Content Strategy for Entrepreneurs (That Actually Works)

So if you're creating content, but you're not getting the views or clients that you deserve, there's a reason for that. The game has changed and most people are playing with outdated rules. I sat down with my friend John ushai, who worked eight years inside YouTube and Meta, and he has a specific framework that he's using right now to generate millions of views and millions of dollars in business opportunities. John's collaborated with everybody from Mr. Beast to Will Smith, and I'm also using the strategies he's teaching to drive crazy growth in terms of views and dollars for both of my businesses. So in this conversation, John and I break down a complete framework. How to find the best video ideas using outliers, the exact formula for intros that keep people watching your videos, and the copy with taste method that the biggest creators are using to create massive amounts of views and revenue. So if you're serious about using YouTube and Instagram to grow your business in 2026 and you want a strategy that actually works, this video is going to be a game changer for you. I just think of this right now, for this room, right now in the audience on YouTube, like, I think we can impact the most by letting them know, how does the average person build a powerful personal brand that actually moves the needle for their business? So not just getting views, but like, dude, I'm trying to get clients. I want respect. I want all the benefits of a personal brand. So before we get into the conversation, which is going to get really tactical, can you just define the opportunity or just lay out the opportunity for people in 2025?

Oh, I mean, I think that everyone says 2025, 2026, you know, things are overcrowded, and that is so not true. I feel like our channel is living proof that YouTube is not overcrowded for quality and for being different. And if you know, like, how to move, then. And I think a lot of things we'll cover in this talk will help with that. It's like the best way to kind of change your life, change your business, grow your audience, grow your bottom line. So it's not anybody who says it's too late that says more about them than the market.

Yes, I agree. And for the entrepreneur audience, you know, these are people in my industry, but also other industries might watch this. I believe as an entrepreneur, you need both long form and short form. Now, I know narrowing your focus is important in the beginning, but I remember just building my brand and building my community and business on Instagram and then adding YouTube and when I Added long form, I got a deeper connection with people, more brand, and it just positioned me better. So for the conversation, we're actually going to do both. We're going to get into YouTube and Instagram because I think it's both important for everybody here. So what is the. When we get into insider information, like just setting this up. I want to start with YouTube. What is the biggest mistake you see people making when they're setting up their channel and getting their first videos out there?

I think the biggest thing is people don't know what to post where. And so the big thing that I try to look at in terms of how do you know what to post on YouTube versus Instagram versus even platforms like LinkedIn or X, which I assume people are active on. And, and the big thing is you have to know how to find visual anchors. And maybe we could queue up this slide that we have a section on because I want to show you like a step by step process of A, what a visual anchor is and B, how to find it. I mean, I'll also share this because I queued up some of my presentation. I don't know how many people for you guys, like, your desktop, like has like a bunch of files on it where it's like final dot, final MP4, final. But actually, I promise you, my desktop looked like that and in many instances still looks like that. But I want to help everyone here push past your perfectionism because a lot of times to be really good at social media and YouTube, you have to realize that perfectionism is procrastination in disguise. And there's a lot of things that we'll talk about today that I think we'll get into how to push past that more tactically. But I think that's one overarching frame that I want to keep in mind. So the big thing to talk about here is using visual anchors. And I think a lot of people ask me this question. This is the number one question I often get, which I think Neil speaks to what you were asking, which is what should you post where across the different platforms and the others that will pop up. And if I'm giving a hot take here, I think too many people make videos that should just be articles, period. Too many people make videos that should just be articles and they don't realize it and they get into this uphill battle that is completely unnecessary, hearing, unavoidable. And the way I saw this firsthand was when I interviewed Johnny Harris, who is an amazing journalist from vox. I'm sure you've Seen his stuff, like, just millions of views, talking about very, like, sometimes mundane topics. But he finds a way to make it interesting, which I think really speaks to his talent. And he said this thing that stuck out with me, which is, there's a million good stories that should be reported on. Only 900 should be told as videos.

Dang. But then doesn't that make it for, like, for us who are thinking, like, man, does that put a lot of pressure on us to, like, when we want to make a video? Is the bar higher now?

It could be, but I think it's knowing how to pick the idea, you know? And I think being selective with it is important because that idea makes the entire process easier or harder. And so, yeah, it's a tall order. How do you pick the 900, right, out of the millions of possible stories to be video? And the way to filter these ideas is visual anchors. And so I think the best way to show that is here's two stories, right? Two versions of the same story. If I said inflation in Venezuela is high, right? That's a common news story that's shared, right? The inflation in some country is high. Is that as powerful as if I showed you this? The currency is so deflated and has such little relative worth that people are making origami art on the street with it.

Dang.

Right? Visual anchor. And here's a clip that I queued up of Johnny Harris talking about that in terms of his experience and how he picks ideas. I wanted to focus on the border between Colombia and Venezuela where there was this massive migration crisis happening, and most outlets were going there and sort of filming just people coming across the border. Right? When I got to the town where that was happening, I definitely went and filmed that. But then I looked around and said, like, what else is happening here? And there were a couple visual anchors that were just hiding in plain sight that no one else was covering. One of them was there was a vendor on the side of the street who was making sculptures out of money, out of currency. Venezuelan Bolivars that were now worth nothing because of the hyperinflation crisis. He was taking that and using it as a raw material to make baskets and, like, swan sculptures and all this stuff that ended up being, like, this beautiful art. But it was so symbolic. You don't have to know anything about macroeconomics, about the geopolitics of South America to see that something's going on here. This guy's using money to make sculptures. And so that was a visual anchor that, to me, is the best use of video to bring somebody in and really hook them into a topic that maybe they wouldn't look at otherwise.

So it's like show them, not just tell them, show them on steroids. On steroids, yeah. Yes. I got to level one. I've been telling these guys, don't just tell people things, show them with visuals. But this is like next level.

Yeah. And I think some of you may be asking or thinking as a natural fob. Well, okay, John, how do you find these visual anchors? We'll get into that too. But every industry has a version of this. And if you're also thinking about yourself. Wait, okay, how exactly are you defining? I get show, don't tell. I get the visual versus the text. But there's this other test that I think can really help speak to what a visual anchor is. And it's something that Cleo Abram mentioned in an interview that I did with her and she's one of the fastest growing YouTubers and she talked about this thing called a napkin test. So imagine explaining idea to a friend and ask yourself these three things. So you're talking about the video idea. Do any of these three things happen? Number one, do you have to draw anything on a napkin to prove your point? Number two, do you have to bring your phone out to show them a photo at any point? Like if Neil, you and I were having coffee, I was like, neil, I got this idea for a YouTube video and then I pull out my phone, blah, blah, blah. Here's I'm showing you visual anchors even though I may not know that. And do you repeat the words this or that to point to anything while talking? This is how that happened. Like this or that is meaning I'm pointing to something more visual.

So it could be like pointing at charts or this. Like I want to. You need the visualization to make the point.

100%. Okay, 100%. And so we don't have to play this clip. But here's how he's basically Cleo talking about. But here's a breakdown of if you have a lot of visual anchors, congrats. You have the potential for a good YouTube video. The potential if you have a few. Now we're talking about short form. And if you have none, that doesn't mean the idea is bad. That's probably meaning that it's probably a better text based post for X, LinkedIn or Threads.

Now we have a kind of a framework because sometimes you think of a short form idea and you're like, man, that could be a YouTube video. Yeah, but Maybe not.

Right?

It could be just meant for short form. Do you believe? And we'll get into more YouTube here as we continue the process, but just because you brought up short form and we're talking about Instagram in this conversation, do you believe that short form should lead to long form or should it be a standalone thing? Cause I see a lot of people just clipping long form into short form. And then it used to perform, but now it's like, you can't just cut clips for the sake of cutting clips. The clips don't work. Like, I've just seen podcast clips dead on arrival right now.

I think it's both. It's kind of where you're at in your journey. But yeah, like, short form does lead to long form. I believe in getting permission from your audience. And in fact, my journey started as short form. And I'll show you a few examples here of, like, what I did and how to come up with those ideas. But as soon as I saw those short form taking off, and initially it was like, oh, 100,000 views, 200,000 views. Oh, my God, 1 million views, 10 million views. Then I had several shorts hit 30, 40, and my most viewed short on YouTube is 49 million views.

Holy shit. What is that?

I'll show you the format. It's this thing where I go on the streets of Hollywood and ask people who's more popular, creators or celebrities? And I would go, I think that one was. I asked people who is more famous? Tom Hanks or Mr. Beast or Tom Cruise or Mr. Beast?

And by the way, is this a format that crushes when you ask people this or that questions on the street? What's that, this or that? Like, is it this or is it this?

Yes. Yeah, that's it. That. It's exactly that. Like, I'm pointing to. I'll share an example in the slides, but it's literally I'm pointing to a printout of their faces. And it basically gets at the generational divide. And I always think great videos turn stats into stories, you know, So I think about whatever industry you're in, there must be an industry stat or study that a lot of people are referencing. And that's good. But I think about, how can you turn that into a video or a visual? And for me, in the creator economy, there's all these stats like variety and like Vanity Fair, they post all the time about, hey, digital stars. YouTubers are more popular than mainstream. Okay, you hear that, but do you feel it? So that's where I was like, let Me take it to the streets of Hollywood and. And literally, I think one of the videos I did where I compared Tom Cruise to Mr. Beast, it was the opening weekend for Top Gun Maverick and I went in front of the sign and there's people who still didn't know who Tom Cruise was.

Wow, that's crazy.

That's crazy. So there you go, that reaction.

Are these younger people though, right?

Yeah, yeah, some of them, I don't know where they walked out from that day. They're like, you know, you get, have you, has anybody been to Hollywood? The Walk of Fame? Like you get, you get a good cross section of America there. Let me just say that.

Yes.

Or maybe not. You get the crazy. Like a lot of interesting folks. But. But yeah, I always find that's fun because like those people kind of know entertainment. So when they don't know. Yeah, Tom Cruise, I'm like, what? Like, I grew up with that guy.

Yeah. This is huge. Okay, so, so I've noticed that so many of you guys are watching these videos, but you're not subscribed to the channel. And so right here is where I'd normally insert a fancy ad read. I don't have any of that. The video is sponsored by me and I would love it if you subscribe to the channel. This is going to help me reach more people and grow. So hit subscribe. Let's get back to. Let's stay on this topic, John of ideation, because I think picking topics for YouTube is really important. If you pick a topic that people aren't interested in or it doesn't have the, the. It doesn't meet the bar, you're handicapped, right? So you're like, I can make the best video on, on whatever that topic is. And if it's not going to, you know, you're just starting from, from behind. So I'm thinking, when you're thinking about how to pick topics, I know one of the big things you recommend is Reddit. Can you walk us through that? Because I think like, that's where people get stuck. What do I make this video? What should topic should I be talking about on YouTube?

How many people here are active on Reddit? Okay, everyone's hands should be up. Reddit is one of my favorite places to research. And so I queued up a few things for that. So another big experience I had during my time at Instagram was we had a chance to work with BuzzFeed and I remember asking him a similar question that you asked me, Neil, which is like, how do you guys at buzzfeed, this was during the heyday, come up with your ideas. And one of the guys said this quote I'll never forget. They're like, okay, what shows up on Reddit on Monday, ends up on buzzfeed on Tuesday, ends up on social media on Wednesday, and ends up on Facebook next month. Just gotta keep it real with my former employer. But sorry about the fonts and all that. I don't know if we load in the new one, but the thing about this, I realized is that their process started about with Reddit and then goes to buzzfeed. So they are looking at Reddit, truly the front page of the Internet, as they title themselves. And so if they're doing that, I was like, why aren't we doing that as creators and businesses? Because there's a treasure trove of ideas and more specifically, visual anchors. So now kind of bringing these two things together. And what I realized is that for every single niche, there's a great subreddit that can help you find visual anchors. So maybe throw out some of the verticals or industries that you guys are in. Just shout them out.

Mortgage. Real estate.

Mortgage. Real estate. Healthcare, Insurance, somewhere. Yeah, okay. There's a subreddit for each of those, and many of them at that. If you just go to Reddit, search. And the biggest thing is make a list. So here's the list. When I was making more content around marketing and career advice, a lot of these, like, were the ones that I would search. And what you want to do is to make this very practical is go into Reddit, find a subreddit, a forum basically, that has high traffic, high membership. Like this one has 166,000 members. And go into it for the first time. When you go into that subreddit, do this toggle by all time, because normally it will not be the default go to all time. So now all of a sudden, you're seeing every post that has been upvoted by the 166,000 members of that subreddit, which, by the way, are your peers, more or less. They're people who have expressed interest in the same topic or other industry professionals, and then change the next filter to top. So, boom, you're there for the first time, and immediately you're getting this entire feed of upvoted visual anchors for your niche.

That's huge. Yeah. So then these.

Think about that.

These can be turned into topics for video. So, okay, we go on Reddit, we pull the topic. How do we turn a Reddit topic into a YouTube video?

Yeah. So I think it's going back to that decision tree of you need many visual anchors to start to make a video. So what I like to do like after that is make this a weekly process. So then go back into those subreddits that you made a list of and then toggle them by this week because now you've seen all time and at this point, week to week, you kind of want to see like, what else is in that subreddit. And then, Neil, this is where I start, like stringing together. Okay, this one's interesting. The city of Los Angeles is posting a job opportunity for graphic designers and design possibly the worst asset of all time. It's pretty good, actually. You know, it's creative, it's modern, it's eye catching. Things you never really. Words you never really use to describe the government agencies. And it gets your attention. So if I see that and I see other posts that are unpolished or rough, maybe that's an idea for a post about how. Or a short form if there's enough, or a long form if there's even more. About just thinking about this at the top of my head, the best commercials or the best marketing campaigns for $0, something like that, or the best marketing campaigns that wouldn't cost a lot and that anybody could do. So you want to start to think about those visual anchors and help those inform the idea. And we'll talk about other ways where you could find the idea based on other ways. But this is one to really think about it visually and. And if all else fails, you could take this and be like, oh, let me make a post around this. And it can just be written. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or literally on the basic. Like even the getting down further on the chart is like literally taking the picture, posting it on Threads or X and then writing above it. And one trend I've noticed, especially on Threads, I don't know why this is true on Threads more so than X. And the reason I bring up Threads, guys is because Threads just surpassed the monthly active users of X, which is crazy because Threads just started like two years ago.

Zuckerberg did it. Yeah, exactly.

Crazy. Like he started a new platform. They. They literally like shunned him for it. And then now it surpassed Twitter, you know, which is now X, which is wild. So anyway, I've been posting on Threads. How many of you guys are posting on Threads? Just writing things. Well, yeah, Mark's back there. He actually was not getting traction with his videos as much. And then he started writing and blew up on Threads, so you never know. But anyways, I've noticed when you post on threads and you put a visual like a screenshot or the screenshot of this with your commentary above it, it can blow up. So my highest viewed highest, like most engagement on threads has been just pictures of things with text over it. So just a trend. It doesn't work on X, but it works on threads.

And to think about a lot of people here in real estate, that's just digital real estate, right? So you write a good piece of content and then the visual, if it goes along with it, that's just like taking out more real estate in the feed. Chances are that people are going to engage with them more.

Yeah. And for everybody here who's trying to get business, like, I would encourage you to like Google your name. You know what comes up. And when I Google my name every once in a while, it's kind of funny too because John, like when you type Google, you know how it finishes your sentence because you can see what people are searching. So when I type in. And you should do this for yourself every once in a while just to check, go into incognito browser and type, you know, Neil Dinger or what you put your name and then it starts to fill in. And for me it said net worth forward conference, forward event. And then it said wife. So I'm like, why are people searching who's my wife? And then it says net worth. Like I guess these are things that people want to search. But anyways, if you do that, you put your name in, it shows all this content. And for me it's showing X threads, YouTube, Instagram, and there's just like a page, multiple pages of content. And so it's really cool to think like when your potential clients are stalking you, which, you know, they are sometimes I just noticed, even when we're doing anything serious, Whitney will actually go deep. Like she's like a sleuth. She'll like Google them. She's like, I'm not letting these people in my house. I want to know who they are. And then like, it'd be cool if all this great content appeared. So I think that's why it's awesome to be on multiple platforms. But going back to the ideation, John, so we have like picking better topics based on Reddit. Is there anything else you can give the group on, like, topic selection? Because before we move on to making a great video and getting more views, I just want to make sure we're picking the right topics for our industry. So let's just say we're in real estate, which a lot of people are. Here we go into the real estate thing, and there's a lot of talk about affordability on Reddit. There's a lot of talk about opportunities. There's also talk on the negative side about it's too late to own a home for, like, millennials and Gen Z. Like, we missed the boat. Real estate's for rich and not for us anymore. So, like, how can we turn this all into a concept for. For a YouTube real estate video?

Yeah. So I think a lot of what you're saying, Neil, speaks to something I really believe in, which is everyone talks about the first mover advantage, which, like, the best time to be on YouTube or social media was what, 2013, 2014, before, you know, there was a rush. Today, I really believe we have the second mover advantage. And there's a lot of the data and articles and questions and problems that we could search and look up and make content around that.

And then what's cool about this, too, John, is like, when you get into, you know, like, topic selection and thinking about stuff better, it makes your job easier because I think it does, like, the heavy lifting for you. So I've noticed if we. We're going to get into intros, but if you have the good topic, we make a good intro. It's almost like the videos kind of could be mediocre after that, you know.

I don't know about that, but I.

Mean, for a beginner.

Yeah.

Like, I've noticed when I got this part right, I was like, okay, I solved that problem. My views went from like a few hundred on YouTube to tens of thousands. Now to get to hundreds of thousands and millions, I had to go, okay, now how do we retain them for the whole video?

That. Yes. So I think if you. It's funny, what will happen to a video's performance depending on where you put your efforts. If you put more of your effort on the idea, you. Yes. The editing and the production, you don't have to work as hard there. But then to your point, if you check both of those boxes, you're off to the races. So just going back to, like, really how to find ideas, because I want to give you guys, like, a full, like, toolkit of like, okay, I could find ideas by looking at visual anchors going to Reddit, trying to come up with as many as possible going there weekly. And now you have a process. Right. And hopefully that, I mean, we do it on our team. We look at Reddit and we're like, all right, here's ideas for YouTube. Save these for X, save these for threads, et cetera. Now let's talk about another way where you could use this second mover advantage. Look at the existing, like 15 plus years of data that exists on YouTube to help you make better ideas. Let's do a little pop quiz here. What do these three videos have in common? Shout it out.

There's a person in each one of them.

Okay. All right. What's her name? Rick. Were you the guy piggyback riding earlier today? Give it up for Rick.

Yes.

I love it. Bringing Saturday night energy into Sunday morning. That's my man. All right, what else, people in it? Okay, stuff, guys. Come on. Stuff, people. What else we got? Maybe stuff. Okay. All right. Okay, okay, okay. These are all good, I think. Super colorful. Super colorful. Okay. Okay. I like this. I like this one last one. Space stuff, people. Diy. Okay. Kind of. Kind of. I kind of gave away the answer when we started. They're all outliers.

Oh, we didn't see the views. Yeah, these are all views.

Well, yeah. So these are. Wait, I'm just curious. So, yeah, so with this, the. All these videos are outliers for their respective channels. And if you look at their subscribers compared to their views, they all have punched above their weight class. And an outlier just simply means, like, they've done more than their current audience size subscribers. Right.

I use a site called 1 of 10 for this. Is that a good one?

1 of 10 is good. I like using Spotter Studio. Where. And I'll show you, like, how to use it because of the filters.

Oh, good.

Okay. So these are all outliers. And I think these are one of the most powerful ways to study. And I remember during my interview with Jimmy with Mr. Beast, asking him about how he finds ideas and what he said really put this in perspective because he uses outliers a lot too, specifically on this one idea that we really zoomed in on, which is one of his most popular videos with about 300 million views, which is called 1 versus 1 million dollar hotel room. And that was based on an idea from BuzzFeed from seven years before, which was one donut versus $100 donut. And you can see if you look at his react channel, there's more of a parallel there where he was inspired by a video called I strapped a gofra on GoPro on a fish. That video that he made was a reaction video he elevated in many ways. And he put other videos back to back to back. But you could see the seed of an idea and where to take it. You still have to do a lot of work to elevate. And obviously his like million dollar hotel room video is not only a different object versus the donut one, it's orders of magnitude bigger and. And the video is longer and more in depth. But here's Jimmy talking about that in a way that I thought was really interesting. I thought it was so interesting how you've studied outliers. And I want to talk about that video, the dollar versus series. Talk about the. Because I don't think people realize how you came to that. And then I got a ton of follow ups with that.

Yeah, 100%. So for the $1 versus. The thing is, yeah, we've all seen Buzzfeed did it, but also, not only did BuzzFeed, but it's just like people across every format on YouTube, beauty channels, gaming channels, everyone was doing videos where they'd compare something cheap to something expensive, and they usually did well. And what I like to do is if I see something going viral across like multiple, you know, formats, all. All across YouTube, then it's like, okay, that seems to be something people really like. And, you know, they're really interested in that content. So maybe I should just do that, like in a really beast way on the channel.

And he does that with shorts too. So you can see this short from Daniel LaBelle where you've probably seen this on your feed in different formats. He's like walking with different, like, weights. And then Jimmy did this with like, bags of money, you know, and that.

Is one of his best performing shows.

Crazy.

There's like a backpack full of a million dollars or something. Like, it was just wild.

Exactly. And can I show you something, Neil? I actually pulled this for you guys. I was there with Jimmy when he was filming that video. And it's amazing to see his dedication to taking an idea to the next level. And he went with bags of money. He was running. He was running. And then when he got to like, you know, $100,000, like, he was like, wait, let's have like a, you know, an entire, like, box on a sled. And then he'll carry it. And then Jimmy like, did that at the end of the video. I was like, wow. Like, you know, he's like bringing in like so many different props and all that. Then Jimmy turned to me, he was like, john, why don't you try it? And then here's me attempting. Attempting being the keyword. Trying to pull the money.

Holy.

I gotcha.

We'll give him some. We'll give him some power.

My God. Two, one. There we go.

There we go. Clap it up, man. That's gold.

That was my leg day, guys. That was my leg day with Jimmy.

But, yeah, I feel like the sled weighs more than the money, bro. Is that true?

Maybe, yeah. So it all was heavy to me, but. But, yeah, it just goes to shows, like seed of an idea, elevate it.

And so I get this and like. But I'm guessing that the average person is like, well, I'm not Mr.

Beast.

I don't come up with these crazy ideas. But I'm thinking just in my head, the wheels start turning, you know, inexpensive real estate versus expensive real estate, you know, poor habits versus rich habits, you know, and I'm just start. I just wrote down in my notes, and I hope somebody here did this versus that. That's the concept here. It's not that we're going to be out there making Mr. Beast videos, but, like, we need a comparison and people like the comparison. And John just said his most viewed, most viral short was asking someone on the street this versus that question, do you know this person or that person? You know, it's like there's a guy in the group who does this as well. He asks people if they feel real estate or he asks people questions about real estate. But the way he's asking them has to be in a format that's going to be appealing to the. To the audience and just asking the questions, like, people are like, oh, the reason why these videos go viral is because he's interviewing people. Well, it's also the format of the question. Right, okay. So when we get into getting better ideas, I think we talked about that, but now we get into actually making a video and you talk about the intros. And somebody told me a long time ago when I was starting with speaking, also starting with YouTube, that if you start well, like, the audience will give you grace. But if you start poorly, like, it's over. It's just doa, dead on arrival. And I see so many videos just, they could be great 20 minutes in or 15 minutes in, but, like, if the intro's bad, are you just doomed to fail?

It's much harder. Yeah, it's much harder. I think piecing this all together, picking the idea, then the intro, like, all these things kind of are what you should nail first. And then the rest of it gets easier or you get more permission from the audience for more grace, like you said.

Absolutely awesome. So for people, when they're making their video. Do you have a framework or formula you could share for how we should structure our intros? Because I think this is the most important part.

Yeah. And Neil, do you want to take another moment just on outliers to show people how to find them? Like I could also.

Oh yeah, yeah, for sprout. What'd you say?

Yeah. Or I could give you a few tactics that could, that could be helpful. So here's one thing I learned about YouTube. If you guys want to use this as a way to find outliers, you could literally go into your YouTube mobile app or go into incognito mode and search for the videos. And then unlike your normal search, go to the filters and toggle for videos from all time highest views. And then make sure it's videos, not channels, and look through those and do that based on different keywords in your niche and you'll start to see the most viewed videos. And then just click on the channel that posted those videos and start to see, oh my God, this was posted by a channel that has 20,000 subscribers. But this video has a million, 2 million views. That's an outlier. And as you start making a list like that's a very manual but you know, affordable and free way to do it. To start building outliers. There's also tools and this is that step by step, in case that's helpful, you could literally go in, type the 1 to 3 words, sort by view, count sort by any time, click on top videos, check on subscriber count, repeat, and you're good to go. So I always like to say, okay, so the why here is, you know, the ideas matter, the how is finding outliers and the what is this like five step process. Anybody could do it. It just takes a bit of time. If you're looking for something more automatic tools like we were discussing like Spotter Studio, like, look at that. You could literally filter by outlier index. So only show me outliers that were 10x score or 10x higher than the audience size of that creator's original audience. And you could also sort by what your audience watches. My audience also watched.

So here's this connects to your channel.

This connects to your channel. Exactly. So you change it, it toggles, you can scroll. And then what's also really cool is you could take an idea like here we go, Ready? You could hit brainstorm and see it says x YouTube employee tries to this is basing an idea off of the seed of that outlier mixed in with my channel that it Knows.

So it gives you the idea topics. The title topic.

Right here. Right there, right there. And then you can sort through them and there's an art to it. Like, right, right here you're getting the scientific. Like, here are videos based around outliers that have performed well in the past and your channel and what your audience may want. But then you obviously have to take these ideas, be like, what can I speak to more predominantly? And then if it's helpful. This is a discount code if you guys want to get it to use Spotter Studio. But again, there's also the free step by step and there's a lot of other tools like Neil talked about. But just like putting it into practice as well as, like, I find it's like, okay, let me find the 10x, the 20x. Like all those outliers that could be helpful to like.

Yeah, this is great. And I love the fact that it actually gives you. When you hit the generate ideas, it's going to brainstorm. You hit the brainstorm button, it's going to give you some ideas right away. So that's really cool. Yeah, because, like, that's the most important part.

Right.

And anything else you want to say on ideation before we move on?

No, that's it. I think going back to the. If we go back to the intros, the Rain slide.

Real quick, though, before we move on. This is. I love that you brought this up real quick.

Yeah.

So he says, copy with taste. I will look at these outliers. And that's what John just said. And what's your version of that? And some people would say, well, then aren't we just all ripping off each other's content? So what do you mean by copy with taste? Because I think to some degree, like, that's what Mr. Beast just did with that. He took the idea and made his version of it. It's not really like stealing the idea. It's just more like adapting it for your audience. Right?

Yeah. It's elevation, not imitation. And if we could go to the slide. Slide with the red carpet. It's a few slides down within this copy with taste section.

So.

All right, this whole idea of copy with taste, like, there's a lot of people say, copy with paste. Copy and paste. Copy and paste. No, no, no. Like, to me, like, copy with taste is. Is. It looks like this. Here we go. Okay. Yeah, here's. Here's the spectrum. So copy and paste is taking from one source. It's imitating the past is hogging the credit. Copy with taste is Blending from many sources. It's elevating the past, it's sharing the credit. And I want to show you how specifically to do that in practice. And the most important thing, like we talked about is it's elevation, not imitation. So if you look at the past, like, you know, going on the street and talking to people is not new. Jay Leno did it when he had his show. And I saw that and I went back, I was like, wait, okay, so he's going on the street. He has a segment called Jaywalking. He's asking Americans, like, you know, questions about, like, do they know this thing about their country or does this pick up line work is very kitschy, but it worked. Now I'm like, okay, I'm trying to do a on the street segment, but for my niche. And I want to ask people who's more popular, creators or celebrities like we talked about. And that is based on. And copying with taste what Jay Leno did and what even Kimmel and a lot of these people do on the street and. And just become a format. All right, let's make this even more specific because anybody could do this, regardless of what niche. Because a lot of people come up to me and it's like, okay, well, okay, But I can't do it if I'm not talking about something as, I don't know, mainstream as doesn't have the same appeal. Yes. Yeah, exactly. But you can. All right, here's a video from a guy who literally. His format, one of his main formats is he goes on the streets and pulls out a red carpet and just has people dance. Okay, ready? Okay. 18 million views. Not bad, not bad. All right, this is my personal favorite, actually. This is so good. Anyways, you get it right now let's copy with taste. Let's see how other people have adapted this. This group, Crash Adams, they're artists who, like, make their own music. Yeah, they're awesome. They're like, all right, let's do this red carpet format, but let's twist it, let's adapt it, but do it with our music, our song. So this is their music in the background. Right. It's a great format. It's just fun. And you could use it like, you know, for your own music. Okay. All right, now let's copy with taste for another vertical, another niche. Okay. Coffee shop. Right? Storefront, small local coffee shop in North Carolina. Very few followers. They did this format. Guess how many views they got. Yes, I know. That was. You got some help from the AV team.

Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that though.

Yeah, but crazy, right? And just look how simple this is. This is ready?

This is funny. Yeah, I like this. Yeah, but this is like when you said it first, John. I'm like, oh, here we go again. This is ideas that we can't use. But then as I watched this coffee shop. I'm glad you got it. So this, like, I immediately start thinking open houses.

Oh my God, please.

Why aren't we doing this in the open house?

Oh my God, Please somebody make that video and, and share it with us after Broker opens.

How about your staff? Yes, yes. And then like, you guys, you could set it up. Like I'm. Maybe these people are coached a little bit. I don't know. Like, you could. It could be. Totally could have done it here. Oh, for sure. Holy. Hey, media team. Like, we could do this for our. Yeah, for our event. For our people coming to the event.

Absolutely.

Because we literally just did Ina and Ashley. We're talking about doing a fit check. Fit check on the red carpet as you walk in forward. Like imagine. Dude, this is crazy.

What's that? But that's almost like, like a red carpet model. You almost want to find people who aren't models because it's funnier. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, like anybody who has a storefront open house. I mean, that is genius. Yeah, that is so. That's a.

There you go. So this is, this is the type of thing, you guys see the value in this conversation of like, hey, how do you think outside the box? Because this is what's required to really take things to the next level. It's like 80% effort gets you 80% results. Just that little extra 20% gets you,000% results. It gets you millions of years. This is crazy.

For only 1999 guys. Okay, two day shipping. Amazon Prime. I found the thing for you. You know, you can literally try this tomorrow. I want to see that real. Okay, what's your username? Lonnie Fitcher. Everybody follow Lonnie Fisher and make sure she uploads that reel.

Yes.

Do we have a deal? Okay. I would love to see that. But this is one example with many adaptations. And what I'm saying is like, look for those outliers. And I think if you're still trying to crack the long form code, like Neil said, start short form, find outliers, adapt it. There's so many more where this came from. This is just the one that I wanted to put in this presentation.

This is really cool because when I've seen somebody get a format that works. I've like, this is crazy. I'll make a video, John. And then it says, you got a million views. And then Instagram literally tells me my insights make more like this. And then what do I do? I make other videos. Because I'm like, I already did that and it feels so dumb. But like, I've seen the people, remember the dude, Ashton hall, who did the ice in his face in the morning and then his morning routine, he made, I don't know, like 50 of those. And that's how he got to tens of millions of followers and views. It was like he did the same thing, like, different variations. So when you find a winning format, should we beat that thing to, like, keep doing it over and over?

Actually, that's a great question. I asked Jimmy that same question. Like, when do you know when you're hitting diminishing returns on that idea? And the truth is, I think very few people even get to that point because they don't try the idea enough. And so, yes, you should. Don't beat it to death in terms of, like, doing it too much. And I also think this is where having a variety of segments is important. So you don't want to just be the red carpeted open houses person, right? You want to have this idea and then also have maybe an on the street format. And then like, if you look at our shorts, I like to think about it as a variety show. And there's a lot of, like, studies that show, like, the more like, variety of segments. Like, some may take off, some may not. And that's part of the process. So yeah, just have, I like to say marry your niche, but vary your format and so be clear on what, who you're making it for. But vary the format. So if you do open houses, like, make sure that you're on the street format, if you do that is about real estate, not about, you know, donuts.

Yes. Okay, this is cool. All right, good. So if we move on to, you know, going back to intros, this is a format that would crush for short form, but the concept of searching for outliers you can do with long form. So when you're in those tools, can you segment short videos versus long videos?

Yes, it's easier in tools like, like Spotter allows you to segment it. Like the Spotter studio tool is like, show me a short form. What's that?

Would you put like, how long the videos are?

No, it just kind of takes a look at like shorts and it identifies those as vertical videos on the platform. And then Long forms is anything but. But typically now most outliers on long form are above the 10, 15 minute mark, given where YouTube is going. But yeah, you could segment.

Okay, so I have a. We're going to continue the conversation into intros, but I think the way my brain works is like squirrel sometimes, you know, like, you go here, you go there. And I'm thinking like, okay, here. Let's just say we're getting more views on our short form. You have a format that's working, you're getting more followers, you're getting more views. Like, I teach a lot of things in terms of top of funnel content versus bottle funnel. This feels like top of funnel content because it's meant to bring more people into your audience and it has more broad appeal. But then for people have a business goal to get clients from. This is it. Like you just make a different type of content. For bottom funnel, like, this isn't a piece of content that you would put a call to action and it's just more of awareness. Is that correct?

That's right. Yeah. Short form is more top of funnel. Long form is more bottom of funnel. There's more you could do. There's more you could say like, you know, when we started with short form, I would say that that brought a lot of audience in, but my intent was always, let's start a show, let's start long form, let's. And there's a lot I could talk about. If you guys want to talk about how to get an interview show or podcast off the ground that we learned to the point where our show is now getting, you know, a few million views per episode and we're getting these guests. But that's where we're able to like convert people to either a sponsor that's on our video or we haven't really sold our own products yet. We're just starting right now our first, like, we're launching a new venture called Boring Stuff where we handle all the boring stuff for businesses. We'll do your accounting, your bookkeeping, like for creatives. And we have a lot of the biggest creators that have come on in the past year. But that's going to be the first time that we're going to be like, okay, let's use the long form to talk about offerings that would be too hard to talk about in the top of final short form.

Yeah. And then for people who aren't doing long form, let's just say you put your business hat on, you're selling a service that offers these services to SMBs to small businesses. It's a boring services. Cool. If you were on short form only and you had to get clients from short form, what would you do? Would you. What type of content would you make to get customers?

So I think you have to think about that platform by platform. For Instagram, I think reels can really help you go more top of funnel. And, and you know, if you're doing this red carpet thing, it may establish that you're in real estate doing it in an open house, for example, but then DMs and feed are where you're going. More bottom funnel within the platform. I always think long form is still the best place to do that because you establish the most connection, you have the most intent from the viewer. But I also understand that it's hard to get to. So in the meantime, feed, which goes out to existing followers, like Instagram stories as well. Right? Instagram Stories, that's a bit more ephemeral by nature, but yeah, stories feed and then DMs, that's more bottom of the funnel channels versus reels. Like that's what Instagram is really trying to push out to non followers. So if you ever look at your analytics, there's a higher probability that your reel will have non followers watching it versus stories or feed will have much fewer non followers. And it's really going out to your existing base to engage. And of course dm, like you have to have an initial opt in by a follow or you know, saying, yeah, I accept that dm. So there is a bottom of the funnel tactic too.

Yeah. And so basically what John's saying is like, we need to get people into a conversation which then you have the opportunity to sell them on whatever service you're offering. And so taking them from top of the funnel to bottom of funnel, just using short form. I love using tools like manychat to like, if you comment a certain word, let's open up a DM conversation automatically and then you can pitch your products and services. And I call this kind of selling behind the curtain. You know, if you're always selling in the content, the content has limited reach, I've just noticed. So I don't want to make a video saying call me, here's the thing, I just want to make a video saying, come into my following, come into my ecosystem. And then when we make other posts, you could make a post that is a reel that is selling a product or service. It's just going to have limited reach because it's come across as an ad. So it's more about, like, how do we get these people into your stories, into your DMs? If you want to take organic people and get them into something. And I love using, like, a conversion event, like a webinar or something like that to get them into.

And I think, Neil, if I could add one other thing to what you said is like, don't be afraid to brainstorm openly with your audience or as part of your content, because you don't always have to sell them something direct. You could say, hey, here's something that I would love to offer you. Like, a specific example of this is we put up a video, and a lot of people, it was a video where I roasted a creator, where we watched their video. We had this on this nice overhead shot, and we were just going through a frame by frame, and I would invite another creator and we would watch their video and give them feedback. And then a lot of people were like, hey, can you do this for my video? Can you do this for my video? So then I put up a form where I was like, oh, I'm thinking about launching a service called Vidroast, where if you go to Vidroast IO, you could tell me how much would you pay for this service? How often would you want it? If I were to roast your video, what's the turnaround time? And would you even value this? And then I got a ton of great feedback and people over email. And so that's an idea of an early thing that I'm like, I don't know if I'm selling it yet, but I'm just curious to. Is that something people would be interested in if I roasted one of your videos and gave you feedback frame to frame? So it's like something like that. It's like.

And I could give you the outlier format for that is Alex Hormozi does this right now where a small business will call in and he'll roast your funnel, he'll roast your offer and tell you how to fix it live. And the. The shorts and the longs do well. It might be because he's here, who he is. Obviously he has the credibility baked in, but you have a ton of social proof as well. So I think it could work for the right person. But I hope what you guys are gathering so far, if you're here live or watching this is going to be like thinking bigger about how you could get more awareness to you as an individual and then what the bigger opportunity is, because I think so many people get caught up, John. And like, I Just want to get my next client. That's cool. But what if we thought bigger on how to get your next hundred thousand followers, how to get your next million view video? Because what it's going to lead to in the bigger picture is like. Like think about how you could leverage that. Like, so say Lonnie does this thing where she blows up her account based on this, and she's like, you know what, Neil? I got a bunch of views, I got a bunch of followers, but I haven't really got much clients from this. I'm more like, I'm an influencer now, but I'm not. What, how do we make money? Well, how you leverage it. Like, obviously there's brand deals. There's probably people within real estate that would pay you to promote things. But even just leveraging it with your next client, like, if you're up against three other agents to get the listing, you're the only person who gets 100,000 views on your videos. Like, that stands out from a marketing perspective. You can get on stages because of that. You can get on podcasts, you can get more awareness. And then now you have the opportunity to throw in just a small ad spot for whatever your product or service is. So I just think of people thinking more long term instead of short term, because the short term thinking is great to get paid, but it kind of inhibits you as a creator.

Yeah, well said.

So let's get into the beginning of the video. Okay. Let's talk about the first, the intros and things about this. And now we're getting back to long form. So, John, when you talk about intros of videos, like, the intro is the most important part. If we lose them, we kind of. We're dead on arrival. And so thinking about that, do you have a specific framework or formula that you can give us to retain the viewer at the start of a YouTube video?

Yeah, I think you have to make your intros rainy, R A, I, N Y. And I want to break down what that stands for, because if you don't like, you're going to have a much harder time keeping them for the rest of the video. So what does rainy stand for? So the R, it must be the font thing, but the R stands for result. Like, what's the end result that you're going to give them in the video? Again, I'm going to show, like, how this is going to play in a address. The objection. People's BS detectors today are so finely tuned that you got to address the objection. They may be thinking about your Video or the end result before. Before they think it consciously or subconsciously instant your intro for long form should be 45 seconds or less. And why now? Why are we talking about this topic right now? What's timely about it? How can you make it a bit more relevant to what's going on in the news? There's ways to do that. And why you? Why are you the messenger? And this can often be the hardest or easiest part, depending on the niche. You pick people. Because at this point you've already kind of married that niche and now we're kind of varying the format and we're thinking about the intro. So I'm gonna break down two ways and two examples of how to do this. And specifically, I wanna talk about this in terms of scripted and unscripted. Cause I think that kind of covers this room. You're probably making videos where you're doing talking head. You're writing stuff on a piece of paper, loading it onto a teleprompter. But you're also maybe doing unscripted, where you don't know what's gonna happen. You're doing an interview. And I want to give a way to apply this rainy format, this formula for both. So let's talk about scripted first. So here's an example from a video I made that got about 850,000 views. It was tips for YouTube and I'll play it. It's called X YouTube Employee explains the Algorithm, something like that. Let me play the intro and then I'm going to break down how we have used the rainy format to script this. The rules of how to grow a YouTube channel have completely changed this year. And I would know. I used to work at YouTube for five years, then worked at Instagram for three years, and then I started this channel. And I want to share seven unconventional tips that led me to get millions of views per day. And it's not the obvious stuff that everyone's talking about. It's stuff I don't think people have heard before. You're very good at what you do. Boom. Okay, how does this apply to the rainy format? R A I N Y R. What's the results that I'm promising the viewer in this video? Tips to grow on YouTube. Oftentimes, the result and the title of your YouTube video should be aligned in some way. Sometimes the R, you could even shorten it and even take it out of your intro if the title speaks to it well enough. Right? 7 tips to grow on YouTube. Whatever it may be, A address the objection. How many times have we seen YouTube tip videos before. I need to immediately address the objection, the elephant in the room, which is, no, no, this is not the advice that you've heard before. This is different. We're not gonna go talk about the. Be consistent, be original. You already know that. And oftentimes I like to open up presentations that way as well. Instant. This intro is 43 seconds. Why now? At that point, the way to grow on YouTube had changed. This was when shorts was becoming really prevalent on the platform. And why you? I worked at YouTube. I know how it was from an inside perspective. And now I'm on the outside as a creator applying it. Here are the results. You could do it, too. And oftentimes this why you. It's like you can't fabricate it. You have to actually have that experience to speak to it. But you could also do what I like to call the guinea pig test or talk by association. So there's a great creator named Sam Reed, who he ate Taco Bell for 30 days in a row to answer the question of is Taco Bell healthy? And he's not a nutritionist, but in the video, he was able to borrow credibility by talking to nutritionists and then also put himself through a guinea pig test of having Taco Bell for that many days in a row. I'm not recommending you do that. I'm just showing you an example. Another creator named Shervin shares wanted to review and show barefoot running shoes. Pros and cons. The way that most people do it is they buy this shoe, they test it out for a day, they talk about it. What he did as a guinea pig test, he wore those shoes for, I think, 30 to 90 days and talked about his experience. He's not a podiatrist, he's not a doctor, he's not somebody who works at these shoe companies, but he put himself through the guinea pig test, and now he has a better answer for why you.

Yeah, I love that. And I noticed the way you did the credibility part was earlier in the video. So it doesn't mean rainy, doesn't mean you do it in this order. It just means it has to be in there.

Great nuance. Yes. You're 100% right, Neil. Like, it could be out of order. Just check as much as possible. And also, Neil, you don't have to say all. You don't have to do all five of these. The more the better.

Yeah.

So if you feel like you have a good intro but only checks four of these boxes or even three, but you feel good about it, that should be enough. But if you're at the one or two, you're probably not checking enough of the boxes to keep that retention.

Yeah, so it's kind of like a quick. And by the way, guys, I've helped over 100 families over the last five years get into these types of homes. Or by the way, I've helped over this many people with this, you know, so it's letting people know that you know what you're talking about. Because everybody here is making content about your expertise, whether you've been in the business for two years or 20 years. And most people here have been in for a decade plus, which is awesome. So make sure you let people know that, because I do think people are watching your video saying, who are you to tell me this? You know, And I think this is just something as a side note that I've noticed gets way more views as a newer creator and I still use it today, even though I've been doing this for several years, is when John, when I make an observation, rather than me saying, here's what it is, like, so here's how, here's what you should do to grow on YouTube. It could be like, I analyzed this much content and here's what I found, or I spent this many years not getting views and here's what I learned. So it doesn't even have to be like, you're super successful at the thing. You just have to have some sort of experience that would be valuable to the audience. Like, save them time.

Yeah, I read 100 books. Here's what I learned. All those are extensions of like the guinea pig test. The guinea pig principle. You're putting yourself through something and we like to hear you go through it and talk about what you learned, even if the end result isn't always like the most positive or mind blowing.

Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so this is really cool. So we get into this and then from an AI perspective, are you guys using AI tools to help you script your intros now? Would you dump this formula into a project in chat or Claude and then say, here's what I want to talk about. Help me script a engaging 40 second intro.

I like to say, like the AI nowadays, like helps solve the rough draft problem, but these get so granular that we like to write it and then like, you know, go with the format, then go with that. But I think like, if you can't script, especially for interviews, this is even harder. But it's still applicable. So if you're open to it. Neil I want to share one more example of like, like an unscripted situation that I think may apply to a lot of folks in this room as well, if you're in those situations. So here's an example of an interview I did with Liza Koshy. It has about 1.8 million views and the title was why YouTube's biggest star quit. So this was one of the first interviews that she did after she left the platform after she had 17 million subscribers. And everyone was kind of wanting to hear what happened, you know, where did she go? Why did she leave? And so I'm going to play the intro and I'm going to talk about how we took this hour long interview and then we cut it down to this 45 second or so intro that checked the rainy boxes. Rereading a lot of the comments on your videos, Liza, and a lot of them talk about, hello, we'll talk about that.

Liza Koshy quit YouTube.

One of the biggest creators on the platform disappears. Although I was at like my peak in terms of numbers, in terms of eyes and partnerships. Liza Koshy, everybody.

The fastest growing YouTuber ever.

I just, I needed me, I missed me, and I refused to be ignored. Who is ignoring you? Who is ignoring Liza Koshy?

You know, you're very good at what you do.

Got him Results. Why one of you YouTube's biggest stars left Again, speaking to the title objection. Okay, is she actually going to talk about it? How many times you see an interview and they don't actually talk about the topic that you cared about, right? No, we don't dance around it. We immediately, within the first, like, part of it, you can see she's addressing it. Oh, oh, whoa. We're gonna get into it. Nice instant. This was 34 second intro. Why now? First time she was really speaking about it publicly in a long format, you know, podcast interview like this on our show. And then why you in this case has nothing to do with the fact that I used to work at YouTube and Instagram. It's more about this interviewer is gonna ask the right question. So I made sure to put in those questions like, oh, she says she's being ignored, but she has 17 million subscribers and getting millions of views. Who is ignoring you? There must be somebody else there. And that led to the hook as well. So that was something that we looked at after going through like the hour long conversation. And what we do is like, we basically go through all of it and try to highlight, selects and see how it fits into this. And then to your Point Neil. We rearrange the the for the intro in a way that it's most interesting to hook people and then of course we keep the conversation in the flow that it was.

So yeah, dude, I love this and I love why now this is so important. Like, think about the things that are changing in the market right now and how people could address it. So I'll give you an example. One of the gals here wants to interview Barbara Cochran, like, who's like this shark tank. But she is famously like known right now for her comments on investing and specifically investing in real estate and how she believes it could be a generational opportunity. Even though real estate's expensive, it's going to get more expensive. And so these are her thoughts and some of it differs with the market and I think like, why now we're at a turning point, you know, and so think about how we could frame in the conversation around her, like almost controversial comments on the market. And maybe it's like the top real estate person in your market who sells the most homes or the top, you know, like a Ryan Serhant type person. Or it could be like a financial expert on the other end or just some industry expert. It doesn't have to be someone who is known. So I've noticed this title works and you can give me your feedback on this. When the audience doesn't know the person. Like this is someone super famous that everyone would know for the most part. If the person is not known, I put in the title what their expert is. So like if nobody knew John, which they do, I would start, I would put my title Content Expert reveals or ex meta Employee reveals. And then that tells the audience like, okay, this is it. So my most viewed form long form interview, which is over an hour, was with this guy Sharon, who isn't well known on YouTube but he's an expert marketer and he has a net worth of close to $100m. So I put $100m, 100m marketing expert reveals the secret, you know. And so what do you think about like that format for just telling, you know, interviewing an expert that may not be publicly known a hundred percent.

I think even if they are publicly known, that could work too. Especially now that YouTube has AB testing for titles and thumbnails. So yeah, a lot of times if I'll go on a show it'll be like X YouTube employee like explains like you know, seven tips or whatever. Ex Instagram employee. So even though like using John Ushai in part of the title for mine can Work, like, using that packaging is a great thing to test. And I think the more and more you're trying to get your shows and podcasts started, you're probably not going to have like, the big guests in the early days. But you do want to find people with expertise and, you know, the $100 million blank expert or like, if I always like to ask a financial question in the interview to try to get those numbers, that can then be put in the title. But it's a great way to kind of solve the packaging problem for sure.

Yeah, like ex Zillow employee reveals the truth about the real estate market. You know, like, there's people from Zillow who know things on the inside. There's people at Redfin. There's all these things. Deals are happening every day. So think about why now. And I think that makes it super relevant. Is this part of news hacking or newsjacking strategy?

I mean, it can be. I like to make our stuff more evergreen. But yeah, like, if you're looking at the news, like setting Google alerts for your industries so you're knowing what's topical, that could help a ton as well in terms of answering the why now? Question.

Okay, awesome. So I want to move on to something that has really helped myself and so many other people in terms of content that gets views but then also gets you clients, which is solving problems like meeting people where they're at. So I'm thinking about the audience that I want to serve. My. My current audience and my ideal audience. What problems do they face and how could it help them? Right. And so what do you think about, I guess, problem solving as a. Is it like an overall theme for your content strategy?

I think that entrepreneurs solve problems with their products and content creators solve problem problems with their posts and their content. And I want to show you a few ways, if we queue up the popular problems section of the deck to kind of go through in your niche and. And find different problems and find the different ways you can make content around that to an audience that already exists.

Okay, so I know we just covered how to do the intro for long form. What's a good tip for everybody on a good solid hook or intro for short form?

Yeah, so I think your first frame of your short form is as important as your Intro, the first 45 seconds for your long form. And what I mean by that is literally like the first zero seconds of what you're seeing. And the question to ask yourself is, can you immediately understand the video from only the first frame? And if you Can't. It's not simple enough, period. And so this example of this series that has now hundreds of millions of views across platforms for us at Creators vs Celebrities, I want to show you some of the rough drafts and the earlier versions of it because it was not this way when we started. So here's the format in a nutshell in its final form. Who are these two people? Is that Logan Paul and I don't.

Know who the other one. Logan Paul. I don't know who the fuck that is. Tom Clooney.

Tom Clooney. That's my boy. He be fighting. And that's my man that be acting. Well, that's one of the Pauls and that's. Why am I forgetting this?

Tom Hanks and one of the Paul's, Logan Paul.

Some people got both, thank God. Here's the earlier version of that, right? Bad first frame, bad intro. Hey guys, we're here in Hollywood asking people who is more famous, creators or celebrities. First up we have Logan Paul versus Tom Hanks. That's how I started it. I didn't have the printout, I looked at the camera, I didn't have the guest too long winded. Then we got into it. Version two, we're here in Hollywood asking people who's more famous, Logan Paul or Tom Hanks? Faster. Better. Still not a great first frame. I went to FedEx, I printed out the comparisons, shortened my question, and you saw what it ended up as. Who are these two people? That's a good first frame. Immediately you're looking at the first frame right there. You're seeing a microphone to somebody, this case who's like kind of half naked in like Hollywood and you see the printouts, you see the counter, you basically know what you're about to get immediate attention. Right.

Almost like being the context of being in Hollywood is in the. Is in the frame. So you don't need to say it.

Yeah, that too. Yeah, yeah. You're on like Hollywood.

And even if it wasn't like if they didn't immediately get that John Hollywood bard. Is it that relevant?

No, it's not. It's more of a, of a way for me to get interesting people and tourists. So I'm not just getting people from Los Angeles, but all over the world.

Yeah. So I just think a lot of us in short form give context. That's not relevant.

Well said.

Like we're always doing something like, hey guys, just had a busy day. Just got the phone with a client and he said something that was great. You've lost you Know, unfortunately. And so even if you have to say that just to get yourself going, it's like easy, just trim it off, you know, just get to. I always like to say, like, what's the most impactful line? And sometimes, John, what we'll do on a video that we shot, and it's an interview style, is there's a bar or like a line that's just, you know, mic drop. We will take it from the con, like the middle of the conversation and put it up front, you know, and then get into the clip. And I've seen the biggest creators do this too. So I love the fact that you're really focused on literally spending a lot of time on that first line in that first frame. Because it means everything on short form.

Oh yeah. And then we'll be there for a few hours and I'm going through probably 10, 20 comparisons. So right then and there, like we have a bunch of shorts. And I like to say, you know, if you can also set up your first frame physically, not just digitally, you're ahead. So there's this other format where this guy takes a product, you know, he has this like bowl of a lot of cards, different products like Oreos, Doritos, like, you know, Coca Cola, and then a genre like horror movie, you know, comedy. And he mixes those together and makes a commercial immediately from the first frame. Especially because it's set up physically, you get something that hooks your attention. And I asked Casey Neistat about this during my interview with him because he does a lot of things physically when there's so many great editing tools right now, even for short form. And I asked Casey, why do you do that? Why do you show paper cutouts and count things with beans and. And like you have more technology at your disposal. And he's like, that's exactly why. And here's what he told me. Exactly. I think that's infinitely more interesting than sort of an optical text that you type into, you know. Premiere. Video editing used to be a highly specialized thing.

Very few people knew how to do it.

Thirty years ago, there was only a few video editors. And now, like, you know, my nine year old teaches my wife how to edit videos. So if everyone's doing one thing, even though it's like the popular technology, maybe think about how you could change that. So can you tell immediately what this video is about from the first frame? Yeah, basically it's like, now I'm taking the format of creator versus celebrity and now doing creator products versus legacy brands. Prime started by Logan Paul and KSI versus Gatorade. But I'd argue you could always make the first frame better. Like, Logan Paul actually made a better version of this video where, you know, the bottles were closer up in frame when he talked about sugar count, he put that on the table. But, yeah, it's really powerful. In fact, it's so powerful thinking about your first frame that you could take it too far. Like, here's one example of a guy. I'll just show it to you and give more context. But it appears like he's on a podcast. But just wait till you hear what he says. No, it's actually amazing how much more credible people will seem to think you are when you're just pretending to be on a podcast. Like, you don't even have to do that much. It's just all you really have to do is look to the side of the camera as opposed to looking into the camera. People are like, wow, he's got to be really important to be on a podcast.

I'm ready to buy whatever supplement he's.

Trying to sell me. This guy's looking at the wall in his studio with a sure SM7B mic. Because that first frame is so well known as podcast. A podcast.

Yeah, it's just like, start a fake podcast, you know, like, sometimes I know.

You talk about it on your page.

Yeah, yeah. People aren't, like, looking at the camera. It's like, look somewhere else and start talking. So this is. This is just all ideas in terms of, you know, getting more creative with how we start these videos. Because so many people reach out and they're like, hey, John, I. I posted this video and it bombed. And it's the topic. It could be the, you know, the framing, whatever. But also, it's literally just boring from the beginning. You know, it's unfortunately, like, we have to make it more interesting. So I just thought of this idea when you were showing the props and the visual thing, and we talked about how important that is in the beginning of the video. But, like, what if we shoot for those in mortgage and real estate, like, what if we shoot props of, like, a stack of cash that symbolizes a certain amount of money? It could be fake money if you want, but, like, it's like, how do you use. Like, how do you use $10,000 to buy $400,000 property? And the property is like a. Just a prop of a house. Like, how to use this to get this, and. And then you can explain it. And I saw a creator do this one time. I wish I had the example but he did. He found his winning format using props for cash and real estate and ended up teaching financial literacy through this concept for all his videos. It's crazy, but it was like, if he would have just told the audience, I'm sure he would have got some views because he got good at speaking. But I think the props are what.

Made the difference 100%. It's just a pattern interrupt, you know, and, and also if you guys are looking for more examples and like, templates and all that, I actually put these all into like a free hack pack that it kind of shares, like the red carpet example, like templates, like other props, like things that I've always, like, come across and found interesting and adaptable to other niches, like real estate. So I put those in there and then also, like different ideas and outliers. There's a hundred outliers in there that was like, oh, wow. These are like, fascinating and can be applicable to other niches. So if that's helpful, that's kind of like this free hack pack that we put together, like for you guys as well.

Awesome. Okay, so let's wrap this up in the. With that last question, which was, you know, problem solving. What was your thoughts on this as a topic?

Yeah, I really go back to it. I think like, entrepreneurs solve problems with products, creators solve problems with content, and not enough people think about that. So if we go to this section, okay, so there's two ways to really solve problems and meet the demand of your audience and make content. And number one is the incognito mode method. So this totally avoids having YouTube use your past search history to sway autocomplete. Kind of like when you were talking about looking up your, you know, search result. So for me, it's like how to make YouTube. Oh, channel shorts, video banners, these are all immediate how to content ideas. You do that for your niche, list of ideas will start to form. The second thing is by, by the way, as a bonus tip is if you're searching on Google, take a look at the people also ask section. That's not there by accident. That is because a lot of people want to know answers to those questions. And if you can make content that answers those questions. Again, YouTube, world's second biggest search engine after Google, owned by Google. Obviously there's a lot that you could do to meet the demand, especially because initially your audience isn't gonna come from existing audience or recommended, it's gonna come from search. So here's a way to tap into that. Another tactic I like to call is a Quora method. So Quora is a place where people post questions all the time. And I don't know how many people use it, but I love using it to see what people are asking in my industry. So, you know, like YouTube, how do you get more YouTube subscribers, like monetization, you know, starting YouTube products. So there's a ton there. And this is where I also would say go into Quora deliberately and intentionally and follow this three step process. So type in your topic, sort by questions, filter by all time.

Yeah, this is huge. Okay, so we got for topics like we're gonna look at outliers, we're gonna look at Reddit. We can also solve problems by looking at the questions our customers or potential customers are asking right now. So like it's like Google trends essentially. And it doesn't even have to be a trending search because in order to rank high in Google Trends, you have to beat out all the pop culture stuff. So it may not even appear there. But I love the fact of just literally typing in Google search and you'll see it right there. Quora, can you set alerts in here too as well to be like. Or you can subscribe. It could be like a check every week.

Yeah, I try to. We have a system where we try to check these places every week just to keep a pulse on like what's trending on Reddit, what is what we have Google alerts, what's happening on Quora. And then ultimately you'll have like again, such a list of questions and ideas and then you could work with that in a lot of interesting ways. If it's a short, you could be like, how can you adapt it to an open house or real estate? Like we were talking, if it's ideas, like, okay, maybe the way I bring these up are an explainer format, talking head or if I'm doing an interview with another YouTuber, this is what a lot of people know. I want to ask them about that. Right. And get another expert opinion. So there's a lot of ways you could use it. Oh man, we have so much we could get into. But yeah, so yeah, the popular problems I find is like just another way to be like, okay, here's a way to find a pre vetted idea.

Yeah, 100%. And so if you have more questions, if you're watching this or listening, like, let me know in the comments. Would love to hear from you guys. I want to just wrap this up for the audience online of like, you know, creating videos that people actually want to Watch has been the thing that changed my business and honestly changed my life. And I didn't quite know where it was going to lead or what doors was going to open. But like, there's just something to be said for not knowing how it's going to end, but just doing the action in the meantime. And I feel like a lot of the audience and a lot of the questions I get at events from entrepreneurs and from people in my industry is so focused on the short term of getting clients. And I love talking about that topic. But as I said earlier, like, if you play this game, you're playing a game that nobody else is doing in our industry. And so I had a mentor who's super successful, worth over $100 million. We had a chance to have dinner and he's sitting down, he's like, Neil, if I sat you down at a table with 10 of your competitors in your industry, what's the one thing that you're doing that they would be unwilling to do? Or like, how could you differentiate? And for me it was like this strategy of hacking attention and like, it doesn't mean we have to all go viral and get millions of subscribers, but if you just spent a little bit of time focusing on the things that we talked about today, you're putting yourself in a totally different category, especially in a boring industry. So there's something really cool about like if you're, let's just think you're a comedian and you go to LA to be like an actor comedian, like you're competing against world class talent. You could be waiting tables for 10 years and never make it. But let's just say you're kind of funny and you're in mortgage. You could literally be the funniest guy, the most influential guy speaking at all the events, thought leader, like you can crush it. And we see examples of this all the time where there's someone who starts a funny trend, gets millions of views and people like, well, yeah, I looked at her numbers and she doesn't even sell that many homes. Well, now she has the opportunity, whatever she wants, you know, like she could do some. Once you have attention, she could launch something. So it might be like she looks like she's losing today, but like, let's check the scoreboard later, you know, at the end of the game and see what happens. Because we're moving into a category where a lot of the people in our industry are getting commoditized. So I just feel like this is like my call to act arms like for everybody here in My inner circle, like, let's focus more on. On making better content and getting more people to stick around on our videos. And that's my, like, my biggest thing for this year is just really focusing on that.

And quantity leads to quality. Like, you need more at bats. And if there's one final thing I leave you with is that I'm a big student of history. And, you know, I love, like, the creators of today, like Casey neistat, who made 800 videos in a row, 800 vlogs, and he was able to, like, cut through. But that trend of, like, quantum quantity leads to quality goes all the way back to people like Mozart, who. One of the biggest reasons why he was so remembered and made masterpieces was because, on average, despite him living half the age of a lot of his peers, he made 600 compositions, 600 songs in his lifetime, when his peers, who were double his age, only made 150. And think about how many forgotten pieces of work we have to make for the masterpieces that we remember. And I just think about that a lot. And even, like, creators, like, and artists from the past, like Monet, who made 2,000 works of art in his lifetime. But the thing that always gets me about Monet is that he was such a perfectionist, going back to what we were talking about in the earlier part of it, that he would look at details in his paintings, and this one time he was making these paintings for a debut, for an art exhibit, and he noticed imperfections in the corners, and. And it frustrated him so much that he took out a knife and cut up those pieces of art and paintings that he worked on. And scholars estimate that that night he destroyed $3.4 million worth of art, all because it was too imperfect in his eyes, but had a ton of value in other people's eyes. So I encourage you to think about, like, what masterpieces are you leaving on the ground, because it's not perfect enough for you. But if you put it out there, it could get, you know, attention, it could get views, it could help your bottom line, because that's the trend throughout time and history across different eras and artists and entrepreneurs. So just something to think about.

Yeah, man. It could introduce you to someone that would change your business, possibly change your life. So, guys, clap it up for John. Thank you so much for being here, John.