. There's a couple different parts to this.
So one is what I'm saying where it comes to the way that you can confidently expect your video to get clicked on over all of the other videos that it's going up against is through evidence. And when I'm saying evidence, it's through knowing where other thumbnails and titles in those different niches have won that same battle.
You're looking at the videos that have worked in other niches, views are similar or same to yours, and also just broad level to see if there's any specific patterns between the thumbnails that are working in those niches. So for example, there's sometimes certain actual concepts of thumbnails that work particularly well.
Sometimes it's a specific style of text that's working particularly well in those niches. Sometimes it's the overall brand feel of the thumbnail. For example, is it more polished and professional versus does it look more raw and amateur?
And so there's understanding that too. And so you can... see the battles that have been won in given niches in terms of what thumbnails have won against all of the competition because the evidence is there through the view counts of those videos and the success of those videos but you obviously have to actually look at those videos and you have to come to the confident conclusion that the thumbnail at least had a significant part to play in its success because sometimes the thumbnail might actually not be the reason why that video succeeded and this is why when you're finding these videos that have worked really well it's not about just taking what's worked in another niche and applying it over you have to actually understand what about that video drove it to succeed because sometimes it was just the title sometimes it was primarily the thumbnail sometimes it was neither but the video was just so good that youtube just had to push it and so you have to actually be able to really figure out what was the driving force of why this succeeded and if you find that certain
types of thumbnails certain assets that are even in the thumbnail have drove it to succeed you can take that as inspiration same goes for the title so the way that you can confidently assume that your video would get clicked on over the competitions is by figuring out what are the best ways to title videos right now and structure the titles with viewers that are the similar slash same to mine backed by data in the niches where they're all the same slash similar viewers that hasn't been done in my niche and that logically when i piece together the title not just backed by data, but I actually look at that title and I'm like, that's a banner title.
Like that, I can imagine that my target market would actually click on that because you understand your target market and you understand what they would actually resonate with. And so therefore you can predict if it would really strike a nerve with your target market, the same way that it's struck a nerve in those other niches with their target market.
And you do the exact same for thumbnails, like certain thumbnail concepts, certain thumbnail styles. just work they work backed by data and they work for actual reason because when you break it down and you understand why you break down why do you think they've worked you begin to question who is the target market in these other niches how do they feel what do they think what's their intent behind the view and as a result of that fact and who they are why are they interested in clicking on this video over the other videos and when you begin to really dig into the why and you explore your curiosity you get to the bottom of it And that's where the real insight comes from to there when you can go into your niche and apply those same insights.
There's the tactical part of, again, figuring out what's working in these other niches and taking it to your niche. But then it's also actual first principles of data aside. Why would somebody click on my video over the other ones on the feed?
They would click on my video because it's one catches the attention of them and their eyes before they even consider another video. So they consider mine first. That's ideal.
And then once that happens, if you successfully achieve that, how do I effectively get them to click on my video before they consider let my eyes wander elsewhere to potentially consider another video? Because the more that happens, the more risk you introduce. of them clicking on another video instead of yours.
If you go back to first principles of how do I get somebody to click? What is the process of getting somebody to click? My video has to land on the feed in front of them.
And once it does that, they have to see my video before they click on another video. And when they see my video, if and when they see my video, they have to click on it before they look elsewhere and click on a different video. My video has to be appealing enough to get them to click in that instance before they click on someone else's.
That is the process. Go more granular. okay first i need to achieve the first part of that so my video lands in the feed because that's the work of the video itself that the title and thumbnail doesn't have a part to play in it landing on the feed the talent thumbnail plays a part of once it's on the feed so the first step we have to consider that process of getting somebody to click and watch is getting the attention of them what can i do to get the attention of my target market before they look at any other videos how can i get them to get attention and this is where Once you go to first principles, this is where the tactics come from.
This is why previously on YouTube, people used bright colors because they knew if they used bright colors, the eyes would naturally gravitate towards that. But now viewers are more sophisticated to where they are skeptical of clickbait to where that sort of effectiveness balances out and you have to be careful in which you can do that.
So you have to be careful in the way that you use those tactics because viewers are... skeptical of those being used, right? So that doesn't work as well anymore, but they're still in time and place.
But that's the reason why that worked. It's the reason why tactics like the three element rule exist. Because if you keep your thumbnails simple, then at a glance, the viewer can process it quickly and they can understand if the video is for them or not.
So the less there is to look at, the more each element has an impact. And therefore, the more likely you are. to be able to grab their attention at a glance because if they're just looking across their feed, your thumbnail is processed in an instance quicker than videos with more elements in it.
And this is gonna be an underlying lesson that's gave throughout the podcast is the tactics that are true in certain instances and they do have a time and a place and they exist as tactics as a reason because they do and at least have worked is because of first principles. It's because if you go... deep enough on the how to achieve the objective of what you're trying to do, which with title and thumbnails is getting somebody to click after your video lands on the feed.
That is the purpose to play of the title and the thumbnail. If you dig deep enough into the how and you chunk the problem down of the steps to get there and then you go within each step and you chunk that down too and you really consider how can I achieve this outcome? this is where the tactics come from so like for example if we're isolating this step of capturing the attention having as minimal elements as you can without reducing the effectiveness of the message conveyed in the thumbnail is naturally going to lead to the thumbnail being more effective at achieving that outcome of getting somebody's attention because there's less to look at each element has more of an impact because there's less elements so it drives more of an impact and if those elements can effectively convey the message of the thumbnail and who it's for and what the video is about, at least infer what the video is about from that.
So they give the title reading a chance. If you're doing that, then that's naturally going to give you more of a chance of them seeing your video over the competitions first. Another tactic that I give that falls under this same logic, which I don't see talked about a lot, is visually representing the desired outcome associated with the video of what your target market wants.
out of the video in the thumbnail. I don't know if you've ever seen thumbnails that have a Stripe notification and Stripe's a payment processor for businesses if you don't know. Or a Stripe dashboard or Google Calendar notification or these different things.
We were the people who invented that. We created the Stripe notification assets. Like I've got the proof for this.
We were the one who created the Stripe notification. Everybody used that across YouTube. The reason why I created that was because I went through this process of thinking, how can I make a business owner?
know within an instance the videos for them for this video that was about making money growing their business well what is the outcome they want they want to grow their business what does growing their business look like to them well if they're on their phone and they see stripe notifications coming through which is the most popular payment processor, or at least at the time it was.
That is how they visualize this. That's how I visualized it when I was doing my business. So I understood the target market to that deeper level.
And so then I was like, well, if I include a Stripe notification asset that says $10 ,000 received, even if they don't know Stripe, they're like, oh, what? Notification? I was like, oh, $10 ,000 received?
Oh, I want that, right? And so then they give the title a chance. Now, that asset has been overused now because everybody's copied us.
And through them copying us, more people have seen their... videos and then it's just kind of grown out of proportion now to where everybody's used it. I think even the top, top YouTubers on the planet have used that now.
But when it was then, it stood out because nobody else was doing that. Nobody else was visualizing the desired outcome for the target market to such a close, accurate level that literally visualized what they visualized, right? They're dreaming about $10 ,000 received, $10 ,000 received, $10 ,000 received.
And so when you visualize stacks of those notifications, it like literally strikes a nerve with their and like it's obviously going to get them to consider it if they've never seen that before it's captures their attention more than anything else because how could it not and it's a pattern interrupt because nobody else was using that and it's like that is exactly what i want it strikes a nerve so hard and so of course they're going to read the title and then if the title is effective as well under this exact same logic it's selling the video and conveying the value proposition of the video for the target market, then they're going to click.
I could go on and on and on about all the different tactics that create an effective thumbnail and that effectively get people to click. But the most important thing to understand is the first principles of it. Of like, what is the process of getting somebody to click when it lands in the feed over all of the other videos?
Understanding what the steps are in that process and understanding how to achieve each step successfully and achieve the outcome of each step successfully in which case for thumbnails that is getting their attention and then getting them to click before they look elsewhere and this is where for example for the second part getting somebody to click this is where tactics like a curiosity gap comes into play why is that a tactic that people sometimes talk about well it's because if you have a gap in curiosity as to where like they either can't get the value of the video out of the thumbnail because then they might feel like you've already given the answer And so why do they need to watch the video if you gave them the answer in the thumbnail?
Or maybe it's a case of they're clear on what the video is about. Like they're still clear in the video. They're not confused.
But there's just still a little gap of like, hmm, this is interesting. I wonder what, you know, is in this for me. That gap in curiosity is what then makes them make the decision subconsciously to read the title.
And the title gets considered and then that does the selling. right so the reason that exists as a tactic is because you've got to understand the psychology of somebody who is on the platform and this is universal like so these tactics the reason they work universally is because humans are human our brain like a lot of the times works similarly but certain types of people depending on the way their brain works because of their background their occupation, these things, their brain works differently because it's been matured and developed in different ways.
And so that's where not everything is universal. So if you really go deep on understanding first principles thinking and understanding your viewer to such a deep level to where you can literally enter their state, you can literally almost convince yourself you are the viewer. So when I simulate that process of being my target viewer on the home feed, I can understand what would get me to click on another video and see another title and thumbnail before another video and then get me to click.
That is the most important lesson of all because that applies to the entire YouTube process. I can go through tactics of these things, but it's that piece that's really important. That was really interesting.
I think there's a lot to pull from what you just said there. So what would be an example where you've done this for one of your clients? a ton because we do this like this is the process for every single one but i would say gary for example gary v so his channel was averaging like 10 to 20 000 views a video before we started working together and his titles were just being chosen on a whim like everything i've described of bad practice in terms of just thinking what moment my target viewer might want what would be a logical way to title this video without any visibility or consideration of what makes a good title backed by data on YouTube, but also like, again, first principles thinking and the thumbnails like AI generated.
So that tells you enough on that front. So the first video we made for him got 300 ,000 views. So immediately from 10 to 20 ,000 views per average, some getting less to 300 ,000 views.
And then we doubled down on that video and got 700 ,000 views on the next one. So with that first video is the new rules of social media in 2026. And the reason why we did that video is because One, again, if we take the two parts of what I've just broken down in terms of what makes a good video idea, there's the data side of it, but there's the actual logic behind the data.
And there's a reason behind the data, not just taking what's working. So the first part was we saw this format of... the new rules of this thing in 2026 and year so for example we saw the new rules of seo brackets 2026 we then did it in the linkedin niche for one of our clients the new rules of linkedin 2026 we also saw the new rules of youtube 2026 so this new rules format was working across different niches that were all related in some way now that was a format that was working why did it work well the reason why it worked is because when implying that there are new rules to something rules suggests if you don't follow these you will fail.
So if there are new rules and you didn't know there were new rules, then you're going to be pretty inclined to want to know what those new rules are if you are the target market of which that video is for. If there are new rules to YouTube and you want to grow your YouTube channel and you don't know about any new rules, you're thinking, what are the new rules?
What new rules? Rules. The definition of the word rules.
That already tells you, it tells their brain subconsciously. If I don't know this, I will not be able to grow my YouTube channel if I am not doing these rules. And even the risk that I don't know these rules is too great to which I can't take that risk if they are a true viewer of that niche because that is their desired outcome.
That is the thing they want more than anything else. It also is exciting as well because it's like, oh, new. So if I know these and most people don't, I'm going to get ahead of everybody else.
And people, whether admitted or not, love to be ahead of people. Like it's ego. With both of those factors combined, the fear of missing out and the desire of being greater than anybody else and getting all this praise because they grow a massive YouTube channel or they achieve top ranking in SEO, which then results in the implied outcome of more business, which then is their desired outcome.
You know, they make these subconscious thoughts in a given instance. But this is what the brain goes through. That is why that video title is so attractive.
That was what was working. but it was why it was working. And so that's the thought process that went through my brain.
And because it had worked with SEO, which the reason why they want to know the new rules is they can rank at the top of search, they can grow their business on and so forth. It's businesses that want to know that. But then LinkedIn.
Some are businesses, but some are people who just want to grow their LinkedIn and grow their social media. But again, the underlying pattern between why there's different types of audiences that would both click on that video is the same intent. They want to grow for different reasons, but same ultimate desire personal to them.
YouTube, same thing, right? So if it had worked for all of those, it would... I could predict it would work pretty well for social media, which both attracts the business audience because businesses want to grow on social media nowadays.
And so the fact it worked for SEO validates that it would also probably work for social media. And the fact it worked for the individual social media platforms was a pretty good signal that it would work for social media in general. And so that was a very confident bet that I could make.
And then that became one of those videos where... Because that was a formula that was working pretty much every time that it had been done right. And it made sense why it was working so well in the market.
Because also not only... was that new rules title one of these videos that was working well there was also other videos that had the same underlying psychology whereas basically these shifts are happening in this market that you're interested in and you need to know about them otherwise you'll fail and if you do know about them you'll be ahead of everybody else like this thing is about to change forever nobody even realizes you're not ready for the next phase of these are all different types of the same type of video the same different ways to frame the same underlying type of video because i knew all of that was working because i looked at the data to back it up but because also it made sense why the same reason why it worked for those different niches would be also the same reason why it would work for the audience of my niche that was one of those instances where i knew the idea was not the bottleneck the idea was no longer a potential point of failure and the idea was something where i was like this is such a good idea i'm nervous to this up like i said earlier and so now the idea problem was solved for and then it entered the next stage which was the
planning process of the video. The same thing happened for the time when we doubled down on that video after seeing that I got 300 ,000 views and was, what, like a 10, 20x outlier for Gary Vee, was the new era of social media has just begun. So it was the same underlying psychology, the same type of video, the same reason as to why somebody would click, but framed differently and was different enough to where it could succeed as well as, or in this case, even better than the original.
And obviously I can get into... why those videos performed differently and how that why that one got 700 000 views versus 300 000 views but for the an application of where i'm applying both the due diligence side of finding the data finding the formats that are working but actually understanding why that's like a really good application of that there's many many more but i think that illustrates it enough so once you've got them to click you brought them in they're watching the video what are the steps next for them to keep watching Yeah, so again, thinking of YouTube as a funnel, it lands on the feed, a percentage you capture the attention of, a percentage click, and then this is where we're at this next part, which is how do we get them to continue watching from literally the second the video presses play all the way, ideally through to the end, but doesn't have to be to have a successful video by any means, not 100 % of viewers will watch to the end.
But how do you make sure that the average viewer is extremely satisfied with the video that you've watched to where the YouTube algorithm gets so much signal that it was a good video? for that particular type of viewer and also the other viewers that you've attracted to where it pushes it to more of those people. Because no matter how good your title and thumbnail is, no matter how much you smash the competition when it comes to winning the game of getting clicked on over your competition, if the video doesn't deliver, you're not even going to show up on the feed in the first place or you'll stop showing up on the feed, which really, if we loop back, is the first step before even capturing their attention, right?
And so that's how the loop goes. This part is so important because this is the ultimate content of the video and there are again different stages to this first When a viewer clicks They're looking for every reason to click off Because it's not that people's attention spans are low nowadays it's that they pick Where to place their attention so carefully attention is the most scarce resource for somebody it is literally their time it is their attention and because of short form algorithms, most people's brains have been conditioned to be very, very, very quick to shift where their attention goes.
So because of this, naturally, when we take all of this logic, we understand that we have to do such a good job the moment it presses play to really reaffirm their decision on clicking on that video and why they should continue to stick by that decision. And so this is what you call the hook. This is your opportunity to sell the viewer and convince the viewer.
as quickly as possible before they run away and click off why they should continue watching and that's the first part for us to consider before we even get into the video itself there is a very simple framework that people can use in order to make an effective hook because if we think about the questions that are going on in the viewer's mind after they click is is this video really going to deliver on what i just clicked for the second thing is why should i listen to this particular person this creator to deliver on the expectation that is being set what makes them so suitable to be able to give me what i clicked for and then after that if you've successfully done those two stages sometimes there's still a lack of clarity as to how are they gonna achieve that for me how are they going to deliver on that promise they've said they're going to do it and they've reaffirmed that i really am going to get that but i just don't quite see how they're going to do it because in my mind there's so many different steps than delivering on that so they want more clarity to
give them more confidence that you're really going to deliver on it. And sometimes as well, the fourth question, which sometimes is clear from doing the rest, but sometimes they need a bit more of a nudge, is, is this video really for me? Like, can we really just reaffirm that this video is truly for me?
Because the packaging didn't make it quite clear enough and give me enough confidence that it was for me. To answer those questions that I just laid out, promise, proof, plan, persona. That is the framework, the four Ps.
Promise is promising what you are going to give them in the video. This is confirming the click. This is reaffirming the expectation that you set in the title and thumbnail and just giving them that additional bit of confidence of, okay, yes, they are really going to center the video around this focus.
This is actually about the thing that I clicked for. This is actually about the expectation that they set. So you do plan to give me this, but why should I listen to you?
That's proof. So you use your own social proof and... You convince them through what you have achieved that you are the person, you are the authority to give them that promise and deliver on that promise.
So for example, if the promise is to teach them how to scale their business with Facebook ads, you need to have some serious credibility in the eyes of the viewer, even more credibility than what they're typically used to ideally from other videos they might have watched in the niche that makes you the person. that they should listen to rather than clicking off and going to a different facebook ad channel and seeing if they're the person that is where you really have to hammer the proof in and convince them that you're the person to listen to okay cool so this person actually is the person to listen to but i still feel a little bit unsure that am i really gonna get it's just skepticism right am i really gonna get what they promised like i just don't see how you're gonna get me there because it's such a bold outcome and it's such a desired outcome that i haven't been able to achieve yet and so naturally they're skeptical the same way that if somebody's on a sales call and has previously been burned by other vendors that haven't helped them achieve the outcome that was promised, they need to be convinced through proof, case studies.
The same thing applies with videos. If somebody else has previously placed their attention and trust in videos that have made that similar or same claim and it hasn't delivered on that, they're naturally going to be skeptical. And so they really want to be convinced as to how are you going to get me there?
And so this is where the plan piece comes in, where you're laying out the roadmap of if... It's a grandiose outcome of, I'm going to teach you from going from this position of essentially zero and failing to this really desired outcome that would be huge for you to achieve. The value of that might be worth hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars if it did actually meet the expectation.
And so that's why naturally they'd be skeptical. But if you can lay out the clear roadmap of how you're going to get them there, then that gives them a lot more confidence to continue watching. So for example, if it is how to scale your business with Facebook ads.
I'm going to teach you how Facebook ads manager even works. I'm going to teach you how the algorithm works so you actually understand that first and foremost. I'm going to teach you how to navigate around the ads manager.
I'm going to teach you how to find winning ad creatives that you can take that will also work for your target market and attracting your target market and being profitable. I'm going to teach you how to build the funnel so that once you've... made effective ads and you've gotten people to click the learn more button, how to actually move them through that funnel to get them to book a call, get on the call, so on and so forth, right?
And there's way more stages to that. Like after the funnel, I'm going to teach you how to make sure that you maximize show rate. After that, I'm going to teach you how to maximize close rate through the best sales process that I've found works for every different type of business on paid ads, on cold traffic, so on and so forth, right?
You get the point. And so now there's much clear roadmap to where they can't see any gap as if you're going to teach me this, this, this. this is this and at this point because of the proof they trust that you're actually going to do that quite well you've now kind of handled all of their objections before they've had the opportunity to click off and then the final one is persona where sometimes in niches there are multiple potential target markets and the viewer understands that so if you're a viewer of the facebook ads niche and you're an intelligent business owner you understand that other viewers might be e -commerce brands and the way in which they might scale facebook ads might be different from how your business would scale Facebook ads.
And so this is a lingering question in their mind. And if they get any potential thought of this video might just be for e -commerce brands, you know, and this might not be for me, then they might click off, especially if the video is a longer video. And it's again, they're just weighing up the decision of should they keep watching?
And so naturally, if you can pre -handle that objection and be like, whether you are an e -commerce brand or this type of business, this is for you, this video is for you. And so you've handled that objection. So now it's like all the clarity that they might have previously been questioning is this video for them.
You've cleared that confusion now. And so you're just maximizing your chances of getting to stay. So again, this framework that I've given you as a tactic of promise, proof, plan, persona is just because of first principles and the thinking about what are the things that a viewer is questioning.
As soon as they click on the video, that might lead them to clicking off because that's the thing you don't want them to do. So it's like the only thing you want them to do is keep them watching. So if we consider...
the most important moment of the video which is when skepticism is at an all -time high and attention allocation is considered at the highest rate what are the things that i can do to minimize the amount of people that make the decision to click off because you want to keep everybody watching that is the ultimate goal and then once you've done that we move to the next stage which is okay we've effectively hooked people in now how do i now keep them watching now in entertainment niches You need to do a lot more voodoo YouTube magic to be able to keep people watching because this is where people's attention spans truly are lower.
And yeah, people are just attention spans are in entertainment related niches a lot more because the type of viewers that consume in those niches oftentimes stereotypically are the types of viewers that are scrolling social media and just brain rotting effectively. Now, if you're in an educational niche, which are typically the type of channels that I work with, but these same principles apply to.
any niche but if you're in an educational niche you've got a lot more leeway with this because people are coming for specific value and they're not going to click off your video because you didn't give an open loop tease of like you know and the last point is going to be you know because with that audience i can actually turn them off with an entertainment audience That is like, they eat that up, right?
So you have to understand your audience, which again, it all comes back to understand your audience and understanding first principles and thinking about what your viewer is thinking at every single stage of consuming your video. So if you understand an audience, for example, in an educational niche, after the hook, the thing that you need to do as soon as possible to keep them watching is shorten the time to value.
Because after you've convinced them to continue watching, the only thing that they're looking for next is... any signal that if they watch the full video, they're going to get immense value. And they can predict based on the earlier part of the video where value is, they begin to give the value, that they're going to get immense value and their expectation is going to be met forward.
So the time to value in the video is extremely important because that's what they make that prediction based off of. It's like a first impression, right? If you make a bad first impression with somebody, then...
their expectation of you and their outlook on you is already kind of set. And it becomes harder and harder to undo that expectation. And for some people, they make the decision to cut it off completely.
So for example, if you walk up to a girl in a bar and you come across as creepy, you might have not been creepy. It might have just been that initial body language in which you came across. Some girls might give you a bit of a chance.
They might give you a bit more time to make yourself up for it. A lot of girls would be like, ew. Go away.
Angela, Angela. But, like, most girls would do that. And you might have been the best guy.
You might have been the guy for them. If they continued speaking to you and you didn't fuck up the first impression, you guys might have ended up in a lifelong relationship and that might have been... your wife hopefully not it's quite a depressing thought if that actually does happen but like you get the point right and in business as well if the time to value is too slow and it takes them too long to get the initial result beyond what they were expecting then you might have got them an amazing result in three months but because you didn't get them a fraction of that result in seven days they already think your service is and they might leave you before you even have the chance to actually deliver the full value and if they had have stayed even though you might have had slower time to value than what was ideal they would have got the full result and so those examples i give because this is the same selfish intent that a viewer has when consuming a video they want it for them they want value and so the quicker that you can give them significant value in relation to what they clicked for and what they were expecting to receive the sooner they get that signal and confidence that okay oh like this guy's good you know like this creator expert
they are the person who i should listen to because they get the evidence it's not just them saying it they're walking the talk and so that is the next thing that is most important and then it is just maintaining that like for an educational audience they don't need these retention tactics and these things as much because if a viewer is serious which hopefully they are if you're targeting a sophisticated audience then you just need to give them what they want but The time to value is really important there and that can have a massive impact on retention.
Like if you see that the retention graph didn't drop off much at the start, you can accurately assume the hook was good. If you see right after that moment from where the hook kind of ends, it goes a little bit longer flatline and then it drops. That's a signal that they probably weren't getting the value quick enough.
This is where you can actually use the retention graph to actually diagnose what might be the issue in your video. If there is certain points where... the gradient just starts to increase downwards in terms of like at a certain point it's probably because they've been feeling for a little bit and starting to have this thought of they're kind of dragging a bit not really getting the value quick enough and so then more people dropped off and so like if you understand the psychology if you put yourself in the viewer's shoes and you understand the first principles of what you're trying to achieve and what are the different things that you can do to influence whether you achieve it or not you can begin to better diagnose the result of that right and then from there it's about maintaining that value consistently so they should be continuing to receive that value throughout the video and maintaining that pace i suppose at this point if you've done things well you've probably got them hooked like they're probably there to watch because you've given the confidence that you're going to continue to give that value so it's just about maintaining that and not giving them any thought of being like i know that part was good that i just watched and the part that i just watched a few minutes ago was honestly really good but like actually i'm starting to get a bit uncertain again
not giving them the opportunity to have that thought. If you keep that up throughout the video and you do ultimately fulfilling the expectation because they've watched the video ultimately throughout the entire video, they do actually get the outcome, you've made a good video. If you actually achieve that and you focus on achieving that to obviously the greatest level, by the end of the video, the viewer actually does feel like they've achieved the outcome or they've got what they need to achieve the outcome and it's actually transformed them significantly.
And you do that. consistently across all the viewers that watch or at least the ones that you want to attract and you want the youtube algorithm to push the video to more of the video is going to succeed it's just about considering how can you do that at every single stage like what are the different things that you need to hit on in order for them to achieve that outcome you need to unblock them at every single stage if you give them an educational viewing experience you need to make sure you cover everything that by the end of the video they're like holy shit i have everything i need to achieve this outcome you need to do that in the best way and how do you do that in the best way well at certain points you might need to be screen sharing showing the thing that's going on maybe it's through a whiteboard at certain points maybe it's through editing and in post -production visualizing the thing to assist the viewing experience if we think about these things when we commonly watch youtube videos where somebody's
doing a whiteboard format, right? Again, there's execution formats that just work, but why do they just work? Well, because for certain videos, it makes sense as the educational viewing experience, if we want to maximize viewer satisfaction and maximize the value that we can give for it to be a whiteboard.
But certain instances, it doesn't. Certain instances, it makes sense for it to be a screen share. And if you had have done a talking head video, the viewer wouldn't have been able to properly follow along.
And sometimes it makes sense for it to be talking head. Because if you did screen recording, it would feel scrappy and their attention would be diluted because they're seeing you in the corner and they're looking at a screen, but there's no real reason why they're looking at a screen. And so it would have been better for it to be talking head, but at the points where things need to be visualized using post -production editing to be able to visualize those things and visualizing those things in the best way.
If something is better visualized through an actual graphic and animated visual. rather than text, you should make that move. But if something doesn't need to be animated and we don't need these flashy effects going on, and the only reason and intention of why we're wanting to do those is because we believe it will retain the audience more, we shouldn't do that because it might be negatively impacting the viewer experience.
If the viewer is clicking on the expectation that you're gonna have a raw sit -down conversation with them, then... you would be negatively impacting the viewing experience and therefore viewer satisfaction if you had all the hyper -editing. So again, it's understanding what the viewer wants out of the video based on the expectation that you set and based on understanding your audience and what they want and really planning that out, which is the act of scripting or outlining so that you can be confident that you are actually going to provide the best viewing experience to the viewers.
And that's how you plan a really good video. And that's just about recording that. And some people are very competent at doing that on a whim, so they don't need to plan.
Because for me, I'm obviously articulating all this experience live right now. It might be a bit extensive and I might be repeating myself in certain instances, but I know if somebody does listen to everything I'm saying and really take it on board, I've covered every single gap. They know how to grow a YouTube channel and they're best equipped to be able to do that better than any other video has taught them.
The same way that the video that I posted that absolutely blew up did. I made sure that I covered everything from doing YouTube research in the first place, calling out what most people did so that I knew that they would resonate with that because that was their situation. So they're like, okay, he knows my situation.
He understands. I'll hear him out. Teaching them how to do it in a way they never even heard of how to do it before because everything else is slop out there.
So they genuinely were transformed by that. time to value very, very quick. From there, leading them through that same process for every stage, from research to taking that research into a video idea, giving them actual actionable stuff for how to package it through title and thumbnail, but giving them the underlying tool to be able to go off and do that themselves, not just a single tactic.
Every single stage all the way to after the video is posted, how do you take that data and loop it all the way back around? And so I completed the full loop. and paid off the entire expectation that I set of the most valuable YouTube training you'll ever watch.
If they actually watched that video, might have been low retention. Maybe I could have made some micro optimizations here or there to compress the video more, to increase retention of it. But it didn't matter because the people who watched that video who I attracted had serious intent to grow their YouTube channel.
And I fulfilled them that promise to the best of my ability. Even with the visual style of, I'm giving a talk. which is subconscious authority visually.
I didn't even have to say anything. And they're like, why are people listening to this guy? He must be somebody.
Let me hear him out. Then I give the auditive social proof of Gary V, ManyChat, NCI, while the results are on screen as well. So then they're convinced that they want to watch.
I gave the plan of the video. I'm going to show you how to come up with killer video ideas. I'm going to show you how to package them, how to plan them, every single stage, how to use the data.
to get even better ideas so that completed the loop for them so they were now sure of like okay this guy really gets my pain points this guy really is going to cover all of them then i had the visual assistance of the presentation to be able to effectively give the value right when i was going through the algorithm of how to do youtube research it was visualized at every single stage they understood it when i was talking about examples i had the examples on screen when i was talking through a process i walked them through that process visually through the presentation i made the decisions that logically would give the best viewing experience.
And I've really thought about that upfront. Some people can do that naturally. Most people can't.
Doesn't matter which way you are. Sometimes I can do that naturally. Sometimes I can't.
There's nothing wrong with either way, but you do need to make sure that you've got that in place because that's what makes all the difference. And that is why that video succeeded, right? It's the full loop.
And then the packaging was correct and everything because of all the reasons I described. So that is really how I make the video the right way. The editing, it also...
is the exact same process what editing style you choose depends on what their expectation is what the audience is what they want what's suitable for that specific video and the specific decisions not just that's the style but the specific decisions you make in editing of like do i include this visual or not at this stage do i animate something now what do i do in the hook it all comes down to that same underlying psychology of would this improve the viewing experience or would this actually degrade the viewing experience based on what the video is about what the expectation is who the viewer is and like that's really everything in terms of how to make a good video so that's the full process from going from an idea all the way to posting the video once the video is posted what data should someone be tracking to know if their video is working so once you've posted a video the first thing you're obviously going to want to assess is is this performing well is this not and so there's
A couple of things that I look at to be able to determine whether that's the case. Now, one thing a lot of people get wrong is they'll anxiously look at YouTube Studio after it's been posted, refreshing it and judging it way too early. And what you don't want to do is make decisions too early in terms of changes, because you might be changing something that actually was originally going to work for something that actually won't work.
If you try and anxiously diagnose a YouTube video. not good. You need to be patient and you need to like look at it level -headed logical.
First and foremost, a couple of things I want to address. Click -through rate on its own is not something that you can look at as a metric. Click -through rate is a noisy metric because when videos are pushed to your existing audience, click -through rate will be higher than if it was pushed to a cold audience, naturally, because the existing audience has a bias towards clicking on your videos.
They know your face. They want to watch your videos. Likewise, a video that's getting pushed to the masses, Typically, we'll see a click -through rate drop and a lower click -through rate than maybe typical because it's getting pushed with broader and broader audiences because the video is great.
It's doing well for those broader audiences. But naturally, if it's getting pushed to broader audiences, there's going to be more variation and volatility in whether somebody would click or not. You can't use click -through rate as a measure for, is this a bad title and thumbnail?
Have I packaged the video bad? Because we've had videos that have gone hundreds of thousands of views with... a 3 % to 4 % click -through rate in some instances.
And a lot of these gurus say you need to aim for a 7 % to 10 % click -through rate, but it's not the case. Those videos have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars. We've also had videos, because we've made thousands, we've naturally had these videos that have occurred in the past where they haven't performed that well, and they'll have a 10 % to 20 % click -through rate.
Why? Because they didn't make it past the existing audience. And so the same applies to retention as well.
We've had videos with 6 % retention. that, again, have gotten hundreds of thousands of views and generated hundreds of thousands of dollars. The leading indicator is the number of views.
And if you've got a history on your channel, it's the number of views that you've got relative to the time that's been posted relative to what you typically get. So if you pull up YouTube Studio and you go into the analytics of a particular video, you can see that there is an average time of which your video will be pushed.
There will be a typical shape of graph specific to your channel. And it's actually pretty accurate most of the times. So again, this is not the only signal.
You have to take everything that I'm mentioning and make decisions based on all the information that you have. But typically your video is pushed after two or three days on your channel or a week or within the first 10 hours, right? There is typical shape of that.
And so you can use that as information, but it's again, just information. it's not the only signal so the views relative to when it's been posted how's it doing what's the shape of the view graph as well is it climbing up still and is it just slowly trickling up is it laddering up because that's also fine too if it like has a spike up and then it might the gradient might decrease significantly but it's actually still getting pushed to somewhat of a significant level that's sometimes a good signal that youtube's just slowed down the pushing of it but it's still testing it because it's still satisfying an audience and therefore it might pick up again but then you've got videos which spike up and then it's a sharp flatline drop which might mean that youtube pushed it and it's like whoa we just got a strong signal of dissatisfaction or low viewer satisfaction let's hold our horses it's not to say that the video won't get pushed again it's just like a pretty sharp signal of okay like it's information again it's intake
If the video is just going like da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and it's just continuing to go and go and go, then that's obviously a good shape and you're good for now, right? Especially if the gradients continue to increase and it's already above what you usually average. Something's clearly working there, right?
But it doesn't mean that your video is not going to slope off. So we can't make 100 % predictions. We're just taking all the information that we can and collectively making an assessment.
Another signal. That is a strong piece of information that we can combine with the other information that we have, such as the view graph shape, such as maybe the click -through rate and retention in combination to those things, is the sentiment of comments and the positive comments to view ratio. How many positive comments and strong signals from the comment sections...
are you getting how many units of that are you getting so a comment being a unit per a thousand views per hundred views because if you're getting an overwhelming amount of organic not botted organic positive comments saying wow this video was so valuable or like this was the best video i watched or how is this video only got this many views or i really liked how you said this this and this that really clicked with my brain nobody else has ever spoke about this in this way if you're getting that to a level that seems relative to the views that you've currently got quite high, that is one of the strongest signals that I have seen that is a leading indicator of success before it happens for a given video.
That is probably the strongest signal above all else. So before you might see that you've got views that you're satisfied with and that the view graph is taking a trajectory that is super exciting and bullish. before you have that, if you have nothing else to go off of, that is a really good signal.
If we take my video, for example, being a live example of this in my own example and proof in the pudding, my video, the most valuable YouTube training you'll ever watch, which was a massive claim to the market, satisfied that claim so well that we had so many people commenting. I've never had anybody give this advice ever before.
This is the best advice I've received. This video is so good. This is the best video that I've watched in the YouTube growth niche.
I can't believe this is free. How is this channel only at 4 ,000 subscribers? which now, by the way, is 11 ,000 and probably when you're watching this even higher.
And so those signals early on before the video, it was performing decently well, but we had no idea where it would go. What we did know is that people loved it and it was resonating with the market to such a statistically significant level that we could project the broader hypothesis that more people would have that same belief and...
maybe even the entire YouTube growth consumer market would have that same feeling that this might be the most valuable YouTube training that they've ever watched. And that the advice given in that video beats all the advice from these other videos. And therefore, because of the purpose of the video, has higher viewer satisfaction than all of those videos, which therefore would get pushed more than all of those other videos.
And because we also have the title and thumbnail intact, because we know what we're doing and I did my thought on that and I went through the diligence of that, that video would really... hit it off. And it did.
The video sits at currently 460 ,000 views, getting thousands of views every hour. I think it's between like around 5 ,000, 6 ,000 views an hour right now, averaging. And we'll probably be at over 500 ,000 views by the time this is recorded, maybe even more, who knows.
I was able to make a prediction, not to a 100 % guarantee level, but an accurate prediction that that video would do very well. I didn't know that it would get 500 ,000 plus views, but I knew it would be a video that was worth making and that... would be defined as successful in my eyes and that i would be satisfied with that is probably one of the strongest signals but it's everything you're taking all the information the like to view ratio is another one as well right compared to what you typically see from a youtube video on your channel maybe on other channels are you getting more likes per 100 views per thousand views to a significant level than what you usually would.
And so that's how you can get early signals that you've made a YouTube video that's hitting resonance and might be successful. And then of course, to know if a YouTube video is succeeding, it's the outcome metrics, which are how many views did you get? Subscribers is vanity.
We don't care about that, but it's good signal because it shows, did this video resonate with people watching to such a degree that it converted people into pressing the subscribe button? at a high rate, despite most viewers actually knowing that subscribing to a channel is useless because they just get fed videos from the algorithm anyway.
So if somebody's subscribing, it's almost just an act of service because the video is so good. And so if that is to a high percentage, again, it's a good indicator, leading indicator of, is this video valuable? So you see how there's all these different signals that I'm taking into consideration that just give more and more confidence stacked up with each other that the video is going in the direction that I want.
But yeah, in terms of the actual... success of a video, if it was successful or not, it's the outcomes that matter, such as views and then conversions. Views is the best leading outcome metric because conversions might not sometimes happen as the views are happening.
If you're selling a high ticket product, for example, off your YouTube channel, you can't judge if the video is successful within a week of being posted based off of the high ticket sales because your typical conversion cycle for somebody learning who you are to actually converting them might be longer than a week, which is typical, right?
But views combined with the logic of looking at your title and thumbnail and the type of viewer that you've attracted based on the type of comments you're getting, you're able to assume the type of viewer that you've attracted. And if that was mostly the target market that you were going after, if a low percentage of it was your target market that you're going after because it went broader, you can kind of make that assumption as to how much of the views that i got is probably my target market that sort of blended metric slash kpi is the best thing to look at i am looking at views because that is ultimately the data for me to then make a decision of did this video succeed and then you know after a longer time period of the video being posted we can make a proper assessment on was this successful and attracting the right audience that actually converted so you can further diagnose was it successful in that area or did i actually fail in that area despite getting a lot of views there are some indicators that are more leading than conversions that you can look at if you are wanting to actually monetize your youtube channel through your products and services and grow your business which are obviously link clicks leads boost calls because these happen
much earlier than the conversion so link clicks can happen pretty immediately so you can see if a video is driving value to such a level and resonating to the audience that you've attracted to such a level to where they are willing to take action beyond a subscribe or beyond watching more videos on your channel or beyond leaving a positive comment right and then the leads which is a relatively low friction way of showing intent because it's just opting into something which is free it's not committing to a sales call for example it's definitely not giving their money over that is the next layer which is also very good but you can only judge those if you've got significant amount of data to work with like if you haven't got a thousand views on your video yet it's pointless looking at those metrics because you haven't got a large enough sample size of data to be able to know whether you're getting a lot of link clicks for your video and you're even going to convert somebody, right?
Those are the different metrics that I look at outcome wise to determine if my video is successful, successful being defined as what is successful in my eyes based on what my goals are with the videos and the channel overall and the leading indicators before those outcomes happen. So I can predict on whether it will achieve the outcomes that I want or whether I can predict that.
currently as things stand, it might not. So that maybe I might need to think about what changes might I and potentially should I make in order to increase the chances of changing that prediction and that hypothesis. And so like this is where you start to get into should you make a thumbnail change or not, right?
Like once you've got these things like, okay, the views. are getting less than they usually would that's typical to the average on my channel and the click -through rate is low and you can even diagnose further the click -through rate by traffic source so you can see if it's getting lower than what it usually would get even with your existing audience and see what it's getting with the browse traffic that might be more cold so you can really dig into the data and again take all that information as well as with the logical qualitative data view of just looking at your thumbnail and looking at the data, looking at your thumbnail and thinking, does it make sense why it might be lower?
And is there things that I can change in order to make it higher? That's how you start to make those decisions. Or if views are lower than what they usually are and there's a sharp retention drop -off midway through the video, what happened at that part of the video that caused that?
Oh, I gave a call to action and the call to action was conveyed in a way that was hard. Okay. I want this video to succeed.
I'm willing to sacrifice conversions a bit because if I don't get performance in the video, giving the call to action is useless anyway. Let me go into the YouTube editor even after it's being posted and let me try to see if I can cut that segment out. Oh, I've cut that segment out.
The video started taking off, right? So like you can't always predict an impact that a decision will have on like making a change, for example. But naturally, you just want to make the better decisions that are in favor of giving you the best chance, right?
And so you just... make that diagnosis. You really look at the data, and the data isn't the thing that tells you something.
It tells you where to look. So the data doesn't tell you what to do. The analytics don't tell you what to do.
A low click -through rate doesn't tell you to make a thumbnail change, but it might tell you to look further into that. So leading indicators, predictive of potential success to the closest level that you can get, and also potentially predictive to failure. before it happens that you have enough time to make the change in order to get the outcome that you want.
The outcome metrics are obviously what you ultimately want, views being the most leading version of that, link clicks next, leads next, so on and so forth, every stage down the funnel to the sale, which has the longest conversion cycle. And so you might not actually receive accurate data on that outcome metric and therefore whether that video was successful, if that is the conversion event that you are optimizing for until your sale cycle has played out.
from the moment of which you started to get a lot of views. For me, for example, the YouTube video that I posted, which got 400 ,000 plus views to date. Well, that video was very successful from the conversion event that I was optimizing for within the first week.
So that was the fact that my conversion cycle was usually longer than that because I've built a business to over $500 ,000 a month. And so I've got enough data and clients to know what my average conversion cycle is from somebody learning about me to actually. paying me money for my service it was getting conversions way quicker than what i would have expected people were going from not knowing about me to watching that 30 minute video of me and within a couple of days paying me five thousand ten thousand plus dollars a month just like that from only knowing me for 30 minutes and potentially binge watching all my videos and it wasn't just a couple people doing that it was 10 20 plus people doing that In total, we've added over $100 ,000 in monthly recurring revenue from that video from just a week of it being posted, right?
That is people who are paying me $5 ,000, $10 ,000 a month with the intention of investing into that forever because it's to grow their YouTube channel. They're not planning on just doing that one time or for three months. That's an intention to commit forever.
They expect to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars if things go well. And they've done that from a 30 -minute video, not knowing me beforehand. And so it's already made me over $100 ,000, that one video within a week of it being posted.
But lifetime, that video will probably net me over a million dollars. And it's only been posted for seven days and I've already got that predict, right? So like that is the definition of a successful video.
And so I know that video has worked. And so I can now really dig into what works so well about that video because it is worth it for my time to really go into that, to get to the bottom of that. Because if I can just replicate that and compound that over and over again.
Because also expecting that that video that I've posted will continue to get hundreds of views per day. If I can replicate that, it's going to be exponential, right? That's how I think about it.
That's really insane. I think viewing videos almost like million dollars, million dollars, million dollars. Like actually being able to see and know how much you're making from it, it's insane.
Yeah. So that's the data that you track. Once you've got that data, what do you actually use it for?
Once a video succeeds, you can then really diagnose why it succeeded. So it's like every time you post a YouTube video, you want to figure out if it succeeded, why it succeeded, what was done differently about that video versus your other videos that made it succeed. So the same way you find out the reasons why other videos that weren't yours succeeded, you figure out why they succeeded for you.
But for you, you evaluate not just why they succeeded in terms of views and these... public facing metrics that you saw with the other videos but also the internal metrics such as the conversions like why did this video not only get so many views but why did it convert so well and like really getting to the bottom of that and not settling for not getting to the bottom of that and just considering the surface level of it because if you can really figure that out and you can get clear on that and it can click you can now take that forward with every other video that you make but the exact same also goes for if a video doesn't succeed because An upload that doesn't succeed isn't necessarily bad.
It's going to happen if you can identify why didn't it succeed. It's actually good because you have to test on YouTube. Marketing is really just another word for testing and obviously testing with calculated risk if you're an intelligent marketer and YouTube is just marketing.
And so you have to test, you have to fail, but it's what you do after the failure that matters. And so if I do a video that flops and I can diagnose, if I can get to the bottom of... this was a banger video but the reason why i didn't succeed is because the topic was just too niche i know not to do that topic the next time if i diagnose the topic was actually amazing but the title was kind of wishy -washy and i used a format that actually now that i look into it in hindsight doesn't actually have a super high success rate because lots of other people failed with using that even though some people might have succeeded massively with it it was a bit hit or miss the format that i used and it made sense why because when i look at that title format and the way in which it packages topics it actually makes sense why it doesn't stand out that well and doesn't strike a nerve because it's not really anything that's like too special then i can assume that Okay, I probably should not use that format going forward.
And maybe both of the topic and the title was really good. But when I diagnosed the video itself, again, I see that there might have been a sharp retention drop off mid video. Okay, I know not to give call to actions in that way the next time.
How can I give a better call to action for my specific videos to my specific market? And so it's that learning process that over time, if you go through that feedback loop of... Making a video, getting a result, good or bad, analyzing that result to get feedback, positive or negative, implementing that feedback, and taking new actions the next time.
In the next video, you're implementing new action, new knowledge in your operating system towards YouTube to produce a new result. You get a new result, you analyze that, you take that feedback again, new, new action, new action squared, and you iterate through that, through that cycle. And if you actually are disciplined enough to do that, you take YouTube seriously enough to where you really treat it like a game of iteration and constantly identifying what was the bottleneck of this video.
What was the limiting factor? If it was succeeding, what were the factors that drove its success? So you're collecting both the things that are driving your channel to succeed and also the things that are potentially holding it back.
And you're removing the things that are potentially holding it back and replacing it with new things that might be untested. It's calculated risk, but you haven't tested it yet for your channel and your situation. And you test that, but then that might become a new success driver, right?
And so you're continuously removing the limiting factors, stacking more success drivers. until you've really got minimal limiting factors you really have no limiting factors and you just continuously you know you get a really good grasp on what drives your channel forward if you actually do that like there's no way you can fail but it's just most people don't do that well like that's the true reason why youtube is a consistency game and youtube takes time you can shortcut a lot of their time and learnings by doing the things that i've talked about in this video And if you do that upfront, you're going to minimize the failures.
But still, no matter how much you do of that, failures are still going to happen. And that's fine. But be intelligent about the way you go about things when you get those failures so that you can minimize them more and more and more, right?
And so that is really the complete loop from learning the foundations of... coming up with good ideas not just good ideas but the best ideas in your markets that logically backed by data but also first principles make sense why they would beat the other videos in your market it's also how when you have those video ideas and you present them and package them correctly and you've gotten the click how you actually turn that into a video that succeeds it keeps the viewers watching it satisfies them to a level to where the youtube algorithm will continue to push it to an extent to which you're satisfied with because you get the results that you want and it's how you after posting that video you can determine on whether the video succeeded or failed you can also determine earlier on before it succeeded or failed can you do anything about it to make it succeed if it looks like it might be failing or if you haven't seen it succeed yet is it potentially going to succeed because of the leading indicators?
And then once you've got the outcome of, okay, it succeeded, it failed, doing that analysis of why. In the failures, there's going to be things you did well that you should continue to take forward and continue to do. And it's going to be things that you did wrong, obviously, otherwise it wouldn't have failed.
With a video that succeeded, there's going to be things that were done well, obviously, because it succeeded. But there's also potentially going to be things that you could have done better that if you didn't have in that video or you didn't do with that video, the video would have succeeded even greater. So even in the positive, videos that have succeeded there's still learnings that you want to get in order to improve your videos going forward to get even better results just like how with the garyvee video that i made the first garyvee video 300 000 views that's amazing most people just celebrate that and be like oh cool we're gonna blow up the channel now what i did instead was i really analyzed okay this video succeeded why did it succeed and i realized okay the new rules of format clearly struck a nerve people are clearly wanting videos around the shifts of social media.
They're really resonating with that, which was also backed by examples such as social media is about to change forever and nobody even realizes by a completely different channel. And you're not ready for the next phase of social media by a completely different channel. So I know that there was demand around the shifts videos and that further confirmed that.
But then I was like, what potentially held this video back? How could I have made a video that succeeded even more? And so I knew it wasn't the idea because the idea was already very strong.
And so I started to diagnose the content. And I was like, this is a great video, but how could I have made this video better? Because the total addressable market of the social media niche is in the millions.
There's no reason why this video couldn't have gotten a million views. So the limiting factor had to have been the content. And the video was good, but I was like, okay, how could it be made better?
And Gary is the social media guy. He is known for calling his shots when it came to social media, like back when newspapers were the thing. He was live streaming and he was on that live stream.
He was saying social media is going to be this next big thing when people called him crazy for it. He's been known for predicting these things. And one of the most recent predictions he made was that we're no longer in social media anymore.
We're in interest media. This was his new narrative that he was calling his shot on. I knew this because I go very deep on the research with my clients to the point where it's off.
the platform of youtube and i saw that these videos were being posted on instagram and these videos were getting millions of views these were outliers on instagram for him his typical videos would get hundreds of thousands on short form which is much easier to get views on and these videos were getting millions and millions around interest media which validated that people were resonating with this message of we're not on social media anymore we're an interest media because with short form content the content is the entire idea Unlike with YouTube, because the packaging has an influence to play at YouTube.
With short form, it's the message. The message is what carries fully because it's the hook of what was said, which in his case was, we're not in social media anymore, we're in interest media. And then the content of explaining that, that is it.
That is the piece of content. And so if the video succeeded to a statistically significant level, it must have struck a nerve with the target market that that reached more than any of his other content. So because of that, I could...
make that assessment that people really resonated with this angle backed by data. But nobody had made a video about that on YouTube in detail about how we're in interest media now. We're no longer in social media.
Even though people were talking about the shifts that were happening on social media and what that meant for the viewer, et cetera. People were making those videos on YouTube, but they hadn't. made one video just around that narrative.
So because I identified the potential bottleneck of that first video that we made, despite being successful by a 10 to 20x multiple getting 300k views, I still diagnosed that the reason why it didn't succeed further was because of the fact that the content could have been potentially a bit stronger, even though the content was good.
And then because I saw this proof that this content that Gary was making around interest media, even in a short form, was amazing content because backed by data, it drove high viewer satisfaction on short form platforms. I thought, well, what if we take that and we just make one long form video on it, which hadn't been done before.
Nobody had done that because people were resonating with us so hot. And so that's what we constructed. We took all the content that existed of Gary across the internet of where he spoke about interest media.
We structured the video in a way from this pre -recorded content, by the way, didn't even record it, in a way that it delivered on that promise. So in the hook, it was like, we're not in social media anymore, we're in interest media. And then it explained it.
And then it had the proof part as well about the results. So we like, we construct the video in that way. And then we found the best way to package it, which was similar to the first one, but it fit this video more, which was the new era of social media has just begun.
because this is it, it's a new era, right? We're not in social media anymore. We're in the new era of social media, which is interest media.
So the title really fit that well. And the way we came up with that title was through our previous process of, this was a format I actually came up with. I invented this format.
I did it for a client in the LinkedIn niche, which was the new era of LinkedIn had just begun. The reason why I did that and I made it up and I took that risk was because all of the other current formats for shifts videos had been done in that niche. So I had to figure out, okay, how do I still take that same underlying psychology?
of why those videos work but stand out without copying videos that have already been done in the niche with that format and that's how i invented that people took that to other niches saw amazing success and so i basically put the two and two together and i created that video and that video is the one that currently sits at over 700 000 views and it's on its way to a million views million long form views so from 10 000 views per video to a million is where that video is going right but even if we just take the concept of he's getting hundreds of thousands of views per video of the videos that we've made for him and that one's got 70 000 views to date as the time recording this so that's an application of that even with a successful video i was still obsessed about how could we have made this better how could we have achieved the bigger and bigger numbers and obviously i'm doing the same for the negatives too so that's like an actual application of that too so i guess that's pretty much the full process then of starting finishing and everything in between my next follow -up question would be a lot of people watching this now will think that
whatever they do is boring or they have nothing interesting to see or just nobody wants to watch a video about them or what they have to do. What would you say to them? I would say that everybody uses YouTube.
Everybody uses it. It's the second biggest, most visited website on the planet. Second biggest search engine in the world.
YouTube videos are recommended by ChachiBT, Gemini, all these AI models and these LLMs. It's suggested in those. There's basically no way that people can escape watching YouTube videos.
Everybody has to watch YouTube videos because it's not just on YouTube, the platform that people have to be on to watch YouTube videos. It's on Google, so on and so forth, right? And so with that said, as long as the people that you're trying to target and capture are on the internet, they will naturally watch YouTube videos or they will receive the information that you give in those YouTube videos.
And it doesn't matter how boring the things that you might consider are boring, you're talking about, oh, they're not boring to your target market. Tessa Dam speaks about insulin.
Now, quite frankly, no disrespect to Tessa. She's my client and she's an amazing woman and very good at what she does. But I don't care about insulin.
And I definitely don't care about how it applies to it, to females, because, well, as you can see, you never know. But it's interesting to the target market because they have a problem. They want to lose fat.
And it's exciting to them the thought that this unique mechanism of insulin, which they haven't heard as a typical way to lose fat before, they can control that and reach their desired outcome as a result of it. That's exciting to them. It's like a discovery.
And so this goes the same for loads and loads of niches. I don't find gardening interesting. People are super passionate about gardening, and some people will pay thousands of dollars to get better at gardening for gardening products, so on and so forth.
Not everyone's interested in business. I watch loads of business videos. And so it's not boring for the people who you actually wanna build an audience around.
And because everybody on planet Earth who uses the internet watches YouTube videos or receives the information in YouTube videos in some way, even if it's in the form of an ai model delivering the information that was in the transcript of your youtube video they can receive your information and you can build that audience so if people are hesitant for that reason because they think they're too boring or they think what they talk about is too boring or they wonder is the people that would be interested in that are they gonna watch the youtube video how is it gonna find them everybody watches youtube and if you make a good enough video the youtube algorithm is intelligent enough to seek them out the youtube algorithm wants to serve its users with the videos that it believes those viewers will be interested in will click on will watch will be satisfied with which then in turn keeps them on the platform because they've provided them with a good viewing experience and what they wanted so they will naturally gravitate towards using that platform more and so it's in their best interest as an algorithm to optimize for that and youtube's been around for a pretty long time and it's a pretty big company
So it's got a pretty good algorithm. And so it knows who your target market is. It knows how to find them.
And so it just comes down to you making the right video and making the video right. The algorithm will do the rest. If someone starts a YouTube channel today with no audience, no brand, nothing, what should they do?
First step, understand the audience that you're attracting. So some people say pick a niche. Your niche might already be predetermined if you run a business and you know the audience that you're targeting.
But if it's not, then you need to figure out and decide what do you want to build a channel around? What do you want to be known for? What audience do you want to build?
And if you are planning to monetize, even if you don't have a product right now, what do you think you would want to monetize around? And therefore, what audience do you need to attract in order to monetize in that way? Understand that audience to such a deep level.
Understand their demographics, their psychographics, exactly who they are, exactly how they think. and exactly what gets them to take and what they resonate with and therefore when it comes to the stage of consideration of what title and thumbnail do i use to get their attention and get them to click how do i need to structure this video and what value do i need to deliver in order to deliver satisfaction you're able to actually accurately do that that's the first step first and foremost because that influences the quality of decision that you can make at all of the future levels that i'm about to discuss the second stage is gaining understanding and awareness of youtube both in terms of what's in your niche and what specifically your target market wants and is proven to want and what they already resonate with and also in terms of broad level youtube so that you develop an understanding of what is working on the platform right now in today's market and why are those things working so this is the act of conducting youtube research and you should be doing this consistently every single day as much as possible to be able to build the understanding and awareness
of what works on the platform and why as fast as possible, because that combined with understanding your audience and first principles thinking is what will allow you to be able to step into your niche and understand what are the right potential videos to make, where are the gaps in the market, so on and so forth. During this YouTube research, look for videos that have performed outstandingly well videos that have succeeded 5 10 20 100 times better than the average video on that channel make sure the traffic has came organically from youtube make sure that there's enough comments that would make it make a logical sense that that traffic is organic because proportional to the amount of views that it has it has a good number of comments make sure that the view graph using free youtube extensions show you the view graph make sure that looks organic so that you know the traffic is real understand the reason why that video succeeded so that you can gain insight from that.
Because it's all good finding videos that perform outstandingly well, but if you don't actually know why it really succeeded, you may take the wrong insights over and you don't actually gain any knowledge from it. Keep doing that, repeating that process and do that as much as possible through the active YouTube research.
Do that across multiple different niches to gain a broad view and not a narrow -sighted view so that you have as much awareness as possible. Then... step into your niche research your niche using the exact same process look for the videos that performed outstandingly well look for the channels that are succeeding but with the knowledge that you've obtained from everything that you've done outside of your niche on youtube use that to hypothesize potential gaps in the market and that is where the ideas come from from seeing what people are resonating with elsewhere and understanding the reason as to why and then applying that information knowledge and insight to your niche where the other people in your niche don't have that same level of insight and that's where you can take over that's where the video ideas come from from for example in common cases finding titles that have worked in other niches taking them over to your niche but because you understand why and because you understand that the reason why they worked in those niches with the viewers that are consuming in those niches transfers over
to the reasons why somebody would be interested in clicking in that same type of title in your niche with the viewers that are in your niche and their behaviors. Do the exact same for the thumbnails. And there you have your video idea because you've already identified which topics have demand in your niche and you've validated that as well.
When you've got your video idea, understand if you're taking inspiration from any particular videos or formats of videos. If there is a particular type of execution style that is... typically used with that type of video to take an inspiration from understand that that might have been part of the reason why the video has succeeded and therefore you should probably take that same structure to your video because if you don't you're losing one of the potential reasons why that video succeeded in the first place and therefore if you don't take it over you're increasing the risk of your video not succeeding also use first principles to understand why that structure would make sense for your video or if that structure would make sense for your video because not always it would and there might be a better structure that would make sense understand what format in which you're recording the video makes sense should it be a whiteboard walkthrough should it be a screen recording video should it just be talking head and should it be a raw talking head or should it be a highly edited talking head understand that before going into the video then use tactics such as proof promise plan persona in the hook in order to
effectively hook the viewer in and sell them on watching the rest of the video but again understand why that tactic works and that also goes for all of the other tactics and then give them value as fast as possible to the level of which it would give them the confidence that you really do walk the talk and therefore they can be confident in investing into that video fully to receive the rest of the value from you and then deliver on the rest of the value and meet their expectation use the editing style use the delivery style and use the structure and your expertise to best satisfy that and actually achieve that and drive high viewer satisfaction to such an extent to where it becomes impossible that the algorithm doesn't push your video to more of your target viewers and then the algorithm enters this cycle of pushing your video to more and more people as it's doing so provided that you made a good video keep an eye on the data Look at the shape of the view graph.
Look at if it's performing better than average. Use the other signals in combination of that, such as the click -through rate, but not in isolation, such as the retention graph, but not in isolation, such as the positive comment -to -view ratio, the like -to -view ratio, and all of these other things combined to understand, is your video performing better than usual, or is it actually underperforming, and might it require change in order to make it a video that might have a higher chance of success?
Then... After a long enough time period has played out, you can make a full assessment of whether your video has succeeded or failed in the end. And you can diagnose what was done well, what was done wrong, carry forward what was done well, discard what was done wrong, and test something new.
New action, new result, feedback. New action, new result, feedback. And you continue through this discipline cycle of iteration in order to hit green every single time.
compound your channel, compound your success, and make good YouTube videos that actually succeed. It's an endless cycle of compounding the effectiveness of your videos and how good your videos are, and in turn, compounding your results and compounding the growth of your channel. And that's really the full cycle.
This video is going to be so good. I want to play a fun little game with you, okay? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through a list of well -known, reputable people in the space on YouTube.
i want you to tell me the first thing that comes to mind what's wrong with them and what you think they should fix in order for them to actually see better growth number one grant cardone he's just not got the fundamentals in place not got a good youtube strategy process has none of the things that i've talked about in terms of youtube research figuring out what the topics that make sense for his target market are on youtube and figuring out the best way to package them what i would do is there are obvious topics that are in demand in his niche, right?
If we take his niches, sales, for example, or whatever it may be, and whatever positioning he wants to take in this current day and age, he is objectively one of the best people to speak on it. And so if he just finds the right topics to make videos on that attract his target market and achieve his goal of his YouTube channel, and just finds the right way to frame those topics through packaging, because he is the authority on that.
And obviously he has became the authority through the level of value he's able to provide. I've got no doubt. that those videos are going to meet the expectations provided we're giving him the right guidance obviously he has to follow the right structure but he is one of those perfect examples of where he is the person who with the right system around him would completely take over but he doesn't but he's got everything that he needs from a value and expertise and social proof standpoint to do it but he just doesn't have it very similar to gary really neil patel neil patel's channel's kind of hit or miss where Some of the videos that he does has decent YouTube strategy.
Like for example, he did the new rules of SEO one, but some of the videos that he makes just don't really seem like good opportunities. And so I think there's a bit of a hit or miss strategy process there where there needs to be more due diligence put into the idea upfront and being really selective with the videos that he does, really identifying where does he have a massive unfair advantage.
And again, that brand positioning and laser focusing on that, because he also makes videos around completely different topics. Like he does SEO and then he's like completely other things. So like that also, hurts the channel and the video's performance because the YouTube algorithm has uncertainty as to who to actually push.
the channel too because it's like all these different audiences are being attracted and they're not clicking on the other videos that they came through a certain video and then they go into his channel but they're not clicking on those videos because they're completely for a different audience and so that's another problem as well but yeah really identifying what is the strategy here how do we want to grow this channel and who do i want to be the person the channel for defining that and being satisfied with that as the north star and then from that under that scope defining the list of topics so on and so forth that all the topics that make the most sense to make videos around because we validated again the demand and logically for the target market it makes sense that they would want those topics and then really really really being specific and picky with what is the best way to package the videos around those topics because sometimes he picks a banger like the new rules of seo and the new rules format is obviously one that's worked really really well but sometimes it just seems like a normal title i can't remember the exact title but i saw one recently it was just like seven social media trends that blah blah blah that might have even been a format way for other people but like you've got to assess what is the success rate of that format and how strong is it compared to a format like the new rules of and why settle and lower your standards for a format that is weaker you want to literally
Feel like with every idea that you do you're literally nervous to fuck it up because then with a guy like Neil Patel He's not gonna fuck it up, right? So, you know that the contents not gonna be a point of failure if he's guided properly and so it's about putting a lot more effort into the ideation and the strategy and the Selectivity of which videos to do in order to remove that as a bottleneck.
That is basically the bottleneck of his YouTube channel Sabri Subri Sabri Again, similar case to Neil Patel in a way where he's proven that when he selects the right idea, the videos do really well. Like he's actually in a really good spot because it's already proven that when he selects the right idea, he has all the value to deliver on it to where it can succeed.
So again, it's already proven for him through diagnosis that the content itself is not the bottleneck, which is great because then we can diagnose the bottleneck as the idea. Because if we look at his ideas, some of them i'll be like learn 97 of meta ads i think was one of the recent ones he did which a proven format across youtube is learn 97 of this thing typically it's tools but it can be done for other things too and so that is a very proven format why well because learn 97 of Sparks the question, why 97 %?
So grabs attention. Interesting. But also as well, it's almost honest that you're not going to learn everything.
It's like you're going to learn close to everything about this thing that there's lots of different intricacies of. And the viewer can assume that if they learn 97 % of it, it's enough to get the full, full value of it, right? They don't need 100%.
And so they believe in the claim. They trust in the claim more. So that's the reason why that former word, he took that, applied it to meta ads, which is a topic where that psychology makes sense applied to it.
And the video did well. He did another one as well. it was give me x minutes and i'll make you disgustingly good at marketing i think was it that came from a thought which was give me x minutes and i'll make you dangerously confident give me x minutes and i'll achieve this outcome for you so give me x minutes format and i will give you this in exchange is a phone that works really well why because it's basically saying you just give me a little bit of your time And I'm going to give you an outsized return where like, it's a no brainer deal because it's what the target view actually wants.
So it can range from everything of like, give me X minutes and I'll improve your communication skills by 110 % all the way to dangerously confident. And then he took it and did disgustingly good at marketing, which is a bit of an adaptation. So you could argue he increased the risk there, but also logically it would make sense that it would resonate with his target market because disgustingly good at marketing, like that resonates with his target market, right?
That video did very well as well. So when he does those videos, they do very, very well. But again, it's one of those hit.
or miss things where i see some videos that are just completely out of the strategy like it's just like he's came up with the title or ai's came up the title or it's took inspiration from a format that just isn't really strong or it's been taken from a form that is strong but it doesn't make sense in the way that he's applied it to the topic it's like he's taken a proven format that's really really good for the topics that it does mesh well with and because if you look at the title data aside it makes sense why it works well with that specific topic and he's applied to a topic where that psychology doesn't transfer over and so again it's the strategy of that where if he had that more consistent it would crush so given you've just spoken about some of the biggest names in the space i wanted to ask you who would be your dream client to work with that's an obvious answer alex homozy for sure yeah and i will get him as a client as well really yes 100 alex is
the absolute dream client because i've watched alex through the business journey of me growing my business from literally the very start he was who i watched at zero all the way through to the different stages and his content's been like very relevant to me at all stages still extremely valuable like massively respect him but also as well like i genuinely see massive opportunity with his youtube channel because again like the same sort of thing applies with strategy he's probably one of the people out of the list you mentioned before who's doing it the best but there's still some massive gaps in what he's doing where even just certain ideas that i have that he could do i know would absolutely crush it and i even came up with video ideas for him like two years ago that he's done within the past six months or so i came up with these ideas two years ago like i came up with the idea for him of if i started a business and this year i'd do this and he did that video eventually two years later and
it's gotten over a million views and there's many many other cases like that where i've done that for him in fact i've actually got some for him the new rules of business 2026 if you want to do that one alex that would be a good one for you but yeah like there's lots of ideas that was a joke it's actually a good idea but i'm gonna refresh his channel tomorrow but that was a joke but there are loads of ideas that i do have which obviously i don't want to give away because other people would just take them and do them instead but it's not just about the video ideas it's also about like the just diff all the different stages i talk about the series of decisions that you make and what improvements can you make through diagnosis of the channel and the videos even the successful ones and there's like so much there so i genuinely believe that i can actually help him and yeah like i will work with him he will become a client even if he doesn't want to no he's got no choice so that's that's really exciting being able to confidently say that you're gonna take the biggest guy in the whole business
side of youtube and run his channel and that you can confidently make it better is it's a great place to be yeah and it will be clear as well when i take it over like look at gary v's channel for example you'll know which videos we made and which ones we didn't because of the results but also you can literally visibly see and it's a good exercise for you to see the difference and what i'm talking about and what most channels do and why they fail and what i do and what i'm teaching in this video and why they succeed you can literally see the visible difference in the titles the thumbnails the videos themselves and the outcome of that which is ultimately what matters but it's the decisions behind that that lead to that outcome so yeah with alex that's the exact same case he's obviously doing it a lot better than 99 .99 percent of people right like he's one of the people who's doing absolute best and that's why he's where he's at but even still i know for a fact he could be doing way better you've already casted a pretty clear vision of
where the company's going to go the people you want to work with where do you actually see things go in the next five to ten years five to ten is kind of crazy because the company's only been in existence for four years september 2022 is when i started and we've achieved so much in that time frame and within the last year it's been crazy so we're at revenue wise and scale wise about a hundred thousand dollars a month start this year we're now at well over five hundred thousand dollars a month and the goal is always to be at a million dollars a month by this year which was an ambitious goal 10x in the company in a year we're gonna smash that like we're gonna absolutely clear that i'm very very confident in that and not only the revenue goal because i think that actually matters less but it's just a testament of what we've built because we've been able to build a company to this level of scale and sustain that which means we're a really good business and we provide a really good service and not only that we have some of the top clients in the industry already like i'm really proud of what we've built we're working with the big names like gary v
Ali Abdaal now, Jeremy Haynes, big brands like ManyChat, Instantly AI, and that's only going to continue to compound more and more. And I'm only 22 as well. So I've still got a lot of time on my side, but the age matters less because I still want to build this thing to remarkable levels at a remarkably young age.
And so I think on much more of a one to three year timeline, because that's actually all I can foresee, I would expect that within the next one to three months, I'm going to be causing a lot of noise publicly. And people are going to be starting to think like, well, where did this guy come from? That also relates to the company as well.
And what we do as a service and the clients that we work with, et cetera, more attention is going to be put on that to a level of where people are like, whoa, where did this guy come from? In six to 12 months, really in six months, but in six to 12, we'll say I'll be known as the YouTube guy across YouTube. And we will, as a result, be the most prominent YouTube company in the space.
We might not be irrefutably the YouTube company yet. But as a result of me being the YouTube guy, we'll have eyes on us from all the top people and most people who are considering to take YouTube seriously. And the vision within the next three years, tops five, because I want to move fast, is we will be the YouTube company.
Like, we will be the company that touches every successful YouTube channel. Every successful YouTube channel on YouTube, educational, but even also... in the entertainment space and just general YouTube, their success will be attributable to us to somewhat of a significant level.
Whether that be we're running the entire channel for them, whether that be we're consulting with them, whether that be they just use our products and services and softwares, whether that be they watch my free content and applied insights from it that resulted in massive breakthroughs for them. Every single successful YouTube channel will be a part of our ecosystem, free, low ticket, high ticket.
partnership joint venture like whatever it may be in some capacity and we will be known as the youtube company and we will completely monopolize the youtube industry not in an evil way because youtube i don't want you to shut my company down and shut me down um it's all in the best interest of your platform and the youtube economy and i also want to serve jobs careers and the best opportunities to the entirety of the youtube economy and service providing market every video editor every thumbnail designer every youtube strategist every youtube agency every agency that is providing an end -to -end service that would be considered a competitor of mine but i don't see it that way because i want to have the biggest possible impact on the industry and so that is where i think we will be in Three years from now, to be honest, which might seem extremely grandiose, but really, I think we're going to smash that.
But if we want to be conservative, five years, I think we'll be there. Yeah, pretty size. I like some woozy.
I'll send the stripe link. Last question. If you could go back to the start and whisper one thing in Euronia, something that would have made all of this easier, faster, or more profitable.
What would it be? Speed. I would say under the scope of speed comes numerous things, but speed, making decisions fast and not overthinking decisions past the point of diminishing returns.
I think because of my ability to think orders of consequences ahead and really think about what is the right decision to make in high stakes scenarios, it's been a big contributor. a necessity for where we're at right now and my success, call it that, and the company's success because decisions from what videos to make from a YouTube standpoint for clients, but also decisions in business on how to deal with certain situations, how to deal with top -tier talent that is pivotal in the operation of making the best YouTube videos and the results that we get for our clients that might potentially consider leaving the company because of misalignment or emotion, dealing with that scenario so that...
that didn't happen like there's countless countless examples of where i could talk about these high stakes situations where if the outcome had went the other way in an alternate universe it could have led to a series of events that could have led to catastrophe or overall failure of the business and that happens all the time to people and so i think my ability to make decisions and think orders of consequences of head and be able to understand people and how to Work with them and so on and so forth everything is led to my success but also as well I think in certain situations if I could go back there are lots of times where I'd make things faster and I've lost out on opportunities by being resistant to things that I could have just done faster this also comes to if I had went back in time I would have hired Faster I would have delegated my weaknesses faster.
I would have taught my ego and been admitting to what i'm not so strong at and i would have filled those gaps with people who are super competent in those areas like for myself i'm not somebody who's very organized i'm super creative and i'm a visionary and i can really vision solutions and a company right this is what i'm really good at i can vision ideas i'm creative but i'm also logical so i can like really think through solutions to complex problems but the actual implementation of that is something that i'm weaker at like taking that vision and actually getting that integrated and solidified in existence and therefore actually solving the problem not just the idea that is something i'm weaker at and also organization etc as i said and that's something that i bared the burden of for too long which slowed me down and it also resulted in negative outcomes such as maybe in certain situations in the past clients churning or talent leaving because my bandwidth was too stretched right and i think this is just the natural course of if we're being really honest anybody in business who's trying to build something big these mistakes are natural especially when you're running solo you know i haven't had any mentor really up to the point where i'm at now i don't have a co -founder like
i've learned on my own through obviously education that i can access online and through programs that i might have invested in albeit i don't think any of them really transformed anything for me i've generally speak and learn on my own and so i had to learn through failure so if i could go back it would be what decisions could i make in order for me to move faster how could i make decisions faster how could i make better decisions along the way and one key part of that and in business would definitely be hiring faster and thinking about how can i spend all of my time in the place where only i can do the things and my time is best spent and what can i remove in order to make a step closer towards spending all of my time there and i think this is even the phase that i'm really really really focusing on right now because if you're seeing my face now up to this point i haven't really been able to focus on building my brand because i've been stretched across building the business and all there
part of building the business. Now I've got an amazing team in place and we have amazing people on board that are enabling me to focus more and more of my time towards this, which is the only thing, the one thing that only I can do to the level of which I can do it and I should be doing. This is the one thing that if I focus on, all problems disappear, all opportunity arises.
And so tending as much of my time towards this as possible and dedicating it towards this as possible is my focus and that's what i'm really making my focus right now bringing the right people on board putting them in the right seat enabling them in the right way with the right direction with the right layer of management as well so that i can take things off my plate know that it's going to be handled well and it doesn't diminish the quality of the outcome of that given thing but actually increases it because they are more of an expert than I am at that thing.
And they have more of a focus than I could possibly offer. And me solely being focused to the thing that I should be focused on, which is now building the brand, getting everybody to know who I am, becoming the YouTube guy in this given era of my life and what we're building here at The Company Views to Clients. And I wish I learned that way sooner because naturally, if I had have done that.
and I dropped my ego and I did things even more aggressively than what I did, which honestly I thought I'm pretty good at compared to other people and that's why we're at where we're at. I still think I could have done it more. And so like the fact that I still think I could have done it more shows how important that piece really is.
We scaled really aggressively, you know, and we hired so many people through this journey of 100K to 500K a month. that enabled us to actually sustain that and i lost profit because of it profit margin i think even went to zero at one point because of it i think even one month i might even lost money but i just didn't even care because i knew that it was because of the massive hiring decisions that we were making and it was all for the greater purpose of what we are building which is the thing that actually matters to me and the vision of the company that's what allowed us to scale really fast and i wish i did it even more that's what i would have told myself going back with speed It's a great one to lead with.
I think now seeing the changes that you've made in the business and yourself and where you're now pushing your energy towards, I mean, it's pretty transparent. Look at the last video, over 400 ,000 views. The channel is now quadrupled in a week.
And we're making videos like this, recording more content, the energy, the drive, it's all there. And no one's going to forget the face. Yeah.
The moment that I've been able to put my attention where it is best spent. literally the first instance of it was speaking at that event taking that and making it into a youtube video and that video within the first seven days has already made us not just over a hundred thousand dollars but over a hundred thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue that we would expect to receive next month that one video has created size of revenue for the business and company that most people could only dream of from one youtube video which shows the power of youtube by the way if you make the right video and that's why i'm now making my focus now i have the bandwidth for it if that's the first instance of it what's that gonna look like in one three six twelve months from now of dedicating pretty much all of my life force towards this obviously not detaching completely from the business by any means like still very much leading the business because that's what we're building this for and that's why i'm doing this so the product matters to me more than anything but understanding that
growing my YouTube presence doesn't just grow the business, but it actually attracts the best talent in the world, which is all serving the greater mission that I am focused on. And I have identified this to be the one thing that if I spend all of my time on, all other things disappear. By the way, that video, the most valuable YouTube training you'll ever watch, if you haven't watched that already, I would suggest that you watch that video next because everything we're speaking about in this video in a more extensive conversational manner, I have already distilled in that video in a very structured way.
which i think is well quite frankly the most valuable youtube training you'll ever watch and the 400 000 people who have watched it also feel the same so i think we'll wrap up here watch that video if you haven't already and i'll see you in the next one
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The cold open stacks three claims in 25 seconds: an idea is right when you are scared to waste it, you cannot find an opportunity you cannot see, and one video added 100,000 dollars a month in a week. The next two hours are the argument behind each one, delivered as a sit-down interview rather than a slide deck.
How they asked for the click.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
