Celebrity Youtuber Reveals His Viral Content Blueprint - Evan Carmichael

If you could give any piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Believe. Believe more. So I think the biggest problem in the world is just lack of belief. It's not possible. She would say it's not possible. There's no way. There's no world that I could do that. Now. Imagine what you can do in another eight years. Like, if we're already an impossibility to our younger selves, imagine what else we can do in this world. They can live in the world of possibilities instead of the world that is wake up every day trying to solve it.

Oh, I'm so excited.

Really?

Yep.

Good.

Welcome to the show. And Carmichael Three.

Three times. Third time's a charm.

Yeah, I know. We've been trying to schedule this for three months.

The plane just keeps getting delayed. Yeah, here we are.

But today it was meant to be.

The Hannah Hammond Show.

Yes.

Let's go. I love it. Look at that. We're here.

We're here this year. You're so funny. So, Evan, for those of you who don't know Evan, which you probably do because he has like over 7 million followers across all his social media platforms. Something like that. Where are you at?

That's an interesting question. Yeah, that's about right.

That's insane. So. And. But your expertise is YouTube. Really? How to go viral on YouTube, build a following on YouTube, monetize YouTube. And you're also an author, a speaker, you're Canadian. So there's that.

Is that a good thing? Or what's with there's that? What does that mean?

No, no, that's a good thing. Canadians. You're so nice.

Okay.

You're so nice. You are kind of a ass, though.

I'm an ass sometimes. Well, what a start to this episode.

That's.

Is that my intro? 70 million subscribers. Canadian and an ass. Wow. Okay.

Yeah, I just, I love it because you're just, you're so matter of fact about being on point with your brand. And like you told me, if you're going to build a billion dollar brand or a hundred million dollar brand or whatever your goal is, you have to treat it as such. And you need to be actually looking at analytics and actually having a strategy. And so I'm really excited to dive in today. And I actually, you know. L get to be friends with you because I'm in 100k group, Joe Fallis group. But I didn't know that you had built and sold a biotech company by the time you were 19 years old.

Started when I was 19. Sold at 22. Yeah. That was my first, first real business. I had a bunch of little things happening before then, entrepreneurial tendencies, but that was my first business.

That's crazy. What does that even mean? What, what did you do? How did you do that?

How did I build it?

Yeah. A biotech company.

Well, okay, so my background is not biotech, but there are two founders in university and I connected with them and I became coo, whatever. In a three person company, like it doesn't matter, right?

Yeah.

And I was given 30% of the company equity and 500 bucks a month and that's how we started.

Wow.

And all of my, you know, quitting on my partner, coming back the next day, all of the failures, all of the struggles, that's really like, I think your purpose comes from your pain. I think whatever you struggle with is the thing you want to help people through. Because I struggled so much in that business, I wanted to help other entrepreneurs not struggle as much as I did. And so that ended up leading to the website and the YouTube channel, being on the Han Hammond show, all the great things that put on the bio.

That was my next question is what led you from biotech to being a thought leader on YouTube?

When we sold the company, I didn't want to sell, but when we sold the company, I got asked to speak and represent Canada at a bunch of these events. So I guess I was featured somewhere. And I don't even remember how it happened, but there's a conference called apec, Asia Pacific Economic Something Community. I don't know, cooperation. And every country sends delegations out every year to it and they always bring a couple young people from each country. And so I went to represent young entrepreneurs in Canada. And so I spoke in Mexico City. It was my first time doing any kind of speaking engagement. I wasn't very good, super nervous, spoke really quickly, you know, all, all the, all the things. And then somebody saw me there and she ran a delegation in Brunei where they were trying to get Brunei not so dependent on oil and wanted to encourage entrepreneurship. So can you speak at our event in a couple of months in Brunei? Like, okay, cool, yeah, I'll go speak there. And just one thing led to another and I thought, huh, like maybe I should do something back home in North America as opposed to just flying over to other places. And then that led to me doing events in my hometown of Toronto, then led to YouTube that then led to, I don't know, all the things, one thing led to another. It wasn't planned, just the next thing. Yeah, you Know, when I sold my business, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I said yes to a whole bunch of things. It's like, you sell your business, you wake up, you don't know what to do tomorrow. Because I had my life structured and then it's gone. You know, like, if you got out of real estate and got out of podcasting, like, oh, what do I do tomorrow? Oh, I don't know. You're looking for things to do. So the venture capital. I went to venture capital because we never had to raise money, but I was always curious about it. So we sold our business before we had the raise. That was our next step is like, do we raise capital or do we sell? And so we sold. But I was curious about it. So, okay, here's a fun thing to try. Why not? And I connected with a group in Toronto that the principals were all in their 60s or 70s, and it was kind of their retirement job. And they took me under their wing and taught me a lot about how they see business. Up until that point, I only knew my one software company, didn't know anything else. But when you're in the VC world every day you're seeing all sorts of different companies and they do a lot of advisory work as well. And so I got to see how they thought and saw so many different businesses that I was like, oh, that's really cool. Which then went to my website and then YouTube channel, and again, now we're here.

So how long were you in the venture capital space?

Year and a half. We were helping raise like half a million to 15 million for growth companies.

You were just a GP.

I was in charge of basically bringing in new deals. So these guys had to street wired. And the Canadian VC market is not as. It's not as aggressive as the US and so a lot of times they'd look for partners. So they would bring a deal and then we'd go to an American partner and like, hey, if we lead this, would you also fund part of it? And so they had the street connections, but they didn't have the entrepreneur connections as much because they weren't hustling because is their retirement job. They're, you know, sitting at their offices and just, you know, doing their kind of networking. So I'm willing to hustle and grind and meet entrepreneurs and like, I love doing that. And so I started connecting with entrepreneurs who were growing in the city and then made the instructions to the VC firm to say, hey, you know, if you need capital, here's an opportunity. So I brought deals in. I was a rainmaker to bring in deals. And they taught me what happens after, you know, somebody comes in for a pitch.

Okay, and then what was your initial purpose or intention with the YouTube channel? Like what was that spark of I'm going to start a YouTube channel. And what was your goal with it?

Purpose comes to your pain just to make it easy for other people. It's like I struggled so much and the thing that saved me was modeling success, like finding successful entrepreneurs who had done it and take one thing in their story to make my business better. I thought, huh, if I can share some of what I learned and some of the stories that I, that I learned from then hopefully can help a few people like YouTube. When did I start? I opened my account in 2008. It wasn't, it wasn't a thing to be YouTube famous. Nobody's doing long form YouTube content. Nobody had a million subscribers. It was an educational platform. If you made a 10 minute video, it was like, that's crazy. Nobody's going to watch a 10 minute video. It's just a completely different animal than what it is now. But I just wanted to, want to help and like I like video, I like visual more than anything else. Like the fact that I can, that I can see you is easier than if this was just audio only. I'd have to be like this trying to listen to you. And so YouTube was and still really is the only long form like YouTube video place. But it was the only video place period back then. And so I just started making content. It wasn't very good. I was super nervous. I just kept going.

Yeah, because you're an introvert, right?

Yeah. People don't believe that. And it doesn't come across when I'm doing things like this. But it was 350 videos until I wasn't completely embarrassed by my content.

Wow.

Like I couldn't watch it. And the only thing I had going for me was I just kept going, you know, so if you look back on your videos, you should be embarrassed by them. It should be, it should be bad. My first video is still up. You can go watch my first video. My first video. I was so scared to do it that I had a friend of mine come in who had a video production company and he filmed me doing it. And we took a whole day to film what was, I don't know how many lines I said. I was trying to memorize the lines. I'm sitting there in a suit. If you want to laugh, you can see me in My blue suit and in perfect plant placement behind. And, like, the setup and design and just trying to memorize the lines. And then most of the video is. Is B roll with me doing audio on top of it. But for me to memorize those, like, 15 lines or whatever I had took the whole day to film and still was not very good. So I went through all the same struggles that everybody goes, maybe, maybe, maybe worse, because I'm introverted. And there were no real models to look up to to say, like, here's how it's done. But it just kept going.

So was your initial. And for those of you who are listening and not watching, Evan's wearing a black sweatshirt with his gold.

Yeah.

Wow.

The hesitation on the gold is rough.

Well, it's debatable, but it's more of, like, a mustard.

But anyway, how do I flip this table over?

You know, his gold valise.

What did you call me?

What did you call me?

A Canadian. But then what? There's something else afterwards. It wasn't very nice.

Oh, you're. No, you're amazing. I love you. You're one of my favorite. I was telling AD before we got here. You're one of my favorite people in the whole world.

Wow. Okay.

You are. You just, like, always make me happy. And you're so smart, and you're willing to help, and you want other people to win, and it's hard to find that.

Oh, good. Well, that's true.

But anyway, I don't know what the.

Smart thing, but I do want people to win.

Yeah. Yeah. And you're. You're. You're known for hashtag believe, and it's like, believe in yourself, and believe in reaching your highest potential. Yeah. And then you wear the same outfit every single day almost, with your black sweater, your gold shoes.

Yeah.

And sometimes Joe's socks that say, what's in it for them?

Yeah.

Yep. But anyway. Yeah. So that's when you started the YouTube channel. Were you having an intention to monetize it right away, or how did you decide? Like, for people who are looking to. To grow their YouTube channel or even start their YouTube channel channel, how do they approach what the best strategy is? Is it entertainment? Is it how to. Is it educate? Like, what's my other thing? Interview style? Like, how do you know what that best strategy is? And how do you align that with your goals to monetize it?

Got it. Okay, great. So how I did it was not how I would do it. Now, YouTube's a very different game. When I'm helping entrepreneurs figure out the YouTube strategy, it's. Well, first off, are we an entrepreneur? Like, what do we sell? So are we, are we trying to be an influencer and be famous or we have an. We're. We have a business that we're trying to build our brand around and generate leads for our company.

We're an entrepreneur. Yeah. I'm not talking necessarily Mr. Beast type style where it's more just pure entertainment, but if somebody is an entrepreneur, they want to build their business, but they also want to build their personal brand so they can be top of funnel into the variety of businesses that they may own.

Yeah.

What's the best strategy of like, for instance, me, I'm doing this podcast, but it takes a lot of time, money, energy and attention. And then I also want to do, you know, I'm not doing the how to videos. And then people are like, well, we want to see more of you. Like, we want to learn how to do private lending and we want to learn how to do real estate. And. And then other people are like, oh, no, you need to do entertaining videos if you want to build a personal brand, because that's the most important thing. So how do you figure that out?

What's your goal?

Build a big personal brand. Be top of funnel for what the brand does, what the brand brings. Leads in for my lending company to raise capital, to originate loans and to sell real estate deals.

Okay, so, so you want leads for the lending company. Well, like what's the most important. That's the most important thing.

Yes.

Leads for the lending company. And those are investors or those are deals?

Both.

Okay.

What's capital raising and borrowers.

What's the bigger. What's the constraint?

But the bigger picture is also building a personal brand that's in line with helping people reach their highest potential. Because of course I'm going to have. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm going to have. I have, I have and will continue to have multiple companies. So it's not just. I don't want to be the queen of hard money.

Yeah.

Because it's a bigger vision than that.

Sure, yeah. The vision can be to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah. Great. There's steps. That's the thing. It's like entrepreneurs have these huge ambitions and dreams and goals and you want to change the world. I love it. And there's a sequence to doing it because to do that big thing, you need tons of money and team and time for people to get to know you. And like, you can't do it by yourself. You need you need killers on your team to help you build and grow. Right? Me with 65 people on my team, I can do a lot more than ragtag here and there part time trying to figure this out while I have this other business, right. Like it depending on where people are at. We most people that I help want to go and build a giant brand and the path to doing that is figuring out what's the constraint in your business to make money so that you can then scale the business which then allows you to hire team to allow you to scale the brand to go change the world. So I love the mission and let's think bigger and to do that we need team to help us accomplish that. And to do that we need money to be able to pay team to go off and build everything else. So it's just, it's not, it's not. No, it's not. So like I don't want to be known as just this. You won't. And it's great like going through this because the people watching think the same thing. It's just not right now. It's like the sequence. So it's like the dream is possible. It's actually faster to go this path than to try to do everything all at once and end up doing nothing. So it's usually when I'm talking to entrepreneur if they have a business, usually the path is how do we use content to help you grow your business so you can afford to hire team to scale the brand which then brings in all sorts of new business at a higher scale. Because if you're just going brand, if you don't know what you're doing, it's going to take you 10 years to do it. Just consistency. If you get help and team and people to help you, it's going to take three to five years. But that's still three to five years and that's investment. I remember helping one guy, big name that everybody would recognize and I went to his studio and I'm walking in, he's like, oh my God. He built the studio in his office, right? He's got millions of subscribers now. And he said, Yeah, I spent $1 million on this studio, are you kidding me? And I came from like, I did everything brick by brick, one at a time, part time, like me, everything. And then a part time editor and slowly built it up where he's just, yeah, just I'm going to drop $1 million on this and build my studio and then not including his full time team to help him like, okay, well listen, if you had, I had to change how I thought about it because hey, if you actually have a $5 million budget, you can get there in a year. But most people don't have that. And so even with help, it's going to take you three and without help and guidance is going to take you 10. And so most people who are entrepreneurs don't want to just keep dumping money at something that's not working. So we have to find a way for you to make money doing it. Because if it was making you money, you do it a lot more often, which then allows you to build a machine that will help you change the world. So typically there's three types of shows that, that will guide people through and you can interrupt me wherever. So it's not just me talking for 40 minutes or whatever. But the first is the Biz Dev show. The second is demonstrate the process and the third is thought leadership and the Biz Dev show. The goal is to, is to get business. So you have a business. Great. How do you build your, how do you get great investors to come on? It's referrals, right? Like how have you built your business kick ass in real estate? Have it's been referrals. People know you, like you, trust you and then they send you deals, right? You keep building your reputation, then you're going to keep getting more deals. That doesn't scale like super hard and it takes a while to start building that up. So what's the fastest way to do it? You do a show, you interview people. So if the biggest constraints will ask what's the biggest constraint? The biggest constraint, if it's I need more investors, cool, interview them because they don't want to go to lunch with you, they don't want to go to coffee with you. They might, it's just hard to build that up. But they'll come on a show, right? It's a nice setup, you can ask great questions, you're going to take them around the tour, whatever. You end up spending an hour with them. Like, well, and so what do you do besides the show? Like, oh, I have this business. Oh cool, let me know. Like now you've, you're leading with a give which is the show as opposed to hey, I'd love to pick your brain on my investment, right? It's like they don't want to do that. And so they're not in, they're in, they're in very high demand in, in the business world, but they're not in high demand in the media world. So these People would be impossible to get a lunch with, but they'll come on your show because nobody's asking them to come on the show. So the whole point of doing the Biz Dev show is to, is to host a podcast that won't get millions of views, but you're, you're building a relationship with the people who could invest millions of dollars into whatever the thing is that you're trying to do. Whether it's hard landing, whatever else doesn't matter. So for everybody who has a business, we help people come up with a. We call it a money. So who are the 50 people that if they knew you, liked you, trusted, you would each be worth six or seven figures per year to your business? Doesn't mean they will send you business, but they have the capacity, the, the ability to send you six or seven figures in business every year to your company. Who are those people? Great. What's the fastest way to connect with them? Invite them on a show, Then you start making more business so you can go even with a brand new channel because they're not in demand. If you needed to get the rock on your show, he's probably not coming on.

Yeah.

But some investor who nobody's ever interviewed. Oh, you want to hear my story? They're much more likely to get a yes. And now you have the relationship. So that's show number one. There's lots of strategies around that we can dive into if you care and if you don't, cool. The second is demonstrate the process. So whatever it is that you do, show me the process of you doing it. And that's great. So the first show, Biz Dev, is great for revenue generation. The second show is great for conversion and ascension. So people who are in our system already, people who are leads, show me the process of what you do. And it converts them to buy and it converts buyers to ascend to whatever higher package we have. So if you're a coach, for example, Right, Great. You sell coaching, you sell groups, you sell programs. If you're going to make a thought leadership video where you stand in front of a whiteboard and show me the eight ways to be more confident or whatever, Cool. But it doesn't mean that you can coach me on how to do it. Where the best content to make is show me you coaching. That's the actual process. Be a coach, be a magician. If a magician were to get up on stage and just talk about magic, it's not great. But show me magic. And for every entrepreneur, there's a magic to what we do you just may not notice it because it's just your default. But if you're a coach, your ability to get a result with somebody and to have them shift, that's magic. So show me the process of you doing it. And that content helps us attract some new clients, but also for our, for our people in our system, sending that, sending them a video of you actually coaching people. Like, oh, I want that result. I don't care if you can present or I don't care if you can write a book. I want to see you actually helping people. And it's usually the easiest content to make. Instead of just getting in front of a camera, asking a coach in front of the camera and be a great thought leader, it's a different skill set versus just coaching people. So what's the coaching element that, that you could bring into your business, that you, anybody can bring into their business, that is magic to other people. And so we just film it. And so that's great for conversions and also ascension into whatever our highest program is. And the third is thought leadership. And that's where you're at. You're making content that could be a podcast, that could be a solo direct to camera videos. Normally what we'll do is try to make it around things that can still try to generate revenue quickly. So if you look at what are the 20 to 40 questions you get asked in your business? Constantly. Cool, make a video on that. So if you're asked about hard lending or whatever, at this point, you may not be answering all the calls. You have a salesperson who's going to answer some of the calls. So what are the 20 questions that they're asking on repeat or they're getting asked on repeat? And even if they say the same thing as you, it just hits different coming from you. So whatever the objection is that they're being faced with, they'll deal with it. But then on the after call can say, hey, here's a video from our founder Hannah of her talking about this specific problem that you mentioned on our call. And so they get to see you saying, even if it's the exact same thing, but it's you, you're the founder. And so it helps convert. So it's still thought leadership content, but helps convert people to work with you. So example, one of our, we have a program called Movie Makers. One of our, one of our students is a lawyer. He made a video how to get ready for a deposition. And it's the best video on his channel helping people get ready for a deposition. It does well for people just finding him on YouTube, but he also sends it to all of his clients before they have to go get ready for a deposition. So it's leverage. We're using it inside our business, not just something on YouTube. Right. And then you can do thought leadership, content and personal development and everything else. It's just the hardest because it's the. It's one, if you're going pure thought leadership, personal development, you're up against people who've been doing it for years. So, like, it's you versus Tony Robbins and Mel Robbins and, like, all of these people, so it's harder to stand out. And so you're not as good yet. And so you. You have to get good if you want to win in that game. And two, there's no. There's no revenue model attached to it yet. And so it's. It's hard to commit to versus if you can see and I. That was all we did at the beginning is, like, help people do that. But it just took so long for them to actually get good and see a business model attached to it. It's like, okay, we need to find ways for them to make money while they're doing this and building a brand at the same time. Yeah. So anyway, I talk for a bunch. Those are the three shows.

No, that's what you're here for. So you recommend doing all three of those strategies at the same time?

No. No.

Or just one?

No. Well, it's like, I want to solve whatever the biggest constraint in your business is and use content to help you do that. So we've said, okay, I want to change the world. I want to win a Nobel Peace Prize. I want to help people be unstoppable. Awesome. Cool. What's the biggest constraint in your business right now? What's the smallest thing? Like, if you could, like, what's our fastest way to generate an extra million dollars in your company? And if you said, I need more investors. Okay, cool, let's use content to help you get more investors. And I would spend the next six months helping raise whatever you need. Are you trying to raise $10 million for your fund or I don't know how much you're trying to raise. Cool. That becomes a billion. Well, what's the next step, though?

Like, a million.

Oh. Oh, sorry. I heard a billion.

No, a billion. But the next step is the first, you know, is another million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great, right? So a billion is awesome. Let's get there. Cool. What's the. What's the step in front of us. If it's a million, cool. I mean, the million is one person.

Yeah, that's the thing. Just the next person. The next person. The next person.

Yeah. Like, you don't want to be taking $10,000 checks from tons of people. It's like, who's a person who can drop half a million million or 2 million into this thing? Because for them, they're just betting on you. Yeah, great. So they need to know you. So what's the best way for them to know you? Do a show and interview them and talk about real estate.

Okay. And then when you create your show, how do you know if your strategy is working or not? Like, how do you know what are the most important analytics that you're looking at? Are you looking at views? Are you looking at subscriber growth? Are you going after a certain conversion amount? Like, how do you know when to pivot and when things are working versus when things are not working?

What are we trying to accomplish?

Well, right now, since speaking for me personally, I'm just trying to. To grow. I'm not running ads at this moment, but I'm about to start running them, so it's hard to be like, okay, what is healthy growth for a YouTube channel? You know, how do you know if things are actually growing on a good pace? Like, for you, was there an inflection point where you just took off after years? Our friend Eddie Panero said it took him, like, seven years of pretty steady, slower growth before he actually hockey sticked and took off. Was that similar for you? How do you know if you're growing on the right pace or if you need to make a change?

Yeah, I mean, so, like, the way you're going at it is basically the hardest way to do it, which. Cool. Whatever. I mean, that's. I. I try not to prescribe, like, the hardest thing. You know, there's easier ways, but whatever. It's like, I always try to help the person in front of me accomplish the thing that they want to do. Right. And so that's why I always try to tie it to business first. We said, no, I'm going to do my business in a different way. All I about is YouTube growth, and I want to win in the podcast game. And there's, you know, Mel and Lex and Joe Rogan, everybody else. And I'm going to. I'm going to do it my way, and I want to. I want to win in the hardest game there is. Okay, cool, let's go. It's. It comes down to getting good. So if you look at my YouTube channel, I post this on my website. If you go to the, if you go to evan comicle.com and scroll down a little bit, you'll see my year over year growth every year. In five years in, I have 2, 000 subscribers or something.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah, it's like, it's like you. How many you have, how many subscribers you have on your channel?

Oh, I just started. I have like just under a thousand per.

I mean, it took me. So we're doing, we're doing. You're coming to my mastermind that we're doing here on the weekend. And we have one member, Markham and Jody. They have a channel about retirement that they started and four years later they have 70,000 subscribers. And compared to my channel, four years in, I had a couple hundred.

That's crazy, right?

So like my path isn't necessarily, you know, I was slow. I didn't, I, I didn't do most of the things that I should have done to try to get better. But inflection point, you can look at the numbers, you can see, I don't know where was it that I, that I took off? Is it when I hit five figures or six figures or a million? You know. But in, in 2014, I did two things. That was my, that was, that was, I guess six years in. I married Nina, my wife, and I got help. I got my agent, Steve, and Steve is the same agent that worked with Mel Robbins and Grant Cardone and other people. And the combination of Steve giving me advice and help, that was a 85% fit. It's like somebody gives you a hat and doesn't like quite fit. You got to make adjustments. But it was still way better than having no hat. So the combination of his push and my wife's support really made a huge difference for me to start taking off. So the answer is I got help and then I started getting better. But it doesn't have to take you six years or whatever. It'll just come down to how good are you at the thing. And it's hard for someone. You're great for how little you've done. Right? So it's like, I don't know how many episodes you are deep on on your show, but you haven't done a thousand episodes.

Like 23 or something.

Yeah, go watch video number 23 on my channel. It's terrible. It's for sure terrible. For sure terrible. So you're already way ahead of, of most people on their curb, but it's like in the comparison to whoever you think is the greatest podcaster, Rich Roll or Lex Friedman or whoever, it's like, okay, it's nowhere close and fair. You mean they've been at it for how long and you're getting started on the journey. Right. And so it's like the willingness to, to learn to close the gap between them. And that's in the guests you pick and the questions you ask. And more Hannah showing up each and every time already. This like 20 episodes in is better than whatever the first one was. Right? I don't know who the first one is.

Robert Kiyosaki.

Okay, great. Yeah, well, Robert, he's great. He's a great interview. Like he can interview himself, but whoever, like the second person is or the third person. Right. Like every year you're probably iterating and growing so much already. If you look at, if you look back on episode 19 and say, oh my God, I suck, you know, but then if you look back on three, it's like, oh man, I really suck back then and just I'm much better. So what metrics are you paying attention to? It's Sure. I mean of course if your goal is growth and views and subscribers is the thing that you're going to be after ads, I didn't know if you're thinking about you being monetized, you're going to run ads. Those are different strategies. But of course the views and subscribers, it's like that's the end result. But what's the work that goes in? What's the input to create that output? That's going to come down to you.

Yeah. And I mean in my opinion, it's like the Alex Hermosi, Grant Cardone, Gary Vee, any of the big influence, Tony Robbins. The more audience you have that are aligned with your values and know like and trust you, then the sales are easy because you have a big reach. And so I think that it's a, it's a multi pronged approach of building the audience and getting the right audience that will convert to sales in the short term as well.

Well, that's a, that's, that's a big yes and Right. So we help a lot of people behind the scenes with a lot of different things that they're working on and a lot of projects that, that mega flop because they have a big audience but not for the thing that they're trying to sell. And so it doesn't do well. And I'll give a shout out to Tom Bilyeu only because he shared this publicly but he's got 4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, Impact Theory. Awesome show. And Tom's longtime friend of the channel. He launched a comic book that failed. He launched a crypto project that that is still ongoing, but struggled to get out of the gate. And I mean, you could probably find the tweet and show it up on screen. But he lists all of these things that he tried to launch that did not work because he had the wrong audience, because he built an audience around personal development and health and wellbeing and mindset and entrepreneurship. But then he's launching a comic book, something completely different. So if you're not building the audience for the product that you want to sell, then it doesn't lead to sales for that thing. It can create a new business model. It could lead to. Tom is a speaker and gets paid a lot to go and speak on stages, but you may not want to travel every weekend to speak on stage. Tom, you know, might get a book deal, but maybe he doesn't want to write a book. Like, it creates a different business model around the audience that you have. But there's a lot of people, big name people who have millions of subscribers, but then they can't sell the thing that they want to sell because it's not connected to what their audience wants.

Yeah, right.

So I'm obsessed with figuring out the business model because if you don't have a business model, people quit. And I came into YouTube already, having built and sold the business, and then venture capital, the bunch of deals. And so I'm just business minded. And I remember the first YouTube event I went to was this little private entry event that I barely made it in. You're supposed to have half a million subscribers plus. And I think I had 300 something and a friend kind of got me in. No public. You're like, not. You don't have to pay. That's just big YouTubers. And one of the key guys had over 10 million subscribers. Really? On his channel. And like, oh, my God, this guy's here. He's got 10 million subscribers, right? And like, what is your. I'm like, what does your team look like? I'm thinking team and building and scale. Right? Turn this on. What does your team look like? It's like, oh, yeah, I just hired my first VA and it's awesome. It's like, wait, what? You have 10 million subscribers? I didn't say that, but I already had team helping me. Not that it's a comparison. I'm just like, I'm looking for how Are people building their teams and their structure. Who's ahead of me so that I can model some of the things that they're doing. And he's got over 10 million subscribers and he just hired his first part time person because he wasn't making any money on his channel. Okay, so this is going to be a problem for a lot of people. And then as we started helping more and more people, it's like, it's great to have the numbers, but if you don't have the business to back it up, then people burn out. People quit, they, they stop making content. Especially the entrepreneur minded people. If you're just, if you're, you're an artist or you're just a creator and you just love, you're doing it just because you love the work, then you do it because it's in you. You can't not do it for entrepreneurs who, it's, they're, they're doing it to support a vision and the vision isn't like coming to fruition. They quit. It's like, okay, we need, we need you making revenue from this because if you are, you'll go much harder at it. And if you're not, it's going to mean it's going to be this part time thing you do evenings, weekends that never grabs the legs to help you go get the Nobel Peace Prize or whatever it is the thing that you want to do.

Yeah, that's. I love that you say that because it does. It takes time, energy, money. It takes a lot of effort to produce content and it takes a whole team. I don't know how somebody could do it without a team. But what is the importance, do you think of the. Just the quantity of output versus the quality of output when it comes to YouTube?

The quality, the quantity leads to the quality. Like the more you do, the better you get.

But if you do, what about production quality?

Depends what you're doing. If you're doing thought leadership, it's much more about quality of thought than quality of production. If you're doing entertainment, then the production quality matters a lot more. You go to see some movies just because of the effects that are going to be in there. You know, it's a crappy plot, you know the acting is going to be trash, but oh, there's going to be some crazy effects. You got to go watch it. But in education, and I only really deal with education, entrepreneurship, thought leadership kind of channels, I'm not the slime channel or entertainment or any of those things. It's quality of thought. So if somebody's going to watch your channel, they're watching it because of what I'm going to learn by listening to you or your guests. Not because of there's B roll of a woman climbing a mountain with some eagle flying overhead and music blasting. Right. Like, that's not. That's not the thing that they're coming for. And so it's not nothing. Like, the most important is audio. If you can't hear, if these mics aren't working, this episode's dead. Doesn't matter what we talk about.

Better be.

I've done videos where the mic was off. And so the only audio you have is from the camera halfway across the room. Right?

That happened to me once.

Yeah. This happened.

Yeah. My second interview. Thank God it wasn't Robert.

That's happened. And then my team's like, oh, my gosh, they didn't notice. We have to do it again. And, like, I'm not doing it again. Yeah, we're gonna release what we have just to show people the journey. And the comments on those videos were, dude, you have all these subscribers. Can you afford a mic? Can I send you a $99 microphone? Why does this guy sound like he's in a toilet? And production quality, like, this guy, I won't say his name just to throw shade at him, but he obsessed about the quality of the camera. And so he had a Red Dragon camera, which is a super expensive camera, but to set it up, he was like, we were in a. In a giant. I was in my dance studio, and he was like, far. Like, three times farther than where this camera is. And. And the audio picked up from the camera was actually terrible. Right. And I loved it. I loved that he cared so much about it. And then he forgot to check the audio. And then we're going to release his video. So audio is most important. There's the brand, right? And the brand is. Is not just. Not just logo and colors and all the things we're working on, but it's how you carry yourself, is how you want to be seen. And people have different brands. You know, Mel Robbins has. She's always doing videos with no makeup on and out and about and off her cell phone and her podcast. She'll be a little more professional, but it's the authentic brand. That's her. Like, she. That's how people get to know her. She's not always polished and perfect. Right. Where other people are going to be a lot more attention to detail. Polished, perfect, the setup. But you're not going. You're not going for that. You're going for the. The, like, it just speaks to the kinds of conversations that you're going to have. And so what does. What is the, like, in a couple words, what's the Hannah Hammond brand?

Well, we were talking about comparing your brand like a car, right? You have Ford and then you go all the way up to Bugatti or Rolls Royce or something like that. And my brand is polished. It's authentic and real, but it's also polished and always put together, always prepared. And you were kind of saying is like, oh, well, even if you go to the gym, you drop down to like a BMW, but when you're really polished and put together, you're up at maybe a Lamborghini or something like that. So that's how I would see it.

Yeah. So great polish. So. And for the audience, she was showing me videos. No, I do authentic and raw and real. And like, showed a video of her going to the gym or something. Still with the hair and the lashes. Like, come on. That's how you, you know.

Yeah.

Which is fine. And that's you. And that's cool, right? That they're not coming for the. The just woke up. Hey, guys, I hate my life, you know, and you hadn't put your extensions in and everything else. Right. Which is just a completely different brand. So if I'm coming for you, like, I think a brand is an emotion. And if you want people to feel polished or prepared as a result of consuming your content, like, how am I going to feel as a result of watching your content? Then if polish or prepared is how you want me to feel, then that's, that's the questions that we ask. But it's also how. How things show up. Like if. If it's polished and prepared and then this table's falling apart or whatever else is happening, then, well, okay, that's very off brand. But for other people, this might be like, way too fancy than. Compared to what their brand is about.

Right.

But it's. They're not coming because of, you know, the color of the table. They're coming because when I'm around Hannah, I feel a certain way and whatever it is that you want them to feel, then the entire brand is designed around that. And, and ideally, it's not a contrived thing. It's that it's who you actually are. So I want people to believe in themselves more when they're around me. Then I try to do that for my content. I try to do that through the interviews. I try to do that in real life. I just try to be that person. It's a lot easier to not burn out if you just. Are you. If you're trying to be something else, and it's a lot harder. So if the brand is polished, then you want people to feel like they could be polished, too. And so through the questions you ask and the guests you bring on and how you present yourself and how you present the show and the thumbnails and the title and everything else. Is it polished? Because that makes me feel a certain way.

Yeah. I got my art logo signature completed. I sent it to you.

Did you?

Yeah.

Okay. I like the excitement. What I love about you is how into it you are. You're, like, so into it, which is great, because it's what I missed. I was really into it at the beginning. I was super into it, but I was too afraid to ask for help. I would never ask for help. Like when you, you know, like, you sat next to me at the event, at Joe's event, and we got shushed because you're asking so many questions. It was like interact interrupting the presentation. Like, I would have been too afraid to do that. And so that's. That slowed down my growth. And I love that you're just so into it and making it so you're going to get there a lot faster. You know, I still think, how do we generate revenue? Because it's just how I can't help. That's how my mind works. Because it allows you to go faster. And just the fact that you're. You're gonna. You're gonna find a way to make it work, which I love.

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, people always say, like, there's no shortcuts on the road to success, but it's a complete lie. There is. And it's finding a good mentor. Just like you did, right? You. That was your inflection point of, like, okay, let me actually do something different, because I know people that they'll just keep. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So if you're just posting the same quality, the same content, the same over and over, and you're not getting the results that you're looking for, that's just insane. You need to find a good mentor. And, you know, I found you, and. And you found Steve. Was that his name?

Steve? Yeah.

Yeah. So I think having a good mentor is so important, and there's so much that goes into it, and. And you just mentioned, you know, I had sent Evan some of my videos because My podcast is new. My whole social media building a brand is completely new. Prior to eight months ago, I was a ghost. Nobody knew who I was. I was just, you know, nose to the grindstone, working and building my businesses. But I showed you my stuff and you're like, you taught me how important the packaging is. And there's so much that goes into it. And it's not complicated. It's, you know, it's not complicated in theory, but it's also very difficult to accomplish because like the thumbnail packaging, the color palette, the face and the emotions. And so like, what is, what does the. I mean, how do you get people to click on your videos before they even get into the video? Like, how important is the thumbnail, the title? And what are some strategies to make those the best they can possibly be to get people to view your video?

Yeah, so any channel that I look at, any channel is like a. Well, you have to have at least some videos, I guess. Not like a zero, but, you know, let's say you have at least 20 videos or 10 videos on your channel all the way up to millions of subscribers. There's always four key things that we'll look at. The first is how frequently you're posting. The second is how long your videos. The third is what's your retention at one minute on the video? And the last is a click through rate. So we're diving in on click through rate here, which is a function of your thumbnail and title. We'll start with title. Most people think that search is the game on YouTube. YouTube is the world's second largest search engine after Google, yada, yada. And it's true. But most views don't happen from search. Most views happen from what YouTube recommends to you. So the goal isn't to rank in search. That's fine. It's cool. You can rank in search. It's great. You're just plain checkers because most of the views aren't coming from there. Most channels don't explode off of search, and if they do, they could be doing even better if they're getting recommended more. So the best way to show up is after other people's videos. And you just think about your own experience. If you watch the video, you search for something, then you see a bunch of videos that get recommended. Afterwards you go down this YouTube rabbit hole and all of a sudden it's an hour later, how many videos did I. Because YouTube is so great at recommending things to you. So even if the first view came from search, all the Other views came from what was recommended. So the big game is showing up in recommended. So what we want to do is have titles that can rank after other videos. So the number of times I've looked at a channel and said, yeah, we ranked number one for this title. Yeah. For a title that nobody cares about, great. You can say you're number one. Like agencies, look, we're ranking number one for this, but nobody's searching for this thing. So who cares if nobody else has made a video on that topic? Especially inside of education, entrepreneurship, thought leadership. You just like why your life is like a table. And you could have this great analogy about like four legs of a table and what the four pillars of a. Right. But if you call your video that, nobody's going to. They're not searching for that. Nobody else has made a video about that. So it's probably going to die even if you have great content because the packaging sucks. So we want to think about how can we rank against other people's videos. And you find people who are in your niche, you look for videos that have done really well for them and then you make your version of that video similar theme, title, don't watch their video, whatever. Their three lessons for success are cool. You make your own. You don't have to copy anything besides the title. And so the point of title is we want to be ranking against other people's videos. Thumbnail is what usually wins a click once we're showing up. So the thumbnail is in thought leadership, usually combination of a face that we want to have emotion on and then emotional text. So the face we want to see, the whites of their eyes. We want to have an expression on their face, ideally not just a LinkedIn profile picture. That is boring. We want them looking either at the camera or towards the text, not away. Because the will follow the eyes. We want it zoomed in for the most part because thumbnails are small on the phone and most consumption will happen on the phone. So we want Hannah to be instantly recognizable. The only exception is if it's. If we have to see the body for some reason, like if it's an ab workout video or something and it's a zoomed in of my face. Well, do I have abs? I don't know. It's like, it's hard to tell. So you need to see the thing. But for the most part, in thought leadership education, if you want to build a brand, you want to be instantly recognizable. Right? So even if we look at this, right, if that was a thumbnail that's gonna be way too small. Like, imagine that showing up. Yeah, Right now, for here, it's fine. But if we're looking at as a thumbnail, it's gonna be way too small. We wanna zoom in on the face. The face should be. You wanna be instantly recognizable because people are scrolling. And so even if I know that that's you, if that was on the thumbnail, I might just scroll right past it because it's just too small text. We wanna be emotional. What's going to get people to stop? And there's all of the psychological sales principles that go into copywriting apply here to get people to click. What are the mistakes people make? You don't want to have a giant logo on there. You don't want to see the person's name, like on this thumbnail. If you put my name, that's valuable real estate. That's taken up. I think we took that off your thumbnail too.

At the beginning.

Right. That you put the name. Okay, so. Well, why not have the name? Well, every letter has to fight for space. The more clutter there is, especially if your brain is about polish, the less people are going to click on it. So if people recognize me, then they don't need to know my name because, oh, that's Evan. And if they don't know who I am, then saying it's Evan doesn't matter anyway. So the name doesn't matter. You have Robert Kiyosaki on. They know Robert. Oh, that's Robert Kiyosaki. Awesome. Click. You don't need to tell him it's Robert Kiyosaki. And if they don't know who Robert Kiyosaki is, then saying Robert Kiyosaki doesn't matter either. So the name doesn't matter. We need emotional text going to get people to click. And that can be a quote, that could be a powerful statement. There's a lot of different principles you can use, but it really matters. And most people. Thumbnail text is pretty boring and the pictures are too zoomed out and pretty boring. And it's a different type of graphical work. So a lot of people come from a graphic design background, make thumbnails really fancy and have a lot of stuff going on, but it ends up being clutter. And then there's too many elements. And so when it's small, you can't. It doesn't stand out because there's too many. It's too much motion, too much stuff happening. So an easy eye test is you design your thumbnail because we Design it in Canva or Photoshop and it's like giant and you can see every detail. Cool. Shrink it way down. And then take a screenshot of your competitors or whatever your video is going to be called. See what other. What else is showing up down the side. And then put your thumbnail on top and see, like, does it stand out or not? And for a lot of people it doesn't. So there you go. How does that. Is that good?

Yeah. And how do you find an optimized title, like the best title for your videos? What's the strategy for that?

We want to show up against other people's videos.

But how do you know what's a good title?

You. You start with whatever you would call it. So you're going to make a video on blank. You start with like, what's a video that you would.

You would want to make in the educational space.

Sure. And whatever.

Well, I mean, it could be how to be a Private Money Lender.

Perfect. How to be a Private Money Lender. So you're going to say you're going to make that video. Okay, cool. So you go to YouTube, you search how to Be a How to Be a Private Money Lender. Okay. Now we're looking for the videos that show up that there's more views on those videos and subscribers on the channel, so that we call those growth videos. So videos that have done really well for smaller channels. If you're a small channel, you had a thousand subscribers, you said, yeah, cool. So what videos have done really well for small channels around that? But it's probably not going to be called that. And it might be called something completely different, but still means the same thing. So in my world, motivation will do way better than inspiration in the title. To me, it's the same thing. I mean, is it different? Sure. But if it's in the title, it's basically the same thing. So are there other words for private money lending? Hard money lending, hard money lending, alternative financing, but you never know, something like that. There might be a video that's five alternative financing for your home or whatever. That's pot. And we went in thinking private money lending. But if we call it this, it'll do way better because it's already proven that it's done better. And so that happens all the time. We want to make a video on something cool, give it your best shot, but then see what's actually been created already. That's done well because people are searching and they're finding that video. So what we want to do is show up after the other person's video that's already doing well because it's proven that it works versus trying to create and like hope that somebody finds this video where there's nothing around us.

Yeah.

Right.

And what about for the you you said the four things was one click through rate. The second one was the first 60 seconds, keeping viewers past the first 60 seconds. So how does the algorithm work and how do you best edit the video to keep viewers past the first 60 seconds?

Yeah. So the. The other two are easy. Typically like how frequency. How often are you making content? If you're doing content like once a week is your is Unless you're making like epic levels of content, once a week is your ticket in. So you want to be at least once a week.

Is there too much you could be posting? Does it.

If you are posting like every day, then I would say let's now focus on analytics and data and figure out which series are working so we can start improving the quality. You have enough data to work off of. If you're doing a video every two weeks, you're also not getting good enough at the skill. If you practice anything. If you were to sell a home or like get a listing or do a tour, every two weeks is like you're just not getting enough reps in to get good at the skill. Right. So like for anything. Right. You go to the gym once every two weeks.

Yeah.

You're not going to get good. Right. Um, so same thing with video interviews, podcasts, your own channel, you know, making content. Just you have to do it more frequently. Um, and then length 10 minutes plus you want to be in content for the range. Long form crushes on YouTube, one to three hours is awesome. Seeing the biggest growth in one to three hour videos. Rogan blew up with three four hour long videos. Right. I don't know how long we're going today, but you know, the longer you go, the better. It's really hard to win off of a five minute video. It's not that you can't.

Although you have 28 million views on a five minute video.

Sure.

On your YouTube channel.

Yeah. It's a really old video.

Yeah.

Right back before long videos even were a thing.

So YouTube likes longer now versus then you wouldn't do that again.

Yeah. Yes. Short. Yes. YouTube their number one goal. And this is also, this isn't just YouTube. This is every platform. The number one goal is to keep you on their platform for as long as possible. Right. TikTok Instagram, they want you on their platform. All day long if they could, because that's how they make money and sell advertising and everything else. So YouTube's number one goal is watch time. They want you to stay on YouTube for as long as possible. If you help people stay on YouTube for as long as possible, you're going to get rewarded with more watch time. Right. So they're going to keep recommending your channel. If people watch a video and then leave, or they leave 5% of the way through, like, oh, this video must suck. Let's stop showing Hannah's videos to people. Right? So the longer you can keep somebody on the platform, any platform, the more that platform is going to reward you for doing it. And so in education, the big shift that's happened in the past five years is YouTube has become the default education place to go to. So when I was making videos, like back in the day, that six minute video, I was being yelled at like, this is way too long. Nobody's gonna watch a six minute video. That's crazy. You don't understand the Internet, like all of these things. People who are in the space were like freaking out that, that video, I don't remember what it's at right now. It's in the millions.

28 million.

No, it wasn't that video. It's a different video.

Oh, 14 million. I was just on your channel before this.

But the short, the short ones, like YouTube was a different beast back in the day, but nobody was making long form content. It just, this didn't exist. Now if you want to go and learn something, if you want to learn about hard money lending, cool. Where are you going?

YouTube.

Yeah, but like otherwise where would you go? The library?

No.

Talk to your mom? Like exactly. Where are you going? People just go to YouTube. So YouTube is, it's not really a social media site. Like the social component is not that big on YouTube. You can go to the comments, I guess, but it's not. Most people don't leave a comment. There's no ability to message on YouTube. It's not really a social media site. It's an education platform at least for, I mean it's entertainment as well, I guess. But every other platform is short form content. So if you're doing entrepreneurial, educational stuff, TikTok, Instagram. The others are short form video and it's inspiration and entertainment. How much are you going to talk about hard money lending in a 45 second Instagram reel? Yeah, like you could just, you can have it to be an inspiring piece or like a quick hit, but you're not learning anything. You go to YouTube to learn, it's long form content. So YouTube loves long form content. So the longer you can go, as long as you're good. Like we've helped a lot of people go from Instagram to YouTube and they crush the first minute, but then they struggle because they don't know what else to say. How am I supposed to talk for 10 minutes? 10 minutes is not a long time. 10 minutes is like the bare minimum, guys. You gotta be making longer video. So if you're just filling air with nothing because you don't know how to make a longer video, well then don't go make a 20 minute video with you just filling air and get the skills to get better so that you can actually say something more meaningful. Right? So if you were to make a 20 minute video on hard money lending, you might have to think about it a little bit, but you could do it because you know what you're talking about. You wouldn't run out of things to say 60 seconds in. But people, a lot of people are moving from the short form platforms to long are struggling with that because they're used to speaking in sound bites, which is fine. It's actually a great skill to have. But if you don't have a deep well of knowledge, then you get exposed pretty quickly, like, oh, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. So they struggle to make long form content. Podcasting is a hack because you can just bring on people and ask questions. Yeah, I don't have to be the expert. I'm going to bring on an expert and they're going to tell me whatever you know we're going to talk about. But then that also doesn't build your brand as an expert. Right. So if you're only bringing guests on, then you're building up a Larry King kind of brand where you're, you're a host, which for a lot of people doesn't lead to business. Right. If you, if you want to grow your hard money lending business, being a host talking about YouTube, like doesn't help accomplish that. Right. So we're achieving something else. So long form content is where people are going to learn. YouTube is where they're going to learn. So longer you can go, the better. Those are usually the easiest things to fix. Like how many videos are you making, how long are you going? Great. Make more and go longer if you can. The last one is the retention. So the first minute really, really matters. So most people who are watching your videos don't know who you are, which is good. This is what you want. If you're only talking to people who know who you are, you're not growing. If the goal is growth, you have to be reaching more new people. Every day was there for Hannah. What? Hannah something. That's what we want. We want brand new people every time. And so they don't. You don't have a captive audience on YouTube. You know, if you're doing a show in theater or something, the first minute doesn't really matter. You're not like going to get out of your seat and leave if the first five seconds aren't awesome. But that's what happens on YouTube. It's not a captive audience. Right. Or Hollywood. Most Hollywood movies would. Would tank because the retention is so bad at the beginning. Right now it might be if you still had like a Tom Cruise or whatever movie you put Mission Impossible on, I'm sure would still crush. But where a lot of people struggle is they have a lot of good content. But the beginning is so bad that then it never gives people a chance to discover the person. So most people will start with like, hey, guys, welcome back. It's me, Evan. I'm so excited. I'm going to talk to you. And they're gone. Welcome back to what? I don't even know who you are. We're targeting new people. What am I being welcome back to? I don't care who you are until I know what you're going to. What I'm going to learn, what you're going to teach me. So you got to lead with an opinion. It's going to make me stop. And this is not anything new in marketing. Like, when I tell this to entrepreneurs, like, oh, yeah, that's just normal marketing. Like, you have a landing page with an offer. What's the headline? And the sub headline, like that's the first thing out of your mouth is whatever your headline would. You'd never have a landing page to promote hard money lending that says, hey, guys, welcome back. It's me, Hannah. I'm so excited to talk to you today about. Right. People would leave that website. It's the same thing on YouTube. So if you're doing solo content, then you can control what happens in the first minute. Is what's a powerful opinion that you have. What can you say that you believe that other people don't believe? Like, what do you believe about hard money lending?

That most people don't believe that anybody can do it.

That anybody can do hard. Hard money lending. And it leads to what financial freedom and wealth. Yeah. Like, how much can you make in a year doing hard money lending?

I doubled my money my first year and second year and third year. But that's realistically 10% on your money.

Okay. It's like anybody can earn 10 every year on their money through hard money lending. Like, if you say that like, oh.

Okay, that's a good headline, right?

Well, that may not be a good headline. It could be like title, but it's a good opening of video. Right. It's like you're telling me something. It's the hook. What do you believe other people don't believe I'm here? I'm trying to, I'm trying to learn how to make money on my money. Like, huh, If I can make 10% a year, it's more than I'm making in whatever else. Like, tell me more. I'm curious. So everybody I work with, people who are experts in their field. If you're not an expert, I don't know how to help you. Now we're doing entertainment content or something else, which isn't what I'm good at. Like, if you, if you don't have expertise in something, go get good at something. I mean, I don't know, I don't know how to help you. It's not something my area. But if you are an expert, like, you know way more about, I don't know much about hard money. London, you're the expert. Cool. What do you know about it that you can teach people? And so in that process, if they watch the video, oh, Hannah's an expert. Maybe I should sign up with her. Maybe I should invest in her fund. Maybe I should. Whatever it is, you know, there's a potential next step. So you can control the first minute in your video because it's just you. And I've told this to people say, oh, okay, got it, got it, got it. And then we write out, you know, what they're going to say. Got it. Perfect. Okay. Got it. And then they press record. Hey, guys, welcome back. Did we not have this conversation four minutes ago? It's just we're wired for whatever reason to always do that. I don't know why. And we see other people do it, so we just do it right? And telling them to like this video and subscribe, like, no, don't do that. And especially not in the first minute. You're killing your retention. And I only care about retention because YouTube cares about retention. So if I want my videos to do well on YouTube, I have to do what YouTube says is good. Which is retention. So you can control it. Just don't have the fancy logos and the intros and you getting out of a car and like all of these things that people 30 second bumper at the beginning of their video to. But I need to establish my credibility. Nobody cares. They don't care who you are yet. They care what you have to say and then they care later who you are. They don't want to sit through a commercial before they get to what you're going to talk about. So there's some of that work. And like we have a framework super quick is just opinion story advice. If you just. We can go more detail on that set. But basically if you think opinion story advice. So anybody can make 10% of the money every year through hard money lending. Cool. That's your. That's your powerful opinion story. Whatever your story is, it could be your story. I doubled my money for the first three years every year. Whatever. A client story or something in a news story with some kind of story. Because we learn through emotion. So like we learn through stories and that we need the emotion to connect before we will listen to the advice. Because if you just said here are three ways that you can make money through hard money lending. Most people, they won't pay attention because you're appealing to their brain but not their emotions. We need people are emotional first. So all we want to do is teach. But you have to do a hook and you have to do a story to get them ready to then listen to the advice. Like, oh, I want that. So if you could do this on a sticky note, we'll. You don't need a teleprompter. You don't need, you know, anything fancy. Just what's your powerful opinion? What's the story? And the story could just be a word that then triggers like doubled my money. Right. And then whatever your three bits of advice are to start winning with hard money lending. And hopefully one of them is get a mentor. Like something that ties into whatever we have to offer to sell. I can't. It's like I want you selling something. Right. Like trying to generate revenue. So whatever the three things are that will lead to them having success and hopefully one of them connects to us somehow in what we're doing in a. In a ethical, you know, legit, like actually good piece of advice way. So if you just thought about that for every thought. Leadership video, powerful opinion. What do I believe? Other people don't believe story. And then three bits of advice. You can do that on a sticky note. And that's a 15, 20 minute video. Yeah, if you know what you're talking about. Right. Like your story is four or five minutes. Each bit of advice is four or five minutes. That's a 20 minute video. And if you can't talk about, like, what's one bit of advice that they need to do to get started? Hard money lending.

Well, if they wanted to do it themselves, they would have to learn how to underwrite properties or know their market.

Perfect. Number one is know your market or number one is learn how to underwrite. So you'd write down on the sticky note, learn how to underwrite, don't write a script. But then you have to talk about that. You could talk about learn how to underwrite for four or five minutes.

Yep.

You could talk about it for four or five hours. It's hard to crunch it down to four or five minutes. Right. So if you did that times three, plus a five minute story, you're at a 20 minute video. It's actually not that hard to do if you're an expert at your craft, just having some kind of structure like that helps. So it's not just, okay, hard money lending, go. Like, there's so much to talk about. Where do I even start? Right. So having little constraints on the creativity help. If you're doing a show with somebody else, the beginning usually sucks. So if it's a podcast, if it's a coaching session, if it's a roundtable, whatever, the beginning of the show is not good. I don't know how we started this. I don't remember when we started rolling and whatever we said, but it probably wasn't the best part of the show. And so if they don't know you and they don't know me, like, why would somebody watch the video? There has to be a powerful opinion somewhere from what we said at the beginning. So we now have to edit. But it's not. It doesn't have to be over the top fancy editing. It's just what are the things that were discussed in this episode that are the most interesting that you could put at the beginning so that people want. It's a little mini trailer. It's like on this season of Survivor or whatever, it makes you want to watch the rest of the video. And when you're with somebody else, it's almost always going to suck at the beginning. And so you either cut clips or you then record afterwards an intro yourself talking about the powerful opinion story. You don't have to necessarily give advice, but you're setting up the video that they're about to watch. Yeah, right. Like if you said, I don't know what I said on this episode, but if you then did an intro like YouTube is the most powerful way to build your brand in 2025. And I wish I had started it four years ago, but I didn't. But today I brought in Evan Carmichael who has 4 million subscribers and he's going to teach me how to 1, 2, 3. Because I want to go change the world and win a Nobel Peace Prize. I hope you can too, right? Or something like that. Right? Just something like that. What did you learn? What's most exciting but powerful opinion at the start where you intro it? Either of those two can work and it really just depends on what's the best. Like if there's no sound bites from what I said, then great. Then get better guests and ask better questions. And so you might have to cover at the beginning and make it with an intro. It's really just about what is going to hook somebody's attention at the beginning of the video. And those are the easiest two ways when you're dealing with guests and when you're solo. You just have to nail what you're going to say. And it's frustrating for a lot of people because you might spend 45 minutes doing a video and that's time. Right? Like you showing up and doing a 45 minute video and if you got to do your hair and everything else right. And just getting prepped and ready and like the mindset, I'm going to film videos and all of that. And then for a lot of people's videos, you look at the, the gold standard is at one minute you're at 70% retention. I mean 70% of people are still there one minute into the video. A lot of people's videos at one minute, they're at 30%, that video's dead. And so you just spent 45 minutes recording this video and pouring your heart into value. And. But it's, it's dead. It's a dead video because your intro sucked. And so like not every minute of this video is equally important. The first minute really, really, really, really, really, really matters. And then there's the rest of the video, right. And so people just don't this, like, how do you, you know, part of the mentorship, because we don't think about these things naturally. So how do you start getting outsized growth on your channel? It's over in the. Over indexing into the things that really matter.

What do you think is the Biggest thing people are doing to inhibit their growth on YouTube, they're not making money.

Yeah, they don't. They don't make money. So they can't. They can't invest in team to really build. You know, like if say, well, I don't have enough time to invest into YouTube, you know, like, I've got three hours a week or two hours a week to do videos. Okay. But if it was the number one way you're generating revenue, you'd be spending a lot more time. So they just, they don't make money. And so a lot of it comes down to just expertise. If you are the host, like, your expertise, or if you're. You are the. The person on camera, it's your expertise. The ability to deliver a powerful opinion and teach or ask great questions. But then it's also team. Team's expertise. From the studio to the editor to the thumbnail to all, it's like it's team's expertise. And the, the higher up you go, the more expensive everything starts to cost. Especially polish is your brand. Right? So, like, what, what's the ultimate version of polish? Like, you're doing it on an airplane, on a private jet. You're doing it from private resorts, you're doing it from wherever. Super fancy places with insane backgrounds. You're showing people a life that could be right. Not living in the world that is, but in the world that could be. But that now costs insane amounts of money to do it. There's no way anybody would do it. Unless you are just crazy independently wealthy, like some of the people I've helped. Right. But that's still like, it just. I default to bootstrap, no money. How do we grind that way through? Because that's what I did. But some people, it's like, no, no, no. I, like, I'm. They're a billionaire. How do I grow? It's like, oh, okay. Dropping $3 million on a whatever is nothing. Like, oh, okay. That's a different world. I'm not used to it, so that was a shock for me getting to some of those spaces. But for the most part, I don't think that's most of the people watching. It's like, how do you. How do you grind your way up? Okay, so how do we make money doing it? And if you're waiting for adsense to turn on, it's just such a long path to make that happen that I want to find ways for people to make money from their content faster so they can build team and go change the world.

Yeah. When can you start getting paid ads on YouTube?

There's two different ways I might mess up the numbers I think you need to have. There's a subscriber number and there's a watch hour. I think it's 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last year. Usually the watch hours is harder to hit. Like thousand subscribers isn't that hard to hit. I mean it's still a number. The first thousand, the hardest thousand. But the watch hours is what usually kills people, especially when they have short five minute videos or whatever. Just so hard. You're waiting so long to get the 4,000 watch hours and it's not 4,000, it's something close. But then whatever AdSense turns on and you're making three bucks a month, it's like, it's not that it's oh my God, I'm rich now. There's often, I mean, it's nice that you're making something, but it's such a long road to be able to make money, especially when the content isn't very long, that it just, you have to be thinking millions. If you're not getting millions and millions of views, you don't really have an advertising business. So that can be an ambition, which is great. I think everybody should have that ambition if it's in them. But if you were waiting till that, till then to make money, you have to be independently wealthy or we need to find ways to make money in our, in our business.

Yeah. How do you feel about inserting your own little commercials throughout YouTube? I was advised to do that like 20 second commercials to test them to see how your audience reacts to start making money of like, hey, if you enjoy this video, blah, blah, blah, you know, if you're a borrower looking to finance your next fix and flip the link below to click the link below to apply to my, to get a loan or something like that. And so he said to insert these little videos are like, hey, if you're interested in being a private lender but don't know where to start, click the link below and I'll help you out. And then starting to test, because he told me it was, it was Pace Moreby actually. And he's like, you know, people are coming into the store, Hannah, but you're not selling anything. And so they're going to go buy from somebody else. And so it would be advantageous to start generating revenue from the content you're putting out. And you could start by putting little ads in your own videos to start seeing where you're getting bites and traction, things like that.

Yeah. That's a solid B minus plan to make it better. You date before you get married and so you capture their email address because what you're hoping is somebody will watch the video and then just call you and want to. And want to work with you. And some people will, but it's a tiny percentage of people who actually just want to go from video to I want to work with her.

Yeah.

Versus if you had their email address, then you can continue to give value and also promote whatever it is that you want to promote for however long during your email address. So it's better than zero. Like it's a solid B minus plan to make it better. You offer a guide, a bonus, a download, something that relates to the thing that you ultimately hopefully will sell for a long time. There's a link that's free in the description below. They fill that out in exchange for their email address. Now you have their email address, you know who they are. Because that way you only know who they are when they're calling you. It's going to be a tiny percentage. If you can now build up your list of thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people, then they can buy that thing plus a bunch of other things. Because you're going to have lots of things that you're going to create and release when you are launching your book or whatever else. You have a list of people to send to when you're approaching a publisher. Having an email list is amazing. Right. And so it's good to be thinking about. I love the idea. The execution could be a lot better.

Okay. Yeah. I'm working on creating that guide to put the email list or the link to gather emails and whatnot. And you know, I just didn't come from marketing. I was always referral based. But now to build what I'm going to build. Like now I'm learning all the ads.

So make it as easy as possible. Like it could be a bonus video.

That'S just a private video.

It's an unlisted video.

Yeah.

That they get when. When they give you your email address. So what, what would be. If it's for people who want to potentially borrow money, what would an interesting video be? A topic forgetting how we deliver video or PDF or whatever. Like what would it be? What would the thing be? Like? Seven steps to what?

Yeah. To investing in real estate.

Seven steps to invest in real estate.

Yeah. How to. How to flip a commercial property.

Okay.

Or a residential property.

So could you Come up with a bullet list of 5 to 10 things that people care about. Great.

How to find deals.

Perfect. But so you can just put down a sticky note and then just stick around here for another 20 minutes after. Whatever. And just go through those points. That video doesn't have to be perfect. Intro. Because they're coming from an email. They're not. We're not trying to rank in YouTube for this video. So it's like, hey, thank you so much for clicking the link. You want to know about how to buy real estate? I'm going to share with you the seven biggest secrets to winning and the pitfalls that most people make. I don't know how long it would take you to come up with the list of what the seven things are.

Not long. Yeah.

Okay, so if it takes you seven minutes to come up with a list of seven things. I don't know. And then how long would it take? Like, you could. If you're good at what you do, you could just talk to it. Like, the problem with the PDF for most people is then. Well, has to be designed. Well, it's got to have the right look and feel and the fonts and it's work. That may not be your skill set if you're not a designer, but for you to make a video, if it takes you five minutes to come up with what the seven things are and 20 minutes to record it, you're 25 minutes away from having your free bonus.

Yeah.

Like, it's not. If the hardest part is the knowledge to get to. To get to the point where you can just churn that out in. In 25 minutes is because you had years of experience in all of the failures to get to where you're at. So it could just be a video. It doesn't have to be a fancy landing page email with like a huge quiz and questionnaire and giant funnel and sequence and PDFs or anything. It just be you. Here's a video which is incredibly valuable.

Yeah, I like that idea. I have the knowledge. That part's easy.

So you're 25 minutes away from having what you need.

Okay. All right. I know we have to wrap up and so I'm gonna ask you a few just viral questions.

Viral questions?

No, rapid fire.

Rapid fire questions.

Yeah. So they're not long answers. Quick.

So I don't know if I can do this.

Let's see, what do I want to ask?

I gotta believe more. Yeah.

Okay. If you had to start today with zero followers, what's the first thing you do to Grow an audience fast.

Subscribe to Hannah Hammond, right? Gonna hear all these experts talking about things.

Yeah.

Next.

That's your answer.

I said fast.

I know. What would you do? Really?

You're bringing on people, you're bringing on these experts. I would.

Okay.

I would learn. Like what did you say? The biggest, the biggest missing piece is, is expertise. Mentorship.

Find a good mentor.

The best teachers are on YouTube. The best teachers are not in school. The best teachers are on YouTube.

YouTube University. That's where I learned everything I know.

Yeah. And just. But Hannah Hammond, first of all, I think, I think that matters.

What's the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make when trying to build a personal brand?

They don't know how to make money.

If you could only focus on one platform to grow your business right now, which one would it be and why?

Hannah? Next. No answer. I'm insulting.

Do you think YouTube will be the leader in all social media forever?

I don't think YouTube is. Okay, first off, there's nothing forever. I don't think YouTube is social media or social platforms. I don't think it's a social platform. Internet platforms, it's a content platform. It's just different. It's not social. YouTube is not social. There's nothing social about YouTube. Like it's barely, it barely has comments.

But if somebody was going to put the time and effort and energy into TikTok, Instagram, those channels versus YouTube, and they only had the money and the.

Resources to do one, what are we trying to accomplish?

It's like, yeah, make money.

Ultimately then it has to be YouTube.

Has to be YouTube.

Yeah. That's not even close. But it depends on the goal, right? I'm not, I mean I have a million and a half followers on TikTok and you know, we can make short form content. It's awesome. What are we trying to accomplish? If you're trying to make money though, it's not even close. It has to be YouTube for now, but it's not forever.

You think something will replace it?

Of course.

Is it out yet?

There's been YouTube killers forever. Like IGTV was supposed to be the YouTube killer. I'm so excited. It was Instagram TV, Instagram, long form content. You just don't go to Instagram to consume 40 minute videos. It's just not the culture of Instagram. So there's been all of these. I don't know if it'll be. It might need a new technology change. Like it might be whoever allows you to beam into somebody's living room and it's like holograms. It might be a whole new technology that we then lean into. I don't know. I don't. I don't see anything anywhere close on the horizon. Like YouTube is. Is the place.

Yeah.

If you want to make money with content.

I want to make money with content.

Well, then it's YouTube.

All right, last question. All right, what if you give any piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Believe. Believe more.

Believe anything's possible.

Believe. Yeah. And it's like, if we look back, you look at. You look at your story, what you've been through, and Hawaii. And like, everything that you've gone through. You look at Hannah from eight years ago, and you look at Hannah now. To Hannah from eight years ago is like, what you've done is not possible. Yeah, it's not possible. She would say it's not possible. Like, there's no way. There's no world that I could do that. Right. There's no way. And you've done it.

I was suicidal eight years ago.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. Yeah.

What you've done is already impossible to you. Right. So I think the biggest problem in the world is just lack of belief. Like, imagine what you can do in another eight years. Like, if we're already an impossibility to our younger selves, imagine what else we can do in this world. And that's the point of what you're trying to do with the show. Right. It's like, create these inspirational moments to help people realize that they can live in the world of possibilities instead of a world that is. So. I think lack of belief is the world's number one problem, and they wake up every day trying to solve it.