DON’T START YOUTUBE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE… (MY STRATEGY) | #THINKMEDIAPODCAST #191
Speaker 2 :
Could it be that your success on Youtube getting a thousand subscribers a hundred thousand subscribers that actually you’re going to win that battle before you even post a video? Who is your channel for? What problem does your channel solve? If you’re trying to reach everybody, you’ll end up reaching nobody. You want to have a cohesive strategy. If I was going to start a channel from scratch this year, this is the system I would follow to get my first a hundred, a thousand even a hundred thousand subscribers. We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. And in this episode of the Think Media Podcast, we’re actually going to be breaking down something we haven’t really shared publicly like this before, and that is our 7R system. That’s a part of our video ranking Academy and Nolan and I are going to be going through all seven r ‘s, so buckle your seat belt and definitely watch until or listen until the end of the episode so that you can catch all of this content. If I was going to start a channel from scratch this year, this is the system. I would follow to get my first a hundred, a thousand even a hundred thousand. Subscribers, and so nolan, I’m fired up to really share this in a context that we’ve never shared before.
Speaker 1 :
We’ve never gone this deep on this training other than in our video ranking Academy course. And so this is cool that we get to talk about this openly with everybody on the podcast and it’s going to be valuable. The first R in our seven step framework is reverse engineer. Can you kind of break down? What that means and if you’re a brand new YouTube channel in 2023 how can you utilize this first step to set yourself up ultimately to know that you can succeed in the end?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah so reverse engineer is all about starting with the end in mind and it’s about answering the questions of who is your channel for what problem does your channel solve. It’s also about getting clarity of what is the business plan for your channel. If you’re trying to reach everybody, you’ll end up reaching nobody. If you’re trying to monetize in every possible creator economy way, your focus is too divided. There’s better monetization options for entertainment, and there’s different ones for education. It’s getting clear on those types of things, it’s getting clear on who is your target audience, and the cool thing about the 7R framework. Is you can apply it first to your channel. So we’re talking about reverse engineer, what’s your channel about what’s the focus of the channel, what’s the branding of the channel. But you also then apply it to individual videos. So you’re maybe posting a video and saying what’s the purpose of this video? Is it more of a broad appeal bring in more subscribers? Is it more of a it could be something as like a channel update. You don’t think it’s going to perform well, but you are wanting to talk to a small number of people that are actually see it. That’s fine. You just defined ahead of time what the purpose is. What I found is I was really inspired by a 2000 year old quote from a military general named Sun Su. The book is very famous. It’s called the art of war and he said that every battle is won before it’s even fought. So could it be that your success on YouTube getting a thousand subscribers a hundred thousand subscribers that actually you’re going to win that battle before you even post a video and we say punch fear in the face, start before you’re ready. There’s something about like you should be doing that anyways, like just learning, practicing, but when it really comes down to. Winning on YouTube and building something significant. You want to have a cohesive strategy and that definitely starts with defining your end targets and getting really clear on some of those questions I just put out there.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah, I actually have a failed YouTube channel. Of course I don’t love talking about it because it’s like it’s a failure, but I haven’t failed YouTube channel and i think I did. I just didn’t do this step. I didn’t reverse engineer and so I started a new channel and I use this step reverse engineer and one of the things that really helped me decide what to make the channel about. And for someone listening, if you maybe are posting about a ton of stuff, you’re just trying to figure out what that niche, what that topic of your channel should be. I found this super helpful and helped my new channel actually succeed and not be a failure. Which was i asked myself, what am I passionate about that which you think? That’s an easy question, but like a lot of people have so many passions and I’m definitely one of those people. And So what I did is I went into it. It’s not just what are you passionate about. You have to think what do people want to watch? Because I might be passionate about something. That’s just I like to play basketball. If I were to film myself playing basketball, that would not be very interesting because I’m just not that good. So I had to ask, OK well, what do what do what would you want to watch on YouTube? And so I actually went into my own history and I started looking at what am I watching. And I noticed I was watching stuff on productivity. I was watching some like basketball highlights I was watching and I started to write these down because there was different themes. And this is like, this is kind of a major hack because. A lot of people they don’t need, they’re like, I’m watching all this stuff on YouTube, maybe you could make your own channel on that. And so that is like a really cool tip to kind of bring clarity to what am I watching because I’m passionate about these topics. And then what would be some advice that you would give to someone who they have a ton of different passions and maybe their channel reflects that. I know that early on you posted a lot of different stuff. How do you narrow down and when do you stop experimenting? Because sometimes it’s best to just get started and to try different stuff. When do you figure out to narrow in and kind of become clear on what you’re going to post about?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, I do think that if you don’t have total clarity, which almost nobody does when they start, it’s because you need to post videos experiment. Should you have a niche day one. Well, you may not need to, because if you do post one topic, a second topic, a third topic, and you aren’t getting views or growing yet, well then you’re not violating your audience. You have no audience. Then maybe you post 10 to 30 videos and they’re all different experiments and something starts to break out. I think what you want to do. I read a book they called those bright spots. If you’re doing a lot of different things in your life, what are the bright spots? It’s like if you had a lot of different friends and you’re like, I’ve been investing in a lot of relationships, but I feel like a lot of people aren’t reciprocating well. Who is? That’s the bright spots. And double down on the ones. Don’t worry about the people who aren’t calling you back. Go hang out with the people that are, you know, invest in the bright spots. So which videos? What are the themes that are standing out? And then the whole other side of reverse engineer, though, is also this practicality of. Coming with a business mindset. And so one of the most valuable aspects that our video Reiki Academy students learn is we kind of come into the crater economy wanting to just monetize our passion, which is good. But there’s a huge skill gap in kind of online business, online marketing leadership. And so I think if you only focus on passion that you’re missing the aspect of practicality and profitability. So I think part of your focus should be influenced. By how much market viability is there here? So some business terms. One is Tam, the total addressable market. What entrepreneurs, novice entrepreneurs actually follow novelty. They follow something they’re excited about. Pro entrepreneurs follow viability, which would mean, is there a lot of people that need their garbage picked up? Great i should start a garbage business. Are you passionate about it? No, but i’m passionate about providing for my family or making a difference or this business that I’m starting over here. So usually in the passion economy, the creator economy, it’s like passion is king. I think if passion is the only king though it’s like passion is king but profitability is queen and she runs the household. Like you need to have a practicality and a profitability to it. So reverse engineer would have to do with. Thinking about some of the market research, so you knew you love basketball. You also identified your proficiency that if it was you teaching basketball or being on camera or teaching people had a three sixty dunk, that probably wouldn’t really work. But then understanding how to use fair use and kind of a face.
Speaker 1 :
Entertaining content around NBA which I, you know, enjoy watching this kind of clips and stuff.
Speaker 2 :
And it and then it blew up and because of what you would learn you have that savviness there. The last thing I would say is this kind of a cool thought exercise. You know, when people think they’re limited financially, one of the things they could do is they could get a loan. Now, I’m not suggesting someone runs out and gets a loan, but you can get a loan to start a business. And starting a YouTube channel is like starting a business. This is not like a radical concept. This is what businesses do historically. You go to a local bank and you get a small business loan. So let me ask you, are you prepared to present the vision for your YouTube channel? To a banker that’s going to determine whether or not they fund your small business loan. Not suggesting you go get one. You actually, we actually do have a partner that we can link to them in the description where you can actually get an LLC set up for free and you can they do have the ability to extend lines of credit. If you’re serious that can be jet fuel for a good plan. The cool thing about that is that ultimately if the banker like goes they say so how you going to make money? Like I’m not sure. What’s the market value viability of this channel, what’s kind of like the competitor assessment what’s kind of happening here. I really haven’t done that. They’d go well and I’m not going to give you the go get to work and what they would want to see is a business plan. And so that’s one of obviously we got to go through all the R’s but one of the we spent a lot of time inside of the video Reikid Academy program getting clear on this stuff because it’s the foundation like doesn’t matter the paint on the walls or the art in the walls, that’s the title and the thumbnails. That’s all cool, but if the foundation isn’t solid, then the whole structure is not going to last. It’s going to fall. So reverse engineering and getting clear basically the business plan, your YouTube plan, your money plan, kind of the synergy, just different language for some sort of the same thing. You’re reverse engineering the whole picture and then success becomes honestly inevitable. Every battle is won before it’s even fought. Like you’re sitting down, you’re like, I know the battle is won, I’ve got the right pieces, I got my strategy dialed in. Now it’s just a matter of executing on the strategy because you started with clarity by reverse engineering.
Speaker 1 :
I’m really glad you mentioned that it’s passion and profit, because thinking back now, the reason my channel failed. I was only focused on profit and so it. And so I’m glad that you said that because I was going into a niche that I wasn’t passionate about. But I was like, this could make a ton of money. And then I was like burnt out trying to do it because I was like i don’t enjoy this it’s both.
Speaker 2 :
It’s not. It has to be both i love that. So the second one is research and what does that look like once you’ve kind of? You reverse engineer, you kind of have that business plan for your channel. You’re clear on what you’re going to post about. You kind of have this is how I’m going to monetize and be able to, you know go for full time and you’ve reverse engineered the research phase is the next step and what does that look like?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah so now if we’re clear on what who are channels for what problem we’re solving, we can go through the seven R’s every time we create a video. So at this stage you may have an idea and now you’re going to research the idea and even determine does this one video have good potential. This could include keyword research. This could include Google News researching trends. This could include studying competitors looking for inspiration from their ideas. It also could include not even having any ideas and using a tool like VID I q’s daily ideas tool that might feed you and in that case. A I or software in a way that it’s doing research for you could research could include studying how much search volume there is about a topic or it also could include going to a conference or looking at the summary of a conference like CES is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And one of the things that actually helped build think media was we were boots on the ground at CES 5-6-7 years in a row and it’s.
Speaker 1 :
Like a tech show there, there’s a lot of new cameras coming out, that kind of stuff and so it was a it was also, it was like a hot spot for creating multiple videos. We would go down year one because people are like oh, easy for you to say. We would go down. You had people fill. No, no, no. Relax, Rebecca. Like I would go down. With a manfrotto monopod, a Canon seventy d with the screen flipped at me in a wide angle lens like 11 to 22 at 11 and I would hold that out on one arm so my arm wouldn’t get tired. With a wireless Sennheiser microphone and I would interview people at booths, take the camera off, shoot all the B roll so there’s levels to it where you can do it solo, you can do it with one person helping you. Ron Starling came one year who kind of interned with think media and then Fast forward. Eventually we were. Like rolling in squad deep with like, you know, five six, seven of us just step, you know, one video at a time, 1 brick at a time. But going there a lot of research was happening in the effect of you’re seeing what’s happening in the market, you’re seeing which trends are coming, which.
Speaker 2 :
Trend surfing.
Speaker 1 :
You’re leading to a lot of content ideas, but the other thing you might say, well, I can’t forget either being solo, I can’t afford a plane ticket or fly there you can cover. A show in your industry, just by looking at the headlines in the news articles and reacting to those, Omar was just talking about how there’s a guy going viral for real estate in Vegas and the video that’s going viral like 4 hundred, 500,000 thousand views is just a loom video. It’s him with a little. Screen recording record.
Speaker 2 :
His face in the corner, but it’s the value, it’s the context and the commentary that he’s giving on reacting to data charts and those types of things. So when something like CES comes out you could type in CES Consumer Electronics Show Las Vegas and then you could go to the news tab and then the normal Google tab and read and follow and study. So research there’s if we go into such layers of depth inside of the program but ultimately. It’s not just like keyword research, it’s kind of like topic research. Being aware of what’s happening in your industry could be watching some other YouTube videos and then synthesizing that information into coming up with a great video. And notice we haven’t recorded a video yet. You know we haven’t actually prepared. And the other thing that research would include in this seven r ‘s is then we are also going to synthesize this into a concept. That we will record, which is a future step right. So it this includes also then getting your outline together by your goal. By the end of this R would be okay, what is my title kind of what’s the hook? And I don’t mean the opening, I mean like what’s going to grab people topicwise? What’s the how’s it, how are you going to grab people with the topic and the title. So I would often times go home even when we were here physically for CES because we were still a small team and there was companies like The Verge that had a double wide trailer. That rolled up with 50 journalists that were in laptops and hitting the show floor. So as a small creator, especially early days as a one man or three person show, I would research at the evening before day two of CES and I would be like, oh wow, they discovered 13 things I didn’t know about. And you don’t have to be here physically. There are other people that can kind of be feeding you if you know where to look and where to find things and so. Yeah, that’s research and then Oregon. And then I would go back and I would pretty much know my title, I would know the hook, I would know like the 1st 8K camera. I’m like oh, I didn’t know that was here. And so once I saw that existed, I studied up, learned about it, whatever. And then I turned that into a video and I was able to leverage great research resources to help me go further faster, come up with strong video ideas and then ultimately. When you follow all seven of the R’s it’s a provable system. So then already this should be like every battle has won before. It’s even thought like that video was a strong idea. It was refined, it was dialed. So if I follow through on it was like basically guaranteed to win. Maybe it doesn’t go viral, but like, it’s going to be a quote, unquote successful youtube video.
Speaker 1 :
One of the really practical advice I want to give on this step of research, kind of going macro level is there’s. Just to dumb it down, there’s basically two pools that you can go after when you’re because people struggle coming up with what ideas do I make. So you have like browse and suggested which is when you go on YouTube, you open up the homepage, YouTube’s recommending content, you want YouTube recommending your content and then you also have search based where people are going into the search bar and they’re looking up video ideas. So I would encourage people listening to this. In your niche, go to your homepage, hit the refresh button, and this is assuming that you’re posting content that is, you know, showing up on your homepage. And find some inspiration from like videos that are doing well and find a way to i typically when I find a video, I’m like, oh i like that idea. I’ll save it to a playlist, I’ll make it different. And that’s one way where you can you want to find videos and it’s pretty easy on the home page that are getting more views than subscribers and that just kind of shows that like there’s a lot of interest in this topic, you should maybe make a video on a on a similar topic and then another one, the search bar that I love that you talk about and you go way more in depth in video ranking Academy is going into the YouTube search bar typing in best camera space bar. Incing for beginners, for vlogging, for outside, and like, those are all video ideas and so those are just some like really easy ways to just start the research method. The next part to that once you kind of decide what video to make though would be record. So what kind of tips do you have for this record stage? When people got it locked in, they pull out the camera. What’s next?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah so actually I think because we haven’t talked as much about. Four through seven of the R’s I think I would just recommend some resources here number one subscribe to think Media. This is our Think media podcast channel. You and Omar are the greatest of all time in terms of a lot of details about recording videos. In fact, sometimes people wonder like what’s the difference between video ranked Academy and think media? Like a lot of what we give away, video ranked Academy isn’t a ton of. How to actually make the content. It’s the whole strategy. It’s getting all these pieces. It’s the it’s getting the shortest path to earning big money with a small channel. All that stuff. We give away pretty much everything free. You have a 2 hour online course. Essentially on final cut, you’ve got a lot of the today’s pop popular cameras, either you or Omar have done a 5 to 10 part series on how to use them, so I’d say number. One definitely. I’m sure most people here are. But you know, subscribe to our main channel, think media, and some advice would be to approach the channel, though with less random intent and more intentionality. So actually to maybe go visit, think Media, asking specific questions like do you already have the camera, go study that camera on think media, have you picked out your software? Commit the time to go watch your final cut. If that’s the software or iMovie, you got both, like go study that block time and go really master that skill set in regards to record. Secondly, we also do have we were talking about before with Mel, if you go to vrapodcast.com you can get a special discount on the video Reiki Academy course if you not. If you don’t just want to master all seven rs. But inside of the course we talk, we do a couple breakdowns with like 19 distinctions review, like reviewing a video of how you could improve your video. So there’s a lot in there, the perfect video recipe, but whether you subscribe to think media, if you want to join video ranking Academy, and definitely a topic for the future because that we could talk about 100 different podcasts. I’m making great videos, so I think it’d be cool to get into some of the other R’s i do think I have one question because I think a lot of people struggle with step one and two, when it comes or sorry, they do really good at one and two and they spend a lot of time there. I’m this way, so I’m kind of just speaking from personal experience and I can reverse engineer all day long, come up with my business plan, I can do research for months and figure out the next hundred videos I’m going to make, but then I actually don’t pick up the camera and hit record. And I think it’s because I’m scared. I’m like, i feel like I’m going to be awkward on camera. And I think a lot of people struggle with that part of it. We don’t talk about that as much on think media. We have very practical stuff. So what would you say to that person who they’re in a hamster wheel on step one and two, and once it comes to actually pulling out their phone or their camera to start recording, they just can’t, they can’t do it. What do you tell that person?
Speaker 2 :
I think that what? We’re facing as creatives myself, you, everybody listening to this, we’re facing what Steven Pressfield calls the resistance. And that’s what it is because there’s a little bit of safety and security in the reverse engineer phase. There’s safety and security in the research phase and there’s some dopamine happening in our brains because what we’re seeing is we are, we’re getting the light bulb moments. We’re like.
Speaker 1 :
You’re dreaming big that.
Speaker 2 :
Idea will work. You’re seeing you’re like man, if I do this when I do this I’m going to add it to the list and. The other thing, though, is there also is some comfort there because i you might be like me. You get into a whole vibe wherever you work. You got your Home Office, you work in the corner of your bedroom. When you get up, you make some coffee, you got a little breakfast over there, put your headphones on. You’re listening to some music. You’re researching, you’re having some fun. You’re still in your boxers, though, like, whatever. It’s a more you got a little hoodie on. It’s cozy. It’s warm.
Speaker 1 :
Your hair is just like.
Speaker 1 :
Yeah, your hair’s not, and you are being productive, but you’re giving yourself. It’s only one aspect of productivity. So what, Steven Pressfield comes up, and I know you’d recommend it if you’re listening to this. And we’ll link them up. The War of Art is a great book. Basically, the shorter version is called do the work. A lot of people will read the book, do the work yearly. If not, whenever they get into a rut of not the resistance is the procrastination. It’s the IT is the fear. But i also kind of want to call out a little bit of people’s laziness. Like, I mean, you’re listening to this podcast. It’s the fact that you got to get up out of your office chair and get into the shower and get ready. And it’s easier to sit at your desk and do research than it is to get your light kit out of the closet and clean up the office and set it up like because it’s the work. That’s why Stephen Pressfield wrote the book do the work because you’re like and then and knowing that. Even setting it up is kind of exciting, but as soon as you get on camera, you fumble and you stumble and there’s a little bit of brain fog and your energy is a little bit low, you have to press through all of that resistance. So the third R is where the rubber meets the road. It’s the time where whether it is fear or apprehension or selfdoubt or imposter syndrome. But it’s also, I think a lot of us are hiding behind, like the even those things we could be hiding behind, because it’s also just laziness. If it feels oh man I just maybe I’m going to put it off till tomorrow. No don’t put off till tomorrow. What you can do today you really have to just punch procrastination and laziness in the face and get to work and it’s something about get the prime the pump. You know they oftentimes say in a good book about habits it might have been atomic habits it was like or tiny habits it was like if you want us to develop the habit of flossing your teeth. Don’t think that. Go floss all your teeth floss one tooth like because if you floss one tooth you’re going to be like that’s dumb. Why don’t I just finish so but that you’re tricking your brain by being like I’m going to floss one tooth. So if you’re like set up the light kit sit down and just record the opening of the video. Like I just record the intro like so you niche down but like what a waste you’re like I’d have to re get dressed tomorrow and put my you know. Whatever on like I might as well finish the video. So like getting it started getting that momentum going getting away from your desk even if you film at your and like actually pressing record. I think you really just got to do it. And those that would be the simplest one. If you get one book get do the work by Stevens Pressfield. We’ll link it up that is a must in every creatives library and I love revisiting his work, his newest book. They’re all pretty similar but they’re all good is. Put your ass where your heart is. Put your heart where your ass is. It’s what’s one of the and it’s really good. I just say it’s not, they’re not very long. And it’s also, it’s kind of a similar thing. It’s about like your heart is in it to create this, but like get moving, put your body there, get on camera. And he goes into a lot of it actually is a different than his other books. If you want to learn more about our seven hour system for starting and growing a successful YouTube channel. Then we have a special offer just for Think Media podcast listeners. If you go to vrapodcast.com you can get access to exclusive pricing, special bonuses, and actually go read some stories and learn exactly what this program will do for you if you’re serious about YouTube right now. This program has transformed people’s lives from many different backgrounds, whether they’re entertainment or education channels, whether they’re business owners or service providers. Or whether they’re stay at home moms or pastors or ministers that are trying to figure out how to get their message out there or create extra streams of income. I want you to definitely see just some of the stories. And you can check all of that out at vrapodcast.com That’s just for you and because you’ve been a part of the Think Media podcast community and I hope this episode is added massive value. Subscribe if you’re not subscribed and we will see you in the next one.
