Ex-YouTube Employee on How to Get 100,000 Subscribers FAST | 036

What leads to a creator who endures versus fizzles out? I had a chance to work on YouTube Rewind in 2014. I looked at what happened to those creators 10 years later. If you were an education creator, you're enduring to this day. But if you were anywhere near the category, you make it big or you make it broke.

He's your favorite creator's favorite creator, and he knows all the secrets.

Prepare for opportunities you don't have because they'll come. 8 AM, I get a phone call. It's like, are you available to interview Jimmy tomorrow? Or I'm going to interview the world's biggest YouTuber. I started talking to his manager. I started talking to his chief of staff. He has a guy following him 24/7 doing a documentary. So I just start talking to him. But, and we haven't posted any of this publicly yet.

Pretty rare to have someone who has been on both sides, building the platform and then also on the creator side.

Believe me, it's harder to get started than to keep going. Getting 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 is easier in a sense than that first 10,000. Okay, let's do some questions. Yeah. Could you please share some insights from your time at Instagram If you're ever thinking about launching a campaign around the holidays, think twice.

One of the things that worries me is titles.

Can I look at your channel? I would not put that in your title. The police are here because that's too good of advice.

John, I want to start by talking about your time at YouTube and Instagram. It's pretty rare to have someone who has been on both sides, not just, you know, on multiple platforms, but also like being able to see those building the platform and how that works, and then also now be on the creator side. And you mentioned in your talk that you've seen a lot of people like fizzle out. What do you notice is the difference between those creators that endure for a long period of time? You know, Beyoncé, who you're talking about, you know, 30+ years in the spotlight and creating versus those who, you know, made it for 2 years on YouTube or 4 years and that was it.

Yeah. So here's an interesting stat to answer your question. What leads to a creator who endures versus fizzles out? I had a chance to work on this video called YouTube Rewind back in 2014. I don't know if you remember that, but it was like a big recap video that YouTube put out that basically they chose the top 100 creators at the time, put them in a big video. It's a music video. It gets like 100, 200 million views. And it was this big honor to be selected for that video. I was on the other side. I was working on helping produce it, select the creators, et cetera. Et cetera. Now that I'm a creator, I did this little exercise and I think I'll put out a video about it, but I looked at what happened to those 100 creators.

Yeah.

10 years later after YouTube Rewind 2014. And I saw, I basically mapped everything in a quadrant 'cause you know, everything can be put in a matrix or a quadrant. And so the axes were short form, long form, education, entertainment. If you were anywhere near the entertainment category, you either made it super big, the Logan Pauls and MrBeasts of the world, or you're no longer uploading, irrelevant, and went broke. There's almost no in-between or middle class from at least that sample size of 100 creators and the trend that I saw. But if you were an education creator or had some tinge of education and worked towards that side and closer to longer form, you're enduring to this day. iJustine, John and Hank Green, Veritasium, Vsauce, all these people were still uploading 10 years ago and still are maintaining a high degree of relevancy and viewership in their channels and businesses. So I think a lot about that, that even if you're an entertainment-first creator, you have to have some form of education in your content. And I could give an example of what that means and how to do that.

Really quickly, I'm curious, raise your hand if you consider yourself more on the entertainment side of being creator with your content.

Interesting. Yeah, that squares up with a newsletter.

Yeah, I think so. Now what about if you're on the education side? Okay, cool. I was— I'm glad to see that people are actually raising their hands. I was a little worried that just people were like, I'm not— I rejected the premise of your poll.

I'll see you guys in 10 years. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, that's what I've noticed is, you know, anecdotally, is that people who are building that long-term education connection tend to endure much longer. What's an example of a creator that you were thinking of?

So there's this video on YouTube that has, I think, 1 million, 2 million views. It's called I Ate Taco Bell for 30 Days. And it's essentially the YouTube version of Supersize Me. It's from a creator named Sam Reed. But what's interesting is not just in what is this guy doing, challenging his body type of thing. He basically, the whole premise of it, there was a bunch of articles that came out, believe it or not, about a year ago that said Taco Bell is the healthiest fast food out there, which sounds like an oxymoron, right? But they were making these claims like Taco Bell is healthier, all this stuff. And he's like, you know what, I'm going to go through this 30-day challenge. Here are the rules. I'm going to talk to medics. I'm going to talk to doctors throughout the time. I'm going to get my blood samples. And it was really an educational piece of video disguised as entertainment. And I think if you're on one side of the spectrum, like a lot of us are on the education side, there's ways to make it more entertaining that we could talk about. And if you're more on the entertaining side, there's ways to make it more educational. But that to me was a perfect example of one that really crossed the chasm.

Yeah, I think that the storytelling is so important, right? And a lot of us breathe our own personality into our videos. We're not just saying, here are the facts. It's not like, the worst college professor you've ever had who's just teaching right out of the textbook. We're finding a way to breed story and entertainment into it. Who are, or what are some of the examples that you've seen of people or tactics that we can use to bring more of that entertainment factor and package up our education in a form that people actually want to consume?

Yeah, so I think it comes down to the intro and thinking about how you could hook people that way. And so I think about when it comes to good intros, it's how can you address an objection right away? Because I think people say, oh, viewers have fleeting attention spans or dumb. No, I think viewers are smarter than ever. And so I find that a lot of people are like, okay, in this video, we're going to talk about this and they go into the actual video. But they never say what you may be thinking about. Whenever I talk about YouTube tips in my videos that are solo explainers, educational ones, I'm like, all right, today we're going to be talking about 6 tips to grow on YouTube. And no, these aren't the normal tips that you already hear. Or like yesterday, I was like, you know, giving that presentation. I was like, no, no, it's not those be authentic, be original. You already know that. We're going to go deeper. And so I find that like that just gives a big like, okay, I'm a human being. We're going to talk about something more just fun and deeper than you usually get. With all the quote unquote normal education content.

Are there other ways that you try to do that in your videos? And then I guess a follow-on, do you need to do that throughout the video or is that really something you emphasize in the hook?

The hook is so important, but then throughout, I always try to find an interesting case study, which is why yesterday, it's interesting to share that as an example because I want to make a video about that. And also you guys, for those of you who were there, I could have given a talk about everything is a remix. Nothing's original and all that, but the entertainment factor was Beyoncé.

Right.

Or MrBeast. So I feel like if you find like a case study or a testimonial, as like boring as those words are, that's really related to pop culture and that people understand and you can make people think differently about somebody they think they know, that's magic. Yeah. And that is what like to me, Your lesson is what you have to get out there, but the story is the glue that makes that lesson stick.

On the enduring for a long time, we have this spectrum of educate versus entertain. But there's got to be more factors beyond that. That's in a broad category. What else do you notice about the creators who endure for years?

Yeah. You know that famous essay, Kevin Kelly, 1,000 True Fans?

1,000 True Fans, yeah.

I don't buy that. I think you need 1,000 true students. That to me is the— okay, listen, who are you guys a fan of? Like fan, like you've gone to a concert or something, yell some names out. Adele. Adele, Adele, okay. When's the last time you went to an Adele concert? 2016. 2016, how much did you pay for that concert ticket? Do not remember. Do not remember. Have you ever bought Adele merch? Yes. You have, what?

Vinyl.

Vinyl, okay. All right, all right. Roughly how much does that cost? $50. $50, okay. So let's say they take it roughly like maybe $300, like $50 vinyl. Anything else from your fandom? Okay, $350. Okay, now who's like a student of somebody who you've taken their course or— okay, your hand went up. Whose course have you taken recently? All these courses. Okay, so you're paying at least $995 or something, right? I know, I know, we launched our own course. I've been studying the market. Did you buy the Academy or the Accelerator? Accelerator. Accelerator. So you paid— did you pay $5,000?

You did?

Okay. All right, here we go.

This is good. This is good. Isn't it great when the examples actually work to prove your point? Yes.

I planted them into the audience, guys. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, $350, $5,000. This is like an extreme example, but Students, the way you can monetize if you're an educator versus an entertainer is just so much more vast. Put out a book, put out an event, course, newsletter, you know, like YouTube sponsorships. If you're an artist, and I argue that both can be artists, but you're an entertainment-first artist, okay, concert, merch, tour, media, meet and greets, it's just that much harder and your audience's propensity to spend is not as much. And I think the key is to answer your question, tastes and preferences change when it comes to entertainment. As educators, it's our job to be guinea pigs and try the newest stuff, see what works, what doesn't, and find the best way to explain it to our audience and our students. And that to me is much more long-term in terms of a strategy.

One thing that I've talked about that makes me think about is I often say teach a skill that makes money to people who have money, because there's a lot of things in there. It's like, oh, I want to teach— and I'll say this, this is if we're optimizing for income. And in every audience and every creator business, you need to be clear on what you're optimizing for. And Early on in my creator career, I was optimizing for income and I was very clear about that, right? And so I taught software design to designers and developers, right? And I know that that can be paid for on a company card. I know, you know, all of these things. Now, there are plenty of creators who have made amazing livings, you know, teaching things like, you know, recipes and cooking, homesteading, things that aren't skills that make money. But if you want to maximize the revenue per subscriber, if those two things are true, that really, really helps.

Big time.

Well, first, I love that you're like, 1,002 fans, not true.

Well, it's not completely not true. But I think it has to be updated for— not to say there's not value for entertainment creators. There absolutely is. I look back at concerts and art and music. All that stuff is so important. But it's harder to build a business around it and really make it. But if you do, again, like I said at the beginning, you make it big, right? Or you make it broke. Middle class, the opportunities, I think, go to more of the educators.

Yeah, that makes sense. Is there anything in that middle class, any other traits that you notice? They're focused on education, they're really focused on getting those 1,000 true students, what else do you notice about that group?

I think a lot of times they know how to hire. There's this other great Jay-Z quote that's like, I'm not a businessman, I'm a business man. That, I think, is the mindset you need to have when you're a creator and you go into it. I left my job and I'm like, OK, I'm starting a business. I'm not just going to become a one-person studio. I want to build a best-in-class. Team and hire and really make content that I know can be sustainable. And of course, like the stress, burnout, sleepless nights, but how can you minimize those, especially as you get bigger? So I think a lot of creators like I would meet at YouTube and Instagram, they'd be big and they were like, they'd be beating their chest like, I still edit every single frame in my videos. I'm like, what? And then, and then 5 seconds later, like, Guys, creator burnout is just the worst. It's just the worst. I'm like, those two things—

It's a correlation.

Yeah, yeah. What is going on here? So I think the ones who hired, but then it's funny, even having something as simple as a brand guide. In our videos, if you see, we're obsessed about our graphics and our design. And we have a few-page document about, no, this is how our videos and our design, the corners around it, the hex codes we use, the fonts we use, and if we bring on freelancers to help us with stuff like ebooks or stuff like that, we pass that along and then that makes the onboarding process easier.

Yeah, that's good. One thing that's interesting is you brought up what creators are proud of. And I find that creators as a group are often proud of some very strange things. And it's things like, I edit every frame of the video. I write every word of my newsletter, and there's lots of things in there that you should be proud of, but one thing that's helped me is to write down a list of like, what am I really proud of? And then look at that list and say, which of those are serving me? Right, 'cause in your example, you hear creators who are very proud of something 'cause it ties into their identity in a certain way. You know, I do it all myself, and then you realize like, okay, is that, that may have served you for the first few years, but does that still serve you today?

Well said.

Is there anything that you can think of, of something that you were really proud of or that you brought to it that then you later realized like, oh, that doesn't actually serve me anymore?

Oh, I think everything I tried to do up until some point and then hire. So my big belief is do it, then delegate because then I won't be able to like, so I think, Just about everything I've been proud of, I've tried to figure out a way to create a system around it. Yeah, you know, um, for our interviews, like, I try to research and, like, I would say, like, I try to watch all their interviews, watch just about every major video they've put out, look at their high school newspapers, like, go way back. Now we have a system where it's like, okay, like, pull these things together and I'll still be the one who, like, looks through it, but it's like taking that and like kind of letting me like focus so we could do more of it in my style, my way that I've done it before I delegated.

I think what's interesting in that is you're still very proud of the result, but you don't have to be proud of or like attached to the exact way that you achieve that result. Yes. The standards still stay high.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes sense. We have this line that we've been using at ConvertKit, or I guess at Kit, of We serve creators who mean business.

That's good.

And there's a different identity in there. There's people who are coming around and saying, oh, I'm just going to do this as a side hustle. We'll throw this out there. We'll see what happens. And something we noticed about everyone in this room and the creators we serve is they show up with a level of intention. They mean business. And so I'm curious, because you came from watching the creator world before you stepped into it. And you came in with so much intention. What are some of those ways that, like, you showed up that you mean business as you launched your creator career?

High production value. The podcast game, the talk show game is saturated. We all know that. And I was entering like 2, 3 years ago when, you know, there's— everybody had a show, like. And so I was like, I'm not doing Zoom, even though that was post-pandemic. I am gonna go for the biggest, like, guests that I know that's in my like phone and text and I'm going to see what I could do. So I flew to Puerto— I texted Logan and Jake Paul and I flew to Puerto Rico and we did 2 interviews and I think that set the trajectory of our channel. But I will always try to make it easy for the talent. We did an interview with Terry Crews, who, if you watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine or America's Got Talent or White Chicks, like, and I was like, I need to make this as easy as possible. So I asked his manager, where does he live? Okay, booked a studio 5 minutes away from it, got my team there, we showed up early, we set up. And yeah, it's harder. I know if you have a studio, you can optimize a lot of stuff. But for me, it's like, okay, how can we have high production value both in terms of the actual set, they get good assets out of it to promote what they want to promote in addition to telling a story. But then I'll ask them questions that I'm surprised that other interviewers won't always ask them. I'll go down this lane. Like, if I see they get excited about in past interviews. So I think that was a big differentiator and a big cost, right? Like, I took my salary, I saved a pool of it, and then I took a few consulting gigs. I'm like, we're starting a business. And that's how I went into it.

Yeah. So there's a few things in there. One, the level of research and effort. That you're putting in, you're getting some of these opportunities, you're making the most of them, but you're also describing a level of resources in your network that you had already. What's something, for everyone here, if you had to build that network over again and you didn't have YouTube or Instagram as a logo to start those relationships, how would you go about it?

I think if you wanna play ball, you gotta at least work for the NBA. To use that metaphor. Like, I think a lot of people want to be basketball players, or a lot of people want to be creators. And if you want to develop those relationships, but you don't want to take that risk at day one, working for one of these companies— doesn't have to be for them, like, you know, just the Instagrams or YouTubes— even like working for like Kit or like, like other platforms that work with creators just gives you a lot of learning by osmosis, right? And I think if you're in these situations, you can just help people more freely. Like the number of times like a creator who's like big now or a lot of people know him would like message me or text me like, I just got a copyright strike on my account. Like, can you do something? Like, I just got this legal notice on my account. Can you do something? Like, John, I'm not getting rid of it. I'm like, oh, no problem. It's not my job, but I will do whatever I can internally to make sure that you're taken care of because I know that this is your business. So I think I pulled and I helped so many people with those little favors in those 8 years and just tried to look out for them without really knowing that maybe one day I'd say, hey, can I interview you?

Yeah.

And that's how it came full circle.

I think another thing in there is not just working for the companies that power the creator economy, but working for those well-known creators, right? Like Jay Clouse is someone that I think so many of us in this room admire. And he was doing good things as a creator. He built his reputation. But the time that he spent working for Pat Flynn and really launching Pat's community and scaling that gave him so many connections and so much credibility. He was able to walk into the community and course space with all this credibility because he's like, yeah, this is what I did for Pat. Here's the testimonials around it. And everyone's like, oh, I know your work. And that opened so many doors for him. And there's all of these things that creators need that they don't have time for. There's platforms they'd love to be on, but they don't have the team for yet. And so there's so many ways that you could serve these bigger creators and end up learning a ton from them and then being a part of their community. And then I'm sure that Pat made so many introductions and opened so many doors for Jay because he killed it when he you know, he worked for Smart Passive Income.

Yeah, I think the nuance, and that's a great point, is that either apprentice or work for a creator or work at a platform if being a full-time creator is your ultimate goal, or work in the industry. Like, but I think now that I'm a creator hiring, if I could sense from a mile away that this person wants to become like a full-time creator like yesterday, I'm like, okay, like I'm gonna put a lot of like training into them and I want to grow them. Uh, so like, I just want to know that they're like, like what's their intent for the next few years, even if that's their intent for the like 3+ years.

Yeah. How do you think about that? Cause on one hand, if someone's, you know, I'm interviewing for a job at your company and I'm like, yeah, just as soon as possible, I want to be a full-time creator. And you're like, I'd kind of like to keep team members. There's, there's an interesting thing where you want to hire someone who is in love with and obsessed with the types of things your business does and wants to learn and will study that in their free time and treat it like much more than just another job. But at the same time, you want someone who will be around for years. At least a year and a half, 2 years, something. How do you find that balance?

I just ask a lot of questions and get a sense of like, okay, whose career do you admire? What path are you trying to have? And there's no problem with somebody trying to be a creator. In fact, I love that. I mean, that's like how I really got into what I'm doing. But if they're like, I've seen a lot of situations where creators hire other creators, but you could tell that that person is like splitting their time because of like they have their own weekly upload cadence, you know, or like they have their own schedule and all that. And again, there's those superstars that can manage both. But I think you want somebody who's like, okay, how can I pour everything I have into what you're building? Because they'll be compensated for that. And then whenever it comes time, like, you know, like I think the creator will then support them tenfold. Right. When it comes to them, like inevitably wanting to do their own thing, start their own business, become their own creator, just like Pat did and like probably open a ton of doors. So I think it's like just being really honest about like, okay, I'm going to put in my time. And yeah, like in the same way I tried to put in my 8 years before I started.

Yeah, there's 2 different quotes that come to mind from that. One is from Danny Inney, who's a great creator in the business space. He talks about if you pay for half of someone's time, you get a quarter of their attention. And so I've always thought about that when hiring part-time versus hiring someone dedicated. Interesting. And then from the creator side, there's a quote from Derek Sivers, and he talks about how you can do anything you want in life. And actually, I think he says you can do everything you want in life, but you have to do it in sequence rather than in parallel.

Huh.

And so I think what you're talking about is it's less of, you know, work at YouTube, work for this big creator, and drive yourself crazy trying to also scale your creator thing with your best energy at the same time. And more of, for this season, I'm going to dedicate myself to learning this craft as I build up this business or this creator's business, and then I'm gonna take tons of notes, I'm gonna know where I'm going and work towards that, but then when that chapter closes, or I'll have a transition period or something, then I'm gonna go all in on being a creator. Is that right?

Those are great quotes. And I'd say another level of nuance is that there's ways you could start to de-risk it if you've been there a while and you're trying to figure out, like you're at the precipice of making your next move. So, I mean, I haven't talked too much about this publicly, but I would take vacation days and my nights and weekend, I would spend that time trying to create while I had the safety and security of a full-time job. So I knew that I could do this on my own time and I would just like, spend the day writing, making videos, and just trying to see if this is something that could become full-time or what it would look like if I were to leave.

Yeah.

Can I ask one other question on the hiring thing? Because I think that's so important. You've done that so well. Nathan, what's your favorite interview question?

Ooh, now you put me on the spot.

I thought this was going the other way. No, no, no. This is two-way. This is my interview. Or other tips of creatives hiring because you've seen a lot of that. And I've met so many people on your team who are very multifaceted, but have also been around ConvertKit for many years. Any hiring tips or questions you ask to try to vet out those superstars from the others?

I like to ask who someone admires. I think this is a question that I ask a lot of creators when they're trying to build their business is, who are you trying to be like? Because that says a lot. And so who you admire in the space, who's a creator that you follow. Even if I'm hiring someone for a job that has very little to do with creative work in the traditional sense. It's one thing if you're hiring a designer or one of our creative growth managers. I need you to be deeply embedded in the creator economy. But if you're our finance manager, you don't need that. We don't want creative accounting necessarily. We can get into that later. There's multiple layers for that joke with John. But I want someone who cares about this industry, even if it's not day-to-day applicable in the job. So I really like to ask, who are the creators that you follow? And if it's someone totally generic or high-level, I'm just not that interested. And I want to know who you're actually a fan of rather than like, oh, you know, I listen to this one album of somebody, or, you know, occasionally this person pops up on YouTube. So it was asking a little bit of like, who has a bit of an obsessive personality? Because I think that that's what this level of drive and success requires. You get hooked on something and you want to see it through to the end, and you have really high standards for the results.

Love it, great.

Let's talk about how you've scaled the business. For anyone who wasn't here yesterday, give a few of the stats on the YouTube channel, the newsletter, and how it's grown over the last couple of years.

YouTube has been, the focus of our business. And now newsletter, like, is our big focus for 2024. Now that's rocking and rolling. But right now the YouTube channel is at 460,000 subscribers, and that's in just about 2 years.

Yeah, that's awesome.

2 and a half years. And so, and our, like, and now I always feel like if you guys are feeling like you need to diversify as a creator, which is always a good move, and you're trying to get into video, believe me, it's harder to get started than to keep going. And so if you're feeling like, I feel like getting your 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 is easier in a sense, though it's still hard, than that first 10,000. And so just know that if you push through, then things really compound because you have that library of content. And the best comments that, trust me, you'll get if you keep at it is like, oh my God, I just discovered your channel. Or like, how did I not know this existed before? Like, I just binged 3 of your videos in a row. Like those comments will come. And yeah, so the YouTube and then TikTok's like at 140,000, Instagram's like at 90,000, LinkedIn's at like 60,000, 62,000. But then newsletter, we just started this year and I met Nathan for coffee and just, I was like, okay, this is a big focus and I want to build with all the pro tools that ConvertKit has and the referral network. And so, Right now we're at about 5,000 and I don't know if this is too early, but I hope by this time next year, I'm just putting it out there, we'll be at 100,000. That's my goal, 100,000 for the newsletter.

12 months from now.

At Craft and Commerce 2025.

All right, put it out in the universe.

Putting it out in the universe.

So you can all help, right?

I mean, that'd be awesome if recommendations or if you guys want to like the ConvertKit's like recommend. To me, that recommendation, then the creator network is so cool because it's like for years it's like, okay, YouTube has had just the video and you watch the video and you consume the video and bam, now we have the suggested tab. Yep. You know, and so if anybody wants to talk and, you know, collaborate there, that would be cool. But for me, a long time for the newsletter wasn't just like putting it out, it's trying to figure out what our format was.

Right.

So it's like, okay, we have news and now we have a new section called the outlier video of the week where we look at what, like, Yesterday, what's a small channel that has outperformed with their videos and what are thumbnails of the week? And then questions that people give and then I answer and can put on future newsletters. And then we also have a cartoon Sunday comics like edition. So we hired illustrators from The New Yorker. So if you sign up, you'll get 20 cartoons every Sunday, which is inspired by interviews I've done with top creators.

You really focused on the level of quality on YouTube. What systems or processes have you put in place or planning for that same level of quality on the newsletter? Because you're not just throwing out random thoughts that you wrote the night before. There's real thought behind it.

There's a template to everything. So it's like if you look at our newsletter, on the top we have our images and then even the way we curate that thumbnail roundup, having it very clearly displayed and then the takeaways. And then just being very intentional about like, okay, right now we're twice a week newsletter. Can we scale to 3 times a week while making it quality? But the twice a week took a while to figure out because initially we wanted to put out a cartoon every week and that's just hard to illustrate. So we took it and then every time I do an interview, I try to have our illustrators, I work with them on a joke or some kind of like illustration based on the interview and we add it to the sequence. And so that was actually a big thing, talking with you and your team and Kyle especially. Shout out to Kyle. My God, one of the best partner managers I've ever had.

We like Kyle.

For real. So Kyle helped us think through, okay, this can be a sequence. And any time— this is the magical thing about email newsletters that you can't really have on social media. It's like you can encourage a very specific content journey. You know, so you just signed up. Okay, you're going to get this welcome email if you sign up from my news, from my landing page. You can get this welcome email if you sign up from the network as a recommendation. Okay, for the next 20 Sundays, you're going to get some of the best cartoons and illustrations that will make you laugh, learn. But then every Thursday, you're going to get something new that's going to be a broadcast. And believe me, these are words I've never thought I'd be using like this comfortably, but Thanks to Kyle and Nathan and the whole team, we're very deliberate and that took a while to figure out. And I could talk about the whole referral thing that we're about to put out next week that took a while too to just think about, okay, now that we have it, how can we pour gasoline on it?

Yeah, I like that. I mean, I do the same thing. I have a private paid newsletter that people pay for one time talking about money. And that's something I don't have the time or energy to write a weekly newsletter about that. But I did the same thing that you did of made a sequence. And when people, you know, buy the products on— I still don't know whether to say ConvertKit or Kit. This is— we're like ConvertKit, soon to be Kit. But when the people buy the product on Kit, I'm just going to go with that for right now. Then, you know, they get dropped into the sequence and they work all the way to the end and then they just sit and wait at the end until I publish another, another email. And it works really well. So I'm glad to see that you're doing that. I think it works especially well with the content that's really high quality and hard to produce. And so you— I think about this intersection between quantity and quality. And you want to find the cadence, basically, where you can maintain and consistently hit your quality bar. And there's some of these things, like a long-form essay or custom illustrated comics, where you're like, I just— I can't do that every single week. And so you use tools like this to be able to bridge the gap and have the best of both worlds.

Yep. Yep. And there's a few surprises in there when you get to like week 16 or 17. If you read on, I put a few Easter eggs too that make those sequences a bit more fun. But yeah, harder to pull off. Yeah.

Really quickly, we talked about the newsletter a bunch. Where should people subscribe to it?

Created.News. So just like Created, just like our show Created with John Youshaei.News.

I love it. Okay. You mentioned the show. I want to know the behind-the-scenes story, and this is entirely selfish, forget about them, I just want to know this, of Jimmy reaching out and giving you the exclusive for his new launch.

Oh, that was crazy. So I met Jimmy, MrBeast, 6 years ago now, 5, 6 years ago at VidSummit, which is a conference for video creators. And we just, you know, it's like, you know, the industry is small, you kind of know people and then This past October, November was VidSummit 2023. And I was preparing for my keynote and just trying to really crush it there. And then all of a sudden, like 8:00 AM or so, I get a phone call. I was like, hey, Jimmy is giving a keynote, but he'd actually rather do an interview. Are you available to interview Jimmy tomorrow? And I'm like, Yes, like say no more. So like I go straight to the venue. This is the day before and like he's like, hey, John. I'm like, okay, all right. So this is like, we already, uh, remembers me and like, you know, so then we start talking and all these, I'm asking like, okay, well, of all the things you could cover, like what do you want to get out of this interview? All that stuff. And, um, and I'll never forget, like I had about 24 hours to prepare for that interview, which was kind of like, I didn't realize at the time, a tryout for this one that you just asked about. And it was the craziest 24 hours because that night we were in Dallas for this event and Jimmy's like, John, why don't you come with me? We're going to play basketball tonight. I'm like, okay, where is like, oh, the Dallas Mavericks practice facility. And I'm like, yes, yes, one does. As one does. Sure. But, you know, I'm not going there to play basketball. Like, I rode the bench in high school. Like, I'm not going to embarrass myself or get injured the night before I'm going to interview the world's biggest YouTuber. I'm going there and I'm talking to everybody on his team. And so that night I'm just like doing like, like I'm speedrunning my research process, even though I've been kind of preparing for this moment because I'm like, it's going to come. It'll come. As weird as I'm like a big— like, I don't like the word manifesting, but I am a big believer in just if you see it, you believe it and you work hard at it. At some point it's a matter of when, not if. And so I just I was there, everybody was having a good time playing basketball. And like, he has a guy following him 24/7 doing a documentary about him. So I just start talking to him, you know, I start talking to his manager, I start talking to his like chief of staff, like all these people, like Jimmy in between, he's like, he just got a shot up. I'm like, hey Jimmy, so your last video, tell me. Yeah, you know, so it's like just, I'm just doing all this research. And then I'm a very visual person. If you ever watch my interviews, like I come with a ton of visuals. You know, I get rough drafts of stuff. I ask them about things that they don't usually talk about publicly when it comes to their creative process. So I got all that in 24 hours. The keynote went well, like as an interview instead of a speech, because that's also what I found is like a lot of folks, they don't want to prepare slides if they're very busy. So they want an interviewer to come in and just, you know, tee up and get the best out of them. So I felt like that was a tryout for a game I didn't realize was what you talked about, which was the big sit-down interview, 90 minutes in North Carolina. And so that was October. It went really well. And we'd been in touch with each other as well as his team to do an interview the following year, which is now this year, 2024. And then I got that DM I showed you guys. Then I got a phone call. He's like, hey, can you come next week? North Carolina? This is just a few weeks ago. I'm like, and again, I'm just like, yes. You know, whatever you need. And at this point, again, I am a big believer, prepare for opportunities you don't have because they'll come. So I had already, like I told my videographer, look into videographers because I always like to save costs by having one of my team and local folks. So we already looked into videographers in North Carolina, like already before he even called me. And then he's like, yeah, we have a big launch coming up. Like I would love to, like have you interview me about it because like you reach the audience that's going to consume this product. The product is YouTube analytics software called ViewStats. Um, and so, so yeah, within about a week, like flew down to North Carolina, we spent a few days there before setting up. And then what really blew me away, and we haven't posted any of this publicly yet, we spent like that week and just the whole day with Jimmy, and we actually have two more videos coming out with them.

That was awesome.

Yeah. So we have a day with him. And then I also did a video with him that's like, have you ever seen those Vanity Fair, like drawing on the screen videos where like a director or filmmaker breaks down a video? That's our new format that we're going to do in addition to interviews. And MrBeast is our first episode.

That's going to be a lot of fun.

So stay tuned. Yeah, I haven't told too many people about that, but two more videos coming up that we shot with him because I feel like just the vibe of the interview was really well. We hit it off.

I love it. Is there, that was something that you had locked in your mind that you're working towards. Is there something that you want to put out there that you're like, this is what I'm aspiring to or would love to have happen?

100,000 subscribers on my newsletter.

There you go.

I don't know, I sometimes say these numbers, but I know that it's also input, then output comes. So really it's like, weekly newsletter and see if we scale to biweekly. And then I guess that would be 3 times a week with the cartoons as part of the sequence. But no, I really want to have a best-in-class newsletter and be the place that you come to to get creator news, but then also creator insights. It's like, why did this video take off? Not just why is this thing trending in the news? Because not all of that's as applicable, but it is something that keeps you in the know. So that right now, if that answers your question.

Yeah, that does. When you're thinking about the newsletter, you really focused on the content and dialing it in and the systems and processes. Now that you're thinking about scaling, what are you focused on? Describe your plan to go from thousands of subscribers to 100,000.

It's so funny because I'm like, I think about scaling, but then I still think about like, okay, is every word in there needs to be in there. So I'm still like, we have like a great like copywriter on our team. Like we talk about the stories for the week, we pick them, we talk about the outliers of the week, the thumbnails, we pick them. He goes off and writes it. Then I'm still looking at it. I like, I look at on desktop, I look at my phone, I'm like, okay, it looks good. Is there wasted space? Let me take out these few words, make it more. So I'm like still on the non-scalable stuff to make sure that, you know, when people see it, they'll share it, then it scales. But I think the biggest thing is going to be our referrals because I want to be able to fulfill stuff that are digital but highly valuable versus a lot of other newsletters I see is like, there's a lot of like higher lift stuff to give to their subscribers or like things that I'm like, do people really care about that? So like for, I'm actually curious to hear everyone's take. If you refer one person to this newsletter, I'm going to give you a, essentially a 30-page ebook guidebook that's like, it's called Infinite Ideas, and it's 8 ways to come up with new ideas that will hopefully like do well on your social media. Like that's one. If you refer 5, you'll get the Top 25 Thumbnails ebook, which is like the best 25 thumbnails on YouTube for the past year and why they work with the psychology behind them. And then 10 is, um, top video outliers, which is like top 25 video outliers on YouTube, why they took off. And then if you refer, I'm still figuring the numbers out, but this may change. But if you refer 50, I'll give you a personalized roast of your content and social media. Is that, is that an interesting like skill? Yeah.

Okay.

Or maybe give me feedback afterwards or when you Q&A.

Yeah.

I'm trying to assess that.

The personalized roast. I mean, I want that. I'll tweet about this afterwards. We'll see if we can get— to be clear, you all will sign up with my code so that I will get a personalized roast of my YouTube channel.

There you go. Yeah.

Don't wait for my code to sign up. Just go ahead and do it. So the referrals, that's a function of how many subscribers you have right now. It is a percentage lift on what we already have. It's not its own traffic source.

Yeah. Right?

And so you might end up growing, say, 30% faster than you were already. But what other things are we thinking about of diving deep on conversion from your YouTube channel to email, partnerships with other people? What else comes to mind? We can also brainstorm things with the audience too.

Yeah, that's a great distinction, Nathan. Yeah, you're right. The referral is amplifying what we have. And to your question, where else are we pulling on to bring people in? On YouTube, What I've realized is like, and we did this with the MrBeast interview where if you watch like past the hour mark, I have a like, essentially like a 20-second thing where I'm like, hey, if you're watching this far, because there's like validation there, you should sign up for my newsletter. That's been bringing in more subscribers. And then, oh, again, I'm a big believer in like make everything look beautiful and like very nicely visually designed. So every part of the newsletter, like we think about like the template of it. but then I'm also thinking about, okay, can this be taken and posted on Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera? So our thumbnail roundup every week we post on Twitter and LinkedIn, and those do pretty well and bring people in. So for me, it's how can I take the asset or like the outlier of the week we're going to post on Monday. Um, so, and then the cartoon. So it's like the cartoon, the newsletter, like these are nice visual assets that can stand alone as their own post, but you won't get the complete picture unless you sign up for the newsletter. So it's a nice give and get.

Yeah, that makes sense. So you've basically taken what would normally be one long-form piece of content that someone would just reply to and be like, hey, great newsletter this week, thanks. And you've chunked it out in a way that they could share that content, they could copy with taste, if you will, and add in their own take on it. Like here's the best thumbnails of the week, here's why I think they worked. And then that's getting these bite-sized things to be shareable.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But I'm still figuring out. So you guys are the pros here and certainly you, Nathan. So any ideas? We're trying to scale while keeping quality. So open any thoughts.

Let's start with that. Instead of going to questions, let's go, if you were in John's position growing his newsletter right now, what's something that you would try? We'll go right back here with the mic.

Something that's been super helpful for us is just doing, it's no extra work off our back, but doing early release. So telling our, hey, get on my email list. We're dropping this video on the channel in a week, but if you're on my email list, you get it tomorrow.

But then if you get it tomorrow, are you putting out an unlisted link?

Yeah, so we're just putting it unlisted and then just get away.

But the second it gets unlisted views, it triggers the algorithm.

So yes, so we've been told both. We've seen it because we've tested it, right? So we've tested the theory because we do this with member videos too, because we give it to memberships. We have memberships. So we give it to our members and then we take it public.

Got it.

Um, we've seen that it doesn't impact the views from our channel.

Windowing content is smart. That's a good, yeah. Okay. Let me, I got to think about that. I got to think about it.

There's little things in that. I see a lot of people on, like do this on LinkedIn and X, especially where they're saying, hey, here's what's coming in tomorrow's newsletter. You know, and that's part of their flywheel where they're making sure The newsletter comes out Tuesday morning.

Yeah. Monday evening, they always have a post that's a little preview, like, like on social, on social. Tease it.

Yep. And so it's in stories and from there.

Hey, Don. Hey, Nathan. So one thing that has worked well for me and I've seen others do it is to, to gamify your content. So if you have the top 25 thumbnails, what you can do is you you can release a quiz earlier, like, which one do you think performs— performed the best? Or which one of those 3 or 4 do you think is in our top 10 for 2024 or for 2023? And then they'll go and vote, and then, you know, the lead magnet is you'll send them your breakdown of which one it is. So to find the winner or the one that's at the top, they'll have to give their email address.

Got it. So it's a quiz that people, they take to guess the top thumbnails and then the lead magnet is I send them the— Yeah.

And you can have a series of things. You can ask them which one do you think is the best, or you can ask them which hook do you think won in an A/B test we did. And so they'll feel smart for trying to guess, and then they'll be like, hey, I guessed right, and then they can repost that and say, I guessed right.

Yeah, I think it's interesting. Let's go right over here. And what you're thinking, um, just to add on to that, yeah, it's closing the loop, right? So it's, it's involving them in the conversation, right? And then closing the loop and saying, oh, this number of you were actually correct. Uh, right there.

Hi, John.

Um, something we found really effective is PDF guides that are associated with the video.

Okay.

So you said how long was your interview with MrBeast?

90 minutes. Okay.

And how many actionable things do you think he said during that?

Like, I don't know, like, like 15, 20. It was like very like— and by the way, we filmed for 2 hours and like, I'm a big believer in like making it as succinct as possible. So there's a ton of— it was like jam-packed.

So if I were discovered that video, 'cause I wanna learn from MrBeast and I watched that and you had, you know, at the end said, hey, scan this QR code and I'll send you immediately the top 20 takeaways from this episode. Even if I don't wanna join your newsletter, I'm gonna join your newsletter. Really? Yeah, 100%.

What is it about that? That's really interesting. What is it about the fact that you get something written? Is that you don't have to take notes?

Yeah, there's lots of stuff I missed. Or if it's a podcast or whatever, I think having something that is written that I can look at in the future is so— we do this all the time with recipes where it's a PDF download and it's a huge way to attract.

Really?

I mean, our newsletter is, I think, way higher than it should be for that kind of the reach that we have.

I guess just show of hands, how many people who like would want to see like a takeaway of like a PDF guide, holy crap.

So I think what's interesting—

Even if you watch the interview, you'd still want— Holy crap.

I mean, the crowd has spoken. They have opinions on this.

And then would you want, like, how does that lead, like that landing page separate from, like do I set up a new landing page just for that? Like created.news/mrbeast or /mkbhd? Like I do this for—

I would because I want to know the conversion rates on that landing page And I want to track those subscribers. And then I also would then have Kyle. I'd be like, hey, Kyle, how do I then tweak that welcome email based on, hey, thanks so much for signing up from the video with MrBeast. That was so much fun to film. Now that you're here, here are the things that I talk about.

Kyle, let's talk about this in our next meeting. That's great and doable. I got to think about how we bring that into our writing.

'Cause you gotta get it into the system. One other thing on that, if I watch the video—

The police are here 'cause that's too good of advice.

They heard that we're stealing ideas.

Yeah, yeah, too much idea theft, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But one thing that I would wanna know is if I watch a 90-minute video, I have my own notes and takeaways and my aha moments, I wanna know what yours are. And you're not going through the video and be like, oh, Jimmy, that was so good. All right, pause everybody, my aha moment here was this. Totally screw up the flow of the video.

Right, right, right, right, right.

But I want to know and I want to be able to refer back to it. And so I think that that would be great. And so in the hook on it, if you're like, you know, at the end you're like, hey, if you got all the way through the 90 minutes of this, you must absolutely love this. And if you want to know my biggest insights and takeaways, go to created.news/mrbeast and I will give all that to you right now.

Maybe it's good that we're doing this talk after one video and then I have two more with them coming up.

Wow. Let's go one more idea, then we'll go questions.

I think right over here is my highest converting video ever converted at 12.5%, meaning 12.5% of the people who watched the video turned into newsletter subscribers.

That's—

it was a video where I was teaching people how to write a business plan and I had a template that I was using and then they could sign up for my newsletter to get that PDF of the template. So they saw me using it in the video.

It was a template of what again?

A business plan template.

Business plan template.

Yeah, so just whenever you can give them a tool from the video or content from the video in another form that they can take and actually use, but especially if you use it in the video. That one was the highest converting, but I've had a bunch of others that converted at around 10% if I used the resource in the video instead of just talked about it, just said, "Hey, you should download this thing." That's really good.

Here's one other thing, like, if— because I think we even talked about this when we had coffee— is like, I want to do that for every video because everything I have, like, you saw my present, it's like a template tool. Like, um, I don't know if you guys know anybody who's a good, like, ebook writer or, like, can take, like, visuals and put— I just have gone through a few freelancers that I'm like, how do they miss this detail? Or so for me, it's like, I want to do that, but it's like— and there's— we put so much work in the video that I just want to find something like where the quality is that high. Yeah, the quality is that high versus like, did you even watch minute 45 to minute 50? And like, you know, to get that thing that is totally missing from you. So, or needing me like to write everything after having just like gone through the prep at like, so if anybody knows folks who are good at that, and I would love to talk with them.

Yeah, sounds good.

Okay. Of the referral things, I'm just curious what's most interesting. Okay, just say you're like, just raise your hand for your number 1. And again, before I go into the infinite ideas doc is like 8 ways to come up with better ideas that go viral on social media. The second doc is like breakdown of like the top 25 thumbnails, like why they work and how to adapt them and like different categories and checklists. And then the third one is, Outlier videos, like same idea, but for video concepts, like why they took off and how you can adapt them. What's your number one most thing that's interesting? Like, okay, Infinite Ideas. Okay. Thumbnails book. Okay. And Outlier videos. We're split pretty evenly. Yeah, we're split pretty evenly.

There was not a clear winner there. Okay.

And do you feel like one email is fair for Infinite Ideas? 3 and 5, or should I raise them higher, make them lower? Quick wins. So 1, 3, and 5. And then where would you— what number would you put a roast? Like, how hard would you work to refer people to get a personal shoutout?

100.

100? What? You're going to get a lot of them.

Yeah.

Really?

How many of you would love to have your content roasted by John?

Should I start a roasting service?

I mean, for 100 subscribers.

No, it's fine because I have a cohort that we run and I do weekly roasts for their content, but they pay a lot for that kind of stuff. I've always thought if I should pair that offer, but either way, I was— okay, that's 100. Wow, 100. I always saw like the email subscriber thing. I see people's referrals. I'm like, I'm not referring 50 people for a hat. Are you out of your mind? But I get that's why I try to make— you're subscribing to my newsletter for knowledge. I want to give you more knowledge and more hands-on.

I think there's also something in the target audience. This is something that I think about in our business and how lucky, serendipitous, whatever it is that we serve creators. I thought about this early on when people like Pat Flynn and sites like Wellness Mama and others really promoted us. It was sort of like, before I was in the small business world and I'd be at a Chamber of Commerce event or something else, and you'd talk to someone, if they loved your service, they'd tell their friends, and that's like 3 people. And then we worked with Pat, and he loved our service, and he told his friends, and that happened to be like, 1,000 people or 10,000 people. And so in your case, when you're serving creators, it's not like The Skimm or Morning Brew, right, where it's like, oh, I loved it so much, I told 3 people at work, right? Like, we all have audiences, right? And so if we love something, you know, it's a lot easier for us to tell 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people.

Yep.

And so you can set some of those thresholds higher. I love the idea of, of starting low.

Yeah.

And building that momentum. But I think like 100 is much easier to achieve in the creator world than it is for a Morning Brew subscriber.

And maybe that segments it where it's like 1, 3, 5. It's like I give you those easy wins. You're getting started. There's something for the aspiring or emerging creator. And the 100 is like the more like, okay, you have an established audience you're building. I could give you much more nuanced feedback.

Yeah.

Okay. I appreciate that. Cool.

I like it.

Okay.

Let's do some questions. Yeah.

Hey John. Hey.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your team, like who are the key hires on your team and How do you like, where have you seen creators as they're growing, like decision points and like people that have done it well?

Yes. Yeah, great question. So I could talk about that. There's like the two parts of our team is like content and then like the operations side. So I'd say the key hire, like my wife is my business manager now and she manages the partnership. Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. Yeah, she's, she's on it. Like I'm such a people pleaser that I know— don't say that. She's like, No, we need to say that. We need to get their W-9s. We need to get this document. We need to— this is the call. I'm like, thank you, baby. Yeah. And so she stays on top and manages our team. And she's always thinking about— one of the things she taught me is like, okay, this whole idea of process and template has come from her. So that was big because we used to have an external manager. And I could talk about the pros and cons there. but that was huge. Uh, we also have like a content writer that's been big, but content writer, I'd say that, um, and he does a lot of writing, but he also does the first pass at our interviews now. So like, I believe like, um, there's so much more room for podcasts to improve visually. So he goes through it and he's like, okay, um, what are all the moments that we refer to a video that we need to find B-roll? What are the timestamps of those videos? Let me give it to the editor. He goes through and on frame.io, like puts that down. Imagine that for 90 minutes, me and MrBeast are talking about different videos. He's finding every single video link and timestamp at the most interesting points. Like if you look at our videos, I'm not just shoving a piece of B-roll in front of you. No, no, we watched it through or scanned it through and we're finding those few seconds where you see something that's like, oh, I got kind of what this video was about. You know, when MrBeast talks about, oh, one verse, $1 million hotel rooms and all this. And then he said, oh, I adapted it from like this guy who bought like, or the BuzzFeed video, you know, we're finding those moments. So that was big. Then on the creative side, like editors, here's a big learning that we had. There is very few editors who are Swiss Army knife and who can make all these different types of content. So I used to have one editor who I'm like, okay, can you edit the interview and can you edit the intro? No. We now hired a specific intro editor. And again, process-wise, we have the different songs that we use, the different sound effects that we use. And it's not those— people use these Vine booms and the— no, no. It's like— and if anybody wants to talk about sound design and sound packs, we could talk all day about that. But we have an intro editor who makes those feel like movie trailers almost. And then we have editors who do the— now we have one editor who does the body of the interview. And then we have graphic editors. So like the other thing that we'll do when we go through an interview is like, what moment requires a visual graphic? There's 4 quadrants of creators that I've experienced in the past 10 years. What he does first is he mocks up a PowerPoint slide and I look at it, I make notes, I edit it. We send that PowerPoint slide to our editors and they animate it. We used to just say, hey, here's a moment, editor, go make something nice visually. What the hell is this? You know, like, and it wasn't bad quality, it's just like, I have an idea in my mind, like, they have an idea in their mind, it doesn't match up, I need to communicate it. So yeah, and then we have a whole consulting part of our, like, business where, um, like, like, brands or, like, creators hire us to set up their studio or or help make their content. We're trying to do less of that because it takes so much time and I did more of that early on to bootstrap and fund the editing, which took a lot. But yeah, those are kind of like the different parts of the business. Great, John, Nathan, thank you so much. Yeah, question is, do you see some sort of high-level pattern distinction between service-based businesses and product-based businesses? Such that there's a behavior that one should not do and is disproportionately impactful. So there's a top recommendation if you're a service-based business that creates a lot of impact. And then there's a top recommendation for a product base and they don't do as well.

What are we optimizing for? Is this for like to get new customers, attention for it, revenue?

Um, that's a good question. Um, let's say subscribers. Okay, so, so hot, like top funnel leads.

The first thing that I would say on this is the service-based, they're going to have totally different revenue arcs.

Sorry, can I change that?

Should I say for optimizing for referrals? Oh, for referrals. Okay, the service-based business and the product-based are going to have totally different revenue arcs. The product-based business is probably going to have this long, slow ramp, and it's going to take a lot longer to build up. And the service-based business is going to be able to have much more linear growth and start much earlier. So it's not an answer to your question, but it's just important characteristics to watch for. And the worst thing you could do is compare the results you're getting in your product-based business to a service-based business and vice versa, and assume that those graphs are going to be anything like each other. Yeah.

I actually think about that a lot because I see a lot of creators now launching these products that they haven't done any R&D for or they haven't really thought about and they're low quality products. And the few that everyone talks about, it's like, oh, we could just launch the next Feastable or Prime or Jimmy launching his software company ViewStats. For me, I think services is actually really interesting if you're good at building process internally. So yeah, we're actually thinking about a few service-based businesses as well. I mean, I was actually telling Nathan, I feel comfortable telling you guys as well, in a few weeks we're launching an accounting business for creators because we find that the way they manage their books and their paperwork is really disorganized. And so yeah, that's a service-based business we're thinking about starting. If anybody's interested in that, feel free to reach out. And we're just starting with a small group of creators as clients just to really perfect it and optimize it. And then once we figure out that process, as I was saying, then we scale that service. But I'm a big believer that services, if you can do that process right and find a niche, there's a lot more opportunity there.

My question is for both of you, what are your systems and frameworks for handling uncertainties and unknowns in your efforts?

In what specifically? Because there's so many unknowns, like in content, in business hiring, like deciding to start that specific business for accounting for creators, for example? Oh, that to me is like it comes down to do I feel an acute pain and do I feel like that pain is not solved in the market? So we've gone through account— we didn't set out and say we're going to start an accounting business. We've worked with so many accountants and I'm like, how do you not know what this line item means? Or like, why are you— you just asked for my fax number? Like, what? Like, what era are we talking about here? You know, or like, you know, you didn't know that you could build a business on YouTube? Like, or like, you can't help me find my ROI on a video per video basis? And just things we've had to build like in-house. So I felt that pain. The other way I'd say I deal with uncertainty and find like opportunities, like moments like this, the fact that you guys said you would recommend 100 people to get a roast, is honestly making me think about that roasting business. And I'm like, maybe like if you— I don't know, a monthly service where I review your content, give you feedback so you don't have to like get sugarcoated feedback from friends. I would pay for that. How much would you guys pay for that a month?

$1,000.

$1,000? You know, I'll say this right now. I'll start that business. No, no, really. I'll do it with just 5 people. If you're legitimately interested and want to do for $1,000 a month, email me at hi@youshy.com. I'm serious about that. My normal public email is john@youshy.com and hi, like my wife, I see it too. Yeah. Hi@youshy.com.

5 people at $1,000 a month. I like it.

Yeah.

And that'll be the early access pricing because the pricing will go up to $2,500 a month for the next cohort. I'm making that up, but it will happen.

I'll take a look at the ad.

Let's go right here. Hi. I'm curious about your main motivations. What keeps you going every day?

My daughter.

That's a good one.

I just became a dad. And so I mean, I say all of that— thank you.

Yeah.

I'm a kid of immigrants. My parents gave me an amazing upbringing. I want to be able to do that for my daughter. If we have another kid and just, yeah. Same for you, Nathan, that question.

It's not as good as that, but no, I think a lot about the mission for the company. We exist to help creators earn a living. And I know it was so transformational for me to learn that making money is a skill and that really the combination of hundreds of little skills and you can master those. Just like you could master playing an instrument or something else. And when I realized that, I was like, doesn't— does other people don't know this? And it was just like, okay, I'm going to get very good at learning those skills and let's teach those skills. And let's like, when you get to the point that money and income is not a point of stress or concern in your life, it's an absolute game changer and you have that feeling of agency and control. And I'm like, I just want to bring that to as many people as possible.

John, so I'm in my second year as a creator. I'm on YouTube. And I've been really fortunate. My channel's kind of taken off, but I talk about retirement planning for people 50+. But one of the things that worries me, and I'd love your thoughts on this, is scary titles work a heck of a lot better than hopeful titles. And I'm sad that I've learned that because now a third of my titles are scary. Once you've learned that, it's hard to unlearn that and not lean on that lever. What's your thoughts on that?

Can I look at your channel?

Yeah, it's Azul Wells, A-Z-U-L, Azul Wells.

Okay. 5 Reasons to Retire as Soon as You Can. Okay. Average retire— Oh, you put an emoji in a title. Why? Because it worked.

Because everybody told me to take it out, but it was going off. It took off.

You put 2 emojis. You put a dollar bag emoji in.

Because I'm over 50 and my generation does that. That's when my daughter says, you know, you're a boomer because you put emojis in your text.

I know, but I would not put that in your title. But it's doing well. But, you know, almost a million views. I know, I know, I know. You always have to wonder, you know, especially when it's like compounding that much. But average retiree income, how do you compare? Two question marks. Okay. I'm sorry. I look at every character count when it comes to a title. 8 Things to Stop Doing After 60 and Have More. These are— I also want to qualify. He's crushing it. This is 1.1 million views, 938,000 views, 821,000 views. So give him a round of applause. Okay, I have two trains of thought. I could give you more thoughts specifically about your content, but let me answer your question first. Yes, negativity sells. Like, you know, it's age as old as time. If it bleeds, it leads, you know. But I think there's a difference between like packaging and like the delivery of the content within that packaging. And if you feel like— I have a question. How many of your headlines on just a rough estimate, are negative? Like—

A third right now.

A third. How many videos are about, or like feel like they have a negative tone or talk about it? Like they talk about something like negative or like are very overly pessimistic.

I usually unpack it in the first 30 to 45 seconds. So I go with a negative headline, but then I spin it into a positive.

Okay, so probably way less than a third.

Right. It's probably 10% are, you know, the Federal Reserve just made it impossible to retire. Right. And, but then I'll unpack that and say why that doesn't matter. Yes, interest rates are high, but it doesn't matter. And here's why.

You're playing the packaging game. We all have to play it, you know? And so if the thing is, the thing is, if you were to say my packaging and my titles are negative and then about the content, you didn't say the thing about unpacking and making it optimistic or giving people like, skills and tools and techniques to unpack that, you'd be like, no, no, yeah, my content is 50% negative. I'd be like, whoa, whoa, now we're leaning into like appealing to a certain audience and demographic that may start getting a bit uncomfortable and unsustainable. But the fact that you're playing the packaging game, and the truth is if you don't do it, a lot of your competitors will. And there's already things I'm seeing that I think you could dial it back because like there's certain ways of framing it. Again, syllables, emojis. I'm picking this stuff out, but all of it makes a big difference. And even as I'm thinking about your thumbnails, like, you know, we could go on and on about like, just like, I like to think about the 18% rule, which is like when you're designing a thumbnail, don't just design it and then shrink your Photoshop page down to 18%. Make it really small and see if you can see the different elements. And I'm looking at a lot of yours, they're good, but some of them, like, I'm like, it's hard for me to see the the words at a quick glance. So I think what you're doing is working, but there's definitely room to improve and update the packaging and still use a bit of— I don't want to use negativity, but a bit of that and get people in, but then make them stay with positivity. Okay. Wow.

I love it.

Great.

Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But good job. That's a great— you've defined your niche. You're growing. That's exciting stuff. Yeah. What's your philosophy around chasing views and what the algorithm wants versus maintaining quality? I would just kind of like to hear that because like we heard in one of these talks, if you just chase the views, you end up being porn on the video side. And if you just chase the conversions on the newsletter side, you end up being like direct marketing copy. So In the short term, there's a discussion. In the long term, it's all the same. You know, I think like, it's like you could play a few games for the algorithm. You can monitor and like, what, like, oh, what did YouTube just release? What did Instagram release? Let me jump on that. But in the long term, to me, it's like the same. The real, like maybe the question within the question is like, how can you create stuff that you really believe in, not just stuff that like works and you believe in? And I think the truth is for that, it's kind of like experimentation. There's a lot of things that I wanted to do on YouTube but just didn't take off. So I've had to just clarify those formats that are, because at the end of the day, it's like, okay, it's a business, how do you make it sustainable? Um, but like new ways, like I've wanted to have it, have a draw on screen format for a while. I was like, when I get a big interview and I could like do it, I'm gonna launch it with and then somehow this all happened, you know? So it's like, it's kind of timing, planning, and knowing that like introducing one new thing for every like 5 videos within the same format, that's work because it's like, yeah, people come to expect and you're building a habit. John, could you please share some insights, something that you fall back on, something that just stuck in your head from your time at Instagram and YouTube? Yeah. The Met Gala is to Instagram as VidCon was to YouTube. And what I say about that is that the DNA of a platform matters a lot and who is big on each platform. And I'll never forget, for my 5 years at YouTube, every single year we'd be planning like the big product launches for VidCon. We'd be going there like trying to like the creators, the people who were starting in their bedrooms or dorm rooms and all that, like, like how can we talk with them? At Instagram, it now has become more about that. But for my first few years there, we're like, Okay guys, the Kardashians are going to be at the Met Gala and Taylor Swift said she wants this feature launch and we got to ship it by the Met Gala, guys. Like all this stuff. I'm like, wow. Okay, so celebrity drives more of like what's going on at Instagram, at least back then. Creators became more of a focus. But what's interesting is that there's creators, there's celebrities, there's friends and family content. Like there's so many things that I think like for Instagram, it just, like there's a lot of like different stakeholders versus like YouTube. It was like, okay, like, you know, your cousin or your friend may not have a YouTube channel versus they may have an Instagram and they may be posting on there. And I'll give— can I give one tip with that too that's more tactical? If you're ever thinking about launching a campaign around the holidays, think twice if you're going to do that on Instagram.

Why?

Because when does Instagram content supply go way up during holidays. Your friends and family who haven't been posting in months are all of a sudden posting their selfies and their food photos during Christmas break and all that. So if you're launching something, you're all of a sudden competing with more content being delivered to your followers. Whereas during other parts of the year where it's more dormant or quiet, it's just creators, celebrities, and brands posting. So that was another thing I realized. Like, I mean, I could go on and on. I could compare them like Yeah, but that's one thing more, yeah, pop culture level, one thing more tactical, if that's helpful. And then we find like we as creators are much bigger on Instagram than we are on YouTube.

It seems like, you know, almost everyone in this room has chosen one or the other.

Do you know of any creators who are doing both of those particular platforms really well? I think it's easier to go from YouTube to Instagram and because like now the answer to that question is like, oh, they're repurposing their Shorts. But I'd have to dig into like case studies 'cause I think the real art of Instagram and where it has like a bit of an edge is like DMs, you know? And like think about it this way, like Instagram has become the modern business card between creators. You go to an event and people who aren't comfortable sharing their, you know, phone numbers, they may share LinkedIn, but they're probably sharing their Instagram accounts, you know? And they're probably having a DM conversation. And a lot of collaborations on YouTube start in the DMs of Instagram. You know, so I think if you've mastered a DM strategy and there's like ManyChat and a lot of things for that, that could help. But yeah, I'd have to give you a clear answer other than like the reels are popping off and so are their shorts.

But yeah, like one thing just off the cuff. So I love you and I think you're amazing. I have to tell Nathan, this is the reason I bought the ticket.

Oh yeah.

So I told, I told John I would tell you this because it's true. The reason I bought the ticket was for John. But like, you're so polished and you're such a good invert. Interviewer and you're just amazing. But what if the challenge was like, we all want to be roasted? You do something live. No one goes live in your space. It's all polished. It's all so nice. It's all great. What if there's just more live, raw content of like, you're already really great and you're already really polished. I know you want all these graphics on screen and it's so good. But just like a 15-minute live of a teardown of somebody.

So that's, I think, as I'm thinking about this more, this is crazy if this comes to fruition because of this session. But it would be a live session and I would take like this group of like, I don't know if it's 5 or 10, like I'll feel it out and it would be a live session. So I would prepare, I would have a queue and I would roast them live. So you learn hands-on about why your content can be better and you could learn from the other people that I roast too. I would do it all live.

I love that. I would love to do that for ConvertKit too. Live teardown of newsletters. Thanks.

Oh, there you go. If you're interested, I'm dead serious at this point. I don't know if I've just escalated my own feelings because of all this response, but Yeah. Oh, you know what? Created with John Yoo Shai, roasted with John Yoo Shai.

Ooh, I like it. The two sides. I don't know.

I don't know. But yeah, seriously, I'm serious about this.

On that note, we should let everyone go to lunch.

But thank you so much. Thank you. That was a lot of fun.

If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search Billion Dollar Creator and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.