Why Most Video Creators Will Never Turn Viewers Into Paying Clients! - Aleric Heck

Is YouTube still the world's most valuable real estate? So if every video can kind of live or die based on merit, how do you actually package yours up to win? And Also, can a 2 minute video ad really beat out a 20 minute video that goes even in more depth? For instance, we're going to talk about things like, you know, what makes a hook irresistible and what comes after that hook to actually lead someone to become a. Not just another like or a comment, but an actual client for your business. That's what we're breaking down today in this episode with Alaric Heck. He's going to share his YouTube playbook, but also his conversion playbook. If you actually want to use video to win and grow your business, let's dive in.

Alaric, we're doing this. Round two. Man, it's been about a year or so. How you, how you doing?

I'm excited. This is, this is going to be great. Yeah. I can't believe it's been a year. We were just talking about that.

We were.

Time flies.

Well, I mean, you're, and luckily, you know, you're even deeper down the YouTube rabbit hole. I know. Last episode we went back into your, you know, the history of how you came around on YouTube. I think it's been what was 12, you started at 12 years old, I think is what it was. Right. And doing all the tech reviews and whatnot.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sixteen years ago, back in 2009, YouTube was a totally different platform. And if you remember it back then, you know, it was the star rating system. It's like, rate my video five stars. It wasn't given a, like, it was all standard definition video. It's crazy to see how far it's evolved since then.

Well, what. Yeah, I mean, that's what I always love someone who's been in the game in a specific vertical or, you know, this thing, thing they've gone deep on for so long. You've seen the, the changes over the years and you know, what's, what's kind of stayed tried and true, which is. You definitely know that and you have a lot of great resources on that. We'll talk about some of them here. But like, does anything stand out with the mind of, like, why YouTube right now? Like, why do you think this is still the place for, for folks to go to?

Yeah. So YouTube is the catalog of video content. Like that's, it's the place where video content lives, where if people are looking for a tutorial, how to use the latest AI tool, how to grow their business, how to, you know, get in shape, whatever. People are looking up, they're going to watch a video on YouTube and roads lead back to YouTube. So, oh, there's a lot of people are talking about how SEO is depending on who you talk to. Some people are saying it's dying, others are saying, hey, it's just shifting, it's shifting to LLM SEO. But as you have more and more chatbots, people going to ChatGPT, Google even having with their own Gemini, whatever people happen to be using. Here's what's not going away video. Because if you're looking for tutorial, well, ChatGPT isn't going to, at least right now, and we're not quite there yet. Maybe in the future it could be, you know, a whole different story. But right now it's not going to just auto generate a video to give you what you want, but it'll generate text, right? So where people aren't going to web pages as much, they're still going to watch videos on YouTube. And so if you're looking for a tutorial, then really any of these AI models, if you indicate that you want to watch a video of some kind, it's going to populate, most likely a YouTube video because it's all indexed. They've got the transcripts of the video, especially if you're doing on Gemini, or you have those little recommended like the AI search up top. And so what that means is that video is still front and center and arguably some of the most valuable real estate on the Internet because as LLMs just start to, you know, transcribe everything or, you know, people talk to AI clones like you help me, right? You know, text is getting more commoditized, whereas video still has that power. Now, yes, there are ways to create AI versions of videos, but those are still being hosted on YouTube. And, and so AI is a tool to amplify those types of videos. But people going to YouTube is, is still incredibly strong and it's also more based around the merits of each video. So one of the big things people ask is how has YouTube evolved since, you know, years and years ago? Well, in the past it used to be like you're building up your medieval kingdom, right? And if you had a YouTube channel with a ton of subscribers, you were guaranteed to get a lot of views. And, and the people that had the biggest channels were the ones that captured a lot of the views. And sure, some people like that style, especially the people that really built up, you know, their channels around that. But YouTube has now shifted to a meritocracy, you could have a channel that doesn't have a lot of subscribers, post a really good piece of content with the right title, the right thumbnail. And because AI is going to actually synthesize even, you know, YouTube is going to look at all the different pieces of the watch time, the transcript, what's the video about, what, what's the click through rate, how many people are actually, you know, with the sentiment towards this video, they're integrating all of that into the algorithm. So now every video, you have an opportunity to reach more of your ideal people. So it really is more of a meritocracy where you produce a really great piece of content as long as you know how to package it the right way. I'm not saying it's just, oh, put a good piece of content and a bad title, bad thumbnail, because people aren't going to click that right. But you have a good piece of content, good thumbnail, good title, it's all there. It doesn't matter if your channel has a million subscribers or has 100 subscribers, you actually have much more of an opportunity in today's algorithm to have that video break through, which I think is really exciting for a lot of businesses and a lot of creators and a lot of people that are going out there to start producing content.

I think that that's how I lean on even more. And I know with your, with your book coming out here, and I definitely want you to break down a bit, you know, you're, you're helping people have that, get a lot more of that confidence if they haven't gone out there and actually done video yet, put themselves out there, or if they have, I feel like I can't say most people, I don't even know what the percentage of business owners, you know, folks that digital marketers who are on YouTube, because I feel like there's probably still a lot who have not touched it, you know, and maybe they're just leaning on things like meta ads, which I think you guys do as well. But you know, there's video and. But I guess, yeah, what is a good starting point for someone to think about when they approach YouTube and actually understand, oh, this is the place to be, how do I approach it? Like, where do I start?

That's a great question. That's a big thing that we talk about. So, you know, the book that I've got coming out here is Video Authority, the art and science of converting viewers into clients. And I created this, you know, very specifically to help people that are actually looking to grow their business off of YouTube. So this, what this book isn't is, this is not the book on how to go mega viral, build a multi, multimillion subscriber channel as a celebrity on YouTube, as a big influencer. That's, that's not what this book is about. What this book is about is how you can build your business on YouTube, how you can get a lot of great viewership, how you can also run ads, YouTube ads targeting the right people at the right time. We talked about that. Also how you could repurpose that content not just for things like YouTube shorts, but also other platforms as well. And how you can essentially create an entire video ecosystem to turn those viewers that watch your videos into consistent clients. Because the reality is likes don't pay the bills. There's a lot of people that have a million subscriber channels and I know them that, you know, they're not doing as well as you think they're doing in terms of your revenue, their actual take home. And what we want to talk about is how you can actually craft videos, whether it's organic and it's published on the channel, or ads that are targeting the right people or really anywhere in between that are designed to actually convert those viewers into consistent clients. And the big thing that we talk about is the key is to be a video authority. So you don't want to just have content that entertains or gets people excited. What's that? What's the difference between somebody who's actually going to be able to turn viewers into clients and somebody that is going to turn viewers into likes? But you can't really take likes to the bank. Well, the difference is whether or not you're an authority in something that you're going to be able to take people off of YouTube to do. Now this is going to be different, right? So it could be being the preeminent authority in AI clones, right? You now create videos and content, but you are an authority in something. So they're going to be excited about actually working with you. Which is very different than, let's say, somebody that's just going out there and using AI clones and making a funny video about that. They could amass maybe even more viewership and not maybe actually they could amass more viewership than you talking about how to build these or how these can be created, but they're not going to be able to drive and command the actual revenue generation that you can do from your channel or your ads. As an authority in how to build AI. Clones. Same thing with me with YouTube ads and video marketing. Right. It's very different. And I've even seen this because I have two channels. I've got my app review, and now it's AI tech channel, App Find. It's got 600,000 subscribers. I don't produce the content anymore. I have somebody, Justin, he's out in Silicon Valley, produces some of those videos on my behalf. And, you know, it's got over half a million subscribers. And then I have my YouTube channel, the Hour Kek channel, that's got 80,000 subscribers, 83,000 subscribers, something like that. That channel, that's me, produces far more revenue, I bet, far more. And it's. Even if you don't account the ads, it's still substantially more. But especially if you account the fact that I'm running ads from that channel and the ads generate the vast majority of my business. Then also, of course, there's the organic content, but that channel, overall, regardless how you slice, if you just look at people watching the content or if you look at the content plus ad, that's huge. It's massively many, many, many full times more revenue than my bigger tech channel and an AI channel that generates revenue from ad revenue and sponsors and things like that. And the reason for that is I am the authority at something that I can take people off of the platform and turn them into clients. And I've built some of the things I talk about, you know, inside this book. One of the things that I break down just kind of, I guess, flip through. I was trying to see if I could find one of the areas. But inside the book I actually break down. Here are some of the funnels that you can use, because you're using video at each step of the process. So you could have YouTube ads or you. Or your. Your channel, your video channel, your YouTube channel. And that's drawing people in. So they're either going to see an ad that you're targeting from the right people, or they're going to find one of your videos on YouTube.

Would that be like a funnel, more or less? Like discovery, top of funnel?

Yeah, exactly. And by the way, that's a flywheel too, because they could see your ad. They don't take action right away. Then you could, you know, get them to watch your channel. And if they're watching your channel, you could retarget them with an ad so that in of itself creates a loop. But once you get them off platform, so they've seen an ad or your channel, or they've gone back and forth between them. Now they actually click the link to go and opt in to your funnel. Well, we like to run what we call a video conversion funnel. It's our version of a video sales letter or webinar funnel. But the way that we like to do it is we want it to feel like an extension of YouTube. So let's just use yourself as an example, right? What you could do is, is pull people off of either a YouTube ad or a YouTube channel where they're going to learn how or they're going to discover the benefit of having an AI clone. So it's, you know, learn how you can, you know, have an AI clone just like these 300 other, you know, people, all the different people that you've supported, and they put in their name, email, possibly phone number, they click go. Now you take them to a video. And this is a 10 to 20 minute long video that we call, you know, video conversion training. So inside the video conversion funnel. And it feels like a YouTube video because it hits all the right notes. It's filmed like a YouTube video, it's got a YouTube video kind of rhythm. But the way that it's actually structured is like a video sales letter or like a webinar, mini webinar where you're actually, you know, hooking people in. You're telling a story, you're building credibility, you're, you're providing value, but you're talking about the what and the why, not the how. So you're talking about the keys, you know, that they need to learn, right? Some of the classic, you know, marketing things that you can do and then leading people to, then, you know, examples and case studies. And then, all right, let's, let's customize this for you. Let's book a call. Let's see how we can support you. And then you could lead that right into a book, a call funnel. And so all of that is structured by having that video. It's video to video, which we found works really well. And they're, they're not phone calls anymore. People are hopping on zoom calls. So that's a video too. So one of the things this book talks about, it's kind of funny. I've got a whole chapter on how to do a video consultative sales call, because it's on video. And the point that I like to make in the, in the book, and obviously there's different funnel pages that maybe don't have a video on it, but the vast majority of your business now is actually able to be built on video, especially for expert based businesses. So how you can actually integrate video.

Each step of the way, this is incredible. I mean, well, I got, I got to say, you know, I'm starting to go through your training so I got to give, you know, my hats off to you here for that because yeah, I'm starting to learn this. I'm in the very early stages. But what you just broke down is exactly what I would love to do for my business. And like you said, to support the cloning and all the AI build team stuff that people heard me talk about on here. But being video focused, I mean it's, it's a great, I mean you're, you're hitting on all the, the modes, right? Like you, they can see this stuff in action, they can see you, the person, it's pretty. And I would, you know, when we're talking about cloning, I'm definitely not ever talking about hey, let's clone you and put you on YouTube and like take you out of the picture. Because like I feel like, yeah, when I look at it, it's like, no, that actually brings the human tighter to the real human and media we're putting out there to educate, connect and then like what you're talking about, you're continuing that off platform that I guess that's the ecosystem, right? Like that's where my brain goes to is like, because I do know a lot of creators and most of them do not have an ecosystem or some business off of the platform of YouTube. So I think that that's a huge takeaway is yeah, the likes are great, the awareness is great, you'll get a lot of data on YouTube, but what are you going to do with it and does it align with the business or the bigger thing that you're building?

Exactly.

Are there other ecosystem, like just to describe more because it sounds like that's a funnel, like let's call it for a consultant. Or are there other ecosystems that you can maybe at a higher level kind of just throw out and lob out there that people can kind of start thinking about. Yeah, exactly.

So that's going to be more for an expert based business. But you can apply this exact same type of thing to products or software. It just might be a little bit different how you, how you position it and structure it. But pulling people in from again, ads or organic. And I'll talk about the ecosystem a second, it's kind of two different questions. So how you appeal or how you can apply this to, you know, product businesses is actually demonstrating the product or the software and you'd be surprised. But if you watch a lot of commercials these days, there's not a lot of actual demonstration of products or services. It's more, you know, know, selling a feeling, which could be good for branding, but it's not necessarily good for direct response. So if you have a product you actually want to showcase, like what are the benefits of that? And then, you know, taking people off to a sales page where they can actually potentially watch a video when it comes to a software, making sure that a demo is incorporated into that, maybe they're opting in to see a video demo that then can lead to a demo that they can book a call, you know, for. So there's definitely a lot of opportunities there. When it comes to other ecosystems. The other ecosystem that we like is content multiplication. So you could take one video and turn it into dozens of pieces of content. And it's crazy that you could do this now. So you can essentially take a, and this is where what I talk about is you can essentially film in, in four hours you can film an entire month's worth of content. Where you have weekly YouTube videos, daily short form content, which by the way, isn't just YouTube, it's YouTube shorts, it's Instagram Reels, it's TikTok. LinkedIn now has shorts if you want to publish it there, you know, and Facebook also, by the way, Facebook's reels, you know, I put a reel up on Facebook, I get, you know, a thousand plus views. People say, say, oh, it's not really, you know, it might not be as much as YouTube, but hey, those are real people watching that reel. And so anyways, so you have all those. So you could cross promote that. Then you could turn it into a weekly newsletter as well as weekly long form, you know, social media posts. You could also do some other like kind of short, like tweet style posts which you could also do now, you know, with, with threads and Facebook's. Also you, you've probably seen this. They're, they're prioritizing those, you know, image background images or whatever, background color with short text, which is kind of funny. And so essentially you can do dozens of pieces of content from just one core content. And then you can film that 10 to 15 minute YouTube video in about an hour. So if you want one of those per week, you can film those in half a day. And so you can have an entire content strategy that takes you half a day to film. And it's mostly AI and you know, a VA or somebody on your team that can go and put all of these different pieces together. Right. You could have virtual assistant and empowered by AI and some select tools and there you go. You can now repurpose all of that content on every platform and have a full content distribution strategy that creates an ecosystem where on organic you're everywhere. We talked about omnipresent retargeting too. With ads you want to be everywhere as well. So there's ways to create ads. They can be cross platform on all kinds of different platforms, but you can do that both on organic and with your ads.

And that's. I'm happy you said that because yeah, the whole omni presence, this is what. Yeah, I've, I've, I've preached this a lot in the past year. With podcast you could do it this way too. And that's how it splits into. But I really like what you're saying like specifically for YouTube because that's, that's kind of that I'll just say that's a personal shift I'm making is. You know, I have a great system for the podcast and to get this kind of omnipresent split out teams doing it with some tools like Opus Clip and Cast Magic is in a. Are there other tools like just, just without going deep but like what are some of your favorites? I know these might change but yeah.

So Opus Clip is really great for grabbing those. And like you said there's, there's other ones that you can use there too. But that's our, that's our favorite that we use to clip the content. And then I love Claude for writing content. So one really good playbook that I have is you can do a really good job with Claude to train it on projects of past writing styles. So for instance, my newsletter, my marketing minds newsletter, I spent over a year hand, not handwriting, but like type of hand typing, you know, my newsletter without AI for over a year and now I have 50 plus samples. So I take those and I put them into a cloud project. And then now what I can do is every time I publish a YouTube video, I can have my virtual assistant take the YouTube video transcript, upload it into Claude, which is trained on 50 plus examples in a specific project. Here's my newsletter. All right, here's a transcript of my video and everything that I shared. Here are all the newsletter examples using only the information I share here without adding other bits and hallucinating. Right. This is a kind of prompted, you know, so using all of the information I share in this video, fit this to the format of My newsletter, in the tone, voice and style I use for my marketing minds newsletter, have it write everything out and then, you know, and then that can be preloaded into my newsletter software. And then I go in and I personally review it because it's important to me. That's right. Just to make sure it's written the right way. And usually I'll change maybe 5% of it, but so there are things that I change. It doesn't get everything perfect. And that's what some people, I'm sure. I mean, I know, you know, this with AI and everything, but I'll make a couple different changes. And then from there I've now got a full newsletter ready to go that was based around that video and then I can link to the video. So now I'm also driving up YouTube views as well. But I also have a newsletter and then the newsletter gets published as a blog. So now that's a blog as well. And then I can also take what was written as a newsletter and I can condense it down to Facebook posts. And I have, I mean, even more like 200 plus Facebook posts that I all wrote myself. Right. And this is, I think the key is a lot of people with AI, they're going out there and they're, they're just trying, they're not giving any examples. They're not putting in the time to write it themselves or the content. It's the same thing with like a clone. It's like you want to create a clone, but you don't have any content out there that exists. It's like, well, you know, what do you want to say? You know, it's like, okay, so, but, but once you do have that content, you can take that. Like, here's all the past posts that I've done and then here's this video. And the video is new content. So that's the important thing too. I'm not just rehashing old stuff or taking other people's information. The video, when I do a video, I just think in videos, right? So I will go and I can just speak to the camera. Now, obviously inside the book we talk about how to actually write scripts and how to do that, because I know not everybody's like that. That's fine, don't be worried. The book talks about how to actually know, come up with infinite ideas. You can actually use AI to help you with that. There's also a manual way to do it. And then once you have that, how to actually outline it, the structure of a video. Just because I'VE done so many of these. I now I know how to, to do it. I think at one point I, I ran the total of the videos and it was, it was over 3,000 YouTube videos that I've created. I believe it. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy across my two main channels. But, but anyways, so looping back, you can then, you know, train it on, on okay, what's a, what's a Facebook post? What's a LinkedIn post going to be? And then you can take that video and turn it into that as well, that transcript. So you can essentially do effortless, you know, content multiplication to be omnipresent across, across different channels.

What if your expertise could work for you 247 even while you sleep? So at AI Build Team, we create AI powered digital twins that clone your knowledge, your voice and even your style so you can scale without burning out. So imagine multiplying yourself, but without multiplying your time or your team's time. And the cool part is you don't have to imagine any of this. You can actually chat with my own AI twin right now. Just go over to AIBuildTeam AI Joe and you can see how it works for yourself. Again, that's AI Build Team AI Joe. It's incredible. And it all starts with that one YouTube video that, I don't know, call it 15 minutes I think is what you said, or something like that where that's the end result. But ideally you're batch recording all of this, which, that was the game changer with this podcast. And you know, now it's kind of changed a little bit. I used to do like three or four episodes in a day and that's almost like mind numbing for a podcast. But if it's a YouTube video, that's, it's a lot easier if you're planned out in advance. Right. And have that, have that game plan.

Yeah. And you're, you're able just to kind of film them back to back. Right. And, and it doesn't, it might not even take you half. Like for me it doesn't take that long anymore. It also depends if you're doing a screen share style video or you're talking to camera if you know exactly what you're going to say or you have to kind of do a little bit of research as you're going or, or prep it a little bit more. So then maybe it's not four hours of filming, but you have to spend a little bit more time like coming up with the script. So there's different things with that. And. And we also, you know, make it simple each step along the way. So obviously, you know, I broke these. Everything down inside of the book. But I also have other software tools. So I've got my, you know, AI ad targeting software, the keyword search dot com. But I've got my YouTube thumbnail creation software, you know, thumbnail creator dot com. And I have a YouTube video script writer that can write YouTube video scripts in your voice. Video ideas, AI. Now, it's kind of interesting because that software hasn't really taken off as much outside of my core ecosystem, but it's very. It works well to kind of come up with, all right, it's going to research trending topics and come up with video ideas that you can do and then. And then basically help you write kind of a sample script, which I love.

Harry. Just dropping all those, like, those little tidbit tools that you have, because, like, I knew you had some of them. But yeah, like thumbnail creator.com, i just pulled it up. I'm like, oh, my God, like, everyone needs this. Anybody? Yeah, I mean, just go there. We'll link all those up too, because those are great. You set them quickly, but we'll pull them out.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that, I'm sure. Yeah, put a link down there. And, you know, just saying that to mention some of the different tools, obviously people want to check them out. Then, you know, they all have free trials too, so people can go and give it a try and see how they like it.

Well, that's the key thing is, like, knowing that these are. You're solving for the bottlenecks that people, you know, the friction points that people are inherently gonna have. Because, I mean, even me, who have been. I've been creating podcast content for a lot of lot. A lot of years. The YouTube side has always been kind of like a byproduct. It's on there, but I know the focus has not been there. And, you know, there's. There's. Everybody is on the spectrum of, you know, how comfortable they are in camera or maybe how much they get hung up with an idea but don't take action. So, like, what's. What are some common bottlenecks and solutions to getting out of our heads and actually hitting the record button or even scripting something? What are the common ways that you see that you just kind of can hopefully bust that bubble for people so we can just get to creating and.

Posting one of the big ones, and you might not fall into this but some people watching or listening definitely, definitely do is just the fear of creating videos and putting yourself out there on camera. And I know a lot of people say, all right, Alex, this is easy for you to say. Clearly never had that kind of fear. Well, actually, that's not necessarily the case. So, you know, seven, eight years ago, I had had my YouTube channel already, but it used to be a faceless channel, right? My. My tech channel. You could hear my voice, you could see my hands. I was showing, you know, every new iPhone or whatever, but you couldn't actually see my face. So about eight years ago now, it was time for me to film, like one of my first ads for myself with my face as an expert business. And so, you know, in the past, one of the things that I had done is I had gone and, you know, worked with. Either you couldn't see my face or I'd work with other clients. But now I wanted to run my own YouTube ads. So I filmed this video following my methodology, following my process, and I watched it back and I was. I was nervous. I was like, oh, no, I didn't really like the way that I looked. I was actually about 50 pounds heavier than I am today, because as I was initially starting this business, I was so focused on that I wasn't taking care of my health as much and fitness and all that stuff. So I was like 50 pounds heavier. I didn't really like how I looked self conscious about it. And I remember watching that video and I almost deleted it. And I'm glad that I didn't, because that ad, the one that I was so embarrassed about, it ended up being the first ad to make me a million dollars in my business. That one ad, awesome. Bringing over half a million views to it. And the lesson I learned is it doesn't matter, you know, what you look like, what you sound like, you know, who you are, like, what background you have. Like, if you're, you know, self conscious, all that matters is that you're being yourself. And so you're being authentic. But you're also showing up as an authority. Because if you watch that video, you know, maybe I'm a little self conscious with how I look, but I am showing up as an authority. I clearly know what I'm talking about. And I'm showing up as myself. I'm not pretending to be anybody else, you know, myself at that time, you know, obviously I've grown as, you know, person since that. But, you know, basically you're showing up as that authentic authority. So one of the things that's actually one of the chapters in the book. It starts off by talking about how to be an authentic authority. You want to tap into that authenticity of who you are and how you're showing up, you know, when you're creating content. And you also want to be seen as that expert and let your expertise shine. And if you can do that, you're going to be able to get the results you're looking for. Even if there are certain things that you're self conscious about, one other technique or thing, there's actually a few little techniques that you can use to break a fear of being on camera. So one is just realizing that you're on camera all the time.

I know, I was going to say.

On Zoom calls, FaceTime calls, you know, all kinds, all of those things. You are on camera and you don't feel any special, any kind of, oh, you know, nervousness when you're doing that. And that's because you're going and you're used to it. You're used to being on Zoom. You're used to being on FaceTime. So the second tip is to speak like you're talking to somebody on Zoom or FaceTime, like you're talking to a close friend. And that way your passion can shine through. It's like you're filming the video for them, not anybody else. Don't think about different other people that might be watching. Just think about as if it was a friend that's gonna be the only person that watches this. And the way you can do that is you get to decide. The third piece is you could delete the video.

That's true. We have control.

You have control. And so if you understand those three things, and this is something that we teach our clients is also something that I talk about in the book. And I've had people say, you know, thank you for this. Like, even though it sounds like it's simple, sometimes you got to think about. You break it down when you think about it that way, that you're already on video. You can film it as if you're talking to somebody specific. And you're in control as to whether anybody ever sees that video. It depressurizes you filming a video, which means you're going to film a better video, which means that you don't, you don't need to delete it. Like, you know how I didn't delete mine? And you can go and publish it or you film a couple versions, right? Again, maybe you do delete that one, but you film another variation.

I love it, man. And this is. Yeah, I think the, the takeaway. There's a couple things. So I used to, I used to coach myself through this back in the day when I was starting. And this is like 15 years ago with like flip cams and stuff. I remember. Yeah, like just make the red light, my friend. You know, I'm just talking to my buddy and you know, it's not so much red lights, I guess, or on Riverside and I see a red light here. So, you know, but the fact is take the pressure off yourself. Like that's the thing. It's like it doesn't have to be pressure, especially if you are rooted in your, your own authenticity. And you know what? You are the best in the world at whatever your superpower is. Talk from that place. And yeah, sometimes that word, you know, might feel woo woo to some people or like, what does it mean to be authentic? But literally, if you think about it, every aspect of life, if you walk into a room and if you are yourself and you don't care about what other people are really thinking about you, you're good. You're living the good life. So it's. And this almost is like. Yeah. For anyone who might be hesitant or feel some friction here, it's almost like therapy in a way to start recording videos and, and watch back. Maybe don't analyze it, but if you're feeling like, yeah, I said some pretty good smart stuff here, post it, you.

Know, get it out there, go share.

It, get some feedback. Maybe don't listen to all the feedback, just keep posting. Yeah, but yeah, and I'm thinking of like on the paid ad side because we haven't really talked too much there and I know you have a whole. In the book. I know touches on it. You have all the training and awesome YouTube channel. Definitely go follow Alaric on YouTube as well and we'll give links to the book and everything. Are there any strategies like, in terms of like the batching, for instance, all that content, would those. Are they the same videos in the ads or is it like a full different kind of approach and there's a whole scripting process.

It's a different approach and we can touch on it pretty quickly. Okay, so really I can actually break down the framework. At one point I was challenged to break this down in like three minutes and I was able to do it.

So we could challenge you.

So basically. Exactly. Start the clock. So the Strategy on the YouTube side is there's two pieces. There's the actual ad and then there's the targeting and the ad is a little different than a YouTube video because it's a little bit shorter, it's two to three minutes long versus a YouTube video might be anywhere from eight to 15 minutes long or some go a little bit longer. And so with the ad, you want it to be hook, educate, call to action. The hook pulls people in, you provide value, you educate them, you actually give them value in the ad. We call it a value add because that's what makes your ad stand out from everybody else's. Most people are, hey, do you have this problem, okay, we'll go buy my thing or go book a call or go sign up for my training. But you know, are you actually providing value? People are on YouTube to get value. So you want to pull them in, you want to provide value in the ad. Talk a little bit about, it's high level, right? But talk a little bit about things that they might not know, you know, pieces of information you can give them, whatever that happens to be and then you have a clear, concise call to action at the end to get them to take action off of the video. So hook, educate, call to action. Then when it comes to the targeting, targeting, it all comes down to this reaching the right person at the right time with the right message, variation, the message and the ad. So now we got to reach the right person the right time. Now you can use Google's prebuilt audiences. They have audiences already, people interested in, let's say, you know, business or advertising and marketing, whatever, but you can actually build your own custom audiences. That's the key. We want to get alpha results. We call the alpha AI targeting strategy. They're training the AI, Google's AI to reach more of your ideal client. And so for instance, you know, let's say you were going out there and targeting your ads as you know, which we're going to be doing soon as we're working with. So for people looking to build AI clones or learn about AI clones, so instead of relying on Google's existing audiences, which I can tell you, they don't have one that's just interested in AI.

Clients, I don't think so what you.

Can do is you can build one. So you could build a, you could build an interest, affinity or where you can actually put in AI clones, how to build an AI clone, AI clone for my business, et cetera. So you put all the interests into one. So now it's people that Google knows is interested, but you actually go a level deeper and you could do what's called a Custom search intent. So you could target people who are searching for specific things. How to build an AI clone.

What'S the best way to build an AI clone, et cetera. Right. And so, and again, by the way, if you're wondering how do you come up with these search terms? Well, that's where my software comes into play. The keyword search.com that finds YouTube keywords and actually syncs directly to Google Ads. But you can find all these keywords that people are searching for. And then you also have URL affinity audiences. This is based on what websites people are going to. So they're already going to sites kind of related to that. Then you could target those people the next time that they're on YouTube. So you now have multiple different ways and there's a few others, but that's. Those are the main ones. And so now you're building those custom audiences to reach the right people. You're training the algorithm. So hook, educate, call to action and then a custom audience and the Alpha AI targeting that is the formula for YouTube ads. Of course, we break it down and we have more timeless principles in the book. And then the book has resources that go to more tactical things as well that come along with it.

Well, let's give people the. And thank you for breaking that down. I think that was under three minutes. I wasn't.

But it felt about right. That was around, around there. Yeah, yeah.

I want to shout out the book just how folks can get to it. So Video authority, book dot com. Go, go, go there. I know it's going to be released depending on when this episode, it might be live, it might not be, but either way that'll get you there. Right. Video Authority, book.com.

Exactly. Video Authority, book.com. and I, I've been working on this for the last three years. So it's kind of step by step and you can actually see it's got actual like action plans. So it's got the visuals and everything too. So it's like, all right, here's your video conversion training. Here's all the different pieces. And then it also afterwards, after each chapter, it's got the step by step guide of what you learned in the chapter to actually take action. Cool. Because that's what I like. Out of a, out of a book. It doesn't just teach you, it also says, all right, here's what you should actually do to put this into action. Here's a little visual of what it'll look like.

I love it and I love it that it's set in principles. And that's like what we were talking about here. What I try to do with this show is, yeah, let's talk about AI, some of the cool whizbang stuff that's coming out. But we know stuff's going to change. But there are principles that we should be definitely living by and studying. And I mean, the fact that you've been working on this for three years and I trust you, and I've seen the material you put out there, you know, in the. In the private members area, I'm like, oh, my gosh, you've done your homework in every which way. So I appreciate you breaking this down and making it digestible at least here at. And definitely, if you're any at all interested in YouTube and you should be, of course, that's. That's your man here, Alaric, and go get his book.

What's. Just to kind of wrap it up here. What is. What's the thing that hangs you up now when it comes to, like, video? Is there. Do you have any, like, friction points of your own? And second part of that, you know, maybe how. How do you get past there? But also what are you interested in? Like, what are you excited about in the coming year? Two, let's say in general. That's a good point.

I think the biggest friction point for me is time in that I have a lot of things that I'm focused on and doing and I'm speaking all over the country and I'm, you know, also running my business and I'm also creating my content. And I don't have as much time as I once did years ago to create all the content that I want to create, but I could potentially help that be even better. But I. I also think that there's a human element of connecting with people that's really valuable on video. So with AI, there's AI ad hooks. We're finding that works really well, especially at the beginning of a video. So the first eight seconds as an ad, especially on an ad. So not necessarily a regular video, but, you know, an ad that can hook people in and then you draw them into the rest of the video, which might be more of a standard YouTube video. So we're finding that that works quite well. Or standard YouTube ad. I mean, to say. Yeah, and. And that works quite well at the AI side. And then when it comes to. Yeah. Handling some of the bottlenecks, I think I'm actually working right now on a new process for creating and publishing content more rapidly. So cool in the works and we'll probably be ramping up through the rest of this year, but especially going to next year.

Well, that sounds pretty exciting too.

So. Yes.

Do you see like just, I guess just to really end on this thing like YouTube and where it's headed because, you know, we have things like AI video clones now and you see, you know, social networks starting to make that a lot easier to create those, you know, and kind of replace the human. Like, do you have any fears or I guess, or opportunities with kind of this new tech maybe integrating into YouTube or do you just have any kind of perspectives there in the, in the coming, let's say year? Because things are rapidly moving.

What I would say is I think people are still going to want to connect directly with people, but I think that AI is just going to be another tool that you can use to more rapidly create what you want to create. So it's really interesting with ads. What we're seeing is the best performing ads aren't ads that are just AI, but they're also not just normal. They're now AI ad hooks. So the first eight seconds like I was sharing and then followed by a more standard, you know, human ad. And I think that kind of speaks to where we're going is the hybrid model of AI being a piece of it, but not being all of it is going to be, is going to be valuable when it comes to video.

I could see that as people are just. Yeah, well, just see it everywhere, honestly. And it's, it's kind of hard to distinguish in some cases, for better or for worse. But yeah, I like that. And probably rapid testing of hooks and whatnot can be done once you kind of dial in what you're doing already, but.

Exactly.

Awesome, man. Well, this is great. I know you're a wealth of information and appreciate you for being so open and coming back again. Go get Video Authority book dot com. That's the new book and that'll. That'll take you to all the right spots. So alert. Thank you, my man. Appreciate you.

Thanks so much, Joe. I appreciate it.

Sa.