Her Viral Formula Breaks 100 Million Views On YouTube Shorts (ft. Jenny Hoyos)

All right. Today we are gonna get smarter about short-form video. Short-form video is something I am mega, mega long on. Why? Well, I don't know. Have you ever seen TikTok, Instagram Reels? Have you seen YouTube Shorts? These things are taking over the world. So today's guest is Jenni Hoyos. She is a short-form video genius, to be honest. I mean, every single short she does gets like 10 million views, every single one. And it's not because she was famous before. It's not because she's doing crazy, crazy stuff. She has just figured out how to make viral short-form videos. So I wanted to ask her every question I could. This is an episode of me learning from her the tricks. So how does she come up with ideas? Like, how do you figure out a good idea versus a bad idea? How does she structure the video? How does she script it? How does she film it? What are the, uh, elements and the hooks that make the video more viral versus medium viral versus low viral? Like, what is that knob? So this interview is me talking to Jenni Hoyos, an 18-year-old short-form genius who is going super viral. And she's going to teach us. So in the next hour, we're going to get really smart about short form. All right, let's do it. Let's jump in. What we're going to do is in the next, I don't know, 45 minutes, you are going to tell us the specifics, the tactical, the breakdown of how you've cracked the viral code. You know how to go viral. TikTok, YouTube, Yeah, but you are 18 years old. You live at home in your parents' house. It's only been 2 years since you started doing a lot of the content that you're doing. I went, scrolled all the way back, and it started off not, not so great, but then now you're getting like 10 million views per video. You've had a 100 million view short. That's kind of incredible. What is that? You— is that what your life is like? Give people a sense of who are you?

Yeah, you, I mean, you nailed it right on the head. Yeah. So, uh, I'm Jenny Hoyos. I'm a YouTuber who makes videos around the life of a cheapskate, I guess you can say. I guess you can call me like, you know, the anti-MrBeast. So, you know, people call me Mr. Least.

Yes. Uh, which is, which is amazing branding. Amazing. We've had MrBeast on here and he's like, I spend $3 million per video. And I'm curious also, when you record, uh, do you like, you know, we talk about Hollywood, if you ever see an actor in their van or their, their truck before they're gonna go do a scene, they'll kind of get themselves into character. They'll get themselves into a state of mind. Nobody can bother them. Nobody should go talk to them. Like they are getting in the zone. I'm curious, do you do anything to kind of get yourself into a certain state of mind? I remember there's a creator called Miss Excel that I love this story. I've told this many times, but she creates content of all things about Microsoft Excel, how to use it better. But like, she's super high energy. She's like dancing and doing other stuff. It's like dancing plus Excel. It's a weird combo, but it works. And she said something like, before I go record, I'm not like, you know, I'm not thinking about what I'm going to say. I just get myself into a state where I, she said, I feel magnetic. Like I just get my charisma, my, my energy up so high. And when I feel like I'm there, I run to my camera, I turn it on and I start recording because I believe, she said, I believe that all content is just energy transmission. It's me pushing my energy through the phone to you. The way I feel, I'm going to push it through and then you're going to feel that way too. I love the way she described that. That's very much how I do this podcast. I'm just curious, not everybody does things that way. Is that similar to what you do or how do you, how do you approach kind of getting in the right state of mind before you create a piece of content?

Oh my gosh. I love this question. Cause I used to struggle with this so much as like, honestly, an introvert. Most people wouldn't like to see me as one, but like, yeah, the introvert with a billion views. Yeah. I don't know. I used to do what Miss Excel did, basically what you said. I used to like try to bump up my energy so that when I film, I have like the highest energy. But now I try to have like consistently high energy throughout my day, every day. And I actually built that muscle by doing this thing, uh, for like a month. I would set up my camera for an hour and I would do a, uh, standup comedy show to myself. I, I'm, I'm like improvised or yeah, improvised. I've never like, I've never done standup comedy. I don't know comedy.

Like, that's amazing.

And, and I I did that just to like learn to not be scared to like tell bad jokes and just like be myself and natural. Then after that, I would like record my entire day almost, and like it wouldn't even go online.

That is fascinating. You actually did that? You would, you would in the morning, you would turn on the camera and you would just do a stand-up routine just to get yourself to feel confident, to be okay in the awkwardness, and to get your kind of like charisma reps.

Yes.

Is that what you were doing? Like, people go to the gym, you were doing that?

Actually, okay, here's what I would actually do. This actually sounds cringe because I've never said it before. There's this YouTube channel called Charisma on Command. So in the morning, I'd watch that, right? And then, like, throughout the day, like, I would repeat, like, the, the things I learned in my head. And then at night, I would do the stand-up comedy show. Like, throughout the day, I would try to record as well just to, like, get my reps in. But that's essentially what I did. I tried to, like, build up my charisma and personality just by, like, Recording videos that no one's going to see.

I don't think that's cringe at all. I think that makes total sense. Um, whenever I see somebody who's good at something, I don't assume they're just good at it. I assume they've worked at this. And when you see somebody who's good on camera or somebody who's got a personality that's really, you know, charismatic, I assume it's because they practiced being charismatic. Maybe they did it informally, just in school all the time, cracking jokes at the lunch table and whatnot. And that's where they got their 10,000 reps. But if you don't have that, or you're starting as an introvert or somebody who's bad at it, there is a deliberate way to get better, just like any skill, just like building muscles, just like becoming good at, you know, tennis or whatever else it is. And I actually feel— I actually look for this. I look for things that are really valuable to have, but nobody wants to practice it. And even worse, people would find it cringe or lame if you said, I'm practicing this. Yeah. Because I'm like, that's a gold mine. That is, we agreed it's valuable. Nobody really works on it. So if I, so I don't even have to work that hard to get great at it, um, to become better than most people at it because most people are not practicing. And even worse, even if people wanted to practice, they'd feel so lame or it's taboo or it sounds cringe or it sounds awkward to do it. That's a, that's a barrier to entry. Most people are not willing to do that. I hunt down those, those skills and I develop them. And I, it's, it's really great to hear you at age 18 doing that same thing. That's, that's really amazing. So you, you've said before there's 4 criteria for an idea. Novelty, uncertainty, knowledge gaps, and complexity. Can you explain what this means?

Knowledge gaps is basically telling the viewer, I know something that you don't, which is why you have to watch. Or similar to we were talking about before, how it's like, I did X so you don't have to. Um, and then uncertainty is basically telling the viewer that you're doing something crazy that you don't know what the outcome could possibly be. Such as like I recently made a video where I sold everything my family owns. There's so much uncertainty in how is her family going to react? We need to see their reaction to her selling everything.

You know, I'm not a, uh, I'm not so much of a, a TikToker or a YouTuber just yet. Will be soon. But when I write even a blog post or a Twitter thread or something like that, I will often put like the central curiosity gap, uh, which is basically what, what is the person curious about that I can put up front where they're going to want to read to the end to see the payoff? MrBeast does this in his videos too, right? He did a video recently which was like, I have people age 1 to 100, uh, trapped in these rooms and the last person out is going to win. And the curiosity is, who's going to win? Is it going to be the old person? Is it going to be the young kid?

That actually is something that comes down to The video idea itself, cuz when I'm brainstorming an idea, we want the idea itself to have so many questions that need answered because at the end of the day, like content creation on YouTube, what piques people's curiosity is a problem that needs to be resolved at the end of the video, or a question that's gonna get answered at the end of the video. And that's what I try to do in all of my videos.

So let's look at one of 'em. So 23 million views, you have, what does $1 get you at Starbucks? Like literally the title is The question, the unresolved question.

Yes.

I don't know. What can you get? And I guess it's more like, what's the most you can get for the buck, right? How do you get the most bang for your buck? That's kind of brilliant. Okay. Who has the best dollar menu? 3.1 million views. Also unresolved. Which, which place is it going to be? And you can see literally the first frame is like you holding a dollar bill with Burger King behind you. And it's kind of like, you know, you can see what you're going to do. You're about to test visually. You could see you're going to test what can I buy with this dollar at this place? Um, so the unresolved question is kind of interesting. The other thing I like that you do that, I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, but like, it seems like you weave in your personal life or your personal stories. So it's not just like, I'm going to do this crazy thing. It's like, it's my mom's birthday and I want to get her a gift. And then you do the crazy thing, but at least the video is more like, I don't know, I kind of connect with you more. I see your mom. I like that you're buying your mom a gift. You're kind of earnest about it. Is that a tactic that you think about, you know, kind of a personal story versus just a generic stunt?

Totally. I think that's what makes the videos, like, quite frankly, there's so many people who can do the same idea and it just doesn't go as viral because they're not telling a story. And that's why I try to weave in like my personal life because it's more relatable. More people comment about it. That's how we get that returning viewership.

Hey, real quick, you know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million-dollar businesses, made their first million. Off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy. That's wild. That's why we wanna do the show and we wanna see more of that. One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about? Well, the answer is finally yes. The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50+ business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free. You click the link in the description below. And get the database for you. All right, now back to the show. So what's an example of a video you did with a story that you could have done without?

Okay, the best example I have was I have a video where I made a garden on a budget. And you know, and if you search up other people's videos making a garden, they were averaging like 20,000 views. Like, people who make gardening videos don't average high views.

So what was the difference? How did you get— if a normal garden video, 20,000 views, your garden video, 20 million views. What did you do to, to juice that video up?

I told the story of how ratatouille is my favorite food, but it's so expensive to buy it. But technically speaking, I could just make a garden to have infinite ratatouille for life. And it's my, and it's my favorite food, so it just works out. And then also my mom and my grandma were helping me for a portion of the garden. It just interweaves so many things that the people can insert themselves into.

Right. So you took a normal thing. With medium to low stakes. You added your why, why I care about this. And the why doesn't have to be life or death. I think that's kind of important. I think, uh, you know, a lot of the YouTubers did it as life or death. It's like, this is, you know, the craziest stunt you've ever seen. And I think Ryan Trahan and you, I think you guys are very, very likable because it's almost like low stakes stakes.

Oh, 1000%. Especially like now on YouTube, people are so used to like these high stakes, like seeing $10,000 in a title anymore. People don't even know what that even means. Cause they're seeing people like MrBeast spend a million dollars. So it's like, you know, people are just so numb to these numbers or these stakes where almost these low stakes are high stakes.

Right. Okay. So let's take an, let's do an example. Here's an idea and let's try to make it better using some of the, some of the techniques. We'll just riff on this and see, see where it goes. Live, live improv here. Okay. So, um, let's say I wanna make a video about me, um, Me making dinner. So I'm cooking dinner. 1 out of 10, you know, video concept. It's not, not gonna be the most exciting. Let's use, show me how you would make it better. So let's use either novelty, complexity, knowledge gaps, or uncertainty. How would you kind of make that idea more interesting?

I love this. So for me, if I was to make that idea, making dinner, right? Intrinsically not intriguing at all. But what's relevant to me is how much of a struggle it is as someone who has like a health condition. Right. So like, that's one angle, right? Then there's also the angle of like you doing it on a budget, which is what I usually do. So now that, that, that's even more of an intriguing angle, like trying to make a healthy meal on a budget because healthy is supposed to be expensive.

Right. Or it could be, um, it could be, I'm trying to make a fancy dinner, but I don't know how to cook.

That too.

Or I'm a total beginner, but I'm going for gourmet.

Yes, exactly. And then like, there's so many different layers and I also love to do juxtaposition where it's like, okay, I wanna make a gourmet dinner with leftovers from last night.

Or, or like a Lunchable or something like that.

Yes, exactly. Turning a Lunchable into gourmet. Then, you know, all of these are great ideas and then at the end of the day it's like, which one makes you most excited?

Gotcha. Okay, cool. And then the personal story part would be, why am I making the dinner in the first place? Why does this matter to me? What are the stakes? So we made the idea more interesting by adding the contrast, the juxtaposition, the complexity, the novelty. But then the personal story might be, I invited my mom over for dinner. She's cooked for me my whole life. I told her I was going to cook her an amazing meal. Only problem is I'm an adult now. I moved out of the house, but I've never cooked dinner for anybody. I've never hosted guests. I got to do it.

The story is even better now because there's even an angle where What if you— the video is something along the lines of like, you're going to turn a Lunchables into a Dinnerables, because Lunchables, they don't have a dinner option, it's just Lunchables, right? And then what's even better is your mom would always— would never cook for you, but she would always give you Lunchables for lunch. So now for dinner, you're going to give her Lunchables. I mean, it sounds a bit complex, but like, as you script it, you don't remember— like, with complexity, the goal is to like add layers to give people more reasons to watch, but you don't wanna actually confuse the viewer. And that kind of comes back in with the way you copyright it because you wanna say it in a way that's, you know, easy to digest and drip feed that context.

Right. Yeah. I was, when, when we were hanging out with MrBeast and he was telling us about some of his video ideas, what I realized was I was like, man, the reason his videos can get 100 million, 200 million views is because it's a concept so simple. You could literally just draw it with a stick figure drawing. And people would get it. Two people who don't know each other trapped in a room for 100 days. Winner, you know, if they make it the whole way, they get $1 million, right? These are like simple, universal, easy to understand ideas. What you just did with the Lunchables, Dinnerables thing is both the kind of like that amusement, like I'm doing this just for my own amusement. I'm not doing this to impress you. I'm doing this to scratch my own itch. Can I do this? And like, I think that's very likable and also very simple to understand.

I think that's a good— I turned Lunchables into Dinnerables. Visually, you can imagine that.

Yeah. Okay. That's great.

All right.

I'm excited for you to go make that video someday. All right. So we got ideas and how to, how to basically brainstorm to turn any kind of mundane idea into a better idea using, using those techniques. Now, actually pulling it off. So delivering on it. So what is the most important part? What's the first thing you do when you're, when you, you have the idea now, first thing you gotta get right. In order for a video to pop off?

The hook. And, and it, the hook is so important that sometimes I figure out the most viral hook isn't the most viral idea. So then I have to come back to the idea and change the idea based on the hook.

When you think about hooks, I guess like what is the, what is the big picture advice when it comes to hooks? And then what is the tactical process you take?

Power words should be the first thing that starts the video.

What's a power word? What do you mean?

Power words are things that will instantly hook people, that are very strong words such as free, $0, stole, or any like crazy word. Uh, cause we— and the reason I say that is because I see a lot of people, like way too many people start their videos with, this is— I'm out. This is— is not telling me anything about the video. Like I'm— I, I actually scroll cuz it's like, it, it's bad. As opposed to if someone says free chicken sandwiches all weekend, I'm in. Where, where are these free chicken sandwiches? I was in the moment you said free. So that's the number one thing. You want your, your hooks to start with power words. The second thing is you want it to be progressing the video. The reason why this is, is also bad is because it is just saying a statement. It is not doing anything. This is blank. Doesn't tell me what you're going to do. It's just telling me a statement as opposed to. Free chicken sandwiches this weekend. You're already telling me the whole story. Or I'm building a secret room. You're already telling me the action, even though the, even though the power words aren't until 3 words in, secret, it still works because it's starting with the action. I'm doing blank. I'm going to do blank. The story is progressing as opposed to a statement being stale. That's the second thing. And, uh, another thing that's very crucial for hooks or in your general, like, introduction of your video is to foreshadow the end. Your hook has to be so clear what the video is going to be about. You're not only setting up the video, but you're also saying what the conflict is and what's going to be at the end of the video, all in one sentence, which is very hard, but that's what a really good hook has.

So I have an example here of one of yours. You have one that says, movie theaters are overpriced. You said that's the hook. And then the foreshadow is, so I'm going to make a movie theater at home on a budget of only $5.

Exactly. Yep, exactly. You nailed it. You want your hooks to have the setup conflict and what the resolution is going to be all in one.

What metrics in a video map to that? So like, for example, um, you know, on YouTube and a normal YouTube video, the thumbnail and the title matter. And you know that because you could see the click-through rate, how many people actually choose to try to watch your video. When it comes to short-form video, what metrics are the, you know, the top two that, that are related to idea and hook?

Yeah, so the idea/hook metric would be the view versus swipe away percentage.

View versus swipe away. And what is like good and then what's like amazing for that percentage, that, that number?

Yeah, so I've heard the average is 70, where pretty good for me is 80% plus, and Excellent would be 85% plus, but for, for, for my channel, we average around 80, 85%, which is not— is very uncommon. Like, I think Beast is like at 75%, so I've heard.

And then the second one is like the, uh, so you have the, the viewer swipe away, and then what's the next most important metric? Retention?

Retention overall. Yes, retention, I'd say, because that just shows how, how much the viewer enjoyed the video.

What do you shoot for with retention?

It depends on the video length, but generally you wanna be at at least 90%. Uh, my team, we usually go for 95+. Wow.

And, uh, again, I, I think for most people it's like 15% or something crazy. Oh no.

Like crazy low.

Um, okay, so the hook and the first frame, uh, what about the visual? What works in the actual visual? Cuz there's, with short form, there's no thumbnail and people aren't really reading the title, I don't think. So what's your, what's your philosophy on how, what to put on screen, what that first frame should look like?

Yeah, I try to keep it as simple as possible. It's very similar philosophy to like a title and thumbnail, same psychology in a way, where I try to keep it like little to no focus points, high brightness, high saturation. And we like, we'll go through, we'll go through so many lengths and measures and After Effects and VFX just to make it like pop out just that much more, such as like Sometimes we'll add artificial fire just to make it look crazier. Like, in one of our shorts, I went to Hell's Kitchen. But you don't really get that message across unless you actually add the restaurant on fire, you know? And it's like something as little as that.

Yeah, if you keep pointing up at the logo of the restaurant, it looks like there's a fire. Is that not real?

That's not real. There's no fire there?

That's not real.

People think it's real. That's sick. Yeah, so we try to make things really stand out. Even with the secret room, when I first hit the wall, I just dented the wall. I didn't even break a hole. And we actually had to make a VFX where it would look like I made this giant hole, like I broke a giant hole, when in reality it wasn't a giant hole that broke. It was like a little teeny tiny hole because I had like a, a little small hammer. So it's like little stuff like that. We try to make, we try and enhance things to look even crazier in post.

Interesting. And so what was the first thing you said? No, no, little to no focus points. What does that mean?

So what I mean by that is we don't want any busyness. To go on. I think, you know, it's a really good example. If you can show who has the best dollar menu, like, in the first frame, just pause it and notice that that is not a real environment. Like, we actually took myself, we rotoscoped myself, and then we found an image of McDonald's on Google that was so much cleaner, that had no cars, the logo was clean, there was no trees, just so it could be perfectly— like, just look perfect for the viewer, if that makes sense. That's what we try to do. We want the environment to look as clean as possible. So there's no busy points.

So, all right, so great. So we've done idea, uh, how to go from meh to good to great. We've done the hook, how to grab them by the throat, get that 80, 80 plus percent, uh, view rate. Now you said foreshadowing is the next part. What is foreshadowing and how do you do it? Because I, this is one that I've heard, obviously I've thought about the ideas, I've thought about hooks. Uh, this is not something I do in my process. What is foreshadowing?

Foreshadowing is when you give a viewer the expectation of the end of the video. And the way I've coined it is you basically wanna tell the viewer that there's an Amazon gift card at the end of the video, essentially. Like they need to watch till the end. Sometimes you'll have to explicitly tell the viewer, oh, you'll get blank at the end of the video. Usually a lot of my foreshadowing is implied. So who has the best dollar menu? It's very implied that by the end of the video, I'm gonna tell you who has the best dollar menu. Essentially, and that's, that's usually the best foreshadowing, one that's like so obvious because it's within the hook and it's implied. But an even better, even stronger foreshadowing hook is when you have a mechanism. So an example of that is, what does $10 get you in Miami? Now, not only do you know by the end of the video what $10 gets you in Miami, but you also know what, how I spent the $10. Now the mechanism is actually seeing the money being spent. Because in the first second you see, oh, she spent $2, we're at an $8 budget. And then a couple seconds later, oh, now she's at $5. And we have a sense of progression of where the video is going. 'Cause otherwise, if the viewer does not feel like the video is constantly progressing, then they're gonna leave because they don't feel like, even though you said that there's something at the end, they don't know where the end is. So it's also very important to make it clear.

Let's talk about storytelling. Uh, you have a great quote, you said, What is storytelling? Storytelling in one word is change.

Yes.

Unpack that. What does that mean?

I think the biggest thing is progression. I, I guess when I say change, I mean progression. So similar to what I was just saying, like the viewer wants to feel like they're constantly either learning or laughing even more, or they are building towards something. They don't wanna feel like, you know, they're watching something stagnant, like they're just watching paint dry. The best storytelling is when there's character development, change in the actual character, where at the beginning of the video, the character started at one point and is now at a new point at the end. So I, I subtly did that in my short that hit 100 million views. So basically I built a secret room with $0, and my goal was to have a secret spot to watch YouTube. And in the beginning of the video, my mom was yelling at me for destroying the house and how there's nothing under there. Like, I'm crazy. What am I doing? and then at the end of the video, she ended up having the secret room and pretending like it was hers now. It was very subtle, but like change like that is what actually made the viewers not only watch till the end to see how that gets resolved, but also rewatch the video again knowing that.

Yeah, that's interesting. What, and rewatching, that's a, that's like a big part of your strategy, right?

Yes. To get people to rewatch. Number 1 is hook and number 2 is overall retention, which is video progression, and number 3 is rewatchability.

What gets somebody to rewatch?

There's not that many things that get people to rewatch, so it's, it's probably the toughest thing to do. Uh, so there, you could, you could do Easter eggs, which is essentially like hiding little things in the video that people are gonna comment about and potentially watch again to see like, did, did that actually happen?

Yeah, I do that all the time. I like a video, I open the comments, then they reference something that I didn't see the first time, so I end up watching it again.

Yes.

And then I go back to the comments and I, and it's still looping in the background and I probably end up watching the video 3 times.

Exactly. So that's one way. Another very easy way to do it is just tutorial videos in itself are rewatchable because people aren't— especially if it's on Shorts, people are not going to watch a tutorial once and automatically know all the steps. So usually when you have specific steps or lists, or listicles is what it's called, it makes it very easy to rewatch. And then my favorite method is actually having twists in your videos, because when you have a twist, Now the viewer is gonna wanna rewatch the video with that new knowledge, knowing what the twist is.

That's interesting. I like that. Um, what about, uh, storytelling mechanically? So, you know, what are some techniques? I know you've talked about this, uh, I think the, the but therefore method, which I, I don't know. Did you get that from the South Park guys?

Yes, I did. Yes, I did.

Uh, explain, explain what that is.

Yeah, so but so storytelling is basically adding conflict throughout the video so that it makes it more intriguing as the video continues. So an easy example is if I made a video going on a walk, let's say, very bad idea, but you know, I went on a walk and then it started raining and then I kept walking and then I kept walking and then like, like there's nothing, there's nothing new that's like really happening because it's just, you just keep doing things. It's like, and then this and then that, like that's such a boring story as opposed to constant conflict being created. When you say "but so." So for example, I was walking, but then it started raining, so I had to find an umbrella, but I'm in the middle of nowhere and don't know where I am. So I went to pull out my phone, but, uh, my phone is dead, so I started running. And you see what I mean? Like, the story feels more intriguing because you're instantly adding more conflict and you're instantly finding that conflict much easier. By simply saying, but so.

Yeah, there's a great clip of the South Park guys doing this where they have a story written on a whiteboard and they just cross out all of the ands. They're like, this is how toddlers tell stories when it, you know, they came from, from school. It's like, and then, and then this happened.

Yeah.

And then, then Mrs., she gave me this and then this, and then I got candy and then this. And he's like, just cross out all the ands and just try to replace them with but. And, you know, but so, right? So, but this, I wanted this. I was doing this, but then this happened. So then I was forced to do this, but then I encountered another obstacle. So then I tried this other technique and all of a sudden, like, any story can become interesting just using that. Like, that's probably one of the highest leverage techniques that just changes the interestingness of a story. Another one is stakes. Do you use stakes in your story? I know, like, you know, basically what's on the line? Why does it matter that you do this? I know a short is so, so small in length, so, you know, you can't build it up in the same way you can build up a movie or a documentary, but Have you used that or do you play with that idea?

Yeah, I love using stakes. And the way I see stakes is also like including a why, right? And usually with stakes, it's either like artificial or just like a personal why. But for the most part, I usually try to make like real stakes. I kid you not, like we always default to like what, what's actually happening in my real life that we can actually include as real stakes.

So for example, in that secret room video, it's like The initial why and the initial stakes are you wanna watch YouTube, your mom's not, your mom's yelling at you saying you're watching too much YouTube, so you're trying to build a secret room.

Exactly.

But then by the time you take the sledgehammer to the wall, the stakes have actually elevated. It's like, oh my God, she's breaking down her house.

Yeah.

She better pull this off or else, you know, now you thought YouTube was a problem. Breaking the wall is gonna make her mom even more mad.

Exactly.

Right? So you, you, you know, the best stories actually increase the stakes over time.

Yes. And we want the viewers to be at the edge of their seats. All the time. Like, I know this conversation is like primarily on shorts, but like even on like my recent long form, the stakes were incredibly high where I sold everything my family owns. And, and the stakes were, were basically like, this is what kept the viewer at the edge of their seat, where it's, I'm selling everything without my family knowing, and I'm gonna keep selling bigger and bigger items until they notice. But when they do, I'm gonna give them all the money I make to prove that Uh, cash is better than trash, essentially. So now, like, it's like, it's a crazy idea. Stakes are high cuz her pa— she can get in big trouble with her parents. And then it's like, you know, when is she gonna get caught? How far is she gonna get? And while I'm saying all this, I'm showing clips of like me taking the microwave and a bunch of decor and moving furniture outta the house. And like, it's like, oh my gosh, this is legit. Like, this is crazy.

Right. Things are getting messy now.

Right.

Exactly. Um, yeah. Like the, you know, even great TV shows, Breaking Bad, for example. So what's the change? He's a high school teacher, kind of a pushover, pretty boring life. Then he gets diagnosed with cancer. He knows he's going to die and that his family is going to be left with no money. So big stakes all of a sudden. Okay, but he's a high school teacher, so where is he going to get money? So he decides to deal drugs, basically to sell drugs in order to get money. But he doesn't know anything about making drugs. So he goes and he meets his high school former high school student, but that guy's a druggie, so he doesn't know anything. So this guy takes over and actually creates a proper lab out of it, but the cops come after him, right? That's the story. And along the way, the stakes get bigger and bigger. At first it was he needs a little bit of money, then it's, oh, the dealer that he's working with tries to rob them, then it's the DEA's after him, but then the DEA is his brother-in-law, and it just goes on and on. And eventually he's running this empire and the stakes have gotten even bigger. Now it's life or death. And, um, you know, he's sitting on millions of dollars. And so the stakes escalated, which is why a lot of people consider Breaking Bad one of the greatest shows, because it did that so well. Um, yeah, I want to recap. We started off saying, let's build the perfect short. We did idea and how you, how you could tag the idea to make it take a, a meh idea and make it more interesting. Then we have the hook, the first frame. How do you grab their attention and get, you know, 80% of people to actually watch versus just swipe away? You have foreshadowing, which is hinting at what's to come, the payoff, the promise of what might, might come at the end. And then you have the retention, the storytelling, what keeps you hooked, what keeps you engaged, that sense of progress as the video's going on. Last thing is the ending. So how, what's the end of this perfect short that we're creating? What, what do you, how do you think about an ending and how do you, what do you do in your endings? Cause I noticed some of them are kind of like abrupt. I'm not sure if that's intentional or not.

Yeah. So A lot of people on short-form content will sometimes not even give a payoff because their retention will be like crazy high cuz they would have no drop-offs. But at the end of the day, there is no viewer satisfaction if you just like don't give a proper payoff. So my intention with endings is to keep it as short as possible while giving some sort of payoff, even if we have some sort of retention drop, because our goal is to ensure viewer satisfaction so the next time the viewer knows Oh, she's at least gonna complete the story at the end of the video.

So not frustrating.

Exactly. So we want the payoff to feel so good. And the way it's called is peak end. There's, there's a theory called peak end theory where essentially you dictate your emotions or feeling or opinion towards something based on the ending. So like, just like you would watch a movie, you can be bored for the whole thing and then like the last 30 minutes was really good and those 30 minutes will dictate your feelings. Throughout the entire movie, you would say that was the best movie I've ever watched, even if the first half you hated it, right? Just cuz the ending is the last thing that you remember. So that's why we want the endings to feel intense emotion. So just close it off with either, uh, strong wholesomeness or like just like the funniest moment in the entire video. Um, and a lot of the times we like to do twists just because they'll have great rewatchability essentially.

Interesting. Interesting. Um, so that's the, that's the perfect short. Now let's talk about the process. So, you know, you've done some interesting things. I, I, I've heard you talk about getting ideas. You're like, I got thousands of ideas for shorts. You know, steal like an artist. What does it mean to steal like an artist? And, and what have you done to, to kind of steal like an artist to generate lots of, lots of great ideas?

Yeah. Stealing like an artist is essentially taking inspiration and rather than actually recreating video ideas. So for the most part, what I mean by that is I, I usually steal from like topics or like different movie techniques as opposed to like taking actual ideas. Cause I don't know, I feel a little icky doing that.

Well, it's steal like an artist, not steal like a thief, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So like steal like a thief is you take the exact idea from something directly in your lane and you just copy it.

Yeah, exactly.

Like you, you copy it word for word, frame for frame. There's people that are doing that. Steal like an artist, I think, is you find inspiration from things direct but also indirect, adjacent spaces, right? Um, and then you put your remix on it. You have to find a way to add your twist, um, to that same base idea.

Yeah, I think, I think the, the easiest example where I stole like an artist is I'm very inspired by like what MrBeast does. Like, like he genuinely is like changing people's lives. He's philanthropic. You know, he's making people happy and it's like, how could I do that with the Jenny Hoyos twist? And it's quite literally doing what he does, but on a budget. I think that's like the best example. Just like I, whenever, like I want to take inspiration from someone, I try to find what's my unique perspective that I can add to it.

That's great. You've also, um, done like built some tools. I think you, you like scrape, you scrape, uh, data off these platforms so that you're able to analyze a bunch of videos, um, and you're looking for some kind of outlier, I would assume, or you're looking for something in that data. Can you describe what you did and, and what you look for?

So, you know, like, like you said, uh, my team has built a bunch of tools and the goal for that is to understand our viewer psychology. So recently our number one goal is to increase subscriber conversions cuz we have over a billion views, um, and 2 million subscribers. Where the average person would have like 10 million subscribers. So, right. We're like, okay, let, we, let's increase our subscriber conversions. And essentially what we did was we created a tool where we took all my videos and I manually labeled what I did in each of those videos. So some of them were labeled as had my family in it. Other videos were labeled as malicious content. So me pranking. Other were, others were labeled as like wholesome and et cetera, like I just labeled every video, every video with any possible thing the video could be about. And a bunch of different like things we did. For example, if I mentioned YouTube or if I said subscribe or literally anything that could have happened, I labeled them manually. And then we put them in a graph and a chart to see the subscriber conversions on that specific video to find how I can maximize subscriber conversions. And doing something like that, we found that I double my conversions when I have my family in the videos. And specifically when I'm making wholesome content. Where I surprise them, such as like, you know, uh, giving my mom a birthday present, for example, would have twice the amount of subscriber conversions. But then, wow, because we have these tools, actually, what, what, what's interesting though is, you know, if you don't have this tool, the average person would see on my, it'll be like on my YouTube Studio, they could be like, oh, you got double the amount of subscribers, so you should do that. But that's not necessarily the case because what we found was I got double the subscriber conversion. But 10x less the views when I do that. I actually get my regular conversions when I do malicious content, but 10x the views, which actually means I'm getting 5x more subscribers, which in theory means that's actually what's gonna get me more subscribers. It's basically little things like this that we're building tools for to find how we can maximize, uh, views, retention, viewer satisfaction, and et cetera.

One of the other things that, uh, I really liked was when you, you described you were studying the platform and you're like, I will go look at a channel and I look at a short and, you know, if I see a short that has 10 million views, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best concept if the person on average gets 10 million views.

Exactly.

But if they on average get 10 and this video gets 30, it's an outlier concept for their baseline. And then you looked at all those outliers to figure out the differences between great ideas versus just normal ideas. Is that right? Correct.

Yeah, it's, it's all relative.

How did you do that? What did you do? Is that manual? Did you just go channel by channel and just try to look at their view, their, their view counts? What did you do?

Yeah, unfortunately that was all manual. So usually the way I find these outliers is by going to trending every single morning. Every morning I will go onto the trending page and I'll watch every single trending short.

That's like your, your morning routine.

Yeah. And my nighttime routine. 'Cause it's like they change it.

And my lunch routine. I'm always doing that. Exactly.

What's crazy is too, once you get used to it, you actually don't have to like just rely on trending. 'Cause now my Shorts feed is just a bunch of trending Shorts because I watch trending every morning and night. Now when I go on the Shorts feed, I find trending like content as well. And, um, and then I have a swipe file, which is what I actually learned from the book Steal Like an Artist. And then I have a swipe file that I'll put all these things in if I want to steal like an artist.

I wanna ask you a couple more questions, tactical questions. One, um, audience. So do you, you know, there's, there's different theories in marketing. They're like, you need to have a persona or a target, target avatar. There's other people who say, I'm just making for me. Um, there's other people who say, you know, you should do a market analysis and find the, the biggest market possible. And then a psychographic analysis, what they care about, blah, blah, blah. All right. That's, you know, what, what do you do? You're, you're actually winning. Uh, what do you, what do you do when it comes to audience?

Yeah, so I used to have my younger self as my avatars and you know, I think you can go pretty far doing that, but I realized if I wanna get to 100 million subscribers, like I need to have multiple avatars. And now at this point, like, I don't necessarily talk to one specific person. I'm just trying to cater to every audience, which is like, I guess, long story short, I used to do all that market analysis, but now I don't. So yeah.

So what do you use as the guiding principle now? Just like kind of what, what would anybody, what would everybody be interested in? Is that the, the different, a different question? Yeah.

The guiding principle is making content that's intriguing for kids. 'Cause at the end of the day, like, That's the biggest audience on YouTube while making it mature enough for adults to also watch. So, you know, there's a lot of kids' content where people are screaming. It's like, how do I make kids-centered content that isn't screaming and is a little more like natural?

Yeah. Like, you know, Pixar did this amazingly, right?

Exactly.

Pixar did it. Made movies that an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old can both go and enjoy and maybe for different reasons, but it's one product. It's one piece of content that just appealed to such a to totally different age groups.

Exactly. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I think it helps having my mom in the videos too. Like, I try to have her as much as possible because people can relate to me coming from a young perspective, or people also watch us because they see my mom and they're like, oh, you know, I watch the videos because it's like, it kind of reminds me of me and my daughter, you know. It's like it gives the viewers multiple reasons.

Give me your take on where you think this is all is going. So, um, It's amazing that every platform is now short-form video. It's amazing that people are getting millions and millions. You can, you've gotten a video with 100 million views. That number is bananas. Um, but also I think people are trying to figure out how to switch to long-form and a lot of people are kind of using their Shorts to try to get to that because maybe they sense that the Shorts is not building as much loyalty or trust. You know, the algorithm picks what you see, not you going and seeing the people you've chosen to follow necessarily. So where do you think this all goes? Like 5 years from now, what does this look like? Where do you think the puck is heading? Uh, or what are your kind of predictions for what you think, where you think the value is, or what you think there may be some misconceptions other people have? Take any of that of like, where do you think this all is going? I'm just curious to hear your takes.

I feel like, I feel like it's going to be like the extremes that do well in the sense of like, I think either short-form content is going to be continuing to grow or really long-form. Content, 20 minutes plus, is going to consume really deep or really quick value. Yes, really deep or really quick value.

Like, I don't want to be in between.

Exactly. That, that's genuinely like where I think it's gonna go. Yeah, I think, I think social media is going to kill Hollywood, honestly.

So let me ask you about you now. So you, uh, you're obsessed. Is that fair to say?

Yes, I have a very obsessive personality. It's scary.

Do you get obsessed about other things? Is this the first thing you've become obsessive about, or did you get obsessed with some video game before that?

I'm obsessed with— I get obsessed with everything. It's a problem.

It's a problem or it's a benefit?

It's both. It's both. Yeah.

And what is your— what's your goal with this? I guess people ask me this all the time. They're like, so when people get a million views or 10 million views, do they get money from that? Is that the— are you getting rich off this? Is that the goal with this? Um, you're 18. What do you, what do you want out of this? What's your goal?

Yeah, so I'm basically living to fulfill my childhood dreams. So as funny as it sounds, like I started my YouTube channel when I was 8 years old. Like I, I am literally living the dream and like, I just wanna keep like achieving my childhood goals, which is like, it's kind of cringe probably to say, but like quite frankly, like that, that, that is the goal. And ideally, like honestly, like I really do wanna inspire people. To understand the value of money and to not be so spoiled. Because, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't understand the value of money and I would always ask my family for things. And, you know, like my parents being nice, like they would give me these things. And it's like, it wasn't until I got older when I realized like, oh my gosh, like they're working so hard to make money. And I would be asking for these things. Like, that's not right. I don't know. Like, and I, and you wouldn't even need it. And I want to inspire people to, to like live a happy, fun life without needing that much money, which is why like my content is centered around having fun. On a low budget.

See, that's interesting because I thought you were saying, I want to inspire people because I'm going to— I want to be the biggest YouTuber and I want to inspire people who, you know, that you can make it as a YouTuber and blah, blah, blah. What you said was very different though. You were like, your, your thing that you do in these videos is about having great experiences, either, you know, giving a great gift or having a— creating a fun project or eating your favorite food. But without having to spend a ton of money, being more resourceful, being more handy, being, being more sort of self-reliant versus, you know, money reliant. And, um, that's kind of cool. I didn't realize that that was your goal. I'm glad you, I'm glad you told me that. That makes me kind of think about what you're doing in a different perspective. And I think it could be a lot bigger if that's the perspective versus I want to be the biggest star I can be.

Totally. And it's kind of tough though, because I'm going to be completely transparent. Like I genuinely want to be. The next MrBeast. Like, I want to be the female MrBeast, like over 100 million subscribers, but I still want to stay true to that message, which is going to be kind of tough because it's like, you know, MrBeast spends a lot of money to be where he is. Can I do that without? I don't know.

Right. Well, that's the whole— that's your premise. That's your whole thing. So, um, all right. That's, that's kind of amazing. Jenny, thanks for doing this. Thanks for coming on. Uh, where should people find you and what's the, what's the shout out? What do you want? What do you want people to do from here?

If you want to work directly with me, feel free to email team@jennyhoyos.com. We can have a 1-hour consultation call together and I will review your, your videos, your business. You know, let's, let's blow up on social media.

Love it. Thank you, Jenny. Thanks for doing this.

Yeah, no, this is so much fun. I love this. Thank you so much for having me.