How I Grew My YouTube Channel to 3 Million+ Subscribers | Evan Carmichael

Giovanni, are you in Canada right now? How are you, sir?

I am excellent, thank you.

Yeah, I've been a. I've been in.

The Joe and Dean fan club since the dawn of time. I think why I joined. I joined Genius Network in 2012 and I was already a huge fan of that show. So, yeah, old school. Hi, everybody.

Yes. Awesome. Thanks, Giovanni. Really cool to see you here. And Evan Carmichael, are you on? Say hello if I have let you in from the waiting room.

Hello, everybody.

How are we doing? Sorry, it was just Joe texted me last minute and I was just trying to listen to that and listen to you guys and get ready and anyway, it's amazing. How we doing? Happy Genius. I love marketing podcasting time. I don't know if Joe's here yet, but I'm super excited. I've been here once before and excited to be back and get ready and see all these smiling, amazing humans and going to dive into your YouTube channels and give some feedback and advice and hopefully help you reach more people.

It's going to be awesome. Thank you. Do you and Joe need just another minute or is Mr. Polish ready to join us as well?

I'm ready. I was just making sure that Evan was going to shot.

Wow. Wow.

What's up, brother? How are you?

All good. Listen, disappointing people is my number one fear, so I would not not show up.

Yes, no, I know. You're one of the most reliable, helpful, awesome people that I know, which is, of course, one of the reasons why I'm trying to think if I should stand here or let's see what's going to be better. Why I've asked Evan to actually join us today.

So.

Welcome, everyone. And let's see. I'm trying to look and see if there's any particular person here that I'm looking for. Not sure. All right, so, Evan, for people that don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about you. How many, what, three point whatever million subscribers you have and what we're going to talk about today. We'll have time for Q and A for a lot of the people here, and hopefully today's session will be a total game changer for you and it'll really help you even if you don't have your own YouTube channel. The psychology, like I heard Gina mention earlier, before we started, when she was chatting with everyone, will be really critical. And Evan has helped some of the most famous people on the planet become a. You know, basically to be the wind behind their sails when it comes to video and. And also to Teach them all of the little methodologies and strategies that are needed. And we also have summer. Summer from thedrawshop.com She's a genius network member for many years. She's awesome. She can do some killer video for you guys too. Well, at some point, Summer, you need to just say something and talk about what you do. But Evan. Yeah. Please give the background on kind of how you got into doing this, including from your humble beginnings, because most people would have given up and you didn't. And since so much of your brand is around believe, I think that's important too. So let's. If you could just kind of talk a little bit about yourself, that would be great.

The most awkward thing of all time for introvert, you know, Canadian. But yeah, Evan Carmichael. I'm a big believer that your purpose comes from your pain. That whatever you struggled with the most as a human is what you want to help other people. Because you struggled a lot and you have, you've come through it and your advice can change people's lives. And, and so I make videos on my own channel helping, helping people believe in themselves more. And as a result, I've helped a lot of other experts, thought leaders. Joe doesn't like the term thought leaders. I think he was result leaders. But people who have a message and have been through things to try to help serve on a wider scale. I think YouTube is the single most important marketing platform for most people in the 2022 environment. People are going to YouTube to learn now, to search. It's. It's massively become the education platform of choice for people. If you think about what you're an expert at, what, what problems you've had to overcome and where you struggled, what you could share with the world, that advice, where are they going to get it from? Where people aren't going to their school libraries anymore. Like, where are they going to get it? They go to YouTube and they search and that's where you could show up. And it could lead to lead generation for your business. It could lead to, you know, book deals and brand deals and speaking gigs and whatever it is that you're trying to sell. It starts with education. It starts with caring, starts with service and a group. Like, if you're around Joe, you're. You're a, you're a good person. That's what I've learned. If you're in Joe's network, if you like Joe, if you're here, you've got a really good heart and you're a giver and you care and So I love all of, all of the genius. You know, anything Joe touches is usually full of amazing humans. And so how do you get that message out to the world to share? And the best part about YouTube versus other platforms. And I'll just maybe give a quick overview of why it's so important. And then my favorite thing to do is actually hot seats, which is what Joe wanted me to look at. So if you've got a channel that you want me to look at and review and give some quick feedback and advice, pop that in into the chat as we go and we'll dive in. Or if you have specific questions, like active participation is really key, not just here listening to me talk, but if there's a question that you really, really, really want to get answered to think about it and type that into the chat. We'll try to get as many as we can so that you're leaving with incredible value that you can actually go apply. So, oh, Joe wanted me to share my journey. So if I could share, can I share screen. Let's see. Yes. So this is my YouTube journey.

Uh, yeah.

25 subscribers in year one. So I started April 2009 and then a hundred subscribers and then 3:44 and you know, took a while to get up anywhere we got, I guess update April 2022. I don't we're at three something right now. But it definitely took a long time to, to get going and to get any kind of traction and results. And a lot of this was me being just shy and introverted and not feeling good enough and not feeling like my voice mattered and not feeling like anybody would care. And all of those things that maybe you're facing right now in your career, your path. And it took me a long time to kind of overcome that. Plus YouTube's also evolved. So it's a place where now people are going to learn where when I started in 2009, sharing education, people thought I was crazy. I was not Nostradamus. I did not know that it would become this. I did not predict it. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And I'm a visual guy, so I'd much rather, I'd much rather see things than just read about it in a book. So why YouTube? YouTube 1. Your content lives forever. So the content that you're making now In a, in six months and a year and two years and five years and 10 years is still getting you views, attention, traffic, interest, spreading your message out to the world. World. It's unlike every other Social media platform. If you look at Instagram or Snap or TikTok, like the videos or the content that you make, nobody cares about it a week later. Whatever you Posted today on TikTok or Instagram, nobody cares about it in a week. And so you're constantly on this hamster wheel. Whereas YouTube, the videos from three years ago are still getting me views, the videos from five years ago are still getting me views, attention, business and growing, you know, the message that I want to put to the world. So if we're talking elf, you know, if you're familiar with Joe's terminology, if you're a hardcore member here, you know what ELF means. If you're new, welcome aboard. It's easy, lucrative and fun are the key tenants of a Joe Polish business. So part of that is getting leverage, you know, and YouTube is the ultimate leverage. The second thing is YouTube pays you. So unlike Instagram, you're getting paid to make content. And YouTube has thousands of people out there who are salespeople selling ads against your videos. And so while you're building your influence, while you're getting more reach for your message, you're also getting paid from the ads that run on your videos. So unlike Instagram, Facebook, you know, most of the other platforms, if they have a monetization program, it's very poor. Where YouTube has by far the best one. So you're getting paid now to spread your message and a good short term goal would be to have your YouTube revenue pay for your entire social media team. Where as you scale and grow for some people, YouTube then becomes a seven figure business, an eight figure business, just off of the ad revenue from the videos that you're putting up. And because YouTube, your content lives forever, you also get paid forever as long as the content is evergreen, the content is still valuable in five years, etc. And then the last thing, just quickly and I see all your channels coming in, which I love. This is great. I don't know how we're going to pick, but we'll have to go through some and I might also reveal some secret tech. I haven't even told Joe about this. Joe, when I, when I come to Arizona tomorrow, we've got some secret tech that I'm going to show you that we haven't shown anybody else yet. So I'm excited. But go ahead, go ahead.

No, I love it. I mean, and also Evan's going to be, he's going to be filming himself in VR because we have a VR coming. So that's going to be some pretty Pretty awesome stuff that's happening this week. He'll be out here all week, so, yeah, I look forward to hearing all kinds of crazy things that you have to share.

Yeah. Tomorrow is full day at Genius X, which is Joe's VR company. Giselle is amazing and we've got that set up, so stay tuned. I don't know when the public launch is going to be, but then, yeah, happy to sit down with the team and talk YouTube. I might share something today. We'll see. We'll see. There's so many other people who have comments and questions too. So, last point, just quickly on why YouTube? The one thing that I want you to remember, if you're going to write down one thing, it's audience retention curve. Okay? There's a lot of jargon, a lot of data, a lot of stats. Don't worry about that. But audience retention curve, this really, really, really matters, okay? And even if you don't have a YouTube channel yet, write it down. Because when you start YouTube in six months, you'll come back to this and like, this will be the keyword that you have to know. Audience retention curve. Betty, I love your smile. It's amazing. She's into it. This is. Don't cover your mouth, Embrace it. It's great. We love you. So I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to show you quickly what that looks like. Audience retention curve. Can you guys see my screen? Okay. Audience retention curve. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Make sure I'm sharing the right screen. So if I go to images here, the audience retention curve shows you what people like in your video, and it shows you second by second where people are falling off. So there's a lot that you can. There's a lot of data on YouTube and I don't want to stress you out and overwhelm you. And I love it. Like, I dive into the data and it gets me all excited. And when I talk about new tech, I want to show Joe and the team it's like all data, data, data, data. But you guys probably don't want to be full time YouTube data people. You know, you got a business to run, and so this is the most important thing to look at for every video. And it's free and it's built into YouTube automatically. This is what it looks like. And I just went to YouTube or Google and typed in audience retention curve. YouTube. But what you'll see is second by second where people are falling off in your video. So you can see in this video, at the beginning, they did not do a good job of holding people's retention. Right. We're like a minute 30 into this video and we've already lost. What do we want to call that, 60% of the people. So the beginning of this video, really bad. And it's not a. It's not my subjective opinion of it being good or bad. Like the market is telling us this is not very good. And so we should fix that. Right. And then you can see here it starts to go up, which means that people are either fast forwarding through this part to go here, or they're rewinding to watch this part again. But in this video, this part here is really good. This is where we're gaining people. And so that's where you can look at your video. It says a couple things. One, it makes you a better creator in that, okay, our intro was really bad and we got to stop doing it like this. And then we can learn from whatever's in here. But the secondary benefit of it, and this is where if you really embrace this, could change your entire business. This clip Here is what, 2 minutes to 3? 3 minutes, 4 minutes. Ish. This. This clip here of it doing really well. This is then what we cut to be our Instagram clip, our Twitter quote, our Instagram quote, Our TikTok video. Every other platform is short form. YouTube is long form. So the goal here would be we make long form YouTube content, we look at our data, we see which clips have done the best, and then we cut all that up to be on all the other platforms. So if you're sitting here struggling to. YouTube was just another platform. Oh, my gosh. I'm trying to do Instagram and I'm trying to do Twitter and it's overwhelming. I have a business to run too. Cool. I'm with you. I understand. I agree. All you have to do is take YouTube long form content at the top, you get the data, find the best moments, and then you cut that to go to all the other platforms. So it allows you to be everywhere with only really doing work on one platform, which would be YouTube. So whether it's the fact that your content lives forever and you can grow your influence and customer brand forever, whether it's the fact that YouTube pays you or whether it's the fact that you have the best data and you can use this so you can be on every platform, it's one of the most powerful reasons why YouTube, I think, should be your top marketing strategy for 2022. And with that being said, we got a little bit of context. Look at all these amazing, beautiful people. I love to dive into questions, channels, reviews, secret tech, wherever we want to, where we want to take things. Joe, what do you want to do?

You know, like, there's a. Matthew actually has this question that I just kind of plucked out of here. If we're going to look at someone's YouTube channel, we should probably go to the top where whoever posted one first. But Matthew said, I don't have a YouTube channel yet, but I'm a subject matter expert in a technical industry. What is your advice regarding starting a YouTube channel when you don't have video editing experience? So the reason I wanted to bring up that question is just like, what if I don't know how to put together videos? How do we get this stuff done? So how would you respond to that, Evan?

I love it. It's fantastic. You do not need to worry about editing inside of thought leadership and education. So why am I going to hire you? I'm going to hire you because you're a technical subject matter expert, and I'm searching on YouTube. How do I X? And then your video is going to show up. I'm coming to learn. I'm not going to subscribe to your channel because of the music that you've got or the. Or the B roll or the fancy flowers that fly across the screen or whatever it is that you think you need to do. The most important thing is that you are an expert and getting that expertise.

Where did.

I got unmuted somehow. Okay. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you now.

Okay. I got muted. Okay.

Oh, you know what? I think what happened is Gina's, like, looking for hecklers and people that are trying to, you know, interrupt, and she might have to. So if that happens occasionally, it's more just to see how well that, you know, we can't perform a real live Will Smith and go slap the shit out of people that are, like, doing stuff. So I think the best we do that is g to just. Yeah. So in case that happens.

It was me.

I'm so sorry.

I was getting someone else, and then it moved into you when I clicked.

No, it's okay.

No worries. Good. We're here. Hey.

It's happening.

Awesome. I love it. So thought leader, like, your job was to make other people think the way that you think. So you think differently. Right? That's why you're here. You wouldn't. You wouldn't follow Joe and be in this group if you thought like everybody else. So you're a weird duck. It's amazing. And your job is to teach other people to think like you think. Joe thinks differently about marketing. Joe thinks differently about addiction. And he's trying to get that message out to the world because if other people understood the way he thinks, they can make their lives better, their business better, their addiction recovery a lot better as well. And same thing for you. So whatever it was, Matthew, you're a subject matter expert in you. You can shortcut people's path to. To solve a problem. That's what the video needs to be. It's you shortcutting the path to solving a problem. How well your. Your camera is. You know, it doesn't matter. Like, look at me, I'm moving in a couple weeks. So somebody commented, evan, you should get some artwork behind you like Joe has. I was like one of the first comments. Like, I used to have a beautiful setup for the studio, but it's all gone now because I'm moving. And we did this in mid. May be looking totally different, but it doesn't matter. You're not here on this episode because of the artwork that's behind me on my wall. Right. I could be doing this from my cell phone and would have just as much impact for you guys. Because you're here to try to extract the knowledge from my brain and put it into yours. So the amount of editing you have, unless your business is editing, like, that's the only caveat. If you are a video editor, your stuff better look fire, right? If you are a video editor and your stuff looks bad, it's kind of a problem. Because that's what I'm hiring you to do. But apart from that, if you're an expert, subject matter expert, all you have to do is teach me to think the way that you think. The better skill to learn is how to be a better presenter. So the first if we looked at that audience retention curve, Remember I showed you guys on Google Images that first minute really, really matters to capture attention. And the better skill to learn is how do you start a video with an impactful statement, with something that you believe that other people don't believe, so that other people who are watching will want to keep watching. Most people, what they do is this like, oh, I got a few good video editing, okay. And I'm. I suck at this. They spend 20 minutes recording a video and then four to five hours editing the video. Does that resonate with anybody here? It's kind of what you're. You're doing. And then you get so tired of spending five hours editing a 20 minute video is like, this is too much work. Well, you're training the wrong skill. You're spending 20 minutes training the skill you want to be good at, which is conveying your thoughts clearly. And five hours training the skill you have zero interest in wanting to get better at. And so the ideal is to switch it, to spend time practicing, delivering a message to a camera to make the first minute of a video even better and zero time editing it. You throw a thumbnail on, you can cut maybe an or whatever at the back, but it honestly doesn't matter. It's not why people are watching your video.

You know, Jennifer just wrote, oh, my God, I see that I'm making this a lot harder. You're making a lot of sense and taking away all the pressure. Being perfect. Yeah. You know, back before the Internet existed, there was this. I used to do seminars for carpet and upholstery cleaners, and I had an overhead that I think I'm trying to think of some Denny Hatcher, who I got the saying from because I quoted him, was, neatness rejects involvement. Ugly works. Right. And that's in a different context, but it's like if you tried to make something so fancy that it just looked really professional. Now if you're Mr. Beast and you're doing these freaking grandiose sort of events, that's a whole nother level. But the thing is, the way to get started is to get started and to speak to the term and I mean, looking at lousy backgrounds. Let's take Giovanni for an example. Like, Giovanni, look at your background. It's really messy. Many of you know Giovanni with Archangel. Sorry, but he'll say something really smart in just a minute, and then you'll ignore completely the terrible, hideous background. I'm kidding. It's not. But Giovanni, what are you working on right now? Talk about anything related to. Has Evan ever taught you anything that was useful to you?

I'm meeting Evan for the first time right now.

Oh, that's so awesome. Okay.

Although serendipitously told a side story for Evan. Stephanie, my partner and I just started taking salsa dance classes and our salsa teacher is a student of yours, and he was talking about you last night, so I thought that was hilarious. There we go. That trust. Find my business. Toronto Dan Salsa. Well, his name is Alex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the company I own. That's awesome. You own that? That's crazy. Amazing. Nice to meet you.

Well, there you go. Hell, I had no idea. I was I thinking you guys were buddies and everything, so that's pretty funny. So. But the point is, is that, like, you can. I'll tell you, I have learned so much from Evan and, you know, it's. We had so much content. And Rakim, who's Chelsea, I think, is also on with us. I have two people that work with me that are on my team that do video. I mean, they're very skilled in production and video. But we have all the little methodologies that Evan will go through, as we have just made such a huge difference. And I was not paying any attention really to YouTube at all. And back in 2008, I think it was. You can still watch the video. I went to the YouTube headquarters and met Chad Hurley, who founded YouTube with Tim Ferriss. And I'm there. There's a video of me and Tim, and I'm riding a unicycle around YouTube headquarters. And I did not. I just paid no attention to it. It. And had I actually taken it seriously like Evan did back then, God knows how many, you know, what, what, What a difference it would have made. But, so, but again, today is an opportunity for all of you. This is not going anywhere. We don't think. And it. And now with, you know, just the whole. The whole concept of thought leadership, too, because you mentioned earlier, I sort of make a joke of, of gurus and thought, because any idiot can, you know, come up with a thought, and many people will steal other people's thoughts and, and call them their own. But when your thoughts can actually produce a result for somebody, and if you are in the world, whatever you're doing, whatever your category is for profit, nonprofit therapy, business, marketing, whatever, you know, how to train a parrot, how to talk, I mean, whatever your thing is, if you have the ability to create a result for someone like my friend and one of our genius network members, Jason Franklin Fladlin, says anything that you're selling, you want to put information in front of it, right? And so for many of you, that information is going to be in the form of a video. And how you put that information in front of your prospects, in front of the audience, put it out into the wild, has everything to do with it. And if you focus on being fancy and you focus on the technology versus the psychology, it's going to withhold you. I mean, it just. It just will. And so that's what I wanted to say. So, Evan, why don't we pick an example of one or if there's anything you think you should talk about beforehand, I'd love to just have you in real time Demonstrate by looking at something. Maybe Susan Gilbert, she had a YouTube channel here. She was the first one, I think that posted it.

The chat went so fast I don't even see the links anymore. But I know Susan, we can look that up. I see also question about converting viewers to email names, which we could talk about the free book methodology. You've probably talked about that. Or Dean.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great too. And we could even use mine and get everyone to. If you've not read my book, you know, life gives to the giver.

Stop.

That's what I was trying to say. All right, this is, this is Susan Gilbert's Evan. I just posted it. If you want to take a look at Susan's. But yeah, but let's talk about the free book model and stuff like that too. To just. Yeah, whatever.

Comes a time.

Okay, let me, I'm on Susan, so let me load that up too. Okay. So for the person asking, I think it was Eric who said, how do we, how do we convert people to email lists? Right. Let's talk about how do we, how do we structure video and what matters and, and in going through this process, hopefully it's valuable for everybody in making your content work. So I'm going to, I'm going to go back to sharing my screen and we'll pop this up here. So we talked about. Let me just close this audience retention curve. So if we look at Joe's channel as an example, some of the things that really matter is we need to have a good click through rate on our thumbnails and titles and we need to have good audience retention. So the first minute, for most of you, the first minute is the thing that will matter the most. If you're teaching, if you're even halfway good at teaching what you're an expert at, then you will be able to hold people's attention. But that first minute really, really, really matters. The next part is do you have a thumbnail and title that will capture people's attention and make them want to click? And this is part of the secret tech that I'm working on. And maybe I'll just share one quick example with Joe because we're gonna, we're gonna dive in and do some fun stuff when I get to Arizona. But in looking at Joe's channel, this is where I love making data driven decisions. We've got this. So ILM meet up with Patty and Tublin and then this one here of Dan Sullivan of changing your game. Just quickly sharing a little bit of statistics. This video Is converting five times better than this video on the click through rate they're getting. Actually, this one is even getting more impressions. So YouTube's trying to promote this video. It's trying to promote this video and get it out to the world. This video has less impressions, but five times as many views. And that's a function of the title and the thumbnail. So if I look at this thumbnail, like do this every 90 days, assume that I don't know who Joe is. Like, this is. We're targeting people who don't know who we are. Right? We're not just targeting the people who already know us and love us. It's brand new people. So this thumbnail here, do this every 90 days. Like, ooh, wow, what is that thing that I need to do every 90 days versus ILM meetup with Dr. Patty Ann Tublin. Now you might love this. This is where like, hey, well let's give it a shot. But this one is getting five times as many clicks as this one. So what we would do then is say, okay, well let's, we have to tweak this title and thumbnail to get more people clicking on our videos. And Joe, I'll share a lot more when we get there in Arizona. But, but the idea is if you're seeing videos that are underperforming, then an easy fix is to start looking at how do we tweak our thumbnails and titles to make them better. Now to the topic of how do we get people onto an email list. I'm a huge, huge, huge fan because you guys here are mostly probably not trying to be influencers. You got businesses to run. The whole point of doing this is to yes, have an impact. But we're trying to convert people who watch your videos to then buy from us, refer us, get in our email list, et cetera. So my favorite way to do it is to have a lead magnet in the middle of your videos. So Joe's got his free book. I think it's Joe's free book. And if we load up a video. Let's see, let's pick a random one and see what happens in here. Should be somewhere. This is a really old. Oh no, it's not that.

Yeah, that one's. That one might be. Yeah, that one's pretty old.

Okay, so here. So the first minute really matters. We're going to. So look at what Joe's doing here is like coming ups, right? Like a preview of what's coming up in this video. Then they're talking, talking, talking Great, great. But then in here I'm hearing an echo. There we go. We go, oh, no. Oh no. Dan Murdock is giving me an echo. There we go. Thank you, Dan here at the 19 minute mark. So there's Jason and then Joe's going to interrupt his video, his own video, and talk about his free book. He's like, hey, if you like all this marketing knowledge, check out Joe's free book. Joe's freebook.com. there it is, There it is. People can go and find it. People can go and find it. And so then if you look in the description, Joe's freebook.com. so what we want to do is in the middle of our video, have some kind of call to action to get people onto our email list. And the easiest way is to give some kind of free bonus. It could be a video, it could be a free book, it could be a PDF. This doesn't have to be some crazy 400 page book, right? It could be a little tiny book. Just something that's incredible value, that relates to the topic. And then ideally at the end, and let's see if, let's see if they've done it on this one. At the end of the video, we want to be linking people up to the next video. So beginning of the video should be something that's going to hook the person to watch. Middle of the video should be some kind of lead magnet to get their email address. And end of the video should be to get people to watch another video. YouTube's goal is to keep people on YouTube for as long as possible. So if you can get people to keep watching more videos, YouTube will reward you and showcase your videos more. So if I'm watching Joe, Ben and Jason Vern, hopefully is the most relevant video to what we just what these guys just talked about here to get people to go watch that video. Most people when they're doing this structure, they do it the complete opposite. So the beginning of the video should be powerful statement, something to hook me in. How do most people start a video? Hey, guys, welcome back. It's me, Evan Carmichael. So excited to have you here. Happy Wednesday, man. Today, like, who cares? I'm out, right? If I don't know who you are, like, my mom would love that. But if somebody here is watching and you don't know who I am, you're not going to sit through that, right? Hi there. Welcome back, welcome back. It's my first time here. I don't know who you are. What am I being welcomed back to right so most people's intros are really poor. What you need to think about is if you are transferring your thoughts to somebody else, what do you believe that other people don't believe? Like, teach me something. An opinion that you've got that you believe that other people don't believe and lead with that. So it's like, what did he just say? Like, imagine a landing page. If you guys have built landing pages for your businesses, you have a headline and a sub headline. Would you ever have the headline be, hey, guys, welcome back. It's me, Evan. So glad that you're here? No, you're gonna. You're gonna have a powerful opinion. You're gonna have something that's gonna want to hook me in to watch the rest. Read the rest of the page. Same thing. If you can hook them for the first minute, they'll watch the rest. Most people then at the end of a video, what do they do? Thank you guys so much for watching. Appreciate you. Go like and subscribe and leave a comment. I have never asked anybody to subscribe to my channel. Never. And we've got 3 million Something subscribers on the channel. Why do you subscribe to somebody's channel? It's not because the person told you to. It's because you really like this person and you're watching more of their videos. So your goal is to get people to watch more videos and to like you and see you as the trusted authority. When you're using language at the end of a video that feels like the video is over. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you soon or see you later. People will leave and bounce and go to another video. This is a really important concept. While it might be the end of you filming that video, it's the end of the video for you. Hopefully it's just the start of a journey for the audience. So for the viewer, hopefully it's the start of eight videos that they're about to watch with you. So as soon as you start saying, thank you so much for watching, goodbye. Appreciate you. You'll see your audience retention curve just tank. People are leaving. Goodbye. Like, I'm out. I'm off to the next thing instead, like Joe's done here, if we have a video up on the channel that we want people to go see, and then if Joe said, go watch this video, not I'll see you later, but I'll see you there. And we're trying to get people to go watch the next video. If they click on this, YouTube's going to start Rewarding us more. Say, oh, when they watch one Joe video, they watch three, they watch five, they watch eight. We should show more Joe Polish videos to people. So the call to action to get on your email list is in the middle. First minute, powerful opinion, hook me in. And ending is going to be go get them to go watch another video on the channel. So this is Joe's team. You know, Joe recorded this once and probably hasn't checked it since, but Joe's team is doing a great job.

Yeah, that was. That's exactly it. I mean, like, my team is putting together stuff that, you know, we're repurposing things and we're taking previous content and.

Yeah, yeah. So he. He made this one video at the end that links up and then he made this little pitch in the middle that his team injects into all the videos. If you put this at the end, people will bounce. If you put it at the beginning, people will also bounce. But if you put it in the middle, people are already getting value from the video and they want to keep getting value from the video. So they'll stick around and watch and people won't bounce and leave the video unless they're going to go sign up for your email list, which is much more valuable than just a view on the YouTube channel.

That's what I'm trying to say. Okay.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Yeah. See what I. Basically, part of my role here is to just crowdsource people that are way smarter than me and then have them share what they know with all of you. So, Evan, if you were going back to when you first started this, I mean, I know you're sharing some of this as we go along, and I've never seen you withhold anything. That's what I like so much about you. You're just so helpful. And many of the quote unquote, thought leaders in the world that have giant followings, I know you are the person behind the scenes with many of them. I mean, dozens and dozens of the most famous YouTubers and podcasters and stuff. Evan is the dude they go to in order to get direction. That's why you'll see so much of his methodology being used by some of these people. If you could go back in time and pick a handful of things that, had I known this or done this, this would have made the biggest difference. And I know you spoke to that even about not focusing on having professional videos or trying to be perfect. What are some other things? And then we can look at some people's YouTube channels.

Yeah. You know, like this curve. A lot of this was just personal development and confidence and my message matters and I, you know, I have something to share and it means like, honestly, a lot of that was just me getting out of my own way and believing myself enough to press record. And it took me 350 videos until I wasn't completely embarrassed by my own stuff. I couldn't look back and watch it. It was like, oh my gosh, it's so what you notice. Every mistake, every flaw, every slur, every. It just, it was. I was extremely self critical. I've kept all the videos up so you can go back and watch them if you want. People like going back and watching the journey kind of where I came from and then 700 videos until I inspired myself with a video where I watched it and like, you know what? Like, I'm starting to get this 700 videos later. So yeah, it's been quite the journey, honestly. I did all the classic mistakes like I did. I was trying to be too perfect. My first video, I was trying to memorize a script and I suck at memorizing scripts. And so most of it was B roll. Cause I was too afraid of, of saying the wrong word and I was too inconsistent on the content. And the answer honestly was just to tap back in the service that, hey, this isn't about me. It's about who I can help. And if one person watches this and can learn something and I'm helping, then it's worth continuing on doing. In the early days, I spent zero time on thumbnails and titles and that is a big deal. One thing that's awesome about YouTube is you can change it. When I look at Joe's channel and we go back and if I tell his team, hey, the Patty Ann one is five times underperforming the Dan Sullivan one. Cool. You can update this, right? It's not only like new videos going forward can be better. It's like, well, what was so good about Dan? Was it Dan's sexy face on there? You know, was it the do this every 90 days call to action? Maybe people don't know what an ILM meetup is or they don't know what who Patty Ann is yet, you know, but you can tweak this where unlike all the other platforms, you can't. So they could add some changes to this video. And Rakim's awesome at taking feedback and improving and maybe this video starts popping and blowing up now.

By the way, let me mention this. So see that one that says how to sell your company. Okay, so Michael Gerber, who wrote the E. Myth, you know, you. Actually, I've known MICHAEL Since, God, 1995, I think, was the first time I interviewed him, you know, years ago. And you were talking with him, and, you know, he ended up watching that video, and I ended up connecting him with, you know, with Rob, who's the guy that I'm interviewing there. Rob actually specializes in companies that want to sell for over $100 million. So it's a big player. And that video, even though it doesn't have a tremendous amount of use, 2.6 thousand views. That one's infinitely more valuable from a financial standpoint than, like, my Romany. Like, pull up my Romany devosula video, if you could.

Go by most people.

Type it in or do a search. Yeah. So Ramany, now, Romany is, like, one of the world's leading narcissist experts, and that video has now 1 million views. But the point is, I almost think of this back in the day is when they used to call hits to your website. How many hits have you gotten? That used to be a terminology that a lot of people used to use in the early days of the Internet, and some people still do. But it's like, how many hits have you gotten? What we used to say is hits is what it stands for, is how idiots track success a lot of times. Now, in this particular case, with views like you mentioned, you're getting paid for YouTube. So in this particular case, you can monetize it. However, just because you have a bunch of people that follow you or you have a bunch of people that watch it does not necessarily mean that that is the thing from a business standpoint or impact standpoint, that that's made the biggest difference. I have videos on here that have been viewed, like, less than a couple hundred times that have converted people into genius network members at $25,000 sales. So don't confuse, like, you have to have a giant audience or a bazillion views in order to have a very profitable YouTube channel, because you don't. And, yeah, that's. Just wanted to mention that.

Yeah. Just to piggy tail. Piggy tail, Piggyback and dovetail becomes piggy tail. Perfect. Just a piggy tail on that one. It really depends on what your goals are. And whenever I'm connecting with somebody about their channels, like, what are your goals? What are you trying to do? Because if Joe just wanted to be an influencer and Joe just wanted to grow as big a channel as possible and get a million subscribers. And that's his goal. Cool. Then we need more of these kinds of videos because that's what's blowing up and that's what the Internet cares about. But if Joe says no, my I want to grow Genius Network and I want to here's my real business. Cool. Then it changes the content strategy. We've had some. I was helping one Genius Network member who's in a 25k group and he's only got a couple hundred subscribers. And he was. He's getting a five to six figure deal every month from his business. That's like revenue into his business. Like almost an extra seven figures a year into his business off of a couple hundred subscribers. Because the people who are watching are his ideal clients. So it's less about like, do you want customers or do you want subscribers? And of course you want both. You know, that's the answer. Great. But which is more important? Would you rather sell more in your business or would you rather have more subscribers? And there's no right or wrong as you tell me what you want and the change is the strategy. Most of the time when I'm talking to entrepreneurs or groups like this, I want to grow my business. YouTube is not my main thing. I want to use it as a vehicle to grow my company as opposed to I only want to be a YouTube influencer. So the way to think about that then is whatever you want to make money doing, show me the process of you doing it. So I don't know if you have coaches in the house, consultants in the house. You could pop it in the chat if you are. If you're a coach or a consultant, the best video that you can make is actually not talking head videos direct to camera. It's coaching videos. I was just doing Instagram Live right before this. I mixed. Joe called me as I'm doing an Instagram Live coaching somebody. He's like, I'm sorry, Joe, I can't pick up. And she's a coach. And she was talking about how hard it is for her to make videos. Like, just look into a camera and make a video. She really struggles with it, but when she's helping somebody live, she just. It's super easy. Great. What do you want to sell? Do you want to sell speaking services or coaching services? I want to sell coaching services. Perfect. Your video should be you coaching people. And some people will not want it to be public. Right? Like, oh, I don't want it just to be on YouTube. Cool. Don't, don't do it for those people. There'll be if people will go on Jerry Springer and share what they share. Some people will come on your show and talk about their life or their business. Right. And so it's a lot easier to make those kinds of videos. A lot of Joe's videos are interviews. You know, you don't usually see a Joe. Okay, I'm Joe Polish, and here are my seven tips to marketing. 1, 2, 3. Right. It's. It's Joe's genius. Not that he couldn't do that, but Joe's genius is extract. Like if you guys watch his interviews, is one of the best listeners because his best question usually isn't. The first question is like the second or third or fourth question because he's actually listening to what they're saying and pulling on the thread where most people won't do that. And so that's part of Joe's genius. And so that's what the content should be about. It's not about the Joe show. And that's what he's also built. If anybody wants to be Genius networkers or is in Genius Network, it's. It's not the Joe. Joe wasn't even here for the past year. And, and it was an amazing experience.

Probably even better than I wasn't around for the last year.

Not because he wasn't here, but it's like, it's not the Joe show. It's. It's the team. It's his awesome team at Genius. It's the members collectively. Right. And so Joe's just this great facilitator. And so that's what a lot of the content should be about. But whatever you want to make money doing, whatever feels more fun to actually do, that's the content that you should be doing. As opposed. We feel like we need to make videos. Like whoever, like Gary does it, or like Grant does it, or like Oprah does it, or like whoever does it. Well, what are you trying to sell? And then show me you doing it and that becomes the video.

Yeah. So, you know, let me. Let me also say too, that this. Let's ask if Sam Karashi is on, if he could. I want to. I want to actually ask Sam about the first. Like, Sam has boatload of people that follow him on Instagram. I think it's 700,000, maybe more. I have no idea. But Sam is one of the most brilliant psychiatrists in the world. I don't know if he's in London or Saudi Arabia right now, but I see that he's on. He's been a Genius Network member for a few years, and several years ago, he is a very precise, very thoughtful human. I mean, he really thinks through what he's going to say. And his Instagram channel is incredible. I mean, what he shares is really helpful. He worked with people that struggle with addictions for over 10 years. He's personal friends with very smart people. Like, you know, he's interviewed Wim Hof several times and James Nestor and all kinds of incredible people in different categories. But he was very hesitant to do like a podcast. And so he was in town for a Genius Network meeting, I don't know how many years ago now this was. And I said, let's do an interview with me and him and Ben Hardy, you know, who wrote many books. Now, Ben, at one point was the number one writer in the world on medium.com and it kind of, you know, he was just so, like, I don't know, we got to get it right. Want to do this, prepare everything. And I'm like, no, let's. We're just going to do it. And I'll tell you, I think in a lot of ways that prompted him. And the reason I want to bring him on is because I know a lot of people have hesitancy to start with stuff. And I'd love to have Sam hearing what you've just shared, give his perspective and viewpoint, and hopefully he's still on. Sam, are you on?

Yes. Yes. Hi, everyone. Hi, Joe.

Hi.

Hello.

Hi, Evan. It's good to see you, brother.

Yeah, man.

Yeah. So, Sam, I'm putting you on the spot here, but you're psychologist, as you always do. Yeah, of course. So you're a psychiatrist. What the hell is this? Fear or hesitancy? Including, you know, the hesitancy that you had when you first started, because now you've got a massive following and you have a really great YouTube channel, and you just put out some of the most thoughtful content. I mean, one of the things I said on my. From my sabbatical is not being on social media was more valuable to me than reading inspirational quotes on social media. And so, you know, if I am going to look at something on social media and do want to have my head filled with, you know, good thoughts or perspective, I would, you know, I would follow you. I would watch you. And the same thing with people's YouTube channels. But the question for you is, you know, based on what you've heard Evan say today and all of the people that are watching, my goal is that we help everyone here take what Evan is talking about and utilize it in the best ways. And I know all the techniques and methodologies that he's sharing, anyone could do. He's not describing anything here that anyone listening cannot do. The big question is, what holds people back from doing it? And I'd love to have you speak to that, even from your own experience.

Well, first of all, in terms of. I remember. I remember that clearly and vividly. I remember putting. I think our relationship started with you putting me on the spot, and it never stopped. So here we are again. And that was the first time I experienced that. And what you. Yeah, it. When we don't do something, everything is bigger in our heads. And to me, that was a bigger step, and I kept on delaying it. But when you put me on the spot. That was back in 2017 and that podcast, it was just. There was this invisible barrier that the moment you cross. And here's the thing, if you have a fear of snakes, the longer you are exposed to a snake without the snake harming you, the more evidence your unconscious mind is gathering that the snake is not dangerous, that a snake is not harmful. And then there's this tipping point where you shift from feeling threatened to feeling safe, and it requires that exposure. So it's either an exposure that someone puts you on the spot to experience, like Joe, and that's what happened. And it created a cascade that got me from probably 6. I guess I had about 7,000 followers, and I just skyrocketed to 300,000 in the first year. And then it just kept on going. But it's. Or you decide to push yourself. And I think the thing that stopped me was I was a perfectionist. I wanted to do things perfectly. The thing is, what's perfect to me is impossible to create, and it will take so much time. And people don't care about what you create in terms of the quality of the video. It's the content they're after. They don't care about the background as much as they care about what you're going to say. Is it going to change your. And I was in my head at the beginning. I was caught up in the idea of, no, no, it has to be perfect. The other thing is, we don't know what people want until we give them something to see, their feedback. And that allows us to basically shift things. And. And that was something I needed to teach myself. But that was after you basically pushed me off the edge. That was like my skydive moment in the podcast on Genius Network. And since then, because in order to get better at something. And here's the thing. In order to get better at something, you need to start doing it. You're only ready when you start, not before you start. And so to get better on Instagram Live, I had to do more Instagram Live. There's no way around it. And it's interesting because people want to. People want to succeed without failing. And that's an interesting problem that a lot of people have, because failure is the gateway to success or the stepping stone to success. So you want to see, I want to succeed without failing. That's not going to happen. So people resist failure, but they want success. So they're caught up in this mental loop of their own design that they didn't even realize that they created. And so one thing to mention about learning here again ties into that, which is that one of the greatest barriers that we have as human beings is our resistance to the temporary incompetence. In any situation, if you want to learn something new, there's something. If there's something you're learning for the first time, you are going to be incompetent trying to do it. Well, when you don't know what you're doing or you don't know how you're doing it and you're not good at it because it's the first time, you're basically stopping yourself from progressing. You can't get better at something until you do it. So the idea is to learn to accept the temporary incompetence. And I'm highlighting that because incompetence is temporary, it's only permanent when you allow it to stop you, basically.

I love it. No, that's really great. And by the way, just to give some perspective on this, I just asked Sam a question, and I could run an entire meetup live, like we're doing here, a session in my office. I have this big office building with a big, you know, Genius Network training room. And I could take the video where we just take what I asked, you know, Sam, we could play that video and then we could have a whole discussion about people's fears and about what holds them back and that sort of stuff. And so what I was talking with. And I'm going to talk with Evan when he's out here for. We have two meetings this upcoming week. We have the 25k Genius Network Group next Thursday or next Monday and Tuesday. And then we have our 100k group on Thursday and Friday. And Evan's going to be at both of them, and he's going to be Teaching really awesome stuff like he's doing right now. And one of the things that I want to do, I mean, even like my interview with Richard Branson, you know, I've done quite a few interviews at Richard Branson, but there's one that I have online and there's a bunch of others that have never been published. Or I could just take me asking Richard Branson answering a question about his team or how you built a company or how did you know, what's it like being a billionaire? How do billionaires network with other billionaires? I've asked him all these sort of questions and just play a little clip of it. It would make for a really interesting video. But for me, what's more interesting is the discussion that it leads to. Because right now we're all in the middle of a big discussion. We have Evan talking about stuff, but there's this conversation and I certainly, I don't have the time during this meeting to even cover, you know, one probably fifth of all of the questions and things that have been sent. But after all the meetings, I'll read those things and I'll be like, okay, for future, I love marketing meetups, you know, or for future anything, you know, what do we have here? And this becomes a thing that everyone could do. And so I, and I will say this too. Most of the personal development and self help people, not all, but many of them, YouTube channels, Instagram, podcast, it's their own form of therapy. I mean, they're just talking about stuff they want to get better at. Like you see Tim Ferriss, you see any of the people that are interviewing all these, you know, that's their own form of therapy. I mean, they're just trying to figure stuff out. And so part of doing a YouTube channel is not just to build and grow your own business, but it's like you get better at stuff like that. Like Summer, who we have on with us, she has a company called the driver draw shop, thedrawshop.com they do whiteboard animated videos. And I will always tell people they don't know how to package up what is they're selling. So they can create sales videos or they can create explainer videos that explain things. But I'll tell people to hire Draw Shop for no other reason that they staff copywriters. And most people, you know, it's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. It's that quote where they're so close to their own business that they don't know how to explain it. And when you can have a sounding board that can help you dialogue and think through what are you trying to communicate? How do you want to convey that? That alone is an important exercise about thinking through your business. So you go to Sam doing a whole bunch of videos. You have to do it. You're going to fail. One of the biggest things I've taken away from this, which, if you want to know the success of Evan 700 videos, is that how many? You said Evan 700 before I started.

Feeling proud of myself. Yeah, yeah.

Most people won't do the reps. They just won't do the reps. Like, you know, we have. I have a genius network member named Chris Voss, and he wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. He's the former top international FBI hostage negotiator, dear friend. He'll be here next week. And, you know, one of his things is, like, you want to be a good negotiator, do the reps you're going to have, you're going to lose negotiations. You're going to have people that are going to shoot you down. You're going to be in very uncomfortable situations. Like anything else, you want to be a black belt, you got to do the reps. So as we go through all this stuff, you want to be a good marketer, you got to do the reps. You got to put stuff out there. And so we'll, you know, we'll teach you as best we can kind of what to do, the techniques, the method. But it's entirely up to you to have the mindset that I'm gonna. I'm gonna figure out how to make this work. And if you want to figure out how to make it work, when it's difficult and when it's challenging and it always will be. I mean, at this point, I am less inclined to sound like a motivational speaker and encouraging people and just tell people that entrepreneurship is just building up a tolerance to deal with a myriad of bullshit that you have to deal with continuously. Because the things that would have killed me when I first started out in business, you know, back in 1990, when I first started my own carpet cleaning business. I'm 54 years old now. I mean, I deal with stuff on a mental level, you know, the first 10 minutes of every day, that if it would have happened back then, I would have wanted to shoot myself. I mean, literally, there are times where I've wanted to shoot myself. I mean, that's, believe it or not, you know, entrepreneurship in life. You know, I'm a. I'm A former addict. And when I say former, I still consider myself an addict. I'm just not actively engaged in addiction. You know, it's, it's difficult. Things are challenging, but it's, it's in that difficulty where you have the ability to transform. It's where the seeds of your future accomplishments lie in the obstacles that seem to stand in your way. And if you learn how to navigate through that, oh my God, I mean, you know, there's so much that you can do. And I say all this, I don't even really like fame. I mean, it's kind of difficult when my self esteem is low, then I want a bunch of people to like me. Then it's important if I look at how many people have watched me and said positive things me. But then I realized that's just the ego needing to be fed all that bullshit. And the thing that I care about is like, how do you actually really make a useful impact? And that's why I'm really doing my best to build Genius Network. Not about Joe, but about the people that are in Genius Network. Because every single person that's on here right now has skill and expertise in areas of life that I couldn't even begin to have any understanding of. So how do we take everyone's skills and their capabilities. Capabilities and utilize them and put them out into the world. And that's why bring on like a world class expert like Evan who will tell you how to do it. I mean, you know, that's kind of why we're here. So. Evan, I'm sorry, I'm taking up too much time talking and you're the more important one on this particular session than me. So let's. Do you want to. I'll let you choose if you want to take a look at another YouTube channel and show some things or just speak to any of the questions that, that have been asked so far.

Yeah, I've been, I've been answering some of the questions in the chat as we, as we've been going along, you know, and for someone like Sam, I was just taking a peek at his Instagram versus YouTube and seeing what, what there. What is different? I think a lot of it's just focus, to be honest. Right. I mean, Sam's got such a great message and such a great vibe and if, you know, this is his YouTube channel, he's done a bunch of interviews and you know, here's his Instagram and 700,000 followers almost. Let's go. Sam doing it. And he's, you know, very consistent on. Look at this, guys, right? Like, with all love the same. He's sitting there in his kitchen filming a video, right? This doesn't have to be the fanciest over the top production, right? I mean, I'm sure a video editor would look at this and just fall out of his chair upset with all the mistakes Sam is making, right? But it's like, that's not the point because it's not production quality. People are not following Sam for production quality. It's quality of thought because this message means something because he's speaking to your soul and helping you become a better human. And so it doesn't matter what it looks like, as long as I can hear the message, right? I mean, if the audio sucks and I can't hear it, that's going to be a problem. But there's a train going by in the background, you know.

By the way, have you ever. Have you ever done a video together with Sam, Evan? Have you guys ever done anything?

We haven't. No, I don't think so.

All right, that's going to happen starting today's at least Planting the seed. I would love to. For you to do an interview with. With Sam and vice versa, because both of you have so much stuff to share. And that's what, you know, that's. That's the cool thing too. I mean, I just love, if anything else, like, I just like sharing really great people with other people. I mean, I get a real thrill that's what I'm doing right now. I mean, that's part of this thing, you know, that's why you interview people. You just want to, you know, the people that I like, I like sharing them with other people. Because I think that's how you put good karma into the world, is that you just, if you have good thoughts, good ideas, you know, it's not fine china. You know, I've sat down with some very successful people, and I'll see some young entrepreneur that'll ask someone a question that this successful rich person knows the answer to and they don't say it to them. It's not like it's going to give away their proprietary information. It's just like. And so many people don't do that. And I think if, you know, part of being a giver and part the world is the more that you give, the more I think life brings back. And I have all that present in my mind because I just finished my book, what's in it for Them? That's coming out in November from Hay House. You can't buy it right now, but I've got this new book and it's called what's in it for Them?

Is that the official title, Joe? Is that it?

That is the official title. We're still working on the subtitle. The operating subtitle is Learn the power of connection to change your life, change the the world and never network again. But we're going to change that subtitle because I think we can come up with one that's much better. But it's all about this part of put out really good stuff out into the world. And YouTube is a great way to do it. There's all kinds of ways to do it. But again, having the best content on the planet, the best recipes, the best knowledge, the best how to. But not knowing how to put. Put it out there limits you. And that's why, you know, what Evan is talking about is so critical. And the other thing that limits people is what I just asked Sam to speak of is the fear of like, am I going to do it right? Am I going to get it right? You know?

Yeah. I mean the thing missing from Sam's channel. So this is YouTube channel one. I mean, so we haven't been as consistent as on Instagram, obviously. Right. So 10 months ago was the last one. But just matter of focus and priority and that's it. But there's not as much Sam, like, it's Sam interviewing people as opposed to Sam. Like, what's blowing up on Sam's Instagram is Sam sharing his thoughts on something and that's not on the YouTube channel. And that's the thing that people would love the most. And just looking at this, you see the comments. It's not people saying, what a garbage setup in your kitchen with a train going by. Like even here, by the way, it'd be fabulous if all your videos were like this.

Not sure what that means. What do you think that means, Sam? The train going by? Or is that. Or did you say some really smart shit in that video?

I think, I think what's. What made this one stand out is the idea of. Because this is the first time that I did a video about a trend. So this is the video about Will Smith.

It's.

I think it's put. If there's a way, like everyone has got to watch this video. First off, Ramani Darvoslaw is Will Smith's therapist and that's publicly known. And the day that that happened, the night it happened, within like 30 minutes of it happening, I was texting with her. I'VE seen a bunch of videos, obviously, like, you know, body language experts and all kinds. It's all interesting stuff because I happen to know quite a few people in Hollywood because of all the addiction stuff that I do. So I've heard all kinds of interesting things. This video by Sam, just content wise, is so freaking valuable. It's so interesting to hear the way that you broke that down. So anyway, I just wanted to, I.

Put the link in the chat if anybody wants to go check it out to Sam's Instagram.

Yeah, but go ahead, Sam. Sorry, I just really interrupted.

No, no, no.

Thank you.

Thank you for what you said. Thank you for your kind words.

So something like this, this is actually, this is a decent YouTube video. Trending stuff is not as good because we want our content to live forever. So in five years, are we still talking about the Will Smith slap? Maybe, but it's not as kind of fever pitch as it was maybe when this video came out. So if you're really into trending stuff, YouTube can be a good place. But Instagram, honestly might be better. Like if that's what people are building their brand around, YouTube. How you get the most leverage is out of something that in five years is still going to be relevant. Now the lessons that Sam is sharing in here, I'm just kind of reading the captions as we're going along. Is, is timeless. Like what he's talking about, how to deal with it is timeless in 400 years is still going to be relevant and applicable, but the story that it's wrapped in is a lot more trendy. And so this, a video like this on YouTube wouldn't have as long a shelf life as if he was talking about something that's a little more timeless in the, in the packaging of it. But again, like all this is just one video from Sam. Sam's Instagram. It's. There's a lot of Sam in here. And so the biggest thing missing from Sam from the YouTube channel is just more Sam and also Sam coach or I don't know if you would call it coaching or, or consulting or sessions or therapy or like. Well, I don't know what one on one with you would, would what language you'd use around that. But instead of you just being the listener, also being the person given the advice because you're so good at it. I've seen it behind the scenes and kind of genius network stuff, but never public, that could be some awesome content as well because you take the time to really care about them and ask the right Questions and then give some good feedback. So anyway, content ideas, right? It doesn't have to be the same. The podcast Tim Ferriss style interview host. It could be Sam the thought leader sharing his 10 minute thoughts on what's going on. Plus Sam the expert just helping people. And honestly, where you're at right now is fine. You know, Sam in his new place with the flower curtains behind you and whatever, like, it's all good, right? Why are you watching the videos? Because you love Sam and his vibe and his amazing voice. That just puts you at ease right away.

That's true. If you actually do want to be in a meditative state, just like watch some Sam Qureshi, it's really good. This question, I think came up a couple times. Barry wrote, are we saying you monetize YouTube videos by converting viewers to sales or is YouTube paying you by views? And the question is both. And so, Evan, I'd like you to speak to that. And let me first say that people do business with people that they like. There are people that have a bazillion more followers than I have and I run a very successful company from a financial standpoint and I don't need a lot of views and whatnot. At this particular point, I don't even need social media or anything. As a matter of fact, I've only posted on Instagram maybe four times in the last year and a half because I took my sabbatical. Then I posted something about this and a lot of things I choose not to do just simply because, you know, I'm kind of making life decisions, which is a whole nother conversation of stuff. The point though is I've spent years bonding and connecting with people in certain ways. And so part of your strategy here is if the whole focus is like, how do I immediately convert it into money? That may limit you because it's, yeah, you want money, yeah, you want your business to work. And especially if you're in a situation where, you know, I mean, you literally have to make money, that's, you know, you may focus on, yeah, we got to convert and we got to sell and YouTube is only one piece here. But the thing is, is that when, when you're just trying to get people to give you money, people can smell it. I mean, that, you know, there's money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. So the point I'm trying to make is how do you make your advertising so darn valuable that, I mean, what people are learning here we could easily charge for and we do you know we're doing this for free? No one here is being. You know, no one has to pay. There's no paywall to come through and watch this. We're putting stuff out. And I've been doing this for years. And as a result of it, I've had people that have given me money because they're like, my God, if the free stuff that you're doing is so valuable, what, I can't imagine what it'd be like to pay you. Or, I've already made enough money with your podcast that I've listened to. Like, I feel guilty not joining your group. That's the feeling I want. I want people to feel like, wow, this just like the thing that you said, Evan. Like, we don't ask people to subscribe. They subscribe because they like. I mean, that's such an important point. And you wouldn't have 3 million subscribers if you were. Your call to action was the only thing that got them to be a subscriber. They became subscribers because they like what.

You put out there.

And so I wanted to just mention that as we talk about monetization, because one of the biggest issues that I have with some marketers is every freaking thing that they do is about trying to convert somebody to buy something. You know, they give away a book for free, and then it puts them into an upsell thing, which, yeah, could make a lot of money, but, like, everything's a fricking pitch, and the book that they're delivering is a piece of shit book. So if you're going to give out a free book, make sure it's a good book. Like, you know, when someone signs up for Joe's free book dot com, you're not immediately hit with 14 upsells. I mean, we send people a book. If they want the physical version, we'll mail it to them for shipping and handling. But we don't do. Like, some people that give away free books. It's just a battering ram of sales pitches. Because I personally think in the short term, that may get you money, but in the long term, you don't bond with people that way. So I just wanted to say that as we talk about making money, which is important, I mean, clearly, I think everyone here would love to figure out how to make more money with YouTube. So speak to that, Evan. Like, how does one make money with their YouTube channel?

So for the entrepreneurs out there, it should be, again, whatever you want to sell, show me the process of you doing it. So, you know, if Garrett here, Garrett Gunderson, is going to be selling his financial education and services. He should be making educational videos about financial services. Then people would want to hire him. So guiding people through the process, he doesn't care as much about how much AdSense revenue he's going to get on his channel. He cares about. Hey, this guy's really knowledgeable. I want to hire him and a client to him. For most of you too, a client to you is going to pay you is going to be worth so much more than advertising revenue on your videos. Now, it could be a seven figure business and it is for some people and it could be an eight figure business and it is for some people. Such an eight figure business is a lot more of an outlier. But a six figure business is totally achievable. You have to be very serious about the content and staying consistent on it. But for most people here, the goal is not to be a full time content creator. The goal is to convert people in ethical and education like you're helping people. And just naturally in the process of helping people, they'll want to want to work with you. I put together something quick. I didn't know if we'd go over this or not, but let me load it up here. Just a thought leadership template. It's not loading for me. Let's see if I can get it open. Basically the format and structure for how do you turn your thought leader ideas into, into clients. And I'll see if I can get that going for you. But basically, again, whatever you want to do, show me the process. So Garrett should be doing more coaching videos showing his process and how smart he is and solving people's problems and it's just a lot more fun. And people will naturally watch that video. Some people will just. But you say, well, most people aren't going to. They'll just take the free information and run well, they pay for the access. They're not paying just for the information. They're paying for the access to you and the customization of the information. And some people will try to learn everything for free and that's cool. And they may not value it enough to pay for it or they may not have the budget. I remember being in places where I wish I could have afforded some things and I couldn't. For everybody here, Joe spends or charges a lot of money for genius. You're paying 25 or $100,000 a year and he still does these for free to learn. Like I'm, I'm going to be speaking next week at People who are paying 25,000 and $100,000 a year to be a part of Joe's thing. And a lot of the information will be similar. And you guys get it here for free as well. Because Joe wants to create amazing value for people. And the goal of this isn't okay, like, how do I convert everybody who shows up to the I Love Marketing podcast? I need to convert at least 10% of them to get into my genius network or the whole thing's a failure. I'm going to stop doing it right. Just by being a good person and putting out a ton of value, you're going to get a lot of people who want to hire you. So I would make that the primary goal. Make it about getting clients for your business by providing a lot of value in education. Not making it a sales pitch. Just people will see that and say, oh my gosh, how do I? Like if Sam did a session with somebody, helping them through a problem that they're facing, people would watch that and say, oh my gosh, can I hire Sam to be my guy? Like, how much is a time with Sam cost now? Maybe he has zero interest. Maybe he doesn't want to do that. Maybe one on ones is not his business and it's too draining or whatever. But if he wanted to, he could get a lot of business because people would watch that, see themselves in that person, and then say, well, if he could fix, fix, help them, whatever, maybe he can help me too. If you've ever been to a seminar, it's a Tony Robbins event or whatever, the best parts, at least for me, are always the. The interventions. The one on one where they pull somebody up from the crowd and they help that person. Right. As opposed to just teaching content from a textbook or slides. It's the interaction why he's only helping one person. But you see yourself in that person and you get a lot of value from it as well. So your goal is to give an aha moment for somebody who you're. You're helping. And in their eyes, lighting up like that, it makes them feel like, oh my gosh, I want to hire this person to help me too. And it's just a lot more fun because it feels like you're helping.

No, totally. Can I also say, too, Evan, that one of the greatest ways to learn is you can learn through the experiences of others. That's the second way to learn. The most ineffective way to learn is just through the school of hard knocks. Never asking for any help, trying to figure it out all yourself, and never seeking out how other people do it. So that's one way to learn. Second way is read people's books, watch their YouTube channels, listen to their podcasts, access stuff, offer to take them to lunch if you can show up with enough of a give to make sense for that. And then the third most effective way to learn something is you teach it to other people. And so I guarantee you that Evan has probably become one way better at his own YouTube by teaching other people how to do YouTube. And so what you're not hearing today, go and subscribe to Evan's YouTube channel. Read Evan's books if you want to understand how he thinks and what his philosophy is. Just on life and about getting through life. And at some point, I've been toying around with something with. We haven't come up with anything. So I'm not perfect preparing anyone for a pitch or anything, because there is no pitch here. It's like, at some point, I do want to do something with Evan that will actually be a more formal training. He will do consulting, as will I, but it's expensive, and it's not always the best thing for people. I mean, I actually tried to talk people out of one on one stuff. And for me, I tell them to join Genius network. I think you'll get more bang for your buck than hire me one on one. Some people do want that stuff, but the point is that if you have something that you really want to learn or you learn something today, teach it to somebody else. It deepens it, and speed of putting something into action has a lot to do with it. One of the top sleep doctors in the world is actually on with us. He sent me a private message, and it's now gone away, but it said, michael Bruce, can you pop on real quick? You know, you had sent me a private. Hey, Justin. Yeah. Well, if you mind sharing what you sent me privately. I, you know, of course. And so, by the way. So, Michael, from a credibility standpoint, how many times you been on Oprah?

I've been on Oprah twice. I've been on Dr. Oz 40 times.

40 times. Okay.

Yeah.

He's been on every form of media on the planet. And he's. I've interviewed him. We've got great interviews with him online. His website's thesleepdoctor.com. i mean, the guy's a smart dude, so. But you. But you're. You sent me a message about practice, and I think it just speaks to what Evan's been talking about.

Yeah. So, number one, Evan, love your stuff, brother. Like, really good, great information, really helping people out. So I want to say thank you for all that you do. Obviously, Joe, you know, I fucking love you. I'm glad to have you back. So here's. Here's the deal. I use YouTube in a very different way, and I think there's a way that people can also use it that might be alternative. I came in late to the discussion, so I hope I'm not repeating something, Evan, that you might have said. What happens for me on YouTube is I don't make money on YouTube. People find me on YouTube and then pay me money to endorse their products. So as an. So the more YouTube videos that I do on sleep and migraines, sleep in pillows, sleep in mattresses, those get out. And then people say, oh, wow, you know a lot about migraine, Michael. We've got a migraine treatment that has to do with sleep. Would you be interested in reviewing the science for us? And then they pay me some ungodly sum of money every single month to endorse their product to my website on television and things like that. And so YouTube provides almost like an audition, I would argue, in some cases. But to be clear, they're not looking for perfection. And that's also part of Evan's message. And they're not. They're looking for authenticity.

Right?

So Sam was a perfect example. Train flying by, the whole thing. That's got to be his kitchen because nobody else is going to set up a studio that looks like that. So now it's personal. I'm in Sam's home. Sam is giving me advice. He's not giving everybody advice.

Right.

And that feels better. I want to take Sam's advice because guess what?

He's in.

I'm in his fucking kitchen.

Right?

Come on. That's the best. I've done all kinds of videos. I've worked for everybody you can possibly imagine. Everybody wants me to just be me. And so I think that is the. That's the message that I've been hearing from Evan and from Joe. And I just wanted to impart that, that it can be bigger than YouTube. And when people notice you, they're going to pay you money. Don't worry about it.

Yeah, that's great. There was a. There was a question on here also, Michael, about, like, what if I don't have a business, but. But want to start doing where did it go? Videos and monetize them. I mean, part of it is if you start putting out good content into the world and a lot of people start following you then I guarantee you it becomes a business. I mean, if you want.

100%.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. All I started doing was putting out sleep content. Now I have arguably the strongest sleep brand in probably the world at this point, at least online. So it's crazy.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Awesome. Thank you. And Evan, I want to ask Summer because Summer has been doing videos for, God, I don't know, over a decade. She's had the draw shop and she's, you know, she's been listening all of this. Summer, what could you. You have a great company. I love what you do. I've referred so many people to it and you know, we've. One thing that I thought was really cool is JP Sears had seen a video that I had seen Summer put together on YouTube called How To. It was based on a book called how to kill 11 million people. And we did that video in 2013. I also had Summer do a video for my friend, the singer Natalie Imbruglia, because she's the sort of English spokesperson for the condition of Fistula, which over 2 million girls and young women in Nigeria alone have. And she was speaking to the UN and needed a video for that. And she's a singer and a musician, but she not really like, how do I convey this? So Draw Shot put that together. Eric Schmidt and Jared Yellen, they had the new digital age back in, that was over 10 years ago, their book and they needed a summary of this book. And at the time he was the CEO of Google. And so Summer put that video together. So I mean, she's worked with some very high level people helping them convey stuff and then all kinds of everyday people that just have something they want to sell, something they want to teach and put it together. So you are definitely in the business. But I was going to say that video that JP had watched, he's like, can I get that downloadable thing? I said, I'll give you a shout out. And I said, I don't need a shout out because it's a controversial topic, but just do a shout out for the draw shop. And then he posted that video on Instagram and it was the highest viewed video that JP ever had on Instagram. And it was something that we literally created almost 10 years ago. So to Evan's point, some videos he put on YouTube, they're timeless, right? Depending on not all of them, some of them are, can be about a trend going on like Sam had talked about. But the point is she's done her 10,000 hours many times over on Video. So I'd love to hear what you have to say about all of this.

So can you hear me?

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you.

Okay. Yeah, that's. All of those have been so much fun. You just took me down memory lane. So, yeah, one really cool thing that we've started doing, we're actually doing for you, Joe. We're just starting this is taking like short pieces of videos that you already have and then animating them for the shorts on your. On your YouTube channel. And a lot of people, like, we'll have people that are like, I'm interested in doing YouTube, but I don't want to be on camera. So there's a lot of people that actually have this fear of talking to cameras. So how do they get out this genius information? And we can, I mean we can do it, you know, when people are on camera and you do some mixed media where you animate a piece of it. But I've noticed that that's a fear, you know, like, how am I going to. Not even because of the production quality, but just because of talking to the camera. And yet they have so much genius to give. So I don't know. That's a barrier. I don't know if you've heard of that a lot, Evan, or if you're mostly working with people that are like, no, I want to be. I want to be on the camera all the time, you know, but there's people that are like, I know I should be doing YouTube, but I just don't. They don't have the time. They just don't want to film themselves, you know.

Yeah, well, let me say this. Yeah, well, first off, say what you're going to say, Evan, and I'm going to talk because you made me think of something in the very beginning that even was the starting point of some of the draw shop stuff, which is one video that I didn't. It was on YouTube. It was B roll from a. It was the. Is selling evil. Like if anyone types is selling evil into Google, you'll probably find both videos. But I'll come back to that. So Evan, go ahead.

Yeah, animated definitely can work. Most people who, most people who I talk to actually are not massive egomaniacs who are like, I need to be on camera 247 and have my own show. And like most people aren't like, um, most people are shy or introvert or you know, are, are afraid to get on camera, afraid to make it look good. So what they do is coaching or, or serving. So if you, if I Had a. You know any of your clients who are struggling to get in front of the camera, It's a lot easier when you're actually helping somebody that the fear becomes like talking direct to camera by yourself and there's nobody in front of you. But for most people, if you're in this group, you actually care about your customers, right. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. So in caring about the customers before they buy, you're not just going to sell anything to anybody, right? You don't just see your next car or your next purse or whatever. As the person's walking into your your place, you're like, I want to help this person. And that's how we lead. So how do you help them? Well, you have to make an informed decision. So you got to educate them. And so it starts with asking questions and educating. And so that those could all be videos because most of the common questions people have could be turned into sessions where those are videos on your channel. But the problem is when you get to nobody in front of you, when you have a customer in front of you, it's really easy. When there's nobody in front of you, it's really hard. Even if it's the same question. So often the answer is get somebody in front of you, do it with somebody else. Like have a real customer in front of you and you can either do it as somebody who's already following you. Like an easy example, if Sam wanted to start his show, we'll go back to Sam for a second to see you still on. Sam wanted to start a show where he's given people again. I don't know if it's advice or sessions or what, but he's helping people. He could do it. If he was selling this as a service, he could one reward people for being with him. So if you're here with me for a year on year anniversary, you get a bonus one on one session with me on my Instagram live and YouTube. So you can do that, so you can use it as a reward. This is what I'll do with my membership program. Like hey, if you buy for a year or at your one year anniversary going to second year, you get a one on one with me on Instagram Live. I did one today with somebody who bought for a year, right? Amazing value. Most people will say yes because they want the extra one on one time. Another option would be just look at people who follow you, who's already on your email list, who's already following you on Instagram. In Sam's case he's got 700,000 people who can reach out to. But for most of you, if you have 20 people who are following you, 100 people who are following you, all of those people could be potential guests for a show where you're then coaching and helping them and just answering questions. And for the most part, when we see somebody actually have a problem, a challenge that we know we can help them with, we light up. It's like we're here to serve. We want to help, we want to take with all the frustrations and struggles that we went through and help them shortcut their path. And so I would much rather see the person. And it is scary and it is hard and just if you think back to what is your message? Is your message to your clients? If you go back to like saying, oh, it has to be perfect? Well, is your message to your clients be perfect? Right? Like the message that you want to live and the message you're trying to share to your clients is not be perfect. Right? So. So you're not living your own message. So just get started and do it. Animations work really well for conversion. So if you've got a message that you want to share that you're trying to share an example of what clients can get by working with you. Short animation videos work super well for conversion. For organic reach on YouTube, it's not as fantastic. Especially now. Long form is working a lot better than short. I'd much rather see Sam talk for two hours about Will Smith and Chris Rock than five minutes. The biggest growth category is the one to three hour category right now on YouTube. People are watching, they are going. So if you can go longer, don't cut it off. People are going to learn and there's nowhere else to get it again. They're not going to their high school libraries to go find this information. I wanted to share two thoughts, one about the like making money and one specific to Michael. If I go back to sharing my screen here, you guys can take a screenshot of this if you want. I won't have it up for too long, but this is something I shared inside Genius Network when I did a presentation of the Thought leadership success map. How do you start making money from your channel? At the top is YouTube videos making 10 plus minute videos. I say 10 minutes because that's your bare minimum. People ask me, how long should a video be? At least 10 minutes for thought leadership. I'll caveat this with my expertise. My zone of genius is thought leadership education. I'm not like the slime guy or the Star wars trailer or like I'm not as good at that stuff. Versus thought leadership, education, entrepreneurship. So 10 minute plus videos at the top. If you can go longer, go longer. You know, if you have more information to share, do it. I also put Instagram Live. If you're going to be doing live streams that you can then convert to YouTube videos, what do you like doing? These are all different options of videos that you could make. So thought leadership is you just talking to camera. And some people love that. They're the expert, they're the speaker. They want to see themselves talk. Perfect. Do that. Coaching is another option. We've talked quite a little bit now about coaching, helping people. Mentoring is if you're going to have somebody who's on your team or somebody who you're coaching consistently now. It's, it's an ongoing relationship as opposed to just a one off. Interviews is when you have guests come on. We've looked at Sam's channel, look at Joe's channel. Q and A's are people are asking you like submitting questions for you to answer on camera. Biz Dev is when we haven't talked a lot about it, but you guys could definitely use to help grow your business. Think about partners for your company. Like if this person knew who I was, that would make a big deal for me. And it's less about. Michael's very excited about this. So it's less about how many views a video gets. It's more about now they're going to ask me about me, right? Like if you do a great interview with somebody. If Michael says, hey Evan, I'd love to have you on my show. Can you, can you come on talk Maybe I don't know who Michael is yet. And now, now I'm much more willing to. People are more willing to come on a show than have a biz Dev sales call. Right? So people who you want to get to know better, you invite them on your show. We're going to have a great time. I have a great time with Michael. What am I going to say next? Michael, what do you do, man? What's your business all about? Now I'm naturally curious about Michael and his business because we had this conversation and it's less about how well that video does on YouTube and much more about building that relationship with the guests that you're trying to have on. So if there are people who could make a meaningful impact on your business, it doesn't matter as much how many views it gets. Try to invite them on as A guest of your show because it creates a relationship. And it's a lot easier to do that than if somebody out of the blue message you to say, hey, do you want to go for coffee? It's probably a no, right? But come on my show, it's more likely to be yes. And then the last step is to document your process. Like whatever you're doing, whatever you're trying to do, what if you're trying to learn, show me the process of you doing it. So these are all options for videos that you could make that are 10 minutes plus, like whatever you lean in naturally, that's what you go off and do. Then you split it up to micro content for all the other platforms. And we talked about taking the highlight moments in a one hour. If Sam and I go and do a one hour interview or something, right? Sam's going to drop like a thousand nuggets on me. That's going to blow my mind. And all of those could be micro pieces of content that I can turn into Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. And so the highlight moments from here now gives me content for every platform that I'm on. I don't have to make custom content for Instagram. I can just take the best moments from my YouTube videos and clip it for Instagram. These all lead to a lead magnet. So Joe's free book or whatever, lead magnet, which we get on our email list, that comes from our YouTube channel. It also comes from all our micro content. We're guiding people to get on our email list so we can grow our business. That leads to value emails. Get to know me. Who are you? What are you all about? What's your message? What's your mission? You can include some of your YouTube videos in an email sequence because just because they're on your YouTube channel doesn't mean that they know who you are yet and have watched the old videos. So you use those old videos, especially origin story stuff, as part of an email sequence. And then you can sell stuff because they know you, like you, trust you, love you, right? And if you're selling coaching courses, memberships, books, products, services, whatever it is that you've got, this becomes your thought leadership success map. So I did a whole thing on this ingenious that went a lot longer. But take a screenshot if you want, take a picture of it so that you've got it. This is what you want to be doing in a nutshell. So I'll stop sharing screen on that one. And then just quickly, since Michael came on one of the big things is figuring out the click through rate on videos. And Michael had one here. So one of the things that Joe and his team and I will talk about with our, with our secret tech is kind of pulling out videos and giving recommendations. Michael actually did a presentation here and this is one I wanted to talk to Joe's team about. It's one of the only ones with no thumbnail. Right. So for whatever reason, everybody else got a thumbnail, but Michael's got passed through somehow. And if we look at, just to show kind of difference in example, if we look at this one here, you know, rich dad, poor dad, the original rich dad, poor dad, this is the guy who Robert Kiyosaki thinks is his rich dad. This one had a custom thumbnail. Be less stupid, be more smart. Right. And it sounds funny. Awesome. This one, these had similar number of impressions, so YouTube's trying to recommend them the same amount of time. This one had a 6.2% click through rate. So 6.2% of the time people clicked on it. This one had a 0.4% click through rate. 6.2, 0.4.

Thanks, Joe.

Of course, that kind of shows you how. Yeah, that's funny.

So it makes a big difference because this is great content. I mean, I was in on this session that Michael led and it was fantastic. And do people care more about Michael's message or Keith? I mean they're both great content inside and they're both fantastic presenters. The difference here is just YouTube's trying to recommend both of them the same amount. They have similar impressions, but because this has a custom thumbnail that people are clicking on, it's getting a lot, a lot, a lot more traction. So it's just the importance, this is where looks will start to matter. Right? So this one has great content but doesn't look good. Like you can't tell that that's Michael. You don't know what this is all about. And you know not to pick on Michael or Joe or the team because they do a fantastic job. And most of these are looking great. But for whatever reason, this one kind of a year ago slipped through the cracks. And good news is we can fix it, right? Like team today can go back and now make a better thumbnail and it should help improve the click through rate on the videos. And so this is where having a good thumbnail and title combination will really help. And if it's not working and you can see like this video and in Michael's video have similar number of impressions, but one is doing just so much better. Okay, like, what can we learn from this thumbnail that then we can apply to this one so that we can get. This is more obvious, right? Because this one doesn't have a thumbnail. So it's pretty obvious. But there'll be other ones where you can, you can learn. Hey, maybe when we, when we put numbers on it, maybe that makes a big difference. And so the thumbnail title and the first minute really, really, really, really matter. After that, it's just about the education. Are you teaching me something that I don't know, Joe?

I want my thumbnail fixed.

That is, my team is doing that right now. And so we will certainly do that.

And I already know what my title needs to be. I want my title to be how to be Better in Bed.

You know, that's great, Gina. Can you please make a note of that? And we will, we will put that down. Yeah, no, that's great. How to be Better in Bed. And you know, one thing before I forget based on, I just wanted to mention this. So years ago, I was filmed for this documentary and then someone that's on my team watched it and then uploaded this video to YouTube. It was like under four minutes and it was called Is Selling Evil? And then they started playing this video in college classrooms in entrepreneurship. And so it never had like, you know, that didn't really lend itself to a boatload of YouTube views, even though I think it's had quite a few. But what I ended up doing was having the draw shop animate that video and people use it in training sessions. And I did this video over 10 years ago. And if you type in Is selling evil? Watch the video of me just being asked the question is selling evil? Then I just riff, which is kind of what I do. And then we basically took that same audio, gave it to the draw shop, and they animated it. And I want you to see, just watch both of them. And Gina, maybe you could post both versions in the chat just so you can see all the different ways that you can present the same information. Evan, would you be up for doing a future session like this? Because we could go on for a long time and I don't want to, you know, we can go for a few more minutes, maybe ask a couple of burning questions that people may have that they can just openly speak to, and then we'll kind of wrap this up. But I'd love to just put a bug in your ear that maybe we do a follow up session. And if you don't want to do that, just say no. And you don't care about all these people. I'm kidding.

I'm always happy to help. I would have suggested maybe something in Arizona, but that's. That's maybe happening a little too quickly. You know, maybe.

Maybe we should do a. Yeah, we should actually do a YouTube event and something. And people. Yeah. Here's what I'd like everyone to do. And this is something I'm thinking of right now. It could be disastrous. I would love for you to write something positive about what you learned from Evan into the chat, as if it was something that he could put post on his website. Like, I've learned this from Evan or anything positive or even not positive. If you don't like him, if you don't like bald dudes. I mean, anything. You can even be insulting if you want. But please post something about Evan or what you've learned today. And just so Evan could have this, I'd love for it to be captured because you will help us write some sales copy on what you got out of today's session. That'd be great. Let's take a minute to do that. And then, Evan, if there's any particular thing you haven't spoke to while we're waiting, think of that. And then we'll take a couple questions and we'll wrap up for the day.

Yeah. So I was trying to keep an eye on the questions as people are talking. Somebody was asking about just the importance of SEO and the importance of consistency and design for thumbnails. And thank you for all the. That you guys are making hard to focus because of your kind words there in the chat. I appreciate you. You want people to instantly know what your video looks like. So I want to know what a Joe Polish video is. I want to know what Evan Carmichael video is. I want to know what a Sam video is. I want to know what a Michael video is like. People should instantly recognize your video, your brand, your style. This is more than just a YouTube strategy. This is a business strategy. Like, I should be able to recognize your logo and what you're all about and instantly know that it's your video. If I pull up Joe's channel, you know, there's a style to it. Most of them. Right. We missed a couple videos, but for the most part, there's a style. And I know that that's a Joe Polished video. Most of the views. This is really important. Most of the views that happen on YouTube do not come from search. So the goal is not to win at search. The only caveat of where you want to win at search is when you do not want subscribers. Most people want subscribers. Most people were trying to get people to come back. If you had, you know, if you're a plumber and you have like an how to Unclog a Toilet video, you're probably not getting subscribers to that channel. Probably, right? I mean, maybe. But the goal is not, you know, who's going to subscribe to how to Unclog Toilet Channel. Right. So it's very how to focused. We don't want subscribers. So search becomes the only game. But most of the views do not happen on search. It might start with search, but most of the views happen in suggested. So what happens after they watch the video? So if I'm watching where's Michael's video here? If I'm watching Michael's video here with Joe, most of the views afterwards will be here. I have a bunch of plugins and most people don't see that it'll be here. So where am I going next? Right. This is where we want to start to win. These are the videos that we want to start to win. And so I'm seeing now I'm logged in as me, so I'm seeing things that I care about. There we are. There's our livestream. Look at that. Amazing. Tom Bilyeu TED Talks. Tim Ferriss, Michael speaking at Google. But look at this. This video is 5 years old. This is what I'm talking about. This video here From Michael is 5 years old and it's still being recommended to me. Now. This is why it's so powerful, is why we got to get on YouTube, because some of them are new. This one from Gary Vee is four days old. But five years ago, this talk that he did at Google, if that was just an Instagram video, it's gone a week later. Five years, this is still relevant. Power of Wine was Michael's book. Awesome book and still valuable now for everybody. And so it's still showing up. So this becomes the game. We want to be showing up against our own videos and against other people's videos. So the SEO becomes much more about what videos are doing well in the space and how can we show up after them as opposed to how do I show up in search? Because most of the views will not happen in search. It's going to come from suggested and browse.

Yeah, that's great.

That help?

Yeah, super. Super awesome.

I'm happy to do a round. I mean, I guess this is already round two, but I'm happy to do round three. Anytime. You guys are great. I love you. I love the message. I love the mission. I mean, next time we could also just do rapid fire through people's channels and I could give feedback. However I can serve, man, I'm happy to help.

No, thank you. Yeah, I'm just trying to size. I mean, there's so much that's here. This is a constant, ongoing thing. Does anyone that wants to speak out loud have a burning question that their life will be complete, will be incomplete if you do not have an answer to it? What does the Oroco do? Take one or two of them and then we'll wrap up for everyone. Because I know we're, we're, you know, past the 90 minute mark, so. Does anyone have a question? If so, speak up quickly.

Louise has got to get a trampoline. Yes, if you see me jumping, it's because I'm on a trampoline. I try to keep it less so when I'm presenting and talking, but yes, trampolines are overpowered. I love them. I have a quick question.

Yeah, go ahead. So how do you make the decision on whether to brand your YouTube channel with your own name versus your firm, your firm's name or a podcast, for example? I have all three.

Honestly, it's not the end of the world either way. A personal name is going to be a lot easier to attract attention to. I think even for Joe, we had that discussion, or the team discussion. Like, is it, Is it genius? Is it Joe Polish? It's a lot easier when it's your name to get people. Because I want people to recognize, you know, Louis, I want people to recognize your face instantly. And people will connect to a face a lot easier than a logo. However, if it's not just going to be you on the channel, if you're going to have team on there and marketing managers or customer service people or whatever, and it's not just you, then you can go logo, but it's not the end of the like. That's a minor decision for the most part compared to the actual content that you're putting up. Cool.

Anyone else from Nicole? Nicole's got her hand raised and she's one of our ELF business coaching members. Hi, Nicole.

Let's go, Nicole.

Evan.

Before and done well.

Hi, Evan.

You reviewed my channel, I think, like back in September. So I don't know if you remember me, but I have a question. So I'm a smaller channel. I'm almost to a thousand subscribers. My. The majority of my views are coming through search, so it's it's 60% from Google. But my suggested is getting better. So before it was like 19% suggested and now it's getting up to 34. What is a good percentage? Because I am such a small channel, because I know like I need to be search generated in the beginning, but obviously the goal is to be pushed out by YouTube. So I was just curious, like, what, what is your percentage of suggested? Like is it 70%?

Is it, you know, you were doing real estate stuff and in Park City.

And you watched my video.

Yeah, yeah. On, on investment strategies or. Yeah, I remember, I remember.

Back line of credit.

Yep. So long, long, long reform. Because some of your stuff was too short.

Okay.

So under 10 minutes is going to be harder to rank and suggested the longer form videos. And if you can just take people deeper, just if you're an expert at what you do, do not be afraid to go long. Like short attention span only applies to the first minute. You know, you won't watch a commercial that's 30 seconds that wastes your time, but you'll watch a four hour Star wars movie. It's the same thing. If you're teaching something that people really like, they'll still stick around and watch. And YouTube loves recommending that. My suggested now is probably 70ish percent.

Okay.

And all of my stuff is long. Like most of my videos are at least an hour long.

Okay.

So I would not be afraid to go long. When you start, when suggested starts getting to be number one, your channel's ready to pop.

Okay.

So that's awesome. And step one is suggesting against your own videos. And a good way to do that is consistency in the thumbnail design which you were doing with like your hat was in a lot of them. And like I need to instantly recognize your, your videos because a lot of times, like if I'm on Joe's channel and I love Joe's channel, and then I see that Michael video show up that doesn't have a thumbnail, I'm not clicking on it even though I love Joe's channel because I don't recognize that that's a Joe video. Right. And so if you have too many thumbnail variants all over the place, people won't click on it because I want them to instantly recognize that's Nicole. I'm clicking on a video so that so consistent thumbnail, not exact stuff thumbnail each time, but a consistent theme, style, design, colors, et cetera. Consistent thumbnail design, long form video. So you know, at least 10 minutes plus. But don't be afraid to go Longer if you can. And then the end card. So at the end of every video, tell me where to go. Tell me where to go next. Go watch this video. Yeah, Training people. Yep, yep.

And then what, what did you do in your YouTube journey? Because from 2015 to 2016, like you had a massive jump in subscribers. So I was just curious like, what happened during that time?

I think that's what I think it was. Ayahuasca. Isn't that right? I'm kidding. It wasn't.

Iowa. You know, I've never smoked anything in my life. I think I'm too afraid. I've never really.

You don't really smoke ayahuasca? That's a whole other story. Okay. We're doing a whole I love marketing.

Meetup about maybe or plant medicine or whatever. I don't know. I've always been too afraid. I guess I don't know what it is. No, A lot of it was, was me taking it more seriously. So I think like a lot of people you start and you kind of throw up a video. And I mean, Joe, I think started around the same time as me or maybe even a little earlier, but just it wasn't consistent. It was just, okay, throw up a video, another video. And so I took a long time to take it seriously. And also just getting out of my own way to be honest. Just like my message has meaning, it has value. It's going to help people. Stop being too critical on yourself. Like all of the just self confidence stuff that like nobody watches their first videos and loves it. We watch it and we think we suck. And we think we suck as humans. Not just like we suck at that skill is like, my video sucks, therefore I am a terrible human being. You know, and I took a lot of it so personally and it prevented me from making more. And when I just decided, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do this, I'm just gonna take it seriously, it's helping some people and keep going. Then I started seeing a lot of you. It's like, it's just lack of momentum, it's just lack of consistency. Like you haven't started or you just haven't kept going. And that's the reason why you're not further ahead.

Yeah. And I'll tell you, like a lot of it too is. It's, it's how. Where does it rank on your to do list of importance? And usually because your to do list has too many non producing, irrelevant, overwhelming things. And so, you know, the way that most people accomplish anything is A take it seriously. You know, a good book from a friend of mine. I interviewed him years ago on this book. It's one of the books I've recommended more than probably almost any other book and I've read over a thousand books, is the War of Art by Steven Pressfield. If you've not read that book, read it. It's fantastic. And it's about resistance. So we all have our forms of resistance. Take it. And he talks about, you know, an amateur versus a pro. So if you can put yourself in the pro mode, like, okay, I'm going to make this work. I'm now taking it very seriously and I'm going to do it. That means that you will get, you know, you will quit doing all the. The bullshit. You know, people like, I don't have it. People would always say to me, I don't have enough time to do these things.

And it's.

The question is, what are you so busy doing that you don't have the time to do the things that are going to make the most difference? And so, yeah, I mean, you know, like, let's take Sam as an example. You know, Sam's focus has been Instagram. It's not been YouTube. Now, if Sam wants to make a big YouTube channel, this is a really good jumping off point where he can make that decision. Like, yeah, I'll do that, or he doesn't have to. You know, Sam is going to do well either way. So no one has to do any of this stuff. But I'll tell you, I really think making anything work is not about the technique. There are people that are making millions of dollars that follow that. Sam, I mean, Sam, that Evan has shared the same exact things that he has shared today with, and they just took it seriously. And so part of it is. And that means a lot of times you have to. Your not to do list is more important than your to do list. It really is. And so the reason people don't have success in life, it's all the bullshit that consumes up all their time and doesn't allow them to go deep with anything. So they go shallow in a million different directions. But that is ultimately your choice to do. And the best way to get started is to get started. And I'll frame it another way, too. If you have someone really important to you, or a child or a spouse or a best friend, and all of a sudden someone showed up and said, if you don't add 1,000 subscribers to your YouTube channel in the next week, and the only thing you can do is using the advice that Evan talked about today on the I Love Marketing Meetup group that you didn't have to pay for. If you don't add an extra thousand subscribers, this person is going to die. You'll figure out how to get the thousand subscribers. You just will. And so part of it is, can you put yourself into that sort of pressure mindset without having a disaster? Given the choice of eating or starving, most people will not starve unless they literally have no other alternative, right? There are life situations that prevent people from wars or catastrophes or things from not being able to do things. However, that's not most of life. Everyone here can kick ass and take names. What I would suggest my girlfriend. She is amazing. She's an amazing doctor and she is on a path. She's been on it now. She was on earlier and I checked. I would ask her to actually speak to this right now, but she had to drop off because she is a. She's a surgeon. And so she is very brilliant and introverted. And so she's doing a video every day for 30 days. And I think she's about a week into it. And I'll tell you, like, she's like, hates doing it, but she's like, I'm going to do a video every single day so that I get good at it. And she's like dating a pretty damn good marketer, but she pays a person to tell her to do this shit, right? And then she's going to meet with Evan next week. So she wants to be ready so that she could take the advice that Evan has because she's doing a video and it's. It doesn't even need to be anything important. What she likes doing for hobbies, what she's interested in, reading it, what are. It doesn't matter. The point is just to get her used to doing a video. And you know, if you really want to, to just take what we talked about today, do a new video every day for a month, just do a video, a single video. It could be 90 seconds, you could talk for an hour. Just do one every single day for a month. And I'll guarantee you, if we had that conversation a month from today, you would be in a much different place. And out of everyone here, we'd be lucky if 1 out of 20 people ends up taking this, that advice and does it. But the ones that will, It'll make the biggest difference in the world. And I'll say. I always say last thing, but I'm a rambler. We have a Genius Network member by the name of John Raymonds. And John, what I love about John is the dude has no ego. He sold his last company for $500 million. He owns many companies, is a big investor. One of his companies is Bronze Studios which produced the Joker movie which is the highest, you know, grossing R rated film in history. Did over a billion something in sales. They've, you know, House of Gucci, I mean all, you know, all these pretty famous movies if you look up. And I asked him to give a 10 minute talk at Genius Network and he's like, what can I possibly share with anyone? Like, dude, you make more money than almost every self help guru out there telling people how to make money and be, be successful. And he's like shy and introverted and what the hell am I going to talk about? So he does a 10 minute talk. It was nerve wracking for him. Now he's given several talks, hour long talks. Our Genius Network members learn so much from this dude. And this is a guy that has so much financial success but in his mind, because he didn't ever teach it to anyone. He was so it was so hard, hard for him to do. And now he's like so much better. But he's still not going like, oh, I want to go out and be a, you know, a speaker. But the point is like everyone has it in them. You just need to give yourself the permission and the mechanism and the reason to do it. So hopefully today by listening to Evan, that will be the impetus. This will be the jumping off point for that. And I hope you found this really valuable. And Evan, as always, you're such a class act. You're always helpful and generous and I just really appreciate you and thank you for sharing your time and your wisdom. And I know this is just a starting point, so I'll leave it to any famous last words you may want to share before we call it a day or an evening for those of you that are joining us from all over the world. Because we have people from all over the world that are with us today.

Yeah. If I can give a final push. I was reflecting on the last time I came to Genius offices is getting out of Canada and Arizona has been just a disaster in the past couple of years. But it was at 100k meeting that I was there and I did a session and remember Dan. I went pretty hard on Dan Sullivan who I didn't know who, who he was at the time and basically told him that he needs to be on YouTube and he has no reason why he shouldn't be on YouTube and that it's a disservice to the planet by you not being. I wonder if that was recorded because that could be a cool.

Yeah, actually it was. So we'll have to find it. I'll ask my team to find. So Gina, maybe we can find. When that was.

I went pretty hard on him, which is, which is an unusual. And again, I didn't know who he was and unusual for me as a, you know, humble Canadian to do that, but I just felt so passionate that this man with all this information is like, it's a disservice to the planet by not getting his stuff out there. And to his credit, you know, probably nothing to do with me, but he's, he's got his channel up and it's going and he's getting some traction and he's, he's, he's making content. It's like, I love it. Dan, let's go. Um, I think there's very few scenarios where your time is not better spent on YouTube. If I put like my push hat on right now, if I was best friends with Sam, if he spent the amount, same amount of time on YouTube and Instagram with over the next year, he'll get 10x the results on YouTube. Like there are very few scenarios where Instagram should be your number one over YouTube. It just almost does not make sense like the, for just where the platforms are. If Instagram is your number one strategy right now, you're losing honestly, like this is the hard push forward now. If you're gonna, if you're gonna go shortcut somewhere short, short content, it's TikTok, it's not Instagram and YouTube should be on top of it. So I mean, we could easily debate and happy to talk to people more and do around two, but there are very few marketing strategies for 2022 for the next year. If we're going to come back and like you're going to put all your effort into one thing, there's very few things that you could convince me would be more valuable in terms of getting a return on your time and energy than YouTube right now. And so for the 20 people who take action on it, I'm looking forward to seeing you in a year and seeing your progress and helping and just thank you, Joe, for holding the space and happy to do a round three, Q&A, hot seats, deep dives, whatever. I love you guys. You've got a great message and it's always an honor being here.

Thank you, brother. All right, everyone. You're awesome, Evan, as usual.

And I want to thank my team.

My team, Gina and Chelsea and, God, I don't know, Eunice, whoever else is on here, Rakim, the whole works. And so I hope you guys found it awesome. Tell other people about it. Our next I Love Marketing meetup, We will either do it next month or we might need to change that date simply because it's landing right during the time where we have another event. But if we do it, we will let you know. It's I Love Marketing zoom. We will also post this up on the YouTube channel, so if you want to watch it or share it with your marketing team, all of this is recorded, so you'll have access to this whole thing. And then whatever me and Evan conjure up, we will share with you.

You.

And in the meantime, if you've not read my book, go to joe'sfreebook.com read the book, have fun, take good care of yourself, and be safe, and we will see you next time. Thank you.

Take care, guys.