YouTube Ads Strategy to Attract Consistent, High-Quality, High-Ticket Clients

Well, hello, Tom Powell with Lunch and Learn. Today joining me are our General Counsel Jackie Kuiper, who's been playing lawyer this week. Jackie, tell me about your fun thing that you just got finished doing here, teaching other lawyers CLEs.

Yes, so I have been playing lawyer, not like in a courtroom, but Minnesota hosts a fantastic business law institute It is a Minnesota CLE. It's a 2-day event, which is long for a CLE. Sometimes they're like an hour or 2, but it's a full 2-day event. Very well attended, about 180 attorneys, business law attorneys, and had the pleasure of speaking on the founder's isolation paradox and talking with other attorneys, business law attorneys in particular, about how to support founders and entrepreneurs using a lot of the principles that we talk about on Lunch and Learn. So it was a lot of fun.

I love that. That is super cool. It's great that you're out there sharing it. And Candice, on the exact opposite, out there you got to attend a fundraiser for a school, and I understand that you bought some art not understanding what you bought, or you know why you bought it.

Yes.

Yeah, how does that go with auctioneers up there, going super quick?

Yeah, I don't know how much I spent till they told me at the checkout, but, um, It was for my kid's school, and my kid was so excited when she woke up the next morning and saw it sitting on my counter that I won it. And now I'm worried that I now am a fine arts collector who will be expected to purchase all of the art.

Yeah, isn't that fun? I seem to remember when you guys were in school that I had something like 15 scarecrows.

Yeah, we had a scarecrow shed.

Yeah, that would—

our school's big fundraiser was a fall festival and we made glass scarecrows and he had to buy a shed for just, just for the scarecrows.

Yeah, this is the fun of what we do here at Lunch and Learn is we talk about how we do all the important parts of being founders out there. And I gotta tell you, today I'm so excited to have joining us, you know, most founders think marketing problems get solved with More, more ads, more impressions, more traffic. But scale without precision just creates expensive noise. And that's why I'm excited for the conversation with Alaric Heck. And Alaric did not just learn YouTube from theory. He built one of the platform's largest app review channels, 600,000 subscribers, long before most businesses even understood video strategy. And he took those lessons to build ad outreach into an 8-figure Figure Company, helping founders generate more than $300 million in revenue by attracting the right clients instead of simply chasing attention. What I appreciate about Alex's approach is that he understands something many founders eventually learn the hard way: attention is not the asset, alignment is. The right message in front of the right audience at the right moment changes the economics of growth entirely. So if you're tired of spending money for clicks that never become real opportunities, this is going to be a valuable, valuable conversation. Please help, uh, welcome my friend Aleric Heck. Aleric, welcome!

Yeah, thank you so much for having me here, Tom. I'm excited. This is going to be great.

Now, you're in, you're in Austin today, it looks like. I recognize the outside of your window there as we've talked many—

very recognizable. It's the new Google building behind me too, which is funny. We talk about YouTube, you know, Google owning YouTube.

I can just kind of wave over there and You know, so when you produce that much money for them, do they actually just wave to you instead in the morning? They're like, hey, Alaric, how you doing? You're covering a couple of our salaries over here. Thank you very much.

They should. At one point they sent me a bonsai tree, which was kind of funny too. So, you know, it's like, wow. Or I mean, maybe they just hand delivered it. Actually, that's probably what they did, but they like delivered a bonsai tree, which was kind of funny. So it was like on my doorstep and it was in a box, but then I opened it up and it's a living bonsai tree. It was crazy, so.

That is super cool.

It's still living.

Alaric, I think we need to put some plants. I kept it alive as long as I could, but I realized, so I was like, all right, I'm not gonna let this bonsai tree die. I'm gonna water it and I'll make sure I water it consistently. And I overwatered it.

That feels like how they used to get, like there was like that gifting an elephant because it wasn't really a gift. Like, give them something you have to keep alive.

Is that a horrible gift?

I know it made me feel so bad too. And it did stay alive for a bit, but then I realized I had overwatered it because I was trying to keep it alive.

I should have, you know, I don't know, like, are you worried Google knows you killed their plant?

They do now. I don't know. Hopefully nobody, nobody tell them.

But anyway, that's exactly how it goes. Well, I got to tell you, we're going to start with this. You've got a new book. Video Authority. So where does someone find this book other than when it shows up in their mailbox? Because you're good friends and you get to see this kind of stuff. So tell me about that. How's the book going? And you're, you're on video, yet you went the old school of writing a book.

Yeah.

What's that like?

Yeah.

And so I've been doing video for so long. Like you said, I started the YouTube channel, you know, almost 17 years ago, which is, which is crazy to think about back in 2009. And I was a kid at the time, so people are looking— you're probably looking at me, you're like, wait, you know, 17 years ago I started, you know, I was doing the channel in high school and through college and I built it up. And then I launched AdOutreach to help with YouTube ads. And I'll talk about all that. But yeah, the book is available on Amazon. When we launched it, you know, became a number one Amazon bestseller in multiple categories. And then also we're now running ads for it too. And now we're back in the bestseller spot, which is super exciting. Or at least in the ebook version of it. And yeah, it's on Amazon, it's Video Authority. I spent the last 3 years working on it. And to answer your question, I've got a lot of video trainings, got a lot of YouTube videos. I have thousands of YouTube videos and I think about 1,000 that are more on marketing and then many more that were on tech with my old channel. And so I've done a lot of videos and a lot of content, but some people, right? And I also feel this way too. Like there's something about writing like a book where you're able to really get all of your thoughts, all your frameworks, all your methodology in one place. Took me 3 years from starting the project to actually publishing. I really wanted to make sure I just poured myself into it. And of course it does have a video training. So it's like a QR code on the inside of the book when you get it that has a free video training that goes along with it as well. So I couldn't do a book about video without a video training, but of course it's all written in the book too. And yeah, I appreciate, appreciate the shout out.

Well, that is awesome. And for— we're going to do this again at the end, but you are also giving our viewers today a gift, right? Or an access to a gift that is a— Angela, you've got it there. It's a book. It's a— tell me about it. Yeah, it's how to do something.

It's a 19-page YouTube ad strategy PDF. So essentially inside of the book has all the frameworks, methodologies, and principles. But specifically, what I didn't want to put inside the book is like what buttons to press or what's working like this minute with ads, because that changes all the time. And so with, with the ad side of things, which we will talk about as well, there's principles for ads in the book, of course. But in terms of what exactly to do, what to click, what to, what to do, I have a 19-page PDF that's up to date with all the best strategies. And it's adoutreach.com/gift or it's that QR code right there. And I think there's also some links to my YouTube channel, a lot of content on there, and then my LinkedIn as well.

And you're, you're in LinkedIn and people can see you in person at CoachCon here in June in Florida, right? It's going to be Orlando.

Yes, yes, exactly. In Orlando in, in June, I'll be speaking at CoachCon, which is, yeah, very exciting.

So tell me, so tell me why Dan Sullivan would have you as a guest, and I know why already, but, but why? CoachCon's a huge deal, right? So, so what's going on there? What are you going to be talking about?

It is, and I'm very honored. Um, and, uh, and so yeah, I, I spoke at the, as you know, at the Genius Network annual event in, uh, last November.

I think you received the best marks, and you were against, you know, people like—

what do we—

who'd we see there, Jackie? We saw Chris Voss, And Alaric just clobbered Chris Voss, right? Yeah.

Well, thank you. I, I, I really appreciate that. Chris Voss, obviously fantastic too. A lot of other great speakers, but I really appreciate that. And so, you know, I shared there, I was talking a little bit more about AI and AI video and how we're doing AI in, in some of our ads, uh, at the start of an ad, but also still, of course, you know, having thought leader, like having yourself in the video too. Some of the different things we're doing with AI, you know, follow-up texts and sequences. And that's what Joe had asked me to talk about at that event. I've done some other 10-minute talks there too about YouTube ads, YouTube channel things. But that talk to the whole group was a little bit more AI-focused. And Dan, he liked it, which is great. And Babs as well.

He was there. Yeah, they were right up front.

Yeah, which was awesome. Afterwards, it was more some of their team members. I did get to speak with him briefly, which was great. We got a picture. He said he liked the talk as well, which was great. Then his team, we had a conversation and they wanted me to come out and speak. I'm definitely very excited about that opportunity and very honored.

Alaric, we've got a lot of founders and entrepreneurs that join every week, and I'm guessing that the spectrum, like, like with AI, um, same with like YouTube and YouTube ads. I'm sure there's a spectrum of where people are at with their use of those, of that tool, or their kind of exploration or even familiarity of it. Um, I'm sure there are some people that maybe don't use YouTube ads at all, some that have dabbled. Um, as you mentioned, things are constantly changing. How do you approach, um, new clients or people that are considering YouTube ads kind of depending upon where they're at?

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. And so different people, like you said, are at different stages. Some have never run it before. Some already are running YouTube ads. Some are in between. Maybe they've run Facebook ads or different ad platform and they know a little bit about the advertising side, but maybe they haven't done YouTube ads yet. And so we want to cater and work with a wide variety of different people. I have some frameworks I can dive into because obviously I want to on here deliver as much value as possible. So I got some frameworks for the elements of a value video ad and what makes a great ad on YouTube. I can also then break down what makes a great YouTube video because there's some similarity and some differences. And then also how to target those ads. That's where we go a little bit more high level, whereas, you know, in terms of the more specifics down and, you know, into the targeting, that's going to make more sense for people that maybe have experience running ads. That's why I have the PDF. The other thing is there's a lot of founders here. The PDF isn't necessarily for you, right? It's to send to your team and say, hey, here's a PDF. Here's kind of the playbook, you know, of these things and the video training, whatever it happens to be. I did write this book to be designed for founders, but things like the PDF, that's going to be more to hand that to the person who's going to be, you know, doing, doing ads or somebody more technical on that side. So as, as Dan would say, right, the who, not how is part of that too, you know, and of course, that's also something that we do for people as well, if people are interested, but Basically, yeah, that's how that all works. And did that answer that question? And I'm also happy to dive into the frameworks.

So let's do it this way. So after you do that very wonderful answer, then I go back to ChatGPT or my Claude or whichever one of those, and I say, now explain it to me like I'm an 8th grader. Or actually, in many cases, I'll say, in certain cases, an 8th grader knows far more than I do. So I'll say, explain it to me like I'm 75. Because, you know, I'm turning on my computer and I want to be able to do a YouTube video, which is super cool out there. So like, what's the first steps for a founder to really master in your framework?

Yeah, so the first— the big steps is really to understand that there's 3 key elements that are in both ads and organic YouTube videos, and that is a hook that draws people in. I'll break all these down. A hook that captures attention, an educate section where you're providing real genuine value to the viewer, and then a call to action where it's very clear what people need to do off of that video to take action. The hook, educate, call to action. Those are actually the 3 main components inside of an ad. When it comes to an organic video on YouTube, there's a couple other pieces. I'll talk about that in a second. So when it comes to the hook, what you wanna do is you wanna get people's attention As they're on YouTube, you think about how these ads work. They appear in front of other videos. So somebody might be looking up, you know, information about something similar to what you're selling, right? And they're watching videos on YouTube. You get in front of that video and you wanna pull them in and capture their attention. And you have a hook. It could be a question. It could be, hey, do you have this problem? Well, we're gonna share a solution, right? There's different ways to do it. There could be a, you know, a humorous hook, right? That's something that we like to do, you know, too. It could even be an AI hook. Sometimes there's, you know, a little funny AI video that captures attention and pulls people into it. So there's different ways that we're capturing attention the first few seconds of that video. And then the educate is where we're providing value. Now, I work with a lot of expert-based businesses and also software companies and services where it's a little bit more, okay, let's demonstrate, here's the expertise. Or here's the service we're providing, here's what makes us unique, whatever that happens to be. But the same rules would apply for products. You can demonstrate the product, demonstrate a software, but basically provide value in the video. How is what you're gonna do able to solve their problem? And if you're an expert-based business, can you give them value in the video that even if they never become a client, they still found that video valuable? If you do that with an ad, then you've won. It's really, really exciting.

So, Alec, one of the things that I dislike in YouTube in the DIY space is I go there, I find it, and then I have to watch it for 5 minutes to get nowhere, to see that I've got to buy something at the end. And that drives me crazy. Whereas like a Joe Stolte, who's been our guest on here before, and you know, Joe, because I know you've spoken at one of Joe's events scenarios.

Yes.

You know, Joe's about getting you real-time help. And then if you find that that's of value, of course then you're going to follow. That sounds more like what you're talking about. It's not just this whole landing page, landing page, landing page to try and get you into something you never actually gave them any value.

Yes, that's what we call it. We call it the value add is the name for this framework that we have. And that's what most people get wrong is they say, hey, do you have this problem? Okay, well go buy my thing or go opt into my thing. But you haven't actually given them any value yet. So what we like to say is hook them in. So it could be calling out that they have a problem, or it could be, you know, a statement or something to capture their attention. Then actually provide real value in the ad. Teach them something. Again, you're not— it's not going to be all the elements of your business. You're going to teach them one thing, but they're still going to find that valuable, or two things, but they're going to find that valuable. And then you have the call to action at the end. That's if you found this valuable, we would love to give you. There's so much more that we can give you, and usually you're giving away more for free. So if you give 1, 2, or 3 small pieces of value in that video, we call them golden nuggets because they should be small, not too, too long of a video, but they're worth their weight in gold. So you hook them in, you give them some golden nuggets, then you have a call to action. The call to action, my favorite, is not go buy my thing right away. If you have an expert-based business or a service business, you know, software is a little bit different, but, you know, expert-based or service-based, you know, consulting, whatever it happens to be type business. What I love to do is give people a longer video training that they have to opt in for that has even more value for free. So what I would say is, you know, when you click the link right here on the screen, you can sign up for to get my 19-page YouTube ad strategy PDF and a 35-minute video training walking you through step by step exactly how this works. and it's all completely free. Just click the link right there on the screen, fill out your details, and you'll get instant access. So you see how I've— I have value in the ad. So I would have shared some value in the ad, maybe, maybe even given the framework I just gave, right? You give value in the ad, then you say, hey, I've got more value and it's going to be free. But in exchange for that, it's contact details, right? So right at the top, you give them value. In exchange for contact details, give them even more. And then from there, Um, you know, you take them down the process to becoming a client if it's a good fit.

But even if not, psychology, a lot of consumer psychology.

Yeah. You touch on something interesting. And I remember I read something earlier this year, there was this period of time where it felt like things were shifting from longer format content to shorter format content, you know, between like, uh, you know, Twitter and Instagram and these very quick bite-sized pieces of content. And then at the beginning of this year. Or I guess at the end of last year, we saw that, that the, the content framework for those platforms was getting extended and longer. And then I saw an article that said something about Instagram and LinkedIn was actually— that content consumption was going down while YouTube was increasing. Um, how are you seeing that shift? And are business owners, professionals taking advantage of that opportunity, or are we kind of slow to steer the ship back to YouTube? Because I feel like a lot of people went all in on LinkedIn and Instagram and all of these things. Are you seeing a shift back to kind of where a lot of us started?

Yeah, I'm seeing, I'm definitely seeing a shift back to it as well. And that's a great way to, to put it, right? Is, you know, YouTube is where a lot of this started and got built out. And then there are other platforms. The other thing too is there's a lot of other people, you know, who are, and they're great and they're, they're, you know, social media experts, but they kind of went where the wind blew. I've doubled down and stayed, you know, really focused on YouTube. And so that's like the big thing that we've, but now exactly the pendulum swinging back to YouTube. The other thing with AI and, you know, all the different AI, you know, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, all those different platforms, they are pulling from YouTube as a primary data source. Um, and so one of the things that's happening right now is we're also seeing where people's blog and SEO content, that's really gone down because less people are doing Google searches now. And now the AI is summarizing. So the AI is summarizing everything in a blog and giving it to you. You might get a little bit of a reference, which is still good, but it's not necessarily linking back to it. Whereas with a video Now this might change 3 or 5 years in the future, but right now, yes, AI can make videos, but that's really as you're making it. It doesn't make it on the fly for people. So if somebody's looking up how to do something or how to learn about something, the AI is much more likely to link out to a video than it is to link out to a blog article that it can just summarize. And so YouTube actually is getting additional traffic from that and also getting additional references from that content that you put in the video. So it's actually, an AEO strategy to post on YouTube consistently. Even, you know, and of course we've got strategies for how to grow the viewership, grow subscribers, and grow the channel over time. But even if it's not as big today or you're building it up over time, just posting that content on YouTube is feeding those algorithms, uh, when people are searching for what it is that you do.

It's, it's amazing, you know. And to speak to how real it is, one of my favorite shows is watching, uh, Jon Stewart, right? And seeing Jon Stewart in all his various areas and all the people that Jon has launched into success out there, and they have mastered YouTube, right? They do Shorts, they do all of the various things, they repurpose the show, they're out there, whatever's going on type scenario. And I just look at your pathway and go, they're doing the exact same thing, and they're never even selling anything. They're just adding value, which is simply the humor that they're doing, right? Which is, which is fantastic. I'm going to change. I'm going to, I'm going to change topics just a little bit here and get into your book. So here I am, I'm reading, and I normally, you know, I have like 92 tab marks on your book because it is made for a founder. And I love people. I love when people actually write books today because everybody else is trying to do all these other things and they're using ghostwriters. You and I talked about this. You didn't use a ghostwriter. This is your work. Which is so important because like in all of my writing that I'm doing, somebody is like, oh, but we can build a Claude and it can write these different things for you. I'm like, no, I can use Claude to get it published for me, but the writing is still going to be my writing type scenario, right? So in this Mastering Consultative Video Sales Calls, and I love this because it starts with build rapport and set expectations, we call that connection. And credibility. So on the, on the two sides, then you go to discover challenges and opportunities. Now, this is where we say that in the storytelling side, it's stage one. It's actually presenting the problem. And we're going to get through that here in just a second. Then you overcome their objections and their challenges, present the solution or the offer and strategy, and then enrollment or follow-up, your call to action. Right. And you've got this just in this beautiful thing. So, Angela, can I pull up our 6 C's? So because I don't know if Alex has ever seen our 6 C's, but I'm going to go through this really quick on here just because I love it when you talk to other experts and you see this is what we do. We've been talking about the challenge, which is the problem. And so if people don't resonate with the challenge, they aren't going to listen. But that's okay because they go listen to somebody else's challenge. You're not trying to sell them on listening to you. You're trying to just say, I can help you solve this problem, right? And then the champion is how do you solve it? So I love in your case, you offer that option of here's how you get it solved and here's what you exactly do. And then the change is what's it mean if you actually solve that, right? The credibility is being built throughout there. I got to tell you, 600,000 people that have signed up for your YouTube, that's absolutely amazing number. How— where does that place you in like the YouTube Hall of Fame? You're like got to be one of the tops.

So yeah, I mean, in the early days it placed me really high up. And at one point, at that point in time, I haven't ran the numbers on this recently, but at that, you know, kind of peak timeframe when I was creating the content there, I was like the largest app review channel. There were tech channels far bigger, but in terms of like focused around app reviews and I was doing iPhone tutorials at the time too. And so one of the bigger ones, what's kind of crazy, this is a funny stat that I saw So I don't know if you saw that MrBeast did a video, it was "Hi Me in 10 Years," right? And yeah, got published recently. So inspirational to see, you know, what he's done from, from that point to now having like 400 million subscribers, TV shows, all this stuff. Regardless what you think of his content, like the business behind it and, and his drive is, is something to be studied. Um, but what's crazy is I looked at the timestamp with that video, he was actually showing his screen and I think it was something, it was either, I think it was like either 1,300 or 13,000 subscribers, but it was like around that point, uh, you know, that he was, he was showing that, uh, and then he obviously 10 years later has 400 million. That's when he had made the video. And at that time I had over 100,000 subscribers. So at one point I, I had—

you were bigger than MrBeast at one point.

At one point, which is the thing about, obviously he's done, I mean, there's so much he's done, but It was, it was kind of an interesting moment.

But he read your, he read your book and he implemented what you were teaching, right? So that's how this got started down there, which is awesome. But I think the important part is you have a call to action and you are in your call to action. A lot of times they're even just a something free, right? It's the next step. We talk about the call to action is not trying to close the sale. It's about get the next date, right? Just get the meeting with them. Because when you try and hard close, that's where I think you lose a lot of people within the scenario. And a short-term client is not who you really want. You want a long-term client. And that goes to the connection, which is really great. So I appreciate that. We're going to— we have a thing that our team just built, which is super cool. I'm going to share that here because I think you can even use this within your conversation. Some of the questions we're having, it is called the Pitch Lab. So a lot of times on our show, we have people that are out there raising capital or looking at a raise capital. And so on our, on our website, you can go to the link there. It is the 6 C's framework. We've been asked a lot about it and you can actually go in and for free try your own pitch and see how it goes and it comes out in there. So this also works with what Alaric's talking about on his thing. If you want to run through it, since we have some similarities in there, just modify it for your own stuff and go use it to see how it works on the YouTube, whatever you're doing right, and see how it is because it's actually the same. It's still the mastering the sales story. Right. So let's talk about what do you— I want the advanced talk of, uh, Dan Sullivan's. I always like to get the jump on Dan Sullivan. You know, I've been in coach 26 years. I'm one of his clients that he talks about that, you know, deep pockets and a very slow learner. So what are you going to be talking about in Dan Sullivan's, uh, Florida thing?

Yeah, so, okay, well, awesome. I'm happy to dive into that. So it's going to be really And I actually just finished putting some of the final touches, at least on the draft I've submitted. There's actually perfect, perfect time for me to share this because it's going to be the cutting edge of YouTube ads and AI in your ads and AI in your marketing. And so that's the big thing that they were really interested in was the AI component combined with YouTube ads. So a talk I give to a lot of places. So, you know, normally, you know, and I just spoke at a different event like Social Media Marketing World. Last week. So when I go, I typically will give my YouTube ads talk, right? And so it's basically, here's how YouTube ads work, the different elements, the hook, educate, call to action. Here's how targeting works. We didn't really talk about that as much here. It also gets more technical. It's in like the PDF, but basically I dive into all those things. But what I've put together for this is how we're using AI at every step of the process. So there's AI like in terms of to amplify, doesn't mean it's replacing things, It just means it's amplifying. And so essentially, when it comes to the actual ad, we're also using AI to rapidly create different hooks that we can test. Now, what I have found, and this is going to be the scoop because I'm going to be sharing this there as well.

We get the advance. I'm going to tell Dan, I'm going to text him.

Exactly. There you go. So you're going to— you're getting the scoop right here, which is basically when it comes to to doing AI ads. We've tested it all kinds of different ways for ourselves and for our clients. And, and so we tested 3 different main things, obviously more than that, but we tested a full AI video ad where you can use Google VEO 3 to create these little AI clips that go and create like AI video. We tested that against our best performing normal video ad, no AI, right? What's kind of been our best performer in the past. And we tested it against a hybrid ad an AI hook at the beginning, just the first 8 seconds, because right now in most of these AI platforms, you get 8 to 15-second, you know, video that's in one continuous shot without having to stitch it together. So an 8-second hook followed by a person like educate and call to action. So it would be, as an example, a Lego minifigure of me, you know, talking to the camera, and then it cuts to me then talking directly to the camera, a real video of me. And then, and then, you know, providing value and having a call to action. The one that performed the worst was just AI video. Yeah, the next—

I believe it.

Exactly. The next best was the best performing previous, no AI at all, just normal video. The best performer, and we're seeing this across accounts, and right now 6 of our top 10 performing ads have AI ad hooks, is a hybrid AI ad hook followed by the rest of the ad. Now, why is that? Now, now, so that's the, the stats and the details, but the reason I believe— now this is getting into my hypothesis and we're why we're seeing this for us and other people— is AI hooks capture attention, but they don't build trust and convert people.

Mm.

But without AI, you have to film a lot of different things to get different variations and variability. So, you know, me, like, you know, obviously Lego figure, figure is a funny example, but we also have another AI hook where I'm an astronaut talking about skyrocketing your, your success. A little funny, but like basically those visuals capture attention. But if it's just AI, they don't know who our company is, right? It could be anybody versus AI captures their attention. What is this astronaut, this Lego minifigure? But it's only 8 seconds. Then it cuts to the real me. Providing value, getting people to take action. We get to use the AI hook to hijack attention and pull people in, and then the value to provide real value, get them to build the know, like, and trust with me, and then take action from that. And that's why, again, that my hypothesis of why we're seeing what we're seeing, which is the AI hook followed by the rest of the ad, is performing the best right now.

So we had, we had Nate Hurk on last— Hurkman on last week. And I don't know if you know Nate, but he's got a huge following on the AI side. And in that, he had just tested with ElevenLabs, which we've been pretty early adopters of ElevenLabs. I'm like, no, I really don't like a, an AI version of me. And so we said, we'll only have a comedic kind of version, or like you said, a Lego type version, something else, a cartoon version of me so that when I speak, it's actually me. And so I love what you just said because I think that's gonna be critically important that it's not an AI version of you that you, you know, or you are very, very clear that it's AI. Yes. Very clear. We've got some questions going on. You guys want to jump in there? Yeah.

Yeah. So we've got a lot of questions. I'm going to tag on to what you were talking about because you were talking about like the format of your videos and the call to action at the end. Dwight's wondering, why have the call to action at the end in his past as managing campaigns, they always had the web address or phone number or QR code up the entire time. What is that formula that you guys are using?

That's a great question. So in terms of the script and in terms of the way the ad flows, we'll reference it more and have a direct call to action at the end. But that doesn't mean that we won't reference it throughout. And that's actually great. See, these are the more advanced questions that like Yes. What we found is sprinkling it in earlier on, but then having the strong call to action at the end. And then also the way these ads are ran on YouTube, the call to action, the button to click it, it's there the whole time so they can click it at any time. So we're not hiding that. It's on the platform. People can click at any time. And then normally what we might do is somewhere— I, we usually wouldn't put in the first third of the video, but somewhere a third of the video, two-thirds of the video. What we may do is say, you know, let's say I'm in the educate section. I'm talking about the value of YouTube ads. And here's a, here's a few key points. Now, these are just a couple of things we cover inside of my full PDF. Talk more about that in just a second. You know, and so basically it's like kind of seeding it, or I might say, when you click the link, you're going to get access to our PDF that's going to share these things. But let me tell you a little bit more before we get into that. And so I won't do the full call to action, but I'll kind of plant seeds that I'm going to give them something. At the very end is when I would actually dive in and say, all right, so now that you've seen how valuable this is, I want to invite you to download my PDF. It's going to break down exactly how this works step by step. And then I would get into the full call to action.

I think that's an important point because I'm more likely to look— I think of my behavior and you touched on the credibility piece. And I think for me, I'm more likely to follow through or subscribe or actually even read the PDF that I submitted my email to receive when I've gotten a little further and I see that there's some substance there, or like I have a lot to learn from this person or the, the content that's being shared. So just thinking of my own natural instincts, and I can see the methodology of building up that credibility, and, and you can do it seemingly pretty quickly in a video. Um, but yeah, I don't just see something, what it is, and then immediately I'm sold. You know, I do, I do need kind of to be, I need to be nurtured.

So exactly. And that's, and that's why we want to have that big focus in the educate section be to provide that value. And then we might sprinkle in just a little seed of, you know, when, like, we're going to share more about this inside of our PDF. And so that way it's very much an aside. You're not getting into the point where you're really selling that yet. You're just casually mentioning it. But at the very end is when you would dive in to actually specifically get in the call to action. So exactly.

Yeah.

Alaric, this isn't just assumptions that you're making or gut feelings. You guys test. Yes, everything. And you continually test because what was working 6 months ago isn't necessarily what's working now. So it's data which goes back to credibility. Right. So it's data, data, data-driven system structure and data to test are the assumptions actually working? That's phenomenal.

It's also very reflective of like, we're a market of attention and retention right now. Everything is about attention and retention. Um, Tori asked a question, how do you decide when it's worth creating longer form video content for YouTube versus focusing on Instagram or TikTok, especially when it feels like audiences mainly engage with short 30-second videos now. Um, I know we do, we have shorter attention spans. Adults do, children do naturally. Hopefully they're not on screens all the time, but we've got, you know, we're swiping, swiping, swiping. We've got 2 seconds to like ingest, if that, before we're on to the next thing. So I can appreciate when she's asking about the shorter videos. Um, I also heard what you said about, um, rather than search engine optimization like Google, It's now AEO, so AI optimization. And when you're looking for something there, the algorithms, the systems are pointing to YouTube or pulling from YouTube, so they're going to come up first. Um, can you reiterate that point again? Talk about how they're, they're like, when do you use YouTube? Because that's what the engines are looking at first.

Yeah, so I would reckon that's a great question. I would really recommend doing both. The short-form content and long-form. What I would recommend is have your short-form content align with all the platforms. Yes, there are nuances, and I will say if you're looking like a more advanced strategy is you might create a different type of content for TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube Shorts. But what I think is more powerful is just create a short-form piece of content you could put on all the platforms, right? That's going to follow that short methodology and then get into long-form content before you try to create specific YouTube Short or TikTok or Instagram content, create the short-form content and then create the long-form content. The other thing is, yes, is the, the optimal strategy that we found, and I'll share this, the optimal strategy is a daily short-form piece of content and a weekly long-form piece of content. However, you don't need to do that. So if all you could do for a long-form piece of content is to do once a month, that's still better than not producing any content. I think a lot of people get in their own heads and they say, well, if I'm not going to do this every week because I've heard, you know, all the best practices, it's like, well, it's definitely better to do once a month or every other week than to do none. And so I'd recommend don't—

you don't have to repeat that, Aleric. Repeat that. I think that was critically important.

Yes, it is far better to do, to do, to create content, even if it is monthly or biweekly or even just very sporadic, than to create none. And so yes, there might be an optimal way to do it with the weekly, but you don't need to do that, especially as you start. And so I would recommend just creating that content, that long-form content. Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah. So the second part of the question, or yeah. Do you want me to dive into that? The second part of the question was for the, the AEO, right? And the optimization. So that's where it is really important to understand what your ideal clients are looking for and asking for and to create videos that answer their questions because that's what the AI chatbots are all looking for. And that's what you want to create those videos for, is to answer the commonly asked questions and have a title that is optimized for that as well. So make sure, making sure that it answers the specific question. The video itself answers the question. You also lead with something along the lines of the question as well. That's going to allow you to be able to optimize it a little bit more. Now over time, yes, there's more advanced YouTube strategies where there's ways to, uh, you know, kind of incorporate different pieces into the video. But the first place to start for somebody like that is just answer the most commonly asked questions. And then really get into your experience as an expert in that video.

I got to go with Ernest because Ernest is one of our great guests. You know what, Ernest, first of all, I want to say thank you for oftentimes bringing up questions, which is awesome. One, he says, do you do SMB, small-medium business, business app reviews still? Is that still part of your business overall, and do you have any niche? And then he's got a second part on there. Do you suggest— how do you suggest videos for different industries, home service-based design platforms, and also the CPG space such as food and beverage space? So there's two kind of questions there. But Ernest, thanks for the questions and your thoughts on that.

Yeah, great question. So we still will work with, you know, software and apps in terms of the marketing side with ad outreach and the things that we're doing, both YouTube ads, YouTube channel growth strategies. In terms of my original channel, AppFind, I actually ran that for many years even without me on it. I actually had a friend and team member of mine that became the lead reviewer. This person, Justin, who lives out like in San Francisco and kind of Silicon Valley, is right there, always on top of the latest AI tech. At the end of the year, he ended up going and joining a great startup and diving into that. World is, you know, he's got a great background for that. So I've been in a little bit of limbo there. I've also been building out my own software too. And so that's— that and that outreach has taken up more of my time than creating the videos. But I am planning to revitalize that channel at some point soon and maybe talk about more AI content. There's videos every once in a while on that channel now too.

So, so, Alex, in your business ventures today, if I was to break it into 3 categories, as I understand, and I make an introduction to you, you have videos and stuff that help the people in the DIY space, the do-it-yourself space, right? And then you have a consulting group that can do it with you, uh, and also you also have space to do it for you. Am I correct in that? Okay, so you have— you kind of help in all 3 of those spaces.

That's correct. With the exception of asterisk, if we don't do done for you YouTube channel management, we will do done for you ad management. And then we can consult on the channel side. So we'll do all the way from do it yourself, done with you, or done for you on ads. And then we'll either do do it yourself or done with you on the channel side. Now, one of the things that we, we can do, though, is we can train an internal team member to manage the YouTube channel. Which, you know, again, is what a lot of our clients do. It's not the founder managing the channel, and oftentimes it's not even the marketing director, right? It could be somebody on the team, even a virtual assistant or social media marketing coordinator that could be managing the YouTube channel following our playbook and strategy. So goes all the way up to done for you on the ads management side. On the channel side, it goes up to consulting level.

That's awesome. And I think that's critically important to our founders out there. Founders have this horrible history of doing things themselves. And it's oftentimes because they're the fastest and are thinking about stuff and it's Saturday night. And I are one.

So as Candace is looking at me, I was just going to say, this is the epitome of Dan Sullivan, who not how.

Yeah, who not how. And then, yeah, but I'm always like, let me test it, right?

Let me try to do it myself though.

And then when I break it, I hand it off to my team and I'm like, fix it, fix it.

Here it is.

40 years plus, and I still can't help myself at times.

I will say, in this world though, in this day and age, for those of us who do like to get in there and tinker under the hood, it is probably the best time to be tinkering, getting a little bit more knowledgeable, and then handing it over to the true professionals, but with our vision and like kind of intent in mind. So I think that's really kind of neat. I have a personal question. Do you ever revisit your old, like, your original videos from when you first started? Do you ever rewatch them, like, 17 years ago, little baby you?

I do. I do from time to time. It's actually funny. I did a, um, at one point, every so often I'll do like a virtual event, and I did one at the end of the year, kind of like kicking off, go, you know, people's YouTube strategies going into 2026 here. And my team was like, you gotta play one of these videos to show your journey. And so I did for this, you know, group of people, however many hundreds of people we had on this like live call and played at least the start of my very first video that I did when I was 12, which is crazy. Yeah, so it's funny.

That's so cute. I'm gonna go hunt it down.

Yeah, you start to think about it.

We'll get those views up on that.

Jackie, you love that. Your face on that one. You love that one.

I do love that so much. I love kids doing cool stuff and just, I love like the nostalgia of looking back at the journey and being like, look what came of this. Look what has come of this. It's wild. I do love that.

Well, my son is, you know, graduate of New York Film Academy. And at one point he put together one of the intros to one of our videos and he used video from me and it's real video. I mean, And it was a real 8mm kind of, I think is the right, you call it camera type stuff from a number of decades ago. And it was super funny to watch that, but that stuff's still out there, right? I mean, it is super cool. So keep that there. Candice, we got one more question. You want to run through that? I think we got it.

Ideas on how to use press releases as downstream content. Our idea was PR press release that earn syndication. And this anchors credibility. We'll anchor in the news on our website, but do you have any other ideas?

Ooh, this is a good one for me too.

Yeah, so I think for— I think you could probably dive a little bit more into the PR side of things, which I think is great. What I will say is if you— if let's say you have a piece of press, so from a YouTube perspective, and Tom, I want to hear your perspective on this for the PR side, but from a YouTube perspective, let's say you have a piece of press that goes out, right? Make a video about it. People love, like, it's like literally what we were just talking about. And especially if you show up, you know, in a humble way that basically is like, hey, like, you know, here's the journey that led to this point. Like, I just got featured in XYZ, right? Like I got featured in like Inc. Magazine as an example like that. So, you know, when we got on the Inc. 5000, you know, and I think I did do a video about this. Yeah, exactly. So here is a great example. So I did a video where I talked about like, you know, This, I remember reading, you know, the Inc. 5000, like Inc. magazine, seeing the people on the Inc. 5000 saying one day I'm going to be on there. And, you know, and I'm just so incredibly grateful and blessed and excited to now have, you know, now not only be in there, but also be featured in an article. Let me walk you through the journey that it took to get here, because I started with my YouTube channel when I was 12. You know, I did not start with you know, being in this magazine. Let me walk you through what I did and then, you know, kind of share something along those lines. I'm pretty positive I have a video just like that on my channel. So, I would say create a video about that piece of press. That would be my perspective. But Tom, I'm curious yours too.

I love that. I will share this though. Yesterday, Candice and I, and I think some of the other team, we were on— there was a group that were doing a podcast and it's a well-known group and they were doing a podcast and it was on Powell versus SEC. So, we have a great chance of getting in front of SCOTUS on a legal case right now. And so, it's hitting a lot of press. I'll be in New York the week after next in a couple of different film studios for live morning shows and various things that have happened. And the person— and we're on there and I asked the host a couple of questions. They don't know that I'm on there because I'm just on there as a guest. And he says— make Candace laugh. He goes, is this the Tom Powell. And it was like, ooh, I've never had a the before my name. I don't know if that's not notoriety or infamy or where that fits into there. So yes, yeah, I love that idea because the other people are out there and it is that 10 minutes of fame scenario. But publications and press releases are just absolutely— even when they're bad, which we've— Jackie, we've had a few of those at different times. They still, you know, end up sharing things, right? So you get out there and you talk about it. And I think that that is— that's a great way to be able to talk about it. And it is— it becomes permanent features out in the place. So even the bad ones that have been out there in the past, you just talk about it, right? I think that's the best way that you can do it. So hopefully none of you ever have bad ones out there. It happens.

Yeah.

If you can— if you can't, then Then you have someone else not talk about it either.

Too soon, too soon. Well, Alec, we have had a couple people ask how they work with you. I think a lot of people like the idea of the, um, you know, uh, working with you or having you do it for them or some combination. Um, so let's get that on the screen one more time, but maybe talk about what that process looks like for how if somebody wants to work with you first, we'd say get the book, get the book right now, order that book. But what's their next step in working with you?

Yeah. So when you, when you get the, you know, so the book on Amazon, of course, but when you get the free gift, the PDF that there, that bottom link or adoutreach.com/gift, you fill out your details there, it'll get you the PDF and also a video training, but then it'll ask you a few questions and then, and then it'll allow you to book a strategy call with my team. If that's a good fit, then you'd be able to book a strategy call and we can dive in. And exactly what Tom was sharing earlier, and from my book and from your, you know, 6 Cs, you know, we want to follow— like, we really want to make sure we lead with value on a call, on a strategy call, really understand your business, exactly what you're doing, what some of the challenges are, where you're looking to go, map out a custom game plan and strategy for you. And if it is a good fit to work with us, then we'll walk you through what that looks like on any of those tiers that do-it-yourself, done-together, or done-for-you tier, and then map that out from there. And that link's there. But also, if you're like looking to directly book a call, you can just go to adoutreach.com/apply. It's also on my website too. But if you, you know, get the PDF, there should be a link in there to book a call.

Well, I have a bone to pick with you. My book isn't signed.

I got to— yes, I'm going to. I absolutely—

Yes, I cannot believe that you sent me your book and didn't even sign it.

It was from Amazon, but I'm going to— yeah, so that's one of the— that's one of the things I used to have. Um, I think I was mentioning I had like an office here and an office manager, all this stuff. We went more remote. Back when I had that, it was a lot easier to send stuff because I was like, wait a second, I have this book I want to send to so many different people. And, uh, and, you know, it was coming down to like, all right, I'm gonna have to figure out— so that is part of the plan, to, uh, to get some signed copies out there.

He can bring it with him. To the next, uh, yeah, offering me free shipping. I'm not shipping it from myself to you.

Yeah, well, when you, when you were on stage and Chris Voss was on stage, Jackie and I were down there in Phoenix and we got one of the daughters a signed copy of Chris Voss's, and the other daughter was so mad at you.

You just lumped me in with you. You just said we did that.

You did that.

You were standing right there. You were getting your signatures at the same time I was there.

I know, but I didn't know that I was responsible for two daughters' signed books.

Have you— I've been middle named by Chris Voss, so I kind of felt like I was in trouble.

So now you're on the same famous page as Chris Voss. So, well, thank you so much. It is such a pleasure having you. And speaking about YouTube, we have two stars, other stars in our midst. They have a super cool show called WTF, Women Talk Finance. And I gotta tell you, I have so much fun. I have more fun talking about their show than anything that I ever do because I think it's the coolest thing out there. They have super cool guests. Their first show of this season hits tomorrow, I think. Is that right? Right. And it's these two that have Women Talk Finance, WTF. It's super cool. You got to check it out. Uh, and they have always awesome guests.

And just, we have our, we have our hype our hype man.

Someday I'm not even going to be able to have them on Lunch and Learn because they're so cool. I don't know.

You can call our people.

Alec, thank you for coming on today. Your energy is so good. It's so fun. Um, yeah, you're, you're a live wire. Your stuff is just so supercharged. Thank you for sharing it with all of us today.

Yeah, it's awesome. Uh, and for Lunch and Learn, thank you all for our guests out there, uh, today joining us today, taking your time during this, uh, what is lunch hour on Pacific time. I don't know where you are, but we appreciate it. And of course, we have a lot of people that show up for the recording, so I appreciate you as well. And it's fun here sharing about what the founder's journey is all about. And it really is just a crazy up, down, where do we go? Who do you ask for help? And I think you said it best with Dan Sullivan's and Ben Hardy's concept of who, not how. And that really is for success in being a founder. Even on these single scenarios that we talk about now, it's never a single person. It really is about the who. And when you have a challenge, you find out the who's out there. And Alaric, you are one of our who's. So, for those out there watching and listening, reach out to him, ask the questions, get some help, and get it out there. So, thank you all for joining and have a great week. Take care.

Thank you.

Thank you.