Passionate YouTube Expert Guide To Grow On YouTube | @derraleves

I made a huge decision at that time. I decided to sell my company and go all in on video. And little did I know that that one conversation would lead to where I'm at today that we were super passionate about. And it cost a lot of money. It was over half a million dollars to make for that ad and for an online ad, that's a lot of money now for the super bowl, that's nothing. That's a drop in the bucket for an online ad. That ad in less than 12 months did $148 million in sale. That the super bowl is too small for me now like because there's like 24 Super bowl like the audience size Super Bowls happen every freaking day on YouTube right now.

My name is Avi Arya, father of two, girl six dog, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer, turn hotelier, now social media marketer, founder of Internet moguls. And I'm going to be teaching you something very interesting. Darul, thank you for taking the time out for this.

Really appreciate it for sure excited about it.

Excellent. So Darrel, you know we'll try to keep this under 45, 50 minutes before we get started. I'll give you a brief introduction of who I am and what we do and then we'll so it's like a short hero story and then I'll ask introduce you and ask you to share your story with us. So Darren, on the 29th of October a couple of months ago, I turned 44. But the story that I want to share with you is when I was 18 years old, born and brought up in New Delhi, India, all I wanted to do in life was to race streetcars. As an 18 year old mine, I was one of the clearest in my friend circle. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. My dad used to go to bed at night and I used to take out his car keys from under his pillow and race with other people, make some money on the side. And I knew I'm going to become a streetcar racer. I had one dream, to go overseas and study streetcar racing and become a streetcar a professional race car driver. One day everything changed in life. I remember my dad giving me a frantic call and saying, you need to come to my office which was the other side of town. I traveled by bus and I went and met him. I remember walking into his office, Darryl, as if it was yesterday. And there was a red carpet on a wooden floor and there was the smell of incense. He had just finished his prayers and he had just finished that with that incense there Was smell of incense in the office. And there were these two landline phones. You know those phones with those wires coming out from the walls, Those phones were off the hook. Now I knew there was something serious happening because the phones were off the hook. My dad said, son, sit down. This is going to be a very short conversation. He said lots of things that happened over the last six months. And I have to sell the house, I have to sell the cars. We almost have to make a restart in life and I cannot send you overseas to study. And one more thing. You have two options. Join my business from tomorrow morning, help us regrow and get back to where we were, or leave the house. You have only two options. Within five minutes, he completely changed my life. I stormed out of the room only to find my mother waiting outside. I had a four hour discussion with my mom. And I think better sense prevailed because the very next morning, Daral I found myself behind the reception of my dad's small 27 room motel. Now I learned housekeeping, I learned how to take care of the restaurant. But I also learned that my dad is doing a fantastic job of running this. Now how do I find my place under the sun? One day we had an international tourist who walked in and. And he paid us in Dutch guilders, you know, Dutch Holland. Currency of Holland before euros. We turned the. We converted the currency and it turned out to be double Indian rupees. And I'm thinking to myself, what if I'm able to convert all 27 rooms into foreign guests, I double the income, double the revenue and I become a star in my dad's eyes. And with that I had now a new aim, a new direction. But the problem was how does a young 18, 19 year old guy is in the late 90s, introduced a small 27 room motel to people all over the world. During that time, Darrell, there was a new phenomenon on the market called the Internet. This was a service that allowed people to get in touch with people in any part of the world. But the challenge was in a place like New Delhi, only the Sheraton Hotel and the British School Library had access to the Internet, which was $10 for a 30 minute session, which was prohibitively expensive. So I went there a couple of times, went to a few friends places, chatted with a few people, tried to understand what this Internet is. I got some ideas, but it was not enough. After six months I saw an ad in the paper Satyam Computers looking for cyber cafe partners jumped at the opportunity. They took a lot of paperwork back and forth. Finally I had this 6 computer cyber cafe in my hotel. Now, Darryl, I had 24 hour access to the slowest Internet on the planet. I would open a website in the morning, in the afternoon, do something in the evening, some access, started working on it. In the few months we had a website ready, somebody said create a website, had a website ready, started getting some queries to cut the long story short, I was one of the first ever budget hotels in the country to go live. There was nobody. It was, it was like barren playing field. My dad said, this is not going to last forever. And you know, but we made hay while the sun was shining on us. We had, in the next four years we were able to buy, pay off our loans and buy four small properties, 25, 22, 23, which were adjacent to my dad's hotels. And that was the first business that took off in six to seven years after we discovered the Internet as the early movers in the Internet space in India. Now there was a bit at about 2005, I did multiple travel websites. And those travel websites started doing very well with something called affiliate marketing that I had no idea about. Somebody called me, said, this is what we can do. We started doing it, making about $1,200 a day selling air tickets by that time. Now we're about 2007, 2008, a company called TripAdvisor, a company called Facebook and a company called Google come into India. They had one target which was to be able to connect to small businesses. They saw me as somebody who was a mini success story in the small business field. So they asked me to speak on different stages with them. I went all over the world speaking on different stages. As you can see, an opportunity to speak for me is something comes, which comes very naturally. I went and I told people my story. That's when people said, Abhi, can you do this for us? And so in 2009, I started a company called Internet Moguls with a four member company. Bootstrapped, completely left my dad's business, completely opened something on my own. Lots of struggle. Eventually in 11 years from 4, we came to a company of 225 people working with 700 clients all over the world. Called it Internet Moguls. This, Darrell, was my long form story which I tell my clients when I meet them. Then at the beginning and end of every video, I say a short format of the same story on my YouTube videos, on my Instagram videos. And how do I say this exact same thing in 10 seconds? My name is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet moguls. Though that's the short form story of my long story. But the difference between the long story and the short story is now I've got two girls, six dogs, husband, two. I have a great top of woman as a wife and what I found was running my agency. I was not able to give time to this part of my family and that was eating me up from inside. So a few years back we started emailing our clients, we started making zoom rooms in the office and we said we will not go for as many meetings to get known, to get leads, to get sales. We can do everything with video. And that started my journey on doing videos for YouTube videos everywhere else to be able to get known, get leads, get sales. Today, today it's been seven months. I still have the office, I still have an army of people, I'm still the only co found. I don't have anybody else to take care of the office except a great team. But now it's been seven months, I've been to the office and we're able to control everything because of the power of videos. So this has been my introduction and this is, you know, this is what I do. And today me and my two daughters who are now 14 and 11, we travel to every social media conference in the world, interview people the girls want to, the girls have been speaking on stage, we wrote a book together and all of that. So this was a brief introduction on where we are coming from. We've been following your journey. Every time we get stuck on a YouTube, you know, how to choose a title or what should I do, we go back to either your videos or Sean Canal's videos and that's our sort of go to channel. So I'm really very happy and excited that we have you on our show today.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you for having me.

Not at all. So Darryl, before we get started, like I said, we start with our story and we allow, we request our guests to tell us their story for our audience. So if I was to tell you, ask you to tell your story to our audience, what would it be?

Yeah, no, I can definitely do that, for sure. So I think the thing for me was at the age of eight, I was very fascinated with advertisements, commercials that actually would play on tv. I would sit by the television with a VCR and wait for that commercial to hit so I could hit record, so I could share it with people and see how they React. And I dreamed of creating commercials that would be shown on the super bowl because that was the pinnacle event of doing those types of commercials. And, and I just became obsessed with that type of content. And then later on my journey, I really started to watch shows like Saturday Night Live and started seeing sketch comedy and see how it impact and how people would talk about that. And I once again started to record those sessions of, you know, SNL or the. Just the things that actually were interesting. This is all pre Internet. And when, when I went and got my degree, I got it in marketing and advertising because I wanted to be that person that can create those types of ads. However, for me, I didn't want to live in the cities that were more conducive to those types of ads. So it's like either la, New York, Chicago, maybe Miami. And Miami would have been not too bad, but most of them were the big three. And for me, I'm a small town person, I love living close to family and I want, wanted to stay local. So I decided to take another route. And the other route was working for a regional hospital in the public relations department. So I did all their ads and PR and I got to a point where, you know, I was able to save them a whole bunch of money. And I went to my boss's boss who was the CFO of the hospital and I asked for a raise. And he pretty much said, we can't do that. You would be making more than your appropriate supervisor. We value you. We see what, where you're going and in 15 years we see you running this company. And I. Two things hit me. Number one, there's a ceiling, okay, that I can't do. It doesn't matter how much value I bring, I'll never get past that ceiling. And then number two was 15 freaking years. Now, I didn't want to wait that much time. I wanted to take action right then and there. So I called up my wife and I said, honey, I gotta quit. I just, I can't work here anymore. And a couple conversations led to K, you know, I trust you. Let's just go for it. Let's find something stable, you know, just promise me you won't go into business for yourself. And I says, well, can't promise that, but let's, let's look. And I had a lot of great job offers. And for one reason or another, they're right in line with my passions. And I'm like, hey, this would be good. But there was always that little thing I felt like I'd Always be held back because of just the way that corporate structure was. And so I was talking over with my wife and I says, we didn't want to move. We wanted to do something. She goes, well, I think you just need to start your own business, because I think that's the only way that you're going to be happy and the way that you can conform and do the projects you want to do and go from there. So what did I do? The first thing that you do when you start a new business is you go and get all the stuff that you need. So I ordered the computers and, you know, had everything going. I was like, maxing out my credit card and I went to Staples because I needed a desk. And I was in Staples and I was looking at all the things that I wanted to have, but I couldn't afford. So, like, they had these back in. This is 99. They had these nice color printers. I'm like, man, if I could just get one of those, I could show my clients my graphic design and website, you know, mockups. This would be amazing. And a guy says, excuse me, sir, could you tell me the difference between this printer and this printer? And I says, yeah, well, this one has a higher yield. It's more expensive, but in the long run, it will actually save you a lot more money because of X, Y and Z. And he's like, man, you're like the best Staples employee I've ever come across. I'm like, I don't work for Staples. He goes, he looks at me and I'm wearing a red polo shirt and khakis. He goes, are you sure? I'm like, no, no, no, I promise I don't. And he goes, well, what do you do? And I says, well, I'm starting my own business. And he goes, well, what is that? And I says, well, I do website design and graphic design. He says, hey, I'm starting my own business. I'm doing business cards. We need a website and. And also I need a graphic designer to help me do these. These business cards. So I left Staples with a desk for $300 or $200 and a check for $300. So I was net positive, $100. I'm like, this is going to be the easiest thing in the world, like, doing business now. I learned very quickly that that's not true. Like, that was serendipitous, of course, that we could get things going. But a couple of months later, it's more worrying about paying the bills and expanding to, you know, the team and really Going from there, my wife would handle all the invoicing. I was going to get clients and I had to do the work. And so it was kind of a gruel. And so I got to the point of, you know, trying to figure out. So I went to the business card company. I says, hey, do you mind if the cards that I designed that I go out and deliver them? And I says, look, I'm going to try to sell them on a website because people need websites nowadays. And he's like, yeah. And I says, I'll give you 10% of whatever I do. And he says, okay, that's fine. So I would design the card, I get their stuff and I do a mock up of a website. And I says, hey, we did this. And here's a mock up of the website. If you want to, if you want. That is X amount of dollars and we can take care of that. And I go from there. And that one little thing, when they didn't do it, I just pulled somebody else's logo off and put another logo on and put the stuff there and went to the next people. And before you know it, you know, I had over 800 clients that I did website design for. And then for me, I'm like, if we're going to do one off, I need to do hosting. I actually wanted residual money coming in, so we started doing hosting. And before you know it, I was doing a lot of Internet marketing because my love is marketing 100%. And that's kind of where things pivoted for me was I had a business that just made money. We were able to do it, but I was bored and I need my creative outlet to go. And in 2005, so this is several years since I started my company. I was looking to expand my company because we were just growing at a fast rate. We would really work on getting a specific niche and then go out worldwide and find people that could fit into it because it's easier to speak to one when you have something working. And so I went on Craigslist because that's what you do when you expand. And you're too cheap to go to Staples to pick up the desk because you need another desk, but you'd rather find one for free on Craigslist. And I saw that and I saw an ad and it was like, hey, there's a brand new ipod. And if you come sign up for this new website, you'll be entered in to win one of these iPod. It's 100. You know, they're giving away 100 iPods. Okay, you got me at ipod. Because at that time, ipods were about the size of a brick, and they held a thousand songs. I still have that. Steve Jobs just introduced the new ipod nano. It's really cool, really disruptive. And I'm like, I want that. So I went to this website, and my jaw literally hit the ground. That's when I saw the most amazing thing I've ever seen on the Internet, which is videos that when you hit play, it would actually play. And not only that, you can embed them in websites. And I'm like, this is like, totally gold. And I'm thinking in my mind, just like you were thinking, how do we increase profits? Right? What's the easiest way to do that? In my mind, I have 865 clients that I can go out and upsell them on a video that we could put on their website. And that will be just easy money. And so I did for the Next. That was 2005. So all of 2006 and part of 2007, we did 865 videos for our clients, upsold all but two, and. Cause they just didn't want anything with video. And they went out of business by then. So, like, you know, they were just being too cautious, I guess. But out of those 860 videos in 2006, Google bought YouTube. And then when we started to come into 2007, all those videos started to show up on Google, every single one of them. And most of them were like, in the first position of Google. And I'm like, okay, wait a minute. We're spending hundreds of hours fighting with Matt Cuts to get our ranking for search engine optimization websites. And all I did was give it a good title on this video. And they're converting. They're getting people to call. And so that I made a huge decision at that time. I decided to sell my company and go all in on video. And what happened next was we were looking for people to provide services. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, pest control companies, whatever vertical it is. Because as soon as we had one video that would actually convert, then I could move it on to other people and just kind of change out some things. And it just save a ton of money that way. And we were ranking all over the place. We were getting phone to ring, and it was really, really lucrative. And for us, we always stay in a silo because it's just easier that cadence and that deliver. I reached out to a friend and he had a pest control company. And what that is, is we live in a desert so we have these big cockroaches about yay big. And so you have to spray it every once in a while or they totally infest your house. And he basically said, hey, you brought me so much work that it's like quintuple what we've been able to do. And I actually can't just schedule anymore. I have to go out and spray because we just have too much work. And he goes, he was out spraying just the commercial buildings and just the higher end clients. And he went into this piano store and he basically, the owner of the piano store says, hey, do you know anybody that does YouTube and marketing? He's oh, dude, you gotta use my guy Darrel. And little did I know that that one conversation would lead to where I'm at today, because what happened was the first appointment with the owner of the piano store, he says, I'm trying to sell Graham pianos using video on YouTube. I'm like, that's amazing. I love that. I love. This is so disruptive. And he showed me a video and my jaw once again hit the ground. And I'm like, this is an amazing video. Like you, I, I know production because I put so much energy the last couple years into this production. And I can tell that you're spending, you know, 10, $15,000 on some of these video productions that you're doing. Like, okay, first off, like, how many, how many pianos have you sold? He goes, none. I'm like, you're spending all this money doing this. He goes, dude, it's so much fun though. It's just like he'd put these pianos on top of mountains and do all this cool stuff. And I said, that's really cool. And I turned to him and says, I go, what do you really want to do? And he goes, I don't like the store. If all I did is made YouTube videos full time and we made music. That's all I care about. And so we went to work together and I was doing the stuff that I was doing before doing their website and, and coming up with ideas and marketing. And he was like creating music with his team and, you know, making these videos. And then we would take the marketing and the approaches that I learned, you know, to kind of push and promote. And what happened next was in less than a year, they went from a couple thousand subscribers to 1.8 million subscribers and hundreds of millions of video views. And today, not only are they continuing to grow on YouTube, but they fill stadiums and they're playing music and people are impacted by their talent. And if you want to check them out, they're called the piano guys on YouTube. They're world renowned and it's unbelievable, the music. Now what that did was, that was a seed of saying, oh my gosh, this is where my 8 year old Darryl and my current Darrell comes together because like they're getting more views than the super bowl. And that's something that I can do on YouTube. And so I decided, hey, it's more about the audience and getting views on YouTube. And so I went from the one off videos that we get sell clients or doing some lead gen videos to doing these massive projects. And since then I've been able to generate over 60 billion video views on YouTube. And I literally have found the formula to do that. And it's really understanding people, how they, how they go. And it's like taking what I was learning at a very young age of how people would respond to commercials and why they would respond to these sketches on Saturday Night Live and the other, and realize that YouTube and the Internet is made for it now. And so that's kind of, that's kind of where my journey is now. This is where it gets interesting. The principles that I teach in My book, the YouTube formula, it literally, I believe in case study. I think you can have theology and you can say, hey, this is where things are going. But it's more about showing that it works. And so I give the case studies of my journey along the way. We had an ad. This is an ad that we were super passionate about and it cost a lot of money. It was over half a million dollars to make for that ad and for an online ad, that's a lot of money now for the super bowl, that's nothing as a drop in the bucket for an online ad. That ad in less than 12 months did $148 million in sales and it's gotten billions and billions of views. And if you ever want to see a cool ad, just type in squatty potty pooping unicorn and you'll see that I was executive producer of that. And so.

Oh my God, of course, of course.

And that's the lovely thing is I've been able to find my passion, my love, and I think where I'm actually in my sweet spot, which is I love creating content that will engage an audience and have it on the Internet, have people talk about it on the Internet, have people go from there. And I can say that the super bowl is too small for me now because there's like 24 Super bowl, like the audience Size Super Bowls happen every freaking day on YouTube right now. And why, like, that type of audience is happening today? Like, why do I want to be just this little teeny thing when I could. We can go through. I have a client. He's one of the most disruptive YouTube creators on the planet. His name's Mr. Beast. He gets a billion. One billion views a month. I mean, every video is between 30 to 80 million video views. Like, it's ridiculous. Like, that, that right there is crushing it. And it all comes back down to really doing the things that I learned along my journey, which is understanding how YouTube works and understanding that formula to really help. Whether you're a mom and pop, whether you're a content creator that wants to educate or you're a content creator that wants to entertain people, there's a way to develop an audience and then leverage that audience to get your content out there.

That is fantastic. Before I go ahead and I tell you how wowed I am by what you just said, I just wanted to let you know that I've already Pre ordered the YouTube formula.

There you go. Love that.

All right. All righty. So, yeah, so what you just said in the last 10 minutes made me feel that Casey Neistat still has some catching up to do. 60, 70 million views for every video. I thought Casey Neistat was the thing. 4 videos. 4 million videos every time he launches.

Yeah, no, Casey. Casey's his. Like, he's his own thing. And Casey is awesome. But it's like there's only like a subset of viewers that are appealed to him. Now he has a couple videos that it's more broad appeal and they got more video views. Like he actually snowboarded down the streets of New York City. Snowboarded with a drone. There's some videos that have taken off where he's talked about some. The ridiculous first class, you know, status on airplanes that have gotten a lot of views. But it's like, and I want everyone to understand this, like, getting a whole bunch of views is fine, but getting the right views is more important because, like, for me, if I just had 1000 followers that cared about me, that watched every video, and I found a way to have them spend a thousand dollars a year. That's a million dollars. And If I had 10,000 people, you know, that's $10 million. And like, you can. You can literally scale it like that. And I truly do believe whether, you know, it's the more volume, less. Less amount, I think there's true opportunity now where Casey comes in he just has a great story and. And everyone looks for his style because it's unique. But what's awesome about his is he'll integrate a brand in a very creative way. And that's where he. He makes a lot of money, is on those brand deals because, oh, it's hip, it's cool. A lot of the creators want to be like it, but realistically, there's a lot more broad appeal when you're going to the masses. Like. Like, Mr.

Beast is fantastic, you know, Daru. So thank you for confirming that because. So I have a very small YouTube channel, but I started maybe 10 years ago, and for the first five years of my business, we was only dealing with hotels. Only hotels. We worked with 500 hotel companies, hired Hilton, Marriott, every single hotel company you can name, and the general manager, the owner and the revenue manager of every single hotel was watching every single video of mine. So when I walk into a hospitality conference, which is what, a thousand people, I walk into a conference, I walk in like a Casey Neistat walking into a YouTube chest. It's just that small audience, and that made me realize that if your audience is there. So what I started doing was every time I did a webinar for my clients, 70, 80, 100 of them, first I made sure that they all subscribe to my channel this, you know, comment on the videos and see what's happening so that they all go there to know who I am and what I'm doing. So. And I'm happy to learn that you still validate an idea like that, that you don't need to become a Casey Neistat to start monetizing it. Even if you're a small mom and pop show and you have 500 people who care about you, you can build a business from there.

Well, and you can start from zero, too, because, like, you proved it. Going into the model, you just had a great idea. You had an offering. You were using technology to disrupt the normal way because people thought you're insane. Whether, whether you accept it or not, they thought that you're super crazy for doing it. And that's why you were able to get ahead, is because people couldn't see where things were going. And you took that risk. And so today, like, I'm literally in Texas, I'm on a set right now, we're filming a TV series. And I want to share with you because this is in the book and this is probably one of the more powerful things, but all you need is an idea, okay? And once you have that idea, you need the message. And once you have the idea and message there, then you can actually start creating content that will engage. Now, there's other little steps that you can do to really amplify it. But. But three years ago, I was at a conference I put on every year. It's called VidSummit. And I invited a friend of mine who was the executive producer of the along with me of that Squatty Potty Poopy Unicorn ad. And he's the co founder of VidAngel and the co founder of Harmon Brothers Ad Agency. So they're the ones that I help do the Squatty Potty ad. And I invited him to come to VidSummit. And he's like, ah, man, just so busy, super slammed. And I'm like, okay, whatever. And so I'm putting on my conference. And he's like, dude, is the ticket still good? I'm like, yeah, come on in. And so he comes, he flies in and he's like, darrell, I need to talk to you. I'm like, dude, I'm putting a conference on. Like, I can talk to you. But he's no, no, 30 minutes of your time. I don't have 30 minutes. I have 1500 people here. We got things that are going on. Like, I'm putting it on. He goes, no, no, no, you have to come see this. And so look, I knew that he flew all the way in just for this, and he doesn't give things up. So I'm like, okay, Jeffrey, I'm going for it. So we went in. I didn't even get through the whole thing, but I watched a pilot concept for a TV show and I was touched. And I'm like, this is amazing as well. The creator is coming up to our offices next week and I want you to meet with him. And so I says, yeah, sure, what up? So I went up and met with this person and we had a. Just. We hit it off. He had the vision of creating a TV series around content that I personally love, which is the life of Jesus Christ, and it's more about the followers of Jesus Christ. And we had the message and we knew that we wanted to raise money, so we decided we were going to do crowdfunding, but we didn't want to do the normal crowdfunding where you get a T shirt and a slap on the back and a thumbs up. What we wanted to do is do it differently. So we actually went and got approval with the securities Exchange Commission to do a reggae offering. So we actually brought public money in. So as we were bringing people in, they weren't just crowdfunding it, they were actually becoming our partners. Now this is where it gets interesting. So from day one, we basically had what we wanted to do. It was something we were passionate about. We had the idea and then we had the verbiage. Okay, the verbiage is we wanted to create a content that we would enjoy. HBO quality content. But we can't do that in Hollywood. We have to fund it ourselves. And so that messaging was there. So we did get funding. And this is where it's really cool. We broke the all time crowdfunding record in film and television. We blew it away. Get $10 million to do a TV series. And then the messaging changed a bit. Now we had to produce the content. And once we produce the content, now it's getting it out to people. And so we did. When the, when the season was introduced, people loved it. We grew our audience significantly. And in fact we're like 1.4 million people on Facebook. We have 700 and something thousand on Instagram, 700,000 on YouTube. And. And it's creating this machine of getting people to go. Now where the disruption is, is we don't believe that people need to see it on Netflix, we don't believe that they need to see it on Amazon. The disruption is we created with our partners, VidAngel, our own app that we can now own the audience and go from there. Now what the cool thing is, since we launched the app, we have 81 million views and counting, and we're getting tens of millions of people downloading the app and they can go worldwide. And the cool thing about it is we found, because we test everything, we found that. And this is kind of the blessing of working with marketing geniuses. I'm not going to consider myself a marketing genius. I'm good. But surrounding yourself by the right team. We found that when we gave it away for free, we made more money. Don't tell me how that works. But what we were able to do is we created a mechanism that when people wanted to contribute and they did contribute, and they contributed a lot more than just opening up the episode or buying the DVD or whatever. And they're contributing to unlock it for more people around the world. And once we did that, we're now shooting season two. It's fully funded by making it free, putting it on the app, getting it out to the world, and we're raising money right now for season three. We haven't even got season two out. And we're almost fully funded. For the first episode, you can find this in the app for the first episode of season three. And so our vision now is this. And this is where it is. We still have the idea, which is here. We have a proof of concept. People can watch it, they can be fans of it, they can engage with it. We're creating content. Right now, I'm sitting in the BTS room. We have six people that are going out and get a lot of BTS stuff that we're putting on our socials to build the audience so they can discover us for the first time. But what we do now is we change the narrative from, you know, getting it crowdfunded because we got it crowdfunded getting it produced. We already got it produced. Now we want to get it out to a billion people. That's our goal. We're going to get it out to a billion. We're not going to stop until we get at a billion. We'll probably go even further than that. But what we're going to do is we're passionate about it. We're creating content that supports it. We have all these vehicles to drive views to get people to find out about it, download the app, engage with the content, become fans, and then share it. And I think that's the key, is whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter if you're coming in and you're doing hotel or hospitality like you were, it's like looking for those opportunities, but more importantly, looking for the right opportunities. Because I guarantee you, if you did not go for the foreign, you know, approach of your plan, you would have missed out on a huge opportunity to double your money and make more income just because the exchange rates and the things that they were expected from there and you couldn't have scaled how you scaled to buy the smaller properties. Now, the great thing about it is you were able to proof a concept and do something, but then you had your messaging down. You knew how to communicate someone from Germany different than someone from, you know, Denmark, you know, you know, the right messaging and where they're, where to hit them, and you're taking the time to do it. I think what we need to do is always think, hey, you know, everyone can shut us down, so we need to own our own, our own content. We need to own our own distribution platform. Like, why go on another platform like that? Could be top of level, but they need to come in our ecosystem. And I think that's where the next three to five years, you're going to see more and more people bring Their content in their own ecosystem. We're already seeing it with hbo, Max, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime. Everybody's like saying, oh no, this are original and you can only get it from there. You have Peacock now. It keeps on going well. I truly do believe for the amazing content creators that are out there that they can create their own ecosystem too, that can be self sustaining and it could be a community driven thing.

That is fantastic. That is like I said, you've raised the bar on two levels. When you said Casey Neistat 4 million and you have Mr. Beast has a client of yours with 30, 40 billion and now everybody having their own content platform. That is way above what I was thinking and that's what I love about interviewing amazing human beings like you. Because at the end of the show, while I'm thinking about what my audience wants to hear, I go back feeling charged and having a bunch of notes. So thank you for that, Daryl. Now what we do is, you know, I'd like you to address for the next 10 minutes some of our the audience here who are coaches. So I work a lot with coaches now and I've got this system which I call the 3D system where we help coaches get known, get leads and get sales. So most of them are doing well and we start with people who are doing well in the first place and now we get them to use the system to get known. And YouTube is one of the first things that I recommend for them to do. The one thing that I suggest as I say, you do YouTube, because those videos, nobody's going to scroll. They're going to be there forever. So people come in at all given times and you know, and they can come in after a year and your video still there. You can get money from a video you made three years ago. Every video is like a salesperson who doesn't take demand a salary. All you need to do is give a little bit of conveyance money so that they can go out into the market and meet your prospective clients. Now, whenever we do the strategy and everything for them, where we get stuck is a new channel, people don't know. So my question on behalf of these coaches who we coach is that is ads the right way forward to nudge, give a bit of a nudge.

I think every case is different. And first off, I believe anyone that's looking to expand, they need someone that they can provide. And so I think they need a coach and I think that coaches need coaches just so they have some clarity and without like that mastermind of processing, I Don't think we would be as effective as we can. And I rely on that a lot. And I also do coach people, too. And I think the big thing is, where was it for me? Because, like, I, like, I'm passionate about learning and I'm passionate about helping people, but that's not my main money generator. I don't do it. I, like, I want to take on projects nobody would want to take on. And that's the things that gets me excited at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day is that. But I was actually in a session and I says, well, I want to be more an authority in this space. And I was talking to a coach, too. And this coach we were doing, I did a lot with online marketing. And I'm like, dude, I just want to be like, I need to make my name in something. And I'm really, really good at generating traffic. Not just YouTube traffic. It's just like, I can generate traffic. And I says, well, what would be best? He's like, well, you know, you should start creating your own platform to have people consume. And I went back through it. I went through the things that I analyzed, and I says, okay, I'm going to start my own YouTube channel, and I'm going to teach the things that you can't necessarily find right now that people are having struggles into it. And these are the basic things. Even though that it hurts my heart to do the basic things, because I want to do the advanced stuff. I'm going to go from there. And I became that guy, and I posted very, very aggressively, and I was able to get a ton of views and a ton of subscribers really quick because it fulfilled with a need. Now, should you do it organic or ads? I think you need to do a little bit of both. And I think you just need to have strategy. I would rather have one view with the right person than 10,000 views with the wrong people, because that one right person can lead to the action. And I think you just need to look at both. I went with the approach of top of the funnel, where I would have leads coming in that would take them into affiliate stuff or, you know, consulting with me or be a part of my group coaching or whatever it is. I would focus in on that. And I, as I would go out and speak, I gained more leverage. And as that happened, you know, I had more visibility. But I think anyone looking to get ahead needs to clearly define who they're going to be a coach for. For me, I wanted to coach people for YouTube because that's what I'm passionate about. Like literally video content 100% of the way. I don't want to divert on anything else. I have case studies on ad buying. I have case studies on organic. I prefer organic over ad buying 1 million percent because I'm good at it. And there's not a lot of people that are good at that. There's a lot of great ad buyers. But I look at an ad, it doesn't matter how much money you throw at an ad, it will never be an amazing ad until the content's good. And the content side is what I'm excited about. And so I think at the end of the day, it's like defining who your audience is, what your offering is, and then creating all the problems that they would face. And I would be doing videos on that. All the things that they frequently asked questions in the industry I do and over deliver, like, don't hold anything back for your private courses. Like, they're going to get more information from you privately. They just need to have that trust and value. And then I would create all the things that they should be asking me that they don't ask, you know, and once you have those things, I think that will translate into a lot of blog posts, a lot of videos, a lot of content that people go, you know what? I like that person. I want to find out more. And it's going to pull them into that ecosystem.

Got it. So my next question is. I've got two more technical questions before I come to my last question. Facebook ads to drive people to your YouTube channel, or YouTube ads to drive people to your YouTube channel, or both.

Neither. I think that that YouTube ads to drive to a landing page in an offer is great, but I would never promote on YouTube for a YouTube video. It just doesn't convert. Like, if you're looking to sell something and translate that over off of YouTube, absolutely, it will convert. If you're downloading an app, absolutely. But to grow your audience, think about this for a second. The attention span of someone watching an ad is a lot less than somebody looking for that ad and discovering you. And you might say, hey, do you know what? I can't. I don't get any views. Well, that's why I wrote the book. I started a YouTube channel a week ago and we already have a thousand views on that video or on the channel so far. Now you might think, oh, 1000. That's hardly anything. Well, let me tell you, it's the thousand right views. I didn't share it with any group. I didn't get any other people looking at it. People actually had to find the content and they watched it. But you know what the retention was on the videos? 78% of the people that started the video finished a 15 minute video. 78%. So when I put out content they like. We did two videos so far. We got a video coming out tomorrow of that. You know, people were searching it out the other ones now we had 48 of the views that we got on the new video were the people that watched this other video. So they're starting to become fans as we put out more content. And you'll see that in a short amount of time, this channel will have a million subscribers and it will have hundreds of millions of video views because it's great content for the people that it was intended to watch. And so I think at the end of the day, I would not do any Facebook ads to come to YouTube. I would not do YouTube ads to build your YouTube channel. I would use those ads, what they're intended to do, which is inform people about a product. You could even set it up where if they watch any of your videos, then it could be a part of a segmented list that you can use ads in YouTube, say, oh, I remember that person. Oh yeah, yeah. Let me go check out their product on their website.

Got it? Understood. Okay, my next question is today there are many people, creators who are very good at what they do. And they're like, you know what, I don't want to put my face out there, abhi. So what do they do? They go online and they see that a lot of people who are doing videos just with their hands and showing a product demo and their face doesn't show. And now there are a lot of people who have almost everything automated. Like for example, they'll hire somebody from Brazil who talks Spanish because they can't talk in Spanish and somebody will do a cartoon overlay of a story and they outsource everything. Somebody does a five minute funny cartoon storyboarding overlay and somebody in Brazil does the voiceover and they publish the video without ever going in front. Or somebody's doing cooking videos with just their hands or that too. I went on Fiverr the other day and they said, we'll do your cooking videos for you if you don't want to be on camera. So what do you think about that strategy to grow a YouTube channel?

Like that's not new. It's happened, you know, early on in entertainment. It's like you have the idea, I Think the idea and the plan is the most valuable thing. The execution is really, really important, but it's the idea and the plan. And so I'll be honest with you, like, we've. We've built channels that way. And, like, I'm not producing. Well, I am producing, but I'm not acting in the new video or the channel that we just started a week ago. Part of my team is doing it, but we've done this enough. You know, we have the right people doing the right things. We have one person that is doing what's in the video. We have another person doing the edit. We have another person doing the thumbnails. We have another person doing the optimization. And that's how our company grows, you know, and as the channel succeed, you know, we're able to hire more people to kind of, you know, keep up with the demand.

That's fantastic. So if there are coaches who are listening to this, they can have other coaches in their teams. All talk about different aspects of how they help clients. It doesn't need to be one person as the brand. So multiple people talk about multiple subjects. More content, more relevancy, more contextualization, and a different flavor to a channel. That's possible, too.

Absolutely. I do agree with that. I think the more you can facilitate your opportunity to scale, the better it is. And then two, don't be afraid to partner up. Don't be afraid to collaborate. I think a lot of people are very territorial and like, oh, no, you know, I can't. I can't partner. I can't collab. And some of those collaborations become some of the most amazing business ventures that have ever existed on the face of the earth. And so I think you got to look for those opportunities for sure.

Just like Bud Spencer and Terence Hill in the TV world. Look for your. Look for your part, I've always thought if I was Bud Spencer, who's going to be my Terrence Hill, never found anyone yet, but maybe someday soon. So believe in collaborations. And sometimes partnering up with competition builds. Amazing. An amazing channel as well. Okay, so Daryl, for all the people. So I'm going to feed. I'm going to be going to feature your book over here, and I have all the. All the artwork and everything for the book, which is coming soon, I believe. And what we're going to do is we're going to have a giveaway for the book as well. I'm going to get some books and give them away over here.

That'd be great.

We're going to talk about your I'd like to also talk to the audience in the description and about your upcoming ventures. How can people get in touch with you, your coaching programs or your new channel? What would you like to talk about?

So I think if you want to follow me, I'm on just my name in socials. That's where I'm at. I do have a website, derraleves.com that you can get there. The best way to buy the book, it could be on Amazon for you if you're better that way. I have a whole bunch of extras if you buy it from me@ytformula.com ytformula.com that has some very unique training that you're not going to get anywhere else. And we actually have a training day with the guy that wrote the Forward, which is Mr. Beast and myself. And we're giving a lot of depth there. So you can do that. It's only available for pre order. After that we'll just basically just bring it down to the price of what Amazon is and you can go from there. The big thing for my coaching programs, my coaching programs are invite only. I only work with just a handful of people. We do a 12 week intensive and if you go to YT formula, all the examples that you see are from my students. I want to show people actually applying what I teach and you're able to see it. And so there's a lot of the people in the book. I truly do believe in case study. We've done a lot of different industries across the board. There's not an industry that I'm not, I'm confident in every industry that can make, you know, millions and millions of dollars in utilizing video. All you need to do is just understand how you're engaging with the viewer, what type of content, they seem valuable. So you can go to ytformula.com, you can check it out and then those that are supercharged, you can apply. It's an application only. You can go to channeljumpstart.com channeljumpstart.com and that's my group coaching program. Or you can find that on my website. So sure.

Got it. Now my last question, Darren, before we got it today is having the kind of channel that you have. I've seen the channel progress to now having like super production quality. And I love the red couch. I have a red chair myself and all of that. Does having a successful YouTube channel make you cooler in the eyes of your children?

I think I'm cool because of association I think that's what it is. My job is probably one of the most unique. Just to give you an example, with COVID and the Pandemic, everything that's hit, we basically moved. Just why school was out because they weren't really in, you know. And we moved to the next door neighbor of Mr. Beast. And that was really cool because, you know, at night they would play basketball with one of the biggest YouTube creators of the planet and you know, their friends and they game together, all that other stuff. But they've been surrounded by some of the smartest people in industries and they get to rub shoulders and. And they get DMs and texts all the time from big creators. And so I think that's the cool part. And I might. I have one kid that wants to be. He's on Twitch right now and wants to be a creator, which is great. And I have another kid, the youngest super, wants to be a creator. But my middle child, he wants to just do what I do. And so he's already interning right now and he's learning from the best and it's really cool. I'm not saying I'm the best. Like he gets to dig deep with our team and I work with him a little bit, but I just want him to get the exposure as an intern. He has to work his way up. But I think that's what the coolness of the job is. They get to travel the world and rub shoulders with some of the most amazing creators on the planet.

That is fantastic. My regards to your family and everyone. Wish all the kids, your kids all the best. Darryl, this was, this has been fantastic. I would definitely let allow us to say that you're definitely amongst the best. Like I said, we run a very large agency with 225 people. All this white hair comes from managing so many people, relationships and emotions. But every time they get stuck on YouTube related content, I asked them to go to your channel or to Sean's channel and we see it on a take. I would definitely let allow us to say that you're definitely amongst the best. Like I said, we run a very large agency with 225 people. All this white hair comes from managing so many people, relationships and emotions. But every time they get stuck on YouTube related content, I ask them to go to your channel or to Sean's channel and we see it on a big TV in the afternoon lunch session and that's how we get our answers from. So thank you very much for doing that work and inspiring all of us. We are in. Darrell, I'm just going to close the show and then speak to you for a second. So ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you got a lot of value from this. This is Darrell. I put in, I've been putting in all the links to the YT formula, the new book that I've ordered and I've got a few copies and I'm going to tell you how you can get the copy from me as well in the description and the coaching program I would definitely go in for the 12 week intensive if I do get selected. So if you're somebody who's serious about that, do consider applying for sure. Once again, my name is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer, turn hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet Moguls and have the privilege of interviewing so many Internet moguls from all over the world. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next episode.