Starting YouTube in 2026? What I would do if I was starting from ZERO

If I completely lost my YouTube channel and had to start from zero tomorrow, no views, no subscribers, nothing, not even an email list, here's exactly what I would do. First, I would not follow the advice that you're hearing about growing a YouTube channel. I also wouldn't try to pick a video that would go viral. I also wouldn't be chasing videos that gained me subscribers, and I would only post one time a week, maybe two, if my schedule could handle it. Because all of that advice going viral, chasing subscribers, posting multiple times a week is all advice for YouTubers. And if you are a business owner trying to sell your offer, your course, your coaching program, your VIP days on YouTube, that type of advice will waste 6 months of your life and not make you any sales. So in this video, let me give you the 5 steps that I would actually follow, the metrics that I would track that matter for business owners, and at the end I will tell you the one number that tells you if my video is gonna help my business make money, and it's not the amount of views. So let's jump into step 1. The very first thing you're gonna do, you're gonna grab a notebook and you're gonna write down the next 3 questions that I'm going to tell you, and you're gonna answer them. You're not gonna get on YouTube, you're not gonna research keywords, you're not gonna film anything. I wanna explain why you're gonna answer these 3 questions that I'm about to tell you first, because I was talking to a course creator just last week who's in my coaching program, and she came to go all in with YouTube because she had been getting sales from Instagram, but it was requiring her to be online a heck of a lot. Stories, reels, carousel posts, right? She had 8,000 followers on Instagram, but like I said, she was showing up every single day. The problem was the same amount of work she was putting into her Instagram strategy, she was starting to see her sales slow down. And before she decided to go all in with YouTube, she told me, I'm thinking about YouTube, but I'm not ready to go all in. I don't have the right equipment yet and I have no idea what I would talk about on YouTube and I'm not sure what I would share on YouTube versus what I have in my paid course. And so her problem was she was looking at the type of content she would need to create that YouTubers are creating, videos and topics for growing a channel like how-to and tutorial type content. And that type of content isn't the right content for making sales as a business owner. So that's why instead of starting with what content you're going to create, you're gonna think about what offer you want to sell most on YouTube. Not 3, but 1. And I get that you probably have more than one offer right now, but I want you to start on YouTube from day 1 making sales. And the quickest way to do this, you're gonna see through the next couple of steps I'm gonna share with you, is starting by answering these questions and focusing on what is the one offer you want to sell on YouTube. For me, It's always the YouTube coaching experience because that's gonna help you now answer question number 2, which is who is your offer for? And it's not this demographic kind of avatar that you think about, right? It's not a female overachiever in her 30s who drinks almond milk in her coffee. And we're not thinking about that. We're thinking about that person right before they say yes to your offer, right before they say yes to working with you one-on-one in a VIP day or a coaching program. That's the person we are filtering this channel for. So for me, it's typically coaches, course creators, service providers like VIP Days whose offer has sold, but recently they're seeing the effort they're putting in to get sales has gone up and their sales have gone down. They're exhausted by the amount of content they're having to keep up on Instagram just to keep sales consistent from what they used to do before., and right now they need another avenue to generate more leads. Let me know if that's you in the comments below saying that's me. So then question number 3, what is the advanced pain point they're feeling right before they decide to buy your one offer? Now this is really what makes business owners stand out, and this is how you get results, i.e., sales on YouTube faster than following YouTuber advice, because you are not focused on beginner-level topics because somebody who is going to buy your offer, going to buy your course, isn't a beginner. They have an advanced pain point that when they get to that point, they need the problem solved, and they are willing— this is the point— they are willing to pay to have that problem solved. So for example, my general audience isn't here to know how to start a YouTube channel. You want to know how to start a YouTube channel and make sales in your business, right? You're also not wondering how to start a business. You're wondering, why am I posting more than ever and making less sales? So this is what you first need to filter through. Answer these 3 questions because this is the complete foundation for what we do moving forward. If you want to make sure from video 1 you'll be able to make sales in your business. Now let's move to step 2, and this is all about picking videos because again, YouTuber advice is make a list of videos, go do keyword research and look for the topics that are searched the most. But that is going to take you a long time to teach the YouTube algorithm who your content is right for. This is my very specific strategy that I teach business owners because I want my business owners to waste the least amount of time creating content that will make them sales, but explaining and teaching the YouTube algorithm exactly who their channel is for. So instead of posting random videos with a list that you came up with, you wanna create playlist funnels. If you've not heard me talk about playlist funnels, this is a series of 5 videos and it's all around one specific pain point, an advanced pain point that your ready-to-buy viewer is having, and then each video leads to the next, creating like a Netflix binge-style session because your goal is to get people to watch more than one video from you when they find you. This is so important because the more videos people watch of you, the higher the conversion rate will go up. Just think, if somebody watches 1 video from you versus 5 videos from you, if they took the time to sit down and watch 5 videos from you, there's a high chance that person's going to want to buy from you. The other thing that this does is it gives the YouTube algorithm exactly what it wants from you. By getting people to watch multiple videos, YouTube will push your content to more people, and the more people that watch your video, the more YouTube understands who your channel is for, so the algorithm can find more of those people. Does this make sense? Give me a yes in the comments if this makes total sense. So what the playlist funnel looks like: video 1 is really about belief shifting. So you need to get them to change the way that they're thinking about their problem to the way you think about their problem. Makes sense? Once you can get them to see, oh, that's my problem— they may think it's something else, but you need to reel them in to explain that's not really your problem, this is your problem. And then you need to be ready to tee up video number 2, because video number 2 is now going to address an objection or give them a quick win to see you actually know what you're talking about. 'Cause when you can show your authority in a video, that builds trust. But then at the end of video 2, you need to be ready to tee up video number 3, which is handling another objection. So what is the reason why they wouldn't believe what you're telling them? And you gotta address that. Then in video number 4, this is where you give them proof. This is typically a case study video, a testimonial video, but this is where you show them "Look, I've got these results." And then you lead them into video number 5, which is your capstone video in where you pitch your offer. And this series of videos is not pushy, it's not salesy, it's a buyer's journey that you're creating in a video format. Your goal here in this playlist funnel is to move somebody from, "I have this problem," to, "Oh, you're exactly who I need to work with," without even needing to do a sales call. But I need you to understand here in step 2, it's not about just creating content. You're creating a pathway to getting somebody to buy from you. Moving into step number 3, this is where we now pick our topics. And this is really critical because the biggest mistake that I see so many business owners make is they focus on beginner-level content. And when you focus on beginner-level content, you're gonna be competing in a massively saturated niche because anybody can create beginner-level content. But because you're a business owner, you wanna make sales as soon as you post YouTube videos, You've gotta rise to the top, right? So you need to be picking those advanced questions that your ready-to-buy viewer is having right before they say yes to your offer. So here's how I want you to think about your topics. You wanna think about the best client that you worked with or the best student that you worked with, right? What was their specific problem that they came to you for? What was the problem that they had that they decided you were the person to solve that for them? That's what you're going to build a playlist funnel around. I worked with a couple business coaches in my YouTube coaching experience, and I'm thinking about one in particular where she could have created videos about how to start a business, and that's incredibly saturated on YouTube. Instead, I asked her to get more specific. Who is the person that she works with that gets the best results from? And for her, that was business owners who were just getting to that 6-figure threshold, and they were selling multiple offers. So she realized she needed to create videos specifically for how to get past 6 figures because her ready-to-buy viewer was already making good money, but they were ready to hit that 6-figure mark and go beyond. But how to hit 6 figures with just one offer, because most of her clients that were getting the best results only had one offer. They either did one-on-one coaching or they had a group coaching program. And so that is very specific to somebody who's already making money and somebody who only has one offer. See how tight that gets? So that's why you need to ask yourself from those 3 questions we mentioned earlier, what is an advanced pain point or an advanced problem my ready-to-buy viewer has? Write that down, and that is your playlist topic. Now, step 4, we've really gotta change our mindset here because success in this world is really tied into vanity metrics. But for this YouTube strategy for business owners, We need to ignore subscriber numbers. In fact, I will go on a little sidebar and tell you subscribers don't really matter here on YouTube anymore because if people are subscribed to you, they have to actually be watching you for your videos to be recommended to them, whereas they may never even subscribe to you, but they may end up watching every single video that you create. So I wouldn't even worry about subscriber numbers. I would ignore view numbers. I would absolutely ignore Shorts. Don't waste your time on Shorts right now if you're getting started on YouTube from scratch. I would ignore trends. And here's what you really want to focus on. You want to focus on, can you get people to click on your video? And can you get people to watch your entire video? Because YouTube wants to put videos in front of people that they want to watch. And if YouTube is putting your videos in front of people and nobody's clicking on it, YouTube is not going to push your video to more people. The second piece is, if people are clicking on your video and they aren't getting past 10 seconds, YouTube isn't going to show that video to people either because that's telling YouTube your content isn't any good because people don't get past 10 seconds. So you don't even need 1,000 subscribers to start making sales on YouTube. You honestly just need 50 of the right people to make sales. And I have a client of mine, Belle, who followed this structure and her channel had less than 200 subscribers. She started publishing her playlist funnel. She was getting about 50 to 100 views on each video, and by her fourth video in her playlist funnel, she had already made $42,000., and she wasn't going viral and she didn't have a huge channel, but she focused on those advanced playlist topics and followed the playlist funnel structure, and she got in front of the people who were ready to buy and did buy $42,000 worth. Let's move into step 5 now because you really need to track some data to understand what is and isn't working so you can double down on the things that are working and quit doing the things that aren't working. I told you subscribers and views don't matter, so what does? There are 3 metrics that you want to keep track of. You want to look at your click-through rate. This is, are people actually clicking on your videos when YouTube recommends it to them? 2 is audience retention, and this is a graph that every single video has. If you get people to watch it, your goal is to get as many people who start the video to get them to the end. So it's gotta be good content. And the 3rd metric is landing page views. Now this could be a landing page, a sales page, an opt-in page, wherever you're wanting to send people with that main offer because you wanna make sure you're creating content that people actually click on that landing page view. So let's say you have a video with 20 views and you got 10 new signups because of that video. That's a successful video even though it got 20 views. But if you had a video that had 200 views and 2 people came over and signed up, that's not a good topic that's attracting ready-to-buy viewers. And that is the metric that will tell me what content to double down on that will make me money. What videos are people clicking on the link the most, and what videos are giving me the most leads or sales? That's the content I want to double down on. Views tell you whether the algorithm liked your video or not, but when people take action to sign up or buy from you, That tells you your ready-to-buy viewer is finding you, and that's the only metric that matters to business owners, right? We're not here to be content creators. We're here to make content that converts into sales. Now let me just double down on how I know this works. Remember my client Belle that I told you who made $42,000 from just 4 videos? Well, she ended up creating 16 videos following the playlist funnel, so just over 3 playlist funnels,, and within 3 months of setting up these funnels had made $152,000 into her offer. Again, her channel still has less than 200 subscribers. Her videos still don't get more than 50 to 100 views, but she's really dialed into what her advanced ready-to-buy viewer is searching. She's creating that content nobody else is, so they come to her and they buy from her. And then just the other day for me, I had a video from 2018 have somebody comment on it and say, where do I learn more about your coaching program? A video from almost 8 years ago is still attracting leads because I focus on content that's not beginner level, but what my ready-to-buy viewer is searching. When you build strategically, your videos on YouTube never expire, and you're not needing to chase an algorithm. You're building a sales asset with every video that you publish. So if you're sitting there right now thinking, my sales have been slowing down, I feel like I'm doing more work to get less sales, you do not need to introduce another offer into your business. Do not add complexity to your business. You need a consistent lead engine that won't restart every morning like TikTok or Instagram, because every day you have to feed that algorithm. But YouTube can be that consistent engine just posting one video a week. Now, if you want the full walkthrough of how to build this playlist funnel and the mistakes that happen for both most business owners, I have a totally free live training coming up. You can go to trenalittle.com/playlistfunnel. Workshop to get into that live training so you can see exactly how this works and ask me your questions about your specific problem, your specific business, your specific offer. Now, I really want you to understand this power of one, one offer, one marketing strategy, and one marketing platform. So watch the video that's on the screen right now where I show you exactly what I mean by the power of one and how it completely changed the way I do business.