The ONLY YouTube Video Business Owners Need to Make

If you're an entrepreneur and you're making YouTube videos to actually get clients, most of the advice you see on this platform is not built for you. It was made for full-time creators, which is why you can watch all these videos and still not get the results. Like, my full-time job is running my actual business and I'm trying to do YouTube on the side. So how does someone like that get results working smarter, not harder? I just had an exclusive conversation with my friend Sean Cannell, who is the CEO of Think Media. His channels have over 4 million subscribers, and more importantly, his students have amassed over 25 billion views directly from his coaching. We just had a convo on how to turn YouTube into your number one salesperson. Let's get into it. All right, Sean, dude, my audience runs real businesses and most of them aren't gonna be posting a huge amount of volume. They're running their full-time job. YouTube's like a side hustle. What's the video they need to make if they just wanna do one a week?

Yeah, I mean, if you just wanna do one a week, I think the first question and the biggest mistake that business owners make is they don't actually search YouTube first for what's working.

Okay.

So the way you do that is you think about a topic, uh, first, like you take your, your topic that you might come up in your mind. Maybe it's based on a question. Um, we were, uh, coaching recently, uh, uh, a special needs education expert, and that breaks down into 13 categories, a category like, uh, autism. And then we focused on, I'm like, what do you really help people with? She's like, well, I could tell them autism strategies for parents, educators. Okay. But then here's what we do. Once you identify the topic you wanna talk about, You go to YouTube and search it. So for example, what's, what's like some of your—

So it would be like, um, there's 2 types of people in my group. They're mortgage people, real estate. One might search, they wanna make videos about moving to a certain market.

Okay.

Like moving to Las Vegas.

Okay.

Another one might wanna just make content about the market in general. Okay.

So if we go, the, the key is before you shoot the video, you're gonna type in moving to Las Vegas. Now I'm asking what's ranking, but here's where it gets gangster. is you're saying, okay, what videos show up and what are their titles? Like, so what can I learn from their titles? What are their video lengths? Because if you wanna be different in the market, sometimes people want a 4-minute answer. That could be the difference. Or you might look and you're like, well, everyone here is actually, it's like a little bit longer, or my opportunity to be, to go deeper. Like, you know, some people might make 5 things you need to know before moving to my Las Vegas. It'd be interesting to be like, 50 things you need to know before moving to Las Vegas.

Really?

That's contrarian, but it's thorough. And imagine you're like, this person, I just went to a masterclass with this person. I wanna sign up with this agent.

I would like, I would be thinking no one would wanna click on it cuz it's so deep. But you're saying that would be the reason they would.

People are literally trying to decide where they're gonna move their family and live and place their life. How much information would they want? But in that brainstorming phase, you're, you're getting insight to say, You know, how long are the videos? What are the thumbnails? What are the titles? And then you could take that into AI. Like, we built a tool at our company that really helps people think about the psychological triggers, the 5 levels of awareness. But once you've identified that topic, so maybe it is like an amount of things people should know to Vegas, then you think about different ways of packaging that. To me, the real heavy lifting or the real work would be coming up with the 4 most valuable topics you could talk about once a week over the next month. And that's the heavy lifting in the strategy stage. Research being not just keyword research, that's so valuable these days, maybe trying to identify topics, but going to YouTube itself, analyzing the marketplace, looking at what else is there. And at times you might identify like this particular angle is too saturated, so I'm not gonna make that video. Let me just make— there's so many angles you can go, so let me go a different angle. So I can plan out my next month of content.

When you're searching, just practically, it's like you're searching last 12 months ranked by views.

I'm looking what's showing up in ranked. It was fascinating when it came to this study we did live at our event about— we did autism strategies and then it was like how to deal with meltdowns was how we went even deeper. And then we saw what was ranked and it was all old videos like 3 years old, 5 years old, 6 years old. And we had an expert sitting in the room who actually is used to communicating, but who was stuck in not getting any views on YouTube, but was suffering what I would say is from the curse of knowledge, talking about much more deeper and more complex topics. And like, I'm like, no, let's meet your target audience at this moment. And we discovered it was the autism meltdown and then realizing like, okay, this outdated video from somebody that It's great. They're clearly— they got like 333,000 views while she was struggling to get 30. And it was a matter of thinking about what video should I make next, how to package that video, how to bring some freshness to it in terms of title and thumbnail. And so—

Updated version of the old video.

It's an updated version of the old video.

Better version.

And it's a better version. That's theirs. I mean, people are also clicking on that because there's no other option. And there's new info. You know, we were just talking about before hitting record, the power of new. People always want new. Our mutual friend Neil Patel talks about the only thing working on social media is new. And so, you know, new research reveals how to handle autism meltdowns. Okay, so now that, that's a fresh angle on probably a lot of foundational principles, but you're like, I actually was reading a new report because it just got back from this and that you can actually, you know, one of these things people do and the other 5 things you do are probably what the other lady said, but you pulled it into the present. That research phase to spend more time on crafting your title, your thumbnail, the package of your video is, is a big deal. And then pick those 4, make 1 a week.

Yes. Okay. This is great. So, and that's like 1 a week, but you could also do 1 a month, you know, depending on your schedule. Like it could be whatever's gonna work for you. So you're gonna be consistent.

Yeah. YouTube's the only platform where your content truly lives forever. So if you, you could not, you could do 1 a month. You also could do 4 in a week and then take some time off because they work for you when you're not working. If you know, they rank and they're suggested. And so I also think, I mean, busy business owners know that there's different seasons. Some weeks, yeah, it's impossible. There's no way you're gonna create content. But other weeks, if you schedule it, it gets done. And so again, if I isolate in on this expert, like she's already used to doing hour livestreams sometimes. And so I'm like, we can plan 4 videos about 15 minutes each, and you could just shoot all 4 of those in, in, in, an hour, you know, maybe an hour and 30 if you kind of restart a little bit, shoot those all on Riverside. We were talking about getting her to set up home office and then, you know, put that into a system depending on where you are. And, and by system, I mean an onlinejobs.ph video editor that now polishes those up at $6 an hour. And maybe it's gonna be $60 to $120 to edit each video.

Each video. That's not bad at all.

Right.

That's easy. So, okay. This other trend I'm noticing and, and, um, There's a lot of things that worked year— we were just talking about this— there's a lot of things that worked last year, the year before, that aren't necessarily working as good. There's tried and true advice, but then there's stuff that's changing. So obviously the algorithm is always changing, but one trend I saw was this raw trend. So there is a raw trend on YouTube right now, and Alex Hormozi just talked about this. He said he's not going to edit as many videos. They're going to do super edited, like high production quality, but they're also— he just uploaded a video where he literally just talked to the iPhone for an hour, yeah, or 20 minutes. And then, uh, Sharan, who's on their team as well, he's like, hey, Neil, my last video I shot in the car and it's outperforming the videos that we spent way a huge amount of time on packaging and editing and all that stuff. So what do you think about this trend?

Yeah, I mean, obviously you're talking about legends here, but I think the unspoken observation about what they're saying is you can't underestimate the brands they've already built.

Yeah, that's true.

And so, you know, I've heard Alex say that. He's like, I think live is a future trend and it's gonna be the thing. And I'm like, yeah, but you're also Alex Hormozi. So people trust you going into it. Now, can you meet a stranger on live? Sure. But if you're in between questions and it's not as polished and someone's busy and they meet a total stranger on live, it's— I'm not invalidating what they said. And again, they're legends. But I think that— I was thinking about that. I think I was in the shower. And here's my take. A— the crafted YouTube video is the most powerful media asset on the internet, period. Yeah, a crafted YouTube video. So notice what also Alex said. He said, we're going to still do. Yes.

So they're not giving up.

They're not giving up on the crafted YouTube video. Human beings in general always are gonna respect if their time is respected. You know, you take somebody like a Graham Stephan, right? And who does financial news and these financial videos, and he's consistently accustomed to getting 100,000 views, 500,000, a million views. But his workflow is a day of research, oftentimes 4 to 8 hours of research, and then scripting every word of his video and then editing it. He might've delegated it by now, but even editing it himself. I'm not suggesting business owners doing that. I'm saying, But what would it be worth to you to have 500,000 views? It's crafted. And people that want financial information, 16 minutes crafted, the, this is the leverage point that every business owner would understand. We, we, the reason people hire you, hire me, is because we're, we're saving them time. We're buying them speed. And so when you spend, you've spent not just hours into a video, you've spent decades into the video. And so the time put into the video crafted so that, you know, there's this Mark Twain quote. I think it's Mark Twain. He said, if, um, if I have an hour to speak, if you invited me to speak, I can do it right now. If I had 30 minutes, uh, to speak, I need a day to prepare. And if I have 5 minutes to speak, I need a week to prepare.

Yeah. It's counterintuitive.

Yeah. You can look that quote up. It's something like that. But it's like, that's the idea that if I have less time, but it's more, oh man, it's gonna be more refined.

So all that's, all that to It's also like if somebody throws you a mic like I just did, yeah, you can speak. But like the guy in my group or who's watching right now online is like, well dude, I haven't— I'm not used to— I don't have the skill yet. I'm really knowledgeable, I've got cursive knowledge, I've got 10 years of experience, but I'm not good at refining this shit down. So I think like, yeah, different strokes for different folks. Like it's not going to work for the—

Yeah, and but I mean, to tie that together too, what, you know, it's interesting is if you took some of your people, they could do an exercise. If you, if you, you could ask AI, can you give me 5 to 10 questions to riff on about a particular topic? And you maybe figure out the topic of your next video. If it was gonna be deep dive, AI's gonna spit that out for you easy. You're gonna look at that as an expert and go, okay, I can riff on those. Here's what you do. Turn on a recorder and record the whole thing in audio. Let that thing record you and you're gonna be overworded and you have so much knowledge. But you could probably spend 30 minutes, 45 minutes just talking. And a lot of times the best thing you're gonna say might be at the end and you remember another point and you jump all around and you remember a story. And even that's kind of a skill, but you get used to just putting that out there. Now we're living in a world where turn that into a transcript and then turn that transcript into saying, hey, what are the strongest points? Could you reorder the structure of this? And that's what I mean by, that's how a good speech is made. Because you get— yeah, you're refining. You're realizing, man, what I said at the end, I should have said at the beginning. And that is what ultimately performs at scale on YouTube, because maybe some people follow you and they're gonna be willing to listen to you riff. But when you're meeting strangers, they, they don't have as much time. Yeah.

So you're on an audition with those people.

You are on an audition. Yeah. So you're trying to give 'em their best 12 minutes. I know it's like a lot of pressure, but I think then my takeaway is a couple things. Number one, It's like the crafted YouTube video is the greatest media asset on planet Earth. And this is also from studying YouTubers who craft their videos more than anybody else. The top YouTuber is MrBeast. That doesn't mean business owners can't do that. I'm just saying spend more time preparing and structuring your content. I'd say number 2, yeah, the raw video is also a massive opportunity, but it still takes structuring your ideas and especially, you know, following the stuff you teach about hooks, attention, and like the opening line. So yeah, shoot in your car, But we're talking about individuals who've crafted their communication skills. That's why I think it's important to not miss your events. And I know that sometimes there's like electives and all this stuff, like they gotta get to your stuff to work on what they say in the car. Yes, that is an acceptable format. And I would almost say in one sense a superior format because people are so used to AI and over-editing that yeah, people are really resonating with the video in the car, but who's the communicator? What's their brand or how well is their message? Crafty.

These guys can do that on a dime. And, and they, to be fair, I'm sure he thought about what he was going to say. He had a little sketchpad. There's probably some hard edits in it. They cut out a few things.

Yeah.

So it's not straight stream of consciousness.

Exactly.

But yeah.

And then lastly, I would validate, of course, the live thing as well. And even for someone who's just starting and for, for 2 big reasons. One, because AI can't copy it. So it's also, that's a depth play.

Yeah.

That's a play for someone who's been on the fence, but like, oh, I'm getting to know this person and then they become a customer. But I think number 2, it's also a practice thing. I think it's like—

It's reps.

It's the reps. And so there's almost nothing better than putting a livestream on the calendar, going live, and even if zero people show up, it's not a loss. It was a chance to practice in public with a little bit of pressure. You became a better communicator. I became a better communicator because of reps. And so by putting in the reps, the value is already in the process.

Yeah, I love that. For the person who's like, okay, this is a different kind of angle on this. We just saw you coach, you know, 50 business owners, different, totally different industries. Uh, I'm coaching a lot of people in real estate mortgage, like I said. So for someone who wants to put out an informational piece of content, this question just came up from my group. This guy's in mortgage, but it would also apply to other professions, service professionals. What's that single piece of content? Like if they're like, hey, I'm not doing long form. And I'm only doing short form. We, I just interviewed Daniel Priestley at my event.

Yeah.

And he said the funnel should be for this person, this service professional should be short form, long form, lead form.

Yep.

That's what he said. Short form, long form, lead form. If you're just gonna make one long form video, is it to solve a specific problem? Is that the best way? I mean, obviously they can make more after this, but what's that first video they need to make?

I mean, it, it, this might be a hard leap for an individual, but We talk about this thing called the no-funnel strategy, and it's the idea of— summarized, it's basically having a webinar that's just a public YouTube video.

Is it like a VSL?

It'd be like a VSL, but it'd be like a webinar, which is similar to a VSL. It's teaching, it's educating, and it's selling. But the big idea is not behind a paywall or an opt-in or anything. It's living on YouTube. Have you ever heard of the strategy? Different people have talked about it. Ryan Deiss, Iman Gadzhi's big for doing it. Like he, he basically puts out like an hour-long webinar, but it lives as a YouTube video. And then all of his other videos link back to that video, which, which is doing the selling. So what's fascinating is people are doing ManyChat and things like that, and it's always nice to capture the lead, but you could go short form, comment a word, and I'll send you that YouTube video. And it's, it's kind of a very transparent— in, in a trust recession, it's a very, kind of chill way to use Instagram short form, your YouTube Shorts, and it could be the related video. And yeah, you just link to that video. And to the degree, you know, version 1.0, that's the thing with it is like the people who are doing this are at usually a mastery level and there might be some iterations. But if that thing is, if you will, great at converting, then yeah, the short form is a chance to meet you and then the invitation to go watch that. And webinars still work behind an email, but it's like, That's so chill. Like, I, you know, if you wanna watch my deep dive class on this, it's just available on YouTube. I can send you the link.

Yeah. Because like they're gonna get their curiosity from the video, the 30-second, 40-second. Obviously you can't explain everything there.

Right.

It's like, hey, if you want, I actually walk you through all 7 of these. Yes. I gave you one on here, but there's 7 more. If you wanna get the link, I'll shoot it over to you.

Yeah. And what's fascinating is by then, then the YouTube algorithm, cuz you can send traffic to it, which YouTube will love, and that could growth hack it at certain times. The YouTube algorithm will then recommend it too as it starts kind of figuring out what the video is about. And so this asset can get better with time because algorithmically it's growing in public. You know, I did a recent, you know, I could call it a case study. I was sort of just trying to revive it, you know, show up. I wanted to, I called it actually the 21-Day YouTube Reset and it was 21 days of vertical videos. I still need to finish it. I mean, people are not counting really. I'm on day 13 and it wasn't, it's clearly not linear. I took a few days off, but even when I did, I would just get back to it. But the commitment to doing it was fascinating because it crushed. I uploaded on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube Shorts. And on YouTube Shorts, I was all shooting on my phone, editing on CapCut. And then sometimes I would just cut out the money, the ManyChat callout, because it doesn't work on YouTube Shorts. And I just linked one, basically no funnel strategy, one video to all of them on the YouTube Shorts versions. And so there's 13 of those out. They all have—

All 13 point to the same video.

All 13 point to a video that actually, uh, my co-host of our podcast and I, we, we, we talk about our 7R system for 30 minutes and then actually the whole second half we sell the program and we go in on a public video. So it's like—

How was the organic reach of that? Did it get kind of nerfed because it's a sale?

It got nerfed.

Yeah.

But that's fine. That was the purpose of it.

It's a salesperson for you.

It was literally a salesperson. It's like a place that could sit there and it wasn't super terrible. I mean, it's all relative, but for us it was like 17,000 views kind of got capped. But again, we could see, you know, and it can still do a decent amount of watch time in the first 30 minutes cuz it's that. And then we let people know and we're like, and by the way, we just wanted to make sure you know all the details about exactly what this program's gonna do. So we're gonna walk through it and walk through the bonuses. And so, You know, watch time and audience retention is, you know, tanked under 10% at the end. But now at 20,000 views, for math, let me just say it was 10,000. You know, if only 5% of people make it to the end, that, that 500 people were watching to the end of a sales presentation. You know, this, now you're talking to people like, do you just wanna know all the details about my program? Hey, let's show, let's talk about it. Jump off if you don't wanna know. And that video came out 6 months ago. And was growing a little bit, but it was wild to see the spike for 2 reasons. The YouTube Shorts linked to it, but the YouTube algorithm seeing the new traffic and the way it works is the people who consume a certain type of content, people like them that YouTube semantically understands, right? Starts broadening that reach. And so I, and I track this in the analytics, it would say like related Shorts traffic. And then it would say suggested and browse all going up because of that. So that's, that actually is very much a short-form, long-form lead form, but that's almost like short-form.

It's like closing.

That's short-form, long-form sales form.

Yeah.

And that's what the link, the link goes to a sales page.

To a checkout page.

It goes to a checkout page. Yeah.

So this is, this, that's like taking it all the way.

Yeah.

For someone who's not gonna go into pitch mode at the end of that, uh, whatever, say they're making a 12-minute YouTube video.

Yeah.

And that's the long-form. This is where I see people kind of mess up is they're making the video, but they're not getting the leads.

Yeah.

So where does the call to action go? Like if you're thinking about the structure of the video, we're going to— oh, but one of my questions before we wrap is like, what's the latest structure that would work for these videos for opening structure? I know you have a framework for this, but where do you put your calls to action? Should you put them in the middle, the end? Like, and then what should that be? Should it be, hey, if you want more info, there's a link in the form to book a call with me.

Yeah.

Or is that too much of a leap for people? So they should just ask for another lead magnet. Cause I feel like, This is the lead magnet. They came from a short form. This is the lead magnet.

I mean, for real estate professionals, I really like text. Like, shoot me a text because getting on a call is, is a pretty big jump. And, and they would know your phone number. And I mean, unless you're gonna use a Google Voice number, you know, or whatever, or your own phone number, like if that's your business and you wanna do transactions, you know, let's talk, you know, shoot me a text. Oh, hey, you know, anytime you could be like watching a movie with your kids. Like, oh yeah, you wanna schedule a time? Like just back and forth.

Because the goal is to get 'em into a conversation.

Yeah.

Because all conversions happen in conversation.

Yep.

So I'm thinking like people are trying to get to the closed deal.

Yeah.

When they don't realize the first step of a closed deal is just chatting.

Yeah. And imagine—

What's the easiest way to chat? Text.

I mean, it might create a, it might create a problem later. You're like, oh, that could make me too busy. Well, if you're not, you know, are you too busy to get rich? You know, it's like, what, like how much traffic do you want? And you could always fix that later. And maybe you start with a different phone number. But especially for a lot of people in local markets, I don't think you could have too much business. Your, your, your number's on your website. What, what's that? What's it there for?

Difference.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then if, if you're worried about privacy, I think, you know, you can get a text number that is this, right? You can associate it with your, uh, CRM, like HighLevel, and then your team can actually see the text and follow up. I think it's, uh, green bubble versus blue bubble, but yep. Uh, growth, of course. What's to stop you from buying a second iPhone?

There's blue bubble selections.

Yeah. There's SendBlue and all that stuff. Yeah. So, So that's great. So that call to action of like you're teaching, let's just say, what's, okay, what's this video that you're sending people to? And then what does the call to action look like for someone who has never done this before?

Yeah, I think I put the call to action not at the end. I put it 2 places. For me, I put it in the middle of the video and the end of the video. And I think that what the call to action looks like is when possible, you want, if you could create any kind of Specificity, curiosity, and urgency. So the call to action, it's like, you know, and by the way, if you want my free guide, go to the website. It doesn't feel very urgent. Maybe if the, the guide will help you achieve results, maybe sort of specific, but it doesn't necessarily create a lot of curiosity.

And it seems like those lead magnets are dying right now.

Yeah.

Because you could just go to ChatGPT and get this shit.

And get that. Yeah. So, so I mean, it's kind of novel to say, and by the way, if you have a question or you just wanna start talking, yeah, like I'm here, text me. Like, it's, and, and like, it's me too. Like, I'll reply back to you. I'd love to answer your questions about the market or whatever you, you know. So what, what can you do? What's, what's novel? I think, uh, you know, quizzes, if you wanna take a quick assessment, um, and what you'll get as a result. So I think the quality of how you articulate the call to action and then the value presented thereafter. Like if you could give a quiz and in just 3 minutes you're gonna get this and the power of having this. Is going to save your money, you know, and you know, right now in the Pacific Northwest, the market's kind of hot. So actually quick, take a quick assessment. We can see what you qualify for or whatever. And so articulating classic business stuff like the features, what exactly is it, but what are the benefits? You know, like, well, yeah, what's the, why should I do this? Why do I need to do this now?

Um, I would even say like, you know, one of the biggest problems I see is people get this, they go down the wrong path. And so because of that, I created a 3-minute quiz. Uh, or 30-second, 90-second quiz.

Yeah.

And if you answer these questions, it will literally give you your path so that way you don't waste time and you'll save this money. Like there's a reason to do the, the interactive.

There's a reason. And that was the features is the quiz and the benefits was saving the time, avoid the wrong path. And so, yeah.

So, um, and then texting is just like, hey, um, you know, one of the things I noticed about people is everybody's situation is different.

Yes.

It's a custom thing. And so I might be covering general things here, but if you want specifics, the best way to do that is just to have a conversation. You can text me anytime. It's really me. Yeah. And then my number's in the description or click this here. Yeah. Whatever.

And when somebody says, if they say they're moving to Las Vegas and they might have already watched a few videos from you, they've already connected with you and the heavy lifting that's done in like pre-suasion in terms of like building trust or them connecting. It's incredible. Like all the different real estate clients that we help, it's like, Um, they're like, YouTube is such a trust accelerator that by the time we're about to do business, like people have closed deals. I feel like they generally like never really met. And I think it, you know, it depends on the, you know, it's like DocuSign is happening. They're like, yeah. Oh no, great. Yeah. We've talked a couple, like, well, no, we trust you. Like we already, yeah, we've seen enough of you. Like it's such an accelerator of trust. And so I think then the last thing is like different types of videos you could do. I like to think about what are the points of the video. Let's say it was mistakes, you know, 5 home buying mistakes in a certain, in a certain market. And what could be interesting is why I say give the call to action in the middle is let's say point number 2 is, um, you know, one of the biggest mistakes people make is they don't fully get the right assessment for the house or whatever. And, and by the way, I have an assessment. So the big idea being that you, you create a problem. Structure your content, you create a problem and point to it, and then you're pitching the solution. It's not a generic call to action. Also good though, by the way, just at the end of the video. And so if this video is valuable, great. Man, if you want help, reach out. I mean, macro content being seen a lot and then just letting people know when they're ready, they could reach out. At least do that.

Yeah. At a minimum.

At a minimum. But when possible, if you have that specific tie-in, tie it into the content itself, create the problem and give the solution.

Yeah. I love that. Okay. So last quick, quick question here is intros. I have seen, you know, you talk about packaging, how important title and thumbnail is. We have a whole video on that if you guys wanna check it out, but If you're talking about packaging, intros are part of packaging.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I have noticed the intro used to be a little bit longer. I don't know if you're seeing the trend too, where it's just getting tighter.

Yeah.

Like you used to be able to lay out the proof and the promise and all these things. And then now I feel like the longer the intro is, the worse the video performs. Sure. Am I correct in that?

Yeah.

Sometimes like that, it needs to be—

I think it depends. I think it depends on the niche, depends on the topic. You, you wanna reverse engineer expectation of the audience. And so I think the, uh, we, we have a, we have different types of hooks for different situations. One is called the value-based hook. And so we've, if we do a listicle, um, you gotta realize the heavy lifting in the video might've said, we did one that was called 50 video ideas for getting started or something. 50 YouTube video ideas for getting started. The video starts like this. Number 1.

No intro.

No intro, no, this is who I am, no whatever.

Where's the authority communicated? Just in the title and the thumbnail?

You could argue it doesn't matter. What are they clicking on it? And I mean, now mind you, nothing's in like a total isolation. We already have channel subscribers authority, there's other videos authority, but once the video takes off, that's, you know, how do you actually get seen in the first place? If you break through because the information's so good and it's so— if the payoff is there and the watch time is there, and that's People were saying in the comments, thanks for like no fluff, getting straight to—

Yeah. Just wondering if people are getting tired of the old formula.

Yeah, I think, I think yes, A, B, I think also mixing up the formula, cuz that's why we have like different tools in our tool belt. It's the value-based hook. You know, I've heard Alex Hormozi say a lot though too, like it might waste time to go authority first, but he'll oftentimes go authority first. He'll be like, I've, you know, I got $250 million under acquisition. I sold a, maybe in this video. And, you know, I did $100 million to launch in a weekend. And so boom, boom, boom. It's still fast. But so if you've got that authority, yeah, how can you say it quickly? But in a competitive space, you know, so I've sold, you know, over 500 houses in the Colorado region. And in this video—

Yeah, that's it. And that would've took you what, 5 seconds?

Yeah. And so you could put, Uh, authority in there. And our formula is the AAA formula. So it's attention, authority, agenda. Those could be one sentence each opening. Somehow you grab attention, you establish authority by saying maybe one piece, and then set the agenda. Could be even, let's get into it, cuz you've already framed it. You don't need to like outline the whole video. You can get straight in. However, especially on longer form education, it's nice to really tease what's coming up to some degree. And I'm gonna be breaking this video into 3 parts. And one of the best things you can also do is the classic attention extension YouTube strategy, which is promising the big payoff and then saying, but before, but before we get to the breakdown of the new YouTube algorithm, we actually have to talk about the newest report from the CEO of YouTube. So they're like in, and I want that.

I think this is like a big mistake people are making. I've fallen victim to this too, is I've just started to explain the problem without telling them why. Like you just did it first. You said, we're about to give you all this candy.

Yeah.

But before I do, like, but before we gotta take some veggies, you know, I'm starting off with like, before we get into it, here's the thing. And then the retention's like this.

Yeah.

'Cause they're not interested in that yet.

Yeah. And I think, I think all of the above is, you know, I don't, I oftentimes like I, I record solo video podcasts, I do interviews, but when I do like a solo episode and I'm crafting it, I might just outline my points, but I really craft the hook. And lately my favorite thing is thinking, really, what is that opening line?

I'm thinking like this too. If you are, let's just say it's a live presentation. Now I don't care if there's 15 people there, 50 or 500.

Yeah.

Just you being on stage or in a, in front of people who are taking notes from you.

Yeah.

That to me almost communicates what you're trying to say anyways.

True.

And then if you're, if you're well-spoken and you're Articulating, you have confidence.

That communicates authority.

That's already— you can just get straight into the teaching.

There's this interesting thing coming out of hip-hop. There's this old underground hip-hop group called Dilated Peoples. They have this one line that says, at the opening of a song, he goes, let me start every verse with something to quote. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. And so it always stuck with me, because that's fascinating. Like, oh man, what's that mean? But let me start every verse with something to quote. the first line. And when you look at some of the most viral songs, the opening line, if we go to, if we are at a wedding or you're in a club or DJ, whatever, you hear the opening line, oh, that's my song. And so there's certain lines where the first line sticks with you. When we say get attention, I'm really asking like, what's that first line? And of course you do this on short form, but on YouTube it's like, man, what am I saying first? Am I asking a question? Am I establishing authority? Let me start every verse with something to quote. What's that? Is that too cheesy? Does that make sense? Who am I talking to? Who am I calling out? And so I like to think about how am I grabbing attention? And then I always weave my story in there. And I think it's also important, a big mistake people make, because you have so many people that are successful in your audience, is before people will connect with your success, they need to hear about your struggle.

Yeah, that's true.

And so, you know, I think people, you know, Alex is like, I did a $100 million book launch and business owners are like, sick, I wanna listen from you. But depending on, you know, where you're at, it's nice to, and, and real estate agent, you don't probably need to say that they're struggling. You know, they just want you to solve their problem. But especially for like coaches and, you know, consultants.

I even think from a certain standpoint, a service professional Saying like what they went through to get to the point where they're at is in, in the right context could work. Like for example, you know, one of the, one of the things I learned the hard way when I first got in the business, or a huge mistake I made as an agent or as a lender was I used to do it this way. This is why I do it this way now. But it's not like, hey, look at me, I'm the best. It's like, dude, I, I'd make mistakes and now you're the benefit of that.

I think that's why it's powerful. The self-depreciating is powerful cuz it's humble. You people need to know and be told it's powerful that it's not their fault. And, you know, and I struggled in acknowledging their frustration. This creates a bond that boosts retention. So I guess my point is it's like grabbing attention. And then the thing that I'll often say is I'll say, and listen, like, and, and so I'm actually gonna be breaking down, you know, the formula that has now helped generate over 30 billion views. But listen, I struggled for a long time before I figured this out. In fact, and you want it, you're hitting on pain, you're hitting on, because by the way, why is a person even watching the video? It's because they're in a place of pain trying to solve a problem. So there's a level of connecting and then it's mini hero's journey because it's like, and I struggled for years. I didn't know what videos to post. I couldn't get the views. I was tired. I was burning out. But eventually, I figured out something that works. And today I've got 3 silver play buttons, a gold play button, and I've helped our clients generate over 33 billion views. And I actually want to talk about one of the main ways they were able to do that. So let's get into that. And a lot's happened there. Of course, the fact we have clients, the fact I struggled. And so that's attention, authority, agenda.

Yeah. But the value is the fact that you went through this pain so they don't have to.

Yeah.

Like now you can learn from it.

And so in authority, I like actually saying it's not just, and I am the greatest and checklist of everything, but also the authority of the journey. And I've, and I've been through the journey. I put in the time, I've experienced the pain. It's a missing piece from a lot of people's content.

It's also a pattern interrupt. 'Cause, uh, I'm just, like I said, I think that maybe it's just me 'cause I'm watching all these, but I'm seeing the same formula.

Yeah.

And it's always the accolades.

It's always the accolades.

Yeah. It's like I've spoke and I've, I'm guilty of it too. Like my last several videos, like, Hey, this is the thing. I spent the last 5 years building a, or 6 years building a personal brand. And I spoke on all these and it's showing the proof. Yeah. And I get into it cuz I'm like, I wanna, I want them to know I'm qualified to teach you this. But at the same time, I don't think people care if you said $10 million, $100 million, or a billion. I don't even think people care.

Already at that point it's like, okay, well I get it. And so by the way, that, and it is hero's journey. There is no good movie, good story, good book without actually the pain and the struggle. It's a better story.

Well, people admire characters more for their struggle than their success.

Yeah.

Any movie you watch, like, it wouldn't be— you wouldn't even care if they weren't in a struggle.

And the conflict itself, the conflict in overcoming the conflict. So now it's even, you know, what can you— what can I learn from your journey? I'm seeing it play out. And here's the other thing is there's also a level of it's not believable.

That's true.

Like, if you like, Okay, but are they making it up? Are they fluffing their numbers? And so of course, whenever we're making videos, we're making them in integrity and telling the truth, but understanding that, yeah, your accolades are true, but people will have skepticism and doubt. But that skepticism and doubt goes down when you go, and no, I actually struggled a ton. I actually lost my— I had a business.

Yeah. I was in a foreclosure or I went from broke to this because of—

And think about some of the people at the highest level. Dave Ramsey at the highest level of coaching and info always talks about still going bankrupt this far into his career. And so yeah, sometimes I've—

He's gotta be a billionaire at this point. I mean, think about the empire that he built.

And so, and this has a lot to do, side note, this has a lot to do with also knowing your audience and you need to talk about the struggle no matter what, because there's all kinds of 7-figure business owners that are struggling, burnt out, marriage troubles, challenges. So it, it's not so much that you don't even have money, but you also might be, but still your payroll is like stressing you out and whatnot. And you'd be like, listen, I, like, I've, I've built multiple million-dollar businesses and I've also lost a lot of nights of sleep. And inside the, when people feel seen like this in your ads, in your videos, like what are they actually experiencing, feeling, and, and what would make them feel seen at this moment when you can articulate that? Um, and connect with that through your story, then you're also prepositioning yourself as the one qualified to help them. Because again, it's not just that you crushed it, but they go, wait a minute, you were literally in my shoes. Yeah. I realized like I had a lot of money coming in, but I was overstaffed. I didn't really know how to run my team. My systems kind of sucked. And I was just literally burnt out. My quality of life had gone down so much and my bank account was big, but my lifestyle, uh, was tearing me apart. And I discovered something though. Yeah. Okay. So now, and, and we're talking about retention. So why am I, why am I gonna stick with you in this video? Information is just so abundant right now. If it's just like information being delivered, your narrative and your story needs to be woven in there for retention, for connection, because that's how humans learn. But also in an AI world, because if it's just like, what are the 6 things? That's what's funny too about, you take like Dave Ramsey's information, there almost could be not more basic information. But why are they so powerful? Because of storytelling, psychology, human behavior, how they connect with people and how they actually get people results. So a lot of YouTube videos that just have a list of information aren't actually getting transferred. It's when people connect with you, you start lighting a fire in them. They start actually, you know, there's some sort of relationship. It leads them also— the greatest way you can get someone transformation is when they join your stuff. They go, but you gotta connect with them first. So now more people are in your program, more people are hiring you to help them with their, you know, getting in a home, getting the right loan.

Yeah. Like, and you could talk about that problem of like the fear of overpaying.

Yeah.

The fear of, you know, buying and then the market crash. Like, what are the real things that people are dealing with? And you could call them out. And then in the coaching, consulting, education space, I've noticed this a lot. Like, if you can, probably works in any industry, honestly, if you can articulate that pain.

The person who articulates the customer's pain the best wins.

Because like, they will assume you have the solution.

They assume you have the solution.

If you can, just say it in a way that it's like, oh dude, that guy gets me. Now that might be a cool way. I don't know if this has been done before, but that'd be dope to do an intro like that. Yeah. Just straight up talking about the pain, uh, people are going through and how you just went through it and you're on the other side.

Oh, it will do better.

For sure.

Yeah. Because a lot of people are out here flexing and flex— the flex can still work cuz sometimes the flex is aspirational. But I think also people are burnt out on that. And I think as they get more, you know, they get more tired on that, you know? Yeah. People will relate to your pain. Um, you know, more than your success and they want both, but yeah, tell the story of your pain.

For sure. Um, so you guys just wrapped up this, uh, dope workshop here. I noticed you're doing these quarterly.

Yeah.

How do people get info on coming to a Think Media workshop?

Yeah, I mean, these are awesome cuz they're, of course, they're, they're here at the video department and Forward headquarters. Um, and yeah, thinkmediamastermind.com. And, uh, specifically for, you know, one of the things we did, I was breaking down that special education and autism example. We're like, building videos in real time. And so—

You mean like people leave here with the ready-to-shoot video?

Yeah. Like we were building the packaging of the video, doing the research, figuring out the titles, and then, and also getting through all the minutia of like, no, don't talk about any of this other stuff. Like, let's find that, that one idea. Let's figure out those titles. Let's refine it. We have a process where we go through a software and you, you, you've identified your call to actions. We've identified your competitors. You know, we're looking at multiple different titles and then selecting the best one. And we're doing that in a workshop environment. So not only that you're leaving with your, um, clarity on the videos you should make next, but you're leaving with the skillset, the mechanism to then be able to do that. And, you know, I'm not trying to overhype it, but really mastering YouTube is like creating a money printing machine. Like the ability to consistently post videos is awareness that'll build your brand, get you leads. And lead to more clients and revenue in your business. And so it's such a valuable skillset to learn. And that's what we talk about at thinkmediamastermind.com.

That's dope. One of the things that I'm focused on this year is just, I just started getting more consistent with the YouTube upload, but just being more thinking about it in the way we talked about in the beginning, which was as another salesperson. And honestly, bro, I don't know if you feel this, I've seen people that are making maybe a little bit, maybe they, they could be potentially making more money doing cold calling or different types of paid ads to funnels and closers and all that. But there's something really dope about like, this did all the work for you.

Yeah.

Like you don't, there is no closer, the closer, the closing already occurred. They just text you and like, yep. So even if it was less business or another arm of your business, it's the whole idea of working smarter, not harder.

Yeah. Tracy Bookman, uh, just did $68,000 in sales this past June for his roofing business. And, uh, we did a podcast with him that said YouTube is my number one salesman. He's at a quarter million dollars in YouTube attributed revenue, which he's tracking just to YouTube, um, for them being his salesperson. And this is not, you know, anybody else having to close on the phone. And respect to all the different ways, you know, I just got pitched new windows when someone knocked on my front door, you know, are you ready for windows? Like, we're living in a world where YouTube Is not only doing that and it's leading to real revenue, but it's also a compounding asset. Not every video ranks, but how many videos you got? Like, you look at your real-time views and you're like, wait a minute, I got a video from 6 months ago, I got a video from last year that's still getting views.

Yeah, and I think we did— our goal was once a month, or biweekly. It was once a month, then we went biweekly, and then just randomly one will pop off for 100,000. Yeah, and I have a bunch that are 5,000, 10,000, it doesn't matter. And I don't really know which ones are gonna pop off.

Yeah.

But it's, it's really cool to see like the compounding effect that that one from 6 months ago is still in the last 48 hours.

In the last 48 hours.

Still getting like—

That's my favorite page.

People hanging out with me every 48 hours.

That's the dream is the real analytics page of like, oh, 6 months old, a year old, still getting views. It's not only YouTube is your number one salesman, it's that eventually you have a whole team of salespeople working for free 24/7. Talking to people and either closing or warming people up at a crazy level.

Yeah. And I, and one just quick backpedal is just like for someone who's watching this and they're like, well, Sean said this and Neil said this about the funnel that you create. If you don't have the funnel, the most powerful thing you could do is just what Sean said. Just tell them to text you. I know it's going to get less leads, not optimized, but the people that message you are already extreme bottom of funnel.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of people, bro, they don't want more leads. They want better leads. So I would rather get the 3 people who are interested in having a conversation than 30 leads that I have to chase down and follow up anyways. Right.

So, uh, you don't have it just— Yeah, I mean, it's both depending on what level you're at. Like, let's start soon. Let's start now. Let's get momentum going. We can optimize later. We can optimize later.

Yeah. Awesome, bro. So, um, if you guys are interested, check out the mastermind because I see people here a couple times, 3, 4 times a year and they're crushing it. So you can learn more from Sean. Thanks for being here, bro.

Yeah, appreciate you.