Using Video For Profits & Income With Sean Cannell

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Wow. I just had an incredible conversation with a dear friend of mine, Sean Cannell, about video, YouTube, building a business, why it matters, why it's important, how you can get into it, getting over the obstacles, but the keys that you need to stand out in a marketplace and how you can use video to make that happen. So go check it out. Welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show. See you in the episode. This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an athlete entrepreneur.

Hey there, Sean. So good to have you on the show finally. It's been years since we met and we're finally just getting around to this.

Mel, I'm so fired up to be hanging out with you. It's always a pleasure and thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, yeah. This is, this is cool. I mean, in the intro I kind of gave a little bit about you, but I think that your journey is so somewhat of a unique journey in the sense that you really didn't start out looking at, hey, how am I going to build this, I don't know, YouTube empire? The, this, this positioning as the YouTube expert and this following, doing the things that you're doing. Can we, can we kind of just start like, how did you end up here?

Yeah, you know, it's a wild journey because today we just onboarded a couple of new people. I think we're at 20W, two employees, almost 10 contractors, eight figure business.

Couple million subscribers on YouTube, different products, programs, best selling book. And it's super weird because I'm a small town kid, college dropout and I'm trying to figure out how to be a CEO and life is just bizarre. Add on top of that that we are now. I turned 40 this year and I've got a seven month old and a two and a half year old and my wife is the CFO. I'm operating as the CEO. Although I relate much more to the term founder. What do I know about being a CEO and all that to say is we're just trying to figure it out. Life is really crazy. And it all just started actually all the way back in 2003 when I was just volunteering at a really small church an hour north of Seattle and the youth pastor handed me a video camera and some video editing software and said, start making videos for the youth ministry. There's like 16 kids. I would make these terrible video announcements for Wednesday nights at youth group, but it actually got me early into the content creation game before all these social media platforms. I made a video a week that was terrible. Like most of us start, your first videos are your worst videos. But it just got me going. And then by 2007 we started a YouTube channel for our small church and again did everything wrong. It was very early days of YouTube, but I was blessed to be into this stuff early. So by 2010 I started a freelance business doing wedding videos, videos for small businesses, doing some YouTube consulting and all that stuff early on, and then many windy paths throughout the journey following that. But they talk about the 10,000 hour rule. I'm probably 40 or 50,000 hours when it comes to video. YouTube, video marketing, video ads on camera, scripting, communication, just kind of being obsessed with, you know, how do you get your message out there in video? And now today my passion is helping entrepreneurs, business owners, leaders maximize the power of video and specifically YouTube because that's the number one video platform.

So good.

So good.

I. We just recently started and I may be totally off base here but, but, but we just recently started to really think about leaning into YouTube and primarily because I see YouTube, I see, I see Facebook as a social platform, I see Instagram as a, an information education platform, but I see YouTube as a solution platform. And if we're providing solutions, the place anytime I'm trying to fix something on the sink or something, what do I do? Let's you do. I want to figure out how to program the. I almost said vcr, which would have been horribly aging for me, but I go to a YouTube video. So it's a how to portal for me. And so, and with the stuff that we do, I Thought that it was a great place. Plus, I do like video. I'd rather do video because I think we can connect at a deeper level because we get a chance to even see people's eyes, see what they're doing, see what their emotion is.

That's exactly right. And actually the data backs that up. 75% of people go to YouTube trying to solve a specific problem. And the CEO of YouTube released a bunch of data about the educational power of YouTube. Of course there's entertaining content on there and some content for comedy or escapism and all kinds of. I mean there's everything. YouTube definitely has everything. But you're absolutely right. It holds the mind share of people that. That man. I go to YouTube to learn. I go to YouTube to discover how to reach my ambitions or solve my problems. And so for the entrepreneur, this is a big deal because entrepreneurs solve problems for a profit. It's the. It's a great place to. One of our key frameworks is asq. Answer specific questions. Which videos should I make first? Answer specific questions. Well, how do I stand out? It feels like all the questions have been answered. Well, no, not even close. Especially I think about some of your expertise. You, you know, there's always things changing in finances, there's always things changing in tax opportunities. There's always things changing in entrepreneurship itself. So of course there's kind of like the general questions. But the reason our framework is ASQ is that word specific is a big deal. There's always like for network marketers this month, new products just dropped. There's a new video needed nor peloton versus Nordic track. You know, there's always. There's a trend in fitness, but there's always maybe a competitor trend. You could click funnels 2.0 versus high level. You know, and latest software opportunities. There's endless opportunities for people listening to this to answer specific questions which is a way to get discovered, start being platformed, building no like and trust. And so where some people struggle on YouTube using we have like 16 different things strategies we teach. But that's one of our favorites to start with is thinking about man. What are the specific questions? The person you help, your your avatar, your target audience is asking what are the pain points that keep them up at night? What are the ambitions they want to reach? And then when you go really specific, that's how you get found. I mean when someone's at a buying decision, do I want to go with ClickFunnels 2.0 or do I want to go with high level or Kajabi, what are the pros and cons? Not those videos are a great way for people to get discovered that are a little bit, maybe that are separate from what they would normally think about creating. But that's where the opportunity is. It can bring in people that have the entrepreneurial mindset and there's some affiliate marketing opportunities and all kinds of stuff there as well.

It's so, so cool because I think, I think this forces you to answer a question that I think a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses are reluctant to answer. And that is, what is the specific problem you solve and who are you solving it for? I was literally, I just came back from speaking at a big event, 2,000 people, and I ran into someone who wanted it. He had a question. He says he built this platform. Now he was from, he was an international, so he wasn't US based. And he built a platform to create a kind of a trading, if you will. And I, and I didn't really understand exactly what he was talking about. And I said, what problem are you solving? And he couldn't articulate it. And I said, who are you solving it for? And then he said, I put a hundred, over $100,000 into building the platform, but I have no customers. How do I get customers? But you don't know who your customers are. You don't even know if they have the problem that they want to be solved. And I think what you're getting at is not just the video.

It is imperative, especially.

In the market and the current economic state, to get really clear on what you're solving, who you're solving it for and how you solve it. And one of the great ways to get that out there is this, this vehicle of video.

Absolutely. And there's some slices on that too. I think that when people feel like it's too competitive, they just probably haven't niched down enough or niched down enough. And where maybe it's a lot of people helping people learn marketing or a lot of people helping people learn personal finance or fitness. But where it really gets interesting is can you niche down by male or female? Can you niche down by a certain age demographic? Some of our most successful students will are teaching fashion tips to women in their 40s. That makes a lot of sense to me as opposed to just fashion tips. And the problem with that is people got all different flavors, ages, you know, in fashion. Can you even talk about region? A lot of our service providers, regional distinction of loan officers or real estate agents. Once you niche down, it's a Smaller pool, but now you become a big fish in a small pond. You know, I'm in Snohomish county right now near Seattle, where we spend half our time up here around family because of our young kids. And what's funny is I'll go to YouTube, looking up Snohomish county market updates. I'm looking for real estate. We're, we're buying Airbnbs and stuff. Up here in a 2023 world, it's shocking how very few agents or investors are making content. In fact, the only person I can discover is named Zach McAllister. I happen to go to high school with him. And what is wild is people are like, oh, that's too crowded. You know how many agents there are up here, you know how much competition, you know, destroyed inventory is like there's a blue ocean for people who, if you. Well, I can't compete with the big real estate channels. You shouldn't be trying to. You would niche down. And so regional is an opportunity. And then if you get into, you know, if you're doing financial solutions for baby boomers and Gen X, really good target because number one, they actually have actual money to manage or whatever. And then two, it all of a sudden it makes sense because they're in a different life season than a young millennial or Gen Z. And so, yeah, I definitely think for anybody listening to this, maybe you're already having some success in business. I think the next level can definitely be getting clearer on who it is you serve. Exactly. Some of the best offers, if we're crafting an offer right. Is for like, for me, I do some private coaching, very exclusive. It'd be like you already have employees. You probably already have some chaos with people editing video. You need to start managing them. You want to invest, you probably invest five to $10,000 a month already in content creation. And you need to level up your systems. And you either don't have or you need money.com or you need Slack or Asana. You're trying to figure out how to do that better and what are the systems to then repurpose content and distribute it that everywhere. Well, that's. And you're. And you're an entrepreneur that's probably doing high six, at least six or high six figures. And now the offer of my consulting is for a very narrow, specific group of people. And maybe you have other offers. Like I know you have multiple books and whatnot. Well, that's much more accessible. You have free content. And so to the nuance of the perfect person you can help. I could change everything.

So good. They now when they do this, we're not just putting videos out. Just to put videos out. Then there is a strategy, there is a process that you follow. There's a, a recipe, for lack of a better word. Right?

Yep. Yeah. We have what's called the perfect video recipe. And for this is kind of cool because anybody using any platform can use this. But it's, it's specifically tailored to YouTube. So it's four ingredients. It's the big idea, the hook, the content and the transition. And the big idea is your topic, title and thumbnail. The hook is the first 10 seconds to a minute. The content is the meat in the middle. And then the transition is actually what YouTube wants most from you. That's a transition to another video. It might be kind of jarring to direct response marketers because we a lot of times think, yeah, the end is the call to action. And we could talk about where I think you should include the call to action. But if you want to play by YouTube's rules, best case scenario is to, and we've probably all seen this, when your video ends, you point to another video. If you've ever watched a News clip on YouTube or a comedy clip, you'll have, you know, someone at the end of Jimmy Kimmel will say, did you like this? Click or tap the screen to watch the next one. And that's what the transition would be. And so those are the four ingredients. We could break them down, but the point of, of learning them is it's like cooking a meal. I'm not a very good cook, but then I subscribed to HelloFresh and then I started to get these boxes. And the key was not only the ingredients, but I had a little card that told me what ingredients to do in what order. I still burnt the chicken a few times. I still made some mistakes, but it was a lot better once I had the recipe. And I learned that if I just keep showing up into the kitchen and I keep cooking, that I can get better over time. So the perfect video recipe has helped people. They just keep using it, even though it still might be like, what do all those things mean? You just kind of learn them and you get 1% better with every upload. Just don't leave the kitchen. You're going to be shocked where you're at a year from now, three years from now, how big your brand could be, how much momentum you have because you commit to continue to show up in the kitchen and cook up some good videos. On YouTube and across platforms because you could intersperse the transition to the call to action on an Instagram reel or somewhere else. What do you want the person to do next? Maybe the best case scenario is leave a comment below or let me know what you thought or perhaps, you know, a call to action to your lead magnet or something.

So keeping this theme, I want to. I will come back to a couple of other questions that I wrote down, but keeping the same is there because I know that this is something that I'll probably get asked all the time. Is there an appropriate length? Is there a, you know, we know the recipe, but is there an appropriate length that that matters to YouTube or matters to the person using YouTube?

So this will be frustrating, but the answer to what is the ideal length on YouTube is. The answer is yes, absolutely. What do you mean? Well, right now 10 second YouTube shorts are doing incredibly well. So are 60 second YouTube shorts. And to be clear, a YouTube short now is a vertical video similar to an Instagram reel or a TikTok 60 seconds or less. Vertical, not horizontal or landscape. If you upload that to YouTube, anybody can do it. It's considered a YouTube short. 2 to 3 minute clips, those are doing great. 5 to 8 minute videos, those are doing amazing as well. 12 to 18 minutes. It's highly recommended. 30 minute trainings or 55 minute trainings. Incredible. Fascinatingly enough, my friend Evan Carmichael, Lewis Howes, their best performing most viewed YouTube videos are approaching three hours long. So depending on the content and extremely frustrating to the listener, I Recommend videos between 10 seconds and 3 hours long. I think that that's the sweet spot is is anywhere in there. And the bigger key is that you are adding value to the viewer and that the videos are as long as they need to be, but as short as possible. You have incredible frameworks. You teach and you got your whiteboard second angle and you're teaching on your iPad. Well, if you're breaking down a concept like that, then that necessitates actually learnings of that kind. However, if it's just a quick nugget, a video that is inflated to five minutes when it could have been consolidated to less than a minute and put out as a short, it's going to do a lot better if it's not wasting people's time. And so what is the intent of the the listener or the viewer when Lewis Howes and Evan Carmichael are doing those long form episodes? There are a lot of times compilation of their other interviews or 50 roles of success from somebody that's Known and someone's probably on a commute, they're listening to it like a podcast. So if you start a quote that'll serve everybody when it comes to video is the creator who understands the viewer best wins.

When you understand.

Who they are, where they are, what they want, what their life. And you also might have multiple viewers. But when you understand, like you're not copying viral tactics of channels that are reaching a Gen Z audience and getting, getting distracted when you know you're talking to professionals that do like to listen to even YouTube videos as a podcast platform. So they may listen to certain podcasts even on YouTube. Maybe they pay for YouTube Premium and shut down the screen. Android lets you do it, I think without paying. And they might change it in the future. And so if you listen to Lewis Howe School of Greatness, you just turn the YouTube video on. You just let it play in the background. What's the intent? It's longer form, really long conversations. Joe Rogan, he happens to only be on Spotify. He's got his clips though. What is the intent of the viewer? I like valuetainment. Patrick Bet David Dave Ramsey two hour call in show. He does a two hour call in show and then they cut clips out of it. So, you know, he's education on personal finance has built a great brand, but there's not a lot of fanciness or fireworks in terms of editing or anything. But they've developed their formula because they know who it is they're reaching. And arguably Dave Ramsey is, is relatively simplistic and, you know, relative his financial advice. You probably have stronger opinions on this even than me, but it's kind of like it is kind of one size fits all for the undisciplined person who can't control their credit card use. He solves a great problem in the market and has built an incredible brand because of how well he understands who his conservative, probably Christian, kind of middle America. He understands who he's reaching. In fact, you could, somebody who could critique him could say his advice is terrible. I don't even know why people listen to him. And that critic is actually revealing their ignorance because they could probably take a page from really having a market message match as opposed to, yeah, because he's not for you. So if you're over here trying to like cost seg bonus, depreciate some property, leverage debt and you're incredibly disciplined and you just got $30,000 cash back like we did, literally from doing paid ads on credit cards, I'm like, listen, I'm Going to use credit cards all day long. We always pay the balance off. And. Oh, you can't get rich using credit cards. I don't know about that. I mean, $30,000, obviously, that's not the main income source, but that's some serious money back. That's literally cash back. Whatever. Dave would critique that. The big takeaway, though, man, when you really understand who it is, you're reaching there. They got a commute. Are they on a commute? Are they? You know, John Lee Dumas used to talk about this. Yeah. Like, when he really dialed in the original show, he was like, 25 minutes. I wanted something to listen to seven days a week. A lot of that. Understood. Because all the way back to, man, who are we creating content for? It's a big deal.

It is a big deal. It's interesting. Someone asked me the difference between Dave and I, and I said, dave digs you out of the hole. I help you build the mountain.

Yes, that's true. Right. Yeah, he is. He's. He is the needed voice. Yeah.

He serves a good. Yeah, yeah. So. But there's a point. So. And, But I think that you're. You're right. The bottom line is it goes back to the original point. This. This whole idea of. Of knowing who you're serving, the problem you're solving, and how you're going to articulate that.

100%.

Yeah. So we might have some viewers. Listeners sitting back on. I don't. I don't. I don't want to get on video. How. How do you. How do we. How do we take that person that has not done a video or. Or is thinking about it, but is unsure how to start? What are the. What are some of the first things that we. We need to kind of get them across to move on? Because I could see a lot of people, they spell, like, they'll ask me, what's my setup?

Let me.

Setup doesn't matter. That's. That's not what's going to get you what you need to get. I mean, I can give you the setup, and then you're going to say, oh, God, it's complicated. I can't do it.

Yep. Yeah. I think the biggest opportunity for everybody that's thinking about doing video is to start with vertical video. We're living in a good opportunity.

Where.

To define vertical video. YouTube shorts, TikTok, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, Pinterest. Vertical video sounds like a lot, but you could just pick your favorite platform. And I know I'm over here saying YouTube is the best, but probably for a lot of your community, I imagine they're heavily active on Instagram and so start wherever you're comfortable with. Even a better place to start is stories because they expire within 24 hours and you just gotta start, you know.

The evidence goes away.

The evidence goes away. And challenge yourself to take your phone, get on camera, press and hold down the button and record for 15 seconds. These days, Instagram stories are 60 seconds, so you could go a full 60. What's nice about this too is it actually kind of helps you.

Talk in sound bites. And it actually is a good way of educating and kind of learning how to get on camera. But to speak to some of the mindsets, you do have to literally just punch fear in the face and punch perfectionism in the face and press record. You got to start practicing.

Tap into. You know, I would say for to do different objections. 1. Sean, why do I need to get on video? You know, I would say one, if you have enough customers, if you would say, sean, I have way too much money.

I want to build my personal brand, but frankly, my personal brand is too big. My following is too big, my inbox is flooded. I have too many customers. I'm stressed and I'm overwhelmed because I have too much money. And even Mel can't help me manage it fast enough. Well, then why would you need to get on video like you get. You don't need more, reach more. But. But this goes into reasons come first, results come second. If you would say, I know I have a message that I need to get to the world, but it's. I'm not getting known. I'm not building the following. I want. I know that my product can change lives, but leads are kind of going slow and I'm not really. I know that. I also want to build a brand that is antifragile. I see the power of building a brand like you building a brand like Dave Ramsey. I could see that vision for my future. Marie Forleo. Well, you're not going to be there in 10 or 20 years if you don't start now. So it's reverse engineering back from the vision to where the vision you're aspiring to is bigger than the discomfort you feel right now or the fear you feel right now. And you do just gotta do it. Accepting that your first videos are gonna be your worst videos. That's true for me. It's true for you. Your early podcasts, your early videos, Terrible. Your early reels or whatever that. And our stuff still needs to grow. But we're just on the journey. Like you practice in public. And the good news is that what setup do you need? It has now been proven that phone only, no microphone actually can outperform fancy setups where you see some entrepreneurs with like a lockdown crispy camera and the perfect captions. Those don't necessarily perform better than just the phone. You can use captions that are built into the platform. Now you like record it, you tap the button and now it's just like does auto captions and you can post these things so that the gap between creating and posting, it's gotta be less than 60 seconds to do a real or YouTube short. You could challenge yourself to at least do one of those a week or to potentially even do one a day. You block some time and give yourself like we've done maybe a seven day fitness challenge or you've done a 14 day finance get out of debt challenge, or you've done a 30 day set your year challenge. What if you did a 30 day vertical video challenge where you post one video a day? Sean, what do I talk about? Answer a specific question. Use the little green screen feature that you've seen people do where you take a screenshot of an article in your industry and you react to the article. Sean, I don't know how to do that. That is an excuse. It is going to take you five minutes to go to. You can write this down. G o o gl.com There's a brand new website, you don't even need chat, GPT or AI. Just go to google.com and be like, how do you do the green screen on Instagram? And you can just figure it out. And, and, and even in doing that, your confidence will grow, your following will grow. Even if you do this at a. You're like, I'm not gonna sound good on camera. Probably true. I might look not good. Hey, that's probably true too. You'll get better, you'll get more confident, be more aware as you watch it back. But to land the plane on all of this, a friend of mine here in Snohomish County, Anton, who's a real estate investor, he committed to daily vertical video and that was the whole thing. That was it. And he is works for Keller Williams, also invests on the side. He actually bought a second phone eventually. He didn't start with that. He had a Samsung Galaxy something and then there was. So he was doing it every day. So he's like, he upgraded and kept his old phone dedicated to the last version. He has Paid his son to help him post the videos and one of his assistants. But to destroy all excuses, he also did like the first month by himself, you know. And he would just record not inside of one of the video apps, he would just record a video so that he could then post it vertically across TikTok YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels which auto posts to Facebook page if you connect them. And after the first couple months, not a lot happened in terms of actual dollars, but he started to notice his following went up dramatically. And I mean he was at maybe a couple like he's at like 2,500 followers on Instagram or less. And so he starts now getting consistent followers. But then what he said, what I could measure is the phone started ringing more, which is how his deals work. The phone started ringing more people that. Because I was top of mind. That's our goal in the. In a noisy world you want to be top of mind. And so then he noticed deal flow was coming to him. But then that was like the first three months, not a lot to show. And, and check this out. He was. I think he was spending about $1,100 a month once he was paying either his son to edit because eventually he started to have them do captions like a headline and some captions or his assistant. But what you of course realize in real estate is that one transaction, it's not uncommon to sell a million dollar home up here at 3%. It's gonna be a $30 commission. So theoretically he could go negative. If you've got the capital for two years, he could pay for his little mini vertical video content production business. He would break even two years later. But what's the byproduct? But already at about six months, this Vertical video leads to a development deal that to the is something like 350, 000 profit for him and his partner Tony in terms of a project that again was opened up because of vertical video and the amount of leads and whatnot. Because he does have a whole team at Keller Williams and everything else. And the other point is he's still only seven or eight months into this thing. Again, more followers. And this is what he would tell you. He's still terrible. He doesn't have. He hasn't mastered the perfect video recipe. He hasn't cracked the code. He's just experimenting. But he just committed to the process. You know you're like an all time martial arts expert, right? Well, you didn't become that in seven or eight months. No. And so. So where Anton is At is it's already. He. He can already measure the financial roi. He can already measure that his confidence has grown and he also, it's also starting kind of a new business for him because now like every agent in the region wants to learn what he's doing. So he now sees the opportunity to probably do a paid workshop, maybe bring me in to speak pretty. So it just starts. It's like kicking open doors of opportunity. Following is growing. DM box is filling up. There's the 350,000 is a pretty good deal that that led to. But then now he's. They're tracking the leads and how many leads they're getting. And one of the problems is the inventory is frozen. So it's good to start asking other, you know, other business opportunities and whatnot. So that was a lot. But just to encourage the listener to this 100% of people listening to this could do this vertical video challenge. 30 days might sound like a lot, but if you wanted to establish a new habit, a new pattern, like if you also accept the fact that even if it doesn't lead to any business opportunity, it will literally change you and make you a better leader, it'll make you a better communicator, make you a better leader. It'll build your confidence at first. It also might hurt your confidence because you're like, I'm even. I hate this so bad, I want to delete it. But. But overcoming that uncomfortability. We all know that the everything good in life is waiting for us outside of our comfort zone. And the last thing I would say is that this is the language of the future. It's actually the language of the now, but it's the language of the future. So if you keep Putting this off 1, 2, 3, 4 years from now, you're just actually going to be so far behind. But if you bite the bullet of having your uncomfortable videos for Anton, he's wrapped his mind around it that this gets really interesting two, three years later and it's already seeing the bright spots. But you kind of are treating online video, I think you should treat it almost like a new company within your company. Like you're starting a little media company, you're starting a little publishing company. And if the average small business is not profitable for, you know, 18 to 24 to 36 months, you should invest in your media company, the video side of your business. Especially if you've got, you have money coming in elsewhere to be like, I don't even need this to be profitable for two years. I'M building my brand, I'm investing in the future. And everyone knows that people like you can write their own checks, can, can kick open doors of opportunity. But because of the media, media you've invested in yesterday, the only way to start is to start today. As uncomfortable it is, it is. Everything is figureoutable. It's grab it. Starting with vertical video. Well what about the fancy studio and eventually doing a video podcast. One step at a time. You could do that as well. We have a channel called Think Media. I mean this is literally our brand. Every you want to talk about answering specific questions. If you have a question, there's probably a free YouTube video we've created that has an answer to it. So it's buying into the why and the vision. And I know that waiting on the other side of your community taking bold action to embrace video is massive. Opportunity leads, customer sales, brand awareness, relationships, JV partners, doors of opportunity, peer led masterminds. Maybe a spouse. Like somebody you're single, you're listening to this and like the other side of you creating video is your future spouse. I'm telling you, you better press record.

Yeah, dude, this is look, but isn't it this way in everything in life? It's Darren Hardy's compound effect. It really is. I tell people I was just like I said, I was just speaking and one of the things I talked about is this idea of the wealth flatline and that there's this portion of building wealth where you're putting money away, you're investing but you're not really seeing a lot of results. And what happens is that people will stall out, they'll say this doesn't work, this doesn't work. Mel, forget it, forget it. And they're out, they cash out. And they say but what happens is that resets you back to day one. The only way to get past the wealth flatline is time staying in the game. Well, it's the same thing like you're saying the only way you're ever going to prove on videos do video.

There's no other way. You can't read it. I mean we'll talk about your book in a second. You can read it from a strategy standpoint, but at some point reading a book on swimming isn't going to make you a swimmer. You're going to, you're going to have to get wet.

Yep, yep, 100%. And here's the cool thing about YouTube.

All these other platforms I highly recommend and they probably have better direct response opportunity. Like sometimes in our entrepreneur community, people Love Instagram because they can follow back, engage with, see who's commenting, see who liked social selling, connecting the DMS and do that kind of stuff. Well, that's great. Problem with Instagram and all the other platforms is if you do post a vertical video there today called an Instagram reel, chances are no one, not only chances, nobody is going to watch that in six months, probably in three months, definitely not two years from now. On Facebook, the same is true. On Twitter, the same is true. On LinkedIn, the same is true. Nobody goes back in your activity post in your feed, but on YouTube, YouTube is a content library, whereas all the other social media platforms are content feeds. Instagram feed, Facebook feed, YouTube is a, is a library. What does that mean? It's like when the student is ready, the teacher appears. When someone has a question, they search for something. And the longer you do YouTube, the, the chances go up. And I, almost everybody I talk to, like, even if they don't know why, they go, there's just, there's like three videos in my YouTube library. They're like five years old that people still watch. That is ultimate leverage for the fight. You're the financial expert. When you start understanding compound interest and, or, you know, real estate appreciating, it's like video estate. So on YouTube, when you post videos, some of them will keep getting views for weeks, months and years to come. The reason that becomes that like nail in the coffin as far as motivation for me is I'm always looking for leverage. What activities can I do today that will give me more time tomorrow? If I can create a YouTube video today and do it in such a way, and this is ultimately what we teach, it's our favorite type of video to make. We'd call it a ranked video, a video that people can create it once, but it's continued to be viewed for weeks, months and even years to come. I've got a video from 2010, to be clear. That's 12 and a half years ago, right? It's like 13 years ago. It just, it in this last year, last 365 days, it gained me two subscribers. Now that's really unsexy. I mean, it's only two subscribers. It's like not that cool. However, it's 13 years old. It actually earned $20 in YouTube ad revenue. Again, $20, like that doesn't even move the needle in my business. Yeah, fair enough, but it's 13 years old. Keep in mind, I didn't even know what I was doing back 13 years ago. But that is A fact that in the last 365 days, a 13 year old video grew my. It got 4,000 views, $20 to subscribers. I now have thousands of videos like that, Mel, as you know. So the compound effect that I've created is outrageous. We get like 3 million views every two days. Our channel grows by like 30,000 subscribers a month. But the only reason we're experiencing that is un. Unlocking that key that most people don't understand is that YouTube is the only platform where your content lives forever. It's the only platform when, where, when you do it right, it's like a fine wine. It gets better with age. And so ultimately.

The compound fact becomes real when this is true for YouTube shorts as well. We have found that YouTube shorts can continue to get views for weeks, months and years later. And sometimes they break out. Sometimes our videos start getting views at day one 55, at day 200. But the, the, of course, learn the strategies. But more than that, just commit to the process rather than like overanalyzing and like trying to watch grass growing, keep planting seeds, because then you pop your head up a little bit later and all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, you know, I've got some momentum. And the cool thing about this is it's not just about size. I mean, I'm throwing out some big numbers, but for a lot of your audience, it's about the right videos being found by the right people. Jen Devore, one of our students, was at 546 subscribers, sent us an email and said, hey.

I'm one of your VRA students and I just had a record week. I did $11,000 in new business in one week from my YouTube videos. She didn't even have a thousand subscribers. She had 546. Her videos were getting 14 views, 44 views. So what I'm describing it, the opportunity is if you're creating the right videos that are attracting the right person and you've clarified what your offer is and what those, those niche conversations. Of course we all want to go viral and have that, at that stuff happening at scale. But I think the bigger opportunity is what happens when over the next 52 weeks you have 52 YouTube videos posted or whatever. And now you just have a consistent stream of leads coming in, which could be to the tune of like 16amonth, but they're coming in from that bulk of videos. And you know that two to three of those will convert in the way that you follow up. It's like game over. Like, define your Business model, define your, you know, funnel, define what it is for you. And then that becomes I think the opportunity to. I get it. The allure of like going viral hits us as entrepreneurs too. We all want that, but it's not needed. I think the key is understanding you have the right viewers, the right people, you know, watching your stuff. You know, you have a video, I'm on your channel right now that's four years old that is getting 03 views an hour right now about how to create a framework that moves people to action. And 0.3 VPH. One of my favorite terms, VPH stands for views per hour. So 0.3 though times 24 is 7.2 views a day, times 365 is 26, 28 views a year. Still not a huge number compared to Mr. Beast. Ain't nobody doing those Mr. Beast numbers. But it's a four year old video that essentially, if anyone is a Star wars fan, it's the Mel Abraham clone army. You have duplicated yourself, filmed yourself on video. You're at the beach, you're hanging out with your family, you're working out. But this video, you know, is being viewed every three hours. One person watches it on autopilot, like you're not doing anything. And that video is generating views for you. And then the opportunity, right. Is best. People getting to know you, getting to like you, getting to trust you. And who knows where they go from there too because of course there could be the direct call to action. But I think the bigger opportunity too is just the relationship build, you know, and what that could relate to people following you elsewhere or then watching another video on the channel. And so this is why I love YouTube the most. It creates the most leverage out of any platform once you start getting some videos like that that are ranked Getting you views 24 7, 365.

So cool. The it's a long term game. I think we need to play the long term because what's going, what you're doing is you're creating a momentum in your business.

That is going to create the traction without the leverage. It is like you said, leveraging.

Yep.

You know, that asset there is going to perform for you without you having to be on the treadmill. It's not done and gone 100%.

And I'm noticing too, I'm digging deeper, you've got a great call to action to a Kajabi page for an a framework formula to stand out. And so then I would say the listener. Right. You think about that. Create YouTube videos in the video let people know how they could go further with you, you know, and that would be probably a free gift, A lead magnet. For some of our students, though, it's book a call with us. You know, give us a call. Book a call. Leave a message. Join a discord group. Join a Facebook group. Join. So you just. And then you put the video out, and then you just do it again. And you just do it again. And does every video perform well? Nope, Just part of. Part of the discipline. But every once in a while, one breaks out. And then, of course, as we continue to study and level up and master best practices. And I want to add value to your community, because people might be wondering if. If I do the perfect video recipe, I figure out what's a good topic my audience cares about. Good title and thumbnail. I really focus on the first 30 seconds of the video because I need to hook the viewer to make them want to watch until the end, give them some reasons to watch till the end, agitate the problem, let them know they're in the right place, really grip their attention. Then the content. Be brief, be bright, be fun, and be done. And then the transition. Well, if I transition to another YouTube video, when do I give a call to action to my freemium? Here's my favorite way to do it. Let's say you have three points. I prefer to teach off points. It's also good for retention. I'm gonna teach. I'm gonna teach you three secrets. I'm gonna teach you three tips. I'm gonna teach you four tips. I'm gonna teach you five tips. Probably not more than five in a YouTube video, unless it's like a deeper dive training. Almost like a webinar of some kind. Okay, so let's say it's three tips. So you go, you know, number one.

You create a video. Number one, clarify your audience. So that's. Because before you even know who you're talking to, you don't know what to do. Number two.

Galvanize or simplify your knowledge into a framework. And so this is what you teach. And you're like, now here's a couple tips on frameworks. This video doesn't go into depth of it. If you actually want to check out my free resource, there's a link in the description down below. And grab that. So. So make your lead magnet. One of the points, give a little bit of value, but then. And then go number three.

You know, tap into the power of Facebook ads. It could be anything, right? So you're like, clarify your audience. Galvanize your knowledge into a framework. Number three. Or maybe it's speak on stages or something. Or like communicate. Like figure out a supportive story. So if you're like, who who's this message for? What framework am I teaching them? What is the supportive story? Three tips every entrepreneur should know about, you know, getting their message out clearly or something like that. So not saying that any of that was good, but saying that's my favorite place to do both. And then after number three, you go and hey, by the way, if you want to learn more about how to turn stories from your life into business illustrations, click or tap the screen because I have a whole video about telling stories more powerfully. So you've accomplished everything. We've got the perfect video recipe. Maybe somebody doesn't want to download your lead magnet. Great, they're still watching. If they do and it stops the session, that's fine because you're also getting the chance to follow up with that person. And that's my dream scenario right there that the listener could take away. Make great YouTube videos that hold the viewer's attention for as long as possible.

Transition at the end to another video because if they made it that far, don't send them off platform and you could have it be a win win. Maybe they're not ready to give you their contact information. Fine. Tip one, tip two, tip three, transition to another video. Agitate the next problem. And if we break that down, number two is a call to action to a lead magnet. You give them a little but you go, I have a whole free thing on this. And then number three, here's a little more. But I actually have a whole video on this. It might be frustrating because you go, well I don't yet. I'm just starting. Well then that's. This is why we teach don't make solo videos but create series.

And you may give a call to action sometimes before the next part in the series even exists. But eventually you'll have a library of videos where you can constantly because you know, kind of as we land the plane. This also is the ultimate trust accelerator. There's a good book from the guy who wrote Influence. I just don't know, you know, Robert Cindolane Cialdini. Cialdini. It's called pre suasion. One of the reasons why YouTube creators have so much greater ease in sales situations is if they're and true for podcast creators as well. Video podcast is the ultimate in 2023 is is you've just spent so much time know like and trust before the sales conversation even happens. And so it makes me think of Levi Lassick living in Dallas on YouTube. He his first six months of committing all into only organic YouTube marketing. He had zero sales, some leads, but zero sales, zero real estate transactions. However, in the following 12 months, no joke, they did $90 million in top line. Not quite, but it ended, you know, at 3% commissions. They profited, him and his partner Travis, 2.8 million in 12 months.

No billboards, no bus stop.

Benches, no paid ads, just organic YouTube marketing. And so it took time, it took commitment. They committed to the process. But what would happen is he's like, I would get calls, whole deals went through on DocuSign without ever meeting up in person. Like, massive levels of trust and relationship was built up. When they did meet up in person with some people, they're like, I already trust you because of that video content. They're hearing your voice, they're seeing your eyes, they're getting to know you. And by the way, if they don't like you, and it doesn't matter because they already excluded them. So they already just, it's a self filtering system. They're not calling you. But the good news is it's like people get to filter because they're watching your content, know, like, and trust. Trust you enough to get on your email list, whatever. Now when it finally comes to sales, like, sure, you still need to learn all those principles, but like, it makes that whole thing a lot easier.

Yeah.

Why? Because you committed to video content. Yeah.

God. This is something that I think we all need to start to think about. Everything that we do in our business.

Or our wealth creation and even, I mean, every aspect of our health, our relationships, all of that, the actions. One of the things I say is that the choices we make with our money today need to serve the financial future we want tomorrow. And it's the same thing. I mean, I can go and gorge myself on horrible food and I'll pay the price later, or I can eat healthy and I'll reap the benefits later and for a longer time. And so, you know, when we take that type of disciplined view to the things in our life, the things in our business, the things in our bank account, it's all going to be better. And I don't know, y' all might want to listen to this and thinking, thinking about they spent 12 months doing videos regularly and they ended up with $2.8 million. If I told you, let's just, let's just be conservative. If I told you that you would make 25% of that. But you had to invest 12 months.

Yeah.

You'd put $700,000 down on the tab and you're going, is it worthwhile? I hope so. I mean, that's the way we have to think about this.

It's not a rocket ship to Mars. It just doesn't work that way. But now what happens? And this is the thing that I know, Sean, you haven't said, but they're now at 2.8 million. Well, what's the next 12 months? Because it's, it resets and, and they don't go, they don't go to zero because they have that momentum you're talking about with these videos that are there all the time and, and doing the heavy lifting while you're off vacationing or doing something else.

100%. It's. I definitely don't want people to get the wrong idea. Not suggesting it's easy, not suggesting it's going to be without pain, not suggesting that it's going to, it's going to take risk. And one of the things that Levi and Travis realized is, again, you reap from what you invest in. Right. And so at some point, I definitely encourage everybody listening to this to dabble with video. But at some point you do make the leap and you decide, I'm going to stop dabbling and I'm going to start dominating. And that is when you mount the TV and get the affluent entrepreneur graphics and get the nice kind of bluish LED lights and get this camera set up and get the mic set up and build the studio and, you know, invest time is the other one. Like put. Putting the time on the calendar to, to book the interviews. You were just talking about, you know, getting a staff person devoted to this. Obviously, I understand it's very meta for us because we are a content info business, but I mean, I invest probably close to $2 million this year in human resources. I mean, what are we talking about? Like, so, so we're doubling down and we do, we do 328 pieces of content a week right now.

Wow.

And that's sounds insane, but we also can track every dollar in ROI. Wicked Reports, pretty sophisticated these days. Monday.com, wicked Reports editors, content. We just onboarded a content admin. I'm not suggesting anybody needs to do this, but. But what I'm suggesting is that once you start to reverse engineer exactly what you described, the people, when the light bulb goes on, they go, wait a minute, $3 million top line, let's go conservative. If I could only do 10% of that, that'd be 300 grand in 10 months, 12 months. And so let's go conserve it all on that. If I was investing in team and systems and some gear to break even on that, but for the accolades and the brand and the awareness, because in the first year, I'm reinvesting just like a startup. It's the media startup within your business or you definitely don't gotta spend 300 grand to get off the ground on any of that. But let's say you profited a hundred, but you spent 200, outsourced some editing, got an admin person to help. It would be the bitter pill to swallow. And that's not helping me sell it, but I want to sell it for what it really is. Is actually probably one of the best ways to.

Succeed is to count the cost of building the tower. Like, Jesus taught us that. He was like, hey, if you're going to build a tower, you would first see if you've got the budget to do it. If you're going to go to war, you would see if you've got, like, the military force to do it. And so it's just. It's saying, okay, do I really want to invest in this for my personal brand, for my sales, for my future? Because I want to get my message out. Because my message deserves a bigger platform and bigger reach. Because you think about the person you help and the problem you solve and the pain in the world and the need of the message you have to get out into the world. When that fire is lit, you go, yeah, I want as many people to hear this as possible. Well, then you definitely want to embrace video. And then you go, okay, then I'm going to put some coin behind this. I'm going to put some dollars behind this. I'm going to put my time behind this and some of my mindset behind this. And so, yeah, it's going to. It could be a challenge and you don't have to take it to that level. But why is. Why are people like you and people like Brennan Burchard and people like Alex and Layla hermozi who spend $150,000 a month on organic content? What does that money go towards? People, basically. People in some software. Software would be the lowest amount. It's probably not even five grand. It's probably. Maybe it is, but it's. It's people. So. So who? Not how, Sean, how am I going to do all this? It sounds pretty stressful. Well, you definitely have to have Buy in as the leader but it's really who, not how. Which is a great book by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy which is saying is there just a content admin, a social media manager or kind of like a CMO I could hire that could help me with this? If I commit to doing one video podcast a week, is there somebody I could hire or an agency I could hire that chops this up and kind of helps me do this? You don't go from 0 to 328 pieces of content like we did from the start. Like that is a multi year. I am the author of YouTube secrets who lives this 20. But, but plenty of people are doing the model's out there. The answers are out there. Like you're doing it. Like the answers are there. And so you build the team and systems around your media empire with no with the clear conviction. Is anything guaranteed? Of course entrepreneurship isn't. That's why in the definition of entrepreneurship is the word risk. However, it's a calculated risk when you say, oh, I get it, okay, yeah, if I make nothing in the first six months, but I can do 700,000 in 18 months and I, and I can figure out how to just have a, a burn rate of. You know, Anton is like, it's like 1100 bucks a month and he's got the capital. He was willing to like bless that money as it went away. He wasn't stressed about the money. He's like, no, I get it. I'm playing this over the long haul. I don't care if this doesn't financially ROI for even the 20 grand it cost me this year and the 20 grand it cost me next year. What if I diverted those funds from somewhere else so that I could multiply my brand, multiply my reach, invest in my brand and then the compound effect to your point, would I invest 10, 20 grand this year, 10, 20 grand next year so that I can have dig your well before you're thirsty. Unlimited ROI in year 3, 4, 5 and be on stages like you are and be and have built my brand up because I had enough foresight to see into the future that like you don't get there by accident. You get there by strategy, calculation, investment, sacrifice, getting uncomfortable, seeing the clear vision and then just putting in the one brick at a time. Darren Hardy compound effect. You'll be shocked where you are on the other side of pressing record and starting to post video.

I love that. I love that the very feeling that is pulling you to and stopping you from doing is the very reason you need to do it. Because the majority of people are going to let that stop them, which gives you the upper hand to get out there and go do it and set yourself apart. And I think, Sean, you've given us a lot to think about. But here's the other thing I'd love people to know. Tell us a little bit about YouTube secrets. You have a book out. It's the second edition. It is like the Bible on YouTube. So I mean, for some of you that are sitting back saying, I don't even know where to start, well then maybe just start with Sean's book and walk through that and you know, you're not sinking a whole lot of dollars into a book. You're going to sink a lot of time and you're going to learn and you're going to grow and then you're going to put one foot in front of the other. I mean, heck, it wasn't like, you know, you didn't start walking and running when you were born and your parents, thank God, didn't look at you and go, well, okay, you're not a walker. I guess you're just going to crawl the rest of your life. I mean, we've got to start there.

Yeah. And I appreciate it and so grateful for the chance to hang out with you and the community. Yeah. YouTube secrets, as I've learned from you, it is built around a lot of hard work to build out the framework of the seven Cs of YouTube success. So in part one of the book, you're going to learn the seven Cs of YouTube success. An Unbreakable framework that we just repeat through. It's like a circle. Because content creation, ultimately more than a one time event, is a habit and a lifestyle. And when you see the benefits, just like working out or eating healthy should be a habit and a lifestyle, content creation in a slow and steady and healthy pace. Because you understand the flywheel effect of just continuing to go around the seven Cs of YouTube success. And then in the second part is a bunch of very specific tactics for Getting views, growth, 10 different ways to monetize. The cool thing about starting to create YouTube content is you can create additional income streams. Even if your core business.

Is probably a product or a service you have, you're tapping into the creator economy, which there's multiple other ways to diversify your income. So yeah, YouTube secrets. And then the second edition completely rewritten. New stories, new stats, deleted a chapter, a couple new chapters, everything's current. And that just came out. So that's, that is available on Amazon there's only the one listing of the book, either ebook, physical, and then the Audible edition too, recorded by myself and the co author at a professional studio. And so if you're an Audible user, you can get YouTube secrets on Audible or you can get the physical or ebook. It's only on Amazon. It's a couple other places too, but it's probably the best place to get it. You got prime or just Kindle. And Yeah, it's over 3,000 reviews and I think it's the number one best selling YouTube strategy book in the world. So definitely a good resource to get educated and, and I recommend everybody not only check out the book, but I also want to speak to entrepreneurs. Yep. Where you should definitely read the book. But my question for you is who in your world could you ask to help you build this? Or who do you need to hire? Because when an entrepreneur, right, is building their business, they do think who, not how, who is going to run the YouTube channel for me? You're not, you're not. It's delegate, don't dump. So you do need to probably read the book, listen to the audiobook, because you want the big vision, you want the understandings, you want to know how to identify if someone's even qualified. But the highly leveraged thing is there's probably something you're doing as the entrepreneur. For 99% of entrepreneurs I speak to, I'm like, yeah, our online course or our book or whatever, you need to be familiar with like the 30,000 foot level. But you probably want to hand this information to the who that is going to support this eventually. And so YouTube Secrets is the book out on Amazon.

Sweet. And if they want to follow you and the work that you're doing, because it's amazing out there, where do they find out more about, about Sean and Think Media and all the stuff you're doing?

Yeah. Appreciate it, Sean. Sean Cannell, rhymes with YouTube channel that's on Instagram and everywhere. And then Think Media is the brand and it has all the accounts as well. And the YouTube channel, there's also the Think Media podcast, So a podcast devoted to.

Learning, video, marketing and video. If, if podcast listeners are interested in that. And that exists not just on the YouTube but also on all the audio platforms. And so I appreciate it.

Thank. Thank you, Sean. And just one last thing that I want, I want to just, I want the listeners and the viewers to understand you mentioned something in passing and that is that you can get additional income streams. And I said, y' all that have listened to me for any length of time. Know that I. I believe that multiple income streams is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity for, for your wealth, for your financial freedom and creating content, putting things out there, building that platform using something like YouTube and some of the strategies that Sean talks about can give you that pathway to additional streams of income, which will accelerate your wealth, accelerate your path to financial freedom. So go check out Sean's stuff. Go check out what he's doing. Sean, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been too long since. Since we've had a chance to chat. So good to chat with you and thank you for, for being with me on the show.

Thank you. Pleasure is all mine. I really appreciate your kindness and look forward to the next time we're together in person, my friend.

You got it, buddy. Same here. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me, me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of building your money machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do a favor, go to Apple, Apple podcast or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people, because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.