Mike Thurston shares 10 years of YouTube knowledge in ONE video

So the good thing about all you guys in this room is that you already have money and you have a set of skills, whether it's one skill set or maybe a few. So you have a lot of value to offer. So immediately what I would do, which is what I did back in the day, my skill set was building muscle, losing body fat, helping other people to do that. So I spoke about what I understood. So I didn't have. I wasn't naturally very good on camera. I was quite shy. I knew that in order to grow on YouTube, I had to just get over that and just start filming. So I would recommend for most people, you buy the essential equipment and have some sort of a setup. Either it's in a studio or your apartment, whatever it is, you have a room, and in there you'd have the tripod, you have the camera, you have like a nice background. Because I think now, compared to, especially back in the day, the quality of production is more important. So you can't just get away with crappy audio or, like, just not a visually aesthetic background. So the visual look is quite important. Then I would have.

Probably two videos a week, every single week, as your target. And no matter what, you have to stick to that, because otherwise, this is what most people do. They like the idea of having a YouTube channel. They're super motivated. They start doing it, maybe to begin with, they don't get as many views as they thought they would, and they just think, ah, this is too much effort. I'm just gonna stop. You can never grow a good YouTube channel if you just do you feel highly inconsistent. I compare it to, like, going to the gym. You can't just go to the gym for a couple weeks and expect to be absolutely jacked. And even with the people who, you know, They've got great YouTube channels today, it didn't happen overnight for most people. It's like usually a lot worse over a long period of time. So I wouldn't necessarily be.

Thinking about being a vlogger or doing anything crazy. I would just sit down and provide as much value as possible in a short period of time. Videos, I would probably say between 8, 10, 12 minutes. You wouldn't necessarily need a cameraman to come and stand there and film for you. You could just have everything set up, like I said. Ideally, one button which turns everything on, sit down, record, and then say what you need to say. Usually what I do beforehand is I have. I don't like going off a script. I'm useless at going off scripts. I like to improvise What I need to know is the points which I need to cover. So I might in front of me have a whiteboard or something which I can see which has all the bullet points on. And I would talk about each bullet point for a minute or two and then very quickly you can, you know, filmed the 12, 15 minute video, maybe you talk for 30 minutes and just chop it up and just condense it and keep in the best bits. So obviously that's just all raw. There's not much going on visually. What I would do is I would find an editor, so somebody who knows how to edit videos, add some nice B roll stock footage. Because at this point in time you probably don't have a huge amount of footage which you have of yourself just starting YouTube. So you just maybe need them, find the stock footage, maybe someone who's good at motion graphics and then they can put together like a visually interesting video. Kind of like Paul Moses, like he realistically just sits down, speaks. I've noticed what he's done differently. Speaks with high energy. So if you compare the videos he used to make two years ago, he used to be really chill, talk slowly and draw the video out. Now he's like energy, like in your face, fast.

I wondered how important that was.

Yeah. Which is difficult because I've noticed now I. That was something which I had to learn. The first few videos I would make, I would sit, I'd talk to the camera, I'd watch it back and I'd be like, oh my God, that's so boring. Yeah. And people, they're very quick to just click off a video. So you do almost beforehand have to psych yourself up and put on this slight false energy, which is a bit. It's annoying, but it's almost like something you have to do but will come more naturally with time.

And then once that the video's been put together, the editors edited it. The most important thing, thumbnail and the title of the video. So the thumbnail again, maybe you probably need to hire someone who just focuses on thumbnails. So someone who's been in the game for a while, whether it's an agency or someone else, work out a deal with them where they provide you with like 8 thumbnails a month, something like that. The title of the video ideally just needs to be as enticing as possible for anybody. Most of your views are going to come from people who've searched into YouTube about a particular topic. So have a look and see what the trending keywords are or whatever it is relating to the content which you are providing people. What's interesting about YouTube is you. You have to find your own community and audience on there. So take for me, for example, I think I had a couple hundred thousand people on Instagram. I started a YouTube channel and I, like, made a big announcement on Instagram, like, hey, everybody, come and watch my YouTube video. Everyone's like.

Like, for some reason, people tend to be quite loyal to their. They have their favorite social media platform. So people who love Instagram tend to stay on Instagram. There's people who just. They don't go on Instagram, but they spend most of the time on YouTube. So to begin with, just deal with the fact that it's going to be slow and it's gonna be frustrating because you're like, hang on, I'm putting all this time and effort into making these videos, and I might get a couple hundred views or thousand views, but you just have to keep grinding and keep going at it. And what you'll find is maybe might be the 15th video, might be the 20th video. For whatever reason, it'll just pop off. Usually that's down to the YouTube algorithm. For whatever reason, maybe people. The viewer retention is high. Maybe more people are clicking onto it because the thumbnail is good. Maybe the title's good. And what you'll notice is that video might pop off and get tens of thousands of views. I remember with me, it was like my 20th video. I did this tutorial video on the common mistakes people make when training shoulders. All my videos were averaging a couple of thousand views, and then now we got 100,000. And then I realized, okay, this is what I need to focus on. Like, people are liking the educational fitness content. So from that point on, I kind of realized, okay, this is. This is gonna work. And I think I was. I guess I was kind of lucky in the day because there was fewer people. I guess this was 2017 when I really went for it. 2017, two videos a week, every week. That was my main thing. So there was much fewer people doing what I was doing on YouTube. So I stood out more. And obviously the standard of the quality of the videos wasn't as high, so I could get away with filming and editing everything myself, which I think now you. You probably need to hire somebody to make the production quality a bit better. But the good thing is all you guys already have money to begin with. When I started out, I had. I didn't have any money. I had a sponsorship from EHP Labs, which is a thousand dollars a month. I just moved from Newcastle where my main source of income was personal training. My clients and I decided I can't do both. I can't be a personal trainer full time and try to be a full time YouTuber because there would be too draining. So I sacrificed the personal training because I didn't want to be a personal trainer anymore. I took this big financial hit, moved to London, was paying for an apartment which was three times more expensive than the apartment I had in Newcastle. But I made the investment because I knew I needed a nice visual studio to film in. It was like this kitchen lounge, all white, very bright.

Which was for me, it was the perfect place to film. So I was in the position where I was desperate, I needed to make money. And I knew that the main way that I was going to do that making money online was to have a presence online. So I went all in, tunnel vision on the YouTube, no distraction, there was no, I no longer need to do the personal training. It would have been nice to have that money coming in, but I was like, no, I can't do that. So very quickly, I think in 2017, when I really went for it, I went from maybe 10,000 subscribers to 300,000 subscribers. And just from having that amount of subscribers, that amount of views, I started to make money from the ad revenue. But then I also offered online coaching so I could sell my time in exchange for money. Obviously more views, higher demand, higher prices. Then because I was getting more reach and exposure. I had all these brands that wanted to work for me because they wanted to place their products in my videos. So very quickly I went from pretty much a thousand dollars a month to 20, $30,000 a month.

Nice, nice. So I'm still kind of just messing around with my YouTube at the moment, seeing what works. I had a video recently about the one about selling my business where I just use my imac camera, hit record, set it, turned it off and uploaded it. And it's got the most views that I've ever got. Like 300 video to like 5000. Should I do more like that?

Yeah, so because that's working. Tell stories that some of the videos which perform best for me is when I sit down and I tell a story and share an experience. So you could talk about particular business deal or an experience you've had with selling a company or getting a client, whatever it might be. Like you're in a position where you've made so much money, you have all this business experience. It's just a matter of packaging it up and presenting it to people and because the most important thing is you have the evidence to back up what you say. The reason why my YouTube video obviously did so well is because I'd already been training for five years and I was like in sick shape. So people will just look at me when I talk about fitness. They're like, okay, I'll probably listen to this guy because the evidence is there.

Yeah. What's more important, title or thumbnail?

Both.

Very important. But.

Maybe the thumbnail.

Yeah.

Because you could, you could have.

I'm better at titles.

You could have a great title. But if the thumbnail is so boring, it's just, it's not going to catch the eye.

Yeah, fuck sake.

It's not like 5050 though because you see guys like Andrew Huberman with the most boring same thumbnail or everything and it just works for me.

But I think Andrew has the reputation whereby you know, whatever he's going to put out, it's going to be top tier content.

I see what you mean.

So yeah, it could just be a picture of his face, but as long as you just know, okay, it's a Huberman video. It's going to be top tier content and I'm going to learn a lot from it. Why does MrBeast spend so much on thumbnails if you already know it's going to be top tier from him as well?

Yeah, because still there's a lot of people out there who don't know who MrBeast is. And I think again, like you could be scrolling down the feed or on the Explore page, the MrBeast name is Tiny. You can't necessarily see where that, which channel that video has come from. So the thumbnail is again very important for enticing people in. This is, it's crazy because even when I scroll through YouTube I ask myself why have I clicked on this video?

What has made me want to watch this video?

Sometimes the thumbnail will get my attention. Then I read the title.

So it could be a good thumbnail but the title's dead. I'm like, the problem now is actually I still, I love to watch YouTube but there's so much more content now. You're fighting for people's attention so it becomes even more important to pull those people in. But what I've noticed is I could put so much time and effort into a video and if that thumbnail is not good enough, it's, it's wasted. Like people are just not going to view it. I heard the guy, Mr.

Beast spends a lot.

Yeah, like 10,000. Yeah. But I also think with Mr. Beast, like, he wants to maximize every single aspect. Like, why wouldn't he? Yeah, right. It's like he has nothing else to do.

So your thumbnails now, Mike, do you. Are you doing it alone? Do you have a team? And, like, what's your. When you upload, when you have. When you're looking at the thumbnail and the title, what are you thinking of when you see. Is it like, how shredded. How shredded am I in this thumbnail? Does the thumbnail correlate with the title? Or what's that thought process of saying, this is going to go up, it's.

Going to do well?

I went through phases. So what I originally did was I would take a screenshot of a clip in the video. Unfortunately, because it was all gym content, most of the time I was topless. Like, that would. That would be enough. You'd see this topless Jack guy, like, okay, this is something which I want to watch. I noticed when I did more of the lifestyle stuff, if I had a woman in the thumbnail or a bit of skin of a female, that would. A lot of guys would naturally just click on it out of curiosity. So maybe there's something. Something particular about the location I'm at or whatever it is that I'm doing or people that I'm with that can pull a lot of people in. I went through a phase where I tried. He wasn't the best thumbnail guy, but he would put text on it. So I'd try and get the text on the thumbnail to pull people in. But I noticed it started to look a bit cheap and tacky. It was too cartoonish. So I noticed a phase when I did that, and I don't know how much that helped, but I moved away from it. I think I prefer more of a minimal thumbnail, which sometimes it could be a screenshot, but ideally it's better to go out and take a photo and plan, okay, this is going to be the thumbnail. And sometimes I forget to do that to me and Chris could be out filming something. Like we did that.

Went to that. The facility where we did, like, the biohacking, did all these cool machines. I walked away and I was like, hell, I haven't got. I didn't get a thumbnail. So I scrounged some really average thumbnail from the video and it. It's. It hurt the performance. So I might have to go back there with Chris and just take a photo of me, like, topless with, like, some crazy machines and stuff. Yeah. Or I. There's somebody who I get doing the thumbnails for my podcast. So I might just say, hey, this is what I've done. I've just been like, please just make me a thumbnail for this video. Because what you'll find is you can do. You can look at the analytics and see if a video is underperforming or not. Many people are clicking on it. Just change the thumbnail. This is what Iman does really well. Iman changes his thumbnails every so often. So maybe a video which he's put out eight months ago, maybe it hasn't performed as well as he wants it to. He just changes the thumbnail to something really dramatic.

That's such an old video.

Yeah, yeah. And all of a sudden, because it's a new thumbnail, people assume, oh, like it's. I didn't notice this video before. Maybe they didn't notice it because the thumbnail wasn't that good. But he changed the thumbnail. Now it has more people's attention. If more people start watching it, then YouTube start promoting it. So there's nothing wrong with changing YouTube like the thumbnails. Like you said, you might be annoyed. You're like, oh, you know, my thumbnail is crap, let's change it. You can still save it. Yeah. You play around with it. You could hire a team of people to analyze all your past YouTube videos and then they look at the videos which have got the least clicks and then you just redo the thumbnails and they might start performing well. When you change it, does it change it? So when you share the link of your video in any of our platform, does it change the domain also? It should do, yeah.

Mark, I've got a question. It's a different topic to thumbnail, so sorry if I'm changing the flow, but it's more on the attention versus intention and creating content that just builds top line high attention metrics versus specifically building content to build depth with your audience, potentially to fuel your offer. Because I've looked back at some videos I've done in the past and I might have done I just bought this supercar or my supercar is broken. And like the metrics will 10x me talking about something to do with SaaS sales. And so I'm just wondering from your perspective if you would encourage someone to focus heavily on building top level attention and then start to funnel that down or just stay in your lane of trying to be intentional with building more engaging content that builds more intention with the audience.

I think I would, I would probably do both. You do the shorter videos, high engagement to draw new people in and then your existing subscribers and existing audience who want to know more, they will then hang around and watch a longer video which you have to put out. Especially if that whole video is providing so much value and you have like the evidence to back it up. People are going to be like, it's worth my time to sit here for 30 minutes and listen to what this guy has to say. That's the good thing. Now because of the brand I have and because I've been doing it for so long, I could sit down for half an hour and talk about something and I think a lot of people would sit there and listen to it. Maybe it's not going to be the most high viewed video ever, but I would probably get way more. People come and DM me saying that video was so sick because it's meant something to them. So don't necessarily just stick to the short form stuff. I noticed as well the thing Hormozi did, he changed it up. He started doing the short form stuff, highly engaging. And then I think people started to complain that those videos, there's too much going on. Like all these things popping up like music in the background. It's like a distraction. It's too much. So then he's gone back to just doing a one hour video of him with a whiteboard. And people love that, unedited. But the people who only want to watch a 10 minute video don't like it. So do both.

So it's kind of like what audience do you want to attract?

Yeah, quick attention.

Fucking.

You know.

I think you would probably find that doing a lot, sitting down and doing a video for 30, 40 minutes, you'd wait, you'd make way more money off that. Not from the ad revenue but from whatever it is that you're trying to sell. It's like a long format bsl. Yeah, Yeah.

I think that's kind of where I'm at. And this is what I was kind of asking earlier. Mine. So right now my channel's at a million subs, which sounds amazing. But now I'm stuck in this niche with fat loss. So if I upload a non fat loss video, YouTube will rank it out of 10. You see that out of 10 system, like very low. If it's anything non fat loss.

What it's like in comparison to your other 10 videos.

Right?

In comparison to the other 10 videos.

So.

So then I get in this mindset of like, damn, it's Gonna hurt the channel for all cool, all good and well. Now if you're in my shoes, would you still, like, now I'm stuck. I feel right, I can't make other type of content. Would you just continue up doing that one upload of a lifestyle type of video or something different and then still one video of the fat loss. Would you take that approach?

If you're in my shoes, yeah. So this was the. I had to make this transition at one point because I was doing fitness related videos for like two, three years. I got bored of it. I wanted to do other stuff. I wanted to do travel vlogs, lifestyle, and just talk about other things which I thought was important to me, that could help people, but it wasn't necessarily about fitness. So I remember when I did the first few travel vlogs, people hated it. They were like, what, what the hell is this? Like, I want fitness content from you, not travel vlogs. I don't care. Who do you think you are? Like a travel presenter. So I had to take a bit of shit to begin with. Some people liked it, a lot of people didn't. But the way to make that transition is not to completely stop what's been working for you in the past. You still make that content, you keep the current subscribers happy, but you start to add in different types of the content. I would probably experiment, see what's working. I think it's important at the end of the day to make content which you actually enjoy making.

Yeah.

No point making content where you feel miserable doing it. And it would probably be.

A scenario where you might even need to increase the frequency of the uploads you're doing. So you might even still want to put out the same amount of content related to the fat loss. But you just put putting in like an extra video, which is lifestyle vlogging. Whatever it is that you want to share.

You kind of like warming in a bit.

Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, one thing that I didn't like when I was doing the fitness stuff is nobody really knew my personality. It was like, okay, Mike Thurston Cokes, very serious. I would speak to the camera like I was speaking to a client. Like, there's no bullshit, like, straight to the point, listen and learn. But then I thought I, there's a lot more to me than just being like a fitness coach. So I wanted to show my personality on my YouTube channel, the interactions that I'm having with other people, the banter, things like that. So that's why I wanted to make that transition and like I said.

When.

You make it, it's weird. People don't like the change sometimes maybe they'll like the change up in the content. Like, oh, this is new, this is different, this is interesting. But like you said, if you've been doing something for so long, you get known as that guy. And I feel like with you got great personality, you now are at a point where you have so much business knowledge that really people should now be watching you to learn how to make money and have, like me. Like, how do you go from being a personal trainer, fitness coach, to being a guy who's probably living a great life and making loads of money?

Which is what I also wanted to ask next. So I was having this child, Alex. I'm now viewed as Dr. Mike Diamonds, this doctor right online. And I bought a supercar and I didn't have the balls to put on my main page because I was like, now people are gonna view me a certain way, mindset wise. Do you just not give a about like, as long as you like it and you feel like it's good content. Is that what's gonna go up?

Yeah.

Do you think that should, that should be the approach I should take? Like, I bought a laptop.

Yeah.

Would you just upload that onto the channel and be like, hey, from fat loss video to hey, I bought a lamb.

The problem is that's a good jump. Yeah, it's weird. Like if you are, if you're doing it for a purpose, like if you were probably like iman, like if you are selling a product or a course which is teaching people how to make money, it makes sense to show off you have money, right? If you're just doing it, like, hey, look at me, I got a Lambo. People like you, like, they. One thing I noticed when I made the transition from moving to the UK to Dubai, the. A lot of people could no longer relate to me. They liked, they used to like humble Mike, you know, living at home, cooking his meals just on that daily grind because people could relate to it. The moment I moved to Dubai, people were like.

I can't relate to this anymore. Like, you're living this glamorous lifestyle, which I don't have. There's two types of people. There's either the type of person who looks at it, gets inspired and motivated, they want to have it. There's the other type of person who just gets depressed and thinks, I can never have that. I don't want to watch it anymore because it makes me sad. It's like a normal life all right. If you ever go back home, you feel weird because all your family is still doing the same thing. And.

That gaps. Yeah, it's the same concept, right?

Yeah.

So I think for you, I probably wouldn't do a video on Hair bought a Lambo, but more so talk about how you have created.

This, this. This point in your life where you can't afford a Lambo. Maybe you don't say, I bought a Lambo. Maybe at some point in the video go, oh, yeah, I bought a Lambo. That's my Lambo. So that you have proof to say I have money. But the main core focus of that video is teaching people how we made the money. I remember I made a video which was like how I made an extra 15,000 pound a month. Everyone fucking loved that video because I just sat down and talked about how I went from being a personal trainer to making next 15,000 pound a month. Didn't necessarily do anything flashy. I just told the story and people looked at it.

Mike, you wouldn't recommend some YouTubers. You have like two channels, right? One for their brand or for whatever reason, and something else. Let's say, for example, Mike is talking about money. He builds a second channel off that. Would you recommend that or. It sounds like you're integrating a few different subjects on your main channel instead of diversifying. What would you say on that?

It's a good point. It's. It just. It depends. I think.

I had the.

Choice, like, say, for example, with my podcast. I could have done the podcast on the main channel, but I thought, you know what this is. It's too different from the vlogs and other videos I was putting out. I decided to do a separate podcast channel. What I could have done, and I don't know whether this would have worked or not, is I could have just kept the main channels, the fitness channel, and done the separate channel for the lifestyles and the vlogs, but it's just more. A lot more effort to get a second channel up and running. It definitely requires more work, so.

It'S hard to know. I think there's both could work, but I personally would probably just put everything on the main channel.

How do you go about doing your content planning, if you do any at all? I would say this is honestly something which I'd probably do a better job of. I think what I just need to do is set time aside each week and just get deep into thought and thinking of ideas. Maybe go onto YouTube, see what is trending, see there's a forgotten name of the app. But you can see what are the top keyword searches that people are typing in. See if you could tap into that somehow that could be useful. And then sometimes it's just whatever it is that I want to do at a certain point in time. Sometimes I'm like, you know what, I want to go on holiday. I want to go somewhere different. So just get the guys, plan a trip, go somewhere. We had a really good trip when we went to, went to Prague, then Lisbon and London. This was all in one week. Did this collaboration video with a fitness girl in Prague that popped off, got like 2 million views. Then went to Lisbon, did a lifestyle vlog in Lisbon, which was really good, got about 4,000 views. And then went to London, did a podcast with Madness Fitness. So that was like a really productive week where I managed to get a lot of videos out of it. So it's brainstorming and then also asking your audience what they want to see. What I noticed when I, when I started my. The main reason why I started making videos was because I was sick of answering people's questions. I used to get, I was getting all these fitness related questions on Instagram, people asking me the same question over and over again and I was like, I'm fed up of repeating myself. So I just went off and made a video talking about that particular topic in question. So not only when people ask me in the future about it, I'd just be like, go watch this video. But then also it just so happened that there was tens of thousands of people who also had the same question that were looking for the answer on YouTube. So you could put a poll on your other socials and be like, hey, you can even just say Q and A. Ask me a question. And you get 100 questions and there you go. You've got like your next 20 videos sorted.

So let's say now that you don't have your channel and you're starting from scratch.

You don't have any YouTube or anything. Like, what would you.

Do? I have money. You have money. Okay. Yeah. So I would, I wouldn't vlog because I think it's. It's very difficult to start off as a nobody and be a vlogger because nobody knows who you are. Nobody's interested in what you're doing unless you're someone like Casey Neistat or someone who just.

Naturally lives quite an interesting life or someone who's super extroverted. You can go straight into the vlogs. But for me, I found that that wasn't Me, the best thing to do would be, as I said before, you get your setup, you sit down, you talk about a particular topic, you do two of those videos a week and then you just need to find an editor, find a thumbnail person and then just pump them out. That would be the long format content covered ideally as well. That's only really going to help you out on YouTube. So you need to also have the other platforms covered. In an ideal scenario, you would hire someone to chop up the long format videos into short format. You then have 30 second or one minute video which can then be put onto YouTube shorts on that channel, put onto TikTok, put onto Instagram or maybe even Twitter as well. So it's really, you're sitting down, you're doing one piece of content which can be put out everywhere. Saves you the most amount of time. I know a lot of people, a lot of these Instagramers, they go out, spend half a day or a day making one reel, one 30 second video where there's no guarantee it's even gonna pop up. It's like such a waste of time. And do you have different kind of captions for all the platforms? What do you mean captions? Like in the Instagram TikTok, you write the question stuff in the. I honestly don't think the captions are that important these days. It's first couple of seconds hook people into the video and if you want to elaborate on it more, you can write an interesting caption. But I don't think that's important.

YouTube and Instagram, I know they kind of go together, but is the one that's more important and guessing YouTube.

Right? I think if you have a million YouTube subscribers versus a million Instagram followers, 1 million YouTube subscribers is so much more valuable than 1 million followers on Instagram. Cool. It's not to say you should neglect Instagram, but I just think from my experience when it comes to selling something and getting somebody to.

Or just showing your personality, people are willing to spend more time on YouTube, to sit down and listen to what you have to say. Instagram people are just scrolling. You've got a couple of seconds of their attention, which is very hard to, to tell a story.

It's not as deep.

Yeah, yeah. I, I personally use my Instagram as a business card.

I heard you say that's a really good.

It's like my Instagram is. This is what I'm about. This is my life. It's like, it's interesting, you know, it's a little bit of everything. Fitness Travel, lifestyle, fashion, People who I've been hanging out with, Naturally it makes me look like an interesting person. Yeah, yeah. So people are like, oh, shit. Like, yeah, who's this guy? I want to know more about him. But other people have a different approach. Where they use Instagram is like, that's their main money maker. Yeah, I could definitely be go way harder on Instagram and sales, but I just. The personal choice. Don't really want to do that.

Makes sense.

Makes sense. Outside of YouTube and the Instagram, what other methods did you use to grow your personal brand and other areas of your personal brand? What do you mean on other platforms? Not just necessarily on platforms. Did you do like any structured collaborations or networking or anything like that? Outside of Booster, the collaborations is a big one. But the problem is to begin with, when you're starting off and you don't have a huge following or audience, it's hard to collaborate with the big dogs because they will look at you and be like, what's in it for me? So let's say, for example, the collab I did with Tate, so I did a big vlog with him. Him before he got really famous.

We'D already been in communication. I think he'd seen my Instagram and be like, oh, this guy looks like a pretty cool guy. Interesting life, like. And he was definitely a point where he wanted to grow his reach and his audience. So it would be like, okay, if I do a video with Mike, this is probably going to reach a couple hundred thousand people who didn't know me, who are now going to know me. So we went off, we did that video. Just so happened, it just popped off. So he got a lot of my audience. And I also got a lot of. Well, I got some hate, of course, because I was, you know, doing a video with him. But I also got a lot of new people come to my channel who were searching for tape because at that point in time, he was like the most searched for person everywhere. Like, if you just. This is what everybody started doing. As soon as he started popping off, people were just putting his name in the title of the video or his face just to get more views. So that's like one way to grow as well as you do a topic on something that's trending. Like James Smith, fitness guy, he made a few videos about prime and Logan Paul. And because he's like, you know, he's got a fight coming up, people are trashing him for whatever reasons. Him just doing a video about prime itself and saying like, his video was Saying how shit prime is. That's got like over a million views for that.

Mike, do you look at Google Trends or do you just try and stay in touch with the YouTube community in general to see what's popping off? Like, is it just observation or are you looking at data graphs or something?

A bit of both. But again, I like, with my ethics and values, I don't like to copy other people too much. Or if something has already been trending and people have already made loads of videos about it, I don't want to then be that extra person who's also doing it. Yeah, but it depends. Like, if your focus is, I want to grow as badly as possible, then include these relevant topics into the title and just give your spin on it. There's so many people now whose channels are based off reacting to other people's content.

Yeah.

And you probably know Greg Doucette. Like, he's a fitness guy. He pumps out like a video a day, two videos a day, which is insane when you think about it. But what he's doing is he's just. I don't know even know if he has a team of people or whether he has a team. He has a team. So his team of people just giving him content, fitness content to react to. So he might watch the video and then he puts down some points and then he just gives his thoughts and opinions on a particular video or topic. And then he just has this endless supply of content which he can talk about for days. That's one way of doing it. But then you kind of get into the territory of being a bit of a gossip and a bit of a bitchy personality, where you're in other people, people's business. But I personally stayed out of drama, gossip, any YouTube beef. Like, that's not my brand, it's not my vibe. But for sure, if I got into controversy, you'd get a lot of attention.

But what is your main objective then, for you personally, you know, like, when you do a YouTube video, is it something because you're thinking about launching a course just recently.

Right.

So what has it been? Is it just been growing the audience? What's important?

I think whenever you striving to have a million subscribers, you've got that goal of reaching a mil. So you're just on it, like, doing pretty much anything you could possibly do to get that 1 million mark. I remember once I hit it, I was kind of like, well, what's next? Like, trying to get to 2mil doesn't mean as much as 1mil. So I think now it's. I put out the content, which.

I, first of all, would enjoy filming it.

Second of all, maybe it's gonna inspire or motivate people. Thirdly, maybe to educate them. So I think one of the problems I've had in the past year is I haven't really had a particular.

Thing to sell people. So there hasn't been a motivation to educate them on the topic relating to whatever it is I'm going to sell. But let's say, for example, the course is coming out now. I have this motivation to pump out a load of content relating to the course. You give out the free information, whatever it might be, and then at the end you plug the course. So it can change, basically, is what you said. Yeah, yeah.

It can depend on. Maybe you have a target goal of, okay, I want to hit the 2 million views a month, or maybe I want my ad revenue to be 20,000amonth. It depends. I think one of the problems is, which I've realized, if you don't really have a particular goal, you're aimlessly putting videos out. And I think the important thing with YouTube is you can't have time off. If you take time off, go weeks without uploading, you will very quickly lose the momentum and your audience. It doesn't matter if you've got a million subscribers. If you stop posting, they're gonna find somebody else to watch.

Does YouTube punish you for that or is that.

I think so. I've noticed if I've had periods of time, like I've had weeks off, I come back and you might get half the viewers you normally would do because they're.

Just. You kind of lost them. They're watching someone else.

Yeah, that makes sense too.

And like when.

Hello?

Something to say where you have a call to action in every. Videos, not only in a few. No, I think with me, I've. I don't really. I don't like to sell to people, which is something which I've had to get out of because if you want to make money, you have to sell to people. I just wanted people to enjoy the video. And to begin with, there was nothing to sell. I didn't really. I had the online coaching, but I didn't push. Push it much because just with the sheer amount of value I was supplying in the videos, people were like, I want to work with this guy. They go to the website, they're like, okay, I want to pay for your coaching. That's.

That's like my plan. Yeah, just like valuable videos that help people understand. Well, Shit like, this guy knows what he's on about. Maybe they need help. It's like, maybe I should work with him kind of thing. That's kind of my strategy. Is that good enough?

Yeah. If you, if you are like, you've got. Just sold a business, like, even me, I'm like, tell me more. How do you do that? Like, okay, I want to work with you kind of thing. Yeah. So you. If the videos are helpful enough, I think what people need to trust you, which is hard to get trust on TikTok and Instagram. Whereas if you watch someone's video, they want you to watch five of their videos. You know, ladies kind of feel like, okay, I know his personality. I feel like he's trustworthy. They're going to feel a lot more comfortable parting with their money, spending it on you than someone else. So I think that's, that's very important as well. So don't even feel comfort at all. Once every three or five videos you talk, study about it. Yeah. I think there's.

I don't know what the exact sweet spot is, but the majority of the video, whether it's 80 or 90% of it, is just like, provide the value. Then you slip in somewhere, whether it's the end or the middle 10% you're just talking about. This is something which, you know, might be of value to you and might be interested in. What I've noticed as well is if it's your actual own product, people tend to.

They sort of. They accept that, like, they much prefer it to. If you're selling somebody else's product, if you make a video, you're selling someone else's product, they know they are paying you to do this ad. So they're like.

We don't even know. Like, how can I trust you? Like, how do I know you really even use this product? Like, you're getting paid to do this. Yeah. And then you lose credibility. So I always never really like to do too much collaborations with other brands because people just don't like that. Whereas if you have your own product, like, say, for example, my clothing, if I have my shorts, I talk about them for a little bit, or whatever else it might be my app, because I genuinely believe in the app is like really useful and helpful to get you in shape. If I talk about for 20, 30 seconds, people are like, okay, fair enough. It's a zone. So it's like more legit.

It's got more integrity.

Yeah.

Does more uploads mean more growth?

As long as you don't Sacrifice quality. So I noticed.

When I tried to put out like three videos a week, it was like getting a bit tiring. And I noticed my overall the energy in the videos, the quality of the editing, because I was doing it myself, it went downhill a little bit. But I think generally.

Two, three a week is good. I think if you're putting out content every single day, sure you're gonna get more reach. But then are people gonna have the time to watch one of your videos every single day? Yeah, I don't know.

Fair enough.

I think from somebody who doesn't have a YouTube channel or is extremely inconsistent, the try and put out four or five videos a week. This is so unrealistic. Just let's have a target of doing two, see if you can stick to that. And if doing two videos a week is a breeze, then I'm going to do a third. But I think you'll find that to put out high quality videos with real substance, it takes a bit of effort.

How important is the first five seconds, Mike? I. E. The hook to. Actually, especially if you're quite new in.

The game, probably more important. Yeah, I think if you've been around for a while, you have that credibility. It doesn't really matter. People already know, okay, this is going to be a good video. But I think what we do particularly with the vlogs is we take all the best bits from the vlog, put it into like a 15 second trailer, put it at the beginning and the people are like, oh cool, like what you're gonna watch? Yeah, sorry.

I'm gonna ask about personality. Like you, you hung out with Iman, Tay Hamza, all these guys. And including yourself, when you record a video, how much, like I guess because we're a smaller group. How much of your true self is that in the video? Like you know, you'll say some off to your friends but you won't say it on camera. So with like guys like Iman Tate, like in terms of the, I guess Iman's, he's trying to go for this James Bond type of feel. Taylor's going for this. Like how.

Because I know with Iman he's different in real life to that way he portrays himself in there. It's very dramatic in life. He's a good speaker, he's just more chill in real life. I feel like I'm not really trying to portray a certain character. I think I'm just being myself. I think what you probably noticed with the vlogs is like I'm an over exaggerated version of Myself, I'm in real life, I'm more chilled and I don't, I don't talk as much. Whereas with the vlog, I have to be more energy, I have to chirp in more, I have to just talk more. So that is in a sense how I'm different. And I think you could probably tell from years ago when I started the vlogging, I was a lot more shy and stiff and just like, just stuck inside of my shell. And I think that's something which over time I've come out of that. And I think that's just from, I guess, building up confidence in not only the repetitions of just doing more and more vlogs, but also once you kind of become, oh, yeah, I'm like, I'm Mike Thurston, I've done this, I've done that. You have have all this evidence to back up who you are, you naturally become more confident and feel like, actually, yeah, I deserve to be in this position speaking to this person. So don't. If you start vlogging, doing the day in the lives, don't expect the first few videos. You're going to be the most charismatic, entertaining person that comes with time. How do you organize your backend admin for your. You choose that because you obviously got a lot of different people contributing, like different creative assets. Like, how do you manage everybody to like make sure everything's delivered you not miss anything a lot of this. So I will still manually do everything myself, my YouTube channel, because I'm still, I'm a bit of a control freak. So I think maybe that's just because the first few years I was doing it all myself. So I still like doing the like the final proof watch.

Do you edit?

No. No. So Chris, Chris films and edits the majority of them. So Chris would probably, he would send me a video, whatever it might be, and it's like the uncut version. So I feel as though, because I want to maximize the engagement, I know there's certain points where either I say something which I feel like this is not really relevant or interesting, but Chris doesn't necessarily know. Does Mike want to keep this in or does he want to cut it out? Like, he doesn't know. So he sends it to me, I will open it up in final cut and then if needs to be, I might chop out five minutes or if it's a long video, like you might send me a 40 minute video, I might chop out 10 minutes. Which from my experience of YouTube, I just think this, this is irrelevant and doesn't contribute to the overall vlog. And then obviously I'm making sure there's no mistakes or anything and then I'll put it out there. But in terms of that there's from that YouTube channel, there's nobody else involved. It's still just me. Is that more just for the vlog stuff though? Because it's more like. Yeah, it's just chunked out if it's. You sat in front of the camera. Yes. So this, this is something which is different. So if I do a sit down video and I'm talking about training and nutrition, this is when it gets a bit more technical. So I have all the like, I know every single clip that is in every single video that I've ever put out. There's like 450 videos, whatever. So I will. If I'm talking about training or a particular topic, I know the exact perfect clip that is going to go for this 22nd segment. The problem is Chris doesn't necessarily know what that is because his training knowledge isn't the same as mine and he doesn't know every single piece of content which has gone out in all the videos. So sometimes I will just take the hit and I will edit a video myself because I know that by me editing it, it's overall going to be a better quality video. Instead of, let's say, for example, you know, Chris or somebody else could put some generic clip over something that I'm saying. But if it's the perfect visual clip of me doing.

Like has way more impact. So sometimes with those videos I will do that. But it's just, it's how much time am I willing to put into it? But I would, I would love to create a clone version of me who would be. I've trained that person up to be the best editor ever and that person just edit. Because I enjoy editing. Like I really do enjoy it just takes so long. Yeah. Would you do that full video in that instance or would you like here's this to this and like hot points. And then. Do you get what I'm saying? So like this is the 20 second clip. This is the clip. This is the clip. And then pass it on. Would you do the whole thing? I did hold. But again it's. Is it the most valuable use of your time? I don't know. Interesting.

But I think because, because I have like, I know how to edit. I have the experience.

Yeah.

It's not hard work for me, but for someone who's never edited before. Yeah, probably a waste of time.

Yeah.

Sometimes it might be better if you film it beforehand. You've got like the 10 minute video done and you write a list of, okay, these are the clips that I need to put over this point in the video. You get the cameraman just go out for half an hour or an hour, just go get those clips so you can then put it perfectly for your video. When you do trips to like, like you said, like Prague, Portugal, like are you working out like, like a profit and loss for the video or is it like you do like a budget info or anything or it very much just kind of like spontaneous. It's more, more spontaneous. But I think now it's, there has to be a reason or purpose behind it. So if I go somewhere and I don't. If I go somewhere for two weeks and get one video, I think that probably wasn't the best use of my time. So I do, I weigh it up sometimes, especially now because I have more things going on, particularly with my clothing brand. I would tie in a lot of these trips and think, right, okay, so I'm going here. I want to make a cool vlog about the place. But I'm also doing a campaign with my clothing company where I've got a marketing director and some other models involved. So I'm getting loads of cool content for the Instagram, which adds to the brand and the lifestyle. I'm getting loads of content for my clothing brand website, the Instagram page of my clothing brand. And I've also got like a really cool lifestyle vlog for the YouTube. So there's lots of stuff happening in that one trip. So you do more kind of like macro profit loss. You don't break it down. Psyche video. There's been some trips, I remember went to the Seychelles to do a campaign there, also did a vlog as well, but it ended up costing so much money to fly the models out and to put them in accommodation. When I looked at the expenses, I was like, holy shit. Like, that was not worth it.

How much was it?

Like 15. 15 grand at least.

Just for the models.

Just like everything.

Which I don't think was worth it.

Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

If you didn't have much time in the week as it is, but you wanted to try and do two videos a week, what would be a reasonable amount of time to allocate to try and get two videos? How much time would you allocate to get two videos done? And how much is too much or too little?

It depends. I think to begin with, it's unlikely you'll Sit down and just bang out the video in one go. It might actually take like an hour because even now I still mess up loads because I say something and I'm like, that's. I can say that better because I'm trying to say the best way I can, the most information as possible in the shortest period of time. It's really easy to waffle on, especially when I have a lot of knowledge about fitness and training. I can waffle on for so long. And I think one of the reasons why I did so well to begin with was because it was straight to the point, no bullshit, like, this is the information you need. And that's what people want, really. They don't have that much attention or time. They want to get as much information as possible From a short 10 minute video, maybe longer, but sometimes a sort short video. So if you, if you. I think planning beforehand what you're going to say takes longer than actually saying it, especially if you've already written it down and thought in your head how you're going to say it. So I might spend an hour, sometimes more, depending on what it is that I'm talking about, making notes, planning what I'm going to say and then putting them into bullet points, maybe rehearsing it in my head and then I sit down and I film it. But if when you get into a good routine and the setup is there, like you're not wasting time setting up the camera, the lights, everything could be a couple hours a week, that's it.

There's really no excuse for not having the time to do it. I think once if you've decided, right, I need. I'm gonna make two videos a week.

Make time. Let's do it.

Urine have seen you at 1 1/2 million subs. Now, if you said to yourself, all right, Micah, for 2024, you want to double that to 3 million. In your shoes, what would you do? Like your own strategy of, okay, my goal in 2024, by the end of the year is to hit 3 million subs, right?

So the frequency which I would need to upload, we need to go up drastically at the moment, I've been very casual. I'm not on a strict scale schedule. I'm probably doing three or four over the summer. At least three, four months. I could easily be doing eight. So I would step up the frequency. I would also.

I would have to maybe sacrifice my values and ethics and go more into clickbaity videos. So videos which are going to entice people in more dramatic thumbnails more dramatic titles instead of putting out content, which where I'm thinking, I just want to provide value. I'm thinking, okay, how do I get as many viewers as possible? So you sacrifice the value. Maybe you're going more for entertainment and you're just trying to reach the biggest audience possible. And then I would reach out to as many people as possible who have a big following and just collaborate with them. So let's say, for example, what I would do is I'd probably do a trip to America. I would do like an American tour for like one month, Stop New York, then Miami, then Houston, Austin.

Louisiana. Go to all these places and collaborate with all the biggest influencers and YouTubers. And I would probably have to do, like, collaborating people who maybe I necessarily wouldn't want to collaborate with them because I don't fuck with them, but I just know that by collaborating with them, I'm gonna get views.

And maybe doing stuff outside of fitness and lifestyle. Maybe I'd go and do, I don't know, some weird, I don't know, some weird video that is kind of guaranteed to get views. That's what I would probably do. And what other things would have to take a hit? So other things, which I am allocating my time and committing to, I'd be like, okay, we have to put that on the back. For now, everything just needs to be focused on the YouTube growth.

If you had a target for two videos a week, but you made two videos and you weren't happy with the quality of them, would you still post them anyway? Or would you just say, I need to get better at making the video first?

Wait, so you saying the videos which you put out, you're not happy with? No, no. Yeah.

If you had a target, okay, two videos a week, and then you make two videos and you say, do you know what? I'm not happy with those yet. Would you try again?

Or would you just post them anyway to begin with? Just put them out there.

Yeah.

Because so many people, when they start.

Trying, I've got big perfectionism.

They're trying to make, like, this perfect video, when in reality, probably no one's gonna see it. So just. You just need to stop procrastinating and just put it out there. If you go on every YouTube channel from someone who's killing it, you go back to their early videos, and then they're trash. Like, minor trash. Like, nobody starts off with these, like, unbelievable videos. The best thing to do is just to get into the rhythm of filming, get into the habit of uploading and naturally you just, you get more comfortable. The way you're presenting the type of content you're putting out there just gets better and better.

Alright, let's do one more question before we wrap up. And we've got five minutes. Who's got the last one?

Dariel, the question I'm posing myself at the moment, is it a good investment to have someone full time on the camera editing and trying to grow the channel more timely? So for example, I've got a budget or 20k for the next three, four months, for example. Should I allocate that time to having a full time video videographer, cameraman, doing the vlogs, doing all the editing, directly focus on my channel and say, yeah, well, okay, this investment's going to go to that. Just one person? Yeah, just one person working 40 full time on that.

I would personally prefer to have more people who specialize in the thing that they do best. So like Chris, sick at filming and editing, but if I gave him the responsibility of making thumbnails, he probably wouldn't be putting out the best thumbnails. So I would rather find somebody who is really good at doing the thumbnail stuff. I think with the. You can find somebody who films and edits and they can be quite good at both. And I think you, you tend to find that when you edit a video, it's much easier to edit when you've filmed everything because you know what's being filmed and it's been filled in your style. So I was in Italy last week, but I had my photographer who was filming, he doesn't normally film and he just literally unloaded so much footage to Chris and Chris is just kind of like where to, like where do I even begin? Like, I don't know, you're kind of putting together a video that you've never seen before. So I would definitely have someone.

Again, it's really hard to. The first person you hire might not be very good. So you might need to test a few people, give people a trial where you maybe spend the day with them. You give them the task of filming a video, editing a video and see what they do. The most important thing as well, you need to vibe with them if you want to be. You're going to have one guy who's going to be filming, editing, you're spending a lot of time with them and if they're absolute freak who you don't like being around, then it's going to be really unpleasant. So try a few different people and then once you found someone that you like they've got a good style and you like being around them. Then offer them a full time position.

Yeah, I was gonna say just maybe you guys might have noticed. My questions to Mike is that I overthink too much now because of the channel size. The more you can avoid that of not overthinking your whole process. Yeah, obviously have some sort of structure, but the more you can avoid overthinking, the better flow it'll be. And say for you, with you guys wanting to throw money at it, rather do it yourself and give yourself enough time to test. Kind of like sales. Don't just throw in a sales gap. You've never sold yourself. So try and do it. Try and do the bare minimum all on your own until you figure out what kind of works and then find someone and teach them how to do that. Right. And take yourself out of it. Because you might invest 20k and you'll put a lot of pressure on the person who has to perform and earn that 20k and then you end up firing them. They might have been good, but you didn't, you didn't know what works to begin with. So yeah, it sucks in the beginning because you have to like do a lot of it on your own. But it will be. Once you've figured out the formula, you can tell someone else, hey, this is the way you should. This is the way I'm doing it. If you can improve it, do that. Yeah. Basically reduce friction.

That's it. Do you think that's an industry specific thing then? It's not like you can lift a person that's done video editing for another industry and make it work in yours. You can.

An editor will be a good editor.

Right.

They'll have an idea of what to do. They know how to do the very basics. Just for different forms of content, there's different styles. But if you're trying to do YouTube.

Specifically, it's better that they understand how YouTube works.

Right, right.

Because there might be like a wedding videographer and they put together like.

Maybe it's a really nice cinematic video but just doesn't perform on YouTube. Got it. That's.

One last question each. Yeah.

Don't you dare.

Would you rather hire a virtual editor or would you rather try and find somebody in person?

Ideally somebody in person. But the thing is, you could have a virtual editor. This is something which I'd probably recommend for people that have much money. You could get maybe a virtual editor in Asia who would work for peanuts and put out a really good edit. Whereas if you have more money to spend. You could probably find an editor who is based where you're based, and then it just means that you can, you know, they could come round, they could show you the video, you could talk about it together, tweak things there and then. Because otherwise you're in a position where you're sending the video backwards and forwards. You got to upload, you got to download. Upload, you gotta download. So I would try to. I mean, where are you based?

Lancashire.

Yeah. So.

Might be a problem, because I don't know how many good editors are in Lancashire. If you're in London, I tried working.

With one or two and then they. Yeah, just.

So I have a good friend, Mattis Fitness, who's based in the uk. He. He lives in Folkestone, which is literally in the middle of nowhere, and he's bought a house there, so that's where he's going to be most of the time. So he's had to pay someone to basically go out to Folkestone every time he wants to film and edit something. So ideally, they need to live as close to Folkestone as possible. I think it's like an hour away from the train, which isn't that bad, but if you're. Yeah, I think.

You might need to find someone remote. I just don't know how many good editors are in language. All right, that's it.

Thank you so much.