YouTube Growth Secrets: How To Grow A Successful YouTube Channel Featuring Evan Carmichael and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #400

New strategies and methods people are using to grow their YouTube channels. In 2021 covered the most important elements of a video or channel that gets tons of views covered. What to do if you're scared to be on camera. We got that. Techniques and strategies to grow your YouTube channel. Right now. We just talked about those. The stats you need to track a step by step blueprint. You need to have success on blueprint and the number one thing Evan recommends for you to do in order to start seeing results with your YouTube channel.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.com I am Timothy Paulson. On behalf of Joe Polish, whom we love, whom we miss, he's on sabbatical for the rest of this year and on behalf of the entire Genius Network team, we welcome you to this I love marketing session. Thank goodness we have Dean Jackson because Dean is remarkable and brilliant. Evan Carmichael. Now, Evan Carmichael believes in entrepreneurs. Gary Vaynerchuk called him the DJ who inspires people. And Ed Mylett called him the modern day Napoleon Hill. At 19, Evan built, then sold a biotech software company. At 22, he was a venture capitalist raising 500,000 to $15 million. He now runs a YouTube channel for entrepreneurs with over 2 million subscribers and 300 million views. He's written four books and he speaks globally. He wants to solve the world's biggest problem. Here it is. People don't believe in themselves enough. Forbes named him one of the world's top 40 social marketing talents and Inc. Named him one of the 100 Great Leadership speakers and one of 25 social media keynote speakers. You need to know Now, Evan set two world records. He uses a trampoline and a stand up desk. He owns Canada's largest salsa dance studio. That's where he met his wife. And he has a giant Doritos bag in front of him all day long to remind him that he's stronger than the Doritos. Toronto is his home. He's a husband, father, TSM fan and Timo Maine. We are exceedingly fortunate to have along with us of course, Dean Jackson and Mr. Evan Carmichael. Welcome.

Thanks guys. Great to be here. I'm excited to dive in. I'm pumped to be here. Thank you. It's a blessing and I'm ready to dive in.

I'm super excited. I've seen all of your videos even before we met. I have to tell you, I was watching one of your videos just a couple of weeks ago that was the one with Quentin Tarantino and. And where he was talking. One of his rules, number six, I think it was, was just the most crystal clear articulation of who, not how that I've ever heard, where he was sharing with Charlie Rose about his. Trying to figure out how this particular director got his vision on the screen. And he said that the director told him, listen, you don't have to. First of all, you don't have to know how to do any of that. You can hire people who. You hire a director of photography that can get your vision up there. Your job is to describe what you want. And I just thought, what a great, like, life lesson, because that's so much of everything that we're talking about. If you want to get anything done is be able to describe it, you know, So I love that. Let's kind of start there with where are we right now? At the lay of the land here.

If you're inside thought leadership, which is the category I consider for entrepreneurs, where you're educating, you're sharing your knowledge, you're. You're trying to get your message out there to the world, It's. It's your number one strategy for 2021. People say it's too early. It's not in thought leadership. You know, YouTube's been around for I don't know how many years, a lot of years. I've been on the platform since 2009. Yeah, yeah. So it took me three years to get on, I guess, but it took me, and I show my stats on my website, it took me five years to get to 9,000 subscribers on YouTube. Five years of making content, and the next five years to jump to almost 2 million subscribers. And wherever we're at now, it's still very, very, very, very new in thought leadership, in education. So there are tons of people who are looking. This is a classic case where there's tons of demand but very little supply. There's a few people. Whatever you're an expert at, all of you are experts, right? You're an entrepreneur. You know a lot about something. Sharing that message, sharing your wisdom can be the path to helping get more clients into your business. And if you go to YouTube and you search for whatever you're an expert at, think about what you would make a video on. What are you good at? What would you make a video on? Go to YouTube and search for it and then watch the videos that pop up. There's probably two or three people who've made videos on it and watch their videos and ask yourself does this person know more than me about the topic? They might have the camera and the lighting and whatever set up, but they know do they have the knowledge compared to you on the topic? And for a lot of cases it's no. And so there's so many people. People are going to YouTube right now as a place to learn, not just entertainment, right? You go to Instagram for inspiration. People go to YouTube to learn, they will watch long form videos. The highest category right now we're looking at the one to three hour range for videos people will sit down and watch. And so if that's you, if you want to educate, if you've got a message inside you, there's giant demand, little supply and that's usually a pretty good model as an entrepreneur to get.

I think what's wrapped up my personal, in my household, the consumption of YouTube is the smart TV that we've got the YouTube app on the TV and we're watching it on the big 70 inch screen like watching regular TV and not watching it on the phone or watching it on the laptop. So it's just like watching TV and everybody's in HD now and there's no buffering issues. Like when YouTube first started in 2006, it was still buffering issues and things that were. It was kind of painful to watch low resolution, all of that. But now there's really no difference between a broadcast cable and watching YouTube. Same kind of thing. So there's that. I just saw an article in the. I believe started out in the New York Times and then it led me to some other reports and there was a infographic and breakdown of what they were calling the creator economy. And you may have seen this, but there are. They estimate the size of the creator economy at 50 million people are creators, meaning if they take YouTube channels, Instagram, TikTok, all of those people who are doing stuff, it's at about about 50 million, which was like 1% of the 5 billion people that are online. So it's only, you know, you talk about it feels like everybody's doing YouTube channel, yet virtually nobody is doing a YouTube channel. In the big scope of things, if you've got this, you look at it like that and then of the ones that they break it down into professional and amateur, like ones who have a certain number of subscribers, like how many people have 100,000 YouTube subscribers? The numbers even just get smaller and smaller. But yet the appetite for it continues to go up and up. So where you're saying about your. If you're going into the Thought leadership category, which most of us on here are entrepreneurs, so that's probably a pretty good guess. What's job one? If we're going let's. Let's start with people who. What can they expect? Or what would be kind of if we were going to try and create just a top level blueprint of what we need. What are the things that we need to do? Starting with, you got to get an idea of what you're going to do and then what are kind of the steps on that?

Most of it, job one is getting out of your fear.

Right.

I mean, the biggest thing, people ask all sorts of questions like, oh, I don't know what topic to make, I don't know what camera I should buy. I don't know all these how questions, but you can give them the answers and they still won't do it. Same thing with your book. You can give people the exact book strategy.

Yeah.

And it makes sense logically. But they still won't do it because they're afraid, because they feel like they don't have a message worth sharing or because they feel like somebody's gonna. Somebody will read the book or somebody will watch the video and what they'll say, or nobody will read the book or nobody will watch the video and how that makes you feel. So the biggest thing is just getting out of your own fear that when the camera comes on and you press record, you don't know what to say and you blank out. My best advice for that is momentum. Like just start and expect to suck. Here's what happens, Dean. So people, they watch a video, maybe they see you on this podcast or they see Joe, or they see how great Tim is. They watch somebody else and they say, okay, I might not be at that level, but I can be like 85% that level because I have a good message. And then they get in front of the camera and then they press record and they blank out and they mumble some words. And then they watch it back and they said, wow, I really suck. I thought it would be like 85%, but I'm really only 20%. And then they never post and they never create. Don't expect to be great at anything the first time you do it. Where did this come from? Why do you expect to be able to be great on camera the first time you're doing it? So just expect to suck. Expect it to be terrible. Expect the audio not to work. Expect interruptions to happen. Expect your dog to be barking. Expect the camera to fall over. Expect to suck. Awesome. Post and then do it again tomorrow and do it again tomorrow and do it again tomorrow. And you'll find like anything else, that the more reps you put in, the better you get at it. And one way that I find helps people is to think about what is your message? What is your ultimate message to your audience? Or even more insular, look at your family. Look. If you have kids or want to have kids, is your message to them. Only do things when you're perfect, only release when it's perfect. Especially something that's creative. It's impossible to be creative and perfect at the same time.

Yes.

So we're not living our own message. Of course your message to your kids is not going to be only released when it's perfect. So you have to go off and do it yourself. You can go back and watch the videos, the early videos on my channel and they're still embarrassing to watch. You know, a cringe every time I look at it. I'm so proud that I did it. But I kept the videos up. I haven't deleted the content because it's good to see. I want people to see the journey to show, hey, I suck too. It took me five years, guys to get the 9,000 subscribers. I suck pretty badly. But you, you get up and keep going. And so I think more than the how to of like what, what, what camera, what phone? Like here, this is your, this is, this is your camera, right? Film, hold it this way, sideways and film. Right. And worst case, you do it like this. Great, you sucked. Release, do it again. Another video tomorrow, right? We're, we're creating all of these how to questions which then is just our head getting us stuck in procrastination mode, thinking we need to have the perfect plan before we launch, where the answer really is. If anybody's interested in making a YouTube channel, your next best action item today is to pull out your phone, flip it horizontal and go film your first video.

I don't know who took credit for this, but I'd heard a format of getting your first 24 kind of videos out there, your first six months, if you're going to do one a week, is to think about the top 10 questions that people ask about whatever it is that you do that you could answer for somebody, one question per video. And then the 10 questions that they don't ask, but they should be asking as another opportunity for you. And then four videos like that are, here's what to do next things that you can do to, to get started with someone. And that would Be a really good kind of easy way to get a little bit of a Runway, to get the framework for it. The important thing, from what I've heard you talk about and seen observed with everybody, is to get in the right cadence of just publishing on a consistent schedule. That minimum would be once a week that you're posting up at the same time and just get 10 minutes as your target to go. What would be on that checklist of. If we were going to say, get the format right?

Yeah. So the way to think about YouTube that's different than the other platforms is your content lives forever.

Yes.

So this video, you know, it'll get cut up and put up to YouTube and somebody in five years is still watching this video. No other platform works like that. Right. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Your content is not living very long. So inside that one, inside an Instagram world, the launch window matters a lot. A lot, a lot. Inside YouTube, it doesn't matter at all unless you're inside of a news cycle kind of thing. Right. If you're talking about COVID that matters now, in four years, hopefully we're not still talking about COVID So Your goal with YouTube is to create evergreen content, meaning the content you make now is still relevant in three years, in five years, in eight years. So then with that thinking, the launch cycle doesn't matter what day of the week you release. Thursday morning, Friday night. Because we're not aiming for views right now. We're aiming for the views that keep happening over and over and over and over again for the rest of our lives.

So you're. So this is good. I just had an insight there that it's not about, like pacing it out, like getting in that consistency of releasing once a week. If you could do 24 videos in 24 days, it would be just as valid or would you be up faster? Is it about establishing your footprint on the like. Each video gives you more of exposure on the platform.

Each video is another at bat. Each video is another chance. You never know what the video is going to be. That is the one that breaks through, that gets you the attention that you've been looking for, the impact you're trying to make. At the same point, even if 50 people watch the video, I think we often lose Track. Those are 50 people who just watched a video. If you were to go speak at a library or lions Club or YMCA or some event and there's 50 people in the room, you'd be nervous to stand up in front of those 50 people.

Yeah. You just.

And give the speech. Right. So we're always focused on what we don't have instead of what you do have. And if you focus on the people you do have, they'll help take you to the people that you don't. So in terms of the. How many videos to make, there's two things that I look at. There's the YouTube algorithm, which at least once a week, you have to be just to be in the game. Daily is ideal, but daily scares people away too easily. So we start with once a week. But then there's the algorithm of improvement for yourself. Because if you're just practicing something, anything, once a week, how long is it going to take you to get good at that skill?

Right.

You're practicing it a lot, whether it's 10,000 hours or, you know, whatever. 10,000 experiments. James Altucher. You know, you'll get there faster by practicing more. And this is a skill set that will serve you for the rest of your life.

Yeah.

People then will say, well, what if YouTube goes away in two years? It doesn't matter. Like, the ability for you to speak a message in front of a camera will serve you for the rest of your life. When the I Love marketing podcast in 2040 is all of Us in VR, sitting in Dean's home together, we're all still just talking in front of a camera. And so it's a skill set that you can use forever, regardless of if YouTube even exists in 20 years.

So I love that. That's a good insight. So to get the videos as fast as you can get them, think about them as being evergreen. I've seen myself go through this accelerated process of discovering somebody and then being able to binge their content on YouTube and compress the amount of time that it took me to really trust them and to like what they've got if rather than if I had seen one video and then I had to wait another week.

Think of it like Netflix. I mean, it's the recommendation engine. When you go on Netflix, you see a whole bunch of these videos that are recommended for you based off of what other people saw in your viewing patterns. YouTube's gotten really good. Great at that, too. So based off of what other people have watched, it's going to recommend this Dean Jackson video. And if they like the Dean Jackson video, what's going to happen is all of a sudden a lot more Dean Jackson videos are going to start showing up in their feed, and it'll be videos from three years ago, five years ago, seven years ago, potentially depending on how long Dean's been on the platform. So that's where the other platforms somebody mentioned in the chat, igtv, Instagram videos live forever. Sure. But nobody's going back to watch them. The other platforms don't build in recommendations of old content. So yes, your tweet from eight years ago is still there. Awesome. Nobody's looking at it. So from a marketing perspective, it's basically dead. Your igTV video from two weeks ago is still up. Great. Nobody's watching anymore because Instagram doesn't recommend it. What's so great about YouTube is not just the technology to record the videos and have it there, but it's the distribution based off a Netflix like association of similar type of people. So your video from 3 years ago all of a sudden could spike up because it's being recommended to more people where that doesn't exist for any other platform. So start off with I want YouTube to help make you money and grow your business. So there's some of us who want to be YouTube influencers and that is the business. But if you're an entrepreneur, you have a business. YouTube can be the driving force for customers in your business. Okay, so that's where. So when I'm in Genius Network talking, nobody wants to be a YouTuber. They have a business. So, okay, if that's your goal, then whatever you want to make money doing, show me the process of you doing it.

Yes.

So if you are a coach, we had coach Susie up here, you know, in the pre. In the pre show. Show me you coaching. Yes, because doing a list of question and answer of here is what my coaching clients ask me versus actually seeing you coach somebody. You're going to get a higher conversion of people who watch that video. Don't want to hire you as a coach.

You're demonstrating your expertise in a likable way that people feel confident that I'd like to get his attention on my business. So I love that. Okay. Showing what you. What you do.

So it's a. It's a lot more fun because now you're not just by yourself in your home or in your office talking to a camera, which is a skill to develop that takes time that you're probably not good at at the beginning. But talking to somebody, talking to a client you've been doing for however many years, everybody watching. And so that's a lot easier and it's a lot more fun because you're working with somebody one on one. It also lets the free. I'm a big believer that the Free leads you to the paid. So if you're doing. If you had three videos with chiropractors, some people then get into concern. Well, if you give away all of your best information on YouTube, then you got nothing to sell. So here's what happens. If Dean is coaching a chiropractor and then he makes a video and he puts it up on YouTube. Some people who are maybe in the super early stages of having a chiropractor firm or, or don't have any kind of budget, we'll look at that video and learn from it and apply it to their business. And that's great because you want to feel like you're giving, you're helping. And there's more of those people. More of those people will invest tons of time, but they don't have any money. So all they have is time to invest. Don't write them up. Those people are great because if those people are watching videos, it exposes your videos to even more people. What's going to happen is some of those videos will get in front of people who value their time more than money. Say, Dean, I love this. I don't want to sit through four hours of videos. I don't want to read the book. I want you to come in and show me how to do it or to do the thing for me because I value my time more than my money. And that's an ideal client.

You're absolutely right. That people fear that people are going to take the things and just do them is I tell people, listen, I can't get the people that pay me money to do the things that we tell them to do. So the people, God bless them, if they're gonna from a one hour podcast, be able to execute, you know, so yeah, that's awesome. So demonstrating it.

So it starts with, what do you want to make money doing? And then show me the process of you doing it. So if you want to get paid to be a coach, show me you coaching. If you want to get paid to be a host, show me you hosting. If you want to get paid to be a speaker on stage, coaching videos aren't the thing. I need to see you speaking. Right. So think about your business. What do you want to make money doing? And then show me the process of you doing it. So that's the starting point. And once you get in there, it actually becomes a lot easier because you're not forcing people outside the realm of what they're already doing. The more you can tie in film making videos to what you're Already doing it makes it just so much easier. So that's one. In terms of just formatting length, all that stuff, we'd be aiming for 10 minutes. Plus people say short attention span. It's just not true on YouTube, inside education, if you're making slime videos or something else, that might be a different story. But inside education people are going to learn people if they watched a three minute video of Dean sharing his marketing knowledge. So where's, where's the rest of it? You know, I want to go way deeper. So this is a great chance where Instagram is very inspirational. Very kind of the whipped cream on top of the cake kind of thing. Fluffy. But then the actual meal is YouTube where you can go deep. People will watch and you can. Your job is to make people think like you think. So next is. I would lower the bar of production quality. Don't worry about if you have the perfect lighting or the perfect camera or the perfect microphone. People ask me like, what is your. I don't know what microphone this is. I don't know what camera this is. Use this. I'll still make videos off my channel with 3 million subscribers from this in my car.

Yeah, right.

Not, not to like show off my car. I just. Nina, my wife, is off doing errands. I'm in the car with her. I'll film. I'll still post those videos. Right. Because inside of this category, thought leadership, your job is to teach people to think like you think. You think differently. Especially if you're an entrepreneur, you think differently, you see the world differently. That's your job to get what you see in here out into the world so other people can see it the same way you see it, helping them solve a problem. So no music is going to save you or lower thirds or fancy intro. That's not what they're coming to go learn from. Now, if you are a professional videographer, I don't know if there's any videographers or editors here in the house. Then your stuff has to look good because you're an editor.

Yes.

Like if you're an editor and your reel sucks, that's a problem.

Yes.

But if you're a mechanic or you're an author or you're a writer, it doesn't matter as much about what the production quality looks like. It's more the thought quality. So this is where people get too caught up on production quality versus. No, no. I just need you to show up and be great and share your story. Another category, video, I would add to the list is Imagine you're sitting on a bench talking to your younger self. So a lot of people, when they're getting started, they say, well, I want to be motivator like Tony Robbins, but I'm no Tony Robbins or I'm no whoever. And they look up to all these people who've done all this great stuff. Like, okay, great. Instead of just showing this giant gap of who you can't be, think about who you used to be. Think about who you were five years ago. And if you're listening to this show, this podcast, and you're watching a video, you've been on a journey. You've been on a personal growth, personal development journey. And you're smarter, wiser, stronger, have better beliefs and mindset than you did before. Right. So think about who you used to be. Think about you're going to sit down on a park bench and you got 15 minutes to sit with you from 2015. What do you tell them? Try it. I mean, I think the reason for that example is so many people feel like they have imposter syndrome when they're getting started.

Yeah.

And that's anything. I'm going to start a podcast around marketing. Oh. But I, you know, I'm no. I'm no Dean Jackson, and I'm no Joe Polish. So then in their mind, well, therefore, I can't launch my show.

Right.

So instead of just looking up to the people who are way ahead of you, I will often, if I'm coaching somebody, they're in front of me. It's like, hey, think about who you were five years ago, your journey so far.

Yeah.

Could you share. Could you help that Dean? If you sat down on the bench, knowing what you know now, could you help the 2016 dean? And everybody says, yes, like, of course, I had lots of things. Great. That's what you shared to the camera.

I love that.

And it gets over the imposter syndrome, because you're not just. You're not trying to talk to the people that Tony Robbins talks to or the people who feel like they're unreachable. Oprah. But you're talking to younger you, and then you recognize that there are millions of people out there, Millions who currently are younger you.

Yeah.

And they need help, and they need your voice, and they need you to step into your courage to actually start to create content.

How many videos do you think it takes to get to where you're not scared to be on camera? Like, I'm not. Because it truly is about just reps.

I would say it's A combination of reps and stakes. Are there any stakes attached to it? So for me, it took me so long to get comfortable because I'm shy. I'm an introvert. I don't love the camera, which people don't believe when they see me in these kinds of settings. But I love serving. And so that forces this side of me to come out. But I have no natural need to be in front of the camera where I get jealous because other people, you turn on the camera and then they're all of a sudden on fire, like they were born for this. Like, what? How do you do that? That's crazy. When I first got started, there weren't automatic focusing cameras, so I had to have my sister come in, focus the camera, and then leave the room because I couldn't. I couldn't film.

Yeah, yeah.

With my sister in the room. Right. Not like some random person. I hired my. My own sister. I was too scared. Nervous. Afraid. Yeah. Even though it's only gonna be love, she's not gonna say you suck. Right. But it's just a mental block. So it took me longer than I think. It takes a lot of people. Just that part depends on your own personality. But it took a lot of reps for me to get through it. And then stakes is. There's a difference between just filming here in my office by myself versus I remember the first time I filmed outside on the street. Filmed on the street and like I'm filming a video and then the postman comes by and I go, he's looking at me. He goes by and I film again. So the first time I picked a really, really quiet street where I wouldn't find anybody until I could work my way up to filming on, you know, busy streets. Yeah. When I do interviews, I'm filming content, especially if I don't know the person or have any kind of rapport or story with them. I mean, I had the past month, Deepak Chopra, Matthew McConaughey and others on the channel. And I don't know enough about them. Right. I mean, I know nothing about Matthew McConaughey before the interview, besides the fact that he's an actor. But I'm not going to say, so what's it like being an actor? So I still get nervous for those things. I've done 10,000 plus videos now. That's a lot of reps. And I still get nervous before big interviews. I still get nervous going on on stage. I actually think that's a good thing when there's stakes involved and you get Nervous, it means that you're. You care about what you're going to deliver. The key is I don't let those nerves prevent me from showing up. That you. You push through the nerves so then they'll show up.

So that would be a nice recommendation is to keep. As you get too comfortable, continue to raise the stakes so you're. Because that's a sign to continue to go, reach higher, even continue to grow.

Yeah. And I mean, I do it through just the lens of service to think, okay, I need to. How do I reach more people? How do I serve more people? How is this going to help? And then if I'm. When I'm on stage, it's the easiest thing because I can see a live audience and I'm panicking backstage and I look out and I find somebody in the audience, like, I'm doing this for her or I'm doing this for him. And I'm not here about. It's not about me. It's about the audience. When I was making videos, I had a really hard time sharing my story. Like, who cares about me? It felt so egotistical to share my story. Who cares about me? I'm just some guy. But it's in telling your story that people then get connected to you. For them to actually hear the message that you've got, until they know that you are like them, they're not going to listen to what you're saying. So sharing your story is actually service. That took me years to actually feel that sharing my message is service. Sharing my story and what I went through is helping. It still feels kind of weird to say that. Um, yeah. So I think. I think, how do you get comfortable reps and stakes?

So this is great. I mean, so here we are. So we've got somebody over. We've convinced them it's not too late. You're going to pick your topic, you're going to decide what is it that you want to be doing. As a result, we're going to pick a format that is demonstrating or doing what it is that you want to be paid to do, and we're going to put them up as fast as you can put them out. Now what. What happens from there? Because I imagine now if people are. We're getting to the point where you got your channel, you got your format, you got your confidence, your momentum kind of building, we're going to post them up now. The expectation is we're going to get a million views.

Right, Here we go.

Now that we've got them up there what can we expect and what can you do to actually impact the views that you're going to get?

So mindset and tactics. Mindset is expect to suck. Expect not to be good at this. Expect nobody to watch it. Expect it to take while they get good at it. Again, some people are great out of the gate, but for the most part they're not. And just we're excited to launch, but then at the same time, just expect nothing to really work just at the beginning of anything. I think the other thing that really helps with the mindset side of things is community. So whether that's even coming to this, I mean, before you join, I was just praising Tim for all the great work he does and welcoming people and anybody who joins early, Tim saying hello and giving them love. And like, for a lot of people, they have nobody in their life who is encouraging them on their entrepreneurial path. And maybe Tim is the only person who said, welcome, I believe in you this week. Right. And like, Tim maybe barely knows them. So trying to put yourself in a community of other people who are supportive, ideally doing something kind of similar. They're also trying to create content or worst case, even just coming here for the episodes and connecting to the people in the chat. Somebody says, hey, I totally, you know, Lisseth says, I totally relate to you. I have imposter syndrome. Wow. Like somebody reach out to Lisseth and create a friendship.

Yeah. And I, you know, you said something earlier about the imagining, like putting in context what, 50 people. Like, if you get a 50 views on your thing, what 50 people actually means. I often get people to imagine, like to visualize a context of 50 people. So I look at what do we have on here right now? We got 360 people watching us right now. So I imagine my community theater has 300 seats in the community theater. So imagine right now that you and I are up on stage and there's 360 people jammed into this community theater. Standing room only people at the back. That's a good way to feel good about 360 people. If you're expecting, you know, 20,000 people. If your expectation is that we're in the, you know, the arena and there's 300 people, it's a different thing. So frame the context for what it means that you'd feel good about a packed community theater. We're packing them in, Evan. Right now. We're, I mean, the talk of Winter Haven right now, if that was the case. Right.

The first speaking gig I did in, in Canada was at a YMCA and three people showed up and I was terrified.

Right, three people. I did a first time homebuyer seminar at the library in Georgetown. I had 18 people and I've. That's the most nervous I've ever been. But that was where the reps. By the third one of those I was completely over my fear of speaking in public. And that translated I never ever got nervous. Even Joe and I have spoken to 5,000 people at a big event in Toronto. So once you get that context, but the reality is putting it up, they're not just gonna show up. So what, what can we do to kind of drive that number and what is, what's the important number to kind of, you know, the stats that we need to track kind of thing as we're, as we're going there.

So we've talked a lot about mindset up until this point because that's really the reason why most people are not getting started. You think it's tactics, but it's actually mindset. So now let's dive into the tactics so the hardcore people who are actually going to go take some action. So 10 minute plus videos you showing what you want to make money doing, showing the process of it at least once a week. If you're not consistent, go once a week. If you're at once a week, go three times a week. If you're three times a week, go daily. If you're daily, you don't need twice a day. If you're daily, then you really start to scrutinize the content to see what's working, what's not working. Having multiple types of series. So like an interview series, a direct to camera series, a coaching series, a Q and A series and then you see what's working. Once you have some actual data to play with, obsess over the first minute of the video to capture attention. So as much As I said, YouTube is a long form place and people will watch hour plus long videos. They do, but the first minute really matters. So assume that they have no idea who you are. On my channel, 83 to 85% of the views I get are from non subscribers on my channel. So that's good. That means you're growing. If most of your views are coming from your current subscribers, that's a problem. So I'm hitting new people all the time. For a startup channel you should be in the high 80s or 90s of new people. I mean if you only have five subscribers, all your views will come from non subscribers. So people mess up the beginning of a Video because they're saying, hey, guys, welcome back. It's me, Evan. So excited to have you here, man. Happy, happy Wednesday. Like, goodbye. Nobody's watching that because they don't know who you are yet. That's a video that you make for your. For your hardcore fans, but not how we want to start a video for a cold audience. So it's a lot of the same stuff that you guys learn in traditional marketing. What's the headline on your. On your sales page? What's the. What's the headline in your. What's the subject line in an email? Right. Something to make me get hooked to want to watch it? What's the COVID of your book? Right? You can have a great book, but with a crappy title and a crappy cover. People aren't going to pick it up. And you spent all this time making this book. So the first minute really, really, really, really matters in terms of data. We really obsess if we're trying to hit 70% at one minute, which means 70% of the people who are watching a video are still there after one minute. And that seems like, oh, that's not that hard. That's hard. That's incredibly difficult. Nobody does that consistently, especially inside thought leadership. So you have to really hone in on the first minute of your video. After that, people are usually pretty good, like, if you know what you're talking about. If I was working with Dean on helping him make his YouTube channel. Dean has all the content. He knows what he's saying. I'm not going to dive in and say, dean, what you said here was wrong about marketing. So, like, you know what you're doing, but the first minute, there might be some tweaks, like, oh, Kadeem, we should. We should tweak how we start this video, because the first minute's really going to matter. Thumbnails. Titles make a big difference, especially thumbnails. It's a visual medium, right. YouTube is a visual medium. So just like Netflix or just like the cereal aisle, you know, the brightest cereal box is the one you pick off the aisle. Like, all of this is marketing advice that people have already learned. Now it's just applying it to YouTube land. Yeah. So brighter thumbnails work.

That's an Evan Carmichael video that you look at the thumbnail and you can see that's an Evan Carmichael. And even I noticed, you know, even the. The branding and the things like, you know, your. You've got your envelope there. I've got my cow. You're. You're anchoring People to where there's a payoff for being an insider in that they know what those are. Yeah, yeah.

And at the beginning they don't know like, why is Dean wearing a cow hat? Why is Dean what's with the horse for sale sign?

That's exactly.

But then they see it again and then they see it again and then finally somebody has the courage to say, like Dean, what's with the horse for. I mean, I saw it in the chat already today. Horse for sale.

Right, exactly.

What's with that? But then, you know, the heap on the inside know what it's all about. But that's, that's the fun branding, long term play. Most people enter in top of funnel, they don't know who you are yet. And that's good. We want to increase our footprint. So having those kind of Easter eggs is fun, but it has to work for a cold audience. People don't know us yet, but they have the same problems that, you know, you can solve. So, yeah, thumbnails titles. We've done over 8,000 split tests now of different thumbnail titles combination. We split test more than anybody, you know, on YouTube, at least that I've ever met. And so some tactics for that. Zoom in on the face, like headshot. Even if you have to cut off the top of their head, like really tight. Because most. Dean might be consuming it on tv. Most consumption is on the phone. Yes, most consumption on the phone. It used to be computers, but now it's phone. So people design their thumbnails on this giant screen on their desktop or their designer designs this giant, you know, and it looks beautiful, but then when it's so tiny it's like, who is that? I can't even make that person out. Right. So zoom in on your face. If it's you, the personality, zoom in on your face. Text on the left, three to four lines of like one to two words of what is the promise of this video? And then your, your video title. Don't make them exactly the same. Never call your video the same thing that's on the thumbnail. Ah, that's like having a headline and sub headline be the exact same thing.

Oh, that's smart. I never thought about that.

Okay, right. You have two chances to win somebody. What is a sub headline? It's a second chance to win them if they don't like the headline.

Yeah, valuable.

So you would never do that. But we already know these lessons, which people just aren't applying them to the YouTube world. So yeah, you have two chances to win somebody. Over the thumbnail is the. In your face, you know, five to seven words. And then the title is a longer form version of that. And then Ideally, the first 30 seconds of the video also matches the promise of the title and the thumbnail. If you want to hit your 70% retention at one minute. And listen, we already know this from direct response ads. If you're running Google Ads and you're promising free shipping on this dog collar, and then you land on the page and you see a dog bowl or something like, oh, I was coming for the collar, people leave. So the first 30 seconds matter. So whatever the promises of the video then is reflected in the thumbnail and title. Not exactly the same wording, but complementary to each other. Because YouTube, all they care about is keeping people on YouTube. That's. That's their goals. Like, keep people on YouTube as long as possible. And so there's the content of the advice, but then the packaging and design around it. Not design of how beautiful it looks, but the strategy design of. We need to make sure that the marketing fits in our title, thumbnail, first 30 seconds to hold people's attention so that they want to watch the rest of the video.

But are there other things that we can do proactively to kind of manually drive traffic to your site, or do you recommend things like that?

For sure. So one, and even in terms of picking the topics, I would look at other videos that are already doing well in my category, especially videos that have a lot of views but very few subscribers. Because if you're going up against a channel that has 3 million subscribers or whatever, some giant channel, it's not quite like if I had 10,000 views on a video that's been around for five years, you might say, wow, 10,000 views, that's good. But for my channel, that's a bad video. So. But if I had a hundred subscribers and I got 10,000 views on it, that's a good video for them. So what you want to do is look at channels in your niche and see which videos have popped for them, have gotten more views than their subscriber count, and then make. Take their title and make your version of it. I don't even want you to watch those videos. I want you to take the title and make it your own.

Right?

So the example I use in the music world is Eminem. And you know, his fate. His famous Lose Yourself.

Yes.

Rap. Right. No, I've never heard even halfway decent cover of Lose Yourself. When they try to be like Eminem, it's like, you can't touch Eminem on yourself. Like, nobody's even close. So you just look like an Eminem junior, but like a Junior Junior on that song. But I've heard some great. There's a burlesque version of Lose Yourself.

I love that.

There's like a country version. Yeah. So it's. It's your art. So the goal is whatever. Whatever niche you're in, whatever industry you're in, you're taking titles that match up what you would want to talk about and then turn that into your own art. Because the goal of YouTube, as much of it, as much as we think YouTube is a search engine. It is the second largest search engine in the world.

Yeah.

Most of the views on YouTube don't come from search. They come from what's being recommended to you. YouTube is much more a Netflix model where you show up and this is what's being recommended to you more than you searching in a specific video to watch. I love it. So if your goal isn't to rank for a keyword, your goal, the SEO of YouTube. I was talking to Stefan about this. He's a genius member network who focuses on SEO a lot. SEO of YouTube is not to rank in search. It's to rank after other videos. Right. That's how you show up. Because people start in search and then they'll watch eight other videos based off of what's being recommended. So the big views come from what's being recommended, not from search. So that's the game to play. So how do you game. You know that system. You make a video with the same title as the videos that are already showing up, that are getting views, and then you make your own art. Like you attach your art to. Could be reaction, it could be a podcast, it could be interview, it could be direct to camera. There's lots of ways to do it, but there are some changes that using the word motivation versus inspiration might dramatically change the course of how much YouTube promotes your video based off other videos using motivation instead of inspiration. And for you, it might be the exact same thing. Yeah, it means the same thing to me. But if you could get a headline that would convert 10 times better by switching one word out, would you do it?

That's amazing. Let me ask you, what about using money? Do you recommend buying exposure?

Buying?

Is there a way to speed up the process if you're willing to invest some money in getting traffic to your site, to your channel?

So depends on what your ambitions are, right? For some people, having 10,000 subscribers on YouTube means something. And so all they care about is the flex to show people they have 10,000 subscribers and that, that helps them get more clients, not on YouTube, but in the outside world. So there you can, you can. Now anytime you're buying, I'm talking also buying within the AdWords product, if you're buying something off of it, your channel can get banned, right?

No, I'm not talking.

Yeah, but some people go there. I've had to help save like even some big accounts. Like, oh yeah, I bought this thing off of Reddit Argentina and they got me 50,000 subscribers. But now my, my account is banned. Like, okay, because you went to some guy in Reddit Argentina.

I'm talking about, like, if you have a channel, let's say that you've got, let's say you do, you teach people how to draw and you've got a book on that. Read this. If you want to learn how to draw and your channel is about drawing and somebody's typing into YouTube how to draw. And rather than making your videos and hoping that they're going to show up organically, is there a way to bid on you actually showing up when they do it? So it's the thing that you're hoping for, you're just kind of accelerating.

So two different strategies. Yeah. Depending on. Again, also working within Google's products, YouTube's products. The first is pre roll ads.

Yes.

And pre roll ads link to a landing page. So it's you. If that video, if that book is about learning how to draw, I'm going to teach you how to draw. And I've got this book that's going to help you do it. And it costs 10 bucks or 15 bucks or it's free or whatever, you're going to show up before other people's videos on how to draw. And you're not thinking branding. This is just conversion. This is just like running Facebook ads or Google Ads. There's a link your ad shows before their video, they click the link, they hit your landing page and you try to sell them something. Yeah, that works. And a lot of people are leaving Facebook to go to YouTube now. Like a lot of the big, big marketers spending millions are leaving Facebook because of all the issues and going to YouTube because it's a little more wild west in this stuff. So YouTube is early. We're not even in the first quarter. Like you haven't even left the house to drive to the stadium yet is how early YouTube for this stuff is.

Right.

So that's one. If you have a product to sell and business model attached to it. Then you can, you can target videos and you can target channels. So if there's a big video on how to draw, you could say I want my ad to show up in front of this one video. Or if there's entire channels dedicated to drawing, you can say I want my video ad to show up in front of every video on this person's channel. Yeah. And you can still do all the demographics of like I want to show up in front of women who are 25 to 35, who live in Vermont, who whatever. Right. You can all the typical placements that we're thinking of. But what's unique about this is somebody's going to learn how to draw from somebody else and then boom, there's your ad. That's direct response and people are thriving off of that. That's not so much my game. I'm dangerous enough in it, but it's not how I grow. And if you want to use advertising to grow the channel to get more views and subscribers that are legit, you know, people to help you, the two ways to do it, one is you can run suggested video ads against other people's content or channels, right? Yeah. So instead of it showing up as a pre roll ad, it's I'm buying the first spot and suggested down the side.

Nice.

And then they could cost like what.

Would it just in a ballpark to.

So it's so niche dependent and country dependent. So if you don't care and it's like global, whatever you're gonna get, you can get $0.01 clicks.

Holy cow.

Wow. Yeah. Even less half a cent clicks if you're just. If you just don't care, you know, like show it to anybody. But that's gonna be reflected then on your views because you might get views but you get a lot of thumbs down. Like why was this book on drawing recommended to me? I'm here to learn about plumbing or something.

Can I show up in the suggested on a particular channel or a particular video? Like you can target like that and that's going to be more expensive now.

It'S going to cost you more because we're not saying. Right. And then the other thing is, what's the geography of it? If you're. I was talking to a guy in Genius last week who wants to target India.

Yes.

Like that's great. Because most people are trying to deselect India out of their audiences. You can get views for nothing if you're targeting the Indian market. He's teaching math classes to the people in India. This Is great. Everybody deal with is trying to target. Usually the big four. Canada, us, Australia and UK are the four the people because those are the buyers typically for English language products and services. So if you're, if you're going to target us, it's going to cost you seven to ten times more than international.

What would be, what range have you seen? I mean, are you talking about, is it cents or dollars or.

The highest I've seen is a dollar something. A click, a click to get them on one video. Look at that.

Like you think about if you're in a high level thing with a high value thing, you can take the best channel that you wish you had already built and then if you're willing to spend $1,000, you could get 1,000 views basically, or a thousand views.

Yeah, but that's the worst case. I mean it's a lot. But flip it. All of these numbers are also, by the way, available inside Google's keyword planner for free. So go look at it and see and it can guide your content to say, hey, if I make my video talking about this, I could get paid 20 times more because there's more advertising dollars. We're taking it from the perspective of being the advertiser. But you can use it as the monetizer by switching up a couple keywords. Like if you made a video talking about Elon Musk and you throw Tesla electric vehicles and a couple other words in there, you'll get paid more because there's advertisers who are targeting the name Tesla and the category electric vehicles. So you can flip it and just look up Google Keyword Planner. It's free. You just have to have a Gmail account to use it and then you can source.

We've got some people in our manning our chat here who could link right to it in the, in the chat for us.

Great. So we wrapping up. I have one more tip.

I want to hear it. Yeah? Yeah.

Okay. So for the advertising, right, so we can pick channels, we could pick videos and we could pick geography. The other thing to do is with your guests. So if you have a guest coming on your channel, if I'm on your channel, you could run our interview as a suggested video against my channel.

Right.

So people who know me are more likely to click that video even though they may not know you. Right. So the goal becomes to get guests who may not even be the biggest names, but have big YouTube followings and big could just be.

But that's why Somebody like Matthew McConaughey and Mr. Wonderful are accessible to you now because you've got millions of subscribers, right? And so it was masterful, your collaboration with Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank that you did the one big interview, but you had half on your channel and half on his channel so they could go and get the whole thing.

The first person I did was with Brian Tracy, where we made our list of the 10 rules for success for entrepreneurs, and I had five on mine and five on his. But that's an organic strategy because at the end of the video, we say, hey, to watch the other five, go check out my dear friend Evan Carmichael's video here. And we link it up. But to amp it up, I could then run that video that on my channel with him to his audience. And you don't need their permission or approval or anything else. And it would show up as suggested down the side. So the goal becomes if you have a podcast, who are some people who have YouTube audiences that we want to target and then invite them as a guest on your show and then you run your video with them against their audience so you can start to hack their audience to come subscribe to your channel.

I love it.

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