1:30:01Trakyo Pod · Interview
Meet The Genius Behind Iman Gadzhi's $100M Personal Brand
The head of content who ran a billion-view machine for five years finally tells the whole story.
May 31stThe argument in one line.
YouTube is a winner-take-all feed, so the channel that validates demand, borrows packaging whose psychology transfers, and over-delivers on the click takes nearly all the attention in its niche.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A coach, consultant or B2B founder with a working offer whose YouTube videos sit at a few hundred to a few thousand views.
- Someone who already knows outlier theory and adjacent-niche ideation but can't tell why the borrowed formats sometimes flop.
- A creator who wants long-form YouTube to book sales calls, and needs a way to tell whether the video, the funnel or the offer is the bottleneck.
- A strategist or agency operator who wants a repeatable research process they can hand to VAs or AI and still quality-check.
SKIP IF…
- You want editing tricks, retention hacks or storytelling templates. The guest calls most of that overcomplicated and spends little time on it.
- You make pure entertainment or gaming content with no offer behind it. Most examples are educational and business channels selling services or courses.
- You want a quick listicle. This is a long, conversational interview with the useful parts spread across two and a half hours.
The full version, fast.
Most business channels fail because experts and their agencies make YouTube decisions blind, which is exactly why one channel doing it right can take a whole niche. The system runs in three stages. First, validate demand by crawling your niche search term by search term and logging every outlier. Second, package the video using title and thumbnail formats proven in other niches, but only when the reason they worked transfers to your audience's psychology. Third, deliver: a hook built on promise, proof, plan and persona, a big payoff in the first 30 seconds, and a call to action that gives the viewer something instead of taking. Judge results by comment sentiment and full-funnel tracking, not click-through or retention alone.
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00:00hostYousef Lashuel
01:00guestJake Trinder
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:00
01 · Trailer
Cold open cut from later in the episode: the 100+ channels, the Gary Vee turnaround, the one video tied to recurring revenue.
01:00 – 10:36
02 · Why most business channels fail
The three-part formula (validate demand, win the packaging, satisfy the viewer) and why winner-take-all feeds make a low bar in most educational niches the biggest opportunity.
10:36 – 20:40
03 · Stealing formats the right way
Why adjacent-niche ideation works only when audience psychology transfers, shown through 'The New Rules of Social Media' for Gary Vee and 'If you don't understand insulin, you don't understand fat loss'.
20:40 – 38:20
04 · Depth-first research and the outlier database
Crawling a niche search term by search term and channel by channel, how long it takes, and the relational database of outliers, niches and formats with statistical-significance checks.
38:20 – 39:10
05 · Sponsor: Trakyo
Host read for Trakyo, the host's own attribution software.
39:10 – 49:10
06 · Selling a mechanism nobody cares about
Awareness levels, keeping the mechanism out of the title, Iman Gadzhi's SMMA video, and how Dr. Sean went from 1K to 100K views a day with visceral fat and 'so fast it feels like cheating'.
49:10 – 57:46
07 · From data to ideas
Interpreting outliers through psychology, building formats as tools, why fame barely changes the approach, chasing views from the target market, splitting channels, and B2B versus B2C audiences.
57:46 – 1:05:56
08 · Titles and thumbnails that win the click
Lifting the common denominator of a proven title format, briefing designers with references, and the core thumbnail move: show the desired outcome simply, then add a curiosity hook.
1:05:56 – 1:16:36
09 · Testing thumbnails and reading early signals
Only test when uncertain, diagnose flops before changing packaging, and use comment sentiment plus like, subscriber and comment ratios as the earliest predictor of a breakout.
1:16:36 – 1:24:00
10 · The 4P hook and post-hook onboarding
Promise, proof, plan and persona answer the four reasons viewers leave, then a fast 'time to value' payoff works like client onboarding to prevent attention buyer's remorse.
1:24:00 – 1:31:05
11 · Meeting the expectation you set
Mapping the micro-expectations under the title's promise, using editing to educate rather than retain, and how vlogs serve two audiences at once.
1:31:05 – 1:36:05
12 · Spotting the gaps competitors miss
First-principles questioning of what a whole niche is copying, with the 'Don't start an AI automation agency, start an LGA instead' contrarian video as the example.
1:36:05 – 1:45:00
13 · Scripting, editing and setup
An AI interviewer trained on 100+ client interviews to pull real expertise into scripts, outlines versus teleprompters, editing for the viewer's goal, and why setup affects first impressions.
1:45:00 – 1:50:47
14 · Diagnosing a flop and posting frequency
Reading CTR and the retention graph relative to channel history, spotting slow time to value or CTA drop-offs, and why quality beats a fixed posting cadence.
1:50:47 – 2:03:57
15 · Calls to action that give instead of take
How one broad video drove $200K in monthly recurring revenue, embedding products in the story (Instantly AI's 'start and sell a service in 10 hours'), gifting lead magnets, and implied calls to action.
2:03:57 – 2:15:02
16 · Funnel bottlenecks and benchmarks
Separate channels for bottom-of-funnel content, full-funnel tracking to find the constraint, link CTR benchmarks, first versus last click, and sales-cycle length from YouTube.
2:15:02 – 2:21:23
17 · Where AI actually helps, and when to hire
AI as script sparring partner, research assistant and editing accelerator (60-80% faster), plus when an outside YouTube partner beats doing it solo or hiring in-house.
2:21:23 – 2:25:22
18 · Where YouTube is going
Rising sophistication will wear out adjacent-niche tactics; first-principles thinkers and proof-heavy, clearly human formats like live talks will keep winning.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- YouTube is winner-take-all: twenty videos sit on a home feed and only one gets the click, so attention piles onto whoever packages the topic best.
- In most educational niches the bar is low because experts know their craft but not YouTube, and their agencies deliver files instead of strategy.
- A borrowed format only works when the audience in your niche shares the psychology of the audience it worked on first.
- "The new rules of X" works only for topics that actually have rules to break; "the new rules of baking" fails because viewers know nothing changed.
- "If you don't understand X, you don't understand Y" needs an X the audience has never really studied, like insulin, not one they already know, like candlesticks.
- A 5x outlier means little on a channel whose views swing between 6K and 100K every week. Check how often that channel produces outliers first.
- Nobody searching for fat loss cares about insulin, so leave the mechanism out of the title and use it inside the video, where it makes the content feel new.
- Thumbnail A/B tests on small channels split already thin data, so only test when you are genuinely torn between two strong options.
- Click-through rate and retention mean nothing in isolation: a 3% CTR can come from mass distribution and a video with 11% retention became the biggest in its niche.
- The earliest sign a video will run is comment sentiment: viewers asking why the video hasn't blown up yet, while it still has a few thousand views.
- Treat the hook as a sales call and the next 30 seconds as client onboarding: a big early payoff stops viewers clicking away.
- Most viewer click-offs after a strong hook come from a slow payoff, and sharp mid-video dips usually line up with a hard call to action.
- Direct calls to action feel like taking. Embedding the product in the story, or gifting a free tool, converts better and protects the video.
- Good link click-through on YouTube is roughly 3 to 5% for a broad audience and 5 to 10% for a targeted one with a value-first call to action.
- Last-click attribution undervalues the broad videos that brought buyers in, so judge each video on both first-click and last-click revenue.
- Bottom-of-funnel case studies belong on a separate channel when they are frequent, because mismatched audiences hurt returning viewership on the main one.
- A broad title can out-earn a niche one: "the most valuable YouTube training you'll ever watch" reached kids and business owners and still filled the pipeline.
- One great video can change a business, so quality comes first; posting on a fixed cadence only helps while you are still learning.
Know why a tactic worked before you copy it.
WHAT TO LEARN
Every YouTube tactic in this interview works only after you understand why it worked: validate demand first, borrow packaging whose psychology transfers, then over-deliver and sell by giving.
02Why most business channels fail
- YouTube shows a viewer twenty options and rewards one, so a channel that gets every decision right can take most of a niche's attention quickly.
- Most expert channels fail because they pick topics by guesswork and packaging by intuition, which leaves the bar low for anyone who researches properly.
03Stealing formats the right way
- Before copying a format from another niche, name the psychological reason it worked and check that your audience shares it.
- Formats like 'the new rules of X' or 'if you don't understand X, you don't understand Y' fail when the topic has no rules or the audience already knows X.
04Depth-first research and the outlier database
- Explore a niche the way a crawler would: one seed search term at a time, opening every outlier's channel before moving on.
- Log every outlier with its multiplier and a hypothesis, and discount spikes from channels whose views swing wildly week to week.
06Selling a mechanism nobody cares about
- If nobody wants your mechanism yet, sell the outcome in the title and use the mechanism inside the video to make it feel new.
- Find a proven format from a niche where people also wanted a fast, cheat-code result, then apply it to the in-demand topic you validated.
07From data to ideas
- Interpreting outliers takes marketing psychology and awareness levels, so study Breakthrough Advertising before relying on research tools.
- Optimise for views from your target market, and split audiences that won't watch each other's videos into separate channels.
08Titles and thumbnails that win the click
- Write titles by keeping what every winning example of a format shares and swapping only the variable, usually the topic.
- The strongest thumbnail usually shows the viewer's desired outcome as simply as possible, plus one element that makes them read the title.
09Testing thumbnails and reading early signals
- Test thumbnails only when torn between strong options, because splitting a small channel's traffic delays YouTube's decision.
- Watch comment sentiment, likes, subscribers and comments per view together: early comments asking why a video hasn't blown up predict a breakout.
10The 4P hook and post-hook onboarding
- A hook should restate the promise, prove you are qualified, preview the plan and confirm who it is for, answering each reason to leave.
- Deliver a genuine insight within 30 seconds of the hook, because attention is spent like money and viewers look for a reason to quit.
11Meeting the expectation you set
- List every smaller expectation sitting under the title's promise and meet each one, rather than layering on open loops or retention tricks.
- Edit to serve what the viewer came for: diagrams for hard concepts in educational videos, music and pace for inspiration.
12Spotting the gaps competitors miss
- Ask what the whole niche is copying and what viewers might be sceptical of; a contrarian 'don't do X, do Y' video can fill that gap.
13Scripting, editing and setup
- Scripts are only as good as the expertise fed into them, so interview the expert first and use AI to sharpen the phrasing.
- Polished setups matter for first impressions with some audiences, but strong value can overcome a bedroom background.
14Diagnosing a flop and posting frequency
- Read CTR and the retention graph against your own channel history, then form a hypothesis before changing anything.
- A steep slope right after the hook signals slow time to value; a sharp dip later often marks a call to action that felt like a pitch.
- Post consistently while you are learning, but once you know the game, one great video beats a fixed weekly cadence.
15Calls to action that give instead of take
- A broad, high-value video can still reach the buyer you want, as long as examples and language show that buyer it was made for them.
- Weave a product into the story so the video could not have happened without it, and viewers will praise the ad instead of skipping it.
- For services and coaching, gift a free tool or template that extends the video, then route those leads to the main offer.
16Funnel bottlenecks and benchmarks
- Track views, link clicks, landing visits, opt-ins, calls and closes so you can find and fix the one stage that limits revenue.
- Expect roughly 3-5% link click-through from a broad audience and 5-10% from a targeted one when the call to action gives value.
- Credit sales by first click and last click, since the broad video that introduced a buyer matters as much as the one that closed them.
17Where AI actually helps, and when to hire
- Use AI as a probing interviewer and sparring partner for scripts rather than letting it write them from generic YouTube knowledge.
- Bring in an outside YouTube partner once one or two extra deals would clearly cover the fee, and be wary of solo strategists with little cross-channel data.
18Where YouTube is going
- As YouTube tactics become common knowledge, the edge moves to first-principles thinking and formats that are clearly human, like live talks and consults.
Terms worth knowing.
- Outlier
- A video that performed several times better than that channel's usual videos. Researchers study outliers to find topics and packaging that resonate with an audience.
- Adjacent niche ideation
- Taking a title, thumbnail or video format that worked in a related niche and adapting it to your own topic, on the theory that similar audiences respond to similar hooks.
- Depth-first search
- A computer-science method for exploring a tree of data by following one branch all the way down before backing up one step to try the next, so nothing gets missed.
- Packaging
- The title and thumbnail together: everything a viewer sees on the feed before deciding whether to click.
- Awareness levels
- Eugene Schwartz's scale for how much a prospect already knows, from unaware of the problem through aware of the solution and the specific product.
- Unique mechanism
- The specific method or ingredient a product uses to deliver its result, such as targeting insulin for fat loss, presented as the new reason the result is possible.
- Three element rule
- A thumbnail guideline: use no more than three main visual elements, enough to be clear without becoming cluttered.
- Watch time share
- The metric YouTube's native thumbnail test uses to choose a winner: which variant earned the larger portion of total watch time.
- Link click-through rate
- The percentage of a video's viewers who click the link in the description or call to action, often measured per thousand views.
- Returning viewership
- The share of a channel's views that come from people who have watched it before. Low returning viewership can make YouTube hesitant to push new uploads.
- Bottleneck analysis
- Measuring each step of a funnel, from views to clicks, opt-ins, booked calls and closes, to find the single stage that limits total output.
- First-click vs last-click attribution
- Two ways to credit a sale: to the first piece of content a buyer saw, or to the last one before they converted.
- Biz op
- Short for business opportunity: content or offers that sell a way to make money, such as starting an agency or an online store.
- SMMA
- Social media marketing agency, a business model popularised on YouTube around 2019-2020 as a beginner-friendly online business.
- Retention editing
- Fast cuts, zooms, sound effects and on-screen graphics added mainly to stop viewers leaving, common in content for younger audiences.
- Lead magnet
- A free resource, like a template, swipe file or tool, given in exchange for an email address, which then leads into a paid offer.
Things they pointed at.
40:07bookBreakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
28:15toolGoogle Sheets or SQLite for the outlier database
1:10:30toolYouTube native thumbnail testing
1:04:22channelThe Diary of a CEO (red-box thumbnail style)
1:55:11productInstantly AI (pre-warmed cold email domains)
2:04:30toolYouTube collaboration feature for sister channels
2:18:32toolHiggsfield and Magnific for thumbnail poses and concepts
Lines you could clip.
1:48:59
“YouTube first and foremost is 100% a quality game, not a quantity game.”
1:49:35
“You're one video away from completely changing everything regarding your channel, regarding a business on the back end.”
1:21:39
“The hook is essentially a sales call. Like you're essentially selling them on watching the video. The next part is onboarding.”
1:25:12
“All this shit about open loops and storytelling structures and all this BS. It doesn't matter. People overcomplicate that shit.”
21:54
“If we contrast that with being able to see over the entirety of YouTube from a bird's eye view, you're YouTube omniscient.”
1:57:49
“Hundreds of people had said it was the best advertisement they'd ever seen.”
18:03
“Nobody fucking understands insulin.”
1:05:38
“There's a disadvantage to testing thumbnails, especially on a newer channel or a smaller channel because you're splitting the watch time share.”
Where the conversation goes.
01:00 – 10:36steadyWhy channels fail and the core formula
10:36 – 38:20denseFormat transfer and research system
39:10 – 57:46denseMechanisms, awareness and idea generation
57:46 – 1:16:36densePackaging and testing
1:16:36 – 1:31:05denseHooks and in-video delivery
1:31:05 – 1:50:47steadyGaps, scripting, editing, diagnosing
1:50:47 – 2:15:02denseMonetisation and funnel tracking
2:15:02 – 2:25:22steadyAI, hiring and the future
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Do you think there's anyone better than you on the planet for it? No, there's not a chance. We're running well over 100 YouTube channels.
Some of those channels are the top in their space, like Gary Vee, Ali Abdaal, Jeremy Haynes. Gary Vee, one of our clients, he was getting 10 ,000 to 20 ,000 views on average when we were starting with him. The first video that we made for him got over 300 ,000 views.
We doubled down and then got over 700 ,000 views and counting, and it's on its way to a million long -form views, which has happened within a month or two, within a few videos. This is the video you posted, which is... 700 000 views you said now it's added up it's like what 20k in recurring revenue that video is like collecting over a middle lifetime why how what like the most leading indicator of a successful video before the video has been pushed is all this about open loops and storytelling structures and all this bs it doesn't matter people overcomplicate that youtube first and foremost is 100 a quality game not a quantity game it's a winner take all platform your goal should always be to make So that's how you wipe an entire market clean and you just take all the demand.
So I don't know if you can share this, but like, like right now you've done this for like hundreds of channels, essentially. Well, like what does your research database look like?
All right, Mr. Jake Trinder. We all know there are like thousands of people online that teach YouTube, but not many of them have, if I have the number right, 150 clients.
And your business is doing like, what, 500k a month now? Yeah, probably about 600, 700 now. And you run people like Gary Vee, Ali Abdaal.
And you actually have a business that's scaled and that made money off of it. And then you went ahead and took everything you did and got 700 ,000 views on your own video and added 100K MRR from your own skill set to 100. And the thing is, a lot of people think that YouTube is like unpredictable, right?
But what you did, technically speaking, it shouldn't be repeatable. but you made it happen. And typically the only way that can happen is if you have like an actual system.
And my goal today is I want to break down that whole system that you developed from the in -depth research, how you map out niches, how you film, how you do the content, how you script it, and everything A to Z. By the end of the podcast, the goal is that anyone watching can start their channel, get views, get leads, and make as much cash as possible.
before we get into it for some social proof get like let the people know like what's the scale of the business how are you guys doing right now like you know drop some game for us yeah so currently art as i say scaled the business to 670k a month and growing i think this month we added about 250k monthly recurring and we're expecting to be doing over a million dollars a month this year Clearing that's no problem.
We're running well over 100 YouTube channels and growing. I think we added about 20 channels to our roster. These are educational brands, experts, businesses, and some of those channels are the top in their space like Gary Vee, Ali Abdaal.
We're also helping people like Jeremy Haynes as well. Other brands like ManyChat, Instantly AI, as well as some other bigger companies as well. When it comes to YouTube business, do you think there's anyone better than you on the planet for it?
No, there's not a chance. The evidence speaks for itself, I think. The goal today is to prove that, right?
Okay, cool. Sounds good. That's the play?
Yes. So in terms of all the channels that you run right now, you basically built a formula around it. I've known you since day one.
And you would do something, you did it for Instantly. And I was like, all right, let's see if you can do it again. Then you did it again and again and again.
And now you're running like people like Gary V, which is like, there's no YouTube guys that can do that. You basically revived the channel for Gary V, which is pretty crazy. And all of that has to have like a formula behind it.
What's that formula? Yeah, I would say if we're to distill it down and I'm sure we'll get into the details of each part. First.
It's understanding the market and understanding where demand is distributed within that market. So demand being the amount of attention that is available to capture from a particular audience, from a particular market. So it's first understanding where is that demand distributed and how do you make a video that effectively communicates that to capture that demand.
So first you have to be able to understand where the demand is distributed. You have to be able to... make a video around that demand so you capture that demand in the first place then it's about okay we've got this topic we know this topic has demand and we know that if we make a video around this topic we will capture that demand how do we actually fulfill this potential to capture that demand so first it's validating demand second it's actually packaging a video in a way which you have the highest confidence in and has the highest likelihood to be able to capture that demand, standing out against every other video around that given topic.
And then once you've got the packaging, you've got the concept and that's nailed and that's removed as a point of failure. It's then about making sure that you make the correct decisions downstream from how do you structure the video? How do you effectively hook the viewer in and retain them and satisfy the expectation that they clicked on in order to fulfill on that demand?
First of all, making sure that you're making a video around something where there is sufficient demand in the first place and has that potential. Then fulfilling on its potential to capture that demand through the packaging. And then...
actually fulfilling on the demand that exists in the content so that it satisfies the viewer and then the youtube algorithm pushes it and it enters this cycle where it pushes to more people it stands out against the other videos that it's competing against for those viewers the viewers click on your video and it kind of enters this cycle so so you just see youtube as like there's already demand existing and you become the best at like capitalizing off the demand yes you need to be the best at and capturing the demand and then satisfying the demand.
So people can make a shit ton of money from it. Yeah. Like you did.
Yes. The last two weeks. Yes.
I've done it myself. Yeah. So, I mean, we're going to go over this repeatable formula pretty much a lot.
You've applied for like Gary Vee, Ali, Jeremy Haynes, a lot of other people. But before that, I want to kind of talk about your vision on where the space is at right now, which is what we kind of spoke about the other day. And you were talking about it, how like there's a lot of like...
shitty agencies, shitty strategists, and it's like the whole space is kind of slop. We were on our meeting. Like, what do you mean by that?
Where do you see like YouTube strategy being at right now? Like, what do you think is wrong currently with how people think and how people process? Yeah, so I think the YouTube space is the biggest opportunity that we've ever seen it to be because I think the reason why most people fail at YouTube is the same reason why it's such a big opportunity.
And to understand that, you first have to understand that YouTube is a winner -take -all platform inherently. Like you go to your YouTube home feed and there are 20 plus other videos to click on all at the same time, whether it be on recommended, search, suggested videos. Only one of those videos gets clicked on.
And so in order to win in a market, you have to be able to capture the attention of the target viewer over all of the other videos. at a higher rate than all of the other videos in order to succeed in the market. And so that's why most of the attention tends towards the channels that are at the top of the market.
The reason why I'm saying this is because in most educational channels, everybody sucks at YouTube. And the reason why is very simple because in most educational niches, the experts themselves are the experts at what they are at. That's their given craft.
And so they don't have... their experience on YouTube to understand what does a good video idea look like? What does good packaging look like?
How do I structure this YouTube video? They don't understand the fundamentals of YouTube strategy and best practices. And it means the bar is very low.
And then also the YouTube agencies that are helping some of these brands and businesses, typically these aren't real YouTube experts. They've built this business. They built this service.
delivers deliverables, which are videos, thumbnails, titles, ideas. And so the deliverables are there, but that's not what drives results. What drives results is figuring out what are the best videos to make in the given market?
What are the best topics to tackle? What's the best way to package them? It's the strategy piece.
So you heard him. You're probably an expert at what you do, but you're not an expert at YouTube.
And so either the experts themselves don't know how to do YouTube correctly or the agencies aren't actually that high level themselves. And even if it's a YouTube expert, they... are operating solo.
So they don't have enough awareness of what's working across YouTube. All this to say, most people in a given niche or like most creators in their niche are not making the correct decisions. And the reason why they're not making those correct decisions.
is because they don't have the information. They don't have the information on what works across the platform. They don't have the information on what are the right titles to use or what's the best thumbnail concepts that we can use right now.
And so the bar is very low in most markets, especially B2B, but also just info in general. And that is why most people fail because they're not making the correct decisions. But it's also why if you can...
learn how to do YouTube correctly and you can understand the fundamentals and then how to apply those fundamentals through a correct YouTube system, then all of a sudden you flip it and you become one of the only people in your market to where you're doing YouTube right. And that you've just created this gap. Now you were lumped with these people, the other competitors in your niche where they weren't doing YouTube to the highest level.
And now you just create the separation and that separation isn't a five X multiple. on your views it is a fundamental difference in how the algorithm chooses to distribute attention from the market to videos all the demand all of a sudden goes towards you because youtube wants to keep people on the platform yeah and it makes sense for them to push them to that video instead so this is the reason why at the scale of which i'm at now if i step in with a channel it's night and day sometimes within less than a month where they were literally failing And all of a sudden now they're the top channel in the niche because it's applying that system and their effects are immediate.
And so what if like some of these guys like use outlaw, what do you think about outliers and like cross niche ideation? I think it's super powerful, but only if done correctly. And I think 99 % of creators, brands, experts, businesses that do YouTube, they don't actually understand the reasoning and the first principles as to why.
that sometimes and oftentimes works, which means that they misapply it or they don't get the most out of it. Or sometimes they completely misapply it. And so what I mean there is, is like, why does adjacent niche ideation work?
Most people don't actually question this and they just hear the tactic from a YouTube growth guru and they take it, apply it, sometimes see success, but then sometimes don't. And they wonder why it hasn't worked. The reason why it works is because you are taking something that has worked.
in multiple different instances where there is an underlying pattern between it. And across all of these instances, it has drove a statistically significant result to where it has produced a five times, 10 times or higher better video in terms of performance than the average video on that channel in multiple instances. That doesn't happen through magic.
It's not just some woo -wah instance of it. It happened because of an actual reason. And that reason is that...
packaging whatever it was whatever the reason was why those videos succeeded which you have to get to the bottom of it struck a nerve with the market that it was in in such a way which the other videos didn't so when it landed on that home feed it won that battle of getting the click if it was the packaging that drove that reason yeah If it was the video itself that drove the reason, it struck a nerve in a certain way to where it drove higher viewer satisfaction to such a significant degree to where YouTube was like, okay, this is the video that we're going to push to more of that audience.
And so people don't understand that it's like the psychology or it's the actual deep -rooted psychology for those particular viewers why that thing worked. And so the reason adjacent niche ideation works is when you are taking something that is struck a nerve with the psychology and the mind of the viewers in those niches, and you're taking it to your niche.
And if applied correctly, you're taking it to your niche where the viewer has similar psychology to the viewers in those niches. They think similarly. They have a similar intent behind the view.
And so the same reason as to why it struck a nerve with them, you could assume... quite confidently that it would also strike that nerve with your audience. But some people will take something that has worked in one niche with a certain type of audience who is minded a certain way with a certain psychology, and they will bring it to their niche where the audience has a different psychology.
And therefore the reason doesn't transfer over. It's like where people take the $1 versus $10 ,000 format, which Mr. Beast does in that entertainment niche, and they take it to the niche.
that they're in with a highly sophisticated audience where they don't care about that right and so you have to understand the reasons as to why certain things have worked in adjacent niches or other niches understand the why behind it to such a deep level to where you can like really understand that viewer and why it actually struck a nerve so much do you have an example of like a video that you saw in an adjacent niche but then you slightly transformed it because people do do that a lot they just copy the exact thing and it's like Yeah, I think there's lots.
So like, for example, where it's, as I say, the $1 versus $10 ,000 is an example where it hasn't been done right. An example where it has been done right, I could take one of our own. So Gary V, one of our clients, like he was getting like 10 to 20 ,000 views on average when we were starting with him, which for Gary is like just not where it should have been at.
And he was just not doing best YouTube practices. He was... doing AI -generated titles or just very basic YouTube titles.
Thumbnails were also probably AI -generated and just didn't look great. But there was no intent behind the decisions that were being made. The first video that we made for him got over 300 ,000 views from the very start, going from 10 to 20K to over 300K.
And then we doubled down, and then the double down got over 700 ,000 views and counting, and it's on its way to a million long -form views, which has happened within a month or two, within a few videos. So it's... a difference, right?
It's not luck. And the first video was the new rules of social media, brackets 2026. And the reason why we did that was one, we chose the topic, which we knew had demand around it.
Social media obviously has a lot of demand around it. Lots of proven videos that have got hundreds of thousands of views in that niche. And then we had to figure out how do we package it, right?
And so through understanding Gary, we knew that he often talks about the shifts that are happening in a market. Like he predicted social media back in the newspaper days, predicted live streaming.
So that was ticked off. That was a fit for him. We knew we could do a video where I was discussing the shifts of social media.
Now, because we have the visibility over what's working across YouTube, we saw a format that was working, which was the new rules of this thing. And that was working for SEO. It was working for...
YouTube. It was working for LinkedIn. We did it for our client in the LinkedIn niche and worked very well for him.
And the reason why we knew we could take that and apply it to social media is because if it worked in these niches like SEO, where the people who are consuming content in the SEO niche, it's marketing. They want to know the new rules of SEO because it implies that if they do not know the new rules, rules being defined as If you do not follow these things, you will not succeed.
You will not be doing it correctly. If you do not follow whatever these new rules are, they will fail at SEO. But if they know what the new rules are, they'll be ahead of the game and...
they can probably imply through the packaging like, oh, if I know the new rules, I'm going to very easily be able to get results, right? So it's like, it creates both fear and desire because it's fear. If they don't know the new rules, they'll fail at this thing that they literally care so much about because they're consuming content around SEO.
So of course, they're going to be deciding that. Of course, they're going to want to watch that video. But then also it implies that it's going to get them the result that they want because they're going to be ahead of the curve beyond anybody else, right?
And so that's the reason why it works with that audience is because there's implied value. of if you know the new rules, you'll get the result you want SEO, which is money growing your business. But then also LinkedIn, YouTube, those are social media niches.
If you know the new rules to the game of social media, these specific social media niches like YouTube and LinkedIn, again, it's that underlying psychology of if you don't, you will fail because there are new rules. And if you do not follow rules, you will fail. That's the definition of rules.
But if you do, you'll be ahead of the game. So like that's the underlying reason as to why people want. to watch that type of format and so i could assume that that would also transfer to social media which is one a form of marketing like seo is and two it's the all -encompassing topic of linkedin and youtube so it would it would naturally transfer and so that's why it would work what would be like a wrong way of using that the new rules of where something doesn't have rules to the game like and and the viewer logically knows before even clicking on the video that there isn't going to be a change in the rules to something so like the new rules of baking yeah right like what changes to baking you just bake unless there's a time where ai is just evidently taking over baking and it's very present in people's minds so it only applies to niches where there's rules to the game and the viewer wouldn't call basically on there being new rules to the game So that's one of the situations where it's only going to apply to that.
Or there's another format as well, which is like, if you don't understand this thing, you don't understand that thing. There's other formats like, if you don't understand this thing, you don't understand that thing. And examples include, if you don't understand funding.
you don't understand startups. Or if you don't understand bonds, you don't understand money. And so for our client, the way we applied this was if you don't understand insulin, you don't understand fat loss.
But the reason you have, but somebody could easily do if you don't understand. candlesticks you don't understand trading now it's not that that video couldn't work but it would be less likely to work because the way that format works is if you don't understand this thing that you might be aware of at max but you definitely don't understand it you don't understand the outcome that you want so either that that if you don't understand x you don't understand y y is like the desired outcome that they care so much about and x is like the unlock that they definitely don't understand Because it's something really specific that might be seen as boring or might be seen as undervalued.
And so it sparks the curiosity of like, well, I definitely don't understand this thing. And I didn't think that this thing was the reason as to why. Whereas candlesticks is like obvious.
Yeah, exactly. And they can't see like, and also most of the viewers in that niche understand candlesticks to such a level. where like they don't feel like there's enough of a gap there whereas if it's like insulin nobody fucking understands insulin bonds some bought like yeah so you get the point right and was it keith keith lee wait for what guy who did the bonds video i'm not sure to be honest like yeah it was because bro um i think it was keith he's he would just sit down and talk finance i think it might have been yeah um but he did like bitcoin video about bitcoin too and he would use it a lot like oh if you don't understand this And then his bonds video just blew the fuck up.
Yeah. Like it went crazy. So let's say someone's watching right now.
They have an offer. They have a business and everything. And they either starting or they already have a channel.
But basically after watching this, you're going to kind of have to restart. Right. Which is how you do with all your clients.
And we kind of spoke about, okay, where does someone actually start? Everyone thinks about like all ideas, whatever and everything. But you just put it down to like research.
Number one, why research? And then. how do you do research on youtube because like people like when you tell someone i'll go do they'll just go look at they'll just type okay if they're an econ they'll just type econ whatever and just randomly look at a bunch of videos how is it you attack research yeah so the way i see youtube is your ability to make good decisions is highly dependent on the information that you have Most people make videos completely flying blind where they'll base their title or they'll base their topic.
Yeah, most people are completely flying blind where they'll base their topic over what they logically think their target market wants. And then they'll package that title either based on intuition, AI, or maybe a title that they happen to see work on their YouTube feed when they were consuming YouTube and they thought, oh, that's a nice title.
Let me take that. That video worked well. And that's as far as their visibility goes, but that's very narrow -sighted where if you're able to see, like if we contrast that with being able to see over the entirety of YouTube from a bird's eye view, you're .
You literally see everything, all the titles that are working, all the thumbnail styles, all the trending topics in the AI niche, trending figures, so on and so forth. If you see everything and you walk into your niche and... see which topics have demand but also you'll be able to see the gaps in the market way easier because you're seeing what's working everywhere else and by comparison you'll be like well what what the fuck's happening in this niche like why is nothing going on in this niche right why in my niche is everybody using these basic boring titles or using the same formats that everybody else has done but they're not seeing all these formats and all these different ways of packaging things that's working right now that i can apply and that's how you find the gaps in the market so The reason why I place so much emphasis on research is because that is what gives you the understanding over what are the right moves to make and the best decisions to make at every single stage of the process, right?
What are the best topics to make videos around? What are the most in -demand topics in your niche that you can make videos around? What are the best ways to package it?
What's the right way to structure the video in order to get highest viewer satisfaction? What are the different execution formats that are working really well right now? that i can take and so let's do like something all right say i have like an info offer now and it's about like maybe an ai agency offer i'm going to take like three different offers but we'll go like one by one say i have an ai agency offer and my videos are stuck at like a couple hundred views maybe sometimes 1k views you tell me okay jake go research and i'm sitting here and you're next to me and you tell me exactly what to do what am i doing on my computer yeah so first You need to research your market to understand where demand is.
So that's the first step. And then the second thing you will need to do after that is research other markets. To do YouTube research effectively, there's a step -by -step algorithm you can follow.
to be able to explore the entirety of a niche. And you do this, whether it's in your niche to find where demand is distributed in terms of which topics are worth making videos around that can see success in the first place. And then in other niches to understand what's working across YouTube.
So you might know how to package videos in your niche and stand out. I use an algorithm which I actually learned in school, funny enough, because I'm from a computer science background. And that's where my education stems from, which is called a depth first search algorithm, which is an actual algorithm that's used in applications such as web crawlers, for example, to explore.
the entirety of a data set so like scraping the web and finding all the information and not missing anything it's an algorithm that's used to explore the entirety of a data set and not miss a single thing and so the way this algorithm works is you have your root node which is the starting point and then you have pathways of other nodes so it basically branches out where you've got the root node and then you've got a node here and a node here and then you've got like all these different nodes it's a tree it's called a binary tree and it's like a basically a tree of different data points applied to youtube what this allows you to do is if you follow the depth first search algorithm correctly you're able to effectively explore the entirety of a niche and not miss anything so if you went through this entire process then you would know where all the demand is and you would know everything that's working in a given niche and then if you multiply that across multiple niches you see everything right and this is into you so the way that works applied to youtube is the root node that you are starting with is the niche that you're exploring so you pick a niche and this would either be your niche if it's your own niche research or adjacent niche if you're trying to find formats that are working the first layer of nodes are the core seed search terms
for that niche that would allow you to get search results of all the different types of videos that are being made in your niche. You can very easily generate this with AI. You just have to say to AI, this is my niche, generate a course seed list of keywords that would allow me to explore the entirety of the niche.
So for example, if your niche was YouTube growth, it would give you terms like how to grow your YouTube channel, how to make good YouTube thumbnails. YouTube growth, growing on YouTube, all the different variations. So you get this exhaustive list.
Now, once you have that list, this is where we start to get into the depth -first search approach because you basically go through every single search term. You basically explore the entirety of one search term first and you go as deep as possible until there is nothing left to find where you retrace back one step. And then you repeat the process and you keep going through that process of researching as far as you can go until there's nothing left to find and then retracing back one step.
So what this looks like in practice is once you have your search terms, you go to that first search term and you search the search term on YouTube. Then you're returned with a list of videos that if they're ranking highly in YouTube search, a lot of them are going to be high performing videos. You see which videos are performing outstandingly well.
And you can see that by seeing the view count relative to the subscriber count at first glance on the YouTube search. But if you go to the channel, you can also see, is this video performing better than the average videos on this channel? Now, the sweet thing here is if somebody is getting an outlier, that's really good.
And you would define it as a successful video. Chances are they probably have other successful videos. So this is where we get into the next layer of the depth first search and that extra layer of nodes where we go to the channel.
So we open up in a new tab. the channel of the video that we, you know, the channel of the owner of the video that we want to explore. And now we're hosted.
Now we see a bunch of other videos that have also performed outstandingly well. And so we start collecting all this information on what videos have performed well, how were they packaged? What was the topic of those videos?
Did they do anything interesting in the thumbnail? And if we study further as well, did they do anything interesting in the execution of the video that might have drove it to that result? So we're pulling the data.
And we're also interpreting the data as to why do we think this video has succeeded? And you can log all of this in a simple database like Google Sheet. Visibly, I use SQLite because that's like an actual database programming so you can query it quick.
But you collect all this data on the channel. Now you're left with a ton of interesting outliers. of videos that have performed well and the key thing is the interpretation you understand why those videos have actually done well or at least you're making a hypothesis so that you know you're studying the game once the channel is done with and there's nothing left to explore on the channel close the tab of the channel and now you're left back at the search term where you left off at, and you go to the next video.
Is that something that's worth considering? Was this a successful video? If it wasn't, skip past it, go to the next video.
We don't want to consider any videos that haven't performed well and it looks like it's done bad. Otherwise, the channel's not going to be worth exploring. And you just continue through this process of going to the next channel, exploring everything in there.
And you just keep going down the search term until there's nothing interesting left to look at on that search term. Because if you scroll down far enough, there's... You start to get less relevant videos.
And then you retrace back one step. You go to the next search term and you repeat the entire process for that search term that I described. You go to the next one and you basically explore the entirety of the data set one pathway at a time until everything's been explored.
And so you only, like what timestamp do you look at in terms of like, is it like the past three months of videos, six months? Like what's the timeline you look at? It depends on the circumstances because If videos have performed really well, and there's a clear reason as to why they performed well, such as the title, but they were done two years ago.
If there's no reason, again, when you study the why, first principles, like if there's no reason as to why that reason why that video succeeded wouldn't work now, then it's still good information. Obviously, you take it as signal, but you don't discard it just because it was older. There's no reason why it wouldn't work now.
In fact, sometimes it can be an opportunity because you could have formats that worked ages ago that kind of got left in the dust. In fact, this has happened with There was a format that was working really well, which was brutally honest advice.
Alex Amozy cultivated with like X years of brutally honest advice. Everybody abused it at the time and got super saturated because everybody had seen it. So it no longer had novelty.
So then it kind of disappeared for a while, but now it's came back up and we used it for Gary V. We used it for another client with brutally honest web design, which in these videos are getting hundreds of thousands of views. So that's kind of cropped back up because the underlying psychology didn't change.
It just got burnt. lost its novelty. So, but then in something like the AI niche, if there's a format that's working in the AI niche, or if it's a trending topic in the AI niche, like an AI model, then you have to take that.
So you have to understand, hmm, was part of the reason why this video succeeded down to its relevancy in that fact, because if it was, you have to take that for what it is as signal. And that does potentially weaken the idea. So how long, how long does it actually take?
Like, like say for example, right now I'm going to go do research. to do really good research on YouTube for like your niche? How long would it take you?
Two hours, three hours, four hours? It's a long upfront investment, I would say. It depends on the niche as well.
If you're in a small niche, sometimes it can be quick. But if you're in a niche like business, definitely takes a lot longer. So it depends on the size of the niche.
And so it can take many, many hours. It might require a lot of your focus for one week, but... Oh, wait, wait, a week?
Well, yeah, because think about how deep... the route and the data set goes there's so many flying off pathways in the business niche for example and so many channels to explore but once you have the visibility it's easy to maintain it and upkeep at it because once you've gone through that process that intensive process initially like think about how much visibility you have over the niche of what's everybody doing and copying from each other but also where the gaps are the other thing that you can do though is you can delegate pathways so you can just basically map out the entire plan of how you're going to research the niche with all the different search terms and all the different things and then just chunk it down.
Transcribing what you just said earlier into AI, right? Well, you can leverage AI. We leverage AI at like a super high level.
I'm saying they can just transcribe everything you said. AI will make a plan for it. Yes, but you do need to understand the process to be able to manage it.
The same way like if you were to train VAs, because that's also what we do as well, not just AI. If you train VAs on it, you have to be able to manage the success of the outcome.
Because if they start delivering you just a bunch of random outliers, but they have, you know, there's nuance to it. So you'd have to understand it. But once you do, you can delegate that person.
That's how we've done it. Like we've got in -house researchers. We build our own internal AI tool because the public tools weren't offering what we needed and all that stuff.
So I don't know if you can share this, but like right now you've done this for like hundreds of channels potentially. Well, like what does your research database look like? In what way?
Like, what do you mean? I don't know. What is it like?
What's in it? Like, is it like just hundreds of thumbnail screenshots? Is it titles?
Is it structure? Is it like hooks? Is it like, I'm like, what does it look like?
Yeah. So there's different, I mean, it's a relational database. So there's different, like there's different databases that are related to each other for different purposes.
So one of the databases is all the outliers that we find, but these outliers have fields. which each outlier is a record and they have multiple fields that we're able to link them and be able to query properly. So we want to know what the outlier is.
We want to know when it was posted in case we do want to factor in relevancy. We want to know the multiplier of how much of an outlier was it relative to the channel. We also want to know if there's any statistical significance with the outlier.
So what I mean by that is in terms of statistical significance, is this is actually an important piece with outliers is you can have a 5x outlier, but it's not something to take as signal. And the reason why is certain channels have a really volatile view flow.
So like some video, they'll get somebody who's with 6k views and then 100k views. And it's like oscillates between this. So if you have a 5x outlier, it doesn't necessarily mean, oh, like something must have worked here.
It might just mean all the videos that have performed worse. obviously they wouldn't have worked and then whenever they did anything right they saw a massive high view so statistical significance is also looking at the frequency of which they get outliers to that degree and is it therefore anything impressive because what the reason why is because we're looking to see if they did something special with that video that drove an outstanding result anyways so statistical significance also like we want to be able to try and make a prediction if there is statistical significance there we want to know the niche that we found it in of course and the topic um And then we want to know if there's, like, when we find outliers, we make a hypothesis of, okay, these are the reasons why we thought it might have worked.
So whether that be a proposed pattern in the title, like, do we think there was anything distinct about this title that fits into a format or a pattern? We don't know if it is one yet that's proven across other niches, but we're making a hypothesis. Or was it the thumbnail style?
Or was it... a particular execution format. For example, instead of a five to eight point listicle, was it 20 to 40 points?
And sometimes there's multiple of these. Oftentimes there's multiple of these. A five to eight, 20 point listicle?
So like a listicle being a type of structure video where it's like, okay, in this video, I'm going to give you the five things that helped me become a millionaire, right? But like Dan Martell does 40 brutal truths, which is like, whoa, usually it's five to eight. So that's one of those things where that...
drives the success of a video because it's a unique format so we want to be aware of the the reasons as to why something has succeeded and note that down in the database we're basically just building that data set up and also obviously we want to know the time that we found it just for querying purposes but we build that outlier database up and then we're able to have relational databases of the niches so we're able to have a niche database where the database is basically everything that within that niche, all the outliers within that niche, all the formats that we found within that niche, so on and so forth.
And then we're able to have a formats database because as we're collecting all this data, proposing all these potential formats, we're making a hypothesis when we're collecting the outliers and we're saying this might have a potential title structure. We're able to use AI at scale to match the proposed formats and see if there's...
like an actual match there, an underlying pattern. So like we've made, okay, this video might have this as a title pattern and that might be the reason why it's succeeding. Oh, this video over here in this niche that we did two months later, this video is also succeeding and the AI basically is able to match those with our human quality assurance layer and be like, okay, that's a format because we're seeing this happen across multiple niches.
We just discovered a title format, right? So then we're able to build up a database of formats. For the formats database, we're seeing what's the average median number of views that that format gets.
And what is the average median multiplier score, outlier multiplier score of that format? When was the last successful video using that video posted? From what we could scrape, what was the ratio of...
the number of times that video was done and it succeeded versus the number of times that video was done and it didn't succeed, that's going to be a bit of a rougher estimate. Because it depends on how well it's able to find the negative examples, which is harder because YouTube's algorithm is positive biased because it's promoting the good videos.
But anyways, we're able to basically assess the strength of a format. And also we use AI and human judgment to data aside. How outstanding is the format?
How unique is the format by first principles? Like when we look at this by first principles in human psychology, does it like make a hell of a lot of sense why all these videos are succeeding using that format? Or is it kind of like a, it's just kind of like a normal title, but for some reason, all these videos are succeeding because that matters too.
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Now let's get back to the podcast. And so what do you do? Like, okay, say someone right now they don't give a shit about your like mechanism.
All they care about is like the result. And I think you brought up earlier the example of like insulin and fat loss. It's like, they don't care about like how they're going to get there.
Or say, cause I say I have a new business model and I'm like, I don't know, selling like mic pieces because content is blowing up, whatever the point is. Right. But no one gives a shit about my mechanism.
There's no, nothing about the mechanism that even exists. but they care about making money of the result or they care about fat loss so insulin comes in right i had it as a note but you already said it so we can find something new how do you bring something new to the market like that's that's the question i think a lot of people are doing something new how do you bring that to the market if there's like less demand for it yes in that case use insulin to do that but like what's your thinking process behind it yeah so i mean first you obviously have to identify that that's the case and like great book on this breakthrough advertising eugene schwartz you know talking about um like awareness levels so like awareness levels is basically you know are they problem aware or solution aware and sometimes in your market people aren't problem aware right they're just aware of the solution the outcome that they want and so oftentimes like you're gonna have to make videos where nobody gives a fuck about your
the problem, they just care about the, sorry, nobody gives a fuck about the solution. They just care about the problem. They don't know what the solution is.
They just know what the problem is, right? Which is they're achieving the outcome or solving this pain point. And what you have to do is first, you have to identify that that's the case.
And secondly, you have to find scenarios on YouTube that exist that also fit under that same scenario. So for example, we identified with Tessa, the client, the insulin doctor, we identified that nobody gives a shit about insulin.
But the reason why they bought the program was because the outcome was fat loss and better health. So there's multiple different outcomes, right? And so in order to figure out, okay, how do we talk about insulin in a way that people care about?
We had to find scenarios where people didn't care about the mechanism and they cared about the outcome instead. We had to find stories on YouTube where people did that and they succeeded with it.
And that's why we found the format of, if you don't understand this thing, you don't understand this thing. Because we were looking at niches where there were a lot of intricate things, like lots of things that people didn't care about or that they didn't know because there were lots of specific nuanced things. But there was the overarching outcome and desire at the end of it that was like usually the broad level of the niche.
So, and then... but but then how do you keep it up like is every video just like that or like after the insulin video how do you guys like keep it up on other videos to always keep bringing in new people yeah like sometimes insulin like sometimes the mechanism is not going to be in the title so you know for example we had how to lose fat so fast it feels like cheating and there's no mention of insulin there but what we did know was that insulin would make a great mechanism for the content that would drive high viewer satisfaction so like sometimes you have to reposition the fact that nobody knows your mechanism as an advantage rather than a disadvantage because it's a disadvantage when you try and make videos directly around it because there's no existing demand it's an advantage when you use it sometimes in the title to drive curiosity because they're like oh like new new sexy thing you know new thing that's like i haven't heard of and it helps me achieve this outcome it gives this impression of oh like maybe this is going to be the cheat code to this thing that i've been looking for all my life right that's what it is and so that's why new biz ops if done right could work so well on youtube is because it's like
the outcome is seeing success, it's making money. And it's like, here's this new thing, this new way of doing that, right? And so it's like, it feels like the thing that they've been looking for, that's going to be the cheat code to the outcome.
Also, sometimes you're just using the mechanism to, in the content, to make the content really unique. So even with Iman Gatsi's big viral video sales letter from back in the day, the best online business model for beginners in 2020, whatever, He used SMMA as a unique mechanism and he articulated it, the sales argument around it in such a way where like it clicked for viewers where it's like, oh my God, like this makes so much sense.
This is the best business model, right? He explained why all these other business models weren't the best. And then he brought in this concept of SMMA and arbitrage and contractors and all this stuff, which just like nobody ever spoke about on YouTube before.
But if you had SMMA in the title. then it wouldn't have worked at the time. But instead, he used it as an advantage where that video got however many million views and generate like tens of millions of dollars, if not over $100 million from that one video.
So you've got to use it to your advantage instead. But in terms of figuring out how to package it in the title, you have to look for situations where it's similar. So if you've got a new biz op, you have to look at niches where biz ops were created and what sort of messaging did they use in order to...
break through and resonate with people, right? As well as not just titles, but also the thumbnails too. So do you have like, I mean, obviously besides Gary V, do you have like another example?
I think last time we spoke about Dr. Sean of like where you came in a channel, you did research properly and just the research, like flip the channel upside down. Dr.
Sean, he was getting like a thousand views a day within less than a month. He went to a hundred thousand views a day. his email marketing system became broke because like it broke the email marketing system because of the lead flow that they had.
I can probably give the screenshot or whatever of this, but yeah, like his channel became extremely successful in a very short period of time. And beforehand, he was kind of just picking videos around topics. he was making videos around topics that he just wanted to make videos around like and what he thought his target market wanted so based on his current business he was like okay i think my target market want to make i think my target market want to consume videos around infrared saunas and benefits of infrared saunas and this and that right so He was just basing videos of what he thought his market wanted without actually seeing if they really wanted it off of YouTube.
So the first step was actually validating demand around topics in his niche. So we did the process of research that I described earlier. where we first understood his market deeply, which by the way, is the most crucial step before research is actually understanding the market to such a good degree to where you can do that research and understand the psychology of the viewers, so on and so forth.
But we did that pre -work and then we researched his niche with all of these core seed search terms where we went through, we validated the demand around visceral fat and like all of these different topics in his niche. And visceral fat was the one that stood out the most as it was getting millions and millions and millions of views.
It was hyper relevant. to what his target market wanted. They wanted to lose visceral fat.
And yet he hadn't really made any videos tackling the topic of visceral fat. Another one was carnivore diet. So carnivore diet was massively trending, but he had never made a video around carnivore diet.
He just made a video around like good foods to eat and just not positioned and messaged correctly, even if it was the same underlying topic. So once we did that and we validated the demand, it was then a case of packaging. And so what we did for that is...
all this adjacent niche research and also just through the visibility we have of like the 100 plus channels that we run and you know doing youtube for all this time we were able to see certain formats that were working across all these different niches one of the biggest ones which a lot of people will have seen if they consume a lot of youtube is how to do this thing so fast it feels like cheating or it feels illegal so it's been done in niches like studying how to study so fast it feels like cheating uh how to get customers so fast it feels like cheating lots of titles like this why does that format work that format works because it's basically saying like how to do this thing that you desire to do so fast because there's speed where people value speed in this given scenario so fast it feels like cheating and so it works where people want to do something really fast and they want to feel like it's a cheat code they want to feel like they're kind of cheating the game like studying so fast it feels like cheating
cheating in studying like this is a common thing that it's like oh like this is a little bit naughty but i'm not actually being naughty i'm just like i'm not actually cheating but i'm getting the same benefits right and so like that's the underlying feeling it's like oh like i'm gonna learn some secrets in this video so that transfers really well to how to lose fat so fast it feels like cheating or how to lose visceral fat so it feels so fast it feels like cheating because cheating oh like as if i'm you know taking ozempic or like one of these glps but i'm not i'm doing it the healthy way but it feels like that so and people want to lose it fast ideally they'd literally lose it right now immediately so there's that desire there so that title gets them so that's the video we did how to lose visceral fat so fast it feels like cheating that's saying like over 800 000 views counting towards a million now and there's lots of other videos like that that we've done for him but the process
is the same. First, validating the demand around the topic that you're making the video around, because there's no point making a video around something that doesn't have demand in the first place. Making sure that you're messaging that topic correctly, the right wording.
And then once you know there's potential there that you're satisfied with, and you know that if you captured, you'd be happy, how do you then actually fulfill that potential? And with the highest likelihood, stand out against all of the other videos around that topic right now in the market and win the winner take all. game of youtube and get clicked on over all of the other videos and that's where the visibility from all these other niches comes in because that's what's going to give you the best information to make the right decision on how to package the video yeah so now i want to get to the other part which is say you've done the research you have your database you have everything ready you've analyzed everything possible in the world how do you go from having all that data and then getting video ideas out of it so having the data is useless if you don't interpret the data so like you can find the outliers but the next step after finding the videos that have succeeded in the data is interpreting it and actually really getting to the bottom of why it succeeded and this is where like you have to understand your target market to such a deep level otherwise you're not going to be able to understand the reason why like most people
study outlier theory and all these YouTube tactics, the most important thing to know first is studying psychology and emotional intelligence and first principles thinking, because that's like your foundation to be able to interpret data correctly on YouTube. Because once you find a video that has worked really well and multiple videos that have a pattern between them, you have to be able to be intelligent enough in that aspect to get to the bottom of why and be crystal clear on that.
Because when you find out the why, that's how you can make sure you transfer it correctly to your niche or you realize it's not something that you can transfer. Like a title format, like I said earlier, not every title format is going to make sense to do in your niche with your audience because the reasons why it succeeded over here wouldn't work over here because the audiences are different, the scenario is different, etc.
So first, really understand your target market and... you know understand psychology emotional intelligence etc etc that's actually the most important even though you have the whole database research and everything if you don't understand psychology uh would you recommend reading a book like breakthrough advertising yeah okay marketing principles okay that's why yeah awareness level is basically the whole shebang if you don't understand that that is then essentially you still like you're still you would still be stuck yes okay so first you do that then say you go ahead you read these books yeah you learn about marketing psychology awareness levels everything you need to know then how do you get ideas out of that yeah so and so then you've got all this data the next step is pattern recognition recognizing patterns between certain data so this is where you start to form title formats where certain types of titles just work and you understand why they work.
So you're interpreting that data and you understand, okay, this works in this scenario. This works when we are doing this type of video. This works when we are...
targeting this type of audience and so you build the formats and you build the scenarios and where those formats can be applied which effectively become tools in your arsenal to whip out in a scenario where there's an opportunity to do so same goes for thumbnail styles same goes for the content itself that the ideas stem from knowing where demand is distributed in your niche like what topics to tackle in the first place and seeing the videos that are being made around those topics and comparing it comparing the way those videos are packaged to all what like everything else that's working elsewhere on youtube as well all the different title because once you see once you see what's happening in your niche currently what is capturing demand what is succeeding but also what's how are those videos being packaged in your niche?
And you compare that to what's working elsewhere, you're able to spot the gaps in the market. Like for the visceral fat example, we saw that everybody was just saying like, you know, if I wanted to lose visceral fat in this much time, I'd do this. So there wasn't a lot of innovation with that format.
So we took a form that was working elsewhere that would apply perfectly to it. And therefore it struck a nerve really well. So the ideas come from understanding your market, understanding where there's demand, and then the visibility elsewhere of understanding like what.
is working elsewhere that isn't being done in my niche okay and then in terms of like how does that change comparing to like the person's fame like how do you approach post research making the video like picking videos if it's a gary v or if it's a random new person that has 500 subs is there any difference or it's just doesn't change at all because we want to grow the audience and so we need to optimize for new viewership.
Like I think if somebody's super famous, then you're able to lean on returning viewership a lot more, like using their face. This is why Stephen Bartlett has his face in thumbnails because he's at a stage right now to where his face is recognizable. Mr.
Beast always has his face in thumbnails, even if he's not the main subject in the video, he always has it, right? So when you've got that level of fame, then there's small things that you do to, you know, like there's the small differences, you're always going to optimize for new viewership and assume that nobody knows who you are when the when you make decisions so nothing really changes there and then how do you know whether if you have a video idea you're just chasing as many views as possible or if you're chasing quality views and is there even a difference yeah so i always optimize like my my north star when growing a channel is views from expected target market.
Like it's the amount of views that I get from what I would predict would be the target market. So views is still the core KPI, but so you're still optimizing for views, but you shouldn't be optimizing for views when you logically look at your title and thumbnail and you're like, this attracts a low quality audience. So it does matter.
Has that ever happened to you where you get a client, you get them so many views, but it's just. I'm sure it's happened in a couple of cases, but I would say the reverse of it where. We've expected that, oh, like this video is super top of funnel, right?
Oh, it's a super top of funnel video. We're expecting that this isn't going to convert well. And then it ends up being the highest grossing video on the entire channel.
Like it both gets the most views and also collects the most cash. Maybe the conversion rate from the views was lower, but it doesn't matter because that wasn't a constraint in this case because we just got way more views and it still converted well, right? It still attracted the right people, but obviously just got a broader net.
So I think, yeah, this stuff about like, top of funnel middle of funnel bottom of funnel i think people really overthink it to be honest i think like you've got to just select making the best videos based on everything i've talked about and with the filter that it needs to attract your core target market well okay so what about those people that have multiple channels where it's like one is a bit more broad and they have other channels that are a bit like super business focused like hermosy now has like three four channels like Is that wrong?
No, I think that's right to do that. But that's right to do that for the reason of if you are making a bunch of videos on one channel where somebody is bringing viewers that won't watch all the other videos and vice versa, that's bad for the channel health because then returning viewership is low on the channel. And that breaks YouTube's confidence to push it further because YouTube's like, well, if the returning viewers and the existing viewers aren't watching videos from this channel, then...
You know, I don't feel as confident to push it to the new viewers. So it's just good hygiene to isolate the audiences of the different audiences of the different types of videos. And then how different would you say like YouTube strategy is for like a B2B offer versus a B2C?
Do you think it's like a whole different game? Does it all come down to the same principles? What's the difference?
So the way it differs is back to first principles, which is not always, but oftentimes the viewers are going to have different behaviors. for example, B2C in a niche like dropshipping or biz op, typically, depending on the biz op, you're going to have a younger audience who is less mature, who is more exposed to content and therefore has a lower attention span and therefore resonates better and responds better to retention editing and more in -your -face sort of highly packaged videos.
Whereas a more sophisticated audience, if you had that same retention editing and very photoshopped where it's like very evidently Photoshopped and fake, they're not going to respond as well to that. So it does just come back to understanding your audience.
And this is where people might take it wrong. They might see a thumbnail style that's working really well in a B2C market where it's like holding up the phone with like the money dashboard and then they use it in like a highly sophisticated market where like clearly four -year -old CEO who's got a eight, nine -figure company is not going to click on that video, right?
But people make this mistake all the time. So it just comes back to, again, that's why I suggest really understanding your market. And before that, understanding psychology and first principles, thinking of like, why has this thing worked?
And would this work for my target market? So now let's say, I think a lot of people, they pick the right videos. So let's say I picked the right video essentially, but I don't want to fuck it up.
Like the next step is how do you ideate? the title and the thumbnail for that video like what does that process look like you found the idea you got it right and you did the research you did everything you had to do you free and read the books you did everything i have the video idea how do you plan out the title the thumbnail for that video do you mean like that if you have the topic so what you just ripped the same title and thumbnail and just replace it with what you have well no i just don't know if you're asking i don't know if you're asking like and if you're asking specifically idea once you have the idea in terms of you have the title and you have the thumbnail what do you do next or if it's like like you have the general idea of the video like you found someone that had an outlier okay and then it's like oh like okay i want to copy that video yeah okay or like you found the video you want to do whether it's like that video of like oh if you don't understand this do this
do you just like how do you plan the title and the thumbnail there how do you plan your own like thumbnails like yeah or just you just rip the same thing yeah so the title is straightforward like once you find something that works the title is usually quite straightforward if you're taking inspiration from a particular title format in a scenario where multiple titles have succeeded with the same underlying pattern because you are taking whatever that common denominator is with that format like what are the what is the thing that is true across all of these titles extracting what isn't true across all of these titles, which is typically the topic is the thing that is removed and variable.
You take it over. And again, understanding why this worked, does that same reason carry over to your niche? Well, if you don't understand this, you don't understand this.
If you don't understand bonds, you don't understand money. Okay, that works because bonds, people don't know what bonds are, but they want money. So understanding bonds seems like the unlock to getting money.
Okay, well, for insulin and fat loss, people really want fat loss. but they definitely don't understand insulin. Most people don't.
Okay, that transfers over. So I can assume that that would work. And so the title's straightforward in that nature.
You're just making sure the reason transfers over. And when you objectively look at the final title and zoom out, data aside, is that something your target market wants? Like, does that strike a nerve logically with your target market?
Because at the end of the day, title formats aren't where you are. It's like, should that work, right? Title's very straightforward there.
Thumbnails, sometimes the thumbnails are straightforward because... Sometimes title formats also have a thumbnail format pair where like a certain type of title format has its thumbnail format that's associated with it. So sometimes you also just transfer over the same thing where you take the reason and you take the common denominator of the thumbnail and why that worked for this format and you take it over to yours, adapting the things that obviously need to be changed because you're in a different niche, a different setting, et cetera.
Other times you do have to kind of invent the thumbnail without taking it from inspiration from the other videos because you wouldn't. so when you like invent the thumbnail now you like send you send a brief to the designer like the thumbnail designer like what are you what are you sending out to the team or the thumbnail designer to get the result you want to get the concept so you shouldn't rely on a thumbnail designer to be conceptualizing the actual thumbnail you have like sketch it out do you sketch it out or you give it reference you give the references of the thumbnails you're taking inspiration from and describe the differences and you just cast the vision very clearly as to what you want but i think the greater point is how do you actually design the right thumbnail concept um and so i think there's again it it comes down to first principles where oftentimes the best thing to do to be able to make an effective thumbnail is just visually representing the desired outcome associated with the video in the most clear, simple way.
Because think about the job of a thumbnail. If we break YouTube down as a process and that part of the process where it's the video lands on the feed, this is where the thumbnail comes into things. The job of a thumbnail is to one, capture the attention of the target market before any of the other videos do.
It's first to grab attention first so that they consider your video first before they click on another video. The second part of the job of a thumbnail is once it's captured that attention, it's actually driving enough curiosity, driving enough interest to get them to click or at least get them to read the title to which then sells them on the video.
That's the job of a thumbnail. And so if you break down... how do I do that?
How do I capture the attention of the target market before they look at any of the other videos? This is where thumbnail tactics like three element rule and blah, blah, blah, they all come into things because the reason why three element rule, generally speaking, is a good tactic is because you are having enough elements to where you can generate clarity, but not too many elements to where it's confusion.
So if you're using the right three elements, you're able to you know, effectively capture the attention. So this is why I always come back to like the tactics exist, like adjacent niche ideation and three element rule and all these things.
And they're not necessarily wrong. It's just, you're going to misapply them. And also there's plenty of the tactics that you're not aware of that nobody talks about that you can figure out through first principles.
And one of those that I don't hear a lot of people talk about is just visually, visually representing the desired outcome associated with the video, which is going to be the thing. that captures the target market most effectively, because if this is the thing they always dream about and picture in their mind, if you're accurately visually representing that in a very simplistic way, what else is going to capture their attention before any of the other videos?
Because it's literally the thing that they want that makes them feel emotional inside. And if you do that, that you've got their attention, and then you have an element of curiosity that makes them think, wait, what? Like, this looks interesting.
Like, for example, visually, representing the transformation from fat to dream shape with the word insulin above it what let me see what this video is about if you don't understand insulin you don't understand fat loss what you don't understand insulin so then they click yeah or dr sean's example similar where it's like we have the fat to dream shape and then we have before after and behind that we have the red highlight block with the white text that is taken from channels like diarrhea ceo but why does that work because it's bright red on a dark background and it grabs your attention so visually you see the red box and you see underneath it then dream shape like you've got to think through what the viewer is going to see and then they see dr sean and medical scrubs which In a given instance, they're like, this guy's a doctor and an authority on this topic.
And so they can already put together generally what the video is about, but then they read the title, how to lose visceral fat so fast it feels like cheating. So the thumbnail and title work together, but the thumbnail is what catches that initial attention. So all this to say is like the biggest thing that they have to carry through everything is understanding the first principles and really going deep on like understanding.
the decisions that the viewer is making at every single stage of spending their attention from the moment they land on youtube all the way through to the very end of watching a video and are they satisfied or not so thumbnails the biggest advice yes there's these tactics like three element rule visually representing the desired outcome associated with the video having a curiosity gap so on and so forth but these things become obvious when you really break down the job of a thumbnail and you think through from the viewer's perspective of how can i influence their decision making by the decisions that i make how can i influence them looking at my video first over all of the others how can i then influence them clicking on my video before they consider another video how can i do that in the shortest amount of time to not even give them a chance and so how many thumbnails do you test It depends on whether uncertainty lies because sometimes we'll not test any thumbnails because then if we're confident, if we're 100 % confident in a certain thumbnail, there's a disadvantage to testing thumbnails, especially on a newer channel or a smaller channel because you're splitting the watch time share.
What's a smaller channel for you? Like sub a thousand slash low thousands of views per video. It depends on the market, of course, but like.
Think about, for a thumbnail test to have a conclusive outcome, like this thumbnail was the one that got higher watch time share, for that to actually happen, there has to be enough data collected. And so if you're not going to get enough data in the first place, you're going to slow the testing process with YouTube because it's going to look at this thumbnail, okay, 30 views on that thumbnail, 30 views on this thumbnail, like it's inconclusive data.
So if you're confident on what is the right thumbnail, then you should run with that because then all of the attention is going towards that and you'll therefore be able to give YouTube significant amount of data to be able to make a decision on whether to push your video further. So you should never test a thumbnail just because, like if you're super confident on what is the right thumbnail, you should only test it if there's uncertainty.
But even still, if you're doing the right pre -work in the research, you should still be extremely confident in every thumbnail that you're testing, right? So you shouldn't be like just testing random thumbnails for the sake of it, you know? So say like you're like very confident in thumbnail, but it flops.
How long do you wait to know it flopped? Yeah, so like this is where we get, this is kind of where we get into analyzing the video post -performance because it depends if the video flopped because of the thumbnail, first of all. Like what if the thumbnail wasn't the reason why the video flopped?
It might have been the title. So you have to first actually diagnose. What is the hypothesized reason why this video it could be like right title right thumbnail, but bad video exactly That's the thing so like you're gonna do This is why you have to Yes, look at the analytics, but you have to the analytics are just signal as to what to look out further They're not the thing that tells you what to do like low click -through rate doesn't tell you to change the thumbnail look yeah like sorry to cut you off so like what would you look at to know the video is the problem would it be like average view duration or like other stats like that like retention yes because that that okay so the video is failed if it drives low viewer satisfaction which is a culmination of multiple things and so it can be harder to diagnose because it factors in yes watch time but we've had videos that i've gotten hundreds of thousands of views with six percent watch time in fact my video had 11 watch time but
it's the biggest video in the youtube growth niche and added 200k more so it's successful even one of our pods like the duration was like lower yeah but it just kept ripping like so yeah it's it's a it's one factor but then there's also session duration do they go and watch more of your videos there is positive comment to view ratio how many positive comments to the amount of views that the video has and also there's the actual qualitative sentiment of those comments like when you look at those comments what is the sort of feedback that you're getting is is it people just being like good video or is it people being like oh my god like this video was so good on x y and z how is this video not blown up yet yeah like and then also like to view ratio subscriber to view ratio it's everything even surveys but i will say the most leading indicator of a successful video before the video has been pushed is comment sentiment and positive comment to view ratio followed by like to view ratio and subscriber to view ratio.
Because like with my video, even when I had a couple thousand views, it had numerous comments being like, oh my God, I've never heard this advice before. How is this video not blown up? How does this channel only have 4 ,000 subscribers?
Now the video has over 70 ,000 views. The channel already has like 15 ,000 and counting and soon will be the biggest channel in the YouTube growth niche. But like, that was that that is something that i have seen consistently as an early predictor of success that nobody talks about so yeah i've seen that too yeah you can feel it yeah when you start to see comments you can feel like it's a runner it's just positive positive positive like or it could also be comments that they like the person in the video so much personality yeah like something's different it's either value or personality like when we did a couple pods some people you can just tell like wow they have like a real like a crazy fan base and we start to see a lot of comments like all right it's a runner yeah because they have more people that are fans it just never stops so it's like yeah if you make a video you can like and the thing is you can be conscious when you're making a video oh this is going to get comments yeah this is going to get a comment oh let's talk about that that's going to get a comment or like um
That's why I like examples so much because when you're using live examples or you test someone live, it's like, oh shit, he actually, do you know that a couple of people will be like, damn, he actually shit tested himself and it worked or like, oh damn, they actually did it. And then, you know what I mean? Like you can, you can actually like engineer it, but you also have to know who you're speaking to.
And I think that's why it comes back to awareness levels of like, do your research. Cause if you know who you're speaking to, it's like, you know exactly what you have to say to trigger them. so i don't know i think i think it's super interesting because it's all like engineering at the end of the day yeah i think because like that yeah it's definitely the strongest predictor like with my with my video like i intentionally deployed a lot of aha moments which like i really carefully structured when delivering the presentation and after the after the presentation as well in person people were saying like well i never heard anybody talk about the death first search algorithm that was such an interesting way of thinking about youtube when all these content people are talking like oh like brand identity but you're just like math you know, computer science algorithms.
It's like a unique perspective of, you know, and so I think, and I got that signal in person, but then I also got that when I did the video. And this is, it's definitely by far the biggest thing. And equally, if you're getting thousands of views, but no comments, that's when I've typically seen like a flatline later following it, right?
So. i would say it's all of those things together like if you're seeing you're getting a lot of positive comments early on and you've got a higher number of views you've got a high and you've got a high number of likes for how many views you have and you're getting a lot of subscribers for how many views you have too like those three things stuck together that's why it's everything you look at the whole picture you can tell like oh like something i feel something different with this video yeah So something I'm curious about is when you have like your thumbnails, what are you using to test?
Do you have like your own thumbnail like testing tool? Did you use YouTube? Like what are you using to test?
Yeah, I just use YouTube. Like I just use the native YouTube tool to do the testing of thumbnails. But I typically run thumbnail tests manually because I typically have a lot of high conviction in the thumbnail that I'm running with.
Like again, I test for uncertainty. If I'm uncertain on what is the best thumbnail, despite I know both of them are super strong because I've done the proper pre -work, I'll test two. If there's three where I'm like, okay, I've got one where it's this concept, but I want to test this slightly different quote to see which one gets resonance more.
But then I've got this concept, which I think is a bit of a wild card, but this could work really, really well. I'll do that. Sometimes it's two thumbnails and two titles.
Sometimes it's all titles. It's really just like a feeling thing too, of like... That's what I'm starting to tell from what you, like a lot of the stuff you're mentioning is like, just know who you're speaking to.
And then some people were like, I want to test five thumbnails. Like I want to rehash every two weeks. Well then it's like, is there even a point?
It's like, is that the why? Like there's no point in rehashing thumbnails if the video evidently, when you do a analysis, a post upload analysis, like that was the problem, you know? Cause if you look at the retention graph and you see, oh my God, there's a massive drop here.
oh, I gave a super hard direct call to action, probably why I dropped. Let me cut that out. And also going forward, let me message my call to actions better.
Bro, it's like when Ryan Clogg was popping off, people were like, oh my God, dude, he found a format. It's like, nah, like the format and the video, like from an outside perspective, it was shit. But when people watched it, that like 50 people that gave him a shot were like, what the fuck?
This guy's going to blow up. And guess what? they like another way of commenting is people posting that video on like twitter yeah being like dude this guy's gonna fucking blow up this guy's gonna fuck yes yeah yeah like that's another way of like showing it or like people sitting there and like making a story on a guy being like i don't know how this is like still like a hundred views like if you do that level that's when you start it's like it's like these weird like things that make people Like take action or act a certain way.
But the funny thing is these concepts they apply it's like a bunch of stuff It's like when you're building a software company is the same thing when you're building a product in econ It's the same when you're doing a YouTube video. It's just it's like it comes down to marketing psychology. Yeah I remember when the first time I had the idea for that screenshot of the YouTube video with like the clicks the book calls cash like that I was like I knew would fucking hit Yeah, because no one had ever shared something like that before and now it's like all over Twitter all the time And I think like the share ability like you have to genuinely know you're like shocking someone.
And I'm sure that insulin video, for example, a lot of people were like, holy shit. But then people will just make a video and it sounds like everything else. And if you can't have that trigger, it's like.
Yeah, that's why the unique mechanism works in the content for one. But yeah, like I think it comes down to like having that effect on, like obviously the packaging matters. Like you mentioned Ryan Coggan.
So his videos were just that good to where the YouTube algorithm just had to push them. It had no choice. But.
Not to say like he could have made better decisions in the earlier stages and who knows the video might've got. Thing is he's also a marketer. Yeah.
So they weren't like that bad. No. I think they weren't like horrible, but like.
they were good enough because he knows who he's speaking to. It was intentionally unintentional. Yeah.
Like he just naturally knows who he's speaking to because he's been to masterminds all the time and everything. So he just has an idea of like, okay, I know who wants to listen. And like, he would still put the right keywords.
The screenshots that he would have on his videos were like him showing something you clearly recognize. Oh, it's an org chart. Like, oh, this is this, or this is like, you know, a bunch of stuff with like, then he would break it.
So it's like, you have to want, you want to find out what the rest of the Myra board says. So I think it wasn't as like. random as it makes it seem yeah and a lot of these people who do the raw videos like it is very intentional and strategic like we did the speed running one for glen coco and that like looks raw and not planned at all but it was actually meticulously planned right and that video did like 300k views and made hundreds of thousands of dollars so like that like you've you just got to understand your market you know you've really got to understand them deeply so like say right now you got the click yeah right person's on this they click what do you do in the first 30 seconds yes okay cool make sure that you convert that click and like like you want to have banger retention yeah yeah what do you do those first 30 seconds okay well first of all retention i'll get into that but like the because the job of the hook the like the job as soon as you've got the click if you've got the click it means you've set an expectation
in the title and the thumbnail that is desirable enough to where they've gave you a chance and the first thing that they are thinking after clicking on that is should i continue spending my attention here and there are multiple questions underneath that there is is this video really about and gonna do what it say it's gonna do like is it really about what it says and is it really gonna do what it says why is this person even qualified to be the person to teach me on this thing if they if they believe the first question, that's the second question they're asking, then it is, okay, like I, you know, I know the videos about this thing and I believe that this person can truly fulfill on this and give me the value that I need, but I just still don't quite see how I'm going to be able to get there and how he's going to take me through this massive transformation that I've struggled with in this one video.
And if you solve that question as well, The next thing is, is this even for me? Like they could be thinking that throughout the hook is like, is this specifically for me?
I know that I resonated with the claim, but like this could be for this person and this person. And like, I don't know if the advice is going to be tailored to me. Promise, proof, plan, persona, four Ps.
That's the framework that I use for all hooks. Promise solves the first question of, okay, is this video really going to deliver on what it says it's going to deliver? You are basically reaffirming the promise in a way that is not the exact same as what the title and thumbnail communicated, but in a way that gives them the confidence of like, okay, I did click on the right video.
And like, he's giving me a bit more of that confidence. To answer the next question of why is this person qualified? That's where proof comes in.
You've got to give the strongest amount of social proof and experience and establish your credibility. relative to the expectation that you set. Whatever the video is about, whatever expectation you set, you need to make sure you've got really strong social proof that really convinces them of like, oh, this is the fucking guy.
This is the person that I want to listen to. Then once you've done that, plan. So plan is basically giving clarity.
behind the roadmap of how you're going to deliver on the promise. So for example, if you're doing like a full Facebook ads course of teaching somebody everything they need to know about Facebook ads, and you just say, yeah, I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about Facebook ads. Okay, but how are you going to do that?
Well, I'm going to tell you how the Facebook ad algorithm works. I'm going to show you how the Facebook ads manager works and how to navigate around it. I'm going to show you how to come up with winning ad creatives using the Facebook ad library.
I'm going to show you how to set up your campaign structure. I'm going to show you this, that, I'm going to show you how to analyze the ads. If you lay out that bullet point of like, it's like, okay, like I really, this guy's really thought through this.
Like he's literally covering everything. I don't even have a single objection in my mind. Like there's not another question that I have around, oh, but what about this thing?
He's covering everything, right? And then persona is just confirming, giving the reassurance like this really is for you. So for example, for Facebook ads and other, like just giving that as an example, again, it could be for e -commerce brands.
It could be for. general businesses. It could be for local businesses.
It could be for the Facebook ads agencies themselves. If you're targeting e -commerce brands, you want to make sure it's clear it's for the e -commerce brands. But what you also don't want to do is neglect the other audiences if it's truly relevant for them.
Because if you're like... limiting the total addressable market of the video for no reason, then the video is just not going to do as well as it could. But if you don't make it clear that it is truly for the e -commerce brand, the core target market, then you might lose resonance with the e -commerce brands and they might click off.
So this is where you can say a line directly, like whether you're an e -commerce brand looking to scale to eight, nine, 10 figures, or you're just a local business looking to get Facebook ads running and start getting a high return on ad spend, or If you manage multiple businesses running Facebook ads for them, or if you're just somebody who wants to learn Facebook ads in general to grow your business, this video is for you.
You've called out the core target market so they know it's for them, but you've also made it clear to the other markets, the TAM, that it is for them too. So now they have the reassurance that this video is truly for them. And that's how you solve all four objections, essentially, is what they are, is objections to clicking.
off the video you solved that is literally all of the possible uncertainties that they have in their mind and if you clarify all of them properly they're like okay let me give this guy a shot let me hear what he has to say and that's where you get into the next video i will say though beyond that hook because that's the hook framework but there's one really important stage right after the hook that i hear nobody talking about and the way that i kind of recognize this is an important part of the video is actually through running my own business So the hook is essentially a sales call.
Like you're essentially selling them on watching the video. The next part is onboarding. And everybody in business talks about how important onboarding is.
It's literally the most important part of the entire relationship. Your goal in onboarding is to give them time to value as fast as possible so they don't get buyer's remorse. But nobody thinks, or I've never heard anybody talk about YouTube in that way where the same thing happens.
Your goal is to remove any potential like any potential possibility of buyer's remorse, but buying instead of money is the currency, . And so the way that you do this is through shortening and maximizing time to value.
So straight after the hook, the next thing they're thinking is, okay, let me get this guy. So let me hear what he has to say. If you straight away, bam, give them a massive aha moment within the next 30 seconds, it's like, whoa.
Like this guy actually really knows this shit because he's actually just applied it. The same way if somebody comes onto my service and like within the first week, their first YouTube video is popping off. It's like, okay, like I believe this guy.
I was a little bit uncertain after I paid this much, which I value so much, my money, but attention is actually an even more valued currency. So like, you know, people really are like looking for that opportunity to click off. And if you give them really fast time to value, like you've got them.
And then like all this shit about. open loops and storytelling structures and all this BS. It doesn't matter.
People overcomplicate that shit. It's like focus on the hook structure that I just said to remove all those objections, focus on shortening and minimizing the time to time to value and maximizing the value achieved in that time to value. And then from there, continuing to keep up that same pace and that same level of value throughout the video.
So the experience is very good and also leaving them off very strong as well. So after they finished the video, they're like, holy fucking shit, like that was a banger video. And that's where you create the reaction of, oh my God, this video was so good.
Like, subscribe. Nobody even likes and subs, like people, for somebody to like and subscribe is a massive deal and leave a comment. Think about.
how much satisfaction you have to drive for that to happen at scale. And so that's why it's such a big signal. And so if you're having that effect on viewers to where they're doing all three of those things and at a consistently high rate across multiple different viewers, that's how you create that effect.
And that's how, as we spoke about, that results in that sort of winning performance. Okay, so once you have the hook, you kind of have the post hook onboarding to the video, how do you keep them fulfilled? Throughout the whole like video even though most of work is done there Yeah, I think it's as I say people over complicate these YouTube tactics in the execution such as open loops payoffs Storytelling structures so on and so forth realistically the only thing that matters is Understanding the expectation that you've set with the viewer and the promise that you've made that's got them to click in the first place Under that overarching expectation, what are the micro expectations of all the different things that they could be coming into this video wanting?
It's a different view, it's at different stages of valuing different things. And you've got to be aware of the whole map of the different things that you need to cover in order to satisfy everybody's expectations or at least tend to that as much to 100 % as possible. If you understand that and you just fulfill that to a way in which is you know communicated very well and clearly you are using editing as a tool to educate the viewer better not to retain the viewer and you're just making the decisions within the video that ultimately lead to you meeting and exceeding that expectation that was set as much as possible in every single aspect of the video like that's all you need like if you like my video the most valuable youtube training you'll ever watch it worked well because it was the most valuable youtube training you'll ever watch and in every aspect of what i covered it was like nothing anybody had ever heard of right and so but that video as i said 11 retention no editing but
it was super clear the value that I was giving. And this goes across many, many, many videos, course videos, 4 % retention, 5 % retention. But there's no way it doesn't meet the expectation of the viewer if they click and they watch that video.
So what do you do if you have a Myra board breakdown or a challenge video or a vlog? I don't know how you make your onboard people into a vlog. It's a real question.
How do you differentiate between the formats of the videos? Yeah. So the thing is, so obviously what you do in an educational video and a vlog is entirely different because what they value is different.
Somebody who clicks on a vlog, be real with yourself and understanding your audience and what do they expect from that vlog? Like if you're doing a lob style vlog with all this different flashy stuff and like, what do they want from that? What sort of feeling do they actually want created in themselves?
They probably want some inspiration and motivation. They probably want to see what the life looks like. They probably want to see supercars and girls in bikinis.
But you've got to understand what they want. But it's true.
But it's true because you've got to understand what the audience truly wants and you've got to deliver on that. But also it's like, it's the opposite. Maybe, maybe if you analyze the market well enough, you understand that people are sick and tired of that stuff, or at least your target audiences.
And what they want is somebody who's super real and contrarian and anti -guru who just cuts through the noise and is like irrefutably themselves and such a breath of fresh air compared to those people. It's like, um, i think one thing daniel dylan did really well is he turned like vlogging into documenting but he put lessons in it so people would feel like they're not brain rotting watching a vlog yeah like to make the excuse to themselves yeah it's like oh this is productive yes but it's really entertainment yep right like when you look into it there's like no education maybe like some stuff is like oh how to onboard an employee but like just watch onboarding employee video yeah um but it's like productive viewer viewership of vlogging so it's like even like dom yacovone i mean maybe that's different because he dives more deeper into business but he has business videos but his vlog are like it's you watch a vlog but you're being productive because you're watching an entrepreneur living and so it's like it's an example like it's like a documentary but like it's not it's like a really interesting thing people that watch down there and like they're convinced like it's productive it's like 300 000 people
are convinced it's productive vlog watching. But if you're like, oh, I watched this guy's vlog, it's like, oh no, he's brain rot. But it's kind of doing the same thing for a different persona.
So it's like an entrepreneur's brain rot is not the same as a guy who just wants to become rich's brain rot. Is that valid? No, it's 100%.
Because at the end of the day, humans are humans. The top entrepreneurs in the world sit on their toilet scrolling Instagram reels.
Everyone is human. And so you've just got to play into that. You've got to understand.
It's true, though. People will look at that and be like, oh, no, that's actually productive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, oh, that vlog is a productive vlog watching. But it's like, is it? Or is this fulfilling your dopamine hits needed?
Because it makes you feel smart. It's like, oh, if I watch him, I could do more. And I could da -da -da -da.
And I could develop. But then most people just end up in the same place as the little guy who wants to become rich and makes $10 a month. It's like.
In each of their life stages, they've changed the same thing. I would argue that he has a higher chance of making a big jump watching the guys that are super rich because he's super broke. But the other guy already has the answers, but it's all like, should I be waking up at 5 a .m.?
Or should I be using my red light and then putting my camera in this way? But it's interesting because I think Daniel still brought a new perspective. I think people that were watching were also like, trying to understand how he films and then he introduced like a whole like new like filming concept so it's like i find it interesting that they both do vlogs but they both served people in such a different way because the kid is not going to think about oh he's vlogging this way i'm going to vlog like him but all the entrepreneur creators that are watching are actually doing that in that video so they're watching him but really they're watching how he's doing things it's like recreate it so like two it's it's like oh they already know they can get rich they're not going to watch him because they can get rich so it's like But they watch that guy because they're not really sure and they want to know what that life could look like.
Basically, we know what that life looks like. It's just like, yeah, I don't know. It's like...
No, because yeah, he understands the different types of viewers that he's attracting and he's satisfying both of them. Like he's satisfying that more entrepreneurial founder -led brand desired type audience who want to build their own brand because they're not even listening to the things he's saying. They're like, but they're probably like really studying the video of like, how is he doing this?
like how is he doing these different angles and creating this aesthetic and that results in high view satisfaction from like a watch time point of view etc and the other side of the coin they're not studying that stuff they're just like watching it like wow like this is so cool and i'm getting so much value so i'm being productive right So yeah, it's like, there's also like this day in the life of a software engineer.
Like this is one of the biggest day in the life repeatable videos, like day in the life of a job that is like super interesting to the most like wide time audience because it's like, they're like, oh, like I wonder what it would be like to be a software engineer. You know, so you've got the software engineer audience of like, who are genuinely curious of what is it going to be like when they step into this role and is this the right role for them?
And then you've just got the people who are like, wow, like I really dream about like having, you know. How do you hijack both? what in terms like how would i yeah like how do you because i guess if say you're like day in the life of building a startup a lot of people maybe are well it's assessing the market and it's this is again like you have to go to first principles and that is the underlying thing because this is where breakthroughs come from the first principles thing and comes from elon musk where he's like everybody there was this predisposed way of this is how you build a rocket a rocket can't land itself and he just scrapped all of that and discarded that and he was like well no like let me actually break this down why would a rocket not be able to land itself?
And he figured out that rockets could absolutely land themselves, just nobody actually questioned this predisposed thought that everybody had. What happens in a market on YouTube is everybody ends up copying each other because they have confirmation bias of, oh, this thing's working, let me do the same thing. But not many people go back to first principles and question, well, like, is this really the best thing to do?
Because what if... In the software engineer market, this video probably exists, but we'll play the example of everybody's making these day -in -the -life aesthetic software engineer videos. Have we questioned if that target market wants a realistic day -in -the -life of a software engineer?
One that's like all these vlogs that really hits on the nerve of like all these vlogs that you're probably seeing and probably watching and questioning, is this really what it's like to be a software engineer, this aesthetic life? You know, is this really true? I'm going to be addressing that in this video.
This is actually what it really is like to be a software engineer. You know, because this is where you find the gaps in the market. If you understand your target market and you go back to first principles.
Would you do a video even like reviewing them and like spotting like, oh, this is actually not true. Like here's on my life. Yeah.
Because you're thinking, what is the viewer thinking about this market right now? It's like everybody's doing these day in the life software engineer videos. And what do they potentially want?
that is not being given to them. You know, it's, for example, one of my first clients, this was a small win, but it's just a good example. Levy, like when this was literally my first client.
So the services evolved massively. Yeah. Yeah.
And so like. The video that we did for him, which wasn't a big one at all, this was back in the day, so not a big, but it was a big success for him at the time and at the stage in the market. This was when AI agencies really started to pop off.
His business opportunity was a lead generation agency. Nobody had heard of a lead generation agency. Everybody was making videos around how to start an AI agency, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Nobody, I was like looking at that and I was like, everybody's copying each other, making these good videos. I was like, do people not feel like skeptical of this business model? Like, are people not, like everybody's saying they want to start this, but has nobody like got that uncertainty in the back of their mind of, Is this really the best business to start?
And that's where I did the video. Don't start an AI, AI, AI automation agency. Start an LGA instead.
LGA being like, I remember that thumbnail like yesterday. Yeah. That was like, that was a OG.
Like he had a good, it was like a couple months of a run. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That LGA was like. yeah yeah and that video like it did really well um despite like the views only was like 50k but for him in his niche that like made hundreds of thousands of dollars and it was a breakthrough video for his business and but it was questioning what people believed was the right thing to do and having that level of intelligence and understanding of the market to be like actually i think there's a gap here and then you can combine the data side of it and the visibility to know the right way to to fill that gap Because that's where like the packaging comes in of like, don't start this thing, do this instead.
Cause that was a formula I worked on YouTube. That's why we use that packaging. I can go super deep there, but like that's what most people do and do that level of thought.
And so if you're putting that level of thought into every decision that you make along the YouTube process, that's how you win, you know? So yeah, like you should be questioning what's happening in your market and whether there's an underserved part. Is that why you also question outliers so much?
And yeah, because nobody else does. Like everybody just goes to these tools and they pick an outlier that's performed really well. And they're like, let me just yoink and twist it to the niche.
But like, that's the bar. The bar is so low because nobody understands the stuff that I'm talking about and nobody thinks about that. And so if you can do that in your niche, you're going to run everybody over because like everybody else is at most doing adjacent niche ideation.
taking these thumbnail tactics like three element rule. That's interesting. It's pretty like brain like energy generating.
It like induces a lot of curiosity. At least in me. Yeah.
I guess the natural next thing is like scripting. I'm always like kind of curious like some agencies are like full script. Do you just full script for everyone or do you like semi -script for some people do you like just give ideas do you use like a teleprompter with this like yeah how do you manage the scripting aspect how important is it for you depends on the career and the client and whatever's best for them like my goal with what i do is to remove every point of failure from the youtube process so like what strategy gives you is and like that that pre -work is it lines up the series of decisions that you're going to make so it lines up We're going to use this packaging, this structure, so on and so forth.
And so then it's just about making sure that once you've got the decisions that you're going to make lined up, that you feel 100 % confident, remove every point of failure and like make sure the videos succeed to the highest likelihood. It's about executing on that correctly. And obviously a pivotal piece of that is the actual video itself.
So certain clients and certain channels that we run. they need more support where it's a full script because they're just somebody who doesn't really do well with riffing and therefore they could miss a lot of the value and you know they just wouldn't do well so how do you make sure it does well as like a teleprompter like you yeah so a teleprompter that's what they use to read the script but the more important piece is making sure that we collect all the information from them on what value are they going to give in the video so we have we basically built like a ai uh like a sort of like trained ai model that is like an interviewer like it's like a really like it's trained off of like over 100 interviews that i've done with clients and it basically interviews the clients back and forth to probe them to extract all the information that we need for a video because we want to make sure the script's fully 100 in their voice and fully 100 the value that you get because most people just generate ai slop scripts from pulling information from all the youtube videos but then why would somebody listen to you this is just like asking ai the question so it's that nuanced experience and that ip that we want to have come through in the script and that's the way that we extract that so that's the most important part of the script is actually getting that information from the client and from the creator of like their ip their brain their experiences case studies and like examples all these sort of things
And so then it becomes very easy to write a script from that point because it's just synthesizing all of that information, articulating it in the clearest way and kind of going back and forth with AI usually to figure out what is the clearest way that I can articulate this lesson? What is the aha moment that I can give here that like really hits home with this specific view?
Like it really clicks in their brain. So it's using AI as a tool, as a sparring partner to not do the thinking for you. but to like challenge your thinking and go back and forth with um it's a very useful tool but you shouldn't lean on it to write the script you should like build the script with it as like a sparring partner as i say but then yes teleprompter to actually read from the script But a lot of people do well with outlines.
It just depends on the person. Some people, they just need the vision of the video. And if you give them a clear enough vision of like, this is what we're trying to do.
This is the expectation the viewer has. And therefore, these are all of the things that you need to take off to the highest degree to meet that expectation. Some people can just handle the rest from there and don't need much support.
What about editing? How important to you is it actually? Or does it come down to, like you said before, of like...
depends on your market and the viewer yeah but then how do you know like you know for example like we do the pod we edit a decent amount in the beginning but then now we're trying to add more edits but even though some of the viewers like smarter but then b2b do you just not have to edit because there's a guy he does like vlogs where he like travels and documents him like investing in companies yeah um the black dude from ss yeah yeah and then he like does vlogs that are edited But he also, it's like less, like way, way less than typical.
So how do you know? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things with this. So first of all, it's as I say, like you have to understand your audience and what they ultimately want out of the video.
Because if the viewer purely values the education, then it's just optimizing the viewer experience for education, both in the way you cut the video and then also do visuals, et cetera. for example, if they care about their education, you want to cut out any points where you give a fluffy explanation that could potentially confuse the viewer.
But also, for points where you give value that is hard for the viewer to really grasp, you want to... Points where you give value where it's hard for the viewer to really grasp, you want to visualize that through simple diagrams. I mean, why do...
teachers in school use a presentation with diagrams on in order to educate because some things just need to be visualized some people use building blocks and stuff like that to visualize so whatever decisions that you can make in the editing process that achieve the outcome that you want depending on your viewer so the outcome depends on the viewer because for some that is provide the best educational experience around this given topic and the sum it's like entertain them as much as possible make them feel inspired as much as possible etc so it's two different objectives which influence the editing style right so then that's why in vlogs you know you're gonna have a lot more music when you're giving something inspirational because music brings out emotion in people the same way that words do so you're gonna make the decisions that influence you know you're gonna make the decisions that are gonna ultimately lead you closer towards the objective of that video whereas with a more sophisticated audience
If it's just pure value, you're just going to make decisions aligned with that. You're not going to have music because it's going to distract from the experience unless music is for some what reason, like it needs to be in the video. And this is why like, you know, with a more sophisticated audience, mirror boards work so well and they don't need editing is because people are just there for the value.
And that is a way for them to visualize value very well. But that's why that format works really. It's like a nice.
visual way to yes stay engaged and feel positive about the viewing experience but also it makes the education part really easy because they can visualize whatever they need and i guess like following through with the editing how much does the setup actually matter for you like the physical visual setup of the video how it's filmed i think it's just calling a spade a spade and understanding that certain viewers are going to make an impression about you based on your setup and also the other side of it that most people don't really care that much so I think it is like I think it would be a lie for and I think it is a lie when people say oh like setup doesn't matter you can use your iPhone like you can but sometimes it's going to be better to have a professional setup where you have a background with depth that doesn't look like you're in a hostage room digestibility too like what like how digestible the video is for that person Like the more you can make it visually appealing to watch, the more I want to watch.
It's like if someone's used to watching Netflix every day, that's why like a lot of vlogs that are high quality work because it's like closer to what they're used to watching a lot of. Or like quality of normal content now is just going up, at least from my perspective. But it's like a lot of people in business or like B2B, they read a lot of books.
So they're used to boring content. Yeah. Right.
Or like they do a lot of SOPs or like a lot of documenting or there are a lot of boring calls. It's like boring for them is what they're used to. Yeah.
I said that's how I would perceive it. You know, it's like, yeah, I would agree. I think it's like humans are humans.
And one thing that humans do is make a judgment based on first impressions. And so, as I say, you have to call a spade a spade by like people in real life. make a judgment on someone based on first impression.
Now, is that first impression concrete always? No. Sometimes you might have a bad first impression of someone just because of how they dress or the way they come across in that first conversation.
But as you begin to know them, you realize, oh, this person's actually sick. I love this person. Or some people, depending on the person, make that first impression and it's enough for them to leave the room and not talk to that person again.
The same thing happens with content where it's like, if the impression made isn't good some people leave some people give enough of a chance to where they continue listening to you and it doesn't matter for them because then you give them so much value and they stick around and that's why raw videos don't always matter even if it does look like you're doing it from your bedroom because they give you a chance beyond that first impression and then they're like oh my god this guy's so good and he doesn't even care that he's in a bedroom he's just dropping sauce yeah but so you just kind of have to understand that fact and play with that basically I guess when a video doesn't do as well for you, or you can call it like it bombs, how do you know whether the problem is the idea, the packaging, or the actual whole video?
Is it viewer satisfaction? How would you know? Yeah, so it's the data side and then also just the logical side.
Again, with everything in YouTube, you've got to look at the evidence and then also combine it with your own intelligence. So you look at the video and you see it's underperforming. there could be multiple signals.
So you could look at the click -through rate and maybe it is significantly lower than your average click -through rate, which like there's no right, there's no good or bad click -through rate because it's dependent on, you could have a really high click -through rate if your video hasn't been pushed to a broad number of people.
Like you could have a high click -through rate if it's just been pushed to your returning viewers who are more likely to click on your video, therefore inflated click -through rate. Or you could have a lower click -through rate because your video has been pushed to the masses and it's highly successful. And it's like 3 % because, you've been pushed to the masses so this clicking a low percentage doesn't mean it's a bad thumbnail same with retention there's no good or bad retention because of what we discussed six percent retention videos have gotten hundreds of thousands of views millions of views and so on and so forth so you can't look at those at face value but you can look at them relative to if there is channel history what you typically get like if you're seeing a two percent click -through rate when typically your videos are getting a high click -through rate then it might be something to look at so You need to look at all of the data for what it is, is signal and information and a signal to dive deeper.
So if it's locally through it and underperforming, then you're going to look at the thumbnail and logically think, okay, why might have this thumbnail not have worked so well with my audience? Or might it have been the title, right? And you've got to be able to look at that and with understanding your audience, be able to make a hypothesis as to why might this particular aspect of packaging, thumbnail or title or both, have not worked with that audience.
And then you make a hypothesized solution of like, okay, I think this was the reason why it didn't. And I think if we change this, maybe that might make the difference. And then you test for that, right?
Or if you look at the retention and well, mostly if you look at the retention graph, if you look at the retention graph, not really the retention percentage and you see, oh, like the hook was actually quite good, but then right after the hook, the gradient Well, it increased. The negative gradient increased at quite a high level after the hook.
Like it really sloped off. That's a sign of low time to value. Like low time to value isn't bad, right?
It took too long to give them time to value or the value given in that time was too insignificant because they've watched past the hook. You sold them effectively and they gave it a little bit of a chance and they're like, nah, this video is just not really giving me what I want. This is dragging and they click off.
Or if... there's like a noticeable dip, probably a call to action. Look at the call to action.
Did I give too much of a direct call to action? Or how did I give this call to action? What could I have done better about the call to action that I gave in order to still give the call to action, but not have that drop off?
And then you can obviously make the decision if you want on cutting out the call to action, you can make that decision. And perhaps that would also be the difference, right? If it is that significant.
And sometimes it's death by a thousand cuts. Sometimes it's the time to value. plus the call to action, plus this, plus that, plus something overarching, right?
Which might be unfixable post, you know, upload. So some of these things you might be able to adjust after the upload. Sometimes it's just going to be, okay, this video, I should have done this.
I can't really change anything now. The only thing I can do is use this as feedback to improve the actions that I take next time and continue through that feedback loop. And how often should you be posting?
Like four times a month? how do you decide like what's like the main target usually and why yeah so youtube first and foremost is 100 a quality game not a quantity game so like with understandings to win a take all platform youtube is going to push all the attention to the best video providing that it's packaged well, so on and so forth.
So your goal should always be to make the best videos because that's how you wipe an entire market clean and you just take all the demand. That's how my video became the biggest video in the YouTube growth niche. So that is the first priority, first and foremost.
People want to keep up the frequency because they think, or it makes them feel in their mind, it makes success feel more predictable because if you just do enough posts, then eventually you're going to succeed. But your videos won't even see the light of day if... they're not good enough no matter how many times you post none of them will whereas one video that takes you two months could get could do all the work like i said the one that i did at a 200k monthly recurring revenue which is life -changing for a lot of people and is now a catalyst for my videos to succeed going forward so like you're one video away from completely changing everything regarding your channel, regarding a business on the back end if you're monetizing.
And you should keep that in mind where like one video matters. So once you've nailed quality, then you do as much of it as possible. But you do not need to stick to a cadence in order to like succeed.
Like my videos, I'm not going to put a video out unless I truly believe it's an absolute banger. But... What I will say is consistency is very important when you're learning the game of YouTube because you need a fast enough feedback loop to test what ideas work and also learn the game in terms of, ah, okay, like this video worked in these ways, but it didn't work in these ways.
Let me take the elements of why it worked. Let me remove the factors that limited it from success and continue through this cycle. As long as it stays intentional and it's not just like, all right, I'm just posting four times a month just to post four times a month.
It's like every video, there's a goal behind it. You're trying to do something different. Yeah.
Okay. So now that we've basically gone through everything, I would say like the research, like the actual like research and growth side, which is from publishing to researching to the idea, the packaging, the hook, the structure, execution. Now I want to get into the actual business side to understand, okay, what gets clients and what actually like really makes money for people.
Yeah. And the perfect example here is the video you posted. which has got 700 ,000 views.
You said now it's added up into like, what, 200K in recurring revenue? Yeah, at least 200K attributed to that monthly recurring. That video is like collecting over a mil lifetime, at least.
Mate. Mate. That's...
700 ,000 views and 200K tomorrow. That is like... Yeah.
Like, why, how, what, like... yeah I mean there's a lot to unpack here so I don't know what direction you want me to take with it because I think there's multiple bits well I think it's like the first thing is okay like what do you think you did so differently because yeah I mean we we do like the attribution for that so I can tell you right now like yeah not many people at 200k an MRR yeah yeah from 700 ,000 views so I think first and foremost of course prerequisites the offer matters the funnel matters we can get into that side of things as well because i think it's important that people have that stuff dialed but i know we want to focus on the youtube side first and first is understanding that like you don't need to niche down in order to have a super high grossing video my video is the most valuable youtube training you'll ever watch which captures all the YouTube channels that want to grow from the gamers, from the 10 year olds that want to build their own YouTube channel because they look up to Mr.
Beast, to the people who want to quit their nine to five and make a career out of it, to the businesses, right? And so it actually can be very beneficial to have a broad video if you nail it, because then it gets pushed to everybody heavily. So even though you'll look at the comments and you'll be able to tell some of the people that have watched it and that they aren't the target market, at the same time, we've literally gotten some of our dream clients through that video.
obviously gotten a lot of clients as well because at the end of the day they're in the market and they want to grow their youtube channel just like the 10 year old kid who wants to build his gaming channel right and it satisfied both of them which is the thing is like i was intentional about that even though in the video i was messaging to the business owners i still made sure that it was universally applicable to anybody who was watching but the business owners knew that it was for them but the other people also knew it was for them so that's the first thing is the value obviously provided tremendous value and i made sure the business owners knew that it was for them and i did that through directly call them out.
I did that through examples of other business owners and the realized impact that it had on those businesses, the case studies, and all those things are intentional. And even the way I speak about YouTube in a very sophisticated way, which resonates with those intelligent people more than the basic outlier theory and this dumb advice that most YouTube gurus give, right?
So from a value perspective, that. Now also the call to action part or implied call to action is so important. Like if you attract the right people and you provide a tremendous amount of value to them, you can convert them, right?
So it's as simple as that. You don't need to overcomplicate. If we've done the idea stage, the packaging stage, right?
The hook stage, right? Because you made sure that they know it's for them, so on and so forth. And you provided value to those viewers because you know the expectation that you set and you knew the viewers that you were attracting and you made sure to satisfy that.
The next step is just making them aware that you have an offer in some way and then also converting that effectively. But most people... do call to actions completely wrong.
They massively fuck this up because they'll give a direct call to action, which viewers hate being sold to. And so when a direct call to action happens that is messaged wrong, it feels like you are taking from the viewer and no matter how much value you gave them. they are going to feel a bit icky about that.
And so this can lead to significant drop -off, which means you lose viewer satisfaction, which means it hurts the reach of your video and can actually kill your video objectively if you really do it wrong. But also it results in lower conversion rates, ironically, because you've tried your hardest to give the most direct offer to convert the highest percentage, but YouTube viewers don't like being sold to it.
It's not a paid ad, right? And so the way to do call to actions is instead of taking from the viewer, you give. And so what I mean by that, is there's two applications of this software and physical products and then more service based where the thing isn't as tangible that you are selling softwares and physical products the way you do it is you position the software or physical product in the video in a way that it is just naturally embedded in the video you don't even have to say anything you don't promote it it is just is naturally part of the video product positioning, right?
So like what we did, for example, with Instantly AI, a really good example of this. Instantly AI, they're a lead generation platform. They do sending of cool emails at scale if you don't know, et cetera.
And then one of the videos we did for them was watch me start and sell a service. Massively viral video. Copied it.
If you know, you know. I copied it. A lot of people did.
There's loads of examples. I copied it and it ripped like 70K views, bro. It was one of my best videos.
It's still on my channel. A really good format. So we got that idea from a channel which did watch me start and sell a digital product in 10 hours.
And this was quite a high risk video in a sense that there wasn't multiple validated data points. There was just that one outlier, but I understood the reasons why it worked and I could get into that, but not for the sake of this because it's a different example. But anyways, we took that and we did watch me start and sell a service in 10 hours.
It was basically this challenge where we had to start and sell a service in 10 hours. Pretty self -explanatory. Now...
with that, the narrative video is, okay, we're going to make this business. Okay. Here's the offer.
Here's the name. Here's the website. I'm building the offer.
Right. And we eventually got to the stage where it was, okay, how do we actually get a client now? How do we get attention to this offer that we have created?
And we went through and we were like, okay, YouTube. or content that's going to take too long to get reach right that's too difficult to do in 10 hours paid ads well like it could work we could pay for traffic but we don't know if we're going to crack paid ads you know it's notoriously hard to crack in a time frame like that and so we go through this and we basically are like going through this thought process which is pre -planned of okay we won't do this we won't do that we landed on cold email why because we can start sending thousands of cold emails we can send as many cold emails as we want and if we reverse engineer the numbers we can basically guarantee was the sales argument that we will get this client because If you send enough and you have the industry benchmarks at the stage, you'll close the client.
Okay, cool. Oh, but cold emails take two weeks to warm up the domains. You can't warm up domains in like, you know, it takes two weeks to warm the domains.
Otherwise you'll land in spam. Oh, but we've just like instantly the platform has just released this new feature called pre -warm domains where you can literally get a domain today and it's ready to go. So it literally became the only way that we could do the challenge.
we basically repositioned something that would have been promotional is like the only way like we had permission to use it because we wouldn't have been able to achieve the challenge then instantly became like the hero of the story almost of where like you know and it just had to be in the video there was no other way and if you look at the comment sections hundreds of people had said it was the best advertisement they'd ever seen.
Like there's many, many, many comments of this and hundreds of likes under these comments of like, this is the best I've seen. Wow. Like, I can't believe I didn't even know this was an ad until dah, dah, dah, dah.
So it worked really well. And that video generated multi six figures. Of course, we did the same for Glen Coco where.
We speed run cold calls from $0 to first sale. And we're just using the platform, right? Like we don't mention it.
And so the question you want to ask, or the thing you want to be thinking when you're doing this is, would I have promoted this in the way that I promoted this if I had no affiliation to it? Because people promote softwares all the time in their YouTube videos, right? Like I've got multiplier extensions of outlier tools and stuff like that always visible.
And it's never going to affect the performance of the video because I don't give off energy. which is like i'm trying to do it yeah and so that's how you promote software and physical products it's just like yeah it's just there like what else would you expect that's how you do that but the problem is with more intangible products and services like if you're a b2b service provider or you're a coach you've got a coaching program info whatever you don't already have that tangibility with the product and service so the way that you replicate that same effect is by basically gifting something to the viewer that is another way to give value beyond what you could possibly give in the video itself, right?
With a video, you can't reach through the screen and do things for somebody. So you get as close to that as possible. And what I mean by this is, for example, if you're doing the best Facebook ad creative strategy for 2026 or whatever, people want the best ad creative strategy.
And one of those parts is going to be finding winning ad creatives. If you give them an up -to -date free software tool, vibe coded whatever like a swipe file of the most up -to -date winning ad creatives right now segmented by niche industry offer whatever and you get you give it to them for free like who's not gonna grab that right like you're giving them something that adds value beyond what they expected it's why in the ai niche when people do claude skill videos or claude use cases if people give the claude scales in the comments section if they give the Claude skills free just by going to the free school community and getting the Claude skill who's not going to do that because if they're actually invested into the video they don't want to go and build the thing out themselves when they can literally just get it for free it's like they weren't even expecting to get that value so it actually gives and what that does is it disarms the viewer it increases viewer satisfaction because they weren't even expecting that so it goes beyond their expectations and you've still got the same result where they've took the next step they've opted in for something you've got their information and then you can redirect them to the main funnel the main offer where you introduce it to them at a stage where you've already gone above and beyond at that point obviously you've got
their email so on and so forth so you can retarget them but that is the approach that i've seen work best i actually fell into this with a channel called ryan dice he basically did this video which was how to run a 10 million dollar business with one hour per week and it was going over the concept of a company scorecard right which is like a google sheet where basically you operate the company from through a set of metrics and nobody had spoke about this on youtube so it was really unique value and it was a big aha moment for a lot of people that's why it did so well And he's just going through the scorecard in the video.
And he's like, yeah, like you can get this free Google sheet template in the description. Like just casually said it like, yeah, like I want to give you extra value. And of course it was an opt -in and then I redirected to his main funnel and I paid him like, I don't even know, like five figures to invest in this program.
So I was somebody who actually went through this process. Also, I will say one last thing. Those are the two main ways.
The other way is if you don't really have that or you don't want to create that and you want to give somewhat of a direct call to action. You can give direct call to actions, of course. I'm not going to say it's going to kill your video.
The way that I prefer to do it is through an implied call to action. And this is basically making people very aware that you have a product and service and that if they want to take action, they can find you, but you don't give it directly. And to somebody who doesn't want to hear that, they don't care because they're not seeing it that way.
So what I did in my video was like, towards the end, I was like. yeah, this is how my clients get such good results every time because I run 100 plus YouTube channels in different niches. I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on my YouTube systems.
And so I just have more visibility than anybody else. So when I'm running channels for these clients, I make better decisions than anybody else in the niche and we win pretty much every single time. And so I basically just explained to my target market that if you want to work with me, here's the sales argument as to why you're just...
unreasonably going to win. It's just so unlikely that you're not going to be the winner in your niche if you work with me. And I've said that I've got clients without it being in a way where I'm like, it's just an example.
But they now know I've got clients and they're like, oh, this guy runs a service. Let me check the description. Oh, I'll run your YouTube channel done for you.
So they take action from there. But anybody who didn't want to hear that, they just take it as an example of like, oh yeah, use that example. That makes sense.
So yeah, I prefer to... avoid giving direct call to actions if i can it can be a good way to get a fast feedback loop on data to understand like okay if you do give a direct call to action you know you can measure how many out of how many views did people take the next step in terms of link clicks etc ctr yeah well that's the second version of ctr to like click through rate so per per thousand views what percentage of people click on the link yeah And so like direct call to action is giving you a very direct way of feedback of, okay, how many people did I convert?
But, you know, you're going to get a much higher link click -through rate through the approach that I've just described because people, everybody wants the thing that you're going through if they're invested in the video and they don't feel like you're being salesy. So they don't have resentment towards you. And also it's going to result in a better video because higher view is satisfaction.
Yeah, there's something that a lot of people are doing now, which I personally disagree with, which is like, oh, make videos and you can send Instagram leads to YouTube. Like, you know, the Instagram guys were like, oh, we send people to YouTube. We make videos specifically for our IG audience.
And it's like just middle, bottom of the funnel, like pure value videos. I think if you're going to do that, I think just do it on a separate channel because your YouTube channel is one campaign. And if you're making videos that are outside of or in misalignment with, the other objectives of the campaign, then it's not going to succeed.
If you're trying to build a massive brand on YouTube, but then you're doing super bottom -up funnel content that is extremely valuable, but doesn't really match with the objective of this and also the audience that you're attracting, just do it on a separate channel and use YouTube's collaboration feature, which allows you to get all the benefits of it being on the same channel without the negatives, because you get the algorithm push from any audience you're building over here and vice versa, but it doesn't mess up the channel.
I think middle of funnel, bottom of funnel content absolutely serves its purpose logically, right? If you have case study interviews and these things, it's going to help push over that audience that is considering buying and they hear real case studies, but you just have it on a separate channel. You can do it in moderation.
If it's like, if you're doing one video per week and then you have an additional video per month where it's a case study interview, it's fine. Like it's in moderation. And especially if there's value provided in that, that's relevant to the audience because it's still relevant to them.
But if you're doing like one video case study interview a week, or like one super bottom of funnel content per week. And then you're doing one more top of funnel YouTube optimized video per week.
That's like too much of a split to where you need to split off into separate channels. And how do you know when like, like how do you know when YouTube is actually like doing its job or if like the funnel is the issue or like the conversion mechanism? Yeah.
I mean, the best way to know is to actually have your data tracking in place because otherwise you're not going to be able to effectively diagnose the bottleneck. Basically, you have to be able to run a bottleneck analysis of there are metrics at each stage, which if you were on KPI and you were hitting industry benchmarks and that you were on track with, you would be converting from your videos.
So if you're not converting at some stage in the process, you are failing or there is a bottleneck, right? A bottleneck being defined as you have a throughput in a system and a bottleneck is , right?
So basically, even if the bottle is this wide, if you have a bottleneck of this, the maximum throughput of the entire system is this. So what you're doing is you're trying to identify where that bottleneck is. And to be able to effectively do that, you do need to be tracking how many views you're getting on your video from logically.
Who would be your target market based on targeting? You have to be logical there. Then how many of those people are clicking?
Link click -through rate. How many of those people are actually landing on the site is even another micrometric because you might have an issue with your site. And then how many people opt in?
If you have an opt -in, how many become leads? How many boot calls from there? If you have a call booking process, how many show up to those calls?
How many close from those calls, right? You have the full funnel metrics and you have to be able to measure those accurately. So you can see, okay, I actually got quite a good amount of views and then I got a good link click -through rate, but then actually when people landed on the site, they converted at a really low rate.
And then you have to be able to look at that and isolate that and think, okay, why did that happen? Was it because the messaging on the page didn't match what I communicated in the video or it isn't clear that it's for that particular audience? Or maybe...
video sales letter isn't high comparing, right? There could be multiple, multiple reasons, but you then know where to place all of your attention. Then you just attack that constraint.
Once you've identified the constraint, you can then absolutely attack that. Maybe you weren't getting enough views in the first place and all the other metrics were good. Like of the a hundred views that you did get, maybe you got.
10 of those people to click and then you know so on and so forth but no wonder you didn't make any money because already you only had 10 people who clicked and no matter how good your conversions rate conversion rates were back end yeah you just don't have enough traffic so you've got to be able to identify where the constraint and the bottleneck is and then just attack that solve that And once you've solved that, then you can, you know, kind of continue through this feedback loop of continuing to optimize the YouTube funnel.
Yeah. So now we're obviously going into the feedback loop. Two things I'm curious, obviously, is like one, what are you using to track?
Like, how is your tracking? Which is an obvious one now. But and then the one that's most important is like, what are the benchmarks you have for every stage?
Yeah. So obviously using track your track. there we go you gotta you gotta have some attribution solution in place and so that's what we're using and then in terms of the benchmarks you've got to be able to in terms of like what like the the actual numbers i would say like typical ctrs opt -in rates booking rates i have some ideas obviously but like what is it you look for like what's the benchmark where it's like because obviously before we were doing it no one really cared about ctr like like clicks per views i introduce it to people they're like what the hell even is that yeah but like you need to know that because it also gives an awareness of like how aware are they what you have um but like then you know if you have a video like because you can look at like 10 different videos and then some videos like have triple the opt -in rate of another video so it's like how do you like how do you attack that and then what are the benchmarks you look for is it like
10 % obviously if you have a newsletter book a call funnel it's very different it's like 10 % 30 % it really varies but do you have like benchmarks for stats they should look at or is it also like situation by situation it's definitely situational because like I mean I would say on YouTube a bad call to action like if you're giving like a bad call to action you might see like 1 -2 % I think if you're giving like a really good call to action conservatively you can see 5 -10 if it's the right audience CTR yes yeah if you're giving like a proper position lead magnet link ctr where it's like the best facebook ads creative strategy and you're giving like a swipe file of ad creatives if you're like if you're getting the right viewers and you're communicating that you can reasonably expect that's yeah i think if you're really good you can get to there yeah but you'd be like we've seen some videos get like 0 .8 percent really yeah i mean they might need your help but like yeah
And then some people that are on the... It'll vary. Sometimes it'll even be like, even a free group will get like three and a half to 4%.
But it's also because... That's quite good for a free group, I would say though. Yeah, but that's like the easiest one.
Yeah. But it varies. Sometimes when people are super aware, like it'll be higher.
But like we've had a vlog that had like a 0 .05 % CTR. And then the next vlog they filmed, I was like, all right, just put a student case study in the middle of the vlog. Like that randomly comes or like...
have it be like uh you facetime him to like congratulate him on his result yeah then it implies that there is something and then like that just like took it from like 0 .05 to like one percent because a vlog is like the awareness level yeah it's also how broad is the audience you know like if you've got like a really relevant audience and you time the call to action well and it's like a value -based call to action not like a take it's a give that's what i'm talking about where like you know you can reasonably like expect three to five but if your audience is more targeted than five to ten is what we've seen but then yeah like if it's like a direct call to action in a vlog like that's gonna be mega low because the question also comes like how do you use it the data you're getting after well it's to understand like you can once you've got the full funnel metrics you're able to see what a constraint is and you're able to make judgments based on the constraint like if you've got a really low link click through it might not even be the call to action it might be the audience you're attracting
right? Like you might just be attracting an audience that isn't really relevant, or that can even happen actually at the landing page conversion rate. Like once you've got people landing on the page, but logically your funnel's intact and the messaging's good and you don't see any issues there, it might be because of the quality of the traffic, right?
A lot of people might click, but they then drop off at that stage because they don't book a call because they're not qualified. Do you also look at like the videos they interact with? before they like purchase a local call or is that less relevant?
Yeah, like because certain videos are going to be the ones that bring in the people, but then certain ones are going to be the ones that convert higher. Like for me, the most valuable YouTube training you'll ever watch, like obviously that convert a lot of people, both first click and last click attribution. But then a lot of last click attribution came from the breakdown that I did with Cameron England because they saw that video and then they watched that one and then they were like, oh wow, that was like hella valuable.
So you've got to look at both because... both are important like a lot of people look at last click and they use that as like oh like these are the videos that are highest converting but without the videos that were like super top of funnel like brought those people in you wouldn't have gotten that anyways right yeah so it can lead you to make incorrect decisions based off of that yeah we had um we had a guy book a call last week and we can like we saw like all the that he like went to like three podcasts yeah and then like he booked a call from ig because he was just watching clips yeah and he was like dude what the hell how did you like whatever so it's like kind of interesting to see because people now cross platform more than ever also yeah um have you ever tracked like how long it takes for someone to convert on youtube like from the first like interaction they have to like closing or approximately complete depends on the offer really doesn't it like i think
certain people can have a sales cycle of months sometimes if it's really high tickets i think like but obviously then for certain offers it just depends on the offer as well and how good the offer is but for me i post one video they didn't know who i was before and then within a week they've closed so i just think it very much depends on the size of the offer but i think youtube's the best at accelerating the sales cycles so we're not really seeing sales cycles of you know multi multi months you know max usually we're seeing between one to three months i would say yeah highest tickets but most are very quick most can even convert from the first video or the second watch from a you know like a big one binge session so but you know why it did it's because your video opened and closed the loop so it's like we we actually ran like a test with like all the because we did like a report i actually gave it to vexian uh the report and it showed that like a how -to video a how i video gets two to three extra revenue
They have a how -to. So it's like the video you did is like, oh, this is how you build a 100K a month channel. Well, you like kind of talked about how to do it, but then you also proved that you experimented on their behalf.
So you educate them, but then you also prove that you already experimented. So it's like, it kind of clears both, right? And usually people, they like introduce a business model and they show a guide of how to do outreach.
They show a guide of how to do this, how to do that. But if you do like a challenge video of like a 24 hour challenge, then people will like watch and buy immediately because they're like. you've already done like everything to prove you're legit.
It's all authority. Exactly, yeah. But you use the example as like the best way to educate somebody, but then also at the same time, you're like, oh my God, this guy's the guy.
Like I just have that many examples where it's like, what? Exactly, yeah. Is he just got the magic touch?
And then yeah, challenge videos are like super viral videos, but also like the most authority. I mean, last thing before we go towards the end, how much, do you use a lot of AI in the business right now? Yes.
And like, I guess, which aspects do you use AI in? Like everywhere. So the biggest part where AI is replacing or contributing the most, I would say, is script writing, naturally.
But I would say not in the way that it carries the script writing, in the way that it molds the script the best. So it's used both in that interview intake process to be able to basically bring out the best thoughts. And challenge them and refine and mold them in the planning process.
So even how I script my own videos, but also how we do it for clients, it's this series of back and forth where the AI is trained to be an expert prober slash journalist slash interviewer, right? Where they're getting all of the juiciest stuff and figuring out where the potential gaps are and how we need to refine certain.
phrasing of certain things to make it more aha to the viewer or like you know communicate it better so it's really that sparring partner like the journalist but then also the person like who molds it into being phrased the best less so about yeah like use all my knowledge base and just go write the video which a lot of people use it for so it's used as a tool to make the script better than it ever could have been without it and also in a record -breaking pace that we've ever seen we also use ai a lot in our research because the research process is very algorithmic but it does require a level of intelligence and nuanced thinking in certain areas the same way that a human could do it like an untrained human with the right process and feedback from somebody who is an expert you can delegate that to ai so we use it a lot for being able to keep visibility over the entirety of YouTube of what's working everywhere.
We still have humans involved in the loop. Like we still have assistants who are running this and junior strategists who are running this. And we still have the quality assurance layer at that sort of senior level of strategy.
Who's like, okay, what you just gave me as a report or return is not good. Here's how I would change that. And that constant feedback is you naturally with managing a team.
So we use it there. We're also pushing the boats when it comes to AI in editing, which When I see some of the videos that are online about using AI in editing, I think people are not using it at the cutting edge of what they could be, at least for educational videos.
I think AI truly is already here in terms of its ability to support the editing process and at least increase the speed by 60 % to 80%, which is already tremendous, especially for cost -wise editing. costs quite a bit it's the biggest cost really with running a youtube channel even that's one of the lowest leverage pieces and it's really at that point now where a lot of people can automate a lot of editing with ai and then just having that human process who's kind of overseeing it and 10xing their ability to output um thumbnail design we don't really use it much in like we don't design thumbnails with ai but we do use it to generate poses and get make concepts into reality in a way we never could before so you can use tools like higgs field or Magnific is another one where if you give it enough references and you give it the right exhaustive prompt of like the exact image that you want, it can do it to like nigh on 100 % accuracy, like tending towards it.
So yeah, we use it really in all places, just in different capacities. But I think soon enough, it will become a place where. you know to be able to run 100 youtube channels you're only going to need a head one head in certain areas and like in strategy and script writing etc and a few editors to be able to do that work you know so and for um i guess one of the final ones for someone who's watching right now and they're like oh i want to do all this myself and everything or i want to get a strategist at what point do you think it's smart to get a strategist or get it get an agency or someone to help you i think like I think at the point where you are confident enough that YouTube is the right thing to invest and commit to, and you can actually afford it, of course, and you can budget for it because the reality is, it's obviously good for you to understand the fundamentals, but it does take time and you need to be able to put that energy towards it to do it.
Like you have to commit to YouTube and like you can do it yourself. You absolutely can.
you've got to know what you're going up against and you've got to be able to make the assessment of, can I beat what I'm going up against solo? I think even with strategists, it's difficult because strategists are YouTube experts, but if they're running solo, then their time is going to be spread across multiple clients.
And so even their time is tied to the actual strategy work rather than being able to have the visibility. And obviously you have to be careful. So like what that means is they're able to make the right judgments on the data that they have, but they actually lack the data, right?
So like when they have the information, they can make the right decisions, but they lack the information because they don't have the scale advantage of seeing over YouTube. So you have to be careful with strategists. And that's why hiring in -house, I think is a terrible idea because even if you spend like 30 grand a month on an internal YouTube team, you're actually getting bang average talent and that talent is limited by their time.
And agencies, obviously, you have to be careful with because a lot of them aren't YouTube experts, even though they'll do everything for you. So I think it makes sense. You got to find the right partner for it.
And I would say at the point where you feel like if you make the right decision, it would be positive ROI. If an actual correct YouTube partner charges 5K a month, 10K a month, and you think you're pretty confident that I can at least generate you an extra deal or two within the next three months when your average... deal size is 30k or whatever it is like it's just a logical investment so and the content lasts forever as well and and where do you think like i think to end it off where do you think youtube's going now youtube business growth like where do you see it heading the next couple years yeah i think the sophistication level of the market is going to continue to rise to where right now businesses with youtube it's still very much in the early stage where we're in the phase now when i started my company we were in the phase where businesses didn't even value youtube now i remember yeah and you have to sell businesses bro being a youtube agency was the shittiest thing ever i remember bro it was like you had to prove it we had to tweet about it was like you have to convince them they should do youtube they would miss post 24 7 like yeah yeah and so now it's shifted to where they're everybody's curious about it some people still need to push over the edge because it's
uncharted territory for a lot but the curiosity usually overcomes the uncertainty to where like it's exploratory marketing now and it's officially considered as that and therefore people make the jump and they can logically make that decision because of all the other benefits that come through long form so we're going to start to see the competition increase massively, but still at the stage now where a lot of people aren't doing it at the highest level.
So if you're able to, like a lot of the people who are doing it are at most doing this adjacent niche ideation and blah, blah, blah, and they're too slow on it, right? So there's still a massive opportunity to be at the forefront of it and establish yourself as the forefront in your niche now before the sophistication level rises too much to where it's common knowledge on.
how to build an internal YouTube team to the highest level, right? We're still in that like gold rush phase where most people don't know how to do it correctly. And so if you can get in front of that, you establish yourself for the future as the authority.
So I think the sophistication level is going to rise. I think businesses are going to become more educated. People in general are going to become more educated.
And so, yeah, I think it's going to get harder and harder to be able to stand out. And I think the people who win to the deepest level on, as I say, like a first principle standpoint and are able to like stay ahead of the market that way because everybody will learn the YouTube tactics and the YouTube fundamentals, which don't change.
And it's going to be the people who are going to be intelligent, who are identifying where does the market go next? Where is the opportunity in the market right now? Because there's always going to be a way to break through.
It's just going to be, it's just not going to be the common way where now it's like, oh like these things didn't weren't done in this niche but they were done in another niche which makes it super easy now with this adjacent niche ideation that shit's not going to exist as much as it does right now because everybody's going to be aware of it and everybody's going to be looking out for it so it's going to be the people who are staying ahead and who knows what that looks like in terms of what those common opportunities are like adjacent niche ideation is now you know it's it's hard to tell obviously you can predict where those things might be with the way ai is going so like for example i think with my video, even the in -person talks, like if you have that undeniable authority.
to where you are speaking in front of a room, live riffing, or doing these in -person consult videos where the viewer knows it's not scripted. They know there's no AI involved in it because it's real human. So that's one of those things where you can make a hypothesis of where things are going in one aspect.
And so I think there's lots of these. And yeah, it's going to get harder. And also the people who are going to build the best system are going to win.
You have to call a spade a spade and understand that. if you're going up against somebody who runs a hundred plus YouTube channels and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on YouTube, like it is going to be difficult, not impossible to beat that person, but it's going to be difficult to beat that person. And you have to be smart in the way that you do that because that person has the visibility.
They have the system dialed into a T and like, you know, it's hard to, hard to overcome that, but there is a way, right. You just have to get smart and savvy. Um, so yeah.
Okay. Well, Dude, it was good to get you on.
Yes. And hope you guys liked the episode.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The cold open is pure proof stacking: 100+ channels, Gary Vee going from 10K views a video to 700K, a single video tied to six figures of monthly recurring revenue. What follows is less hype than that suggests. The guest, a computer-science dropout turned YouTube operator, lays out a research-first system and repeatedly argues that most popular YouTube tactics work only when you understand why they worked.
How they asked for the click.
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