← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
The Truth About How To Get 100K Subscribers On YouTube - 891
00:34:13
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
If you've ever had a post go viral and then immediately thought, wait, how am I actually going to ship all of these orders? Yeah, that's the part that almost no one talks about. When your company is growing fast, order fulfillment can make or break your success. And that's why I recommend that you use ShipStation. ShipStation's intelligence driven platform brings everything into one place. Order management, rate shopping, inventory, returns, warehouse systems, and even analytics. They're saving business owners up to 15 hours a week on fulfillment. And here's what I love. Instead of juggling five to seven different tools, it's just one. You can connect to over 200 sales channels and it automatically compares rates across carriers like USPS, UPS and FedEx. Plus, over a million businesses already trust and use ShipStation. And that's why I highly recommend if you have any kind of business where shipping is required, ShipStation is the tool that I would suggest. Try shipstation free for 60 days with full access to all features. No credit card needed. Go to shipstation.com and use code BYT for 60 days free. 60 days will give you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're saving on every single shipment. That's S-I P S-T-A-T-I-O-N.com and use code by T shipstation.com with code BYT Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify, the number one e commerce platform in the world for building your business and selling your products. More about them later. Also later I'll tell you a little bit more about our sponsor, which has me super excited, which provides weekly nutritious, wholesome meals that help you hit your goals in less time, energy and effort. Plus, they taste great. Today's episode is also brought to you by Rella, which if you are a social media manager, is going to be a game changer for organizing and staying on top of all of the content that you are creating, planning and posting. But I'll tell you more about them later. I got one of these. And so in today's episode I'm going to tell you exactly how I gained 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and how you can do the same. I would not consider myself a YouTube expert. My forte is really Instagram, but I've learned a lot about YouTube in the last three years of growing this channel and really in the last 15 plus years of being on YouTube. More about that story later. And so today I'm going to spill the beans. I'm going to spill the tea and give you the four ingredients that are necessary to to reach 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Because in my opinion, and this might be a controversial take, this might not be what you expected me to say. As a guy who loves Instagram and focuses all of their time on Instagram, I believe that YouTube is the most rewarding platform. I also want to begin by saying it is absolutely not too late to grow on YouTube. I actually started this channel at the very end of 2022, after the COVID boom and of course more than a decade after YouTube started as a whole. So it is absolutely not too late to grow. However, almost everyone would agree it it is the hardest platform to grow on. When you think about TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and all of the other social media apps, most people don't even consider YouTube a social media to begin with. And I think I might agree with that statement. But regardless of how you think of it, everyone agrees it is the toughest to grow on. It takes the most time, energy and effort. And that's part of the reason that I think it's the most rewarding. But I also think that's part of the reason that so many people fail and so many people burn out. For example, my journey on TikTok was the polar opposite of my journey on YouTube. I started on TikTok at the very beginning of 2019, which was far before most people really caught wind of the app and joined. But I posted a few silly dancing videos when I was a college football player and I blew up and gained like 300,000 followers on TikTok in about a week's time. It was absolutely insane. The same cannot be said on YouTube. On YouTube, like I mentioned a moment ago, I started this channel at the end of 2022 and I just hit 100,000 subscribers in April of 2020. Not to mention I would have what I would consider a little bit of a leg up over a lot of other YouTube channels that might be starting today. And so I don't say any of this to scare you again. I want to say that it is possible, it is absolutely doable to grow on YouTube. And I'm about to walk you through the four key elements in doing so. But I also want your expectations to be in the right place and I want you to be ready that if you want to grow on YouTube, you need to commit for the long haul. But let's get into it. The four ingredients that we are going to be covering today are, number one, the channel setup, number two, the gear Number three, the team. And number four, most importantly, the content. Let's begin with the channel setup. Just like on Instagram, you need to optimize your profile. Just like if you had a physical location business, you want to make sure that your storefront is set up for customers to be able to come inside and find what they're looking for. You want to make sure that your YouTube channel is set up correctly as well. And that starts first and foremost with a clear niche or a direction or a topic that your channel is going to take. And I absolutely believe that it is necessary to have a niche if you want to grow on YouTube. Now, you can grow without one, but it's going to be much slower. And I also think that you don't have to necessarily have it predetermined before you post your first video. I think that a lot of people will find their niche over time as they're kind of posting about different topics and experimenting. However, if you don't eventually find your topic or your niche or your focus, you're always going to struggle to grow. And I would say that without a clear niche, you. You will never reach 100,000 subscribers. Now, there are exceptions, but that's my belief. And the way I define niche is essentially the who and the what. Who is your target audience and what are you going to be posting about? Ideally, you should know both of those things and have them clear in your mind before you truly start trying to grow on YouTube. Because they're going to influence who finds your page, how you format your videos, what you say, what you don't say, the topics you cover, and so much more. But then besides that, getting into the actual nitty gritty of setting up your channel. Something that I learned, I think, far too late in the process. I actually learned it at Vidcon last year in 2025, is that your banner on your YouTube channel should be something that's super short, concise, and something that is essentially a call to action. If you look at my channel banner now, it just has my big yellow branding and it says the word subscribe. You can't really get much shorter of a call to action there. If you look at Mr. Beasts, it says subscribe for a cookie, and then there's a cookie emoji. If you look at Gary Vee's, it says his name, Gary Vee, and then it says video and shorts every day. If you look at Wolfie vgc, my favorite Pokemon content creator, and the goat of vgc, his channel art is really just a artwork. It's not necessarily like this complex illustration. It's just an artwork and his channel logo. If you look at everyone's favorite Hustle culture bro, Alex Hormozi, his channel artwork just has a photo of himself, it has the two companies that he has founded and it has his books. I would actually argue that Alex's is a little bit more complicated than I would recommend. But really the takeaway here is that you shouldn't spend a lot of time, energy and effort designing this high graphic design highly illustrated banner when really it should just be a short call to action. The third element of your channel setup is an attention grabbing profile picture. This is just like on Instagram. If you're building your YouTube around a personal brand, then it should be your face. As you can see, my YouTube profile picture is my face. If you're building more of a business brand on YouTube then you would want your logo to be your profile picture. But I want you to make sure that your logo is actually formatted to be a profile picture. For for example, Google uses just the G as their profile picture rather than the fully spelled out word Google because that just wouldn't make sense as a profile picture. And then finally your bio's intro. Now I think a lot of times people overthink their bio on YouTube and they spend too much time crafting it when really what matters is just those first few words because everything else is going to be cut off and most people are probably not going to read your full bio. So I updated mine again after attending VidCon 2025. So mine now just says no BS Instagram strategy. Mr. Beast simply repeats the same thing that is in his header that says subscribe for a cookie. Gary V's is a little bit more traditional where it describes a little bit about him. And Alex Hormozi's is the same listing off the companies that he has founded. And Wolfy VGC's simply says greatest Pokemon player of all time. Basically this is your elevator pitch, your snapshot and the first introduction that many people are going to have to potentially subscribing to your channel. Now let's talk about the gear. And by the way, if you go to my channel and you sort videos by oldest first, you can see my very first uploads. You can find the very first video from back on October 30, 2022. But when I first got started, I'm pretty sure that first ever video was filmed on just my phone. And while I had this microphone in front of my face, if you listen to the audio. It's pretty clear to me that I wasn't actually using this microphone. I was probably just using my phone's built in microphone so it doesn't sound so great. Also, when I first got started, I don't think I used any third party lighting. I just kind of used the natural lighting from the windows in my office. And believe it or not, don't crucify me for this. My first ever YouTube video was edited by yours truly on Imovie. Now if you're watching this video, maybe you haven't even gotten started on YouTube yet. And so if that's the case, I want to encourage you to just use your phone if you do want to add a piece of equipment or you do have a little bit of a budget to spend. The first piece of equipment that I would recommend is not lighting, nor is it even a better camera. It's actually audio quality. And I believe this because as you're watching this right now, watch what happens if I make the video quality really poor, but I leave the audio quality high. You can still watch this content. It might not be your favorite channel, it might not be your favorite video, but you can still keep watching. But now watch what happens when the video quality is great. The video quality is 4K and the audio quality has gone down the drain. It makes a really big difference and it makes the video almost unwatchable. The reality is most smartphones nowadays can shoot in 4K, so it's probably good enough quality to get you through at least your first dozen, if not your first couple hundred uploads. And then as you start to monetize your channel or make more money or whatever, then you can reinvest into the channel and purchase a better camera. But I really think your phone is good enough to get started now. Currently at the time of recording this, I've continued to add little pieces to my tech stack, if you will, to improve my setup. So just so you know, the camera that I'm currently recording on is a Sony ZV E10. My backup camera is actually just an old iPhone still. My microphone is called a Shure SM7B which its claim to fame is that it was the same mic that Michael Jackson used to record Thriller. And the microphone is actually plugged directly into the camera through this little device which is just battery powered. It's called the Comica AD3 by LinkFlex. And what I love about it is that it's a very compact system so it's easy for me to travel with my setup. It's Easy to use. When I first got started with podcasting, I had, like, this full studio setup where I had, like, all these little dials and adjustments, and I was like, I'm never actually adjusting anything, and so why don't I just simplify this? And I want to give a shout out to Omar El Takori, who actually gifted this to me when we did a podcast interview a few years ago. And he was like, dude, why are you not using a professional microphone? And I was like, well, because I have no way to connect it to my camera. I have no way to connect it to my phone. And so he just gifted me this. So shout out to you, Omar. And then in terms of my lighting setup, I'm still not totally in love with my lighting setup in this office. I feel like it could be a little bit more professional. I was called a softbox right here behind the camera, and it's made by a company called Neewer. And. And this operates as my fill light. And you can think of your fill light as kind of like the main light source on your face or on the subject. And then my key light, which is kind of like your secondary lighting source, is actually just my office's window over here. I have in the past used a actual lighting source here, but I feel like it's too much bright light. Or sometimes if I do use a secondary light, if I'm filming at, like, night, then I will just turn down that secondary light so it's not so bright on this side of my face. And the main source of light is this fill light right here. And then I have this light behind me, which kind of acts as a hair light. And it also kind of just acts as some ambient light in the room. I also have these lamps, these little lights that were built into my office, shout out to my wife, Tay, and our interior designer, Caroline, who kind of planned what my whole office space would look like. And this little light that's behind me is actually just like a $5 light off of Amazon that casts different hues onto the wall. So I could make it pink or blue or whatever I want, but I try to usually just make it gold so that it matches those lights. But again, all of this is a little bit advanced and not necessary when you're first getting started. I will say that none of this is also super expensive. Like I just said, that light's, like five dollars. I think my box light is, like, maybe 50 bucks. The most expensive part of my entire tech stack is definitely my camera itself, which is a couple hundred and this microphone is a couple hundred as well. But like I've said, you don't need any of this when you are first getting started. Also, when I first got started, like I told you, I edited my first video myself on Imovie. I now have a professional editor shout out to you Kylie, who edits my content. And I believe he uses Adobe or maybe he uses Premiere Pro, I'm not sure. Maybe Kylie, you can add an editor's note right here as to what you use. But he edits my content for me, so I don't even have to edit it myself now. Speaking of Kylie, that's a pretty seamless segue into talking about the team. It's almost like I planned it that way in my notes. Let's talk about the third ingredient of a successful YouTube channel. A YouTube channel that gets the silver play button reaches 100k subscribers. You can't do it alone. I mean, sure, like you could, but it would probably end up being your full time job or you'd have to get really lucky. I would venture to bet that if you interviewed a thousand people who have 100,000 subscribers, 900 of them, if not, 950 if not 990 of them have at least one other person on their team and they're not doing it alone. Now. Most people are doing it alone at the start, as was I. But then as we have progressed as the channel has earned more income through Google AdSense and through sponsorships, I have reinvested into the channel and added more team members. And the first one, who I would argue is the most important team member to add first is the editor. So we've had a few different editors on the channel over time. And after this section where I tell you who is on my team, I'll talk to you a little bit more about hiring and kind of my thought process for how to hire and what to look for. But the first person we hired was an editor. The second person that we hired very soon after that was a thumbnail designer. Fortunately, with AI image generation tools, it's become much faster and easier than ever before for a graphic designer to create thumbnails for you at scale, which is pretty awesome. The third team member we added was our channel manager, Shout out to you, Kristen, who basically keeps the channel running smoothly, makes sure that everything is uploaded when it should be uploaded, that it's scheduled, make sure that all of the titles that I've come up with are actually inserted, the descriptions are written, make sure that everything goes live when it's supposed to, and it has the right sponsorships in it and just kind of make sure that the overall health of the channel is doing well. And then the fourth and final team member that we've added relatively recently is a sponsorships manager. Now, I have heard your feedback and a few of you who have brought up like, hey, having three sponsorships in a single YouTube video is a little bit much. And I absolutely hear you on that. And so I just want to let you know that going forward, we will have no more than two sponsorships on each episode. And also, I really appreciate your feedback because even though I have 800,000 followers on Instagram and 100k subscribers here on YouTube, I still read pretty much every single comment on every single YouTube video. So your feedback definitely goes a long way and I take it into consideration. Even if it's the most negative, harmful, cussing me out criticism ever, I at least consider it to a certain degree. Now that we've talked about who is on my team, I want to give you some tips for hiring your own team. Number one, it is always going to feel scary. I think that if you get to the point where you're like, this isn't scary anymore. It's, I'm just desperate. Like, I need help. I need someone on my team. That's not a very good place to be in. Now, I know some of you might be in that place right now, but usually I would recommend hiring someone before you feel ready or before you feel not scared, because it's likely that you're never going to feel ready and you're never going to feel not scared until it's too late. So hire someone as soon as you have the capital, as soon as you have the means, as soon as you have the option to do so. Consider hiring someone. The second thing I want to say is that you can start with the less expensive option. Like, you don't have to go all in when you first start your channel and hire like a $30,000 a month YouTube editor. I'm sure that those exist somewhere out there. But when you're first getting started, you can use inexpensive AI tools. For example, a tool that I've been using a lot recently that we've actually built into our workflow is called Gling AI. And it's a tool that now, Kylie, our Ed uses for the rough cut. Basically, when this whole file is done being uploaded and created and when I'm done recording the episode, we need someone to go through and kind of just do the mindless task of cutting out the bad takes removing the filler words and all of that. And that's something that again, it doesn't require taste or creativity or originality. That's something that is very robotic, right? And so we now have a robot doing that. We have Gling AI going through the video and automatically creating that rough cut, which saves Kylie time so that he can then spend more time in his zone of genius as an editor, as someone who can do motion graphics and who can have taste and who can make these creative decisions and strategy. He can spend more time on that because he doesn't have to spend as much time on the rough cut. But like I said, Gling is a relatively inexpensive tool. If you are opposed to using a tool like Gling or you don't want to use AI, you could also hire a virtual staff member who's maybe from a country where the cost of living is lower. And so you're paying them something that would be far below minimum wage in the United States, but in their country that's actually a great living wage because of the conversion rate. Additionally, you could consider hiring someone who's maybe like a new editor, someone who's just getting started, a beginner. Because sure, they might not be like pro, they might not be like, you know, cinematic Hollywood level editor, but because they're just getting started, their rates are a little bit lower. And so they get the benefit of experience from working with your channel and you get the benefit of passing off your editing so that someone else can do it and you can spend more time doing what only you can do, which is coming up with the topics, filming the videos and actually creating the content. Now I know I have a lot of social media managers who listen to the show every single week. And so I'm so excited to tell you about our latest sponsor, Rella. Rela is an all in one social media management tool which is going to make working with your clients so much easier. Everything from planning, getting approvals and posting your content all in one place is so much more than just a scheduling tool. Is truly an all in one management suite for your social media management business. Rella even now has an AI tool embedded called Ella which knows your content better than you do. Allowing you to plan entire content calendars and create on brand content so much easier. Go to getrella.com and use code BYT to get 10% off the first three months of your annual plan. Again, that's G E T R e l l a.com to claim your 14 day free trial and then use code BYT for 10% off the three months of your and find out why social media teams are ditching the tool Chaos. As many of you know, when I first started this business, I was a college student athlete and at the time I was eating like five meals a day over 4,000 calories and I was eating the exact same meals every single day. Same breakfast, same lunch, same first dinner, same second dinner every single day. And it was super boring. But it was what I had to do because I just didn't have the time to make different meals, to get different ingredients, and to experience experiment with different recipes. But that has totally changed since I graduated college for two reasons. One of those reasons is my wife Tay, and her constant encouragement for us to diversify what we're eating. And the second reason is because of HelloFresh. HelloFresh allows you to choose from over 80 global recipes every single month so you can constantly change things up and meet your protein goals and be able to make your food faster and more efficiently without having to waste time meal prepping, planning, grocery shopping and all of that. And I don't know about you, but every single time I have food delivered I'm a little bit dissatisfied because it costs so much and it's usually not super healthy because let's be real, nothing quite hits like home cooking. That's why we use HelloFresh and you should too. Go to hellofresh.com byt10fm to get your first 10 meals free and free breakfast for life. One per box with active subscriptions. Free meals will be applied as a discount on your first box for new subscribers only and it varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com byt10fm to get 10 free meals and free Breakfast for Life. I remember when I was starting my very first online business way back when I was a freshman in college and I was very lucky to have my mom as a partner by my side. She could kind of mentor me and guide me through the initial setup process and building the business and coming up with the name and the products and what we were going to sell. And some of you may know that that was helping moms keep their kids safe on Snapchat. And I would imagine that when you are thinking about starting or in the early stages of your online business journey, you are likely faced with all of the same challenges, all the same doubts and fears and concerns. Is my product right? Is anyone going to listen to me? How am I going to market this? How am I going to sell it? And you need a partner by your side as well. And that's where Shopify fits right in. Shopify will help you get the word out by allowing you to easily create emails and promotional posts so that you can reach your customers wherever they are. And Shopify can be your commerce expert with world class level expertise in inventory, international shipping, handling returns and warehousing and all of that. Plus if you ever get stuck, they don't just have customer service, they have world class customer service that is available 247 and that's something that even my mom couldn't provide for me. And Shopify has that iconic purple shop pay button which is used by businesses around the world and is the number one converting checkout option in the world. That means better conversions, less people abandoning their cart and more customers for you. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify Today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com tribe go to S-O-P-I-F-Y.com tribe. Again, that's shopify.com tribe the third tip that I want to give you for hiring someone is to just start with a 30 day trial period. Just like almost any tool that you sign up for nowadays has a 30 day free trial. You can do the same with your editor. And I'm not saying that you're not going to pay the person for 30 days, you're going to pay them for their work, but you're going to go into it with the expectation communicated to your editor that hey, this is just a test project, this is just a trial run to see if they like working with you and if you like working with them. That makes it a lot easier at the end of 30 days to say like, yeah, you know, I think we're just not going to continue working together. Whether that's because you can't afford them, you don't like their work, or whatever it may be, but it just gives you that out and it makes it so much less pressure and it gives them that out as well. So that if at the end of 30 days it's not what they expected, they can't meet your demands, whatever it may be, they have an easy out as well. And then my fourth and final tip for hiring people is pay people fairly. Almost every person who I've talked to who has had a rapidly growing channel, which I don't consider my channel a rapidly growing channel, but everyone who I talk to who does, they all echo the same sentiment, which is that they actually don't get paid from their channel revenue. They don't take A cut of their YouTube. They reinvest all of the AdSense and all of the sponsorship dollars into better editors, better graphic designers, or paying their graphic designers and their thumbnail creators and their editors and then their channel managers even higher so that those people can create an even better outcome. And so pay people fairly and you'll get better work. If you try to be cheap, if you try to cheat people, if you try to undercut people and not pay people what they're worth, you're going to get really bad results and it's not going to be a very sustainable business model. With all of that being said, that brings us to the fourth final and most important ingredient for growing on YouTube, which is the actual content itself. Now, what I'm going to be focusing on for this section is what we typically think of as YouTube content. Long form horizontal video, like you're watching right now, YouTube shorts are a whole nother conversation. YouTube Live is a whole nother conversation. And that's not something that I've done a ton of on this channel. And so it's not something that I feel well equipped enough to talk about. So I'm really going to focus on what we do well on this channel, which is a long form horizontal video, like you're watching right now, content on YouTube and the success or failure of your channel is almost exclusively tied to your packaging of your videos. Now, when I say packaging, that essentially refers to the thumbnail, the title, and the first 60 seconds. And yes, retention matters. Yes, the quality of the video as a whole matters. Yes, the better, the more engaging, the more invaluable your content is overall. The more likely people are to send it to each other and to rewatch and to subscribe and to keep coming back. But people won't ever click on the video in the first place. They won't even watch. You could have Interstellar, one of my favorite movies of all time. One of the most highly rated science fiction movies, one of the most highly rated movies of the 21st century. You could have that as your content. But if the title sucks, if the thumbnail sucks, and if the first 60 seconds sucks, no one's going to get to the rest of the content. So with that being said, let's talk about the three different elements of the packaging. First, the thumbnail. Six different tips that I try to keep in mind when we are designing or picking our thumbnails. Number one is what's called the rule of three. And the rule of three is essentially that on your thumbnails, you want to have no more than three elements. If you clicked on this video, hopefully there were only three elements on the thumbnail or even less. If you start to add more than three elements on your thumbnail, it can become confusing, less attention grabbing or just less likely to get the click. Speaking of 3, the second tip that I have for you is to test three different thumbnails. It's amazing that YouTube gives us this option, but when you upload your YouTube video, you can actually put three, three different thumbnails. And when you are putting those thumbnails, this brings me into my third tip. Experiment with different styles. So if you have three different thumbnails, they shouldn't have the exact same look, the exact same feel, and just like one slight word variation. Instead, you should have three drastically different looking thumbnails. And then after 48 or 72 hours, after a period of time, you'll be able to see the results and likely you'll have one clear cut winner. And then from there you can iterate on that winner. So if one thumbnail is the clear cut winner, you could then create slight variations to that one and retest three new thumbnails that are again variations of the proven winner. My fourth tip for your thumbnails is to get inspired by other industries. Some of my best thumbnails on this channel have been inspired by Pokemon creators who I love, or fitness creators who I love. Oftentimes there are people in other industries who have great ideas for thumbnails and, and you can get inspired by those and apply them to whatever topic or niche you've chosen. Fifth, and this is more of a general recommendation. And really all of this is a general recommendation. There are definitely people who have success on YouTube with very crowded and very organic looking, almost like photographs as their thumbnails. There's people who have thumbnails that are very busy and loud. There's people who have thumbnails that are very minimal. Every audience is different and every channel is different. But again, these are general recommendations to help you get started. And the fifth recommendation regarding your thumbnails and is that smoother skin, brighter colors, bolder text is usually better. That's just human nature, right? We're usually more likely to have our eyes go to the thing that pops off the page. And so if you have brighter colors, if you have the smoother skin, which I don't mean that like you have to do a better skincare routine. I mean, like you can just use like an edling effect to kind of smooth out your skin a little bit, maybe make your eyes a little bit more big or white, or you can show your teeth or something like that. Those sorts of things usually generate a higher click through rate. And then the sixth tip for your thumbnail. And this is one of my favorite things that I've learned over the last few years is that your thumbnail should not just repeat what the title is. It should be complimentary to the title, it should talk to the title, it should interact with the title, it should add to the title or make someone curious to read what the title is. Or if they just read the title, it should make them then curious to watch the video. And so instead of just kind of repeating whatever the title says in the actual thumbnail, see if there's a way that they could complement each other. Speaking of the title, that's the second element of the packaging that really matters. And my tips for your title is, number one, use a tool. I like to use vidiq, but there are lots of different tools out there that can help you with title optimization, scoring your title, predicting whether or not it's a good title that will actually get clicks and searches. And speaking of searches, you want to make sure to include SEO or search for engine Optimized Keywords in your title because, and I can't believe we haven't talked about this already, YouTube is the world's second biggest search engine behind Google. That means that people are searching for things, they're searching for videos like yours, searching for businesses and topics like yours on YouTube more than any place in the world besides Google. And of course YouTube is owned by Google. And so how often are you googling something and then a YouTube video is its first result? Probably all the time. And so that's why you want to make sure that your title is optimized, not just for curiosity's sake and to get people interested in clicking, but also for search engine optimization so that you can show up in search results, get more clicks, and thus get more views. Tip number two for your titles and the topics for your videos in general is to look at what other people in your industry are doing, not just so that you can get inspired and create your own versions of those videos, but also so that you can see what gaps are there in the market. What is no one talking about in your industry that you are uniquely qualified to add your two cents on. That's something that I like to do all the time, and this might just be my own personal thing, but when I'm doing title research, when I'm doing video topic planning, I try my Best to never watch my competitors videos. And that's not because, like, I'm a hater of theirs. I'm a cheerleader. I'm a big fan of so many of my competitors here on YouTube, but I feel like if I watch their video then I'm too heavily influenced and I'm like, how do I make this my own? How do I say it in my own way when what they just said is in my head? So instead I might look at the title from someone else in my industry and think, oh yeah, well, I could give my own tips about that topic. Maybe some of my tips are the same, maybe all of them are the same, but I have no idea because I didn't watch their video. I'm not truly stealing the content. I'm just getting inspired by whatever topic it is that they're covering and then I'm making it my own. And my third tip for your title is to remember the drunk Grandma rule. If your title could not be understood by a drunk grandma, then it's probably too complex. It probably needs to be simplified or dumbed down so that more people can understand what the title is before they click on the video. And then speaking of when they do click on the video, the third piece of the packaging that most people forget about is those first 60 seconds. Just like on Instagram, we harp on the hook. The hook, the hook. The beginning of your reel is so important. The beginning of your YouTube video is very important as well. And there are a few different techniques here. You could repeat the title at the beginning of your video. You could add to your title. You can be aware that, hey, someone just clicked on a video after reading the title. So maybe I'm going to reference the title in my hook. But essentially your video needs to begin with some sort of hook that creates curiosity, that creates interest to keep watching. Maybe it's going to make a promise as to what they're going to learn in the video, like I did at the beginning of my video today. Maybe you're going to start with an interesting moment and then you're going to cut away from that moment and come back to it. Maybe the first 60 seconds are going to be whatever is in the thumbnail and then you're going to go back previously in the story and kind of walk us through how did we get to this climax? Most exciting moment. Essentially think about the audience, think about the viewer. They just clicked on this video and so what do they need to hear to stick around until the end of the video? Speaking of a bonus Tip for your content, which this is such a hypocritical thing to say because I'm saying it right now. At the end of this episode, ask people to subscribe. If you want more subscribers, remind them to subscribe. And there's different ways that you can do this. There's different ways that you can incentivize this. But most people will tell you if you put it at the beginning of your video, like right after the hook, you are going to get way more subscribers. Don't wait until the end of the video like this silly goose just did. That's a horrible example. Do not learn from me on this one. Do what I say, don't do what I do, and ask people to subscribe at the beginning of your video, not at the very end. Now, the final thing I'll say about your content itself is what I have found to be most helpful and most effective in growing the channel and getting more views is to start with the title and or the thumbnail. Or at least start with the topic of the video, then figure out the title and the thumbnail, and then plan out the video. I think far too often people will just hit record, which I'm a big fan of, like just hit record. You know, start sloppy, start messy, start raw. But I think far too often people will just kind of hit record. They'll record about a thing that they planned on talking about, or they'll make their vlog, or whatever it may be, and then they'll think, okay, well, what's a creative title that I could add to this video? Or what's a creative thumbnail that I could use to make people interested in this topic? And I actually find it's more effective to start with the title and the thumbnail, or at least start with the topic, create those things, and then plan out what is actually going to be in the script or what it is that you're actually going to cover in the video. And with all that being said, I want to reiterate what I said earlier, which is that it takes time to grow on YouTube. It took me three and a half years to reach 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. And I'm very proud of that. I'm very happy and I'm very thankful for all of you who are subscribed to this podcast. But it took a long time. And it took a long time, despite having a co host for the majority of those three and a half years, who was my mom, who herself has over a million followers on Facebook, couple hundred thousand on TikTok couple hundred thousand on Instagram. She's got a massive audience. That also was despite this podcast existing for an entire decade before going on YouTube. Believe it or not, we are actually almost on our 900th episode of this podcast, but only about 200 or so are actually on YouTube. And so we have a massive listener base and subscriber base over on audio only over on podcasts, who theoretically could have all come over here to the YouTube channel. Not to mention, I also have a large audience myself. I have a lot of followers on Instagram. And despite all of that, it still took three and a half years to reach 100,000 subscribers. And so again, it takes time. I want you to commit, commit to the long haul because YouTube is the most rewarding platform. It's the most rewarding monetarily in terms of pay per view. It's the most rewarding in terms of brand deals. Brands tend to pay more for a YouTube channel that has 100,000 subscribers than an Instagram that has 100,000 followers. It's also the most rewarding in terms of social credibility. Right? People are YouTubers, sure, people are TikTokers and Instagrammers, but YouTuber is a much more credible career. It's something that is actually one of the fastest growing careers that young kids in Gen Z and Gen Alpha say that they want to be when they grow up. And so it's got that social credibility. I have nearly 900,000 followers on Instagram and my friends yawn at that. But when I hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, my friends celebrated me, they send me videos and congratulations. And so again, it just has that social credibility. And I think the reason for that is that YouTube more than any other platform is merit based. And I don't mean to poo poo any other platform. Again, I flipping love Instagram. But you can have a couple of videos go viral on Instagram and get a couple hundred thousand followers. Same is true on TikTok, but the same is not true on YouTube. It's very, very unlikely that one of your first few videos is going to go viral. And even if it does, it's very unlikely that that viral YouTube video, that singular viral video is going to blow up your channel and give you a couple hundred thousand subscribers. That's just not how it works. People are very withholding of who they subscribe to on YouTube. They're very picky and choosy about who they spend their time with and who they decide to subscribe to or not on YouTube. I can't tell you how many people watch my episodes every single week but still don't subscribe. And it's a very merit based algorithm. If you make good content, if your thumbnails are effective, if your titles are optimized and people are clicking and watching and enjoying your content, you will grow. If not, well, then you need to figure out how you can improve those things so that you can see growth. YouTube, more than any other platform is about quality over quantity. It takes a lot of quantity to grow. It takes a lot of time, energy and effort. But you will never grow unless the quality is there. And so I want to encourage you to focus on continually improving your content, continually making your videos stronger, better editing, better thumbnails, more value. And the way that you're going to do that is you're going to just press post. Just like I recommend on Instagram, just press post. That's what I want you to do on YouTube. And so even though I've given you a lot of tips and strategies and ideas to think about today, I want you to believe in yourself, to just press post and do not stop. Because something that I mentioned at the very beginning today that I told you we would come back to is the numerous times that I have started on YouTube in the past. When I was a little kid, I posted my first YouTube video in like 2009 maybe. And then after that I had a basketball trick shots channel that was around for like two years where we would do regular uploads of me doing dude, perfect style basketball trick shots. And then when I was in college I tried to start another YouTube channel and I stuck with it for a few months and then I burnt out and I kind of gave up because I just wasn't seeing the return on investment. And it wasn't until the end of 2022 when I decided I am doing this. I am going to build support systems, I'm going to build automations, I'm going to go all in on YouTube, I'm going to continue to reinvest and I'm going to commit to this channel that I finally saw the growth, I finally saw the results. And like I've said a million times, it was not overnight. It's taken a long time, it's taken a lot of effort, but it has absolutely been worth it. And so when people ask me what my biggest regret is in business, what is my biggest regret in my content creation career, it is not taking YouTube seriously earlier. Thank you so much for watching and as always, happy listening.