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- [00:00]
A
Hey, this is Sharan Srivatsa. Welcome back to the Business School podcast. And in this episode, I want to tell you about how we hit a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube in under 63 days by posting just five videos. And this is actually not a content creation lesson in any way. This is a business lesson. These are the things that you could do both on and off camera, on and off the field. And when I looked back and figure out why we did this, I came up with five important lessons that you can implement in your life and in your business right now. So let me break down step by step, the five reasons why we were able to hit a hundred thousand YouTube subscribers in 163 days just by posting five videos. And I break it all down for you step by step, starting right now.
- [00:46]
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One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question. And this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharan Srivatha and welcome to Business School.
- [01:21]
A
In this episode, I want to take you behind the scenes and tell you about how we crossed 100,000 subscribers on YouTube in just 63 days and we only posted five videos. That's it, just five videos. And we didn't even post them often. We post the five videos every two to three weeks now. When I looked at this, I kept asking myself, why did this work? You're probably asking yourself that too, because it clearly wasn't the volume of posts, it clearly wasn't the frequency. It wasn't like we did daily uploads and made a, you know, a hundred plus posts a day. Each video actually made the next video easier to watch. And I really think that someone watched one that, then another, then another. And when that starts happening, I really think the channel grows faster. So just for your benefit, here were the five videos that we put out. Number one, everything I learned from being around the top 0.1%. Number two, everything I learned at Goldman Sachs in 17 minutes. Number three, once you understand investing, you understand money. Number four, the seven rules of money this one actually got is tracking at 1.3 million views right now. And number five, how to create generational wealth. The crazy part is, if you have not watched anything else, you should watch this video. It's actually my favorite one. That got the least number of views. I will save that for another time. Anytime you like something, it's probably not going to do as well. That's it. Like five videos, 63 days, we did over a hundred thousand subscribers. Probably one of the fastest growth to a hundred thousand YouTube subs of anyone that I know. And when I stepped back, I realized that there were five things that actually made the difference. And I want to walk you through exactly what they were. Now, it doesn't matter where you are in this journey. I think that you understanding this, you recognizing this will allow you to be a better advisor to your team, allow you to maybe level up your content. But understanding this is a business idea, not a YouTube idea. So you're like, hey, I don't care about content, Sharon. Well, this is not a content thing, this is a business thing. So I really think you will benefit from this overall. So I'll keep all these five things short and get right into it. So, number one, make one of zero content. Well, what does that mean? The first lesson that is this idea of one of zero content, meaning content that only you can make, right? Zero. Like no one else can make this thing. What is the content that only you can make? Because here's truly what happens when it comes to YouTube. Most people try to make content that sounds smart, that has some hacky, like, you know, has the best of the best YouTube scripts of people that use that are out there. But the content people actually trust and want more of comes from experience. They want to hack the experience curve so that they can learn something from you that they don't have to experience themselves. So let me give you an example. If, for example, I say in some video concept that, hey, you need to do XYZ because consistency matters, well, that makes sense logically, but it doesn't really hit the point home. But if I said, hey, I have run the 5am club for the last 14, 15 years. I have woken up at 5am every single day for 15 years in a row, even though I'm a night owl. That is a completely different result because it's one of zero content that only I can say that. I don't know anyone else who has woken up at 5am for 15 years in a row while they were a night owl and actually have documented proof about it, right? Because now there is history behind, there's experience behind it. There's something tangible behind it, there's proof behind it and people can connect with that in a lot of ways. So when you think about your next video I would say don't just start with the idea. Start with the things that you have actually done. Or if you have the idea, try to use, use an example of something in your own life. If you say, hey, this is about going through a struggle, then talk about a struggle in your own life. If you say this is about how you need to have courage when you lose money, we'll talk about the time you had courage when you lost money. If this is about, you know, going for something big but then not making it, then talk about going for something big when you're not making it. You have to tie the concepts that you talk about to your own experiences because that's what makes one of zero content. Now you could also talk about it about someone else's experiences and what somebody else has done. That's okay. But when you make content about someone else, you are just like everyone else because everyone else can make that content. Now you may be able to be a better reporter and tie it all together, but it has to have your personal take on things because one of zero content is extremely helpful, right? I did not say here are what the top 1% do. I said here's what I learned from the top 1%. So now I tell the story of my interaction with the top 1% and that's what really makes a difference, right? Because when you do that, the job in today's world with everybody wanting to pump out AI based content is you want content that feels real, that feels authentic, and when it compresses someone's a chance to get to know you and your life's experience. So like If I'm taking 10 years worth of experience and bringing the 10 minutes for someone else, they don't have to go through that 10 years of experience. And that's the cool part here. So big lesson there. When the content feels real and authentic, people keep watching because it's this voyeuristic attitude where they get to see your life. By the way, I really think this is why the five videos work. Every one of them came from my lived experience and my learned stories. It was Goldman Sachs or building companies or investing or with the wealth creation journey. These were, while these were broad ideas that applied to everybody, these were the implementable ideas came from my personal experiences. And I think that one thing changes how people receive the content because it feels like it's done before and they can learn from that experience. All right, big idea number two is so if you take nothing else away, take this one away, keep your videos connected. And I say this as my second lesson, because YouTube is not just a set of individual, individual videos that you just post and you figure out which one hits. I really think it's a collection or a portfolio of your work. When someone finishes one video, the next click actually is important. If your videos are random, the next click is hard to do because it people don't, are not random in their heads. But if your videos connect in some way, the next click, the next watch becomes easier. All five of these videos focused on money investing and wealth. They had this broad theme of money tied to it. So when someone finished one video, the next video kind of sort of made sense and then the next one, and then the next one, the next one. So someone is not watching one video, they're watching three or four. They're going down this labyrinth of videos and that's when growth really starts to take off when it comes to YouTube. So before you publish a video, ask yourself one question. If someone watches this, what should they watch next? If you don't know that, answer the content, just maybe to disconnect it. I think about this as if each video is a chapter, a disconnected chapter in your book, right? It doesn't have to be sequential. If each video is a disconnected chapter in your non sequential book, then it makes sense because it's totally okay if you have 10 different chapters in one book. The book is generally of one topic, but all those chapters kind of sort of refer to something. It does not have to be sequential. And I think I ask myself, when I want to put out a video, I don't say that's a good video idea. I say would that chapter make it in my book? If it does, then it has a place in my portfolio on YouTube. If it doesn't, I have to find a way to get that message to actually become a chapter in my book, right? So here's kind of like big idea number three, which is, I know this is really basic, I'm going somewhere with this, which is respond to comments. Now because the just imagine this liking video takes one second, people can just kind of like thumb a like right? But writing a comment actually takes a minute, takes effort, takes people out of their flow of things. So when someone stops, writes a comment, even if it's an emoji, or they just say first comment or whatever, I try to respond and I, I, I could do a better job. But you start to learn what people actually care about, you start to learn what confused them, you start to learn what they like, you start to learn what was helpful to them. You start to learn, you know, you start to see the hate. And you're like, oh, maybe there is a hate pattern here, especially early on. It gives you a sense of, like, what people are doing. And for most people, you're not getting hundreds or two hundreds of comments. You're probably getting, you know, a dozen total. Just not even responding to those is crazy, because if you don't respond to the first 12, you're never going to respond to the next 120, right? And so I think it becomes harder later on. And I try to respond to these comments, they just kept coming. I remember the time when I was commenting on each of these videos and I just finished like 20 of them. And then another new 20 showed up, and I just did 20 more. Another 20 showed up. Like, I was actually had to pull over while I was driving just to record these comments. Because I realized that recording these comments gave me so much understanding of what people want. And one of the videos that we actually made was we actually scraped all the comments and we realized that that was supposed to be the topic of the next video because a lot of people just asked for that same thing. So it informed us on what actually comes next. But I will tell you, early engagement will bring stronger relationships because the early people are the ones that are supporting you. And stronger relationships do what? They build stronger channels, right? So in a lot of ways, I would say if you're not responding to comments, you need those early true fans to support you early on because they form this really supportive base of people that keep coming back to you because you recognize them and reinforce their behavior of responding to these comments. I also will tell you, this shapes the next video, right? Like I just said, you're not guessing. You're actually responding to what people are already telling you. So even if you don't make a completely new topic based on that video, you can then reference. Hey, I know that many of you are interested in blank, right? Many of you. And when you do that, they actually. Your editors can actually put screenshots of the comments in there. That shows proof that you're actually responding to the comments and you care about what the comments are. When people start to see that you care about the comments, they start to comment and people start to comment. It shows it to more people. And there's this really good reinforcing loop. So just you should respond to your comments, especially on YouTube. All right, number four, this is going to sound awkward, but let me tell you the big reason. It's build a visual identity. And if Every video looks different. It becomes harder for people to recognize your content right off the bat. If you were at a bar and you saw the Joe Rogan show, you know exactly the episode and the setting that he's in. If you saw an Old School Friends episode, you know exactly what that said. And if you saw a Seinfeld episode, you know exactly what that said. And if you saw a Bridgerton episode, you know exactly what that said. And if you saw cnn, you know exactly what that said in. Right. If you, you. If you saw a White House correspondent talk, you know exactly what that said in. People recognize your content right away. So some people say, well, Sean, I'm not the White House, or I'm not cnn, or I'm not Joe Rogan. Well, the sooner you do that, the faster you become them. This is not a correlation relationship. This is a causation relationship. If you have a different location and different editing and a different feel, it becomes really hard to recognize every time. Which is why what we did is we started standardizing a lot of this. You actually will see more of the standardization coming forward for my team. But even that, even if we didn't have the same studio, we started to get something similar. We didn't change the structure too much. We had a similar structure to our entire videos. We started editing the same exact way. The fonts, the. The graphics, the styles were very similar. Because when someone presses play, it should feel familiar. Familiarity builds a lot of safety. And when they have safety, they want to spend more time with you. Honestly, you don't need a complicated setup. I would recommend that you just pick a few things like the cut or the edit or what have you, and just keep that, you know, going. Keep that the same over and over. And for some people, it's hard. Maybe you shoot differently at a different set or you structure your editing. I think familiarity gets people to stay longer. And when people stay longer, what happens? The channel grows. Let me give you one tactical tip here. If you're starting out and you don't know, don't have a real good feel for your aesthetic of what you want to go with, tell your editors to pick one of the creators that you like right now and just mimic their look and feel and edit. Maybe just use a little bit of change with your fonts and colors, but use their look and feel and edit for everything. See for the first 10, 20 videos, see whether you like it, and then you can slowly start to make the change from it, coming up with your own identity. If you don't want to do that, then just mimic someone else's that you already like. So it gives you the longevity. So you're not going from edit to edit to edit, and it's different every single time. Also, whatever edit you make, whatever style guide that you have, if you somehow end up working with different editors, just give them the same style guide, have them do the same edit over and over again. Be really ruthless about rounds versus squares and fonts and colors. Like, don't change it up. Just because you see somebody else's and they have yellow doesn't mean you should yellow. Just make sure your stuff, your visual identity is unique and unique to you, because once again, this goes to making one of zero content. All right, the last part, I know this sounds really simple, but the team is the last part. I really think this surprised me because I realized. I realized that I am actually a very small part of the process. I'm just the talent, and probably I've contributed 10% to this video. But there is concept research, there is story selection, there is packaging, there is editing, there is iteration, There is, you know, strategy on when it goes live. There is the thumbnails and the titles. And I have realized that for every hour we shoot, there's probably 15 to 20 hours of preparation. And I'm not doing that 15 to 20 hours. And that preparation is what makes the video the video. So when I show up to shoot and we are ready and we rehearse the material and we have the notes online and the team is ready to go. The team is what has taken the channel to actually do this. I'll give you a crazy story. We shot maybe five to eight times and did five to eight different episodes in the last seven months. And we never published any of them because we were just not feeling right about the topics that we did. And as soon as we kind of nailed that, we could have posted sooner and kind of tried to engage, but we realized that coming up with what we like and just going hard on that is the answer. And there was all the team around it. So if you're really serious about building something on a data and brand centric platform like YouTube, you've got to get a. Some kind of team support or you have to put in the work. Now if you have to put in the work, you probably have to be in some kind of mastermind group or some kind of, like, community where you can ask questions and. And, you know, have somebody else give you a second pair of eyes. I think with AI, you can get a second pair of eyes. On your things. But I will tell you, without the team that we have, without the meticulousness and how we actually shoot these videos, there's no way this would have happened at all. I really want to iterate this idea. For every hour we shoot, we're spending 15 to 20 hours outside of the shooting. So if we're shooting for two hours, it's probably 30 hours total of prep to actually get there. And I'm not even counting post production. And that's what actually makes these videos, these videos. Because people you know, have been posting videos for 10 years and still have not hit 100,000 subscribers. How were we able to. Again, did you hear me say we? How are we able to. Not me. How are we able to post five videos and hit 100,000 subscribers in less than 63 days? That shows that if you're focused and you have the right strategy, the things that I'm actually telling you that we learn would be really helpful to you. And that's exactly what happened. You know, honestly, five videos, as I told you, in 63 days we had, we didn't upload more than, you know, a video every two to three weeks, we had over 100,000 plus subscribers. We got, you know, one video right now is cooking over 1.3 million views. And I think the idea of each video made the next video easy to watch. And that way people watched more than one, people stayed a little longer, the channel grew faster and that's exactly what happened. So if you want to see all of this in action, I really think that just go to YouTube, find my channel and you will see it. I want you to like take a peek at it and just see to make sure what I'm talking about is exactly what I'm sharing here. Because the main idea Here is, is one of 0 content. Can you actually do what only you can do? Can you make it a sequential or non sequential part of your book? Can you get the team to work in your favor? Can you actually resp to comments? And most of all, can you have a simple visual identity that you repeat? That way as you repeat it, people feel familiar. And when they feel familiar, they feel safe. And when they feel safe, they want to watch more of your stuff. Hey, I don't know if this is helpful to you. I have two action items for you. Number one, please just go look at my channel. I think this will be helpful to you. Send it to your team, send it to your friends, send them this video. And number two, if you like this, and this was tactical enough and you want to make more like this, just screenshot this and tag me. That way I can make more like this for you. So if you like this, screenshot this and tag me and I can make more like this for you.
- [17:37]
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Hey, this is Sharon. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I've got a chance to build two billion dollar companies the hard way.
- [17:46]
A
So if you like this episode, you
- [17:48]
B
will love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It's on my side substack called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from
- [18:01]
A
the trenches as I go for a
- [18:03]
B
three peat and build the Next billion. So everything's free at my Next billion dot com. Please check it out. My Next billion dot com.