From Zero to 3 Million Subscribers: Sean Cannell’s YouTube Blueprint

Subscribers kind of don't matter like they do, but like the videos are going to be based, they're going to be judged on their own merits. So that's really good news for a brand new channel. If you can master the art of making a great video and spend more time on quality, the algorithm is working in such a way that good content will rise to the top. Subscribers can sure be an advantage. And even if you have them, you still have to fight to even reach your own subscribers.

Hey, what's happening? This episode, I sat down with YouTube guru Sean Cannell. We unpacked his specific seven step process, his system for launching and sustaining a successful YouTube channel. He's been doing this for 17 years, so you've probably seen him around on YouTube. If you've hunted on how to start a channel or grow a channel, this guy has it all for you. That's what you're going to learn in this episode. He's got something like 3 million subscribers or close to it and tens of millions of views. And this thing has helped a bunch of students as well to grow what they're doing. So even if you're a business owner thinking you don't have the time, you don't have the chops to put into YouTube, he gives you a process. Or if you're starting from scratch and you want to be a creator, that kind of type got the process for you. Or maybe you have a stagnant channel, you put in a lot of work. We just haven't really hit gold yet. That's what he's also going to get into. It's not a magic pill. You got to punch fear in the face, press record and put it in the work. That's what we're going to get into here. Enjoy this episode with Sean and let's go. Hey, before we jump into the episode today, I want to shout out one of our partners, HubSpot, and they have been tackling this customer service dilemma. They have a brand new service hub from HubSpot. It's a whole new platform that's combining service and support together in a single platform to deliver the best possible experience not only for your customers, but for your team by freeing up their time. Everything is AI powered, so this thing's a big win win and improves everybody's experience and has them coming back for more of what you got going on. Go check it out for yourself over@HubSpot.com service. Now onto the episode. John, we're rolling. It's grateful to have you here, man. Thank you. For your time. And I mean, dude, I've been following you for a long time on the YouTube spheres and you know, from the tech stuff, cameras. My old partner Matt Wolf, we were chatting about him, he's now, you know, kind of gone off into YouTube la la land in the AI world. And I know you were talking about following him as well. So I'm sure he would thank you as well for some of the stuff that he's, he's experiencing on YouTube. But yeah, man, how long have you been in the game now? Because I, I feel like it's been a good decade or so, at least since I've seen you.

It is, yeah. And thank you so much for having me on, you know, grateful. Yeah. We're gonna cross 3 million subscribers on our Think Media channel in the next two months and I'm planning on making a video called 17 Years of YouTube Experience or YouTube Advice in Two Hours or something. I saw like there's a business guy that's doing it for 23 years. This hit 4 million views. So I saw that kind of video idea. I don't even know if I'll pull it off, but that's at least on my to do list because it is, it's kind of been wild. So 17 years. The first church I started, the first YouTube channel I started was for my small town local church in 2007 and we did like a 10 part video blog for the pastor. It was terrible, it was ridiculous. But just the fact we even were in YouTube that early. So yeah, you fast forward to today. I've been doing video production, video editing, shooting for 20 years and YouTube for 17 and future is bright. I'm more excited about YouTube today than ever before.

Well, that leads me, I'll just fast track. The first question is like if you were to start all over again, would YouTube be that platform that you focus on?

Yeah, it would be. No question, I think still, because all the foundational truths about YouTube remain the same. It's a search engine, it's a content library. So all these other platforms are content feeds. It's like a social media hamster wheel. You just got to keep posting and by all means, let's build our businesses and change lives and impact people on all the social platforms. But YouTube just creates more leverage than every other platform because the shelf life of content can be decades long and I've experienced that now. I have 14 year old videos that are still getting views, subscribers, earning ad revenue and even generating other income streams. 14 year old videos still producing for me today. That level of leverage, especially for entrepreneurs, it's kind of like, it's the idea of compound interest. It's like, let's invest in real estate today because of appreciation. And even real estate investors understand that there's so many different ways they can earn from real estate. I'm going to save on taxes. I could get appreciation, I could be cash flowing in the process. And so I can monetize in multiple ways, which is true about YouTube as well. I post a video today, I can grow my following, I can make ad revenue, I can keep getting new awareness, and I could keep getting leads and clients and an affiliate income or sales. So it's just leverage. But I think what's most fascinating is there's no doubt about it, we have some big enemies right now when it comes to building an online business or social media. Competition is a big one. There's bigger competition than ever before. There's. There's more people that want to get in the game than ever before. Mistrust is a big one. There's. We're living through a trust recession. People are just overwhelmed by fake influencers, fake food, fake boobs, fake muscles, fake families. Just we've seen a lot of. So there's just mistrust. And then Covid and can we trust the government? Can we trust Fauci? Who can we trust? That whole thing is affected where people's mindsets are. It's overcomeable. That's another challenge. And then I think the other one's overwhelmed. There's just a lot. We were talking about Matt Wolf and I was like, man, we're using AI as fast as we can. And even as fast as he's publishing content, I'm like, how in the world can, can I keep up with this? And I do this full time. I'm committed to. I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna do my best. But it's a lot of overwhelm. And so understanding people are feeling that depending on what stage they are. So these challenges are all overcomeable, but we just need a new set of skills. But here's the good news. I just made a video and I asked and surveyed our audience. How many of you are seeing new and small YouTube channels being recommended to you on your home feed by the YouTube algorithm? And the majority, seven out of 10 people said, yeah, all the time. About every four uploads, it's like, influential creator, huge creator, big creator, small creator, like new channel, like brand new videos that are under 500 views, 200 views, videos under 100 views, channels that are under a thousand subscribers, under 500 subscribers, under 200 subscribers. And that has been confirmed by YouTube. Todd Bupre, the director of kind of the algorithm and search and discovery was talking about how there's a dedicated team for new channels. And so YouTube wants there to be a feedback loop of it, not feel because. Because they'll lose. They monetize creators. It's a really cool deal. They basically split ad revenue between themselves and creators. So it's this cool deal, but they need a pipeline and so if it, if it's impossible to get in the game, their future isn't bright or it's only going to be the top 1% super famous creators. So they're intentionally programming the algorithm, dedicated team. So I think that it's, it's probably harder than it's ever been before, but it's possible. And I think that some people are going to be, they're not going to persevere through the challenges right now, but those who do are going to reap massive rewards because YouTube still I think the best place to plant your flag, build your business, make an impact and what some of the tips we could talk about in this podcast will help people do it.

Yeah, man. And that's where I'll lead them to. I know you have the 7R framework was from one of the videos you shot earlier this year. And maybe we can go through that. That's kind of on my mind. But before that is, you mentioned there's a lot of noise, a lot of competition, distrust all this stuff, more competition. I'm thinking my mind goes to quality versus quantity. Are you saying we need to pump out a bunch of content or is it like one solid piece at a certain duration? Like what's your take on that? To get seen, noticed, engaged.

I think there's three levels to the journey of the debate between quality versus quantity. Level one is quantity. But when you first get started, I think it's less about YouTube best practice because you don't even know the best practices and even if you know them head knowledge, you're probably not able to execute on them. It's your first time getting on camera, it's your first time starting a podcast. It's your first time looking at the back end of YouTube. It's all pretty overwhelming. So the reason I think that quality is the first step is because it's more about personal growth and personal development and skill building than it is even about making an impact. Maybe you'll get lucky, but if you look at the history of any influential creator. A lot of times they've done 100, 200, even 500 videos before things popped off. That's discouraging. Someone's like, I don't want to do 500 videos before. But you know, it's just, it's kind of like if you look at anyone who's actually gotten in shape and you're like, wow, they got six pack abs. Like, wow, Their, their triceps and their biceps and their shoulders are really defined. It wasn't like, oh yeah, they went to the gym like two times. It was pretty cool. Like, I mean, they just had such a good, like, you don't even believe this workout they eat. Like this one steak that happened to be grass fed and grass finished. Went to the gym twice and boom, Brad Pitt fight club ripped would never happen. Like there's something about the muscle building, the routine, the skill building. So I think quantity is great. But what's cool about it is YouTube still happens all the time. People are just shooting something on their phone. No editing, they're just experimenting, they're focusing on quantity. But along the way, some videos pop off. Along the way, 10 or 20% of their videos, it's always the 80, 20 rule. It's like some still pop off. And, and so even when you're in that stage, like we help all kinds of business owners, but a lot of loan officers and real estate agents. And even when you're sort of overwhelmed, you don't understand the tech. If you make the right videos around the right topics, you just put them out there. Maybe local search based terms. People are getting, getting leads, getting transactions in a really tough real estate market at the beginning of their journey. But then the next question becomes, all right, phase two, then it turns into, I would say, quality over quantity. Because now it's not just about throwing all these videos out there. Now it's about looking at the lessons you've learned from them, Identifying what you've learned you've gotten better and slowing down and making a better video. There's a book called 10x is Greater than 2x by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan.

Yeah.

And in the book he actually explains 10x is greater than 2x with a Mr. Beast story and breaks down Mr. Beast, I believe, being interviewed on Joe Rogan saying what a lot of people don't realize is if they would just spend 20 or 30% more energy on one video, it wouldn't just get 20 or 30% more views. They could 5x to 10x their views if they would just. And and in that same chapter he talks about, a lot of times greatness is an extra revision. What happens I think for some creators is they do live streams or they do Q&As, or they, they're so busy, like, especially business owners, they just like shoot for 45 minutes just talking, or they do podcast interviews. And, and they're, they're just long, you know, and they kind of go through. It's almost like, okay, cool, you could do an hour long podcast interview. But what if you actually sat down and edited it down to 28 minutes of pure fire? That's a revision of what you shot. What if you recorded for an hour, but instead of just putting it out there, you refined it down. I think it was Mark Twain who said, you know, if you gave me an hour to speak, I'm ready right now. If you gave me half an hour to speak, I need a day to prepare. If you gave me five minutes to speak, I need a week to prepare.

Yeah.

And I think it's like.

Polish refining your ideas. In this case, it could be editing visuals, really getting the hook right. The title. Right. So I do think phase two is quality. Fewer outputs, higher quality. And that's what I'm focusing on. I, I am aware. Here's another way to put it. There's some people who take pride in uploading three videos a day. Like, and, and there's some models that support it, like for all this. There's a lot of tensions in YouTube, I think about, Meet Kevin, right? He can pump out every extemporaneous start, stop videos all day long around trending financial topics and whatnot, and he's killing it.

So there's all the live stream set up, right?

Yeah, yeah, he's got it all dialed in. But Graham Stephan's a good example and actually comparing those two because they're probably pulling similar views Kevin's doing. I don't know if that's true, maybe more. But he's, he's, he's doing a lot more volume. Graham's much more polish. So he came on our podcast and he, I was like, okay, what goes into a video? He's like, well, about two, three, four hours of research. It's, it would be like Tuesday morning, then about 4, 5, 6 hours of script writing. I script the whole thing, then I shoot the video the next day. That's going to take 1, 2, 3, 4 hours. Then the edit's going to take 4 to 8 hours. And I'm like, well, shoot, dude. My whole process, like two hours. Well, there's that's, that's a quality like Graham's pulling 400,000, 700,000, a million views. A lot more polish went into it. So the thing is at the early stage, I don't think it's just a time thing because you don't know what to do. You're not that good at writing scripts and you, if you put two days worth of work into a subpar topic, you're going to be super discouraged because it might be a masterpiece. But like even the, the video strategy itself, the topic and the packaging. So I think then it's quality and then stage three and not everybody gets there is both. And that's where you, if you are Mr. Beast, you got a hundred plus, couple hundred people working for you. If you're Alex and Layla Hermosi, you've got my friend Caleb is their director of brand and 10, 20, 30 staff, editing, shooting, you know, and then they're also just freakish machines that don't mind working 70, 80 hours a week. So it's also, do you want to up quality? How much hustle are you putting in and then how much team and systems do you want to put around you? So I think right there in the middle would be kind of an interesting thing where you start with quantity, eventually it turns into quality. And to break through the noise right now competition is highest for low effort content.

Got it.

So right now to break through and I could, this is interesting stuff. Like I got almost 3 million subscribers. Subscribers don't matter. It's like embarrassing. Like myself, I should be embarrassed. I should be ashamed. You know, I posted a video. I actually didn't post it. My team posted it. I'm doing that. I did this Q A series. It's two minutes long, it's one question, one answer. And it's on my Think Media channel. And I have the haters come out of the woodwork. But like they're not wrong. It doesn't look good. So you know, it's a Ask Sean series. Do mid roll ads hurt viewer retention?

So niche, not a good. It's fine. It's just a question. And I answered it. And I answered it in 2 minutes and 19 seconds. It only got 2, 700 views. I have 3 freaking million subscribers. But here's the thing is so of course, you know, sometimes maybe a little critic, I'm like, well bro, you don't even have like a video posted, let alone, you know, I mean all I know is trolling. But still I see you in the comments. But I've Never seen you at the bank. Like, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than.

But, but they're not wrong. And here's what I realized. I'm like, okay, the video is too short. Some of the best videos that are performing are 25 minutes plus. Because when you're actually getting watch time two, it's super niche. It's not broad appeal, you know. Three, it's, yeah, it's not a great title. It's not. And also, as far as low effort, literally, I just amassed a question from somebody I was filming with and I answer it. So my answer could be decent and there's some good comments on it. But then let's look at it another way. Ten days ago, I posted a video that's 23 minutes long. It has 126,000 views. I planned it, I crafted it, there's editing in it, there's whatever. But here's, here's the good news is that subscribers kind of don't matter. Like they do, but like the videos are going to be based, they're going to be judged on their own merits. So that's really good news for a brand new channel. If you can master the art of making a great video and spend more time on quality. The algorithm is working in such a way that good content will rise to the top. Subscribers can sure be an advantage. And even if you have them, you still have to fight to even reach your own subscribers. What's happening to me is my 2 minute and 19 second video is not reaching my 3 million subscribers. I still have to earn their viewership because of click through rate, watch time, topic and all of that. So half of the critics in the comments are also, you know, I think they might not be understanding how YouTube works and, but again, I don't blame them because it doesn't look good for like, dude, you got 3,000 subs, you only got 2.7. I'm like, also, well, yeah, but we're getting like 8 million views a month. Like, are you seeing the ranked videos in the old library and whatnot? And I'm also, you know, out here running a company. This isn't me trying to defend myself. Or maybe it is out of deep insecurity, but I'm like, I'm like, bro, I'm not even, I'm actually really not even making as many videos as you would think. It's like I found myself in the CEO role where good, for better or worse, I've drifted away from even being the creator and now I'm like in meetings and stuff. And so I'm trying to like get the right leaders in place and get back to that. But yeah, give me some time to. I'm talking to my executive assistant. I'm like, yo, I need, I need that Graham Stephan time because gimme two days and trust me, you're going to get a banger. But if I'm doing, you know, I'm also fulfilling on products and building a business. And I think that also would be the other final piece I'd say is it's so funny. We talk about all this stuff and of course views matter and we want to grow our channels. But let's also look under the surface, like what's your actual business model? Because if we're judging by one metric, if we judge by the visible, oh, bro, your video only got 3,000 views and look at all your subscribers. I was like, again, well, like, let's look at the P and L. You just don't really know what's happening behind the scenes and what are we even solving for if we're solving for vanity? And it's not bad, like it's a badge of honor to get a lot of views, but there's also a lot of people who can have a good look with a lot of views and, and they actually live paycheck to paycheck. Happens all the time for influencers. So anyways, I, I think that's a long answer in terms of your question, but start with quantity. But right now, quality, just getting above the low effort content was where the majority is. Competition isn't that fierce. If you learn the skills and put in a little bit of extra effort, you can rise to the top, bro.

Yes, and incredible answer. There's so many rabbit holes I want to pick through, but I probably will guard myself a little bit because you mentioned Alex Hormozi for one, and I saw he just posted something I think in the community or like a text post which is like something part of YouTube, newer feature. I haven't used a lot of it, but you know, I see Alex doing it all the time and he actually proved to your point, you know, one of his clients, I think it's 7,000 subscribers, not many views, but $1 million. Business, very niche. You don't need this massive viewing audience to again, P and L. And that goes to kind of one of the insights or concepts. Not really a question, but a lot of business owners are listening to this. A lot of also are just curious about YouTube, but they're like, I don't Want to be a creator or I don't have the time or whatever it might be. So you're leaning into that.

You can't silo YouTube as YouTube by itself, even though it's a. Obviously it's a model, it's a platform and very important. But at the same time, yeah, as a business owner, you're like, okay, how can I do it all? And I think that's where I see a lot of people get stopped. And even the process of starting and trying YouTube, you know, it might be the intimidation factor, but really I think it's more in their mind, you know, the mindset and how to approach this. It's probably team, like you mentioned. Yeah, assistants. Hey, team, help me kind of, you know, create some, some thinking time, you know, you know, and actually planning time to execute this. And I don't know if this is like a good segue to the 7R process because I feel like that's a lot of what you talk about there. It's this, it's almost a mindset, I feel like, or a lifestyle of create the content, post it on a, on the right platform, engage correctly, grow your business, whatever that model is. What would you think on that?

Yeah, yeah, I think I just want to hit one thing that I think would be valuable to what you brought up and then we can hit those seven R's right on. Friend of mine named Anthony Langdon is the roofpreneur. I think this is the model for business owners. So he's up in Snohomish, Washington, built an eight figure roofing business. So he's already, you know, killed it on that respect over decades now, I think, or a couple, you know, close to maybe a couple decades. And that's, I think thing one, especially when you get into business and entrepreneurship is this is all gonna be helpful if you've developed some level of mastery, you have some experience, and then you're pulling that experience into YouTube. But I think it's also way of going about it is what he realizes now is he saw the opportunity to now move from success to significance, pass along what he knows in serving others. And he just knows that he can help other roofing companies get their hands off the tools, get their time back, scale. And as many small businesses, you know, probably, I mean, it's probably mostly solopreneurs at this number. But the stats on like what the average business in America makes is like 58 grand for like the average business. So I bet that's a freelancer that has an llc. But all that to Say is you crack. Cracking a million is tough. If you're a roofing business and not at a million, that's probably pretty tough. So of course he knows, he's like, man, I know I could get guys from a couple hundred a year with more peace of mind. So he also then sees this opportunity to get into the content game, start getting into YouTube, getting into Instagram, vertical videos, packaging what he knows, and now moving into coaching courses and all that stuff. I think a big key though, there's a good book from Dan Martell called buy back your time is everything's just a matter of like buying back your time. And so where he's gotten at this moment, he's already had massive success and he's leaning into the digital and coaching. But it's taken a long time for him to hire an operator, get the right team in place. And he scaled the time needed to run his roofing company down to five hours a week. He said he's about to get it to two hours a week. That right there is, I think, part of the process that doesn't get talked about a lot, where you can hit it from one of two sides where I interviewed Layla Hermosi on the podcast. And like, it's sometimes funny when people, they'll give you an answer like, how possibly can you be like a CEO, operator and a content creator? They're like, easy, just work 80 hours a week. Just like work 40 as the CEO, operator and work the other 40 on the con. Like, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh, okay, well, I got a two year old and a four year old and I'm all about the hustle. But like, that's not even an option right now. So sometimes it's, it's actually not that mysterious. It's like that was how like, and, and then some people are wild. Like, not everyone's that productive at 80 hours a week. Other people are if they're psychos in terms of their, their fitness, their health, their age.

A lot of kids maybe. And no part kids.

Yeah, yeah, true. 100%. Like, look at a lot of the people that are killing it. Like at certain crazy levels, they may or might not be spending any time with their kids or they don't have any kids.

Right, right.

Here's the point though. So I think that what Anthony's done is now that he's bought back his time and so he can invest in learning this new skill set, building a whole nother, essentially building a media company, because the entrepreneur mindset, I think is also different. It's always funny to me when someone's like a multimillionaire or multimillion dollar business owner and they start being like, so what I'm going to do is start YouTube and like edit my own videos. Like what the what do you like do you do your own bookkeeping? Like you know, you've already built this whole. But sometimes that's what we do. And actually I think if you do a little bit of that, it's not bad because if you're going to hire well, learning a little bit about what it takes and a little bit of if you learn the ropes.

I feel like it's a forced review sometimes of yourself. You know, we're all our self worst critics. Right. So you'll, you'll find the knacks and things.

Yeah. So anyways that just a thought there of kind of closing the loop on that first topic that I think that's a great model that thinking as a business owner about how you could buy back your time, create more time and margin to get into the YouTube game and to decide are you willing to just like add on the extra hours that it's going to take or could you delegate higher and in a way go back into startup mode. And I that mindset shift's a big one. You're starting another business you're not just starting. It's kind of a marketing channel. But the better way to think is you're starting a media company that will be a marketing engine for not just your current business but but also could create all kinds of new streams of revenue and very well could be more lucrative even than your original business because no doubt about it, Anthony could certainly build another eight figure company helping other roofers scale their businesses in the education space. So anyways, just a thought to close that loop but happy to get into the seven R's if you're down.

That was beautiful, man. Again. Yeah, seven R's. And again, you know, you already made a video that outlined all this stuff so regurgitation, I don't feel like it's totally necessary. I want to point them that way. So in the show notes description I'll definitely be linking to the video but seven Rs let's run through them kind of quickly. And the reason why I want to bring it up is this. I feel like it's a mindset getting into this and it's a lifestyle. Like it's some podcasting for me I did mainly it's been audio, it's been newer on the video side of things. So I got a shit ton to learn to be very honest, you know, on ramping up the video side of things. And I've already gotten a lot of nuggets. But in terms of the seven Rs, if you got them on top of your mind, however you want to approach, I would just let you have it, man. In today's world, online customers and everybody expect personalized support on every channel and in every way they want it like done right now. But the problem is most solutions out there don't allow that to happen. They're not delivering. So your customer service reps are struggling to stay productive and your customers honestly just aren't as happy as they probably once were. Now's the time to change that. This is exactly why There's a new AI powered service hub from HubSpot. The service hub actually allows you to bring this type of level of service and success together for the first time so you can deliver on the expectations that people are expecting. And actually it's boosting revenue along the way. The reps that are using Service Hub from HubSpot right now are reporting 13 times faster to help them resolve tickets and also it helps them close something like 42% more tickets per day. So that basically means that you're also retaining people at a much higher rate and they're saying more than 80%. Not only that, you're getting this full 360 view of your customers in this smart CRM that basically helps and supports you in the marketing, sales and service delivery and success of your team, but also making the experience much better for your customer, which boosts your revenue and your business growth. Go and visit HubSpot.comservice to learn how this all new solution can help you deliver for your customers. Are you juggling multiple tools to run your online business? Well, thankfully there is a better way and it's called Kartra. So with Kartra, boosting your income has never been easier. And that's because it's the ultimate all in one platform for online success, offering every tool you need to grow your business. So imagine building pages, funnels, courses, autoresponders and checkouts all in one place and all for one affordable price. So the best part about Kartra is that you can automate just about everything. So it's like having a team of experts working around the clock to help you earn more. Now's the time to streamline and set scale your business. Visit hustleandflowchart.com Kartra for a free 30 day trial. That's hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R.

A so this is our YouTube success system. It's called the 7R Video Ranking Academy system. And that's our core education program. And so number one is reverse engineer, number two is research, Number three is record number, Number four is release. Number five is rocket. Number six is review. And number seven is repeat. So number one, reverse engineer. This is start with the end in mind. And there's three things that you want to start with the end in mind with. First is before we even post a video, it's a question of what is this channel all about? Who is this channel for? How will this channel help people? What problem does it solve? How am I different? You could get the Simon Sinek framework here and say what exactly does this channel do? How do we do it that's different and why do we do it? Talking about the drivers, the values, the beliefs. This is all so we could get so deep in each of these. That's why our course about 50 hours. Because we can actually it'll be very helpful to just listen through the seven Rs, but each one could go pretty deep in terms of getting clarity and carving out your unique voice. So you can reverse engineer your channel, but then you also use this 7R system. On every video I post, I go through it. It's like second nature now, but it's like, okay, then it's, it's a loop, it's a circle. So reverse engineer each video. What is the purpose of this video? And videos could have different purposes. Is it to be broad appeal and to reach a lot of new people? Is it for my core audience to let them know about a small event I'm doing that only has five spots? It's weird. Like that's go back to my low viewed video. Like what was the purpose of the video? Honestly, it was filler. It was valuable, but it was filler because I just batch produced 50 questions and like I'm not, you know, so like it's just self awareness. What am I trying to achieve with this video? Am I trying to promote a certain product? Am I tying it to an income stream? And then the other thing. So we're going to reverse engineer the channel, we're going to reverse engineer each video, but we're also going to reverse engineer our money plan. And so you want to start with the end in mind of how you plan on making money. What's the best way to make money for the channel and what's the best way to make money for an individual video for some. Like, I talk a lot about affiliate marketing and I remember one of the people I was coaching was like, okay, so I should start doing like book reviews. And they had like a big business and so like leads would be incredibly valuable for them. But they're like, well Sean does like camera reviews, so maybe I'm supposed to do like book reviews. I'm like, bro, you're going to make 4% on a $10 book. You make 40 cents. If you get like four leads, you're going to make like 40 grand. Like so I think it's, it's just are you trying to get phone calls, get someone to get on a wait list, get someone on your email list or like in my case, the way I originally built a six figure income was I knew how to rank videos using this seven steps. And so I would.

Think about something people were searching for like what's the best camera for YouTube? Or I did stuff in the health space like what's the best greens juice powder. And that is a. I love health, like fresh green juice. But when I'm traveling I'll mix powdered green juice with a water bottle to get some vitamins, get some nutrition. Athletic greens is an example, right?

Yeah.

And so athletic greens who you see as a sponsor everywhere they had. The thing I was reviewing was organifi. Well I ranked this video and as people watched it, I friend told me about it. I use it for a while, talked about it. I put an affiliate link in the description. That affiliate program had continuity. It wasn't through Amazon, it was directly through ClickBank. At the time, commissions were like 30% in perpetuity if people subscribed and kept going. That one video earned me $20,000. And the whole thing followed these seven Rs because start with the end in mind, you know, like reverse engineer. And so a lot of times when people are surprised, like they wake up and their bank account has not grown, it's because they didn't actually architect a plan and work backwards for it to do so. And then even apply this directly to YouTube. So I'll try to speed up a little bit. But like reverse engineer, what's the, what's the purpose of my channel? What specific what's strategy of this next video? How's this channel going to make money? And what's kind of cool is the reason this is a powerful framework is you could keep coming back to it because you never graduate. I don't. You're always of like the next time through you're like, what are the new opportunities now? AI is here. What are the new topics I could Talk about? There's YouTube ads, different ways of earning money. Do we. Are we launching a membership site? Should we start channel memberships? Should we create a physical product like it. It's just an. It's a reminder to check back in and say, okay, based on where we are now, what are the next best moves moving forward?

Yeah.

So then we get kind of more into specific video strategy. But again, all these steps can also apply to your channel at large. Research would have to do with step two. Research would have to do with keyword research, topic research, competitor research, trend research. It's. It's. What's the most strategic video that I should. I make. It's also maybe evaluating the competition. I think Sun Tzu from the Art of War military strategy book said only fight winnable battles.

Right?

So it's like sometimes we, we are doomed to fail from the start, but a little bit of research would have helped us actually win. Because what people do is they just run out, guns blazing. But a smart military general would say, wait a minute, what? Are the enemy's forces stronger than ours? Yeah, they got double the forces. All right, well, we can't take them head on. Are their weapons superior? All right, well, what, what does the terrain look like? But history has shown us that weaker forces, lesser weapons, disadvantaged army has created victory because they actually approach things different. Oh, well, their numbers are greater than ours. Then we're going to take advantage of these trees over here and go guerrilla warfare because we can't fight them in the out open. Their force is too strong. But we might be able to beat them here. What are our strengths? So when you research the competition, you're also identifying, well, okay, here's some gaps in the market, or here's how I could create a unique advantage. And my. One of my favorite quotes that Sun Tzu said is, every battle is won before it's even fought.

That's right. Yeah.

So reverse engineering research are such overlooked stages in the content creation journey. Which then gets us to record. Now you're actually pressing record. You've outlined your video based on the first two steps. Be brief, be bright, be fun, and be done. Set your gear up, film it. You know, if you've planned ahead, is there going to be props in your video? Are you going to use a visual illustration? Are you going to draw out a framework? Is it just talking head? Like, how do you want to show up? Just all that preparation can help you record Better then you release your video. Step four, the right way, that's going to be optimization. Title, thumbnail description, end card, playlist, tags. If YouTube gives me the opportunity to fill out data, aka metadata, I want to use it. In a 2024 world, tags don't really matter, but they do give us. YouTube has said they can help correct misspellings. But the other thing is that when you're a new channel, your title is going to still be always very influential and having keywords, a keyword or a keyword phrase in your title. How is YouTube going to know what your video is about if you don't support it? With metadata, the searchable terms, the things people are searching to describe your video, and the tags, description and title. So you just don't want to cut corners there. Even more importantly is what you say in your video because YouTube is reading what you're saying, transcribing. So just really optimizing the release of your video and the most important things being the title, the thumbnail, and the topic itself. Then step five is Rocket. And this is an interesting step because if you've done the first four steps right.

Your video can take a life of its own. And you don't got to do anything else. The YouTube algorithm, it'll be blast off. The YouTube algorithm sucks your video away. People search for it, they find your video because it ranks. Your video starts being suggested on the homepage or around other videos by the YouTube algorithm, and you launch a banger. And the reason we call it Rocket, it's kind of like all this preparation was up until this launch. And then when you start getting familiar with your YouTube analytics behind the scenes, you can see, and this video is taking off and you also sometimes see because this happens, that, oh, SpaceX crash and burn. The rocket just exploded. Thank God there wasn't any astronauts in it, you know, or there wasn't any pilots, because that can happen. And so Rocket is if you've done everything right, you put out a video and it doesn't just get views today, but it just keeps going for weeks, months and years to come. YouTube's the only platform that'll do that. But then also Rocket has another piece which is we can support the video. I'll never forget, you know, I was talking to my friend Neil Patel and real expert, high level marketer, entrepreneur, big email list builder. He's built a huge email list. And so one of the ways where he had an unfair advantage on his YouTube content was when he had a new video come out. He'd Send an email, boom, 5,000, 10,000 views would drop on it. They actually watch the whole thing because they know who he is and they want that kind of SEO training or whatever. And so he could rank his videos relatively easy and kind of get them going. And that's the idea. Rocket would be like, what kind of jet fuel could I put behind this.

Video just to get lift off quicker?

Yeah, can I share it on social? Can I send it? And this is a great thing to debate because in some cases sending traffic from external social media is not always helpful. Because if they're not like, people say, like, how do I use my Instagram to grow my YouTube? And my best answer is, you don't. You grow your YouTube. With YouTube, you do the first four steps and the video rockets on its own because people are already on YouTube and if the algorithm suggests it to them, they probably want to watch it and they'll like it and it'll get even more views. And the problem is if someone's watching these short reels on Instagram, number one, they probably don't even want to leave. But number two, they, if they go to YouTube, they might not stay and even give you watch time. So not all traffic is the same. Nevertheless, if you're just starting, you're just scrappy, just getting going. You want to do this stuff, share it on LinkedIn. Put the newest video in your email signature. There's some teams. If you have like an agency or a team, when the new video comes out on Tuesday, their whole team has to watch the video and let the whole thing play. So it gets complete watch time, right? So it's like that's the mindset you need. You're fighting for every view at the beginning. You're starting from scratch with a brand new brand. That is startup culture. It's startup mindset. So that's what Rocket is. And there's many different things that we could do there. And then review is reviewing the analytics, studying the video's performance. We know that what gets measured gets improved. So starting to learn what analytics matter most. What can I learn from that video so that I can improve my next one? And review has actually a short term implication as well. I was talking to Graham Stephan on our podcast and he talks about how oftentimes when he launches a video, if it's not doing as well, and he's kind of developed a sixth sense, if it's not popping off, he knows, oh man, I didn't. Maybe they get the title exactly right or the thumbnail right. And he'll sometimes change the title and the thumbnail 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times in the first couple hours of an upload.

Oh, that early even. Okay, yeah.

Now that's a sixth sense type of behavior. And he's got a massive audience, so he's getting a lot of feedback in that short amount of time.

True.

If someone was like, oh, that's what Graham does. I got 23 subscribers, I'm going to change my thumbnail. There's no one's even seeing it. Like you're, you're not even getting a volume of impressions to watch a different trajectory of the video. So learning these skills is important. And review could be, I would say for most people, follow the steps, get a good title and a good thumbnail and just roll with it.

Yeah.

There has just been a rollout now to a majority, including small channels of YouTube's new split testing feature, which allows you to start with up to three thumbnails right at the beginning, which kind of solves this for you. So it's not guesswork. It's not like, should I change the thumbnail? It's like if you design up three thumbnails, YouTube will then split test those and then optimize the best one. But sometimes it could be as easy. If you're kind of a mid sized creator. I'll wake up, we, we auto post or we schedule upload our videos. And the first thing I do when I wake up is check my phone and I read the comments. It could be a toxic place to go first thing in the morning. But what I'm usually looking for is if there's any dissonance, like someone goes, oh yeah, like, I'm glad I clicked on this video because this is not what I thought it was going to be. And this is way better. I thought, like, if I get anything like that, or oh, you're kind of clickbaiting here. Or man, this is great. Or I'll just look at the performance. And I've developed that sixth sense as well. I'm like, man, I know this is good. Like I've just, I've posted thousands of videos. So I'm like, I know this is good, but like, it's kind of flat. Could I rep, could I pivot this title different? This just, you know, the thumbnail different without tools. So that's kind of a sixth sense you could develop. So that could be review real time. The other thing about this step is earlier in our conversation today, we talked about how when you're just starting, go quantity first, worry about Quality later. I wouldn't want anyone to get stuck on step six on their first video. You're not going to build a campfire around the analytics of your first video. Your priority is post 50 videos and then go back and review all 50 of them and say, what can I learn? Which ones did best? What are the bright spots? What are some of the topics that stood out? And so while you definitely can benefit from studying analytics early on, it kicks in once you actually have a big enough data set to actually analyze, as well as growing in that R and then finally repeat, which we actually added a secret Athar I thought so. Which is repurposed. And so repeat is now based on everything I learned. How can I begin again more intelligently? It also at scale could be things like.

Success leaves clues, make part twos. I've posted 50 videos. What are the top five? How do I make a part two to that? How do I follow that up with the related video? And so you're not just repeating the process from scratch, you're repeating it with information from the review stage. And then you're also in the repeat.

Phase of our seven step framework, we think about things like asking yourself questions like, you know what, what do I want to happen next? What's the shortest path to revenue? What am I doing? It's always about strategy. What video should I make next? What would be the most strategic video I should make next? What would be the most lucrative video I could make next? Because I could tie it to different income streams. Because in doing so, I've created money for the mission. How could I now going through this process maybe alone one or ten or a hundred times, how could I go through this process? How could I delegate now? So as I repeat, how do I do this whole thing I just did? Because just listening to me, the listeners are probably exhausted. They're like, geez, you're talking about the steps. I can't even imagine doing them. But this is, this is why so many of our students have had such amazing YouTube success, is because there's a lot to this thing, but it is learnable. And when you learn these skills and master a framework like this, you can create repeatable, predictable success on YouTube. And by having these prompts and cues, it's like, okay, now some money's coming in. Maybe it's not wise for me to keep editing. So my next step, I'm going to reverse engineer. I'm going through this processes again. How could I maybe outlook outsource thumbnail editing? Or how could I maybe outsource video editing, or how could I improve my workflow by tapping into some AI tools? So having a reflection phase is. That's, that's the 9th R. 9th R. There it is. I've never said it. It's repeat and reflect. Like reflect and begin again more intelligently. But then also the secret, Athar is repurpose in the sense of, especially if you're doing a video podcast. Yeah, any content lends itself to this, but especially podcasts. And we've all seen it. There's these long conversations with people, but then there's the shorts that come out of it. And you could take a long form YouTube video, turn it into some shorts, you could take a long form YouTube video, turn it into some clips, and then you ask yourself, am I going to repurpose my content onto other social media? And if we're in the reflect stage, if you're just getting started and you're barely able to sustain YouTube, I don't recommend getting distracted by other social media platforms. But now you might be like, okay, I've got some team in place or some system in place. I hired a virtual assistant. I've got an editor helping me. Maybe it's time to tackle TikTok. Maybe it's time to tackle meta and start thinking about how I could DJ out my content and measure that as well. Is it worth the energy and the time? Perhaps it is. And how could I repurpose and get more leverage out of my content? I'll give you one more kind of advanced strategy too. We do these things called, like, content marathons, where.

Probably the best way to say it would be if you look at Dave Ramsey's video podcast, one of the things he's known for is rants, right? Oh, stupid. You're stupid. Like going off on people, people get mad, you know, whatever. Of course, everyone's offended and fragile and so he'll go on rants at the end of the year. It could happen anytime. They'll usually post a video called Top 5 Dave Ramsey rants that's repurposing the content into a new video. And that new video might do better than all the videos in the year before because it's the highlights. Comedians. There's a comedian I like named John Crist. He does skits all year long, like independent YouTube videos that are skits or jokes. And then, or usually around the holidays, he'll do top skits and he'll just stitch them together into a new YouTube video.

That's it, man.

So there's lots of ways you could do this. But one of the most underutilized.

Opportunities for especially prolific content creators. You've been doing it for a while, you've built up a body of work is thinking about how you could chop up and DJ the content that you've already created. So like as a video podcaster.

You could just re upload your top five episodes into one long episode. And where this is even crazier is this kind of content surprisingly.

Hacks the group the YouTube algorithm.

Watch time, right?

Yeah, the watch time. One of the biggest misconceptions that blocks a lot of entrepreneurs and creators success is they make assumptions and they project assumptions on things because they go, I wouldn't watch a four hour video, but other people would. If you look at Lewis Howes, one of the top podcasters, school of greatness, study his top 10 videos, they're all like three and four hours long and they are compilations. Sometimes he'll take all the different doctors he's had on and they'll talk about a particular hacks for health. So, so you'll package something new like how to hack your energy, boost your mood and feel better. And it'll be a three hour video of creating a theme from all of his conversations with people that could talk about medical ways to hack your energy and fitness and all that stuff into an original new video. And again, that original new video could get in his case, millions of views. So.

Get me wrong, this all takes energy and, and you could do that in the lazy way, but it's a like meaning you literally just stitch together and it's like what? Because you keep starting and restopping, but if you re edited, you've already done the work of interviewing a bunch of cool guests, right. And, and so if you think through what they've said and perhaps create a montage or a compilation of something that really hammers a particular promise. This content creation stuff takes a lot of time and energy. And if you go to the effort of making these videos, why not think about them more intelligently, about how you can maximize them. Like the mindset on the farm is like nothing goes to waste. Like we're going to use the hooves, we're going to use the skin, we're going to use the organs, we're going to use. And so it's kind of like in the content creation game, like nothing goes to waste. I'm going to think about how I can maximize all this that I've put into it and get more.

Leverage out of it. So that's kind of an overview of the seven Rs with the eighth R of repurpose, reflect and got to add.

Nine in there now, man.

And then, and then, yeah, so repeat, reflect, repurpose and repeat the process. There's the seventh one.

Thank you. And also for the bonus podcast piece there because that's of course selfishly helps me, But I know YouTube's doing a big push for podcasting and you know, video RSS feed as well. This is a different topic and I know we're running out of time here, so you know what I'm going to do instead, Sean, is direct them to the book for one. So YouTube Secrets is your book that they can grab and also your course and you've been hinting at it and I think it's a perfect next step, you know, framework. Now tell us a little bit about the course, what, what it, who it's for, what they can get out of it.

Yeah. So I appreciate it and thanks again for having me on. Joe. You know, the course, the way our company works now is we have a, a do it yourself level which is going through these 7Rs in depth. There is a private group aspect to it, but it's really do it yourself and some peer support as well as our team. Then we actually have a group coaching level and a one on one coaching level. It's all built around the same seven Rs. Listeners already heard them. And so if, if you would say one, I want to master that information and master that skill set, that's what the course will do for you. But number two, it is also, it's accountability and community. I think that's what's so essential. Information is abundant but accountability isn't in the sense of when you get connected to other like minded people. Like, like our private group is on fire. Like where you're, you're getting wins, you're getting the, the, the psychology piece. I learned this from Tony Robbins and there was like a study done that success is about 20% logic and information and it's 80% psychology. So we've learned and that's why we've architected our program to realize it's one thing to know the seven Rs and, but it's a whole nother thing to implement them. And so the psycho, the psychology piece is half in the way we teach studying adult learning theory and how we've structured our curriculum, but it's also just getting around other killers and other people who can relate with you in the grind because YouTube is a marathon and not a sprint. Keep you you know, focused on your goals and keep you motivated with those prompts, whether it's happening in the group or text messages, the different things. So we're, we've really worked hard to create a world class program for anybody that would say if, if you don't want to do YouTube, it's definitely not for you, but if you're like, I want that, you know, I want to fast track my success to mastering YouTube and understanding this stuff, it's definitely worth checking out.

Right on. So go get it. Go, go follow Sean. And I think the big thing, like you said, information's abundant. Sure, we can scour YouTube videos all day long, scour your channel, of course, go do it. Listen to your podcast. But it's community and accountability that's across the board with everything. So focus group. You guys have done the work for a lot of years, obviously. So easy way to get there. I'll link it in the show notes. I also have a link if you go to hustleandflowchart.com Sean that will take you there and make sure you go to the right place. All the links, a bunch of stuff will be in the description, show notes because I know we covered a lot. Sean, any final things before, words of wisdom, interesting things you're working on, what's on your mind? Leave us with something great and we'll call it a day.

Well, I appreciate it again and thanks for having me and thanks for listening. If you made it this far, you know, watch time. This is the final few. But that actually tells me like that I think you're serious about your goals. And I really just have one question for you and it's who is waiting for you to show up and take your goals seriously? You know, maybe at another time on the podcast I could talk about how in 2009, my wife almost died and we got crushed in the real estate recession, the big short. And we went through a lot of betrayal from people we trusted and it felt like our whole world was falling apart. And that was really when I got into YouTube and started to fight for my family and to figure out how are we going to pay these medical bills. But it wasn't even just for my own self, my own finances and our own financial freedom. Fast forward to today and I think about the subscribers we have and the students we helped and the stories. Like, I think about Dr. Andrea Furlan, who's a chronic pain doctor and using our 7R system. Not only has she won awards in Canada in the medical field, boosted her income, but she gets Messages from people around the world, even in countries that have limited access to pain solutions, whose lives have been changed from watching her free videos. And so what's crazy now is I think back. Not only did YouTube change my life and create freedom and help my family, but who's waiting for you to show up and take your dream seriously? It was really hard. There's a lot of ups and downs. There was a lot to learn, and. And we talked at the beginning of the podcast about some of the challenges that are ahead of us, but those are overcomeable. So I think when you get clear on your why and you really ask, it's kind of heavy. Joe, I'm sorry to take it so deep, but it's kind of heavy to think about. Like, man, what will happen if we don't. If we don't actually overcome our fears or we don't actually get out of our comfort zone? I don't know, but there's probably somebody that won't be helped, won't be served. I believe that God has woven greatness into all of our DNAs, and that there is some. There's a gift, there's gifts in us and knowledge in us and experience in us and solutions in us that other people need. And it's kind of a scary thought. So it's. It's responsibility. A weighty thought to imagine. Maybe somebody doesn't get that breakthrough or that solution or they stay stuck because we're interconnected and we're here on the planet to not just serve ourselves, but to serve others. So I'd encourage you, if you feel any fire at all, you feel a message, you know you do. You want to increase your own finances, your own financial freedom, great. But who's waiting for you to show up and take your goals seriously? That you could do that on this platform called YouTube and not just create a great living, but also do something significant that could really impact the lives of people. If you're feeling that fire, dive in. You don't. You got to use our stuff. It's there for you or not. Just dive in. It's time to dive. Don't wait on the sidelines anymore. Get serious. Punch fear in the face. Punch perfectionism in the face. And press record.

Sean, you rock. Thank you. This is exactly why I do this podcast and why I continue to do it eight years in is I know there's people listening and watching and dreams will happen on their side. It's fulfilling. Mine, too. So questions to you, y'. All. So thank you very much for your time. Appreciate you so much, your insights and experience. Let's do it again, man. Keep it going.

Sa.