How to Navigate the YouTube Shift | 29 Minutes of Insights

The biggest shift that's happened over the past 5 years with YouTube is it's become a place for education. People are going to learn. I want to learn how to get blank. I want to learn how to improve my marriage. I used to go to the library, or I used to try to talk to my mom or whatever. Now the default is I'm going to go search how to do it. And in a short clip, that's more inspiring, that's more quick hits. But what are you going to learn about improving your marriage in a 45-second TikTok video. You can say, here are the 4 things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but like they're not gonna go deep, right?

Yeah.

And so for people, and this is education, they wanna learn, they wanna improve, they wanna get better, they wanna join your challenge, they wanna take the next step with you. The long-form content, uh, works. We used to recommend 10-minute plus, and still like 10 minutes is the bare minimum. We're seeing the biggest growth in the 1 to 3 hour, and even now like 3 hour.

Geez, that's, that's crazy, isn't it?

Well, cuz they're going to learn. Yeah, people are going to learn. All right, so here with Greg from Freedomology, part of our mastermind group, spent a couple days in Toronto and doing a session here. Excited, excited. What's on your mind, man? Tell us about Freedomology and how it can help.

So excited to be here for sure. So Freedomology, I think like what Freedomology is today, it's a growing community of people who are committed to you know, like improving their health, both physical and mental, and improving, so relationships, and improving their financial freedom, so more time and money. But if we go back like 10 years, it started as a small team of researchers in Ohio that was sort of an offshoot from one of our other businesses. I have a technology company, it's called RealFlow. So we've been building technology for real estate investors. So people who want to achieve financial freedom, through real estate. And so we've had mastermind groups and coaching programs, and because obviously when you build technology, when you build a solution for people, a tool to use, like you can't just give them the tool and expect them to know how to use it. They have to actually, you have to coach them on how to do a deal, how to find properties, and how to analyze a property, how to resell a property, how to renovate a property. So we got really good, good, you're good at the past 15, 18 years is helping people achieve financial freedom, right? Because that's, I think, like a lot of people when they look at success, when they think about success, that's the thing they think they want. That's sort of the ghost that they're chasing. And so what we realized about 10 years ago is that you can, that there's science to financial freedom, like, right? Science explains the how, how something works. But just because someone knows how to do something doesn't mean that they're gonna do it. Necessarily. It's like the who, the what, the where, the when, the why. So we build programs to teach all of that, right? And what we realized is that, right after a few years of coaching, that we could teach financial freedom, but what was happening was many people who were achieving financial freedom, it would take them a few years to build up assets and income, but they were getting divorces. They were overweight and out of shape. They had no energy. So they actually business like they, they were muscling it, they were building a business, but they really weren't happy, man. Like they were not achieving that vision of success that they thought they were searching for, right? So we had a sneaky suspicion about a decade ago, 10 years ago, that financial freedom, that money was not the key to success. It wasn't the thing that people were really after. It was, yeah, time and income were, So we're very important, but you know, happiness stems from relationships and how well connected you are to your family. If you're married, if your spouse, your wife or husband and your kids or, you know, your friends and health. If you have nothing, if you have all the money in the world and great relationships, but don't have your health, then what good is it, right? If you can't enjoy it. So health gives you that energy to be able to enjoy life. So I think for us, It's been a 10-year mission. So we just launched Freedomology Labs this past year and just launched our YouTube channel like 6 weeks ago. So it's new, man. It's crazy. But it's like 10 years of research and study before we wanted to, you know, test a lot of these ideas on ourself and with our team before introducing these concepts into the world. Yeah, so that's sort of where we're at right now.

Awesome. I mean, I didn't know about the 10 years history as well.

Yeah, it goes back a decade, yeah. That's awesome.

So, I mean, what's next? Where are you struggling? How can I help?

Yeah, just like there's science to building a business or, you know, achieving health, there's science to YouTube, right? There's science to, and that's one of the reasons that we connected with you and your team, and Sean's been awesome to work with, just learning the science. But I guess what are the biggest, levers you can pull? So as a new channel, like we're brand new, we're a month or two into it, right? So 1,000 views for us is like, we celebrate, right? When we went from 100 views to 500 to 1,000 and now we're at like 1,500 on a video, which we submitted like 4 days ago. Again, it's using the science of like the powerful opinion and the concepts that you teach. But what are the biggest levers you can pull? Like thumbnail design, like in your head for a new channel like us, what should we be focused on? We're creating this content, but what are the main top 3 things we should be focusing on, you think?

So there's always 4 things I look at for every channel. Whether it's a brand new channel, whether it's somebody who's got a million subscribers plus, it's still the 4 things and just various things within those 4 things. But the first one is gonna be how frequently we're making content. So especially at the beginning.

Yeah.

Because the more reps you put in, the better you get, the more you learn, the more you improve. Like, okay, that worked, that didn't work. And you can have all sorts of theories and ideas about what may or may not work, but until you're actually doing it, You don't know. So frequency of content is the first. How often are you guys making videos?

So 3 times a week.

That's great. That's a great start.

3 times a week, yeah.

Right? So like if you did 3 times a week, and there's time and resources and energy, and the more you can batch it, like your time is the most valuable thing in the company. You're doing other things as well. So like how do you batch the content to get as many out as possible, then team delivers on the rest? 3 times a week is good.

Cool.

It's not bad. It's not great.

So more or less, I know some channels that are huge are doing 1 or 2 videos a week, but they're longer, they're more produced, they're— So is it like, so content, is it short and more or long and less?

Long and more.

Yeah, long and more.

Like whatever channel you look at, Lex Fridman making 3-hour-long videos 3 times a month or something. Cool, if he was doing those 3-hour videos 3 times a week, he'd be even bigger.

Yeah.

People are usually challenged in doing that kind of content so frequently. But it's a combination, like why make so many? It's not just for the audience growth, it's also for you to put in the reps to get better, to get faster. The more you're doing, the more you'll quickly pick up on, like already if you've gone through the 6 weeks, you've already made a lot of changes.

Yeah, oh for sure.

From 3 weeks ago, let alone 6 weeks ago, and you'll keep making more changes. But how do you know what to make? How do you make changes too? Well, you iterate. You see it, you're getting advice from our team, cool. And as you do it, it's like, that doesn't feel right, or how I'm gonna do my intro, or how we're— you end up changing things as you get into and doing it. So the point of doing the reps is you, yes, build audience, but you also just start getting better at the thing. So if you did 6 a week instead of 3 a week, you'll get better twice as fast.

I gotcha.

Right? It doesn't mean that you have the capacity to go— like 3 is good.

Yeah.

It's really good.

We have a small team, so I mean, it's, yeah, 3 is, we record 1 day a week, and we produce the 3 videos from that 1 day a week, from that morning of recording.

If you're learning real estate investing, and you do it 1 day a week, you'll do it slower than if you learn it 3 days a week.

Yeah.

Or 7 days a week. Right. So, but you're balancing other things, obviously, right? And that's your whole concept too, with what does freedom look like? It's not only obsessing over 1 thing, but Content frequency matters, and at the beginning that matters even more because we're trying to get better at a skill. The second is length. So length is how long are we going, and the longer the videos are, the better they typically do in education thought leadership. So it's hard to get a 3-minute video ranked. It has to be like insanely controversial.

Okay.

Or it's got to be like a music video or a Star Wars trailer or something that would do well. But in thought leadership, It's really hard to get a 3-minute video ranked.

So let me ask you a question there. With the short-form generation, right, with, with, with like TikTok and Reels, the thought process is short, punchy, quick, to the point. You're saying YouTube won't serve up those types of videos as much in the thought leadership space and like the new concept, the mental invention space when you have a new idea that helps somebody. You're saying—

Shorts are great.

Yeah.

Separate channel.

Yeah.

The short-form content hurts the long-form channel.

Okay.

Right now. I would do Freedomology and then Freedomology Shorts. And Shorts you could do 10 times a day.

Okay.

You take your content and clip it up.

You split it up.

And then that gives you content for Instagram and TikTok and everything else. Cool. Every other platform is a short form, right? So you can then take it and take one-liners and put it out to Twitter.

Okay.

But long-form, YouTube, then it's easy to cut up for different platforms. You don't necessarily— the content could do better if you're doing unique content just for the platform, like you're only gonna make a short video, but you don't need to do that. A lot of people have tons of success just clipping up their episodes, assuming you say something good in the long-form video, right? It's like 30 minutes of crap, then you're gonna have 20 crappy short videos too, right? So Shorts is its own thing. But the long-form content, the biggest shift that's happened over the past 5 years with YouTube is it's become a place for education. People are going to learn. I wanna learn how to get blank. I wanna learn how to improve my marriage. I used to go to the library, or I used to try to talk to my mom or whatever. Now the default is I'm gonna go search how to do it. And in a short clip, that's more inspiring, that's more, quick hits, but what are you gonna learn about improving your marriage in a 45-second TikTok video? You can say, here are the 4 things, blah, blah, blah, blah, but like they're not gonna— You can't go deep. Right, and so for people, and this is education, they wanna learn, they wanna improve, they wanna get better, they wanna join your challenge, they wanna take the next step with you, the long-form content works. We used to recommend 10-minute plus, and still like 10 minutes is the bare minimum, We're seeing the biggest growth in the 1 to 3 hour and even now like 3 hour.

Geez, that's crazy, isn't it?

Well, 'cause they're going to learn.

Yeah.

People are going to learn.

So we're doing these sprints. Then we take our coaching call that we do so every week, which is about 30 minutes to 40 minutes, and we're packaging that up. Now those calls, so aren't getting the same initial success as the shorter videos, But I don't think we have powerful openings on those. It's more like we just sort of ease into a coaching call.

If you're teaching people, you don't want to go long just for the sake of going long. But if it's helpful and you're teaching people, they'll sit and they'll watch. Past 4 hours, we're not seeing as much growth.

Yeah.

And we've done 8-hour videos that have not done as well as like the 3-hour, 2:45, 3:30.

I've never even seen an 8-hour video or 4-hour video on YouTube.

Well, we play with a lot of formats and experiments. People will sit there and they'll, like if they're learning, they'll keep, why would you shut it off? You're learning, where else am I gonna go? The third is then retention, and specifically the first-minute retention. So how much do we keep people around? So that's powerful opinion or that's coming up. If you have a great coaching call, but the first 5 minutes is boring. Hey guys, welcome, okay, we're gonna get started in a couple minutes. Nobody's gonna watch that. Like assume they don't know who you are. I don't know who Greg is, I don't know Freedomology, I've never heard of these guys, I'm skipping to the next thing. It's not like you're speaking in a room, like you're doing a TED Talk or whatever.

So where they're captive.

Exactly, like people don't just, after 5 seconds get up and leave. But they're doing that on video. So the first minute really, really, really matters. And always looking for that 70% audience retention at the first minute. Which is nobody hits that consistently, but that's gold standard. If you had 70% retention in 1 minute and you had a 3-hour-long video, you got 1 million views on your video. But that's really hard to hit. So that's some of the science. So how do we inject energy into that first minute? And so it could be coming ups. We're taking highlight moments, put it at the start. Like this video will probably have coming ups. How did I start this video? Hey, we got Greg here, Freedomology Mastermind. We're here in Toronto a couple days. Fun for somebody who doesn't know me and doesn't know you, they're just watching. And then they hear about Freedomology, so they take highlight moments and that's gonna be at the beginning. So like, oh, something good is coming. If you're a solo video, which you're also doing, then you can control the opening much better. Powerful opinion, context, sentence, raise the stakes, story, and then advice, right? This is where like, are we looking at the right metrics? If your coaching video is longer than your other videos but it didn't do as well, the first place I would go to is your audience retention. Where are you at 1 minute? Okay. 'Cause if you're at 30% at 1 minute, it doesn't matter. 70% of people left in the first minute. Like, your video's dead.

Yeah.

Right?

So would you deactivate, like, would you shut that down and would you try to redo an intro? If you think the content is good for that 30-minute video, once you get into the meat of it, do you redo an intro? What would you do with that content?

Depends on how much new stuff I have coming out. Usually it's just, okay, keep it and onwards because you're going to do more coaching calls and they're going to keep getting better and there's going to be better questions and you're going to be better at responding to them. And so it's like, okay, just keep moving forward. If you're not making any more content, we really need to milk what we've got, then yeah, you go back and you edit and repurpose and mashups and everything else, right? Some of the people we help, or they've like passed and we're helping their family and their estate, like big names. And so like there is no new content coming out, so really gotta maximize what we got, so we're taking gold nuggets that we can find. But in general, if you're doing more coaching sessions, like cool. If you get asked those same questions, you're probably gonna be even better at answering them the next time. So just keep moving forward.

So let me ask you this question. If you have a pretty good, call it 20 to 30 minute, thought leadership video, so it's got concepts, it's got, we call them mental inventions, like new ideas introduced to people in cool ways, but maybe the intro's not that great because the intro does what you just talked about. It's like, hey, we're back today, blah, blah, blah. So if you have those videos up and they're not, like they're gaining a little bit of traction, could you redo new intros, new 30 to 60 second intros, put it at the beginning, cut out the beginning of that existing content, and put a new intro at the front of that and repost it. So you're gonna get penalized for having essentially like 20 minutes of the same content?

You won't get penalized. It's more just opportunity cost of time.

Yeah.

So somebody's doing that, like you said, I have a small team, I don't have a lot of bandwidth. Okay, so I'd rather you make 3 new videos than to spend tons of time fixing the old ones. Mostly because you're gonna keep getting better with every video that you make. But if you said, no, no, no, this is like epic. This is like, I'm never gonna be better than what I did. Okay, then let's find a way to edit that. But I wouldn't put it as a rule. Just keep getting better. I mean, you did a lot of the mistakes too of like your early, early videos were— and it's only 6 weeks, so you've made a lot of progress in 6 weeks. But like the intros, right? Freedomology and the—

Yeah, welcome back to week 2.

Not even you talking, the—

Oh, the intros, yeah.

All the face reads. Yeah, the trailer stuff. Yeah, yeah, that all has to go. And everybody that does that type of thing. Yeah, we cut all that out, yeah. So is it worth going back and fixing those with no trailer? Like maybe if you have extra bandwidth? But if you don't have extra bandwidth, I would say just keep making, keep going forward. But you know where to look. Like, why is the video not taking off? Well, okay, you know, how long was it? And what's your first minute retention? The frequency doesn't— the frequency is more for the channel growth. The frequency won't impact any individual video. So frequency first, and then how long are the videos, what's our first minute retention, and the last one is what's our click-through rate. So you could have great retention on a video and some really good content, but people aren't clicking. If they're not clicking, then you have a bad thumbnail title. And objectively you can see, you know, you look at your data and say, okay, this video is underperforming. It's not getting as high click-through rate as these other ones with similar impressions.

So how do you know it's the title or the thumbnail? Like, because click-through rate, you don't, you can't.

You don't, well, testing.

Yeah.

Like, so one observation, and we've come in and helped some big channels where the title is like Coffee Talk 12 or something. Like, that's the worst title.

So boring.

Right? Nobody's gonna click on that title.

Yeah.

They have to be a super fan. So I would fix title first. You know, if a video has really, really low impressions, I would probably fix title first because we want to try to show up against other people's videos. But once it's getting impressions, thumbnail is more important because people are more visual. They're looking at it before they will read whatever your title of your video is. So you could follow, I mean, you're working with Sean, you got some best practices. The thumbnail has to be easy to read, visible. The title has to be appealing. But you can also then see which, not based off of opinion. This is where I like looking at the data because I might have an opinion, you might have an opinion, team has an opinion, but I really like this. Well, okay, but it's not working. Objectively, it's not working. So are we doing it because you like it or are we doing it, we're gonna do what works. And we're not gonna push outside ethical boundaries. But it's ultimately, it's not a hobby you're building, it's a business, it has to work. So it'll show you, we can look at what videos are underperforming, what videos should be getting more views. YouTube is trying to promote these videos because they think it's a good video, but it's not getting the clicks. Well, it's because your thumbnail, title are just objectively not good enough. What's the problem? So if they're getting impressions, it's like 70% thumbnail, 30% title. If it's not getting any impressions, then it's usually we need to fix the title because we're not showing up enough for people even to see the book cover.

Okay.

Those 4 things. It's always, it's usually multiple levers that we're pulling on, but it's always at least one of those levers that's a big problem. So you can have a great click-through rate, people are clicking on the video, but they're not watching. They bounce because your intro sucks. right? Or you have a great intro and they're watching the whole thing, but the click-through rate sucks. Or you're just not posting frequently enough. Or the videos aren't long enough. And so it's like, your channel starting from scratch, if you came 6 months ago and said I have 0 subscribers, what should I do? It's still those 4 things. And if I'm looking at someone who's got 3 million subscribers, or even what we still look at for our channel, it's still those 4 things. Which ones are we, what levers are we pulling on?

So assuming you're on those 4 things, why do you think some channels blow up and others So you think it's only those 4 things, or how important do you think production of video is versus like some influencers can just turn the camera on, they're charismatic, like low production quality video and you know, it gets views versus highly produced like MrBeast produces TV shows, right? So what's your thoughts on?

Again, like quality content in this space is the quality of thought. So you're a thought leader. I'm following you because you're going to make me think like you think. Like you see a health challenge, you see solutions where other people just see problems. I want to think like you, Greg. How do you do that? That's your job is to teach me how to do that. The fanciest animations and whatever, if they don't help me do that, then it's a waste of time. So it's mostly quality of thought. Like if you're going to spend a lot of money on production quality, what metric are we trying to move? It's the first-minute retention. So are people watching longer because of that extra production quality that you threw in there? And if not, then you're doing it because there's a brand, there's an image, it makes you look good, cool, whatever.

So if you're gonna spend time on production, do it that first minute especially, you think?

Oh yeah.

Or test that.

Yeah, 100%.

Okay.

Because I mean, you'll, because you have good content, and this is a big caveat, So there are some people who can hold attention for a minute, but then you see them like tank.

Yeah, ours is pretty stable after the minute.

That means you're a good speaker and you have good content.

Yeah.

If it's tanking in the middle, it's because you don't, like you're dry, you don't know what else to say, it's bad content, right? So if I look at you and it's like after a minute it's pretty flat, okay, so people like it. I don't need to watch what you're doing there, 'cause it's not a problem area. You're holding people, nobody left. But in the first minute, 60% of people left. Like objectively, that's a problem. We need to, I think it's good. Well, cool, it's not working. Like the amount of people, times we fought with people over like the trailers at the beginning, right? But it makes me, positions me to be this expert. And it makes me like, okay, but you lost half the people in 20 seconds. It's not working. And then when they can see that it's not my opinion on it, it's like, it's actually, this is a problem. And you need to fix it.

So what do you think, what's opinion on, we've been going back and forth with Sean on this idea. Like injecting CTAs in the video versus putting them in writing in the video. A lot of thought leaders, I've never seen larger influencers, let's say, so it almost comes from a position of weakness if they're like, like, subscribe, click the notification bell. Like, you don't see—

Oh yeah, that you don't need to do. So, so first off, when you're looking at other people who've had success, yeah, it's great. I love modern success. They're winning usually off of not all 4 of those things. They're willing off— they're winning hard on a couple of the levers. So, uh, Joe Rogan is not winning off of his thumbnails. He's not winning off of CTR. His titles need work and his thumbnails need work. And the number of people who copy Joe Rogan thumbnails.

Yeah.

Because they think it's working because it's Joe Rogan. He's not winning because of his thumbnails.

Right.

The number of times we've tested his thumbnails on tons of channels, they always lose. They consistently lose. Joe Rogan wins because he's Joe Rogan and because he's making 4-hour-long episodes.

YouTube's an extension of his brand versus he's not trying to build his brand through YouTube.

Uh, sure. But it's like, why is he winning? He started the super long-form content and he asks great questions and he keeps people engaged. He has insane retention on his videos. And so that's why people love Rogan and it goes long. He's not winning off of his click-through rate. So people, it's like when you're looking at people, like what are we modeling from these different people? So the fact that somebody does something or doesn't do something doesn't mean that it's necessarily working because most of the best creators don't actually do much of the science. They're winning off of their art. If we go back to CTAs, you don't need to tell somebody to like and subscribe to your channel. You can, it doesn't hurt, but pay attention to audience retention dips. So the best thing to do, like if you think about the channels you subscribe to, was it because they told you to subscribe to the channel? Was it because you like love this content and I want more? Right? So like, focus on that. Focus on getting people to love your content and give as much value, and every 10 seconds in the video has to fight to be in the video. And so for CTAs, the beginning CTA is we're trying to get people to watch the rest of the video. So that's the powerful opinion, etc. The ending CTA should be to go watch another video on the channel. Go watch. You like this? Look at how we'd solve this health problem over here. And then the middle CTA is to get them on our email list, lead magnet, join our next challenge, something to— how do we get people? Because the goal is not just to grow our YouTube channel, the goal is to grow the Phänomology community and get people into your challenges. So how do we get them off of social media into our business? We need to get their email address, give them a lead magnet. And then from there you have an email sequence which can include videos, but also, hey, our next challenge is coming up, join us.

So would you do that only at the end of a video?

Middle. There's 3 CTAs. The starting CTA is basically the hook to watch the video. The middle CTA is the lead magnet to get a free resource in exchange for an email address. And the ending CTA is to go watch another video on the channel.

So do you tell them the website or you always direct them to—

Below. They don't remember what the link is.

Link below. Yeah, yeah.

And then the first line, and YouTube's updating their, I don't know if you saw the new YouTube that they're playing with. It used to be 3 lines. Now it's one that gets cut.

Yeah.

If they launch the new rollout that they've been testing.

Yeah, we saw that together, I think on Instagram or maybe the movement, yeah.

The first line now. And so it used to be three lines before it cuts. Now it's one line. So your link has to be right there 'cause people don't wanna click see more. So you tell them in the description and go click on it. You can say freedomology.com, but then people—

Yeah, have the link right there.

Yeah, they don't remember freedom, why freedom, freedomology, and they can't spell it and it's just like, Or they're on their phone and they can't, so have the link right there. But those 3 CTAs. And then those 4 levers. And everything is, we're always trying to tweak and improve those 4 things.

Have you experimented with paid? Like where?

So, talk about that a little bit. You have to have a model for paid. So paid for subscriber growth doesn't help much. You can get subscribers, but they don't watch your videos. Paid is better for if you have something that you're trying to promote. So like the best paid strategies are, for example, like do you know how many people have watched your videos total? No. Okay, so let's say 50,000 people total have watched your videos, cool. You could retarget them with your next campaign. So your next launch is gonna come up, you're gonna launch your next health challenge or money challenge or whatever, you could do a targeted commercial to them. Hey, thank you so much for watching our videos. Our next health challenge starts in 3 days. Come join us. We're gonna guide you through how to yada yada yada yada yada. Click the link. Right, so you're retargeting people, but there's a, if you're spending money on something, we want it to lead to a business result, and a view and a subscriber alone is not a business result. And so when you bring people in through paid, it's usually the worst subscribers. So it's best for, retargeting. It could be cold if you're gonna go cold outreach, but it's better if they've already seen a piece of your content.

Okay, makes sense.

Cool.

It makes sense, yeah.

Well, looking forward to the next couple days. If people wanna find out about you, where they go?

Yeah, so freedomology.com or freedomology.com/h40. Again, we break it up into health, relationships, and finances. So we're very focused on health, like mental health, helping people in these sprints. I think most people, when they look at, hey, do you wanna be healthy? Everybody raises their hands, says yes. But it comes down to how do you define health? And I think, so I think if we peel back layers of the onion, it's mental health is the foundation. Like, people really don't just wanna look good, they wanna feel good too. And I think that's something that the world really isn't helping people with, you know, in the most efficient way right now. And so our sprints focus on the mental health aspect, the physical health, and the connective tissue in between is environment. Like right now we're in the studio. It's a cool place to record a video, right? So I think we're physical beings always in a physical space, so we should focus a little bit or a lot on optimizing our environment, where we live and work and yeah, so freedomology.com/h40 for our next sprint.

I love it.

Yeah, cool, man.

Thanks. Appreciate you.

Appreciate it, brother. Yep, good.

To see me coach other entrepreneurs, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there. If you have a million subscribers on a channel, like what kind of money do people make from that? You can make 7 figures off your channel. Okay. You need audience, you need long content, you need consistent content.