I Helped Ex-YouTube Employee Grow His Business in 52mins | 037

You've been able to build your business to a massive level really quickly. 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, the newsletter that you're growing now. But there was an idea that you threw out live.

I'll roast a piece of content. And then people were like, well, I'll actually pay $1,000 a month. I'm like, what? And I've since got 9 emails so far.

So you have a $9,000 a month recurring revenue business if you want it.

But I think about like, what's the process in place where I feel like I'm overdelivering for those people who sign up?

Let's jump on the whiteboard and see if we can sketch out this business.

I see a lot of you doing this. Don't do that. Do this instead.

I'd pay double.

Really? And then maybe I like categorize these by verticals. You can learn what are the mistakes that other people are making. If I were to offer this right now, would you pay $12,000?

Happily. Customer number one. Wow. So, John, you've been able to build your business to a massive level really quickly, right? You're over 400,000 subscribers on YouTube. You've got the newsletter that you're growing now. And what I love about it is you have this whole business behind it. It's not like as a solo creator you're just doing it. You've built a team, you're taking it very seriously, and I want to dive into the tactics and what's working and let's do it. Just what you've done.

So yeah, I'm happy to dive into like how to get those easy wins as a creator trying to build a newsletter, how I built the YouTube business, what other businesses we have, how the newsletter's feeding into that, and also just get your advice about what other things we should be doing. So hopefully other folks who are watching can benefit as well.

Yeah, let's do a few of those. Those takeaways that you had on growing the newsletter from YouTube. And then I want to get into— there was an idea that you threw out live.

We'll get into it in a second.

I'm not going to tease it yet. Yeah, but like, let's workshop if that is an actual viable business that we should do.

Yeah, I love that as a, as a cliffhanger. And who knows, maybe we'll look back at this in a year like that was like the business, the biggest thing to come out of this, even though there's so many things. So yeah, so first things first, I think the biggest things I took away in terms of easy wins for creators to have when they're starting newsletters is if you're doing an interview format, especially, I think having takeaways of that interview as the lead magnet or the thing on your landing page that gives people that extra push to sign up if they're just viewing the video. And, and it's saying that right now, it sounds a bit obvious, but for me, until I saw everybody in the crowd, like kind of raised their hand saying they wanted that. You know, as I was kind of going back and forth, I didn't— it didn't hit me that a lot of people are watching, like listening, not watching, you know, a lot of people may be watching, but more passively not taking notes. And a lot of people may be taking notes and not realizing that maybe I had different takeaways or maybe there's things that happened behind the scenes, like with my interview with MrBeast that I'd put down in that doc that they could get if they sign up for the newsletter as an extra download, as an extra lead gen. So I think that was the first thing I thought about is like, if it's an interview, can I have a takeaways doc that if you, hey, you just listened to my interview with MrBeast, go to this page created.news/mrbeast to get my like PDF, like my two-pager of takeaways. Or if it's an explainer video, it's a solo video where I'm like, you know, ex-YouTube employee explains 8 ways to grow on YouTube today. Like that video that I put up on my channel, having like the template or the tools or the things that I talked about, you in written form. To me it was almost so easy that I ignored it. But hearing the people say, no, I want that.

Right.

I think we'll do that and it'll help grow our newsletter.

Well, and people talking about it being at the very end of the video or near the end of the video. Yeah. And so your target market for that is the super fans who have gone through so much of this content.

Yes, yes, yes. And it still like keeps like enough room in the beginning for retention. And if you have a sponsor, you could still put it. So I thought that was really interesting and I'm excited to do that. And Yeah, I can't wait.

Yeah. What were some of the other things that you were thinking like, I might try this?

I think the other thing is like having really good referrals that build on the reason why people subscribed. And so, you know, my plan going into this was like, okay, I want to have like digital deliverables. Yeah. And having 4 of them, one of them, if you refer one person, is kind of like this Infinite Ideas ebook I call, which is like 8 ways to grow on social media and how to find better ideas. 'Cause if you don't have a good idea or you don't know how to find them, you're just gonna be starting with an uphill battle every time. So that's one ebook. The other one is like breaking down YouTube's like top 30 thumbnails, why they work, the psychology and checklist behind making your own thumbnail. And the third one was a like top video outliers ebook. And the fourth one, which just, I couldn't believe the reaction to that, um, was like Hey, if you refer like, I don't know, 100 people to the newsletter, I'll roast a piece of content. Yeah. And then people were like, well, I'll actually pay for that. I'm like, I'm like, oh, all right. And then somebody's like, like during this session, like this fireside chat we were having on stage, they're like, oh, I'll pay $1,000 a month. I'm like, oh, okay. And then more people, what was it like 15 people or something?

There was quite a few who were like, no, I will pay for that right here.

Yeah. And then like in the 90 minutes since, like I was like, okay, anybody who's interested, email me hi@ushy.com, hi@ushy.com. And I've since got 9 emails so far saying we'll sign up. Yeah.

So you have a $9,000 a month recurring business if you want it.

Yeah. I need to think about how to create the process and overdeliver on those rows and all that. But that was crazy because I was like, okay, I want to deliver that as something for a referral. And then it turned into something that Oh no, we'll pay.

Right.

So maybe that's another part of the business. In addition to like we have sponsorships, we have consulting.

But this, this roast idea is so interesting. One thing that I'm wondering is based on the scale of your business, say we got this to 10 people. Is $10,000 a month like pretty meaningful in your business at this point, or is that too small to have a big impact?

It's definitely meaningful. I mean, both as a business owner and as a dad. And now that I have a baby girl to take care of and we're like thinking about her future life and education. Yeah, it's definitely meaningful. The The thing I think about though is like, that's meaningful revenue. What does that mean for my time? But I think about like, what's the process in place where I feel like I'm overdelivering for those people who sign up so I can review their content, I can review the thumbnail, the title, the packaging, and provide like clear alternatives. 'Cause I wanna make sure that whenever I give advice or I'm giving audits, it's never abstract.

Right.

And I'm being very hands-on. I'm showing how to change it so that can meaningfully drive more views, and then more conversions in their business. So I'm excited about it, but also I think the right process has to be put in place so it doesn't like take so much time that it takes away from like creating the interviews and content that's having the big growth that we're seeing right now.

Yeah, I like it. Well, if you're up for it, let's jump on the whiteboard and see if we can sketch out this business. So the criteria of our flywheel here is we need it to not take that much of your time. We need it to be at least decently scalable, and get to, you know, meaningful revenue. And then it has to deliver a lot of value for the clients.

Yes, yes. Sound good? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Let's do it.

Let's grab some markers.

So I think right now our overall, like, brand name is Created. And so I was thinking like this will be called, like, it's called Created with John Yoo Shy. Okay. And so I was like, okay, if this part of the business, maybe it's called Roasted.

Created and roasted.

Yeah, we'll see, yeah. And then so, okay, so if the price point is—

What do you think about, you threw out $1,000 a month on stage, what do you think about that price point?

Or they threw it out there. They threw it out there. It sounds like a big number and it definitely is. I always try to think about like, okay, well, my time, like what does that mean? Like in terms of like versus a consulting session or like, A lot of brands bring us on as retainer and we'll do a sponsored post, we'll do monthly consulting, and then maybe there's a speaking event thrown in there. So right now, let's just say going with that, they're like, you know.

Yeah, so I wanna dive into that for a second because there's really two parts to this equation in the price. So if I throw this up here, and we're trying to come to price, then we need to, there's going to be, our costs, which are primarily time. So I'm going to throw in the two sides.

Yep.

We've got time and then we've got value.

Yep.

And so, you know, maybe it's time and cost.

Yeah.

And so the intersection of these two things brings us to what we can actually charge.

Yes.

What things would you need to deliver on the value side where you're just like, this is above and beyond what anyone would expect?

Yeah. Well, actually, what's so awesome about this is we kind of build this business in real time, like What would you value as somebody, you're a founder, you're making content, like it's a monthly service where you know you'll get a deep audit and roast on that piece of content. Let's say we're primarily talking about a YouTube video where there's a lot of parts to it, the title, thumbnail, intro, and then body of it. What would you want as a monthly like deliverable to feel like you're getting around that? Price point?

Yeah, so the first thing is, this isn't quite the answer to your question, but what I'm realizing is the amount of money I already spend on content. Yeah, right, like I just built up this whole studio. Yeah, you know, spending $7,000 or $8,000 a month just on the teams like doing the editing, my time. So my all-in cost on content right now related to this that you would be roasting is probably call it $18,000 to $20,000 a month if I'm valuing my own time.

Yes. Yeah.

And so basically I want to see in that value to make it worthwhile to pay $1,000 a month. Yeah. I'm looking for probably a 10 to 20% increase over my baseline.

Yep.

Of performance. Right. So it's not actually— you don't have to make my videos twice as good.

Yeah.

Right.

So I'm just going to say 10 to 20% and maybe make your process more efficient because I'm already thinking about like you know, like, how are you even making these videos beyond the output, and how can I help? Because there's a lot of things that we've learned, like, it's like training an editor on an intro versus the body of an interview, or the body of a video, is actually very different. And there's different things that you should tell an intro editor to make those better versus the body editor.

So I think a 10-20% increase in performance would be good. But then actually what you're saying is If you, in addition to that, if you give me a decrease in effort to produce.

Yeah.

Like that's worth it as well.

Yep.

I don't know what other things. I feel like I'm relatively new to the space.

Yeah.

So what other things should I be looking for in the value?

Let's get specific. Like how many things do you want me to roast for that price point?

So I'm putting out a video a week. Okay. So I would love the, like I want a fast cycle. Okay. Of feedback.

Yeah. Right.

And so I want, you know, if we put out a video and you roast it, I don't want to make the same mistake.

Right, right.

You know, and so I want that you're like, okay, you mostly got the idea from the roast. Yeah. But you missed this part of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that might be too often because there's a lead time in videos.

Right, right, right.

And all of that. But I would love 4 pieces of content roasted a month.

Oh, wow. Okay. So I think that's a lot. That's a lot because I'm going to go in depth with each one. That makes sense. You know, And the other thing is, if you're making the same type of content once a week, it may be the same mistakes repeating. So I like—

And you're like, I told you this last week, and we're saying, yeah, but we actually made that video 3 weeks ago.

Right.

And the cadence doesn't make sense.

Yeah, so I think it would be— So 1 piece per month? I feel like I would wanna do 2.

Okay.

But I mean, let me ask you the question. Does 1 feel too little if it's in-depth and you learn?

You know, the way I would position it is less around— we're doing one roast per month, uh-huh, with a featured piece of content.

Yep.

And you might pull up some YouTube analytics for the whole channel.

Yeah.

As you do it.

Yeah.

And you're like, oh, here's some of the other things that I noticed, right? So you focus the roast on a single piece of content.

Yeah.

But there might be a way that we package it so I don't feel like I'm paying $1,000 for a video roast.

Yeah.

I like, maybe there's a little bit of a channel audit in there as well, which might only take you an additional 10 minutes.

Yeah.

I don't know, what do you think about that?

I think that could, but I try to think about how that becomes repeatable, because like a channel audit you could do once, and then maybe once they improve, you could do another time. I guess here's another question that goes into it, and like if folks are listening in the comments, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts as well. Would you want to get feedback before you put it out or after the video?

Oh, that's interesting. I mean, before.

Before.

Ideally.

So you can know how to—

Yeah, 'cause if it's like, hey, this video would've been amazing, but you kinda screwed up the intro.

Right, right.

And it's like, better luck next time. So I mean, would we put that down of feedback before?

I mean, I wanna, for value, I wanna over-index on what's ideal for you.

I think, yeah.

And then when it comes to time and cost, I wanna figure out what's sustainable for me. Yep. So if you, that seemed like a pretty, like, that was a pretty clear answer, like you value before.

Yep.

The thing I think about with that is like, okay, let's multiply that by 5 creators. They all want me to talk about before, all of their upload schedules are on different timeline.

Right.

How do I batch?

You need to be able to batch this. Right, so it's over here, we need a batch process.

Right, right. So feedback before on everyone's different, schedule makes me like a bit like nervous.

One thing is that I think what we have to say is that you, for this to work, it has to be in your schedule, not theirs.

I mean, that's, I kind of, but I still want to—

the rules here, right?

I think so, yeah. For me to do this sustainably, because otherwise it's like, I don't know, maybe that's like a different service where it's like 48-hour turnaround, but I, I want to be able to do stuff that I could commit to.

'Cause you also don't want to have all of this freedom as a creator and build your business and then—

Get a video where it's like, that will take significant time to go in depth and get feedback on. And so I think it has to be, yeah, it has to be batched. And therefore it's like, I'm trying to think of if it's—

I think it has to be on your schedule.

Let's say Nathan, if you submit feedback of a video, and like before, how, like, would you wait 2 weeks to put it out? If that's like, maybe I'm thinking about a rotation cycle where it's like roasts come in on the 1st and 15th of every month. Submit before. Would you, would a 2-week window?

'Cause you might move some episodes around.

To fit in.

You're like, hey, there's this one episode that is gonna be good, but like, we're not expecting amazing things from you. Versus I got this one creator in as a guest and I really want to nail this. And so I'd switch it around so that—

The higher priority comes to me.

So the higher priority comes to you. Yeah, so I think one piece of content per month. 'Cause we'll learn the lessons from it. So I like the first and the 15th.

For one piece of content or still talking about two?

No, I think for one.

For one.

Because I think you're right that the timing of it, or like the lessons learned will be applicable to so much more.

Yeah.

Especially if you had that as part of your, yeah, your bit, like the recurring takeaways that I want you to have are like, here's feedback specific to this video.

Yeah.

And this is applicable, you know, beyond that.

Yeah.

So we'll just go first and then 15th.

And, and therefore, like if let's say somebody submits on the 3rd, I have until the 15th. Ideally, I'm like, maybe I have to have a window of like—

Yeah, there's 3 days before.

3 days before. Then on the 12th, so the dates of delivery are 1st and 15th, or maybe it's like, those are the dates you have to have it in. Then for me, I know I have to set a, like, maybe it's the 16th and the 2nd, like a day in between to sit down and go through all the stuff that have been submitted.

Right.

And give in-depth feedback, so that way, within like 48 hours of the deadlines, people get their deliverable.

Yeah.

Which is the audit, the roast.

Yeah, I think that would work really well because then you could batch it.

Yeah.

I think like my ideal for you is in this business we can get to something like— I'm trying to think of this as even possible.

Yeah.

5 hours twice a month equals $25,000.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Like that's where this is just a home run of a business. Even if you're like, oh, I'm not going to scale it further. Like you think about the security you can give your family, your team, payroll, all of that stuff. If you're like, hey, I know I always have this $25,000 a month coming in. But then a total of 10 hours a month is like, yeah, you can consistently commit to that without being like, oh, I committed to 10 hours a week and now Jimmy's like, hey, let's go do a shoot.

And you're like, oh, but the roast. You do the roast at 10 PM from your hotel room. That's not gonna work. Right.

Is there— I mean, I just threw that out there of like 5 hours twice a month equals $25,000.

Yeah.

As we're dreaming, does that sound about right or?

Okay, so the deliverable right now is like, I'm trying to think about like it's— do you use Frame.io?

We do, yeah.

What if I took your video or you send it to me in a Frame link and I left notes on it? Yeah. Or would you like a Google Doc? No, no, no, I mean Frame is fantastic. Okay, so let's go like a Frame. So what you could expect is you submit as a frame link.

Yeah.

So that way, like, I have it ready to watch. I don't have to like worry about the uploading process. I'm watching it and I'm giving my notes per timestamp. Yeah. Right. So that's one deliverable. Let me— before I go on and just try to go into overdeliver mode, if that happens once a month with a video for this price point, is that enough?

I think so. I think it will filter out it'll filter your demographic some, right? Because what I'm realizing is I would actually get 2 subscriptions to the service because I would do one for my personal brand and I would do one for the ConvertKit team.

Got it.

Because I'm already paying multiple full-time people to produce all this content. So if you're adding on $1,000 a month to that, like it's fairly insignificant. Now, so I think $1,000 a month for this one deliverable, one video is totally worth it. But you will filter out some people. Like, this is not a beginner service. It's not intended to be. And so you just have to be unashamed about that. That someone's like, that's so expensive. And you're like, well, we'll get into the watching publicly thing, which I think could be interesting. Well, what I was just thinking is, as we play with the price point, now, if you're doing feedback and roasts on videos when they're live on YouTube, that feels like a perfect thing to do in public that other people can learn from. Either everyone can, or maybe specifically only the other members of this get access to it. And there might be something like, hey, if you want your videos roasted in private, that's $2,000 a month. Right, because maybe you're a brand that really cares about exactly what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't want your rough drafts public.

You don't want your rough drafts public, yeah. And so you could have some price differentiation based on that. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves.

What do you, it sounds like another deliverable could be, I'll put an asterisk by this, but it's like, access to other roasts.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

And what does that look like? Do you want to see the frame links of those people?

It's not just that you're giving me one roast per month.

Yeah.

If you had 10 clients in this, we're saying 25 clients, right? I'm getting access to 25 roasts a month.

Yeah.

You know, I may not consume them all, right? But that's pretty phenomenal. You just give everyone, hey, you can do private roasts. If you send a frame link, yeah, if you want to do public roast, send me the finished YouTube video.

Got it.

And you could, you could play around with that.

And what would, I guess, what would be the roast or the feedback there? Because if it's public, I could do two things. One, I could put it in frame and respond there, or I could do a live reaction of it. Yeah.

I mean, either one would be super interesting, but I think there's a lot of value in the access.

There is.

Yeah. The roasts. Okay.

And then maybe I like categorize these by verticals.

Yeah.

So if you're like, okay, like, like if a founder channel versus a cooking channel versus a food channel.

Right.

You can learn what are the mistakes that other people are making.

I like that.

Yeah, that's really interesting. So it's like the more this service exists, the more like the library of content becomes interesting, as long as people know they're opting in to having their rough drafts shared. And maybe, I guess, I guess there's two versions of this. There's like private, semi-private, and public. Like, and semi-private is this where it's like other paying customers get access to other paying customers' rows, but that's semi-private, and then private is like, no, no, no, just, I don't want my Framelink shared with anyone. And I'm trying to think, like, I guess people would like to opt out, maybe they have to pay more, 'cause they're kind of like, by doing that— They're not delivering value to you. They're not resending value to the community. Yeah. So, how much would you value So I think these two can be like the original price point. How much would you value if you're like, I don't want my stuff to be accessed by anyone else?

At first I was thinking I'd pay double.

Really? To make it private? I think so. Okay.

Well, it's hard because I personally, like, I'm working public on everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. Yeah.

But I think, I think brands would for sure.

Yeah.

And so it's less of the private package and it's more of like the brand or the business package. I'd probably put it at $2,500.

Month. Whoa, okay, wow.

Because if you think about it, like, what else they're spending money on in their business. Yeah, if, if a company is saying we're going to start a YouTube channel and take it seriously, yeah, I guarantee they're spending at least $25,000 a month.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so you're saying, hey, like, let's make sure this is effective, right? They might only sign up for a certain amount of time. Yeah, you know, but the library of roasts, you know, there's this idea of like all this content is available for free online. Maybe there's other reaction videos and roasts and all that you could learn from. But no HR department wants to write a payroll check to someone where the memo line says researching free stuff on the internet.

Right, right.

It's totally not free anymore.

Yeah.

And so I think it's worth a lot. Okay. I think we, you know, let the market decide that.

Yeah. So let me just, to be determined, but I'll put like some kind of like upcharge versus the—

versus that.

Yeah.

So going back to like on the deliverables or like the end state, I think what we're trying to say is like 10 hours equals $25,000. If we could design this, I mean, really, probably at this stage, you know, 5 hours equaling $10,000 would be amazing. But like we want to build a system that can get us to that, right? Yeah, there's definitely some price discrimination, right, of we've got two packages. Yeah, anyone who's followed my work for a long time knows I love multiple packages and pricing because there's this saying of like, where's the best place to sell a $3,000 watch? Next to a $20,000. Yeah, and all of a sudden it's like, oh well, $3,000.

It's like seeing different wine like listed on a menu.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're like, oh, there's a $25 bottle or $40, right? Oh, $40 is so expensive, but if it's $40 and $200, you're like, I think the $40 sounds good.

Yep, yep. And also, this kind of like, these price points I usually never even think about, let alone like charge, and it makes me like feel like I have a bit of a way to segment, 'cause then I have my course that goes to much more aspiring creators and it's much cheaper and more affordable. So I feel like, yeah, this is maybe the high ticket.

And you might include some of these public roasts in your course, which could give you, like that could be part of that flywheel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Like $1,000 monthly, you would submit one video that hasn't been published yet on Frame, and I would give you detailed notes. Yeah. You get access to other roasts. Yeah. And you feel like that would deliver enough value?

I think so.

For one video, because initially you started off and you said like two videos.

Yeah, because I think the access to other roasts and realizing that I can only incorporate so much feedback.

Got it. Yeah.

Yeah. And the overlap of the feedback. I think what would be interesting is because we're batching this on the first and the 15th.

Yeah.

If you did a quick summary video of what you found interesting, you're like, and maybe this is 3 minutes long.

Yeah.

You're like, hey everybody, it's the first of the month. I've got, well, in this case, we've, let's say we have 25 clients. Yeah. So you drop 12 videos.

Yeah.

In this, you're like, your videos are all delivered. The 2 that I thought were most interesting are this one and this one.

Yeah.

Here's the key insight. If you watch nothing else over these 2 weeks, watch that section because that's something that you can all learn from.

I see. So it's almost like, it's kind of like this, but with like key takeaways for everyone. So it's like key takeaways. So it's almost like I'm, like you could go through and look at it, but I'm giving you the highway to—

The TL;DR.

The TL;DR.

Yeah. And you can make that super quick. Yeah. Right? Like this is a 3-minute video. Yeah. You know, you're just hitting record on it.

Speaking of video, what do you value more, a Frame Link as an audit or a video reaction audit? It's a good question.

I don't know. I think I'd want to try it out. Ali Abdaal talks about this of like, you know, optimizing for fun, right? Feel-good productivity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would be more curious of like, which is more fun to you?

It's such a, yeah, I'm trying to think that through, 'cause like, one, like, for me to do a video roast, I need to make sure I'm in my set, in my studio, and like—

Yeah, the Frame one, you could be on a plane.

On a plane, do it, and so there's more flexibility. And then also think about for the end user, Frame is sometimes better because it's like you could kind of see the notes in detail for those specific timestamps. But then like, I'd probably like go through and watch and stop and give, like talking, I could give more notes in real time. And I've also found that like the video response, it's fascinating to see somebody's eyes and body language as they watch your work. So it's like you could see boredom from somebody's face much more easily than, hey, I got bored during this part. But then it's also like, hey, like if I'm like talking about—

[Speaker] You then have to intuit that they, right? Like it might be easy for you because you've studied this a whole bunch, but someone else might be like, I don't know, he just seemed—

Same level of interesting. Yeah, or, but then the benefit of frame is like, do you have too much headroom? Move it in 20%. Make it feel like more intimate with that person. This angle is just not working. Do you have the other shot and just use that camera? Your audio feels muffled here. See if you could add more noise cancellation or like, you know? So I guess it's the same takeaways for the audience, it's just a matter of how I wanna deliver it. But it sounds like for you, you didn't have conviction on it.

I think either one would be fine. Okay, all right, that's good. You could record a quick video talking over your notes, right? So you go through it in Frame and record a quick video and say, hey, here's the things that I noticed. This is the most important point. If you felt like that extra personal touch was necessary, I don't know, you know, I would just play with that.

Okay, got it. So if you got to the main deliverable here, if you got a detailed Frame link on either the like 2nd or 16th, like after you submitted within either window, what do you feel like that is enough to warrant, yeah, like the monthly subscription.

Yeah, I think it's, it's this plus the access, right? The roast, right? And yeah, $1,000.

Yeah. And then this is always evergreen. So it's always there. Yeah. But I guess this is the thing that I'd also deliver. Like, hey guys, I just roasted like the last like 10 videos from those of you who submitted. Just wanted to give like a key takeaway that I think applies to like different industries and verticals. I see a lot of you doing this. Don't do that. Do this instead. Yeah. As part of like the Exactly.

Eventually you could add— this is getting way ahead of ourselves— but you could, you know, highlight the best roasts, you know, later on. Or if someone— this is probably way more than we need to do— but you could go back and say, you know, eventually do before and after. Yeah, right. Because hopefully someone will ask, right, on the feedback. And so, yeah, there's just— there's an interesting library of evergreen content that can come from this. It's more of a value add in the future. Got it. And then, you know, if my video team's like, "Oh, we might cancel this 'cause we feel like we learned things." Right.

Well, like, we don't wanna lose access to that library of content.

Yeah. You know?

Fair enough. So there could be some good things there. And then just to clarify, like, so for this, it's like feedback before. Is it still more valuable?

Like, if you had it— I think so, 'cause everyone's, this is all people who are taking YouTube seriously. Yeah. So yeah, the more I think about it—

Before. Before you put it out. And then you would take my feedback and actually change the video. Yeah. Do you feel like, 'cause there's so many different ways feedback can be taken, what if it like, they take the video, like, and I guess like they don't implement the feedback in the right way and it ends up like not performing as well. Would you hold that on the, hey, I followed your thing, it didn't work, versus like a video that like you roast afterwards, it's like improve this.

Well, I think no one's expecting that you can take—

A silver bullet. Any, yeah. Yeah, okay.

You know, any collection of audio and video and make it into something that's like, Yeah, okay. You know, we're really, you'd have to know how to position it, but we're really anchoring around some level of increase.

Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah.

I think the deliverable and the value is there. Okay. And so now it's like, okay, what has to be true to be able to have 25 people as clients, right? To get to a meaningful amount of money. We gotta fund that college fund.

Right, right, right, right. So we got the schedule, we got batching the content, what else? So just to dive deeper into schedule, 'cause I think this is the key to all of it. Okay, so you have between the 1st and the 15th to submit the content, or between the 15th and the 30th, right? Okay, let's say you submit on the 7th. So in this system, are you waiting until the 15th until that first window closes, and then you're waiting another 2 days until I have chance to like, on the 15th or 16th is when I sit down with all the content that's been submitted from the 1st through 15th, the first half of the month. So now you, because you submit in that first window in the middle, you're waiting 7 days, 9 days. Well, how does that feel?

Sure. I think we need to get into it. I was thinking about it. Okay, if you went weekly, that means the gaps are shorter. But what if all 25 of us decide we want to submit our video in the first, you know, the first week, and then you just— and maybe that'd be okay. But I think you just need to play with it and see what people are doing. Yeah. But I think the expectation is, hey, use this for the videos that truly matter. Yeah. That you want to be a hit. And, you know, I'm assuming this is true for you, but on these videos, you've got to put them out in advance so that you can get feedback. So you get— Yes. Yeah. Because the other thing is, if someone's like, hey, we're really like, we review this, I'm really trying to publish it on the 16th. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, no you're not, because you gotta implement the feedback to be able to publish it. [Speaker] Right, right.

But let's say, I'm just trying to think about turnaround time when people pay a lot of money for, they expect expediency, you know? So let's say you, let's even go more extreme example. Like the window closed on the 1st for everybody who submitted from the 15th to the 30th. You submit on the 3rd. Now you're waiting 12 days until I lock it and can batch everything and review. And then you're waiting 2 days. So now you're waiting 2 weeks for feedback. How does that feel?

I think in some cases it's okay because I can plan around the schedule. And then you have the $500 rush fee where it's like, hey, if my schedule allows, yeah, I will rush the email. Yeah. Oh, here we go. If you commit to a year. Yeah. I will give you 2 rushes that year. Oh, interesting. Where I will do it on your schedule. But you're paying $12,000 in one go.

Yeah, so there's a rush fee. I think there could be. Yeah, and then—

I would just play with it and see, do we need this? Yeah. And you might even write it in there. And it could be something that someone's like, hey, could you do this? How big would the rush fee be? And you're like, you build some extra goodwill 'Cause you're like, oh, no problem.

Don't worry about that.

I'm gonna waive the rush fee this time. I had time available. I'm in between shoots.

Whatever else. So if it's like rush, the rush fee being defined as like 48-hour turnaround.

Yeah, if you think you can deliver on that, then absolutely. And do that for $500?

Yeah, or if you buy like a year of the service, I give you 2. Yeah, but it's so interesting because I'm talking this out with you and I feel like if I was a customer and I saw, oh, his windows of submission are 1st and the 15th, I wouldn't think about that edge case of if I submit on the 2nd, I'm waiting 2 weeks. So I'm trying to think about— I probably have to have very clear copy to explain that.

Yeah, just put it in the FAQ. FAQ. Yeah.

Hey, what happens if I submit on the 2nd?

How long do I have to wait?

And it's like, oh, that's good. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And then just— yeah. FAQ. If, yeah, submit. Yeah, the, like, second.

Yeah, just do the extreme issues.

Or, yeah, or 16th. Yeah. Yeah.

And then, like, we'll cover these things. Yeah. And that'll be fine. Yeah. So then, like, how long do you think it would take to do— To review?

To review a video? So we start with, like, 10 customers. Let's say it's a 10-minute video. It'll probably take me an hour, 45 minutes to an hour.

On a 10-minute video?

If I'm giving real detailed notes.

Right.

Like, it's like 10 minutes I'm rewatching it back, which is actually making me think, like, what if they give me an hour and a half video? I probably have to think about the video length. Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you're thinking about the video, isn't it the first 10 minutes that matters most anyway?

Yeah, and even the first 5 minutes.

And so that's the thing, if you're saying, like, you can submit any length of video you want. Yeah. I'm reviewing the first 10 minutes. Got it. Or up to the first 10 minutes.

Yeah. Okay. As a customer, how would you feel about the first 5 minutes?

I mean, you just have to position it as to why the first 5 minutes are the 90% of what matters. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is true. Yeah. You know, it's because even like if you want to be really like surgical about it, it's really the first 30 seconds to a minute. Right. But I feel like then the creator will lose out on all the feedback about how they retain, not just hook.

Yeah, so I mean, I think you just hammer that home. Someone's like, I really want you to review the full video. Yeah. And you're like, look, we're gonna keep working with you. Yeah. Can you dial the first 5 minutes? Because it doesn't matter after that.

So really, actually what I think it is, is it's thumbnail plus title plus first 5 minutes. So like that is really what the review is. Yeah.

How long do you think this takes?

That's faster because I can see right away. The thing about it is it's fast to analyze when something's off. Maybe again, this is like going and trying to overdeliver. I'm trying to find reference points of like, no, no, try a title like this, try a thumbnail like this. I think that works.

So I guess math-wise, I should have done slightly different, but for this math to work, we need to get to what, 25?

Minutes per— per review? I— yeah, I'm like trying to think about how do you even— like, yeah, okay, so the first 5 minutes makes it better. Yeah, so first 5 minutes, if I'm— if I'm taking 5 times as long to review as the piece of content is, you know, because like I'm thinking about stopping, typing, like having a clear thought further, and you're like, oh no, now I know what it is, and now I go back. So every— everything I should just as a rule of thumb, assume that anything that gets submitted to me, I'm taking 5 times longer to give them feedback. Or find an example, give a reference. So this is like, right away, this is 25 minutes.

I feel like if you get to 30 minutes per video, we're slightly over our time here, but like, we're still in the ballpark of a great ROI. Yeah. And you're like, oh shoot, we're at $2,000 an hour instead of $2,500 an hour on your takeaway. And you gotta sell and market the thing. Right. Other stuff like that. Right. Is there anything that someone who's not you could do in this process to provide value?

I'd want to do everything myself to start and then figure out how to delegate like we were talking about on stage. I think the organization of this, somebody else could do. 'Cause it's like just taking my work and organizing it. Probably the communication. Yeah, definitely the communication of like— Communication with the team. Yeah.

Things the team could do. Yeah. The organization. Yeah. And then I think the community.

Communicate, yeah, comms, yeah, for sure, yeah. Like, hey, thank you for submitting. John now has this in queue. We'll make sure to deliver by this date.

Well, that's automated. Yeah. Right?

I guess, yeah, we got, yeah. Like submit, I guess.

But there's some level of like packaging up the links, making sure that, you know, on this day, all the links are waiting for you. Yes. In the right format. Yes. Yeah.

Yep.

So that you can do what you do best. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yep. I think there's a pretty interesting business there.

Yeah, it's nuts that we're like live talking and building this like after this morning, 'cause I was not even thinking about this as something.

So what I'm wondering is, like, is there anything that's missing that feels important or could be broken in the process?

My tendency is to add more to things without knowing if they're necessary. So I'm like trying to think about like, if you give me access to your YouTube analytics, like, and I look at the retent— Like, but the fact that you said this is enough, and that many people in our talk were emailing and saying, hey, I'll pay you to audit my content on a once a month, I'm like, and knowing how much time this will take, I'm tempted not to add more to it right now. And then I also don't want to be the guy who's like, hey, thanks for paying this much, now here's upsell number 1, 2, and 3. No, no, no. You got the all-access pass to Disney World. You know, like, I'm not here to charge you more for, you know, like, like this ride versus that ride. Yeah, I like that. But except for the rush fee, which I think is like an extenuating circumstance that would bring upon like extra friction that I need to like figure out with every other part of the business. That's where I feel more justified. Okay.

Here's the thing that I think you add. If someone does a 1-year commitment and they prepay, they get a channel audit as well.

Oh, nice.

Because most people, like most subscription software businesses, you say, hey, if you pay for a year, we'll give you 2 months for free. Yeah. In this case, all you did is you gave additional value and you didn't have to offer, you know, whatever that is, an 18, 15% discount. Yeah. In our case, as a business. Yeah. There's not really any difference between paying monthly and paying yearly on that amount of money. Interesting. And so you're like, yeah, we'll lock it in for a year and you're going to give us, you know, we said the 2 rush fees.

Yeah, yeah, for like your high priority videos. Let's say that launch video that you put out. Yeah, exactly. Like that one, I know they're on a timeline. There's a lot of people looking at that. The stakes are high. The stakes are high. That's one of Nathan's rush. Yeah. And maybe there's hopefully communication ahead of time. Right. That it does, this thing is coming this month.

Right. I was thinking about what Bonnie Christine was saying in the mastermind that we did. Yeah. Where she was just talking about how she's amazing at putting together sophisticated offers and the funnels to sell them and all of that. And for this one part of her business, and she sells like millions and millions of dollars a year in products. Yeah. And for this one part of her business, she's just like, nope, has to be dead simple. You know, we sell it through Instagram DMs. This is the exact offer. That's it. That's it. You know, we're like, oh, we could tack it. And she's like, no, it is just this. Yeah. And she sold you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth it in a couple of months. Wow. Because she just stayed so committed to, yeah, you know, a very straightforward offer. And so I think that's what you have to do here.

So if I were to offer this right now, yeah, would you pay $12,000? Yeah, absolutely. You would? No question.

Get out the Amex right now. Wow.

Okay. If I launch, man. Okay. All right. Wow. You helped me ideate on this. Okay. Here's another question. Like, do you think I need to build a landing page and like to have this all fleshed out? Like how— what level of like— or do I just take the people who are interested after like to today and go with that, develop like the system, and then once we go to, or like, I think I always need to have a cap in terms of who's in this. Well, and that's the other thing you say, hey, I'm only taking 5 clients. Right, right.

As you did. Yeah. You do that, you make sure it's good.

Good, and then—

You dial in the process, 'cause we have so many assumptions in here.

Right, right, right, right, right.

Right, and so you find out, oh, I can actually do this a little faster. This is actually way slower and harder.

Right, right, right.

And you get that worked out, and then you get to go to your email list. Yeah. Or whoever, this waitlist of people emailing you.

Yeah.

So I would always run a waitlist. Okay. And say, hey, if you want to get on the waitlist for this. Yeah. There's, you know, other people on there. And then you email the waitlist. You say, hey, I've got 2 slots open.

Got it. Who wants the first come, first serve? Yeah. Got it.

And then, you know, it's going to be much easier.

So, yeah. Is there ever a public landing page for this or it's always communicated via email and like, you know, like word of mouth?

Either one is fine. You need the page in order to make it clear what the expectations of the value.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, you know, like we're talking about, it's really important the expectations are set correctly.

Yeah. Especially for this. And like, yeah, what, what these are, what you're getting, the fact that your roast could be shared. Yeah. Yeah. I might just make this a default. And if somebody says they have a problem, I almost don't want to charge for the private thing right away. I agree. Because it's almost like I don't—

be shared within the group. And it seems like, hey, Maybe you do it as a favor or whatever else. So like, hey, could you really not share this one?

Yeah, no problem. No problem. Yeah, no problem.

Yeah. 9 out of 10. Yeah. Get shared publicly. Yeah. Because it also diminishes your return.

Or semi-privately. Yeah. Like me within the group. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Versus public. Like, I think there's still a level of like other people who are learning from others. Like there's a level of like safety and vulnerability and having your rough drafts there versus like, hey, it's going to be public for anybody to access. And then that feels like you don't— that access is not real access because people would never pay for it.

I'm like torn in this in a few different ways. Because on one hand, this caps out really soon. Yeah, when we could get into, you know, how to scale it, and we bring in other YouTubers and all this. Yeah, we're not trying to do that right now.

No, no, no. But to define like the price tiers, I think there's two like sides of it. So it's annual, and then there's— is it— should I do monthly, three-month, quarterly, or like Like, I feel like monthly, the thing about it is like, if you just do it once and then you opt in, it's like, I think at least quarterly.

I think both are an annual commitment.

Both, no matter what.

One's just paid monthly and the other is paid upfront.

And then what's the, is there a refund policy?

I would probably position it as an annual commitment and you can cancel anytime.

Cancel anytime.

Which is a little bit of a dichotomy there where you're like, well, hold on, Is it really a commitment if you can cancel? But it's like, look, if this isn't delivering value, happy to let you out of it. But you need people to come in. If someone's like, well, can I just do it for 3 months?

No, it's annual.

It's like, no, no, no, you gotta, look, we're gonna get an increase in each video over time. You gotta implement it. If you're thinking you're going to get a roast on one video and then forever be a phenomenal YouTuber.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, it's a shift.

So I think the difference is really Just pay upfront, annual commitment, but pay upfront versus—

versus the other one is pay monthly and like you submit your credit card and there's like a monthly withdrawal. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

So yeah, it's just annual versus monthly and there's just a very slight— if you pay annual, there's bonuses upfront.

And then let's say so, okay, so it's annual pay upfront versus pay monthly. And then if you're— if this— if you do this, you get the monthly roast. Right, just the service. And if you do this, you get the monthly rows, but then you get the channel audit. And then you get the— To rush. To rush videos. And then this is 48 hours. Yeah. Yeah, I might do 72 just in case it's a weekend, so I could get on Monday. 72 or 48 business hours. Yeah, 48 business, yeah. So, okay, and then pay upfront. So this is they pay $12K upfront. This they pay $1,000 monthly, first of the month automatically deducted. But at any point if they're like, I'm not happy with the service, maybe it's like prorated back. But this way it's like, I guess the real benefit 'cause to them it's like, you kind of sign up and then the money's going one way or another. This one is like, I can use the cash upfront to hire, to build my team, to reinvest.

Yeah, 'cause we could, you know, if you had half, you get 10 people to pay up front, you've got $120,000. You're like, okay, I don't think you need a dedicated person for this. But like you have a lot of confidence in your ability to offer this service.

Yeah, okay, that's interesting, yeah.

This is fun. This is crazy. This is really fun. Like in 30 minutes or whatever, we're like, here's a whole map for a business that we don't actually know 'cause we haven't tested this.

Let's sit down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But we don't know for sure that this is going to work.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you and I both have been around in business for a long time. I've seen a lot of things, and I don't see anything about this that would make me think it's not going to work.

And the fact that it came from the audience saying, we'll pay— like, I would have never imagined that price point that we kind of anchored at until people started yelling it out. And then I was like, okay, okay. I was like, then I was like, I was just trying to find extra validation. I'm like, okay, email me. And then getting the emails, I'll pay. Like, where's the Stripe page? I'm like, we just talked about it 30 minutes ago.

And they're like, but seriously, what have you been doing?

Yeah, what do you do? I was commuting to Nathan's studio. So there's something there. I just think the way you encourage me to think about it with like time and because I always overindex on the value and I'm like, let me do that. And then like when I had my course, just try to overdeliver, but it took a lot of time, you know? And so for this, and you know, you want to be sustainable both for yourself as well as them, is really interesting. So dude, let's, let's, um, I'm excited to reflect on this and see what happens. Yeah.

And we can report back on, on where it's at. But really, like, to wrap up some takeaways, I'll share a couple of mine and I'm curious for yours. But I think the first thing is recurring revenue provides a huge amount of stability. Yes. And so I imagine this being the foundation that powers so much of your business and like gives you the confidence to take really big swings. Yeah. Because then, you know, let's say there's a sponsor deal that comes in and you're thinking about like, it's not quite the right fit, but you've got payroll. Yeah. And this makes you like, oh, it's 100% off. Like, no interest in that because I've got this, the recurring expenses of the business. Yeah, totally covered by recurring revenue. Right. We can also launch this really quickly. Yeah. And then the last takeaway that I have is any time you can get that immediate feedback, which most people don't have the luxury of, like sitting in front of, you know, 100 of their target customers.

Yes, it's amazing. Wait, you—

but any way you can recreate that early in the process, I think it's so valuable.

That's huge. And also, I mean, the other thing about it is like, not only that, but like, you guys are watching this right now. If you have thoughts in the comments, like, let us know because I mean, to your point, building in public is so fun because it's immediate signal versus noise. Yeah, I think my big takeaway is that I don't have to have the perfect landing page. Or the perfect product to launch, because my tendency is like, let me get feedback. I always love like I'll be in an Uber and I'll ask my Uber driver for their thoughts on something that I'm working on, you know, but like I'll get feedback, but sometimes I need to polish the landing page and get everything together before I launch something. And I think this whole process has taught me is like, no, if you can really offer a service that people are asking you for before you even put it out, then deliver value to them. Perfect it while, you know, like, like having it as a business. And then the polish is when you want to scale.

You know what I think our rule for this should be is that your sales page, as much as you ever get for this first version, has to be a Google Doc.

I was going to say, if, if you're paying that much money, don't you feel a little bit let down by a Google Doc?

Or you don't care because you feel like I'm getting in on the ground floor of something that like you're like, hey, I only offer this to 5 people, you know, or I'm only, you know, gradually scaling it up. And you just, the way I would position it is I'm like, look, I could spend all this time, I could hire a designer, make a beautiful page.

That's not what you're paying me for. Yeah.

You're paying me to give a teardown, to roast your video.

Yeah. And that's good. You know, you just, you cut away everything else and just focus on the value. So if I put the, if I, cause I, I think it's right. Setting clear expectations and FAQs is, is important. If I put that in a Google Doc, send it to you and the other people who email me, Nope. You feel like—

With a ConvertKit commerce link for the checkout. Great, yeah. People can sign up and do that recurring thing and you're good to go. You've got a business that, like, you would leave Craft and Commerce with a $5,000 a month recurring revenue business and then pretty quickly scale it to, you know, $10,000 and then $25,000 a month.

Dude, this is, I mean, I have so many more questions, but I think this is the most tangible thing that, I don't know, like, has come from, like, a talk like this.

I appreciate it.

Helping me think through. I hope this is valuable to people watching as well. But this is amazing, man. I can't wait to see where this goes. Thank you, Nathan. I love it.

So if someone wants to get on the waitlist for this. Yeah.

Give the email address one more time where they can email me at hi@youshaei.com. So h-i-y-o-u-s-h-a-e-i.com. Mention that you're interested in the Roast Per Month program or just, just type in roasted in the subject line and tell me a bit about yourself. I think I do want to take a look at people's channels and make sure they're a good fit.

Um, well, yeah, it's gotta be an application process.

Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. We don't just let anyone into this. Yeah. Yeah. And so I just, more so to make sure it's valuable to them. Yeah. And then I'll set up, put together the Google Doc to start now. It's so interesting. It was almost like, uh, you go to In-N-Out Burger and this is the secret menu, you know? So, I like it. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm, you're shifting my mind in terms of all that. But, uh, yeah, I think that's the email. If you're interested or if you have any thoughts, leave it in the comments. But, uh, let's keep building this in public and see where it goes and I think this is going to be such a great way for me to fund even bigger productions and grow it. Like, like, I mean, with our interviews and like what we've done, like that last interview with MrBeast was our most expensive shoot because I just wanted to make it, you know, the graphics of the set, like all the stuff that we did, like, you know, it took a lot of like manpower to pull that off. Right. So this would be cool to have the peace of mind that I could do even more of that for viewers and for our business. So, man, that's good.

Yeah, we'll leave it there. Thanks for watching, everybody.

Thank you, Nathan.

Leave comments. If you have any feedback at any point in there, drop a comment and say like, oh, this is what I think you should do.

Yeah, I'll be coming back to this comment section. This is very like a targeted conversation, but thank you, man.

Sounds good. And I'm happily customer number one.

Thank you, man. Let's do it. Let's do it. Appreciate it. Perfect.

There we go.

That was amazing, man. Thank you.

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.